Metapost: Deconstruction Voting Results

@ demotivationalposters.org

If you're a regular reader of this site (and I sincerely hope you are, because it's a very nice site, even if I do say so myself), you have probably noticed that I like pictures, particularly little thumbnail pictures to go with posts. Now, they aren't always particularly relevant pictures, but in the cases where the relevancy isn't immediately apparent, I do at least try to make sure they are funny pictures.

In posting the deconstruction vote results, I wanted to find a picture that would neatly encapsulate the concept of "protest" or "riot" or "anarchy" to really bring home the point that while I'm terribly worried that at least some of you will hate me for either (a) not choosing the series you voted for or (b) choosing a series that you would have liked to vote against or (c) both, it is at least your right to hate me for those things and I don't want you to feel guilty for having feelings that make me feel guilty. (I come from a family that serves every decision with a nice, thick dollop of guilt, you see. It's like whipped cream, but with more sad.)

Unfortunately, all the pictures I found for "protest" and "riot" and "anarchy" were really quite glum and not light-hearted at all, which in retrospect is not terribly surprising. I briefly considered giving up, but no, my readers deserve a good picture for their metapost. And then I hit paydirt with "dissent" - an adorable kitty cat reared up and captioned very appropriately with a statement encompassing respect, disagreement, and the respectful voicing of disagreement. Perfect!

Then I read further. Oh no, Ana, I said to myself. You can't use that picture on your site! It has a Swear! I was crushed. I considered editing the picture in MS Paint, but it just didn't feel right - someone went to a lot of trouble to insert that Swear on their poster and here I was coming along Photoshopping it off, without even the dignity of actually using Photoshop. No, I decided, I had to either post the picture in its entirety or not at all. And looking into those cute cat eyes (like liquid amber!), I knew what I had to do.

So if you've lost your innocence today at the hands of my metapost picture, I do truly apologize, but I hope the adorableness of a kitty cat standing up for his (her?) deeply-held beliefs makes up for your loss somewhat.

Alright, results time, people!

I was absolutely astounded at how Chronicles of Narnia galloped onto the field and swept all its opponents 'neath its mighty feet, or at least I was until Husband pointed out that it's the only thing on the poll that anyone has ever heard of. That hurt a little - it's always quite shocking for me to realize that not everyone watches anime every week like we do - but I suppose I could just soothe my feelings by calling myself avant garde and hope that no-one disagrees with me.

At any rate, I was pretty thrilled that Chronicles of Narnia was doing so well and I was already planning posts in my head until something like half my regular commenters weighed in to explain what an utterly bad idea that would be, and even Husband was all, "Hasn't that been done before?" Despondency set in and I had to go snuggle Primary Cat for at least five minutes while he relentlessly squeaked to be let go. (Don't feel too bad for Primary Cat - when you do let him go, he squeaks to be picked back up.)

The ultimate answer, really, is that yes the Chronicles of Narnia have been done before. As far as I can tell, they've been done in pieces here and there all over the interwebs, but they have been done. They've been done so much that there is also apparently a Neil Gaiman slash-fic of it, even. (I haven't read it yet; I need to.)

So why do it again? Well, the obvious answer is that in my narcissism, I think I can do it better, or - and this is probably closer to the truth - I think I can add some new insights to the pile. I also think I can do it from a slightly different perspective - a lot of the existing critique of the Chronicles of Narnia is either an attack from people who don't appreciate the viewpoint of the source material (Gaiman, Pullman, etc.), or apologetics from people who very much identify with the material in this series and don't want to hear anything "bad" about.

I feel like I can bring a third point of view: although I don't agree with all the tenets expressed in the books, I used to, and I think that I can respectfully discuss the material presented without arguing from a position of ignorance or anger.

("But, Ana," you are thinking, "did you not clearly state in the poll thread that you were going to be an angry liberal pagan feminist strawman about all the CoN theology?" Well, yes, I did. Because I suspect that at least some of what I write will seem that way to some readers, just as it will seem that way to some readers when someone tallies up a mathematical fact about how many times girls speak in Dr. Seuss books. But whether the subject is Narnia or Twilight, it's not my goal to tear down the literature so much as to take it apart and examine it closely.)

So, based on all this, I've decided to honor the poll as planned and run a Chronicles of Narnia deconstruction series. But! I am also very much aware that at least some of you are not interested in reading about that particular series in the slightest. So we're also going to do a runner-up, but this is one that I'm going to pick myself, and that is: Claymore. (The vote-based runner-up would have been The Path and I still plan to do that one at some point, but Husband pointed out that I need to get some better video capture software for the game sequences, so that's on the back-burner at the moment. Plus, I really want to do Claymore and I'm Chaotic-aligned, so there's that.)

So here's how this will play out:

Twilight posts will continue on a weekly basis as we go through line-by-line. I'm on a cloud right now because we just finished chapter 1 of Twilight and to be honest I wasn't sure if that was going to ever happen, ha. I think the weekly posts have worked out very nicely and though I've had to scramble a bit to make the posts happen on time every week, for the most part it's worked out very well. We'll see how long I can go without missing a week, knock-on-wood, cross-your-fingers, etc. *grins*

Chronicles of Narnia posts will go up on a whenever-I-feel-like-it basis. This will hopefully work out to two posts a month, but I'm not making any promises on that one. But before you get too disappointed, remember that at two chapters a month we're almost guaranteed to finish the entire series before I get to the end of the Twilight saga. How's that for perspective? I will be doing the CoN series in Published Order, not Chronological Order, and you can read more about the difference here. (I'll have a longer post about this later.)

Claymore posts will follow a similar when-I-get-to-it posting schedule but again the plan is two posts a month. Each Claymore post will follow a single episode of the anime series, and if I can find that episode on YouTube, I'll link to the video in the post, but I can't guarantee the link will stay active for any length of time. If you're interested in following along with the deconstruction, I highly recommend either buying the Blu-ray on Amazon that I have (or the DVD, which I think is the same, but haven't verified it) or renting the series from Netflix or Blockbuster.

Probably neither of these new series will start for at least a couple of weeks because I want to re-read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe again before I start gabbing off about it. And also I'm kind of busy with another Super Secret Mystery Project that I hope to inflict on you before the year ends.

In closing, I love all of you readers so very much and if you were here right now I'd totally let you pet Auxiliary Backup Cat. (You can't pet Primary Cat because he bites strangers. Sorry.) I hope that nobody gets fed up and leaves over the new deconstructions and I do hope that everyone can find something to enjoy about the new posts. I'm absolutely thrilled to have 119 people vote in this poll (and I encourage all of you who aren't currently subscribed with Google Reader to do so in order that I might continue to gurgle happily over my subscription numbers), and I hope that you all continue to stick around for the good times ahead.

And - again - I do apologize sincerely for the Swears.