[ SECRET POST #2448 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2448 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #350.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Especially when they start going "Death of the Author"

[feotakahari]

I'll set aside FFVIII and plausibility now, since I don't know enough about that. What really gets to me is FFVIII and themes--if you enjoyed the story of FFVIII, doesn't having Rinoa turn out to be Ultimecia render the entire story not only pointless, but stupid? And if you didn't enjoy the story of FFVIII (which, to be fair, I didn't), why are you spending time interpreting it when you could move on to something that isn't sappier than a Hallmark movie?

As for Card, I'm not saying it's good to conscript children, just that there are a lot of things Card could have done if his specific message was "conscripting children is bad" or "war is bad" that he didn't do. (The most obvious is that he could have written about actual children--Ender often reads as more of an adult than the adults, albeit an incredibly ruthless one, so it's a bit of a stretch to read him as an innocent corrupted by those around him.) It seems like the main reasons that "war is bad" is a message people take from Ender's Game are

1): the original never said "war is good," and

2): "war is bad" is a very common message in stories that are about war and don't say "war is good."

It seems a bit unfair to Card to say that he wrote a "war is bad" story just because he didn't originally write it as a "war is good" story, especially when there's another message to take from it that's very, very rarely done. (The reason I loved Ender's Game was that I found it pleasantly unusual for an author to portray a philosophy he seemed to agree with while at the same time showing the worst possible way it could fail--it felt so much more honest than all those authors who have the philosophy they agree with always succeed and competing philosophies always fail. If we read Card's message as "war is bad," then the final twist falls in line to say "war is bad," and the uniqueness disappears.)

Re: Especially when they start going "Death of the Author"

[ariakas]

RE: FFVIII. There is a large contingent of people who played the game and felt that the story and themes pre-third disc had a great deal of potential, and that potential is squandered in the late game by turning it into nothing more than - as you say - a sappy romance worthy of a Hallmark card. If Rinoa is Ultimecia (which, given the evidence, I believe was the original intention - later changed when they decided to take a different, and terrible, trajectory with the story) it restores some of that potential.

RE: Ender's Game. None of that changes the fact that Card went back on his own statements and even revised the original work to correct what he perceived (belatedly) as an incorrect interpretation, when he'd accepted that interpretation - and even supported it - before as his own views changed.

Card's far from the only author to do this, either. Nor is Ender's Game the only book he's done the "no no it really meant this" interpretative retcon with, as the poster above me pointed out. Thus, Death of the Author is not only a valid perspective from which to critique literature, in some cases - such as Card's - one must do so.

Re: Especially when they start going "Death of the Author"

[feotakahari]

I'll give you that it's not an author's place to change what he said earlier. (I argued that in a lower comment in relation to Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451.) And I'll back off on FFVIII, since I clearly don't know enough about it to argue with you.