My Richard Armitage fanblogging dilemma

Soon, my preciousssss!
[Source: Fabolaktuko's blog]

Have I been too quiet about Richard Armitage these past couple of months or so? I think I have. Of the things that drive traffic to this blog, Richard Armitage is one of the biggest, and here I am, writing virtually nothing about him. It's just not right, is it?

There's a reason for it, though. Actually, there are a few, probably, such as the boring "there are only so many hours in the day and I have to prioritise writing reviews as this is kind of meant to be a review blog" and it was probably a couple of months ago or so that I decided I was going to try writing a review a day, Monday to Friday, which meant less flexibility with other posts. Sort of. (I've told myself I'm at liberty to write whatever I like outside of one review a day, so it's not as if I suddenly have to stop writing posts that aren't reviews.)

No, I've found the biggest reason for not posting about Richard Armitage as soon as something new to come up to be something else completely.

Because I follow a load of RA fanblogs and tend to get news through them and so on, by the time I've gone through them all, it feels as if the topic's done already. Like the Beard. Everyone was writing with their opinions of it and by the time I was at the stage to comment on it, it felt redundant. What was there to say that hadn't already been said by everyone else? At least several of which I had posted comments on? What then is the point of me writing yet another "OMG, look at that BEARD! And that's something which I find surprisingly, unbelievably SUPER HOT!" post?

So not the beard I'm talking about. [Source: Nat's blog]

And it's been similar topics since that have popped up. Voice of reason would say that it doesn't matter if "everyone" has written about it, because hey, "everyone" hasn't necessarily read about it. We all have different followers, different readership. Need to tell myself that "my" readers don't necessarily hang out on the exact same blogs that I do, and surely I should not "deprive" them (man that sounds wrong) of a topic they might not otherwise come across? But at the same time, if you're reading one RA fanblog, odds are you're reading a few. (My voice of reason is very good at, umm, telling me to stfu. This tends to get me down, and sometimes that affects me more, sometimes less.) Basically, what I mean is, I should just write about it if I want to and not worry about it. If people want to read it, they can, and if they don't, they won't.

The most recent case of finding a piece of news and feeling like "ooh, I should write about this!" was today, actually, but I was at work, and got distracted. RA's comments about being in The Hobbit - saying that the sword was "bloody heavy". Aww. :)

I've also been thinking that I really ought to write more about RA, because it's a subject dear to my heart, and also, a lot of people like to read about him ... which then gets me frustrated because I don't want to feel like I'm blogging specifically to suit people. Is it not meant to be something I do because I enjoy it and writing about what I'd like to read about?

"It's what's expected" is one of the ugliest phrases I know, and it always puts me in full on rebel mode. It's "expected" to wear white when you graduate in Sweden - I went "the hell with that!" and bought a dark blue dress. Mum got me to wear a white shawl with it in the end, but still, I did wear dark blue dress. Another time, there was a talk about what sort of cake I wanted on my birthday and when I said "why do we need a cake?" - of course "because people expect a cake" - it had me replying "well then, people should stop expecting so bloody much - I don't particularly like cake and isn't it supposed to be my birthday we're celebrating?"

I realise it probably makes me sound like an arrogant prick, but I have a thing for challenging conventions and I hate when we're supposed to do things without question just because society expects it. Stop to ask WHY every once in a while, for goodness sake. Even if it's something as silly and minor as expecting to munch on a piece of cake on someone else's birthday - why is that an expectation in the first place? "Because that's how it is, that's how it works"? Ugh, you don't have to go far down that path to realise what a quagmire that can be. (Today, I heard someone say Down's Syndrome was a result of inbreeding, and after resisting the urge to introduce my head to the desk repeatedly, pointed out that no, that's not how it works.)

Anyway.

Point is (getting there eventually), I want to write about RA because I want to, not because I feel as if I owe it to someone, that "people expect it" or anything along those lines. It'll make me run screaming in the other direction. Or, as has already been shown, make me clam up about the subject completely. I appreciate that a bunch of the followers I have are following because of when I write about RA rather than all the other stuff, and paradoxically, it makes me feel like I want to write about RA once in a while and that I "should", but I don't want to be a crowd-pleaser for the sake of it. This is not meant to be a pure RA blog anyway, as I've mentioned before, it's technically a general entertainment blog which happens to be a little snowed in on Richard Armitage and Jane Eyre, but it's not supposed to be an RA blog (or a JE blog, for that matter). Can't please everyone anyway, that's the problem! :)

I babble, as usual. Time to go to bed. If you've read all the way to here, I salute you, and will reward your tenacity accordingly. Love you! :)

"Well, hell-ooo."