One of the things I wanted to do with this project was write a short narrative to go along with the picture. Originally, I wanted to use one of my own unfinished novels as a basis for this project, writing a story like Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson, but that fell through because I didn't know what form the story should take. I think the main challenge of digital rhetoric, of using text, is still organizing what you want to say and how you organize it.
So I decided to write about an Internet artifact instead. I find that organizing an informational paper is easier than a narrative. But I also wanted to show that both these franchises have stories that go along with them and that by mashing these two narratives together, we get a new story. Captioning images is a frequent occurrence on the Internet. This is why memes exist, after all. But I didn't want to just caption this image. I wanted to write a narrative such that if someone landed on that page of my website and knew nothing about either franchise, about Care Bears or Hellraiser, that there were enough clues in the narrative to help lead them down the path towards knowing without being too leading or taking away from the simple narrative I created. For instance, in the Hellraiser series, a toymaker is tricked into making the puzzle box as a gate to the Cenobite Hell Dimension in which humans are tortured. Care Bears would help a man who would be discouraged (to say the least) after making such a device. I've watched enough Care Bear cartoons to mimic their dialogue. Whether I have done a good job is really up to whomever encounters this little narrative.
That's what Comments sections are for.
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