|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2014 15:57:40 GMT -5
I haven't read Card's work. How are his "bad guys" developed as characters? Do they have motivations? Can their point of view be understood even if it's ultimately wrong? Or are they just bad guys for the sake of being bad guys, and evil for the sake of being evil? The latter would definitely support an "us vs. them" mentality. And I was going to say pretty much the same thing mrp said, just less eloquently. There is no bad guy in Ender's Game.. unless perhaps you count the government as bad guys... even in the later books, the theme is really that people need to overcome their own evil from within. No character in any of the Ender books is 'bad'.. a few are a bit wrong headed, but that's really it. There's a strong theme of acceptance of those that are different from you, and to make sure you understand something/someone before you hate, because you might really love them. Yeah, pretty much the opposite of him in real life. Maybe that makes his political views worse, since he clearly knows what's the 'right' way to be. That seems very strange to me then. Like Shaxper says, you don't have to be crazy to write crazy. I think the reason being is most people aren't crazy and wouldn't be able to point out how wrong the portrayal of crazy is when we see it. On the other hand, I would think people would have to be normal in order to write normal, since most of us are normal and could instantly spot a bad portrayal of what "normal" is. Which is why I wondered if he had bad guys with no motivation to be bad guys, which is something I see a lot of in fiction. Sometimes I can instantly spot misogyny, racism, and radical political ideology in a work not based on a character or "good guy" expressing those views, but based on how the fiction is built. When the bad guy "hates our freedoms", when the women all seem to be crazy and all the men seem to be the rational heads keeping the women in line, so on. But if he seems to perfectly understand right and wrong, then yeah, this is all very strange. |
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 12, 2014 22:00:19 GMT -5
He defintely writes as if he really gets people, and his characters are really models of tolerance and empathy. The protagonists pretty much are all simply misunderstood, and end up good in the end for the most part.
|
|
|
|
Post by Rob Allen on Jun 13, 2014 12:16:28 GMT -5
Did everybody already know about Marion Zimmer Bradley, or is there just not much to say except "ewww"?
|
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 13, 2014 13:55:53 GMT -5
the latter.. also, I'm not nearly as bid a fan of Bradley work (though it's not bad, certainly)
|
|
|
|
Post by dupersuper on Jun 13, 2014 20:12:06 GMT -5
Did everybody already know about Marion Zimmer Bradley, or is there just not much to say except "ewww"? I know not of what you speak, and Google does not help. |
|
|
|
Post by Action Ace on Jun 13, 2014 20:21:01 GMT -5
Did everybody already know about Marion Zimmer Bradley, or is there just not much to say except "ewww"? I know not of what you speak, and Google does not help. Check Rob Allen's post from June 11. |
|
|
|
Post by Rob Allen on Jun 13, 2014 20:32:02 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Jasoomian on Jun 16, 2014 2:11:40 GMT -5
Well, I guess those folks who weren't buying Card's works because some of the money was going to that kind of advocacy; can resume buying them rest assured the money will be safely nestled in Card's brokerage account instead. As for the Mormons; a couple years ago a Mormon friend of mine invited me to his child's "baby blessing," which I guess is like a baptism without the baptizing part. I like to see new things; so I went. I got there early with a couple other "gentile" friends and we were invited in to an antechamber where they were holding a men-only pre-service meeting. The women and children remained in the hallway at this time. It seemed that just by showing up one day, I already outranked the women. |
|
|
|
Post by travishedgecoke on Jun 16, 2014 3:45:07 GMT -5
I agree.. no side is taken... just pointing it out. That's why I was wondering what the motivation was... though, to be honest, just bringing it up is sorta taking a side against it, really. Is there some political view PAD has that people don't like, perhaps? (I don't know of any, but that's not the sort of thing I care about). I'm really not a PAD fan, and as a human being I've heard stories where he comes off poorly but also those where he's a class act, but... he has used established company-owned characters to take potshots at people in his real life, which might upset some fans. And, his fiction tends to where his social opinions on the sleeve, though I know nothing of him being appreciably politically active the way Card is, or even the way that Elliot S! Maggin is. I can easily see David as a "read the book, not the author" kind of guy, though, based on what nonfiction of his I've read and his tendency to try to be objective in his fiction in a way that isn't really objective just possessed of conviction and tonal objectivity (that atmosphere of "this is how life is" a pretend-middleground that Card - and many writers, bad and good - have used in lieu of openly picking a side). It's not a position I agree with, but at the same time, I'm fine with him/others holding it. Outside of criminal matters, how we judge people and how we appraise their worth vs harm they do is and should be subjective. But... "I'm not supporting them, I'm just giving them money" is pretty specious. There are better defenses for separating the authors from their works, including simply not caring. In terms of Card... he's extensively politically active and increasingly using his fiction as propaganda. I have a complete inability to separate him and his entertainment work. That separation in the New Criticism sense, was really championed by horrible people who didn't even want their own colleagues criticizing them publicly. It was just a dodge then, and it's more or less a dodge now, at least from my perspective. In terms of supporting booksellers no matter who they're promoting, selling, in business with... I have no loyalty to stores encouraging me to buy just to keep them open. I don't really support stores. Stores are there to provide a service. I'm not there to provide them anything, unless, y'know, a friend happens to run the place, and then I'm supporting my friend, not a shop. |
|
