darth_ender

The Mouths of Sauron

Before georgec reads this and thinks that for some reason I can't admit when I'm wrong (in spite of admitting it on many occasions), you guys are right.  Well, at least in the sense that the reasons most Dems voted against the bill was because it was perceived as a political trap rather than a legitimate fight.  Nevertheless, were I pro-abortion, I'd still vote against it, as I see such motivation for having an abortion as completely unjustifiable.  Of course, my view now is tainted by the fact that I see abortions in general as unjustified, but I at least see some argument for it in spite of my disagreement.

He's ignoring me now for my succumbing to peer pressure and joining in the ridiculously long postings.  After all we've been through together.  :(  Perhaps forgiveness comes when the page changes to 514.

Because the sex of your baby is a matter of women's health, apparently:

http://news.yahoo.com/house-rejects-ban-sex-selection-abortions-202308339--abc-news-politics.html

I know it might seem strange, but I like the book as well, just like I do like the PT.  I just don't like how it affects the original story and characters established.  Perhaps if it had been written in the opposite order, I'd find it more worthy of my approval.  But Ender came first, and I came to love him first.  Hmm...that makes me sound like a humpback whale ;)

Someone (TV's Frink?) will say:

tl;dr

Yeah, well, your loss!  It's a brilliant analysis!

;)

So as I mentioned elsewhere, I've been reading the Ender's Game series again.  I finished Game for the fourth time, the short story precursor to the novel for the second time, I read A War of Gifts for the first time, and now I'm about halfway through Ender's Shadow.  Here are my thoughts on the latter, and it will make sense why I posted it in this thread in the end instead of the "What are you reading?" thread.

*Warning, there are spoilers ahead: proceed at your own peril*

Orson Scott Card did an excellent job blending this story into the mesh of the other.  He wrote Ender's Game in 1985, and Ender's Shadow, a parallel story in 1999.  Shadow centered around mostly the same events and the same timeframe, but from a different character's perspective.  The reader is supposed to be able to read either story first or second and gain just as much enjoyment either way, as they are independent tales, and his experiment worked!  I can't imagine the limits one imposes on oneself when writing stories in this manner.  We see how it limited GL when creating the Star Wars PT.  But Card deftly pulled the whole thing off.

And while it's a good story, I have to hold it to a lower level of canonicity in my mind, much as I do with SW lore.  You see, I read Ender's Game in 2000, and I'd heard of Shadow, but instead followed the Ender storyline (which admittedly got pretty weird by the third and fourth books).  I loved Ender's character, as is obvious by my handle.  I was much younger then, and I related well to Ender, who is an extremely intelligent boy, far brighter than the other characters, and of the sort I hoped to be (I now find myself falling only slightly short of that mark ;).  During that story, there is a character named Bean, and if you read only that story, you gain a perception of Bean, even with two brief portions where the third-person narrative follows his train of thought, though only briefly.  But the glimpse you get of him is that he is bright, similar to Ender, but not quite as bright.  He tells Ender, "You're the best."  He reveals that he is still a child, though the story puts children in very adult situations (warfare, not pornographic, since I know Davnes is reading this).  He gets excited about things in a childlike manner.  He gets emotional in parts.  He shows some shortcomings in his estimation and perception.  He shows limits to his creativity.

In 2002 I read Ender's Shadow for the first time.  Suddenly, Bean is actually smarter than Ender, though it turns out he's been genetically manipulated to achieve this.  In fact, he blows Ender's superhuman abilities away.  Ender, who was manipulated by adults into doing things he did not wish to, who revealed self-perceptions of doubt and weakness, who felt the torture of adult-imposed social isolation, who did not even hold any ambition for greatness, but only the good of humanity, is topped by Bean who is calculating, limited in emotion (clearly not emotionless, but more controlled), rather being led by more pure logic, embracing social isolation, holding few weakness and therefore few self-doubts, and is actually ambitious to an extreme.  Though perhaps his motives are also for the good of humanity, he aggressively sets out for leadership.  Many of Ender's manipulations by the adults, it turns out in the end are manipulations by Bean.  Many of Bean's comments of supposed adulation such as, "You're the best," turn out to be patronizing, as Bean knows he's the best.  Much of the perspective we get of Bean before feels out of character, such as the childish side of Bean.  And Bean's intelligence completely undercuts Ender's, as Ender foolishly believes Bean when he says, "You're the best," instead of recognizing that Bean is a faker.  He recognizes Bean's creativity (which is actually de-emphasized, IMO, in favor of his calculative abilities in Shadow), but doesn't see him as hyperintelligent.  He misses out on all of Bean's manipulations, and in the end, if you accept that version of Ender, you don't really believe he is so smart after all.

In the beginning Ender was selected because of his emotion, his ability to empathize, along with his mental capabilities.  He is approximately equal in intelligence to his brother and sister, but his brother lacked the empathy to relate to his enemies and therefore was cruel, while his sister was too empathetic and therefore too soft.  Those who recruited Ender found him to be the perfect medium.  OSC missed the mark, I think, in Shadow, because at the end of the book, Bean admits that Ender is the right man (boy, really) for the job of Bombad General because of his empathy, his ability to persuade and create loyalty, his ability to truly lead, which Bean lacked.  He had the brains, but not the leadership.  But Ender's Game made a particular point to mention that Ender was also selected because his empathy allowed him to reach into the hearts of his enemies and anticipate their moves.  Bean lacks this ability, but apparently, if memory serves (remember, I'm only halfway through and going just by my last reading on this point) doesn't recognize its value in Ender's perceptiveness.  I guess I just feel that Card made a very intelligent character, and then made him look kinda dim in another book.

Characters who are vulnerable are most interesting.  Bean is too invulnerable.  He is too smart.  Throughout the whole book, I want Ender to still prove that in some ways at least he is smarter than Bean, much as we hope that our Kasparovs of the world will outsmart the Deep Blues in spite of the superior processing power.  More intuition.  More empathy.  More something.  Ender is now weak.  And I don't buy it.  I read Ender's Shadow, enjoy in for its own story, and continue to call myself darth_ender, knowing that Ender is really the smartest and Bean is just a smart but obnoxious turd in the "real" Ender universe.

What does this all have to do with the film?  OSC has apparently pushed for Bean's inclusion as much as possible in the actual film.  The movie Ender's Game is actually somewhat of a hybrid, drawing some elements of Ender's Shadow into the script.  I don't want Bean to undercut Ender.  Ender is the better character, the vulnerable character, the character you want to win, but who really faces the overwhelming odds and still manages to come out on top.  I hope there is moderation in this, as there are good qualities to the expanded Bean story, but if Bean starts making Ender look like a twit, I swear I'm gonna...start pulling weeds in my front yard or something.

Anyway, that's my rant.  Go Ender!

"What the he** is a jigawatt!?"

Religulous

Because all an intelligent argument needs is comedy and satire, one-sided rants, exaggeration, and oversimplification to convince people who already hold a view that they are right.

Thanks, Bloodnose, for bringing it up :)

I love Jack Handey's humor.  I don't even know how to describe it, it's just so off-the-wall.  But it gets me to laugh nearly every time.  Here's a sample:

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is “God is crying.” And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is “Probably because of something you did.”

If you’re in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it’ll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing.

To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.

And my personal favorite:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to DisneyLand, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said, “DisneyLand burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real DisneyLand, but it was getting pretty late.

So the challenge here: try to make your own Jack Handey-style Deep Thoughts.  Write your own little anecdotes, and try to get as many LOLs (or ALLOLs) as possible!

As am I.  I wonder if many people have had equal difficulty divining playable rules from what was presented on the screen.  This version seems the most promising to me at being sufficiently intelligent and strategic while simultaneously matching R2's and Chewie's game.  25 cells really makes it difficult, but this guy may have done it.

CP3S said:

So what is the point of our village? By some of the suggestions, it seems we have modern technology, so we are not pretending it is the 19th century or anything.

Maybe in our village is made so we can all raise our families in a mid-nineties world where Star Wars is still cool and exciting and no special editions or prequels exist. Just three movies on VHS, a number of novels, stacks of comic books, and loads of silly merchandise that somehow actually still seemed cool back then.

If we made a movie about our island, it would feel like a period piece taking place in 1995 or so. Then by the end we discover they are really living in the 10's, and that they gave up modern life so that their offspring could grow up SW fans in a world where they don't have to experience the frustrations of all the rifts in fandom and the lack of originals on DVD and/or BD.

 I think this is a fantastic idea!  Imagine...the Backstreet Boys on our radios all the time...white boys sagging their jeans...dial-up Internet hitting the market...okay, maybe it wouldn't all be cool, but the idea of pressing rewind on my VHS player so I could rewatch one of those letterbox versions of the OT that came out around then...fun nostalgia.

I've always been a board game fan, and I especially have a fondness for chess variants.  When my love for Star Wars and chess cross, I find myself fortunate that Star Wars has a chess game: Dejarik.  In high school I tried to invent rules based on the movements shown in ANH, but I never got far.

Several years ago, I found these rules.  Quite frankly, they're rather lame: all movements were based on an inherent number of steps each piece is permitted to take in any combination of directions, and it relies too heavily on luck.  But at least it was something.

http://dhost.info/rissa/Holochess/index.htm

A few years later, I found these.  More interesting, but rather basic, as all the pieces moved in the same manner without variation.

http://zeelay.free.fr/star-wars-artisanal/

As you can see at the second site, the author was writing "advanced rules," but they were not completed.  These were supposed to allow for piece variation, but these rules have been forthcoming since I discovered them in 2007.

But I actually forgot all about this game for some time.  I wrote the author of this page to ask how his rules were coming along, and he told me they were actually done, but only in French.  He suggested I translate them, but I don't speak French, and the online translators are obviously quite limited.  I have here the rules in French he provided me.  I don't believe he would mind if I put them up, since he told me to translate them into any language I knew so he could post it all on his site.  If any French speakers wanted to translate this so we all could enjoy the game, I think that'd be awesome, and in turn I could offer him that translation to post at his site.  Hopefully he's still around, since he sent this to me about four years ago.

http://www.4shared.com/office/_7VrNSS0/Dejarik_une_page.html

I hope someone would want to take a stab at this so all can enjoy it. 

It took me longer than I expected to get through this just because I've been busy.  I have to say that this edit illustrates a number of fine points, particularly how well the deleted scenes could be used.  I still have faint hopes for something like the collaborative ROTJ edit to work out, and if it does, I hope a number of the Jedi deleted material is included in a similar fashion.  Certain choices truly do change the narrative in interesting ways, and I think Jerjerrod's dilemma was particularly interesting and built suspense.  Certain choices were so startling as to be outright hilarious.  I won't spoil it, but the end of Ozzel, "You're feelings for them are strong, especially...you know," rescuing Han, "All too easy."  Many were truly inspired.  Luke's dream sequence in the cave was quite fascinating, and I'm surprised how you were able to integrate the Cloud City portion into it.  It truly raised the tension drastically for that scene.  The ending was pure brilliance, and it's too bad there's no way to make a sequel to all this following your cliffhanger ending.  A very fascinating edit!  Well done!

Perhaps this video will make you feel a little better.

http://youtu.be/ic4mEc_6JQ8

I nominate Bingowings as one of the scary monsters to keep the populace in line.

He is talking about storytelling rather than plausibility.  But even then, there are plenty of reasons why Fett wouldn't be there.  He's a bounty hunter, and bounty hunters have to make a living catching folks.  I don't have a problem with Fett being there, but I can see others' reasoning.  He's not alone in his view, and there is no need to be rude, especially since you're pretty new and no one has had a chance to get to know you or your style.

Faster and more intense!  That was very nice.  My one suggestion has to do with the clone saying, "They're all over me," followed by Obi-wan with an identical line.  It just sounds too redundant.

Too bad we probably couldn't somehow dub everyone's voice so they called Obi-wan "Ben" instead of Obi-wan...that way his statement to Luke would actually be true.  "I haven't gone by the name of Obi-wan since, oh, before you were born."  I doubt you could find enough suitable replacement voice actors, and probably couldn't alter the lip movement easily enough.

I remain a fan of your impressive work!  Nicely done!  I imagine a job like this edit will take some time, but I still look forward to it.

I've never played any of the Star Wars RPGs, but I love the West End Games books.  Especially before the PT, they were my go-to for Star Wars lore.  Of course, much of their information is considered inaccurate now anyway (like the size of the Executor, for starters), but they were such fun reads and really added so much depth to the Star Wars universe.  COMPNOR, for instance, while hardly mentioned in even EU sources, is a fascinating branch of the Empire than brings it closer to Nazi Germany, and entirely conceptualized in these books.

Hey, thanks :)  I'm glad you like it.  Again, I won't take credit for the documentaries...some guy named Martin did that.  All I did is find the various videos (some things rather obscure) and put them all on one DVD.  Perhaps you know that, but I simply don't want to take more credit than I deserve.  But still, I think it's a fun disc, and I'm glad you enjoy it too.

Tobar said:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I had read up until they leave to start the games before I saw the film on opening night. Was disappointed when the film completely failed to realize various things plainly described in the book like the city. I finished the book after and thought it was decent. As has been said before about the mutant dogs....ugh.

 

Yeah, the dogs are the big weak link.  Certain things are certainly not captured by the film, as is the case with any film.  I think I'm glad I watched it first, then read the book.  The characters are similar, but not the same.  I think I appreciate the differences and find strengths and weaknesses in both tellings of the same story.  I hope the films do better than the books for the sequels.  The sequels are definitely inferior in my mind, and not because they are less action-packed, as many criticize.  I actually like the slower parts better, and I feel the action portions are far more contrived, the characters/contenders too cliched, and the finale too depressing.  Not that I'm against a good tragedy, but this was not a good tragedy, IMO.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I'm currently reading Stargate SG-1: The Barque of Heaven by Suzanne Wood.

It's okay, I guess, but since I'm not really a fan of SG-1 anymore, I'm not really into it; I'm only reading the book to see how good the retcon the author created to explain away one of the many discrepancies between the show and the original movie is.

 I'm interested to know what retcon that is.  I'm not a huge fan of the movie or the series, but I get some enjoyment out of both.  Do you refer to the nature of the symbiotic relationship between alien/god and host?

Spider-man 3 is my least favorite of the series, but I don't hate it as much as so many.  My biggest gripe is really that there is just too much for one movie.  In reality there were four villains, and none got the respect or attention they deserved.  IMO, Harry/Goblin should have been the focus.  Sandman should have been left out.  Venom, if he must be included, should have simply been an instrumental character, but I'd rather they had focused on the "fourth" villain, Black-suit Spidey.  Peter's own darkness as he tries to battle Harry were more interesting, and I personally would have liked to see Harry never get redeemed.  Once Peter overcomes the symbiote and defeats Harry without giving into his most base emotions, then we could see the symbiote crawling off to find Eddie Brock, and then we're in a demanding place for a sequel while still having produced an enjoyable and not overflowing film.  I was disappointed with the film overall.

I have to be honest, since this thread is discussing the merits of films at the moment, I personally enjoy X3, and while it has some flawed character usage and some cheesey RPG elements (Level 4 mutants?!), in many ways it's my favorite of the trilogy.  It takes risks and alters/kills major characters.  It is emotional.  It didn't get old to me as quickly as the previous two did.  It's exciting.  And it has far and away the best soundtrack of the trilogy.  People talk like it's a horrible movie, but it's much better than the X-men prequels that don't even fit the continuity.