Ender's Game is a really thoughtful, well written defense of genocide, it seems like.
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Replying to @nberlat @segfaultvicta and
I really don't think it is. If anything I think most people I've talked to think the book goes too harsh on Ender! I mean, he's 12 and thinks he's playing a video game, and does what he does to escape abuse! None of that can really be said for any historical genocideer
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @segfaultvicta and
the genocider it lets off the hook is the general. he constantly reiterates that it was necessary. it's very much a "we have to make tough choices, and that makes us bastards, but we're right" kind of text.
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Replying to @nberlat @segfaultvicta and
I've been back and forth on that. The later books definitely confirm Graff gets let off the hook and was justified, but, the actual story says he totally was not. If the formics could have figured out that the humans were not inevitably an enemy so could he
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @nberlat and
I feel as if Ender (like Card!) apologizes for his own abusers, and that the kind of mentality that people who belong to very large church (and probably other types of religion, I'm just familiar with church) organizations of forgiving to avoid conflict do come to dominate
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @nberlat and
This is why I'll defend the first book most of all, it certainly had the most influence on me and it says nothing about forgiveness. It's entirely about understanding, and then displays someone's trauma reaction to having a massive horror revealed to them.
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @nberlat and
In the film adaptation with Harrison Ford phoning it in as Graff, I could easily have seen Ender pulling out a gun and shooting Graff as an alternate ending cut. There's definitely no forgiveness there.
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @segfaultvicta and
I haven't seen the film. Graff is definitely in the right in the book, though, and being right kind of trumps other moral claims in situations like that, I think.
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Replying to @nberlat @segfaultvicta and
Which part is he right about? It's been a few years so I may be missing the part you're referring to. He's not right that they had to do any of it - the formics were never coming back. It was all for nothing
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @nberlat and
He's *described* as "right" in the sense that the humans had *no way of knowing* if the formics were ever coming back and if they didn't win the war in this one all-out effort the formics could've overwhelmed them in the next invasion
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The hive queens themselves are described as having also made this calculation, determining that the human revenge invasion was inevitable and would inevitably be genocidal, and making peace with having to fight this war and probably lose
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
Except they're more admirable - they could have launched a preemptive strike and didn't.
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect and
In the first chapter with Ender in SofD, these describing the four words of communication and understanding. The students bring up the Xenocide, and he tells them (painfully) that with hindsight its sad, but that Ender was still right in using Dr. Device on the homeworld
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