Goodbye Servetus

Servetus, from the Me + Richard Armitage blog and possibly the most well-known blogger in Richard Armitage fandom, passed away from cancer on Sunday, April 14th, 2024 at the age of only 55. Her loss deeply saddens me and, although I never met her personally, she has meant very much to me in my blogging and fandom life and even occasionally in my personal life.

To me, she was always around. In February this year she posted about her 14th blogiversary, which means she started blogging in 2010 when I was already a few years into my Richard Armitage admiration. I think I must have stumbled on her blog relatively at the beginning of her Armitage blogging career because I know I was lurking and reading it faithfully long, long before I ever interacted on it and with her. Her blog and a few other blogs at the time (like Guylty’s blog or Herba’s blog) finally inspired me to start blogging myself and I have been doing so since then.

A little over 9 years ago Servetus linked to a post I had written collecting reviews for Richard Armitage in The Hobbit. I had only been blogging for two or three months at that time, with hardly any readers, but then she somehow found my post (we didn’t ‘know’ each other at all at the time) and linked to it and I actually started gaining a reading audience. She was good at putting the spotlight on others like that and I’m sure she sparked other blogging ‘careers’ just like she sparked mine.

Servetus was analytical and critical and she had an ironic sense of humour that I enjoyed. She had a deep knowledge of, among other things, history and theology and politics and she was a walking encyclopedia of Richard Armitage information. She had a phenomenal memory and remembered everything. Although she loved Richard, I liked that she avoided the hero-worship of him with a good dose of critical thinking. She spoke her mind, was exact and direct in the wording she used, didn’t accept bullshit, and with that was sometimes controversial. I do think that her criticism, her sarcasm, her directness and her clear sense of boundaries were sometimes mistaken for insult when it wasn’t really meant that way. She was just trying to make sense of everything in her own, unique, analytical way. She believed in the diversity of fandom, abhorred fandom policing (there is no one ‘right way’ to be a fan) and was able to analyze herself, Richard or fan life in an intelligent, scholarly manner.

Richard Armitage seemed like a journey of discovery for her, a gateway to understanding more about herself, in which she was always open and honest. The “me” in her blog title wasn’t an accident or throw-away thought. It was about making sense of what it was about Richard that fascinated her so much and what that in turn revealed about herself. Whether you agreed or disagreed with her, whether she annoyed you or made you nod in recognition, she always had something interesting to say. She didn’t become the most prolific Armitage blog for nothing.

From a more personal angle, she was always a good blogging friend to me, she was supportive of me, was always open to any questions I had and always ready for discussions. Sometimes she asked me things that really made me pause and consider my response and that helped me organize my thoughts. She challenged me in a positive way, directly and indirectly, through her writing. I learned from her, I laughed at her posts, I felt connected to her for far more than just Richard Armitage.

I connected with her for her liberal views and championship of human rights, for her interest in and knowledge about Germany (where she had lived and I had also lived for a while), for being Jewish which feels familiar to me, for her interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder, for her understanding of theology as it was a world familiar to me through my dad who had been a theologian and a scholar and analytical, just like her. She even once helped me figure out a basketball gift for my son, as he loves Giannis Antetokounpo who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks in Wisconsin. Servetus was from Wisconsin and knew more about him than I did. She knew so much about so much!

I really felt for her during those difficult years when she was caring for her ailing father and could also relate to the reality that circumstances in real life sometimes made it difficult to blog. She blogged and also commented here less frequently in the last year or two but once in a while she did reach out with a like or a comment or an e-mail and stated that even though she didn’t often comment, she was still reading. She also had the intention to blog more. In the fall of last year Servetus contacted a few bloggers and came up with an idea to reinvigorate our Richard Armitage blogging lives but alas, real life intervened with that as well.

Even though she wasn’t that active anymore in the blogging world, I liked knowing she was still around and didn’t think that much of it when I hadn’t read anything from her for some weeks; that tended to happen sometimes. In her final post in February, that 14th anniversary one that I reference above, she mentioned being unwell but to me it also sounded like that crisis had been averted and that she was on the mend again. In retrospect I understand that her cancer diagnosis came just a few weeks after that and that it turned out to be very aggressive.

Fast forward to three weeks ago when I found myself wondering about her, right when I was in the middle of my moving house chaos. I distinctly remember working in the new house, clearing kitchen closet space, and thinking about how she might be doing. I told myself that I should really e-mail her to check in with her and I vowed to do so soon. Then two days later the news reached me that she had passed away. I don’t believe in ghosts or even souls really and I’m not religious but the fact that she was in the forefront of my mind that Sunday, which in hindsight was also the day she passed away, really strikes a chord with me.

It’s difficult to imagine that she won’t be out there anymore, at the end of another computer, interacting with me and with us! I will miss reading her blog and her commenting on my posts. I will miss her reaching out to me with something she felt I would find interesting. I will miss her support during challenging times. I am sad that I will now never get to meet her in real life, something I had always hoped would happen some day. I hope she knew how much she meant to me, albeit from afar. Her illness was swift and I guess that if it did have to happen, at least she didn’t have to suffer long. Rest now in peace, dear friend.

I know she loved Bagginshield fan fiction (Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins pairing from The Hobbit), so here is a Bagginshield smile, just for her.

Zikhronah livrakha. May her memory be a blessing. And may her family and friends be comforted in their mourning.

For those who wish to leave a tribute or message of condolence for her family, please visit https://www.lewinfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Susan-R-Boettcher?obId=31196583.

For the coming two weeks (May 5th to May 19th, 2024) if anyone without a platform wishes to share their thoughts or tributes, feel free to reach out to any of the following blogs on our contact pages. We’ll be happy to host your commemorations:
* Sonja on https://guylty.net
* Obscura on https://ancientarmitage.wordpress.com/
* Herba on https://minorherba.wordpress.com 
* Sue on https://imfeelingthis.blog/
* Or me, Esther, here on https://bookesther.wordpress.com/

In a bit of a lull

In recent months I find I have not been blogging much. Mostly it’s meet cute Mondays and not that much else. I constantly think of things to blog about, I have a big one sitting in the back of my head right now as I type this, but somehow I can not find the motivation to deep dive and make the time and effort to type it all out. I’m sure it’s got to do with some private family worries that I’ve had but now that everything seems to be settling down again, the blogging bug still hasn’t returned. I find that I miss it on the one hand, but can’t make myself do much on my blog on the other hand. Well, today I’m making myself do something by typing this post. Not that much to type about, but I’ll give it a go.

The weather today has been glorious and we decided to watch mini me play a football match as the end of the season is nearing. Alas, they lost by 3-2 but it was fun to see her in action and also really nice to catch up with another couple (parents of mini me’s team mate) who we’ve known for a long time before mini me even joined the team.

Mr E and I then biked to one of the lakes near where we live for a bite to eat and a glass of wine/beer outside in the sun. When we got home late in the afternoon, our cat was all too eager to find a spot on my lap! She misses her people when they are gone during the day…

Mini me hung out at the football club all afternoon. When she popped in this evening before heading out again she showed us a trophy she had been given: her team mates had chosen her as MVP of the team for this past year! We’re very proud.

As Junior is out all day as well (at a music festival), Mr E and I had a nice takeaway Thai dinner together and our neighbour’s cat also came by for a visit. He used to be the best friend of our old cat who died last winter and it’s always nice to see him around.

His colour even reminds us of our old cat, so occasionally, for a moment, our hearts will skip a beat when we see neighbour cat in our garden. Alas, it never is our old Effoh but neighbour cat has a special place in our hearts because he and Effoh used to be good friends…

Now the evening is here and Mr E and I are still in our garden (it’s after 9 pm). It’s gotten a little chillier so we are wearing sweaters now, but it’s still light out and nice and peaceful…

The house is still a friggin’ mess (we had initially planned a cleaning day today) but we can’t be too bothered by that after the lovely day we had today. We must make the most of good days while we can, mustn’t we?

Looking back

A few weeks ago on her blog, Herba wrote one of her look-back posts. No, not about this…

… but she looked back to a certain date in her nine years of blogging; she looked at what she posted about on September 22nd each year. These posts are always fun to read and I thought I’d join in the fun as well. As I’m reading her blog post on October 10th (yeah, I know, late to the game), I thought I’d do the same, but then for October 10th in each year that I have blogged.

On October 10th in 2014 I had only recently started on this blogging journey (and eek, I forgot that this year at the beginning of September it was my 8th blogiversary!). There was no post on the 10th but there was one on the 9th, about the Gustav Klimt painting The Kiss.

On October 10th in 2015 I posted about a first look trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s a film I ended up enjoying far more than I ever thought I would.

On October 10th in 2016 there was no post either (I am, after all, not a daily blogger). The one closest in date was from October 7th with some silly jokes for World Smile Day.

On October 10th in 2017 I wrote about discovering Gabriel Macht through Suits and his wife Jacinda. I still really like the man, even though it has become very quiet with him after Suits ended.

On October 10th in 2018 again no post, the one closest in date is from October 11th. It’s about sexual consent as explained in a Tea video and about that video reminding me of Stick-Figure Richard. Yeah, sounds confusing when I put it briefly like that. The post itself is clearer.

On October 10th in 2019 again no post, the one closest in date is from October 12th. I was in the middle of my Anne with an E season 3 obsession and depressed because I had vertigo.

On October 10th in 2020 no post either, but there was a brief one on October 9th about John Lennon for his 80th birthday.

On October 10th in 2021 (last year) a post on my search for a new job and watching the new All Creatures Great and Small series.

And today, October 10th 2022, this is my second post, my first one being about illness and a recovering cat.

I remember writing all these posts and it amazes me that these span 8 years. It sounds so long but it doesn’t really feel that long…

1000!

So, this is now my 1000th blog post! I guess that is a good occasion to reflect a bit on this blogging journey I’ve been on.

When I started blogging, a thousand posts ago, all I knew was that I wanted to write and share my thoughts. Up until then I had only been on message boards to relieve my fangirl passions but what I really wanted was a place of my own to do as I please without adhering to anyone else’s rules and hopefully without the drama that inevitably always ensues in online fandoms. I wanted my own little fangirl corner and my own outlet. How to approach it, though? Yes, I loved Richard Armitage but I didn’t want to be limited to writing only about him. I liked other actors too and shows and movies that Armitage wasn’t connected to. And maybe I’d occasionally want to write about other stuff too but I figured if I did all that it would become too much of a hodge podge and I’d just embarrass myself online.

I figured if I couldn’t decide on one topic, maybe I should decide on one form. So, I decided my blog could be a collection of letters that I would never actually send but that I would still write and share on my own outlet. My very first post in May 2013 was a very short little letter announcing I was going to start blogging, immediately followed by a second letter (and a bit of a mess) that I ‘wrote to’ John Green about loving The Fault in Our Stars. I planned on following that letter post up with a third letter post but couldn’t figure out what letter to write and to whom. And so I remained silent for over a year, trying to figure out in my head how to do this.

Then one day I had the brilliant insight that I was over-thinking this. So what if my blog would turn into a hodge podge of topics and there was no one form it would adhere to? Blogging was always going to just be a hobby, something to do for fun, so why put any constraints on myself? I would just jump in, without any specific audience in mind (which meant there was no one to embarrass either) and write about whatever struck my fancy. It wasn’t necessarily about the readers, I figured, it was all about me just wanting to express myself, and boom, my third post was born in September of 2014 (16 months after my first post).

That third post, and the true start of this blog, was about having seen Richard Armitage live in The Crucible earlier that summer. It was the “summer of love” and I had been reading all these exciting stories all summer about the play and meeting Richard at the stage door. I decided to finally jump in and add my own voice to all the excitement. I wasn’t much for self-promotion so I don’t think anyone really read that at the time, but that was fine because I had finally taken that plunge and put my words out there and this time I was going to stick with it.

People started actually reading here in December of 2014 when Servetus linked to a post I had written collecting reviews for Richard Armitage in The Hobbit and it all grew from there. I never aimed at having a large audience (often the larger the audience, the larger the drama and I’m not so fond of drama) but it was nice having a few readers. My follower count has considerably grown since then (many follows are not actual readers, though, just ‘commercial followers’) but I think the most people that read here consist of a fairly small group and I like it that way. It’s my own small community. Going by my blog statistics I know that I have more readers than commenters and I feel a kinship with those who just lurk as I used to be a big lurker too on blogs and forums. All lurkers are more than welcome here. 🙂 I had never expected more than five people to ever read here, so I am grateful for each visit to my blog.

So, seven years of actual blogging and 1000 posts on, what is my takeaway from this writing journey?

• Love what you write about and this blogging thing remains fun. I’m glad I stuck with my hodge podge topics, even if some posts are barely read.
• I’m happy to blog whenever I want. Sometimes (like this past week!) that’s daily, sometimes I’ll stay quiet for days and even, on rare occasions, a few weeks. I put no obligations on myself, I write purely for fun and don’t want a set schedule or set topics to interfere with that.
• Commercial blogging is not for me, I like to remain constraint-free, and so I have no interest in ‘growing my audience’ or ‘attracting advertisers’.
• My main audience, going by statistics and comments, are Richard Armitage fans. My most read posts are the ones I wrote about Richard at the Newcastle International Film Festival in 2018 (here and here).
• A successful blog post for me is not necessarily a well-read post. For me the ones that are most successful are the ones that gave me real joy or real relief to write.
• It usually takes more time to write a blog post than I initially think (like this one, which in it’s first draft from a few days ago was really short but then grew and grew). Even short posts I need to re-read regularly to make sure I say what I want to say before I hit “publish”.
• Sometimes when I start writing I’m not even sure what I want to say. At the beginning when I blogged I always felt I needed to make some real point but that has changed. Now, even when I have nothing in my mind at that moment that I want to say, I just pick something randomly and start writing. There is always something in my head that preoccupies me and only by writing it down does it start to take any form. Sometimes it even turns into something completely different than I initially thought. Some posts are lovely journeys of discovery and some have virtually no point at all.
• Few people in my real life know about my blog and I like to keep it that way. This blog is my escape, my brain drain and I’m not looking for real life daily feedback on it from family, friends or colleagues. Only my husband and kids and two close friends of mine in real life know of this blog.
• I am more involved in the community aspect of blogging than I ever expected to be. I like that I have made some blog friends whom I love interacting with and I have even met some in real life! Community was not necessarily what I was looking for but I like that it came along with the blogging. I also love that I sometimes learn things from my commenters, that they sometimes challenge me and it’s been great for refreshing my German too! Some readers here are German and have their own blogs that I comment on, which made me write and ‘speak’ German in my head far more. The writing and speaking were slipping away from me but that has been reversed now to a better, fairly reasonable basic German standard.
• I like honest discussion, I don’t like personal insults and sometimes it’s just best to agree to disagree and move on. With all that, except for a few minor incidents, my blog has remained relatively drama free, for which I am grateful.
• As time went on, I have shared more and more personal things about myself, but I also like to maintain a certain distance and not get too close. As much as I truly enjoy interacting with you, my blog friends, and love being friendly with you, I also guard my personal space. Automatic self-protection mode, I guess, and a bit of an introvert’s trait as well.

The big take away here, after writing one thousand posts, is that I still love to blog and that it has brought me so much relief, unabashed fangirling and community. Maybe I even love it more than when I first started out because I have found a kind of groove that I feel comfortable in.

Thank you to each and every one of you for being so tolerant of my musings, for indulging my nonsense and for making me feel comfortable enough to share all these hodge podge posts. Thank you to all for reading, for commenting and for challenging me, for lurking and browsing and with all that helping to make this such a good experience for me.

I plan on continuing this for a long while yet. On to the next 1000 blog posts!

Seven years of The Crucible

Yesterday Richard Armitage tweeted this…

… and I can relate to the feeling old statement. It doesn’t feel like seven years ago that this play was staged at The Old Vic in London and that I went to see it during ‘the summer of love’, a term coined by some Armitage fans at the time due to the outpouring of love for this production and for Richard during that summer run. The Crucible gave me a lot personally as well.

By the time I traveled with my husband to London in July of 2014 to see The Crucible, I had been an Armitage fan for 8 years. I was a solitary fangirl at the time, eagerly slurping up Richard Armitage news and discussions on message boards and on certain blogs, lurking but never jumping in myself. During that summer, Servetus on her blog very helpfully kept a running commentary on all stage door encounters that were shared online, hence making it really feel like a summer of love for me. Check out the archives on her blog for June – September of 2014 if you are curious to see pictures of fans with Richard and read fan reports.

In tandem with this trip I had also been wanting to jump in to blogging on my own blog for a long time. I had started this blog with a single post in 2013 but didn’t know where to go from there as I didn’t want to write a single issue blog, so I stopped again. I was feeling especially inspired by some other Armitage blogs I also read (like Guylty’s blog or Herba’s blog and some other really great blogs that have alas gone silent over time, but popped up again partially during last year’s online blog reunion, see this Twitter hashtag).

Anyway, during this summer of Crucible love I started to feel the pull to also share my Crucible play and stage door experience. I was just a bit iffy about the public attention, i.e. worried that if I did get active, I too would eventually be caught in fandom spats as I had seen happening from the beginning of my fangirling days. I wanted to share but I didn’t want the drama, real life was busy enough. Then in September of 2014 I finally decided to stop over-thinking and over-analyzing, I just jumped in and wrote about my Crucible experience. With that post, really, this blog was born. Richard Armitage in The Crucible and the fans’ enthusiasm had pulled me over the edge and finally got me blogging. I didn’t announce anything about that post anywhere and it wasn’t until a few months later that this blog even started getting any traction but the slow start suited me well.

Not only did The Crucible get me blogging, it also, very importantly, led to my first personal encounter with Richard Armitage whom I had admired from afar for all those years. I can still remember the excitement while meeting him and handing him a little gift and exhanging a few quick words with him. Alas my camera failed that evening (also it was dark outside that stage door) and the pictures are all grainy but I don’t mind so much as the memories are all still there and really do not feel like 7 years ago! I am forever grateful to Mr Esther who helped me get my Crucible booklet and ticket signed and my little North and South poster as well that I had brought from home.

He also took this picture of me with Richard (I look a little manic!), which is now still the lock screen of my phone before I unlock it to reveal Mr Esther and our cats.

What The Crucible also gave me was a renewed admiration for Richard’s acting talents. I’d not been a huge fan of Robin Hood and Spooks and while I did love him in The Hobbit, I longed to see him do a great role without prosthetics. And boy, did I get that with Richard as John Proctor…

Mr E and I were both quite blown away by the production, by the cast and especially by Richard in it. We were mesmerized throughout and feeling quite shaken and drained by the end of it. My husband, who has always been supportive of my fangirling hobbies but always benignly from a distance, was just as much in awe as I was. Richard Armitage on stage is a wonderful thing to behold, he has a big presence there, he feels large and powerful, and when we met him at the stage door after the play he suddenly felt slight and almost shy. He must have felt competely drained.

That Crucible experience stayed with me for a long time (still very much alive in my mind and heart when I finally posted about it a month and a half after I’d seen it) and I was pleased when it was announced that the play would be filmed. When it came to the cinema in early 2015, I took my mother to see it and she too was very impressed. So much so, in fact, that for my birthday two months later she even gave me a watercolour painting she had made of a Crucible scene. It is now hanging above my signed Crucible ticket and poster in our dining area. That painting became my blog header and I also had a phone cover made of it that Richard Armitage even signed a few years later at the Newcastle International Film Festival.

I am glad The Crucible made me able to share some fangirling with my husband and even with my mother and I credit Richard as John Proctor for giving me the push to set me off on this blogging journey that I have really been enjoying these past almost 7 years. The play has been an important catalyst for me and I have loved revisiting it again and again over the years. I still think it is one of the absolute best things Richard has done in his career, he would have really deserved that Olivier Award he was nominated for at the time.

Long story short: happy 7th anniversary to The Old Vic’s The Crucible production, I’m glad you were made.