A post about OSC from concordantnexus

[conuly]

I can't comment on *anything* here, of course. What's really interesting are the comments.

Why are people who don't know the guy so eager to condemn him/his condemners?

Comments

[mhari.livejournal.com]

*topples off her chair* Christ, it's too early in the morning for these levels of batshit insanity.

I loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. I didn't like Xenocide very much, and the later volumes varied from boring to offensive. Oddly enough, I am neither a fascist nor a drooling Card fangirl.

I abhor the man's politics and his raging homophobia, and his increasing tendency to put large wodges of unprocessed propaganda in his books pisses me off. But there was a time when he wrote good, engaging stories that could stand on their own. He's a jerk, but a jerk with talent which he doesn't always live up to.

Also I think it's funny that he supposedly denies up and down the board, frothing at the mouth, that Ender = Hitler, but he has never made any bones about the fact that Homecoming = Book of Mormon.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. I didn't like Xenocide very much, and the later volumes varied from boring to offensive. Oddly enough, I am neither a fascist nor a drooling Card fangirl. [...]

Seconded, with a litle addition: the latter volumes haven't been published in Hungarian and after Xenocide I didn't feel enthused enough to read'em in English in e-text.

[mhari.livejournal.com]

Well, that's okay then. You weren't missing much. *pets*

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

-meow!-

[leora.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree with the above. I am a very big fan of Ender's Game, and it's a vital book to many children who grew up in abusive situations. It was the first book I read that showed childhood the way I was used to it being. It showed that other people have to make the same choices I did, even if they were fictional.

But calling Ender Hitler is just stupid. Yes, stupid. Because Ender did was not informed that he was killing anyone. He never made a choice to kill the Buggers. He never was given a chance to. And he only ever killed in situations of justifiable self-defense.

You cannot make the same argument about Hitler. And you cannot compare deliberately and with knowledge both torturing and killing sentients to be the same as accidentally killing sentients in situations where you believe it is kill or be killed. They are not morally equivalent, and trying to say that Ender=Hitler is both offensive to those who like the story of Ender and empathize with him and to all of humanity which is disgusted by the actions of Hitler.