Total Midterm Points: 40

Homestuck (7)

I'm surprised it wasn't on the reading list. I know it's still vaguely niche, but I thought it would've been talked about enough to make it on the list. It's so much to read, and I haven't read it in such a long time, so I read up to the 2nd act before stopping. I've read it all before when it was still coming out, but it's such a garbled mess that I don't remember half of it. Is it convoluted and hard to comprehend? Yes. Is it stupidly long? Absolutely. Is it smart? It is. It was so influential to comic culture as we know it, that it has to have some recognition. I don't think there's been a fandom as big as there has been for Homestuck since the height of it's popularity. Everyone somehow got a piece of this pie and had a wild time with it. It's so expansive that if you read it, it's like you have a secret badge of honor you can subtly mention to other people you think have also read it and just understand that person at a much...

The Arrival by Shaun Tan (3 Points)

This beautiful piece captures the uncertainty of those who've experienced immigration face, while not being entirely negative. It shows the humanity others are capable of giving despite there being a language barrier. It gives hope to those who are going into personally uncharted territory that there will always be kindess. We follow a man leaving behind his wife and child to move to a foreign place in hopes of a better future for his family. Along the way we meet some characters that help our main hero through his transition into a foreign land. In the end, his family is finally reunited with him and they are able to be together in this new place. What I loved about this piece is that it was abstracting a very real subject. Even in the beginning of the book where the dedications go, it says "for my parents." You can tell just from the drawings that there was a lot of love put into this piece. It was personal, but abstracted enough so that anyone could understand and appl...

Une Semaine de Bonte (1 Point)

This one was very hard to translate because I was trying so hard to comprehend the pictures. Maybe it's because I'm having a hard time deciphering what's even in the photos due to lack of contrast in some of them. I definitely think it has something to do with livestock. I've heard that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an allegory for how awfully we treat pigs and cattle, and I feel like this might be going in the same direction, just with chickens. The chickens in almost every photo are torturing, stalking, scaring, or kissing humans. I think this is talking about how we treat livestock as pets, but will ultimately use them for what they're worth and end up culling them in the end. Even the kissing makes sense to me because people love their pets and kiss them all the time. I'm not a pet owner or a vegan/vegetarian, but I feel like that's what is being said here. It could also be a bit more general than that as well. It could just be talking about how humans...

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