Periodically, I like point back to some of the nearly 500 posts we’ve written here on Beneath the Tangles. Besides the “A Year Ago” series I began several months ago, I plan to occasionally post about blogging milestones – those little breakthroughs when posts hit certain numbers of significance in terms of hits. Three posts recently hit such mileposts:
Finding the Invisible God in…Claymore
Milepost: 10,000 Hits
Part of my “Invisible God” series, I compared the indomitable claymore, Teresa, to the great prophet, John the Baptist:
John is born to “prepare the way” for the Christ. Teresa, meanwhile, prepares the way, unwittingly, for Clare. Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the law and the central figure of the Bible. Clare, certainly, is the heroine of Claymore, and as her power and abilities grow (or rather unveil themselves), the manga is setting the stage for her possible role as the claymore that will change everything.
My second post ever, this one remains dear to me because I do believe the connection I argue for is strong. It has also consistently brought in hits (and hopefully a few conversions, borrowing both a blogging and religious term) due to the image I used of Teresa.
Do You Love Me Enough to Let Me Go?
Milepost: 1,000 Hits
In this article, I compared the dissolution of the Bebop crew to idea of Christians as God’s advocates on earth:
Today, [God] expects his people to be advocates among the horrors happening in the world. Believers should think of God’s just and merciful character and do things to change the state of the world. He doesn’t hold us hostage, as Faye attempted to do with Spike. Instead, he lets us make our own decisions as independent people, hoping that we’ll make decisions that are full of grace and love. He loves us enough to let us go with the hope of doing good for others.
One of my longest entries, I wrote this post with the idea in mind that I wanted to discuss Abraham’s bargaining session with God in Genesis. It’s one of my favorite Old Testament passages, and through one of my favorite series, I found a point of comparison.
My Experience With a Voice Actress…or, Get Over Yourself, Minorin!
Milepost: 500 Hits
In this personal post, I complained about the difficulties I had in procuring a promised interview with a noted voice actress:
What had led this woman to suddenly stop interacting with me? The tone of my emails was congenial, I thought, but perhaps she found me unprofessional or…gasp…creepy. She could have also looked at my blog (which she volunteered to) and found it lacking, and thus decided not to waste her time.
As a follow-up, since writing that post I regained contact with this specific VA, but again lost touch with her. I’ll hopefully be able to schedule a meeting one day, but the feeling of urgency waned after I was able to spend some time with another Christian VA, the amazing Caitlin Glass.
I hope you enjoyed this little trip down blogging memory lane with me and perhaps read a post or two you hadn’t before, or forgot that you’d read. 😉
10,000 hits? Whoa ! ! Btw, I have dvd and several volumes of Claymore…. but the updates are soooooo slow.
Yeah, it’s definitely tough to wait so long for the manga updates, especially since it’s such an epic with so much story to tell!
Oh, you’ve unspammed me? He he he
Darn it, why does my comment always go to your Spam Folder? T.T
I have not really read all your posts, so I don’t know if you have actually written about Evangelion?
I wish I knew why your comments always went there. I’m the one generally in charge of dumping spam and approving not-spam, and one would think that after my approving your not-spam posts so often, the system would have learned. But apparently not. :/
As for Evangelion, since I was one of the eleven people who had never seen the movies (I saw the TV series ages ago), I watched the two movies currently available a few months ago. I found myself really enjoying them, even though I was never really a part of either the I Love Evangelion More Than Anything group or the Evangelion Is From The Pit Of Hell group. I’m sure there’s a lot of interesting symbolism there that more talented minds than mine can draw out, but for me the interesting sorts of questions would always be ones like: How is Ikari Shinji changing? What are his father’s true intentions? Can he learn to get along productively with his fellow Eva pilots? Can he combat his inner demons? And so forth. 🙂
Yeah, it’s strange how you’ve been identified as a spammer. R86 and I have talked about this before – for some reason, our site seems to dislike you. 😛
And yeah, Evangelion is a good recommendation. Like R86 mentioned, there’s a lot to talk about in regards to growth and all that good thematic stuff. I wrote one article on Eva 2.22 a while back (and possible another that I’ve since forgotten). As for the symbolism, there are fans much more knowledgeable than I who’ve written tons about the imagery – better to let them handle it. 🙂