55 thoughts on “Interlude XIV – A Low Ballin’ We Go”

1. It seems when RA is the subject, a can’t low ball it even when they try.   I would think Twitter was my mistake, but it’s not high on my referral list at all.

   And you’re not a wet blanket.  I don’t want to picture you as a buddha either.

    

   • At times I do feel like a wet blanket in terms of squee-ability that’s just me.  Maybe I should practice. SQUEE!  😉

      

2. yeah, I didn’t start this to be a Fan, either. 🙂 Been wrestling with that all along, and asking myself similar questions from a different perspective the last week or so. But I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do this, whatever it is we are doing.

    

   • Yeah, I know there are degrees of fandom and to each her own.  I wonder what the soft core fans are saying?

3. i get where you’re coming from, Judiang. I’m not hardcore either. In fact, had forgotten the trailer was being released and was glad Frenz was on the ball.

   I have a real dilemma with RA: I wish him so much success, he deserves it. But I don’t want to, could never be a part of the squealing fandom that follows him and which will inevitably increase as he moves through his career.

   It’s obvious he will retain his own flawless personality, just like Colin Firth and Hugh Bonneville do, but I can’t bear the squee-ing from the fans that goes with that success. I suspect I will withdraw from reading the fan sites… already there is a change from those early days when we were all Gizzie’s Girls and North and South sweethearts. Am I a Grinch? I hope not.

   • I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stay at this. I really did think it  would be hard to last a year.  But as things are playing out, I’m satisfied I started off tongue-in-cheek.  That persona is much easier to maintain.  At least it is easier for me, and frankly, helps me make fodder of the screaming airheads who are coming.

     Despite the snark, there was a loftier direction I was going with my diary. I had the end point planned out before I started the blog. But now I’m not comfortable with what I had planned, and it will become something far from what it was going to be.   Part of me is sad about that, but  the rest of me has moved on and in doing so moved the writing to another place.   The net for me is that the blog has served its purpose — to get me writing a story that’s been in me for 40+ years, and the perk I never saw coming is realizing I have many more in me.

   • Oh yes.  The fandom will definitely change after the Hobbit.  I just wonder what it will change into.

4. Well I started from seeing RH on TV. And immediately was replacing a low-voiced, Scottish actor (Dark-maned and tall too) as my actor crush. Blue eyes?? Converted from brown. Never mind the actor in mein alde age has auburn hair, probably. He is an actor. He has screen magnentism. And is tall. And has done all the actor tick-boxes, in terms of working it all through. So far. I have faith in how he goes from Hobbit.  And, as the Scot, has a voice, even better-tuned…

   IF I were to do a blog, it would not be all RA all the time. But it would relate to his work, and his characters and his career. For the foreseeable future. I think he might be a treasure and has proven the acting chops in TV.

   Naturally, I fantasize about his characters, etc, but I’m not going to write about that. Except obliquely – through a dark glass…:D (Ilove both me+ and Confessions., because there is discussion…)

   • I can definitely see you starting your own blog.  You’ve done wonderful posts here.  What would it take to get you over that last hump, hmmm? 😉

5. So, ladies………does that mean that the likes of me [non-American, non-author, non-blogger, non-university lecturer,  but an intelligent mature person nonetheless] who has been a fan of Richard Armitage for more years than all of you put together, will no longer be welcome to leave comments on your blogs?

    

   • That’s not what I inferred from this piece at all, Kathryn.   I think it’s the antithesis of what you describe that would be a bit of a hassle.  But I think an airhead is not going to hang around too long on Judi’s blog nor Servetus’.   Now mine otoh is another story, but you know, I’ve found some of those airheads are kind of interesting when you get them away from RA Universe. LOL!

   • No, as Frenzy said, I meant the opposite.  I welcome your comments.  I’m just musing about what type of fan will appear after RA reaches The Big Time.

     • So sorry, Judi…I should have apologized yesterday for …once again… jumping to the wrong conclusion.  You have every right in the world to decide how your blog is to be….used? viewed?…anyway so I wasn’t criticizing, merely wondering out loud, if I was still allowed to visit.  Thank you so much for all your work…the time and energy and thought and graciousness you ladies out into your blogs is very much appreciated by us newbies (to the world of blogging) believe me.

       BTW…as a long-standing fan of Richard’s, I’ve also wondered (and even worried a bit!) about what it’s going to be like for him and for us, too, from now on.  I’m hoping that the majority of his new fans will be of the mature variety but I’m sorely afraid that there will be a great number of them who’ll be…..what was it Skully called them?……”CWS sufferers”?, too.

       • Probably some of us are CSW sufferers, too. 🙂

6. I’m not American, Kathryn. I’m another “colonial” of the North American species, and not an author/blogger/university lecturer. I just like good acting and actors (while being immensely susceptible to male physical charms. 🙂 Of which Mr. Armitage has in abundance.

   • Oooops, I did it again! I thought we had to be all serious or something now and definitely not rave about Richard’s charms! 🙂

     I’m quite happy to take a step back from my usual gushing but I’d find it difficult not to wax lyrical about the dear man occasionally! 😉

7. I’m glad the trailer has you looking forward to the movie. I think it’ll be a good’un. As you know, I’m just fine with you being a “fan” of RA – that’s basically what I am, though not to as much of an extent as you. And you know the MAIN reason I’m looking forward to the upcoming movies, and his initials aren’t RA but SM. Heh.

   As for being a Buddha, I tried picturing you naked, fat, and bald, and it was an ugly sight…

   • I think this will be the first movie where we will be looking for our boys together.  How DT managed to not get cast baffles me.  That would be a trifecta!  😉

8. I’m glad we’re not having this discussion at my blog, which is where I’m usually having it. Or in my mind, where I am always having it.

   And I don’t think judiang’s post was about stopping people from participating in the fandom — just about what her place in it is. I sympathized very much with the “do I belong here” question because I ask myself that all the time, and I ask myself if all the directions in which “me + richard armitage” has developed are really things I want. When you interact with an audience, you inevitably change. (What Richard Armitage experiences as an actor, we thus all experience as writers to some degree.)

   I think we’re about to see a major change in the fandom, starting over the next year and then probably exploding a year from now. I’ve always seen the blogs as a sort of half-way place between the (for lack of a better word) “discipline” of the fan sites / discussion boards, which follow fairly strictly guidelines in what they are willing to post, and have very strong boundaries for discussion in order to keep it friendly and tasteful, and the “wild west” of the unmoderated sites like youtube and imdb and topix, which allow the discussion of anything — which means also anything and everything not only tasteless but also distasteful. I know that “legacy” fans (people of the first hour, which I was obviously not) don’t always appreciate the direction I’ve taken my writing. The whole process of developing new stuff occurs in part precisely because one sees a lack, a hole where one can insert one’s own writing and one’s own personality. I think Prue’s reaction (not unakin to pi’s, when she was still blogging) will be a very common one because we saw it already in response to the emergence of the blogs — some of which appeared in ignorance of the boards, others because they didn’t care for the atmosphere there.

   The blogs are the products of individual personalities, which means the rules and atmosphere on each blog are different, but also that the reason for blogging in each case is different. The emergence of tumblrs in the last six months or so is another mediating place between the blogs and the unmoderated sites. In turn, Twitter provides another different shade of participation. Once Armitage’s fan base grows, the capacity of the sites / boards, which were the original tonesetters, and the blogs, which emerged briefly as such, to moderate or affect the direction of the fandom is going to fall drastically. The blogs were already a step in that direction, but I suspect that the fandom is going to become both too large and too diverse for individuals to influence its tone significantly in the way that boards like AA did in the past. In particular Armitage is likely to gain a more significant chunk of younger male fans. This development is going to have advantages and disadvantages. I suspect that if Armitage can take it (i.e., he succeeds fully in ceasing to worry about what fans think of him) it will be a net plus for him, but at the same time, anyone who thought s/he was “in touch with” Armitage somehow by participating in the fandom (a feeling facilitated by those earlier messages, and still evident to a lesser degree in later ones) is going to have to face facts. The Armitage fandom started off as a particular flavor of period drama fandom with a relative unknown who was both responsive and apparently a sweet guy as well. Things are now becoming much more nebulous.

   Since the blogs all stem from individual rationales and develop individual voices, each blogger is also going to have to rethink why she is blogging and what she gets from it — as the object she is writing about changes. This is a natural process. I was thinking this week that anyone who came to my blog to find out about Armitage would be confronted in the first place by all the holiday ruminations I’ve been publishing. Not that there isn’t plenty of squee on my blog — there is — but the blog isn’t written for just any kind of new fan. I don’t think that on the whole that will be a problem: I have an extremely hard time keeping up with comments, and couldn’t deal with an onslaught of new fans who also all wanted to talk to me. I am developing certain features of the discussion boards in terms of conventions and rules, as well. I think these developments are only problematic for me if the reason I am doing this is to be a center of Armitage discourse. That wasn’t the reason in the beginning and it shouldn’t be now, so it’s not a problem. But one writes personal things and one feels exposed and then one sees the daily hit number go up by such a drastic proportion and one feels — bemused.

   Apologies for the threadnap.

   • You’ve articulated well exactly what’s going to happen in the next couple of years.  I am concerned what type of fan will appear.  You put it aptly – at times I feel exposed in some of the things I write and I’m not sure if I want to put it out there to the general population (although I technically know that’s exactly what I’m doing).  Right now I feel we have a relatively small tight knit group of of mostly like-minded people and that will change.  I suppose what really matters is knowing the audience we want to attract will find us; those we don’t, will fall away.

     Now that you mention it, we are the happy medium between the fan boards and the general forums.  I don’t see that changing too much.  We might have an influx of new blogs, but many will fall off because running a blog is harder than some might think.  It will be interesting to know whether the presence of our informal ring of blogs has any influence in fandom.  Sounds like a poll and study to me!  😉

     • I think one thing I’ve been meant to get over via fandom and blogging is the application of the “you’re doing it wrong” to everything unlike me — which I grew up with, and so come by honestly, but has been the source of huge unhappiness in my life. In actuality, I’m disturbed sometimes when I read crudely salacious comments on  youtube, but / and it’s not like I don’t think those same thoughts. And those people don’t leave comments at “me +”, so why should I worry about them? It’s not like the fandom as I experience it is some objective entity that I am experiencing either correctly or incorrectly; it is only what i experience, as I experience it. Presumably people who are disturbed by the major wave of squee that is about to erupt will continue to stay where they are, where the squeers (who are probably mostly not interested in the buyin a login and a handle and following the rules) will not go.

       • Oh, how I want to be able to express myself the way you do!

         • That’s kind of you to say, esp considering the many typos in that post 🙂

9. There’s a reason I don’t blog about him and this is it.  When I say he’s just not that interesting to me that’s not quite it; it’s more that the process of fandom isn’t interesting to me anymore because I’ve been thinking about it since the first time I caught sight of John Taylor in a fedora.  This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with trying to figure out where the hell that came from if it’s a new experience, it’s just that for me I’ve accepted that some things just are.  There are fans who fight it; there are fans who don’t.  For me it’s easier to just step into the river and find a comfortable place to stand in it and if that involves me clearing space then that’s cool.  I blog because a couple of other bloggers encouraged me to do so when I kept spinning their comments out to something else.  All the new searches haven’t affected my numbers at all and that’s fine with me.

   The law of averages dictates that some of the new fans are going to be freaking psychos, but we have some of those already; some are going to be totally squeeing little girls, but we have some of those already, too; some are going to be bemused and ambivalent about it and we have those in spades.  I think the only thing that’s going to change is the numbers.

    

   • I’m torn between thinking things will change in the number of fans or (for want of a better word) quality or both.  In the end, I have to remember that I own my space.  If I don’t like what’s happening around or to my blog, I have the choice to change the format completely or end it. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

     • And that is your answer to the future, Judiang: sometimes the best posts are those that come from left-field.

       Because RA HAS such a limited voluntary exposure and all the links on The Hobbit and anything else he does/has done are covered X gazillion by a million different blogs… there is no real freshness over the internet, except when you take something unusual/personal/idiosyncratic from your own life and write about it. You’re already doing that with your journey through writing… that is really interesting detail that many many people will be focus on.

       Isn’t it funny how a little talking between friends at the end of a post can actually help you articulate your own directions? Blog posts on Mesmered have done it for me a lot! And funnily, even when I stopped posting RA images, my stats didn’t go down.

       • I feel, though (maybe this is not true) that at least on my blog the people who comment on the “my life” posts are often a different group than comment on the specifically Armitage-related ones. This is an occupational hazard as my blog title has his name in it — I’m going to be drawing readers who are mainly interested in him and aren’t interested in my struggle with fandom and various other issues. Some relevant questions here are (a) how important are comments? I think the answer to this question changes over time; and (b) if comments are important to you, can you develop a significant enough identity as a blogger apart from commentary on Armitage that people want to visit you? Your blog is about so many *other* things than Armitage that are also not about your life, per se, Prue.

   • I could be wrong, jazz, but I think the proportion of squeers is (a) going to grow drastically and (b) that segment is not going to be susceptible to the sort of behavioral discourse that’s predominated in Armitage fandom till now. That may be a good thing, but “control will be lost” (to put it as vaguely as possible). Maybe there never was any control at all in the first place, but people who had that illusion will lose it …

     • Let’s let the Control Freaks knock themselves out dealing with the squeers and we can split a couple of bottles of wine and watch it all go down…I’m envisioning something like this.

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro

       • I’m a recovering control freak, Jazz 🙂

         • That’s why you need to drink more wine, Servetus…just be mellow…where’s the smashed smiley?

10. I think I will probably hang around, but I don’t know how often I will post in the next year. This has nothing to do with an influx of fans nor with a fading fascination with Richard Armitage. It’s more to do with life’s pressures. Not going to bore you with it, but I will say this,  I’m doing well to post. I think mostly I post because it makes me think and makes me laugh which is a wonderful stress reliever. I’ve also developed a relationship with the audience, and it’s hard to leave that.

    The only thing really difficult about the blog is I have been debating for months about putting something up that is dear.  I’ve mentally slapped myself countless times to come to some resolution on this. I’ve also talked to friends and family and the input is mixed.  My husband finally read all of my writings and listened to what I intended on the blog.   He was the one who told me to write fearlessly, but he’s urging me not to tell my story on blog. He wants me to publish.  I’m not quite done with the story, and I wasn’t sure if he was just being kind until I read it to some published authors who are strongly urging me to publish.  I never expected to be at this place and am in a bit of a quandary as to how much to publish on my blog.  I never expected anyone to like it.  It’s a good problem, but it is a problem. LOL!

     

    • Just keep in mind, Frenz, I’ve got a sparkly lasso and I’m not afraid to use it.  I’ll keep yours next to pi’s.  😉

      • 😀

    • I think Prue solved that problem with Gisborne she’s about to publish, by posting some excerpts on her site, especially those she knew would be reworked in second draft anyway.  That way, you can introduce your audience to your project and protect your published work too.  Also, are there any stories that won’t make it into the book?   You can post those. Just an idea.

      I would love to read them.  🙂

      • Thanks, Judi. I wrote it in first person and in the process of changing it to third. It does sound better, but it’s work! as I’m sure you and Prue and others here know well.  I should say it’s work for me.I haven’t been feigning humility when I’ve said I am not a natural write. I am not!  So  I’m not sure when I’m going to be done, but I’m determined to finish it. I have written some short stories, but I’m not sure how well those really fit on that blog    If I get to the the end of the diary, then they might make sense. I thought I would be done last year on my first anniversary. Maybe it will happen on my second.  I’ve stopped beating myself up for missing the self-imposed deadlines.

        • I’m not a big fan of wattpad. I liked it a lot at the beginning, but my enthusiasm has dropped rapidly as I’ve seen how people get mobbed there. I am subscribed, I read wattpad fics, but I don’t feel like it’s an ideal venue for even beginning writers. It’s not a very supportive place.

          • Phew.  You took the words out of my mouth about Wattpad.

            • You have the advantage, if you publish at your own blog, that the real trolls will stay away. I don’t know how to get honest criticism, though, except through people who you know really well. I have met a number of kindred spirits through Armitageblogging, but my most trusted proofers are still people I have actually met.

      • Work? No! Surely not… eighteen months of research and writing before it gets to publication stage. Gaaah!

        But fan-fiction in Wattpad may be the way to go, Frenz… it’s a lot less demanding.

11. Hi Judiang and others,

    Wow!  Lots of insightful comments!  I like to say that I’m an “avid” RA fan, not a “rabid” RA Fan–but it’s a terribly close call.  Ha!  I don’t  take myself seriously and neither should anyone else.  Ha!  Well, except for my fiction stories.  I’m facetiously humorous a good deal of the time–which doesn’t translate well in written form without the vocal inflections and impish grin.  So Im thinking of just labeling those meandering thoughts of mine as such when I post them–to avoid confusion.  Ha!

    Frankly, I’m amazed that people are reading my little blog.  But they are.  Blame Bccmee. She put me up to  it.  I think she felt I was too wordy on FB and needed another outlet.  Ha!  But, I enjoy creating essays, sharing my fiction stories, humor, etc., and such on my blog.  And though my fiction stories are also posted on DF, I have some novel length stories 2xx pages that are just too long to serialize in either place.  So, I’m seriously looking at Wattpad for my longer stories.  I welcome anyone’s thoughts about Wattpad as a venue and its ease of use. 

    And it was scary to share my fiction stories at first, because I had no notion how they would be received.  But, I like the idea of getting out of my comfort zone of the slightly conservative me in real life. And my blog is a way to challenge me to do that.  And goodness knows, Judiang would probably label me “Grati After Dark”  for my blushingly candid remarks in her Armitage World chat group whom I converse with regularly.  Let me put it this way, the clock strikes 9:00pm CST and my hubby asks me if I’m going to go talk with my RA gal pals.  Ha! 

    I’m a new blogger and small potatoes.  I don’t blog to try to “influence” others–perish the thought.  I just speak my mind and  I enjoy exchanging thoughts with those who comment on my blog.  And I enjoy reading and commenting on your blogs–something I’ve only been doing for a few months.  I’m a real newby.  But, I’m learning  alot from everyone’s insights.

    Though RA is not my “sole” focus on my blog–it took me all of three posts to write about him when I started my blog, ha!–he figures in about 90 – 95% of it my blog at this point.  Naturally, RA is my creative writing muse and whom I would cast to play the male leads in my fiction stories. Ha!  And I don’t envision stopping writing my blog because Richard Armitage’s star goes stratospheric.  More power to him–you go fella.  We’ll all enjoy experiencing his future artistic projects.

    Holiday Cheers!  Grati

    P.S.  See?  I said I was a wordy girl.  Ha!

     

12. I’ve tried to read everyone’s comments but there’s a lot. So, I’m just going to say what I wanted. I’m a hesitant RA fan of sorts. I haven’t seen everything he’s done, nor do I want to (I tried strike back but didn’t even finish the first episode, sorry Porter fans. I have no interest in Sparkhouse, sorry JS fans).

    I think everyone’s blogs will probably get more hits here at first with an increased interest in him from the hobbit crowd, however I don’t think those high levels will be sustained. 1) Unlike Aragorn or Legolas in LOTR, Thorin’s hotness isn’t that obvious, someone would actually have to look up RA to see his gorgeousness (again my opinion, I’m sure someone out there will think he’s hot as a dwarf w/o knowing what he looks like). 2) If the blogs aren’t touching on the subjects that the fan girls want to discuss they will move on elsewhere such as topix or other blogs (I believe that was mentioned prior). 3) Frankly, (please no one hate me) I don’t really think this role will make his career take off. I could be wrong, and if he wants it to take off I hope it does for his sake. Looking at the original LOTR cast, it really didn’t catapult anyone’s career except for Orlando Bloom. Everyone else kind basically stayed at the level they were at. With RA being a relative unknown in the States, I don’t think this will change much. As mentioned before his cuteness isn’t obvious in the movie like it was for Orlando and that will have an effect (along with his age).

    As for Lee, he wouldn’t be bad as long as you don’t believe a word he says. Love him and leave him.

    • I think the general trend is up. A year ago, when I’d already established a clear, regular audience, 600 hits in a day was a fantastic result for me, and I could figure that a third of them came from a group of about a dozen readers who were very active participants. Now twice that is the *norm* and the number of active participants / constant commentors whom I know has not really changed; if anything, it’s fallen slightly. I’d been idly calculating targets for particular milestones when I hit 500k hits — and on that day I figured that it would be 1.3 years before I got to a million, but if the current trends continue or increase, the blog could reach that milestone substantially earlier. My number one day was the CA premiere, and that was such a spike that I don’t anticipate that that will become the norm for a long time, if ever. More people know who he is and are googling him, though, that’s simply undeniable even with limited analytics. I think it’s fair to ask how casual googlers or people who become new fangirls will really behave, or whether they will fulfill our worst fears, but that there’s more interest and that it seems likely to grow as the film draws closer (especially if the PJ publicity machine continues to function as well as it has this year) seems hard to contest, IMO.

      • I’m just stunned at how many hits I’ve gotten. I would have been utterly shocked to have 30k on my first anniversary. It was inconceivable I would have over a 100k.  Still shake my head at that.   About six weeks after that first anniversary, I quit blogging regularly and averaged about 1.5 pieces a week. Had a little surge in posting for couple of weeks since then and went back to only posting every week until a couple of weeks ago.  Since then I’ve been averaging between 1,000 and 2,000 hits a day.  Unreal!  I would love to think that’s me, but I’m a realist and know it’s not.  People are hungry for information about Richard Armitage, and obviously it started before the trailer was aired.  Search engines were never high on my list of referring links. They were always toward the bottom. NOw they run four to one over the link with the second largest amount of referrals, and  ‘rafrenzy’ is remaining much lower on the key word search with Richard Armitage, Thorin Oakenshield, The Hobbit, Misty Mountains Cold, etc staying steady at the top.

        PJ is sharp, and he’s not just going to slink off and then come back sometime next fall to promote this movie.  There’s too much invested to do that, so I agree with Servetus about the pr machine being enough to generate continual interest.  However, the last few days’ level I doubt will remain as that is the result of the trailer.

        Another two. : D

        • I also think that your result is interesting, Frenz, given where your blog shows up in general google searches — I was surprised recently to find out where mine is when you search “richard armitage” myself, but then it’s not surprising that people end up visiting me if I am on p. 2. If you’re below that it means that people are really looking for info.

      • Servetus, I found your blog by doing a google that I am rather embarrassed about (richard armitage girlfriend and it took me to the RA/AC post). Anyhow, I found your blog to be on a different level than the others that came with that search so I kept coming back. Plus some of the other sites with the scary obsessive-protective re: anything private r/t RA comments scared me off.

        • That’s one of the 3 most common searches that lead people to my blog, Jael, and that post is by double the most viewed of everything I’ve written. So you’re in a larger group and have no need to be embarrassed. I am sure I googled that at some point myself and probably ended up at Natalie’s.

          I think the sites that have the rules re: no personal discussions do that at least in part because those discussions lead *very* quickly to flames. I’d prefer to be able to discuss what I want, myself, and that was part of why I didn’t join up with a site, but now that I’ve been reading comments for approaching two years I can see what a chore the whole thing can be.

13. I don’t think the high level of hits will hold on the blogs, and I said as much in my comments section on the piece that addressed the issue.  I do think this role will catapult RA’s career forward, but not in the fashion it did Orlando Bloom’s, and that’s just fine.   But there will be plenty of people in the states who will look up RA’s name and learn about him. Even if it’s a small percentage of the viewing population, that’s still a lot more people than know of him now.

    I am not wild about John Porter, so I’ll join you on that, Jael. I liked the character fine, but he is far from my favorite.  John Standring is not my favorite, but seeing that character after watching John Thornton and Harry Kennedy convinced me that RA was a talent, and that North and South was not a fluke.

    That’s my two on it; I’m sure I’ll have more later. : D

    • I imagine RA’s career taking a steady slow surge forward rather than Bloom’s who catapulted and then seemed to stall.

      The people who will be interested in RA definitely will Google him at least.  So, I’ll hide back in the shadows while you all represent for us.  😉

      • I hope it’s clear that I don’t represent anyone. I’m just running my head about what I see. : D

      • I sure hope his career does go slow and steady forward. That is better than catapulting and stalling, Orly’s career really catapulted with the whole Pirates of the Caribbean thing.

        Frenzy, I agree. One’s blog should be written for their enjoyment and not to please the audience. You do your thing!!!!!!

      • I’ve never had the impression he wanted to be a celebrity, so if the film just gets him better roles I am sure he will be happy (and that will make me happy, too) 🙂

14. @servetus,  Exactly my point. If my blog, which is pretty obscure even with my posting on Twitter (twitter is pretty low on my referral links), is found so well, then people must really be motivated to get info on RA.  BTW,  my page placement varies depending on the query.  But for ‘Richard Armitage’,  I’m on anywhere from the 15th to the 18th page. I did release the Google bot to crawl more frequently for a couple of weeks last year, and I made it to the 5th to 7th  pages.  This was done to see how the bot works, which I’m noting for other purposes having absolutely nothing to do with dear ol’  Richard.   I also wrote one too many pieces on Armitage Army so that the search string  put me at the second or third spot on the first page for that search.    I was terribly uncomfortable with that, and no, not because it was ‘Armitage Army’. I was obsessed with anonymity and terrified of being unmasked.    I still want to be under the radar, but I’m finding that may not be possible any longer.   So maybe I’ll go out in a blaze of glory never to be heard from again — at least not as Frenz.  LOL!

15. Ahh…not as Frenz.  That’s good because I’d miss your blog if it didn’t exist in any form at all!!!

    🙂

    • Thanks, Kathryn. The domain is paid up until 2013 or ’14. I forget, and it would probably offend my frugal gene not to use that blog until then.  But I’m not kidding when I say I want to be anonymous.  If I were posting with my name on those pieces, no way in hell would some of them be there, and I wouldn’t have had nearly so much fun.   Yes, I’m a chicken.

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