It was an online friend from a different fandom who introduced me to Richard Armitage. This friend really liked Mr. Thornton. She didn’t have anyone to gush about him with though, or anyone who had even heard of the actor’s real name.
When The Hobbit promotions started in December of 2012, my friend thought that maybe now she could finally persuade some of us to join her.
She continued to post various pictures of Mr. Thornton on our community message board, along with a few from Richard’s photo shoots. I initially thought he wasn’t bad looking, he had beautiful eyes and a classic dignified nose.
But what was this North & South that she kept going on about? Wasn’t that a Civil War saga, starring Patrick Swayze?
Eh, I wasn’t really in the mood for another period piece at the moment. I think I’ll pass. how enticing can a cravat be, really?
My friend then informed me that this unheard of crush of hers was starring in the upcoming Hobbit film. Well, now you’ve got my attention! I was a long time Tolkien fan and had been eagerly awaiting the movie.
I didn’t know much about the film itself, preferring to go the wide eyed & innocent route this time around. Which character did you say this guy was playing? Thorin? But he’s old and grumpy!
What were your first thoughts of Richard?
Nowhere in Particular RA 
The first time I saw Richard Armitage was on a YouTube video (August 2012) of the train scene and the girl entranced me at first because she was talking about HIM doing her “the favor”. Their hands touched and I thought that she just proposed marriage to him. Then his face came into the frame and the way he looked at her and then kissed her, and then scene shifted to another man’s face and I thought, “brother? Husband? What sorcery is this?”
Then she walks away and other guy hands her her bag and leaves. Then he turns around and says, “you’re coming home with me?” And I thought to myself, “dude if that’s how you kiss, I’m going with you anywhere!”
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it 😉
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I actually resisted watching N&S for quite a while. I can’t really remember why now! but I sneaked a peek at the train scene on Youtube before I sat down to watch the mini-series. that KISS?! I can’t even describe what happened to me while watching, it was just so…Ugh. no words!
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I’ve only ever watched the kissing scene. I’ve *tried* to watch other scenes, but in spite of what I’m sure is great social commentary by Gaskell, I don’t think I’ll ever do it.
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if you normally don’t like those kinds of period pieces then you probably won’t like it. it’s the classic scenario of judgmental stereotypes & misunderstandings, with the underlying romance building underneath that you don’t actually see until the end. I like to see how the characters change, through their hardships and the growing awareness of each other. that end scene though is AMAZING! and you don’t necessarily need it put into context for it to be amazing, either.
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I don’t care much for the classic romance plots of the “judgmental stereotypes & misunderstandings” and can’t stand Austen since it all seems so silly and the preoccupation with who you will marry so materialistic and shallow, so I suspect if I ever watch North and South, I will only watch it with the sound off.
It’s a pity because I used to watch vhs tapes of classics 1970s BBC mini-series like The Forsyte Saga (in black and white) with my grandmother and liked most of them. There were love stories, but with none of what I think of as silliness. People fell in love and it ended happily or it ended tragically, but not because of misunderstandings.
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I understand what you’re saying and do agree with you for the most part; they tend to be soap operas in old fashioned clothes. I find the social customs interesting because they are so far from what I am used to. there is something to be said for the sexual tension and the reward after a long struggle, but if you’ve read one Austen novel, you’ve read them all; doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy them, it just means I know exactly where the plot is going.
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Read one, read them all. That’s how I feel about Austen too. It’s very formulaic.
I did watch Lost in Austen, which wasn’t great Lit but which I really enjoyed. It had the advantage of having as the main character a modern girl who knew all the ins and outs of plot trying to avoid those misunderstandings, while the characters still managed to mess things up. They were like lemmings rushing to the cliff no matter what the main character did.
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is this movie a comedy? because it sounds funny!
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It’s a British tv mini-series. It’s available on DVD, but I think it’s available on youtube 🙂
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Here is the youtube link to Lost in Austen (separate comment in case urls won’t post) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz-9gmfXjTI
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thank you for the link, I’ll be sure to check it out!
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My first glimpse of Richard was waiting in line to see the Hobbit when I looked up at the giant poster of all the dwarves and immediately I zoomed in on Thorin – 30 mins later I was a puddle on the floor after he arrived at Bag End and said “Gandalf” The rest is history (and, if you want to know more about it check out one of my very first blog posts: How I fell for a hot and hairy dwarf! http://bechep.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/834/) 🙂
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when Thorin opened that door, I sat up straighter in my seat and mentally sighed, I then found myself thoroughly immersed in the story but those eyes of his haunted me for days! I like to fondly relate what has followed, to Bilbo grabbing that contract & racing through the village exclaiming “I’m going on an adventure!” because it has been an adventure, and it’s really just beginning. –I had not read that first post of yours, thanks for linking it!
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That is a perfect description! “I’m going on an adventure!” let’s hope ours doesn’t involve any orcs though!
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It was Mr Thornton I fell in love with… From his very first sighting in the mill, looking very tall and very proud… By the time we got to the kiss I was a puddle on the floor. Then Lucas North , so gorgeous right from the first words in that husky voice… Then heroic John Porter who got me to watch an action series and even enjoy it… Still not totally convinced about Thorin because the prosthetics detract from the beautiful planes of his face… But RA with a false nose is better than no RA! 😉
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even after I decided that Richard was my faux soulmate ( 😛 ) I wasn’t all swoony over Thorin exactly, but the past few weeks I’ve changed my tune; those expressive eyes get me EVERY time.
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Oh, how could I leave out the dream in black leather, Guy! (And in the same vein, the sexy Ricky Deeming…)
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Guy is very hard to forget! and when Ricky rolls that cigarette in the interrogation room? dead.
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I had seen Richard Armitage in the (often very dodgy) Robin Hood series (which I watched when I remembered to do so and the horrible costumes and script didn’t drive me away), but I didn’t make the connection with Thorin. I have seen Lord of the Rings many many times, and had been sort of waiting for/dreading The Hobbit. (I relaxed when I realized that Peter Jackson was the director). I saw posters and images of him as Thorin, and still didn’t see it. So for the first month or two of my Armitage Infatuation, it was really Thorin Love, and only Thorin Love 🙂
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Robin Hood PS
This isn’t to say that I haven’t now watched every episode of the Robin Hood series several times, although I usually fastforward through anything that doesn’t have Guy in it. I even bought the dvds just for the commentary and bhs stuff.
Okay, now I’ve done it. (slinks away in shame)
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I’ve been seeing clips of the RH commentary floating around a lot recently. they sound really good, and may even entice me to buy the DVDs for myself (I watch them on Netflix).
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There are transcripts of the Armitage bits of commentary on one of the websites. I think it’s RACentral(?)
My favourite bits are where the girl who plays “Jac” keeps talking about an “orange” dress, and he keeps saying “I think you’ll find it’s red”, or the bit with the maid comes into the dungeon in season 1 ep4, where in the commentary he says something like “You can hear me squelching in my boots” and someone else in the cast (the guy who plans Alan?) says “Is that what happens every time a maid comes into the scene? You squelch in your boots”) 😀
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I didn’t really go gaga over Thorin until I bought the DVD. now I watch it endlessly (along with my 8yr old daughter; she loves it and is now reading the book). I love the weight he has upon his shoulders, and his sassyness. I do think it’s a funny movie at times, I’m always laughing at the witty jabs and the sarcastic body language; Richard and Martin are both wonderful in it.
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Me too. I think that they are a great team.
I wish loonie part of RPS shipperdom hadn’t ruined so many other character interactions for me before I even see them.
(By this I mean the ones that think the RP ships are all real and troll the internet saying so, flaming all in their path. I realize that that is a controversial statement in parts of fandom, but after more than 10 years of online fandom I stand by it).
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I don’t pay any attention to those, straight or slash. I learned my lesson in “shipping” from the last fandom I was in!
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Well, if you’ve read my first comments at MorrighanMuse’s blog, you’ll know that I have a looong, unhappy history with crazy shippers who troll gossip boards and pretend to be insiders and then troll forums starting flamewars. I was hoping the (with great respect to all the actors) age of the dwarves in The Hobbit would mean no slashing, but then Peter had to go and hire young and extremely good-looking actors
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I’ve not gone back to read that blog from the beginning. sounds like you’re describing the Twilight fandom(that was my most recent fandom) but I guess those types of things are prevalent in every fandom. I tend to be somewhat aloof in my wanderings, only taking notice of what interests me and discarding the rest. I thankfully haven’t gotten involved in those types of scuffles myself, though I do personally know people who have been targeted. it’s bullying, plain and simple.
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It was mostly LOTR fandom. Never been near Twilight.
I started in fandom quite young and was in Star Wars fandom and LOTR. I left Star Wars fandom after I saw how lame the movies were becoming.
With LOTR, I was mostly a fan of the movies and all the actors in them, but especially Gandalf and the hobbits. To my astonishment, annoyance and even anger later on, I found some kind of weird cult had formed around the RPS written about some of the actors. Even though I didn’t read at IMDB it was pretty inescapable, especially for a couple of the hobbit actors. People were posting anonymously on gossip boards and forums pretending to be the actors (who were saying that they gay and wanted to come out but were being oppressed by ‘PR’) or else as supposed insiders. Then people starting inventing weird fanfic-like scenarios which even included attempted sexual assault, and these were treated like gospel.
And then it got *really* weird 😯
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that kind of stuff did squick me out a bit at first but I just overlook it now, since I don’t particularly enjoy it myself. I noticed “slash shippers” going crazy when those first pictures of Thorin and Lee Pace’s character (too lazy to try and spell correctly at the moment!) first surfaced. I’m sure it’s strange for the actor’s themselves, knowing that kind of stuff is out there (both real person and character driven) but to each their own; I’m sure they find many things about fans/fandoms strange.
one of my favorite interviews concerning this subject is when the young man who plays “Draco” in the Harry Potter movies was on one of the late shows and they were showing fan art slash pairings of his character and Harry Potter. he took it in stride and had a good sense of humor about it.
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I’ve learned to get over the FPS because those are fictional. RPS, on the other hand, is writing porn about real people, which is a bit more (as my profs used to say) problematic, especially to the world outside fandom (or a certain bit of fandom). The crazy part comes when you insist that your RPS is RL and try to force this on others. Luckily, most people who write any kind of RPfic (maybe the great majority of them) know it’s fantasy.
I know that not all actors are okay with RPS, and some are even weirded out by FPS (as confirmed in the book The Frodo Franchise). I know it’s not considered cool (even by those who create FPS/RPS) to show it to the people depicted, especially in a public forum.
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I read a few “real person” fics in my last fandom but didn’t much care for them. most were too OOC and those that weren’t, seemed too spot on, which made me feel like a voyeur. who in their right mind would show the actor/actress the “real person” stories?! no one in their “right mind”, obviously.
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I know there was an incident where some fans handed Elijah Wood some FPS or RPS art at a press conference or something. He turned beet red an got flustered, and there was much spin by the craziest shippers who tried to explain this away.
The crazy shippers have slightly ruined Bard/Thorin scenes and definitely ruined Thorin/Tharanduil interaction for me. (The Bard/Thorin scenes are only slightly tainted because there was the AFAIK lone shipper who was claiming for no reason at all that Luke Evans must be Richard Armitage’s bf. On the other hand there have been either a couple of shippers and one or two energizer-bunny trolls who have been pushing Lee Pace and Richard Armitage as a couple based on stuff like their names being mentioned one after the other in tweets when a big group of Hobbit cast and crew go out to a concert or film. I read a tweet in which someone said that the person who posted the original photo of Peter Jackson and Lee Pace at the Tenacious D concert (with Richard in the background talking to someone else) was flamed horribly for objecting to the shippers calling it a “date”. Someone else I know said that anyone who objected to that idea elsewhere was being accused by a troll of working for pr! Again 8-I So it’s already gotten unpleasant )
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oh my…I have no words for how twisted that all is! I’m glad to stay blissfully unaware.
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My cousin and I went to see it, and she probably hasn’t read Tolkien and only went because it was my birthday, but she loved the movie and (I suspect) especially Thorin. She asked me if I was planning to see the second movie, and when it came out 😀 so the Thorinmania is often immmediate.
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I just wanted to say that I grew up with that poster! I saw it at a lawn sale right after I first read LOTR and bought it to hang in my room (right beside the Tolkien calendars and a watercolour inherited from great-aunt that reminded of something Tolkien might paint).
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I actually bought the poster as a present for my husband’s high school graduation (yes, we’ve dated since HS!) I’ve always tried to make sure it was hanging in a prominent place throughout the years. unfortunately, since it’s now in the kid’s playroom, it was hanging next to Justin Bieber for awhile *gasp!* luckily, that’s not the case anymore.
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In a way, that’s too bad. The Biebs could use a wizard like Gandalf in his life right now 😀
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my daughter despises him now because he turned into a “bad boy”. it makes me happy to know that doesn’t appeal to her yet!
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He’s more a lame boy, really ;-p
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