Are We Fan-Bloggers the Minstrels of Modern Times?

For some time now I wonder, if the Medieval minstrels and the art of minnesong has quite some similarities to fan-blogging, especially RA-fan-blogging of our times.

Abaelard and Eloise (by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1882)
Source: wikimedia.org

Some special signs of Medieval minnesongs were:

* that the singer had no chance of gaining the direct favour / love of his admired woman.

* that the woman was beyond reach and his own station.
(It was even a requirement to search for an admirable woman well beyond one's own station.)

* that the woman was good and had admirable qualities (at least after the minstrel searched long and wide for them or created and invented them himself. [No comparison to RA-fan-blogging in the later case, as here the admired qualities quite obviously exist for real!]).

* that the minstrel defended and advertised the good qualities of his chosen lady.

* that the lady was most important, who had the most minstrels singing her praise. (Quite obviously a strong element in fan-votings, when even illegal methods are used to enhance the number of votes to show the importance of the admired 'star'.)

* that the minstrel polished and enhanced his art and artfulness by describing the qualities of a certain lady. (Who in my opinion sometimes even took second place compared to the art itself.)

* that the minnesongs were created to form one's own character and develop genteel ways of behaviour and to strengthen the ability to observe and find human qualities. This technique to better one's character and judgment was especially encouraged in lawyers and diplomats, so you see, in branches were truthfulness was not that important [No or indeed pun intended, but only at the right places and not regarding RA-fans or fan-bloggers ;o)].

Quite obviously beyond my station ;o)
Source:
(Captain America Premiere, New York 2011)
www.richardarmitagenet.com

The only evident difference I see between Medieval minstrels and modern fan-bloggers is, that most (or all?) known minstrels were male and it was an especial recommendation for men, to practice this art of character building and self-enhancement. (Women were generally thought not to need such refinement ;o)
Today's fan-bloggers, especially in the RA-world (which is the only one I know ;o) are (mostly or all?)  female.



Please share with me, what you think about modern fandom and female self-betterment by being a RA-fan ;o) 
I am quite eager to learn, how you see this comparison and modern fandom.



P.S.: I know that Abaelard and Eloise are not the right example for platonic love, but at least, Abaelard wrote a lot of love poetry for his adored Eloise, so I hope you might forgive me for my lapse and rudimentary memory of my former studies ;o)

Happy Thanksgiving

I can hardly top last years Thanksgiving-post, when it comes to my favourite picture of RA.

So I will link to that post and wish you all a happy and joyous Thanksgiving !!!

My own thanks this day go to my computers and websites. I thank them for all the problems they made and all the havoc they caused.
You will say, now CDoart completely went cRAzy ;o) and in quite some aspects you might be right, but if (I won't and can't share the details) you would know, what ill fate I evaded by not getting my will and being able to finish my work in the planned timeframe, I only can thank the almighty powers, ruling the universe and my fate, for their lenience.
How can such bad events turn out to be the best thing which possibly could have happened? But they were exactly that, with unerring accurateness and attention to even the minor details.
I hope I will be worthy of the effort and will be able to defend and spread the knowledge which was so gracefully saved.

Thank you, for creating and forming life and fate, even when I do not always understand the bigger implications and sometimes get grumpy, nervous and impatient !!!

Bccmee and an Addictive Porter-Game

Are you a beard-fan or want to dress John Porter according to one of RA's further roles?
Bccmee now made it possible with her flash-game in her second PortEmber post!

See, what her game did with me ;o)

Unerringly my creations revolve around a certain king of hearts.
In my view he should get more than one horse for his kingdom, he should get a film with lots of horses in it ;o)



Please support the petition for the filming of "King Richard III" and spread the word about the efforts. Thank you !

BCCMEE Has a Big Day Today !

Completely unbelievable, John Porter almost forgetting bccmee's birthday? He must remedy that immediately ;o)

Wouldn't we all want to be taken on a trip by this driver?

Happy Birthday, bccmee!!!

P.S.: bccmee is the fan-artist of the week on KingRichardArmitage. Go to the presentation with fan-art by bccmee here.

1st Bloggiversary

It took me a long time to decide what to write about my first bloggiversary.
At first I thought about writing about why I started the blog and why I maintained it, but this is not really, what interests me about my blog. (I am a boring necessity for the blog, so why write about me ;o)
So lately I came more and more to the idea to collect, what the blog gives me.

First I must add that I did not expect to get any readers, so the start was clearly not made with any intention to write for others to read my stuff. Sorry for that, but I greatly enjoy having readers! Thank you for bearing me and staying with me during my tweaks and turns and struggles!!!!


You will have recognized:

* that I don't care for actual events and the covering of the news. That is for other blogs to do who do it greatly. I am a bit more carefree and take up what I just read or stumble over, which need not be of any current kind, but lately is mostly connected to our 'secret' King of Hearts, King Richard Armitage.

* that you can't really expect news from "The Hobbit" here on my blog. I bear it, as Mr. Armitage is in it and I admire the elaborate video techniques and perfect marketing campaign. If I were born again, I would like to develop camera technic (but then I would most likely have to be born a man to get into such a job and that I would rather not like, as then I most likely would not find the RA-fandom and that would absolutely not be bearable ;o). Who would help me over my (computer) problems then?


* that I have two computers, supporting me in my fandom to Mr. Armitage: one computer is named after a fantasy character I put RA into, Max (Maximilian) and another, Schnuckie with a new by-name "Schnuckie Schlawuckie" (= sorry, an adequate English translation for that name is just beyond me. [Perhaps it is best explained with: Schnuckie is a bit like 'darling', but perhaps a bit more informal than that. Schlawuckie is a tender way to say someone is quite annoying and tricky and most importantly you do not hold a lasting grudge against this person or in my case computer ;o)]


* that I do like RA in most of his roles and avoid others.
The one's I like exceedingly are John Thornton, John Porter, Lucs North (Al Delarmy ;o), John Mulligan (swoon - I surely would end up in prison with a John Mulligan around ;o), I like some of his smaller roles like the free spirited Ricky Deeming and even was surprised that I very much liked him as Percy Courtney in "Miss Mary Lloyd", Captain Ian Macalwain and as unpretentious and nice Claude Monet or as the 'dutiful' husband in "Frozen".
Some other roles are quite entirely missing on my blog and I avoid mentioning them, as they irritate me ;o) [That is the prerogative of 'boring me' ;o)]


So as a sum up, on my blog, I do what I like and don't bother with things I don't ;o)


Now what about a jubilee celebration and why a jubilee is so important for me:

* I want to say thank you to my blog, for what he did for me. (My blog is once again a thing which is, quite necessarily, male for me like my computers, which/who ;o) bring and connect me to RA news and information.)

* I want to say thank you to you, my readers, for supporting me, giving me feedback, support and most of all, your open friendship. THANK YOU!!!!
Thank you also for opening a new world for me during this year of blogging, a world of openness, understanding and encouragement. 

* Thank you for your contributions into fandom, fan-art, fan-videos and fan curiosity ;o) Your contributions keep me alive, when once again my computer brakes down or in a chaotic work day things just get completely out of hand and start to be absolutely crazy. Your nice support stops the world from spinning uncontrollably and brings my focus back to the nice and important things which are dear to my heart. Thank you!!!

* Especially I want to thank the one person who is the reason for all this and stands in the centre of this blog: Mr. Richard Armitage. Thank you for giving the wonderful impression of being an exceptional person and for giving inspiration to so many.


Now you really have deserved a treat, for I kept you so long with talking about what is important to me, though I at the beginning had not wanted to speak about 'boring me' ;o)

To celebrate, I want to do this with one of my favourite videos by bccmee, who is our fan-artist of the week on KingRichardArmitage. Please click through her various works, tutorials and fascinating images and videos, some of which are linked in the celebrating articles mentioned on Richard-Fan-Art. (On the Richard-Fan-Art page we try to collect the news and blog articles about Richard Armitage and King Richard III, though the page still has quite some potential for optimisation.)

Bccmee's video "Do you know your enemy?" to music by Green Day impresses me every time. Though in my daily live the enemy normally is not so clearly defined as in the video, still it helps greatly to fight mine ;o)

My blog and this video have one thing in common in this case, as both help me to fight my enemies, in- and outside of me ;o)




Now I need to prepare for a new year of blogging. I promise to come back to "Intrigue". I have such a lot of notes I must sort through to get some things in the right order to continue halfway consistent.

Thank YOU for your help in a wonderful blogging year!

King Richard Armitage - Fan-Art Event

The presentation of fan-contributions has started today with the first contribution, stormy looking King Richard!

KingRichardArmitage, the website with the petition in support of the filming project by Richard Armitage, has a resource site now,
the Richard-Fan-Art page.
This website will collect all fan-contributions and present all related blog posts of the fandom.

Enjoy and have fun with 'our' King Richard !