Professor Belli–Fall 2020–City Tech
Time for this week’s People’s Choice, on Destroyer reading responses. Get your votes in (complete with your chosen post–author/title/link, an excerpt from it + rationale for choosing it). This time around, comments are due by Sun 10/25. As always, looking forward to seeing your choices 🙂
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I like Tommy’s reading response on Destroyer because of the structure of his paragraphs and how he focuses on one idea for each paragraph. For example, “Death is a theme very prevalent in this story.” Throughout the whole first paragraph, Tommy would explain why he thinks that. Also “‘Artificial life will be Humanity’s next great ‘concern’.” In the second paragraph, he writes about why he likes this quote and relates it to other stories he read.
I like how Edward analyzed the idea immortality in the comic and it how relates to the real world. I feel like for Dr. Baker, she made her son immortal but I’ve wondered if she ever thought if thats what Akai wants. There might be a chance that Akai starts hating life and humanity just like the monster going forward with his life. I also liked how Edward mentioned “that humans can even think about artificial life when there still racial inequality.. Humanity is thinking far into the future before facing present-day issues.” I think this a good point he brought up here as racial inequality is something that has been a concern for a very long time and still is as we see in today’s world. Immortality is an interesting idea to explore but as seen in the comic with Akai getting shot and killed, and also with today’s current events, racial injustice should be more talked and addressed about. I also liked the different ways Edward compared the themes he brought up in the reading to other resources like a game, concept, and past reading and how all of these resources brings up a bigger picture of his themes.
I enjoy Edwards response to destroyer because of his perspective of what it means to still be yourself. He explains an old Greek story about a ship that changes all its parts and then says “The philosophical question then becomes is the ship the same ship as the one that originally set out since everything has been changed” it’s strange to think what makes up something. Is it the spirit of the ship that’s the same ? Likewise to a human if you get a heart transplant and brain surgery where they take a piece of your brain out are you still the same person ? It makes you think wether Akai is still Akai or is he now mostly machine responding to what his mother wanted him to be ? It makes you think of not only Akai but his father. Her father barely has free will and his entire body is physically gone. Is he still the same person ? It’s a great perspective that there isn’t a real answer to but I really like how it makes you think about what makes something what it is.
I like Edwards’s blog on Destroyer due to him connecting some ideas of the story to real world things, such as mentioning Theseus’ ship and the idea of replacing all the ships parts, as well as even connecting life and death to Destiny, a game in which death is said to not be a problem. Edward also analyzes how the events people go through, his major example being Dr. Baker when her son was killed because of police brutality. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/belli-f2020-eng2420/edwards-reading-response-6-the-destroyer/
Edward’s response to the question is pretty well done, with the amount of detail put into it about a very good graphic novel. One of my favorite sections from the response was this one question near the end, being: “In what ways can we achieve immortality?” as this is already something that is going on in the current modern world. Is it even possible to achieve such a thing called immortality? Especially since eariler on in the paragraph, he goes into detail about how the bodies are something left frozen only to be let out again after a while, which some way of giving people a longer life, even if they are frozen in time.
Along with providing good analysis, Derick’s response included a deeply personal account of his and his loved ones’ experiences with police violence. This is violence that had so often been hidden from the mainstream, but thanks to the ubiquity of video recording it is finally coming to light. Derick’s analysis, where he claims “[t]he situation revolves around a deeply rooted hate and fear implanted in our society over 400 years ago” mirrors the pervasive fear detailed in LaValle’s Destroyer, and shows that despite the passing of centuries, many things have not changed.
I really enjoyed reading Edwards’s reading response. It really had a good balance of plot and analysis. He was very thoughtful about the design of his blog. One quote I enjoyed would be “The Destroyer touches on the topic of artificial life and race. Dr. Baker talks about how artificial life will be what comes after humanity falls and that Akai is the start, partially organic, and artificial will eventually evolve to be that of purely non-organic life and machine.” Artificial intelligence is something we have discussed in class and I agree with Edward that this story really discusses the nature of human mortality. The concept of immortality could have a lot of consequences depending on who was immortal. I also feel that AI is something that is becoming very prominent now and as more technology is developed, the world will slide into a very moral debate about how to handle AI and possibly immortality.
I like derrick’s response to destroy, it’s interesting to see the parallels between the story and currents events. As they say, life imamates art and vice versa, to see society react this way to a person of color and then jump the gun in certain situations is just awful. We all pray for change but only a few ever do, but what’s worse is when the individual takes matters into their own hands. The justice system isn’t the best right now so everyone is either super angry or fed up to a point of rioting and rebelling.
I enjoyed reading Edward’s response of “The Destroyer”. He brings up modern science and compares them to Frankenstein’s technology. He also discusses about Dr. Baker and what drove her to bring her son back to live.
I like Ronald’s reading response, he explores the juxtaposition of The Monster and Akai in detail, with some of the key differences in their creation. “Akai was born of something that Victor Frankenstein didn’t have for his Monster, Love, and it’s shown with how he’s presented in the story.”
The Monster was an experiment conducted by Victor Frankenstein just for scientific inquiry but Akai was made because he had a mother that cared for him.
Edwards comparison between sections of the reading and the characters is phenomenal, and he truly captures events that are shocking. Edward was able to show the comparisons between several characters, through their actions and the eventual outcomes. He was able to report on how the story changed its main points and its objectives as the characters evolved, as well as gave well done character analysis.
Thanks all for your votes & thoughtful rationales … Edward is the clear winner this week. Congrats 🙂