Sunday 30 January 2011

Richard Armitage & "Schnuckie"

Followers of my blog will have recognized, that "Schnuckie" is my computer.

"Schnuckie" failed to start last Friday and as I had to send him back to the manufacturers, he will take some time to find his way back to me. You could very well say he abandoned me for a while.

Now you might ask: what does that have to do with Richard Armitage?
His absence made some points of my fandom for Richard Armitage clear to me. This is the reason why I tell you about my "Schnuckie" and his companion "Mausie", who would otherwise have remained anonymous.

The absence of my Schnuckie hit me hard, not only, because all my professional software and software licenses are on this computer.
I still had access, at least for a while, to the internet via another computer, "Mausie".
But on Schnuckie were all the mail accounts and RSS feeds of my fan-obsession. I somehow felt bereft without them, cut off from all the wonderful information. And when Mausie abandoned his monitor, I also lost the ability to watch the film DVD's.

Another aspect of my fandom also occurred to me:
For fandom I use and try to expand my computer skills. Picture editing, website creation, video editing, nice blog sphere behaviour, all of these elements are computer related for me.
Richard Armitage is in some way the motivation for me to better myself.

How can my computers (and here I do not speak in the singular!!!) desert me in all of this?
Computers, my way to Richard Armitage!

The funny thing is, I have not the slightest idea if Richard Armitage even vaguely likes computers.
But I love them, and as you see with "Schnuckie" and "Mausie" even give them names. By the way, my computers are all male ;o)
Their logic and sometimes tricky behaviour just is not female ;o)

But why do I love my computers?
- perhaps because they have to do what I say (sometimes)?
- because in some way they do allow me to do what I want (sometimes)?

Regarding fandom it appeared to me, that these are perhaps also aspects of my fandom.
Nobody is there to disagree or set limitations - at least not the object of adoration.

But my computer "Schnuckie" has 'his' limits as the defect now shows.
Does my fandom have its limits as well?
Oh yes, Richard Armitage does currently not give input as to provide us fans with new material, because he is currently working on "The Hobbit". But as this will take some further time to progress, we are cut off, like I am from my computer.

Perhaps computer and fandom is not such a bad comparison after all, though I started it as a kind of sad joke?

[I must excuse myself for using Richard Armitage for comparison reasons here. It is purely circumstantial and any kind of disregard is completely involuntary. But as I am no other person's fan I had nobody else to compare the computers with.
Not that I think Richard Armitage has anything in common with a computer. He is much too fetching and expressive for that.
You see, I have quite a lot of differences as well. Perhaps I should do - oh no - enough of reminding me of my still not working computer!
You see I miss 'him' badly when I do not have 'him' for some days - and that again is something 'he' has in common with Richard Armitage ;o) ]

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Strike Back on RTL 2 in Germany TODAY !

BBC Germany announced the start of "Strike Back" in Germany.

RTL2 will show all three parts of the first series beginning January 26th, 2011:

More information here (in German only!):
http://www.bbcgermany.de/GERMANY/dokumentationen/genre2/907/Microsite/index.htm

Teil 1 am 26. Januar um 22:05 Uhr auf RTL II
Teil 2 am 28. Januar um 22:40 Uhr auf RTL II
Teil 3 am 29. Januar um 22:00 Uhr auf RTL II


I am just too curious how the synchronised version will turn out. From the first German episodes of "Spooks" I was heavily disappointed. The informal 'you' does work in English, but most certainly not in German and the word by word translation they did for Spooks 1 just did not work for me. The fine irony was completely left out in the German version, so the dialogue was a bit boring and the forced familiarity between ministers and state officials very strange. I gladly went back to the English version.

Sunday 23 January 2011

Computers and Fandom

Why computers have a tendency to brake down Friday evening after all shops are closed, is a small miracle to me.

The connection between computers and my fandom I will have to analyse further in a later post. Some interesting aspects occurred to me while not having my main working computer available any longer.

For now, I just wanted to let you know that I am back online with my old, reliable, but unfortunately in the meantime a bit slow computer.
My "Schnuckie" is gone and has to be repaired, as something with the electricity does not work. Fortunately no viruses and lost data.

Thursday 20 January 2011

Announcement - fanstRAvaganza 2011 (from March 14th to 21st, 2011)



fanstRAvaganza 2011


THE event for all fans of Richard Armitage is held this second year! Initiated by Nat from www.armitagefanblog.blogspot.com it is a combined event on various blogs to celebrate the main topic and subject of those blogs, Richard Armitage.

You can find a list of all participating blogs here.

Vaughan-Meeting a Pre-Arranged Detour?

Was the meeting between Harry and Vaughan a pre-arranged event to let Lucas North drop his guard?
This would explain, why Harry took it upon himself to meet Vaughan and did not send Lucas or another member of the grid alone to acquire the information.
It also would explain, why no real information was forwarded by Vaughan, though Vaughan must have given good reasons to get Harry to leave the headquarters.
It might also explain the high security level with which Vaughan's files were sealed off.

Has Harry already had doubts about Lucas and wanted to lead him on to reveal his true background story? Had he been suspicious since Lucas requested full file access in episode 9.2?

What still keeps me wondering is the strange relationship between Harry and Lucas even before the strange Spooks 9 - events.
Is it down to male rivalry or is there more to it?

Sunday 16 January 2011

Pity for the Murderer

The last post about the unbelievable behaviour of Maya in "Spooks 9" let a new idea grow in my mind.

Was it the intention of the scriptwriters that we should pity Lucas / John in the end? 

The whole of MI-5 is hunting him down,
Harry is disappointed of him and does not support him (though Lucas / John does not let him. But Harry also does not give the impression that he really wants to help Lucas, he wants to control him, but help him?)
Nobody understands him and Lucas / John stands alone against the whole world.

The only thing is, what did the scriptwriters want to reach with this?

John the murderer was the only one at the end of Spooks 9 who had my sympathies.
Though I must admit, I normally fall for the underdog and would quite naturally try to defend him.
I did not care for Ruth's tears, for the grimaces of Beth and Dimitry which I could not interpret as compassion for Lucas / John
or for the complete absence of remorse which Harry showed.
Harry at the end to me seemed disappointed, that it was not he himself who died and not in the least relieved, that he survived.
Whatever the feelings of the team were, they did not solve anything for me in the end.
Lucas / John / Nobody was gone and did not leave someone to remember him, as all seemed glad that he was gone.
Problem solved, let's see what the next problem will be.

Is this meant for us to read as a criticism of the system, which killed 'our kind and gentle Lucas'?

Friday 14 January 2011

Lucas & Maya - Lovers and Opposites

Forgotten Love Declared as the 'Love of a Lifetime'

This is the hardest bit for me to believe.
If it would have been shown as a rescue for an innocent, as some hints try to declare it, I would tend to believe the 'forgotten love'. But the whole environment does not support this interpretation of the separation of the pair in love 15 years back.
Lucas is described as an excellent spy and cannot enact a secret identity which would allow him to meet Maya again or to at least spy on her and try to find out, what she does and how she fares?
No way - I do not believe that !!!

If he can forget her for 15 years, I would say 'Good riddance'.
Why Maya goes along with Lucas / John makes no sense for me, but what makes this totally unbelievable is, that later on she easily believes John being a murderer, because "for the first time he makes sense".
She sets her career and future on a man she has so fundamental doubts about. He for her suddenly makes sense as a murderer, when he never has made sense before?
I do not know how the relationships of the scriptwriters work, but mine normally make sense for me, at least in the interpretation of the moment.
Interpretations can be wrong or change in time, but as Maya formulates her attitude, John for the first time makes sense as he has never before.
Why did she not ask him about the things which did not make sense?
The only question she asks is about his job.
- Here he evidently lies to her or at least evades her question as he as a good spy should towards a not vetted person. -
Is he a good spy or a good liar here?

Some of the questions I would have asked him:

What did you do the last years? - And here I would have expected much more than an evasive answer. I would have expected him to talk for hours and would have guided him on by accounts of my stories of the passed years to make up for the lost time.

What he planned to do in future?

Why he wanted me back in his life? - Because he saw me in a picture is not likely to convince me!

What hurt him? - Because it was quite obvious in his demeanour that he had been hurt.

What the tattoos meant to him? - She sleeps with him and does not even ask the obvious!


After 15 years she does not know him so well any longer that she can rely on sex to cure everything. This is an approach typical for younger people, but a well established doctor after 15 years of separation is too old for such kind of nonsense and simply losing one's head. She should have become more aware of her personal needs in life by now.
At least in the morning after, reality should have kicked in.
Here I do respect the attempt to show her hesitance and her efforts to getting the situation under control by asking John what he does for work. But this is a meager attempt, especially as it is met with an evasive lie.

More unbelievable even is her first question and the reaction to John's comment that he was in prison.
That John (Lucas North) could have been innocent appears to her last.
I would interpret that as - the love is long gone.

Which again leaves me with the question, why does Maya go along with John's scheming and leaves her previous life and job without a notice? How reliable and thoughtful is that of her? Does she really care about her patients? Her behaviour does not imply that. As I mentioned previously in a blog post, her behaviour towards the wounded Vaughan is unbelievable for a doctor. Her leaving her job and patients is equally cruel and unforgivable for me.

Her character is either so crudely drawn, that she appears to be careless, gullible, ungrateful, disloyal and selfish or the scriptwriters really wanted to tell us something with contrasting her to the caring and thoughtful John (Lucas North).
But in general this really makes me pity Lucas / John and leaves me without sympathy for Maya. Especially when Lucas so nicely advises Ruth in episode 9.8 how best to go forward with her feelings for Harry and compliments her on her cleverness, a thing men normally cannot do very well (e.g. compare it to the late home secretary's comment on Ruth's intelligence in Spooks 9.1).

Wednesday 12 January 2011

My Search for a New Way ...

You will have recognized, that I tried to erase my grumbling over "Spooks 9" and finish it together with the year 2010.
I was not totally successful with these efforts, but in my search for a new way for this blog I continued to find topics of "Spooks 9" which still disturbed me.
I will go on and dissect the episodes of Spooks 9 for a bit longer, but also want to get in new aspects.

For this I want to explain my relationship with other roles of Richard Armitage a bit:

I avoided "Robin Hood" so far in this blog and I have to admit, this has a reason.
It took me a while, at least 1/2 a year into fandom, till I was able to even watch Robin Hood fan videos. It still took me a while longer till I was able to watch "Robin Hood" episodes. I could not get hold of the whole of series 3 so far, but as I will buy the whole series anyway, I did not try overly much.
The reason for my hesitations?
I found Guy of Gisborne so dark and fearful, that I just could not imagine liking this character or even wanting to see Richard Armitage in this role.
He frightened me and even in bits and snippets he was so forceful, that I really avoided him as Guy of Gisborne.
What changed my mind?
I saw the scene in a fan video, where he is dumped into a water basin and afterwards speaks to Marian, thanking her for saving his life. This one scene changed my whole perception of him and his intentions as Guy of Gisborne and afterwards watching "Robin Hood" just felt o.k. for me.

I still did not see "The Vicar of Dibley" though I watched some fan videos with snippets already.
Here I cannot really put my finger on the reason, why I avoid Richard Armitage in this role. It surely is not jealousy, because the snippets I saw were much too funny for such a feeling. And as Servetus very well examined, I feel more sisterly protectiveness for a person I never saw in person nor likely will ever see.



What I really did like of Richard Armitage's previous film projects was:

"Moving on - Drowning not Waving" - John Mulligan is by far my favourite character Richard Armitage played so far. I think I once must examine my affections for underdogs a bit more ;o)

"Frozen" - Though his role is short I found his appearance in this film very impressive.

"The Impressionists" - Though I normally do not like bearded men, Richard Armitage really looks charming as Monet.

"The Golden Hour" - I liked his performance, though my stomach was not so very pleased by all the film blood. I had to stay away from food for hours after watching the episodes.

"George Gently" - Richard Armitage as Ricky Deaming really convinced me. Life is too short to waste inside 4 walls (real walls and those in the mind).

"North and South" - I love this film and perhaps that is the reason, why I cannot really talk about it or analyse it. I love all the characters, some I even knew previously from "Hornblower" (A BBC series of the C.S. Forester books which I absolutely adored as child. My feelings for these books were something like others describe feeling for "The Lord of the Rings".)

"Strike Back" - That I love John Porter will surprise nobody after my fan-videos. The book already brought me to tears when I imagined Richard Armitage in the role of John Porter even before I saw the film.


The audio books just are wonderful and I cannot name one I especially like. I like them all !!!
The witty characterisation of each person by change of voice is just adorable.
I let a friend of mine listen in to one of the audio books and she said: "It is just one (?!!) narrator?" (Translation)

Monday 3 January 2011

Poll by Servetus - How Protective are You?

You will have recognised in the headline of this post that I do not question the presence of protectiveness in our feelings for Richard Armitage, but only the amount of our protectiveness.

Servetus has posted very interesting poll questions on her blog http://meandrichard.wordpress.com.
If you have time, please support this poll which will run for another week till January 10th, 2011. Here is the direct link to the poll questions:

Armitage protectiveness poll

I am quite interested in the results and especially, what Servetus with her fabulous way of researching and analysing all aspects of fandom will make of them.

I am very much looking forward to the final analysis!

Sunday 2 January 2011

From Grumbling and Speculation to Pure Fiction

In the latest posts, I repeated myself over and over again and hope I have not bored you overly much. I tried to erase most of the repetition by going over the blog posts over and over again. Still they contain lots of repetition, as they represent my efforts to come to terms with a for me unexpected development in my attitude towards Spooks 9 and the scriptwriters.

I have increased the number of blog posts lately, as with re-watching Spooks 9 I wanted to come to a resolution in the 'old' year. Somehow I did just that, even when the outcome was a bit surprising to me.

After all these long posts with speculations about what the scriptwriters may have meant with Spooks 9 (what I at first thought a good show should have revealed on its own), I now will come to what I have at first thought, the scriptwriters would lead their multitude of hints to.

I will not be able to recollect all my flowering and blooming ideas growing wildly over any possible film format for Spooks. But I will try to at least give you some ideas, where and why my fantasy ran wild and why in the end I was so disappointed by the meager explanations really given.

My main fiction and sole hope, I still have not completely given up upon is, that Lucas at an early stage did cooperate with Harry and enacted the whole last part of Spooks 9 to fool the Chinese kill squad. Perhaps even Vaughan was in on the deal, as his meeting with Harry did not reveal anything new (as mentioned in post "Vaughan and the Mobile Phone") and his death was only a fake.

What was the other series, where a whole part was later revealed as dream? Dallas, Denver Clan, …? (I normally avoid series at all cost, so please excuse my vagueness.)

Alternative Storylines:

• Lucas North found special material he held back in the Chinese embassy, when they broke in in Spooks 9.4. This allowed him to see deeper into their reasoning and their causes for following him.

• Lucas North trusted Harry Pearce early on and planned the shown story line to distract the secret instigators and observers of the whole show.

• Lucas had anarchistic ideals and wanted to destroy all world governments. Therefore he worked for the downfall of all governments, including the British and the Chinese.
o This is my weakest storyline, as Lucas in all situations works hard to secure and protect Britain.

• Lucas North knew of a plot against queen and country, he could only prevent by going along with the threats by Vaughan.

• Lucas North really being bad and Harry Pearce discovering some unknown dealings of Lucas, e.g. the ‘secret helpers’ for finding Vaughan, which are not approachable by Harry Pearce, but only would work with Lucas North.

• Lucas North is the leader of a gangster ring, using the MI-5 information to gain world power.

• The external specialist Harry brings in in 9.8 to detect Lucas / John clearly accuses Harry of knowing liars, but not pursuing Lucas enough during his interview with him. This let an alternative story line of big dimensions grow in my mind. What if Harry knew, that Lucas was lying to him, he knew more about Dakar, he wanted to expose the Albany file for his own reasons and used Lucas / John for this?

• Only Lucas / John knows the real extent and connections of the secret instigators. He does not confide in Harry, as he does not trust him. Harry’s way of giving up a useless state secret does not recommend him as well. The time Harry worked together with the Russian spy on the grid also does nothing to recommend him as a trustworthy source for acting against Russia. Lucas wants to bring down Russia and all its allies, e.g. China, the U.S. and all western governments depending on Russian energy resources.

• Lucas / John has such high moral standards, that in the end he rescues the world from his existence.

Saturday 1 January 2011

Happy New Year 2011 to You !!!

I wish you an enjoyable and successful Year 2011 filled with lots of luck, happyness and health.


The earth is such a tiny ball in the universe. Why can't we stand to care for it together?
Every conflict on earth gives me a little stab like a knife. We have problems with health issues, prosperity and well being for everyone enough already. Why do we add to these problems instead of solving some?

In this mood I very much appreciated the new Christmas-message by Richard Armitage published on RichardArmitageOnline.com. He has such a nice and unobtrusive way to remind us to try to be better persons for others sakes.

In this sense have a wonderful and successful year 2011 full of love and joy!




Wonderfully sweet video by ThePhylly3!