Bloodchild

1.     What is your reaction to the text you just read?

It’s clear that the reader’s reaction to the text isn’t meant to be just a black and white approval or condemnation. Just like how the relationship between the humans and the Tlik is complex, so is the reaction to the text.

      The Tlik are not portrayed as malicious. They (or at least the one Tlik shown in the text) are caring and understanding towards humans, allowing them freedom even though they are clearly the more powerful species. The parasitic children are disturbing, as is the “birth” of these children, although this does have some very clear parallels to human pregnancy and birth. Although the Tlik use the humans for their own purposes, who is to say that how they treat humans is any worse than how humans treat animals, or how humans treat each other? And yet, the short story brings up a question of morals: is it okay to take from someone as long as you give them something in return? And who gets to decide whether the give and take are equal? In the Tlik’s point of view, a longer and more comfortable life seems like a great trade in exchange for the use of human bodies as hosts, but in the human’s eyes this is not the case.

      My reaction was one of interest and curiosity. I enjoyed the graphic scenes of “violence,” since they really slapped you in the face with how different the Tlik culture is from human culture. I wanted to know more about the Tlik, where they came from, what they do. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to actually live in the world described by the story. The physical implications did not bother me nearly as much as the psychological implications; that humans would essentially be animals in their own minds, always questioning their importance to an unknown species.

2.     What connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the story with which you were able to connect.

The story was, to me, a parallel to the human practices of raising livestock or keeping pets. Clearly, this is not an exact parallel, since humans don’t require the use of outside species to reproduce. However, other connections are still there, such as how we provide for our pets’ needs in return for affection, or how we do the same for livestock in return for some sort of service. Most importantly, we do not ask our pets or livestock what they think about this exchange, we simply assume that since we give them things in return that the exchange must also be satisfactory on their end. (Of course, there are ways to tell whether animals are happy or not, so there is a kind of communication that can occur between animals and humans. Regardless, any “exchange” between humans and animals is usually heavily weighted in the humans’ favor.)

Similarly, the Tlik create a “trade” with the humans without asking the humans how they felt about it. And there is clearly a mode of communication between the species, but the Tlik still do not ask the humans if they are fine with the exchange. It may be possible that, like humans with animals, the Tlik believe that the humans would not be able to comprehend their reasoning.

3.     What change would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What change would you make?

I think that this story would translate very well into graphic novel form. There is plenty of gripping visuals described in the story, such as the birth scene, the fight between Gan and his brother, and the scene from the brother’s memory, that would be greatly enhanced by actual pictures. Facial cues and reactions from the characters would, in my opinion, also heighten the emotion of the story.

A necessary change this medium would bring, however, is the reduction of written words. In the original short story, Gan’s thoughts and inner turmoil is described in words that would not necessarily translate well into pictures. In my opinion, throwing large chunks of inner monologue text into a graphic novel is usually too jarring to tolerate, and it would end up breaking up the flow of the story. In order to adapt this short story into a graphic novel, a lot of Gan’s thoughts would have to be cut, to be replaced with carefully thought out facial expressions and reactions. The graphic novel version of the story would become less first person and more third person, transforming the reader into a spectator rather than someone actually part of the action.