Fandom #Asks: Richard Armitage

The first character I first fell in love with– Thorin Oakenshield
I just really liked his eyes at first, his deep voice, and his commanding presence. but I don’t like long hair on men. those Celtic beads and the classic warrior hairstyle wore me down though.

the risk you take when you Google Thorin Oakenshield hair

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now– John Proctor
idealist, sacrificing himself for the good of his name, which had already been tarnished by giving into the temptation of a wily teenage girl. the guilt! the shame! the angst! a sick wife, a town full of people who have all seemingly gone mad, conniving girls who stir up rumors of witchcraft, this story has everything!

Wile E Abigail. where’s a falling anvil when you need one?

The character everyone else loves that I don’t– Chop
that long hair again, I just can’t get past it. although he can be a snazzy dresser when he wants to be, and he can hold his own in a bouncy castle!

children can be brutal

The character I love that everyone else hates– John Bateman
it’s true. it’s one of my deep dark RA secrets! I don’t hate John Bateman, because I don’t see him as someone separate from Lucas North; they are one and the same. does he make overly dramatic dumb-ass decisions when he’s operating in that persona? yes. that doesn’t mean I’m going to forget all he was as Lucas North, all I loved about him as Lucas North, he’s still Lucas North! if you hate John Bateman, you hate Lucas North.

Lucas North made dumb-ass decisions too

The character I used to love but don’t any longer– Francis Dolarhyde
I wouldn’t say I loved Francis but I did form an attachment to him, not only because of his dual personality and all of the intriguing things that went along with that, but also because it was that character that pulled me back in when I started to drift out to sea. alas, he couldn’t sustain me and so I did sail on to different lands, but Francis spoke to me at a time when I really needed to feel something.

fear is a feeling.

The character I would totally smooch– Daniel Miller

smiley kisses are the best kisses

The character I’d want to be like– Gary Fuller
ordinary hero,assistant principal, boring but attractive. divorced father, cringey but loving. Gary battles fantastical weather conditions to save his son. I don’t want to be a boring divorced assistant principal, but I would move Heaven and earth to save my kids. according to my daughter, I’m already a master of cringe. so I do have that going for me.

believe it or not, I’m walkin on air, never thought I could feel so free…

The character I’d slap– Lee Preston
talk about cringey! the Speedo? not a fan. the smarmy wink that goes along with the Speedo? no. the flirty girty strip poker champ?

A pairing that I love– Lucas & Beth
they had chemistry. they distrusted each other at first but it quickly grew into mutual respect. they worked together well as colleagues, I would have really liked to see how that transferred to a different kind of partnership.

any combination between these three would work for me, to be honest

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I Pledge Myself to Thee…sort of

Loyalty, book adaptations; how far do you support something based on it’s origins, rather than it’s own merits? Ideally I think most of us would say that we wouldn’t do that, we either like something or we don’t–not because of any prior bias. For myself, I can admit that I do give weight to that bias and it makes me feel guilty, twofold: If I’m giving the project more leeway than I normally would because of the story it was adapted from, that’s not a fair judgement. By the same token, if I don’t like it as much as I feel that I should, that somehow feels disloyal to the original story. Sometimes the differences between “original” and “adapted” bother me, while other times they don’t. I guess it depends on whether I think they’ve improved upon the original story or even branched off far enough that it’s become it’s own unique telling. What has me in this particular frame of mind currently is the Starz television drama Outlander.

I’m a long-time fan of the Outlander novels, yet I’ve struggled with my impressions of the television version. Character portrayals, plot changes, and even minor historical or logistical differences have stood out to me like a sore thumb. I want to over look them, just go with the flow and enjoy seeing my beloved story on screen…but I can’t. It’s not that I hate the show, I would probably really enjoy it if I had no prior Outlander knowledge; I hate being one of those “in the book” people but in this case I am. I think it’s time to own that for myself.

There were many “in the book” people who didn’t like The Hobbit movies. I could understand their complaints but I had no problem enjoying the movies on their own merit…sort of. I really liked the first movie, An Unexpected Journey. And it was through my love of that movie that I became enamored with one of it’s leading men, Richard Armitage. The second movie in the trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, had a different tone to it than the first but I liked it well enough. By the third and final film, The Battle of the Five Armies, I was left questioning how deep my bias might actually be. Looking back, I’m thinking that it was my investment in certain characters that pulled me along, instead of an overall affinity for the films themselves.

I always carry some kind of bias with me in regards to book and film series, tending to see them as a whole instead of their individual parts. I can’t help but have positive (or negative) slants regarding actors, directors, screenwriters, etc. before I even view a film for the first time; it’s unavoidable, really. Sometimes that bias helps and sometimes it hinders but most of the time I can see the forest for the trees. On the occasions that I can’t though, do I keep trying in hopes that some switch will suddenly be flipped, or just bow out while I’m ahead?

I’ve pretty much bowed out with the continuing book series of Outlander, for instance (I adore volumes 1-4 but I gave up after number 6) but I think it’s easier to let go of a book series than a television one, for some reason. It’s so easy to binge watch things these days, which can be an entirely different experience than hanging on week to week. I’m a big fan of the television series Lost but was not an original watcher. I binge watched the series during the summer before the final season aired, and fell in love with it. Waiting week to week during that last season though was torture! Considering how different some of the seasons were from each other, and how many of the storylines never came to fruition, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it if I had watched in real time.

I think I’ve hung on this long with the Starz version of Outlander out of obligation: so many of my family and friends know my love for the story and look to me for opinions about it. so much so that I think some of them were surprised that I didn’t visit the real life sites when I went to Scotland last summer. I won’t say the characters and situations didn’t cross my mind on my travels but Scotland isn’t Jamie Fraser to me. I guess the question is: how much of Outlander-Starz, is?