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Bean was a prick
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Apr 22, 2022 18:12
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I AM GRANDO posted:I had no exposure to that kind of rigid conservative thinking as a kid, but it may be as simple as a strict upbringing ruining your mind and making you lose the capacity to be self-critical or revisit rigid beliefs even as you grow and change in other ways. Doesn't help that a lot of the channels where sci-fi authors would get exposure were/are often exceptionally racist and sexist even by the standards of the time. Progressive ideas aren't new or uncommon, avenues of expressing them often are. Reminds me of Astro Boy, I've probably mentioned one particular arc has surprising apt and resonating messages about racism, even kinda spelling out the premise a bit with the viewpoint character saying that he noticed racism against other humans fading to be replaced by treating robots exactly the same way.
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Apr 22, 2022 18:13
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I love Woody Allen's work, but I haven't been able to watch any since Dylan Farrow's letter and everything that came out afterwards. It's the same with Louis CK's TV show, where whenever I think of it I have both the memory of the show, which blew me away when it first aired, and the testimonies against him. I try to direct that discomfort towards being critical and aware of the systems that allowed for (and continue to allow for) perpetration of abuse.
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Apr 22, 2022 18:21
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Post Ironic Cereal posted:I remember Take the Money and Run being kinda funny but like hell I'm going back to confirm. Like most things, viewed with hindsight probably not that funny overall, heavy handed in places, yikes in others, and the occasional gem. Like, 2 years later he made Bananas, which has a pretty funny scene where the rebel army run out of food and Mellish is tasked with feeding them and he just orders thousands of grilled cheese sandwiches (and one on a roll) from this one-man diner in the middle of the jungle. However, it also contains this direct quote: quote:I'm doing a sociological study on perversion. I'm up to Advanced Child Molesting.
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Apr 22, 2022 18:25
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Doesn't help that a lot of the channels where sci-fi authors would get exposure were/are often exceptionally racist and sexist even by the standards of the time. Progressive ideas aren't new or uncommon, avenues of expressing them often are. Reminds me of Astro Boy, I've probably mentioned one particular arc has surprising apt and resonating messages about racism, even kinda spelling out the premise a bit with the viewpoint character saying that he noticed racism against other humans fading to be replaced by treating robots exactly the same way. Off of this, there is a certain burnt out gifted kid vibe that we get in a lot of sci-fi (and television) in general. I didn't read the Ender series but reading the stuff people have said here and elsewhere it appeals to a certain, you're a genius and so above the people around you but society doesn't realize it. There are healthy and super healthy ways to deal with it but a lot of writers it comes out as you pleebs just wouldn't understand what I know. Of course that point view can be very predominately white as well which comes with its caveats.
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Apr 22, 2022 19:14
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Mooseontheloose posted:Off of this, there is a certain burnt out gifted kid vibe that we get in a lot of sci-fi (and television) in general. I didn't read the Ender series but reading the stuff people have said here and elsewhere it appeals to a certain, you're a genius and so above the people around you but society doesn't realize it. There are healthy and super healthy ways to deal with it but a lot of writers it comes out as you pleebs just wouldn't understand what I know. Ender's whole problem was that everyone KNEW he was a genius and above them all but they were pushing him to make sure he wouldn't break when they needed him the most.
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Apr 22, 2022 19:23
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Vandar posted:Ender's whole problem was that everyone KNEW he was a genius and above them all but they were pushing him to make sure he wouldn't break when they needed him the most. Well, shows what I know!
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Apr 22, 2022 19:23
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Kchama posted:That's actually not the moral of Ender's Game. The moral of Ender's Game is that Good People Are Good, Bad People Are Bad. Or at least, that was what OSC was trying to teach. That was the whole point of the genocide: Because Ender is GOOD, that means he could do a genocide while being innocent, and that his genocide would turn out to be for the best. Or Ender intentionally murdering other children doesn't make him Bad. When you're good, no matter what you do, even if you intend to do evil, it'll come out good. And in reverse, if you're bad, no matter what kind of good you do, it'll turn out bad. These are intrinsic, and you can't change whether you are Good or Bad. This reading doesn't make any sense to me. The book frames Ender's accidental killings as bad things. Throughout the book he has the philosophy that it is better to end conflict as quickly as possible with decisive, pre-emptive attack, because he thinks of every conflict as a potentially existential threat. The moral of the book is that this is a bad way to approach conflict, because it leads to unnecessary destruction and tragedy. Ender is not a good person, at first anyway. The book makes this pretty explicit with the parallels to his siblings Peter and Valentine; you are clearly meant to think of Peter as evil and Valentine as good, and see both of those aspects within Ender. Ender learns, by the end, that it's better to learn from and seek to cooperate with those who may initially be in conflict with you - to reject Peter's destructive tendencies and embrace Valentine's compassion. He is not "intrinsically good," he has to learn how to be good. And you say "when you're good, no matter what you do, even if you intend to do evil, it'll come out good" but Ender commits (accidentally-ish) an entirely unnecessary genocide of an otherwise peaceful species - I fail to see where the book frames that as "coming out good." Ditto the unnecessary death of his two school bullies. Anyway, that's why it's so jarring to learn that he's a religious nut homophobe. Compassion for one's enemies apparently doesn't apply if they're gay.
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Apr 22, 2022 19:39
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The Ender's Game movie was pretty poo poo, btw.
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Apr 22, 2022 19:50
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Doesn't help that a lot of the channels where sci-fi authors would get exposure were/are often exceptionally racist and sexist even by the standards of the time. Progressive ideas aren't new or uncommon, avenues of expressing them often are. Reminds me of Astro Boy, I've probably mentioned one particular arc has surprising apt and resonating messages about racism, even kinda spelling out the premise a bit with the viewpoint character saying that he noticed racism against other humans fading to be replaced by treating robots exactly the same way. It's not that writers somehow could get exposure from racist/sexist publications, but the entire system basically rewarded and continues to reward mediocre white men. The famous black astronaut comic was 1953 so it's not like there weren't plenty of people in the field ready to throw down and tell racists to go gently caress themselves. It's just only something that happened once the writer/creator had any amount of clout (and was also a white man). In very recent years Vox Day won a significant minority of votes to lead the SFFA and is a 14 word literal eugenicist. NK Jemisin as a black woman winning back to back awards and multiple NYT best sellers couldn't even get TV pitch meetings. It's not like there's anything special about the field. Like all other avenues of success dominated by almost exclusive white men, there's institutional inertia. Academic History in the US from the Civil War until the 1970s was literally all Confederate apologia for a similar reason.
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Apr 22, 2022 20:02
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Vandar posted:The Ender's Game movie was pretty poo poo, btw. They cast a man named Han Soto to play Harrison Ford’s assistant in the movie, and I think that’s very funny.
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Apr 22, 2022 20:23
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Vandar posted:I think I might like Ender's Shadow more than Ender's game, but boy the Bean books end up going to some really weird places. My favorite Bean stuff is when like three year old Bean is able to scale buildings like loving Enzo from Assassin's Creed despite being small enough to fit inside a toilet tank. DontMockMySmock posted:This reading doesn't make any sense to me. The book frames Ender's accidental killings as bad things. Throughout the book he has the philosophy that it is better to end conflict as quickly as possible with decisive, pre-emptive attack, because he thinks of every conflict as a potentially existential threat. The moral of the book is that this is a bad way to approach conflict, because it leads to unnecessary destruction and tragedy. Ender is not a good person, at first anyway. The book makes this pretty explicit with the parallels to his siblings Peter and Valentine; you are clearly meant to think of Peter as evil and Valentine as good, and see both of those aspects within Ender. Ender learns, by the end, that it's better to learn from and seek to cooperate with those who may initially be in conflict with you - to reject Peter's destructive tendencies and embrace Valentine's compassion. He is not "intrinsically good," he has to learn how to be good. And you say "when you're good, no matter what you do, even if you intend to do evil, it'll come out good" but Ender commits (accidentally-ish) an entirely unnecessary genocide of an otherwise peaceful species - I fail to see where the book frames that as "coming out good." Ditto the unnecessary death of his two school bullies. Let me say again: It's not my reading of the story, but the one OSC says is intended. OSC has also absolutely changed his mind on a lot of things in the later books. Peter's probably the biggest one, because OSC said at one point that Peter was based on his own big brother who was an abusive brute, and the reason why the books change towards Peter being a good guy is because he came to realize that his own big brother must be Good, therefore his abuse was good, and actually probably not abuse at all but just him being a scared little boy like Ender. OSC's morals and what he thinks he is saying seem completely divorced with what he actually writes. Like when asked about Songbird (the story about a sexual relationship between a young boy and a man, and yes I am simplifying that immensely for the sake of brevity) and how it clashes with his stated beliefs on homosexuality and how it's all fake and wrong and there's no love there he basically shrugged it off. I would presume the 'coming out Good' is that the genocide wasn't actually COMPLETE and Ender was able to find the egg and deliver it to a new colony and end the hatred between the bugs and humanity by taking the hatred onto himself. The two school bully deaths, on the other hand, were seen as necessary in the book itself. That was kind of the point of the Graff's trial where him showing the unedited footage of Bonzo's death convinced everyone that it was super necessary (conveniently forgetting that it only happened in the first place because Graff manipulated things to to make it happen, even keeping Bonzo at the School long after it's stated that commanders get washed out if they can't 'move up'.). I think the biggest stumbling of the book as intended is the constant refrain of the reason why Ender is so able to destroy his foes and is the greatest general ever is because he loves them and has compassion/empathy for them which is uhh... never true. He kills the schoolyard bully entirely due to his personal philosophy of beating like him and Bonzo so hard they become too scared to attack him again which just so happen to always involve lethal force. Ender never faces consequences over this and only learns of Bonzo's death when the book is basically over. His victories in laser tag don't come from some sort of compassion/love for his enemies teaching him how to defeat them, but because he has the relatively basic revelation (that apparently no one else ever figured out?) that you can recenter yourself in zero-G and and potentially use it to your advantage (I don't think this ever actually comes up in the real battle, it's just an artifact of it being based on a short story entirely about laser tag). And finally his victory in the final battle has nothing to do with love and compassion for his enemies, because at no point does he ever really meet (I don't think the Giant's Drink stuff counts) or really care about the bugs as he's fighting them. The revelation actually is an issue because if Ender cannot think that he is doing a real battle, then he cannot believe he is fighting with real men killing real bugs. Even him deciding to blow up the homeworld with the Doctor Device is just a matter of him being exhausted just wanting to have it be over so he goes for all the marbles. He does the genocide because he's tired of training and just wants to finish the campaign, and hopes that by doing a genocide (which IIRC is suppose to be against the rules of the training) he'll be fired basically. He gets told he had to be tricked into it because a truly compassionate person (which was necessary to have the empathy to think like the bugs and understand and anticipate them, which never really comes up because nobody knows anything about the bugs, otherwise they'd know for sure that there was no invasion coming) would never be the killer they needed, even though, you know, he had no problem dishing out brutal, lethal beatings with his bare hands. pentyne posted:It's not that writers somehow could get exposure from racist/sexist publications, but the entire system basically rewarded and continues to reward mediocre white men. The famous black astronaut comic was 1953 so it's not like there weren't plenty of people in the field ready to throw down and tell racists to go gently caress themselves. It's just only something that happened once the writer/creator had any amount of clout (and was also a white man). It didn't help that the Great Gods Of Scifi were all horrible people. Asimov had a sexual harassment industry. Harlan Ellison made it his mission in life to make people around his miserable. OSC thought there should be arbitrarily enforced anti-homosexuality laws so as to keep LGBT people oppressed through fear, and worse.
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Apr 22, 2022 20:56
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he may have said that's what the book is about but it's completely incongruent with what he actually wrote, you can't "win" literary analysis by pointing to the author
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Apr 22, 2022 20:58
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moonmazed posted:he may have said that's what the book is about but it's completely incongruent with what he actually wrote, you can't "win" literary analysis by pointing to the author I mean, if you read the post you may have notice me mention that what despite he says he intended he clearly did not get across in his writings and any good morals you found there was sadly accidental and not something OSC actually believed. EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is that OSC is a bad writer. CharlestheHammer posted:I mean considering the whole point of this is literally talking about the author himself I think it’s fair to point out his opinions on his own books There is this, too. Kchama has a new favorite as of 21:05 on Apr 22, 2022 |
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Apr 22, 2022 21:01
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I mean considering the whole point of this is literally talking about the author himself I think it’s fair to point out his opinions on his own books
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Apr 22, 2022 21:04
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Kchama posted:I mean, if you read the post you may have notice me mention that what despite he says he intended he clearly did not get across in his writings and any good morals you found there was sadly accidental and not something OSC actually believed. I don't know, I think if a writer manages to create something that goes way outside and beyond their own prejudices, that's good, even sublime writing.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:10
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rydiafan posted:The "good" people living in the evil house decorate the severed slave heads with hats for Christmas. Please turn your sarcasm detector to 'on.' Even just the evil people displaying mounted elf heads openly says some nasty things about what is acceptable in that culture.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:17
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Kchama posted:Let me say again: It's not my reading of the story, but the one OSC says is intended. Ah I see, that makes more sense. Kchama posted:I would presume the 'coming out Good' is that the genocide wasn't actually COMPLETE and Ender was able to find the egg and deliver it to a new colony and end the hatred between the bugs and humanity by taking the hatred onto himself. I guess this sorta makes sense from a hyper-christian "the lord works in mysterious ways" sense. A more sensible person, in my opinion, would say that the genocide was bad and the saving the egg was good, and the fact that the bad partially caused the good doesn't redeem it, because it was totally possible that good things, even better things, could still happen without a prerequisite genocide. But I guess if you believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds because of an omnibenevolent god, then you have to believe that all negative things are ultimately cause of greater good, and thus have to frame it that way. It's super cognitive-dissonance-y, but that's rather the whole point of this discussion, I suppose - the cognitive dissonance between OSC's morals and the apparent morals of a book he wrote. Kchama posted:I think the biggest stumbling of the book as intended is the constant refrain of the reason why Ender is so able to destroy his foes and is the greatest general ever is because he loves them and has compassion/empathy for them which is uhh... never true. The adults talk about his compassion being important not because he has compassion for his enemies, but because he has to be a capable leader. His compassionate, Valentine-like side is what wins him the loyalty of Alai, Petra, et al. His ultimately finding compassion for the bugs is, to the adults, an unintended side effect, and that's why they hide the true nature of his "training." But yeah, we can both agree that if OSC meant it to be a story about unambiguously good and evil people then he hosed up.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:27
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Evil people doing something doesn't mean it's acceptable in their culture. That's what makes them evil.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:27
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DontMockMySmock posted:
Ender's Game posted:"Of course we tricked you into it. That's the whole point," said Graff. "It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it. It's the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough." If he hadn't been so compassionate, he wouldn't have understood the bugs well enough to destroy them. That's the constant refrain, that his compassion is what lets him destroy his enemies. It just also has the extra effect of winning the love of his 'underlings' and work with them like a hive mind. Mind you, this really isn't displayed either. When he becomes leader he finds himself using the same manipulations and tricks that Graff and the other adults used on him in order to get his underlings to do what he wants. It's framed in the same "Oh I love him so much but I must be cruel and harsh to toughen them up!" way that Graff sells to the other adults when questioned on his methods. I remember way too much of this book, ugh. I only read this one, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker, so I can't speak of what goes on after them very much beyond broad strokes. Kchama has a new favorite as of 21:56 on Apr 22, 2022 |
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Apr 22, 2022 21:49
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Kchama posted:I remember way too much of this book, ugh. I only read this one, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker, so I can't speak of what goes on after them very much beyond broad strokes. The Ender books get really deep into metaphysical and spiritual and religious stuff, and the Bean books go hard down the military route while going into some deeper sci-fi things. I am kind of tempted to read the last book that came out last year (I think?) that ties the two storylines back together and ends things.
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Apr 22, 2022 21:56
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Kchama posted:If he hadn't been so compassionate, he wouldn't have understood the bugs well enough to destroy them. That's the constant refrain, that his compassion is what lets him destroy his enemies. It just also has the extra effect of winning the love of his 'underlings' and work with them like a hive mind. Mind you, this really isn't displayed either. When he becomes leader he finds himself using the same manipulations and tricks that Graff and the other adults used on him in order to get his underlings to do what he wants. It's framed in the same "Oh I love him so much but I must be cruel and harsh to toughen them up!" way that Graff sells to the other adults when questioned on his methods. The cool thing about fiction is that you can just make up a reason why something happens, have everyone in the story agree that that's the reason it happened, and a bunch of people reading the book will nod their heads to the logic and then attempt to carry it forward to their own lives to predictable results
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Apr 22, 2022 22:08
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Ed: joke not as funny once I actually wrote it out.
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Apr 22, 2022 22:10
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rydiafan posted:Evil people doing something doesn't mean it's acceptable in their culture. That's what makes them evil. That is a very simplistic view of evil. The Black Family wasn't just evil, they were rich and respectable. Society allowed them to mount the heads of their elves on the walls.
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Apr 22, 2022 22:10
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Vandar posted:I think I might like Ender's Shadow more than Ender's game, but boy the Bean books end up going to some really weird places. Kids leading the armies of the world and bean's test tube embryo kids were weird stories.
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Apr 22, 2022 23:22
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i have a hard time believing that anyone, ever, read a book about bean the magic toilet baby and thought "this is worth continuing"
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Apr 22, 2022 23:57
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I've been watching Adam-12 in the afternoon and today's ep (from 1975) featured Reed being partnered with a *GASP* female cop!! Most of the male officers (especially Gary Crosby's character) make the usual chauvanist remarks. And, of course, she saves his bacon at the end of the episode.
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Apr 22, 2022 23:58
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ilmucche posted:Kids leading the armies of the world and bean's test tube embryo kids were weird stories. I mean yeah but things get even weirder.
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Apr 23, 2022 00:08
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Mister Kingdom posted:I've been watching Adam-12 in the afternoon and today's ep (from 1975) featured Reed being partnered with a *GASP* female cop!! That sounds a lot like police in 2022.
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Apr 23, 2022 00:12
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Vandar posted:The Ender books get really deep into metaphysical and spiritual and religious stuff, and the Bean books go hard down the military route while going into some deeper sci-fi things. The only post-EG Ender book I've read was Ender in Exile, which I remember thinking was OK but couldn't tell you a single thing about now.
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Apr 23, 2022 00:33
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Toshimo posted:That sounds a lot like police in 2022. Well, that's just sad.
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Apr 23, 2022 00:42
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I saw Enders Game but I preferred Infinity War
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Apr 23, 2022 01:15
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I thought Sci Fi ended after blade runner.
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Apr 23, 2022 01:43
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quote:Bonzo I hate how he has this character named BONZO for however long into the book, like that’s not a funny word you’d lol at, and then slips in, “oh, but he’s Spanish and it’s bon-SO.” Go gently caress yourself, OSC. You sound like a rich kid coming back from a gap year in BarTHElona.
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Apr 23, 2022 02:46
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Neito posted:The only post-EG Ender book I've read was Ender in Exile, which I remember thinking was OK but couldn't tell you a single thing about now. He's still pumping them out, including writing a big prequel series about the original wars, which is so far past the point of the original books that I'm sure it's just the equivalent of paint by numbers genre fiction. The original Ender Quadrilogy is the only thing I think holds up, because it takes place a really long time after and gets into a lot of weird esoteric morality and ethical issues as opposed to kids on the internet becoming the most powerful people on the planet from posting really well.
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Apr 23, 2022 02:53
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Wasn't that back when the internet was seen as something academics and scientists would use more than anyone else?
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Apr 23, 2022 02:58
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MariusLecter posted:Wasn't that back when the internet was seen as something academics and scientists would use more than anyone else? Yeah he wrote it in the 1980's, back then people outside of the military or on certain college campuses didn't have access to the internet.
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Apr 23, 2022 04:20
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Kchama posted:My favorite Bean stuff is when like three year old Bean is able to scale buildings like loving Enzo from Assassin's Creed despite being small enough to fit inside a toilet tank. I'm pretty sure some exhausted parents of hyperactive children would believe it.
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Apr 23, 2022 04:28
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:I hate how he has this character named BONZO for however long into the book, like that’s not a funny word you’d lol at, and then slips in, “oh, but he’s Spanish and it’s bon-SO.” don’t forget Achilles which is pronounced ah-sheel but again doesn’t tell you until well after he’s introduced IIRC
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Apr 23, 2022 15:36
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Rockman Reserve posted:don’t forget Achilles which is pronounced ah-sheel but again doesn’t tell you until well after he’s introduced IIRC That pissed me off so I just called the character rear end in a top hat in my head. Also, he was an rear end in a top hat
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Apr 23, 2022 15:45
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