#ender's game

[penultimate-step]

Lately, I've been thinking about the effect of real-world time on perception of media. Or, wait, let me start from the beginning.

When I was 11, I read the book Ender's Game for some school assignment or another. I don't remember ever considering Ender a relatable character, but certainly my understanding of the events was shaped by being of an age to see the protagonist not so much as a young child but as someone of my peer group, someone who could have been slotted amongst my classmates without anybody batting an eye.

Over a decade later, I read the sequel, Speaker for the Dead; it takes place many years later, when Ender is in his thirties, and my feelings about the in-universe time skip were undeniably shaped by the real life time gap between my reading of the novels. Reading the first book back then and then the second book now created a feeling where it's almost like, I'm browsing the facebook page of someone I had known in middle school but lost contact with, checking up on how they're doing today. The real-time factor caused me to perceive it less like a timeskip, and more like a reunion - the feelings were closer to "oh wow, that's my boy! I haven't seen him in years! Wonder what he's up to?" Which in turn gave me a better position to appreciate the parts of the narrative about him struggling to find a place in his adulthood than I would have been had I perceived it more strictly as a quick skip from 11 to 20 to 36.

While musing about this, I considered a VN I played a few years back, which took place over three in-game days - except at the end of one in-game day, the game would lock you out from progressing for 24 hours real time. So that as the in-game investigator protagonist was ruminating on the information that had been discovered that day, the player would be forced to do the same. In this example, by forcing the player to experience the same timeframe as the in-game characters, the sense of it being an in-depth and extensive investigation increases, even though without the forced pauses the game would be short enough to blow through in a handful of hours real-time.

Which brings to mind how time effects things in long-running serial works. It's well known that an audience which watches an episode or reads a chapter week by week has a very different experience than one binging through whole seasons or volumes at a time, but I wonder if the real time relative to the in-universe time makes that effect stand out more? Fight scenes, for instance, have been known to take up several chapters in certain manga or webnovels. What does it do to the reader's perception, if from their point a view a fight takes a whole month, while for the characters they read about it's only been a couple hours? Readers might feel that the situation is more stressful, since the pressure of the fight has been ongoing for a long time for them, while in-universe it was a rough afternoon but no more than that. Contrastingly, when a series skips ahead or otherwise has long periods of time for characters that feel short for readers, it can feel like no time has passed and everything is still the same, unless the author really stresses the differences in world-state that occurred offscreen. Because the reader hasn't changed at all.

No conclusion here exactly, I just think it's interesting how often an audience's response to a work, the emotions felt, are more closely tied to their real-life timescale, something almost completely out of the author's control, as opposed to in-universe time, which can be intentionally shifted or played with for the sake of the narrative.

[fortunaegloria]

Appreciation post of Harrison Ford's smile (part 6) 🥰💕

[alphamecha-mkii]

Ender's Game by Julie Bell

[knightotoc]

I picked 1-2 things from all the authors/directors I could think of, but let me know if I've forgotten something interesting. I was thinking about this topic because this year's bestseller Fourth Wing was apparently written by an ex-Mormon who now loves coffee and smut, which I think is pretty funny.

[imagesofcelebrities]

Hailee Steinfeld as Petra Arkanian in Ender's Game (2013)

[entropyofmadness]

Poseidon is my favourite Epic character for reasons, and it occurs to me he and Ender Wiggin (from Ender's Game) would've gotten along very well.

Ender has a philosophy of not winning just the one fight, but all future ones, a particular principle that turns him far more deadly than he should be out of sheer self-preservation.

Poseidon would've loved him.

[charactersmashorpass-2]

"bug hot 😳😳😳"

[thelingering]

hmmmm

perhaps we the ender's game fandom need to come out of hibernation and stretch our legs for a sec

how many of y'all like Bean?

[transrevolutions]

"ender wiggin is ontologically evil and the real villain of ender's game" ender is like. eleven years old. neurodivergent and a minor in the most literal sense of the term.

[theotherpacman]

orson scott card: there is no tragedy greater than the violence we teach to our children before they can understand it - violence against those who, despite how completely and irrevocably different from ourselves they may seem to us, deep down, are people and that's what matters

orson scott card: homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to be members of society <3 and I also hate black people

[f-arelos]

god, i never felt young

percy jackson and the olympians (2023) / first love/late spring - mitski / jackie and wilson - hozier / daria (1997) ender's game - orson scott card / daisy jones & the six (2023) / caesar on a tv screen - the last dinner party / stranger things (2016) / arsonist's lullaby - hozier / the picture of dorian gray - oscar wilde / omori

[minus-hyphen]

I can't believe the b-plot of Ender's Game is just Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider using AOL online chatrooms to manipulate the world government

[novelmonger]

1-6, 9, 12, 16-19, and 23 for the Rocky Road asks, please?

A book you regretted reading

The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Hated it, hated it, hated it. I honestly see no literary merit in it, and I probably shouldn't have finished it because of the kinds of invasive thoughts it was giving me, but it was for school, so I read the whole thing. I really should have asked the teacher if I could do a different book, but instead I just tried to get through it as quickly as possible. My biggest regret in regards to this book is that I asked my mom if I could burn it (she said no), instead of taking it and burning it on my own. I needed the catharsis.

2. A book you couldn’t finish

Most recently, They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. If I'd taken five seconds to look at the tags on Goodreads, I would have realized it wasn't going to be the book for me, but alas. Instead I got invested in the characters and read until I couldn't kid myself anymore about the budding romance I didn't want to read, at which point I put the book down.

3. A concept or plot that you thought was squandered in a story

The Dragon's Legacy by Deborah A. Wolf is...not a great book. I could wax eloquent about all the problems I have with her dumb matriarchal desert society, but the biggest shame in that huge waste of time was a really cool idea about these people who have a telepathic bond with big cats. It was a really cool idea, especially when (if I'm remembering right) usually it's only women who can bond with them, but one of the main characters is a boy who manages it. The whole story could have been about that, and it would probably have been much more interesting than the big nothing of a story I slogged through instead that was apparently just setting up the next book.

4. An underutilized setting or world

I am on what is probably a lifelong quest in search of a well-written fantasy based on some Middle Eastern culture. It has to be written well, avoid egregious stereotypes, and capture in some way that particular old-meets-new feeling, that warmth and vitality and history and darkness and light, of the Middle East. All of which is apparently hard to do, because I keep on running into stories written by Westerners who don't seem to have done much research beyond watching Disney's Aladdin. Or it's ruined by an explicit sex scene on like page 5, because that has happened with alarming frequency too :/

5. A character you want to rescue from the story they’re in

I think Kaladin Stormblessed would really benefit from taking a vacation from the Stormlight Archive and getting some intensive therapy :P

6. An author you want to rescue from the story they told

I want to rescue Jack London from The Call of the Wild, which is the one story he's known for. Let's have the world forget about that story for a while and pay attention to the far superior White Fang instead.

9. A character type, plot, or element that you normally don’t like but did like because of the execution

This is probably not what the question is getting at, but it's the one example that's coming to mind right now: The Wheel of Time. There were a lot of characters I couldn't stand as written by Robert Jordan. Like...almost the entire female cast, for one. But then in the last three books, when Brandon Sanderson took over...suddenly I liked them! I ended up crying at the death of one of the characters that annoyed me the most! And that was entirely down to Brandon Sanderson knowing how to write distinct characterization that makes sense and makes you care.

12. A book on hold that you do mean to finish

One day, I will finish The Idiot by Fydoor Dostoevsky. I will! Let's just...ignore how I've been working on it for like half my life at this point >_>

16. A book you hold a grudge against (read or unread)

Fifty Shades of Grey. 'Nuff said.

17. A book that you were spoiled for

I will forever resent Pinterest for spoiling the "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do" moment from Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson.

18. A book where you like the adaptation or an element therein better than the book itself

The Maze Runner movies are vastly superior to the books, surprisingly. The movies actually tell a coherent story, all the characters are more believable and proactive, and while there's still some eyebrow-raising things about the plot, it's much more satisfying and compelling. The books are weird, man.

19. A book you don’t really like but have kept for other reasons 

I don't really like any of the Ender's Game series other than the first book, but the series should stay together, and I want Ender's Game on my shelf, so the rest of the series is there too :/

23. A highly-hated or derided book you love

I don't know exactly how hated/derided the Jedi Apprentice books are, but just about the only thing I ever hear anyone talking about in relation to them is getting angry at Qui-Gon for leaving Obi-Wan on Melida/Daan during the arc where Obi-Wan leaves the Jedi. Sorry, everyone can die mad about it, because I love that series anyway. Both of their actions make sense in context, mistakes are acknowledged and apologized for and forgiven, and I'll always have a soft spot for those books.

Rocky Read Asks

[lenorayoder]

Ender's Game Orson Scott Card ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

First of all: while I recommend reading this book, Orson Scott Card is a terrible person and who knows what terrible things he donates money to. If you read Ender's Game, please do it by buying it used or borrowing from someone, not anything (like buying new, borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from a library app, etc.) that could give that man royalty money.

There’s a lot to love about this book, but the author’s vibes are truly rancid and permeate the whole thing. I like what this book says about empathy, and some of the critiques of military culture and war. Despite some critiquing though, this book never manages to feel as anti-war/military as it seems like it should given the subject matter. The pervasive sexism clearly comes from the author instead of serving as another layer of the military critique. The portrayal of religion and its suppression is strange and doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the book. The way Card depicts and talks about young boys… really rubs me the wrong way.

Card was clearly enamored with the Battle Room and lingered on it a lot, and I think that’s to the detriment of what this story could have been, its themes, and the ideas I found a lot more interesting and nuanced. I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of the computers’ AI (that’s never called AI), and how it manifests in the game Ender plays on his desk. I also think the narrative doesn’t capture enough of Ender’s complexity and inner life. A lot of the characters just don’t feel as complex as it seems like they easily could be. The whole book feels more like a prequel than a standalone, and that’s a shame because there’s so much good material to work with.

Again, a lot to love and I loved this book when I was a kid. As an adult who can read between the lines though... oof.

[podplease]

Valentine Wiggin: They're not going to make you hegemon bro Peter Wiggin: They will. They will if I post good.