Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Universal Studio's new film in November: Ender's Game
Posts
I didn't know about his personal views growing up and my dad is Mormon and loves scifi, so Card's work was kinda thrust upon me. "Ender's Game" was good, but I liked the original ending of the series, "Children of the Mind," much better. His early book, "A Planet Called Treason," was one of my personal favorites for a while.
Some years later, I tried reading the Ender's Shadow series and they were shit. So I stopped reading Card.
Then a few years after that, while waiting on a length car repair I bought a Card book of the rack of the next door HyVee. It was the one that Shadow Complex is based on.
I read the intro, couldn't believe my eyes, skipped to the afterword, and returned to the HyVee to demand a refund.
I then looked up Card's background online because man WTF.
Now I feel bad for every supporting that bigoted goose.
I refuse to see this movie. I do not want Orson Scott Card getting a single penny more of my money ever.
Why?
Fuckstockings is why.
Can you call it shipping when the author himself does it
I'm pretty sure that's just called "writing"
Google+
When it reads like zutara fanfiction I can call it shipping.
I have a tumblr.
Check it out.
I will probably see the film, though I bet they will ruin it and turn it into some shitty action flick.
Card himself can suck a dick though. The more bigoted he has become over time, the shittier his writing has become.
PS: All those crazy seedy undertone accusations about the first book seem like they are really stretching it to me. It feels a lot more like finding shit to support something you want to be true than anything else.
I've always thought that's such a weird defense against criticism. "You're just looking for something you want to be true." Why would they want it to be true? Why on earth would someone go into a YA novel actively looking for fascist undertones? What would one gain?
And if it's an arbitrary, pulled-from-thin-air theme, how come (as far as I know) zero other Young Adult novels have had similar accusations of proto-fascism and genocide-apologia lobbed at 'em? Why would people collectively, arbitrarily pick this one, all at once?
What a profoundly silly, dismissive attitude.
I liked Ender's Game and saw nothing really strange with it until now. I'm not going to say those undertones aren't there, but I'm also not going to let those undertones ruin the book for me. I've also read the rest of the Ender Series and yeah it gets way more batshit crazy. I'm not even sure I 'enjoyed' those.
well, because people love to hate on shit. it is like their favourite fucking pastime.
i actually agree with you completely. people aren't just pulling this shit from thin air, that would be absurd. but if they were going to, that would be the reason why
Authorial intent and intentional fallacy are always a bit of a sticky wicket, but yeah, I get ya. That's reasonable. Different folks have different thresholds for how much the themes of a piece of entertainment impact their enjoyment. It'd be weird if everybody's tolerance was calibrated the same on shit like that.
I went to go find it and speed through it with new eyes
and I think I actually threw it out when I discovered what a shitlord Card was
the buggers attacked twice
the third invasion was humans attacking buggers
it wasn't "sheer luck" they developed a weapon that would fuck shit up and flew to the bugger homeworld and blew it the fuck up
e: i guess you said this like a minute later and i misread those setences but still
genocide ain't cool bruh
If it's any consolation I never finished it.
they licensed the IP to him for two books he gets no money off the game and it's a great fucking game
play it
I stopped playing a long time ago because something else came out and just never got around to finishing. Maybe I'll do that soon.
No. Knock this bullshit off. I see people do it all the goddamn time, but that doesn't make it ok to pretend you know the "real" reason someone disagrees with you and that the reason doesn't really have anything to do with the material itself. Taking this stance just demonstrates that you're being precisely the kind of unthinking clod you're complaining about.
I suppose I am talking less about the messages (all the might is right and the child violence etc etc) and more about the idea that it is some sort of deliberately, specifically, pro-nazi book just feel like folks trying to attach the pro-nazi label onto a author they already (for good reason) dislike.
Are some of the messages in the book not exactly great for kids? Certainly. There's also some pretty good stuff in there too, though. I find it quite fascinating to see how different people interpret things from the book, honestly, and the reason I love seeing it used in schools as a study text is because there is just so much to talk about and break apart within it- both the good and the bad.
I'm not sure if he was necessarily saying that. No matter how you look at it, in a lot of cases people tend to be much more vocal and vitriolic when they dislike something. Having more of a reason to hate something, like Card's personal beliefs, only serves to fuel a lot of those people. I don't think he was insinuating that people hate things just for the sake of hating them. But when they DO hate something, they're a lot more likely to glom onto any and all reasons they can find to justify it.
(I am also not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing in this particular instance. I've never read any of Card's work, but knowing the kind of person he is, I never would, and I would also not begrudge people for actively looking for more reasons to support their distaste for him)
sketchyblargh / Steam!
This particular one? I'd argue it's because a lot of people really dislike Card and want to find reasons to make his early writing (you don't need to do it with some of his later works) appear hateful and horrible. While I certainly can't say it's all perfect and shiny for young adults, I certainly don't believe it is as bad as people make it out to be.
Do people have good reason to dislike Card? Absolutely, and I am right there with them. But I suppose I just look at all these arguments trying to make Ender's Game look like some sort of horrible piece of work and just can't help but wonder if people are speaking out of their hate for Card rather than a neutral analysis of the book itself.
Maybe I'm just feeling a little defensive of a book that I really value a lot- it was a very important piece of ficton to me in my younger years (along with Speaker for the Dead, which was more important really), which does feel weird when I consider who the author is, but this is just the gut feeling I get whenver I see someone call it pro-nazi.
I don't really think that's profoundly silly or dismissive.
the first three? i think were fun
and then lemur brains and dinosaurs happened
sure hey why not
what a coincidence that someone on the internet is a psychic and can read peoples' minds
i mean I'm pretty sure "so many" here is, like, two people, while the rest of the thread is busy denouncing the book and the author.
I am undone
can i acknowledge that the book has some fucked up shit going on in hindsight while still admitting that it holds a special place in my heart due entirely to nostalgia
chheeeeck, nope
well yeah when you're dismissing the community at large as a pile of white privileged jerks based on how they're responding in a thread, it matters if what you're saying is accurate or if you're just conjuring up a boogey man to disparage.
dang
i guess i'll just go with shouting the glory of sword of truth (i will not do this (i have never read those books (i never will)))
good idea, sarcastic dismissal definitely makes the people calling you out for being a goose look bad and doesn't make you look like an even bigger goose at all
and this wouldn't even be a thing if you would've just clarified your statement in a non-derisive way
I don't think asserting that something is more likely in this community is the same as dismissing the community at large. I mean, Dich is willingly participating here with us. This isn't a post he made on tumblr or something.
If people wanted to tie their criticisms of the book into Card's noxious politics, they'd go hunting for homophobia or Mormon parables, as exist in his later work. But nobody here has done that, because it ain't there.
What people have done is see a troubling undercurrent (without having to go look for it - I've been saying this shit well before I knew about Card's vile personal politics), point it at, and had the response be, "Nah, haters gonna hate." Which is silly and dismissive.