This is an Unspoiled Network podcast.

This is Unspoiled the Book Club covering Enders Game by noted bigot orson Scott Card.

In this episode, we are gonna talk about this monster of a book.

I wasn't ready for any of it.

I have a lot to say.

I'm so glad I didn't read this on my own and then I get to talk about it with all y'all.

Thank you Kimberly for suggesting this one.

Welcome to Unspoiled.

Welcome to the show everyone.

I am Natasha and I'm Kimberly.

All right, So, Kimberly, we talked a little bit briefly when we did our test to make sure that everything worked out with the internet and everything.

But let me know, like to repeat for our audience, why you chose this book and the backstory on your reading it for the first time and everything.

Yeah.

So, my best friend is a huge fan of the series.

She read it when she was you know, the age of Ender, I guess in the book wow, And it was a big deal for her brother, her mom.

They all read the series together and talked about it, and so she's always recommended it to me very energetically and I never got around to reading it, and then I want to say, like a year ago, I for some reason actually gave up and read it and I was like, Okay, this book speaks to me and it's I don't know, I'm like, man, I feel like I missed out on thirty years of being able to talk to people and think about this book since you know, oh well yeah, but yeah.

So when you posted that you were open to suggestions, I was like, I would really love to hear her take on this book, so I'm going to suggest it.

Yeah, I you know, obviously this book has come up before from people, especially Miles, a co host from a bunch of other shows, who particularly I think Speaker for the Dead is like his favorite book of all time.

And just to get out in front of this guys with orson Scott Card being a shitty person, I had a lot of like reservations about covering anything written by him, And that's part of why I never read it up until now, was knowing that he is a very shitty guy.

He has a similar thing going on with him as JK Rowling, where he is very vocal about his opposition to gay marriage.

As soon as gay marriage was made law.

He basically was like, well, all right, and like weirdly was sort of I don't know how to describe it, but he just very much was like it was a matter of law.

The law has been decided, and so even though I don't agree with it, I'm dropping it as like a topic, you know.

But he was really intense about it for a while, and also has done a lot of like racist dog whistling writing and whatnot, so I don't want to pretend that none of that is true.

I I my reasoning for deciding to go with this.

It was like a combination of everybody voted for it, and I kind of suspected that was going to happen because it's been recommended to me a lot, and I could have left it off of the options for voting.

But the truth is I have really always wanted to read it, and I felt I feel like I would rather read it in this context for the show and talk about him as a person as well in the context of that, then read it on my own and try and process that separately and privately.

And it's just a classic in so many people's minds, and it felt like not having read it was really leaving something out of my overall literary education in sci fi the same way I feel I haven't read st An Ursula Kayla Gwinn, and that's like a huge oversight in like my fantasy education as well.

You know, there are just certain books and authors that I'm like, this feels key.

Then I can't believe I haven't read it.

And there's not the same problematic quality with Ursula Kyla Gwinn.

So that's not the issue there.

But uh, I am blown away after reading this that a man who behaves as he does wrote it.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

Yeah right, I don't understand, though.

So tell me what spoke to you about this book specifically, Like, what did you go into it thinking it was going to be.

I had no idea what to expect.

I knew it was a sci fi book.

I love sci fi books.

I love fantasy books, but I never I don't know.

It wasn't like with an with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, where it just kind of exists like in the Collective Gestalt, right, Like I just didn't really have any clue what it was about.

I knew it was some smart kid and there's something with aliens, and that's really all I knew.

So I didn't know what to expect going into it, other than that, like people in his opinions, I really respect, really enjoyed it, and so I wanted to give it a shot.

Yeah, it's it sort of feels a little.

This is part of what like kind of captured my imagination as well, was that I had heard other people say I can't believe the person who wrote this is also saying this, whereas with JK.

Rowling there was less of a I can't believe and more of a oh well, and you look a little closer at her writing and you start to be like, maybe there was a sign here, and there there were hints, you know, and yeah, I'm sure that this is something that like you can see in some of his later writing.

But this is like this, this is based on a short story from like nineteen seventy seven.

Yes, and so that fascinated me as well, just like it feels so fresh.

It's okay, I'm gonna tell you guys what I thought going into it.

I was gonna get.

I thought we were getting.

And it's weird because like, technically I wasn't wrong, but it's not.

It's not.

I thought we were getting a child who is gifted and saves the world through video games in a very typical why a Chosen One gamer boy kind of style.

And it's so funny because like that's literally correct, but it feels like a really unrelated to what I was thinking when I was thinking those things.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah?

Absolutely, I don't know.

I don't I'm trying.

I was trying to describe this to Rashaan earlier, and I was having so much trouble.

I was like, it is about that, like he plays a game, but it's not, and he is like the chosen one, like they choose him.

But it's very hard to explain.

I don't really want.

It is very hard to explain.

And it something that I put in the description when you had us, you know, suggest the books that we would like to cover.

Was that that, you know, when I was a kid, I was in the academically Gifted program and all of that, Like I got chosen to do the special classes and I absolutely loved the special classes.

Right, Like what what other fifth grader gets to like make up a civilization and bury it and then have their classmates excavate it as an archaeological dig, right, Like that's sort of something is really cools me.

I know, I know, so cool.

I know this isn't what this is about everybody, but that is I need to take a minute.

You wait, okay, so wait, you invented a whole and then you like bury stuff and then your class has to, like, because it's a separate group, dig it up and piece together what you left.

Yeah, they broke us into groups of like two or three kids, and we got to come up with, you know, with our civilization, and we were supposed to make up like, you know, a religion and a government and stuff, and then you know, come up with artifacts and bury them.

And you weren't allowed to write things down, you weren't allowed to give like overt clues, and then this has crazy swapped us and we like it was so cool.

It was obviously it really stuck with me.

It's like the favorite things that I ever did school.

But but yeah, so I had and I would say a typical education with great, great opportunities shout out at Asheville, North Carolina Public schools.

But you know, then I get to the real world and I'm like, wait, what, okay, this is different.

Yeah.

And then, like, especially with the books, while I hate the parts that focus on Peter because they're just you know, nails on a chalkboard, all the worst things that you would want in a human being, and the ability to it's like if Trump were capable.

Right.

Yeah, And.

While I really don't like those parts of the book, it's really interesting to read those parts and see like the way Peter and Valentine think about things and Ender but the three of them kind of thinking about things in almost a puppet master sort of way, and to be able to go, oh, I've never seen a book that actually acknowledges that some people do that.

And that kind of spoke to me as well.

And I like that it touched on like especially the part where Valentine is worrying about I've lost the appropriate words for it, but just the capacity to do good with that and to do not good with that, and motivations behind it.

It was very interesting to me and it really got me thinking about a lot of stuff.

Yeah, I am you know what I feel like.

So as you guys understand, I'm sure we're probably not going to do a like beat by beat of the whole plot, because that's kind of not the spirit of the book Club episodes is to talk about like themes and a bigger but there I am going to want to touch on different portions in a general sense, So I'll start just with the very beginning of the book, which it's very funny in retrospect how it starts with Ender being lied to by a grown up and just instantly like she's lying.

But you know, sometimes you just get to see what that means, like lies have their own place, and I learned how to function with those as well as with the truth, which later on is very very relevant.

And he is in this weird position where he has a monitor, which all the kids apparently have done to them for some period of time, at least at his school.

I get the impression that it's like every child has this done to them, and his has been on longer than anybody's, which is a combination of what draws the attention, but also the fact that he is a third child, which is like something that they had to get a special dispensation for and makes him kind of a pariah, and it sort of results in his parents like utterly not caring that he is taken up into space.

And when I say utterly not caring, it's not really true because it's made clear that like they do love him, and they do like they have their own baggage when it comes to the whole like dispensation for children thing, and just that he is this weird reminder of how they are not within the bounds that they are very like willing to say goodbye to and sort of pretend he never happened in a way that doesn't really come back up again, like once he's taken, we don't ever we see Valentine and we hear about Peter, but there the parents never factor in.

Again.

I kind of expected to have something.

There's well, there's parts where the dad is quoting some of their writings and things like that.

But and I think at one point Valentine reflects on the fact that nobody else, like their parents aren't thinking about Ender's birthday and things like that.

To me, it it really stuck out to me as well.

And I thought about it as if almost like like they were gestational surrogates or something, right, like they knew that the government needed another output of their DNA and yeah, and that probably this output was going to get taken away when it was five or six years old or whatever.

And until then, yeah, it's going to be kind of awkward.

It's going to be obvious that we have a third kid.

But after that, it'll it'll all go away and then like it happened, and then like it, it just all went away and they could go back to being normal, compliant citizens.

M Yeah.

So he gets uh, he gets picked up picked on by a bunch of kids at school, and there comes this like major scene that kind of sets the tone for the entire book of these kids that like gang up on him, and he decides that if I just beat up one of them regular it is not they are going to keep picking on me.

It's not going to end this.

I need to go so hard that they never even think about targeting me again.

And he beats the shit out of this kid's styles.

His name Stilson.

Yes, I think it's still And it's not.

Until you're like eighty percent through the book that you find out that kid died.

Did you suspect that kid had died?

Because I sure didn't.

I did not.

No, No, oh my god, y'all.

The HM, Okay, we're going to back burner that, but this is what gets the military looking at him because they took the monitor out and then they wanted to see what he would do.

And apparently despite the monitor being gone, they still are able to like watch him, which I'm not sure how they.

It's clearly like a hyper sveillance state.

Yeah.

What I found sort of interesting about the like world building is that the world building is entirely through the character's actions, and there are no real exposition y descriptors of what the tech looks like or how it works or anything detailed.

It's it's all described in a you take it for granted sort of way, as if that tech technology actually exists and we all know what it is, which today works because we have some of this.

But I really wonder how it came across when he originally wrote it and people didn't have any of the you know what I'm saying, like yeah, when he's talking about the.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I just go, yeah, it's like a big iPad whatever.

But if I try to think about, you know, what I would have thought when I was a kid in the eighties and nineties, Like I don't know what I would have thought about somebody taking a desk out of their locker and holding it in their lap like that makes absolutely zero sense.

We have a pattern context, and.

His dad is like reading the news that's projected onto the table, you know, at one point, and it's just sort of mentioned, and I'm over here just like, oh, okay, so it's like a screen.

But then I stopped and I was like, what do people who hadn't seen any of them?

What do they think of?

This?

Is like, it's just a couple of different and the light suits as well.

It's like very barely described and explained, and I just wonder when you don't have the context that we have, it must have felt so alien, you know, in a way that I can't wrap my head around now.

But anyway, so surveilled state, as you were saying, and the military comes in and is like, so we saw that you beat the shit out of this kid, and we just kind of wanted to know why you did it.

And Ender gets really really upset and starts crying, and it's like I didn't want to do that, but I just didn't want them to fuck with me anymore and had to get ahead of it and make it so that they wouldn't, which is, as we see later literally what they are trying to do with this preemptive strike on the buggers at the end of the book.

Yeah, so the fact that he did the thing, but that he didn't like doing the thing is what cements him as the one they need, because Peter, for example, is just as smart, but he's a sadist.

Yeah, I want to talk about Peter.

What do you think of what happens with Peter?

I wanted to hate it, and I hmmm, I think living in the political world that we do today, I'm just kind of like, yeah, yeah, that tracks right.

Yeah, it was what I would have That's another one.

Everything is different coming at some of this today than it had been.

So, but like Peter is is there's a fascinating moment when we're in Valentine's perspective when he is telling her like he is aware because he set it up for her to find the animals that he tortured and killed.

So she sort of throws it in his face, like I found them, and then realizes, oh, he meant me to find him, And he does this thing where it's really hard to tell if he's being sincere or not, and she isn't sure, and she eventually decides I think he is, but even she's not positive.

And what it is is him saying I am worried, that is all I am, and like I need to do something else with my mind and my abilities, because if I'm not given a bigger goal, this is it is like just tormenting things and I don't want to be that.

And a part of me is like, I really get it, and another part of me is like, yeah, but that's not a person that I want having more power over people, which Valentine just doesn't seem to be worried about in an adequate way for me.

I'm saying, yeah, yeah, I feel that.

I also really appreciated that she said, well, at least this way, I'm here to keep an eye on things and I can help influence him and I can, you know, maybe see your things a little bit, maybe prevent the worst.

And voind if that didn't resonate with me, so star into the distance, right, Yeah.

I just can't.

Like, here's what I want if I had my brothers.

Valentine murders Peter.

Now here's the problem is.

The whole thing with Valentine is that she would never murder Peter, right, but like she gets to the point where she's right behind the power and then she takes that power out because they are they are crazy and we're good.

I feel like we're in a good place.

But like the nature, it's the similar thing is with enders, Like the nature of the person that you want in that position is not the nature that would do that thing.

So that sucks.

Yeah, the people you want in power are not the ones that are going to seek the power.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's this.

This whole subplot of the two of them taking over via like online discourse is also really really disturbing in a way that nobody could have understood at the time.

You know, I just there was no context for like this exact and I know that this is not somebody who can see the future.

This is just human nature doing what we fucking do.

But it's very creepy, very creepy to read it today.

I was there was a lot of this that I wasn't ready for.

So all right, Ender gets brought to military school, and from the beginning it's set up that he is going to be purposely divided in one way or another from his classmates, and we get these sort of like chapter starts where it's conversations between the general or the colonel or whatever their names are.

It's like what we later hear is probably things that were aired during the court martial, I think.

And so we are being given an inside look at their actual strategy with Ender, and it works really well, I think, because it's like building this sense of dread a lot where we know that they are about to fuck him some he and we just have to wait and see what that's going to look like.

What did you think of the Like?

I know that it's sort of a trap to start worrying about what an author really believes sometimes because there's not really a way to like to fully tell at the time versus who they are now and whether that's relevant.

But I couldn't decide, and I think by the time I got to the end, I fell on the side of I think Orson Scott Card believes that what they did to Ender was necessary.

I think I wanted to see it as an indictment, but instead I felt like it was more a support.

Yeah, I have to agree with that, because that was something that I kind of tried to sit with at the end of the book, and especially like I just reread it to prepare for this, but I just kept waiting for that why did you do this to me?

Moment that really doesn't ever come around, and I the first time through, I just kind of was like, Okay, well, Andrew doesn't need to ask that question.

He gets it, you know.

But also maybe maybe maybe the author just feels that there is no further need to defend what was done to him because and justify the means, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, I think that what kind of got me thinking that he was in support of it ultimately was the conversation I don't remember who it is between these two men where they're talking about how later on people are going to look at what we chose to do and they're going to have like a real Monday morning quarterback vibe about it all, which is real easy to do with twenty twenty hindsight, but in the moment they won't have any idea what it was like to try and make these choices on the fly, and that they just don't get it.

And I think ultimately that feels like what Card is saying is, yeah, this is all awful, and you can watch it being done and find it hateful, but you can't argue with the results, you know, like which kind of I mean, I get his point, but I also the results are that we genocide in a whole planet that didn't need to be killed.

Dude.

So I don't know if this I don't or since Scott Card confuses me a little bit, I think like just fundamentally who he is is compared to what it feels like he's saying in this book, and then the times where I felt like he was saying one thing, but then characters make a point in such a way that I feel like it's him making a point, you know, when you get that tone that comes through where you're like, that's the author saying this to me, the reader.

But yeah, it's it's a very subjective, like I might feel that way and other people might not feel that's what's happening in that moment.

So it's hard to say.

All right, all right the school.

Talk to me about the school.

What did you think of this setup?

And was was any of this resonating for you.

From from like my own education, Yeah, like your your own experience with being amongst other gifted kids, or.

Just the pressure, you know, because obviously they are much younger than we are when we're put through our paces with certain types of pressure, but nevertheless it can still be like relatable in its way.

Yeah, a lot of it was very relatable, very much so.

And you know, at one point I was thinking about how in Star Trek they just sort of drop that, like kids that age are taking calculus and things like that, right, just expectations are just on a different level.

Yeah, and growing up like that, Like I didn't realize when I was going through it that I was and my peers were being held to very different expectations than most people experienced.

Like I never remember there being a question of if I was going to college, like, of course, that's like the next thing you do.

You have to do that before you go to graduate school.

So why was I not going to go to right?

Yeah?

What did it occurred to me that not going to graduate school was an option?

Right?

And yeah, so that felt yeah, Yeah, it resonated really really closely for me because it was just this is this is the thing that we do we don't and because Enter doesn't have access to the nets as they call it, he doesn't have any other perspective on what normal would be like, so every time you're reading as a reader and you're like, well that's fucked up.

Like he might be like, damn, this sucks, but he's not going to be like, why are you doing this to me personally?

Because that's what happens to all of the kids that are going through this program.

Yeah, and it's weird because like, eventually there comes a point where they are actually doing things, not even according to their own rules within the school, and that's when he does start to go why are you doing this to me personally?

But it takes a while for us to get there because initially he's being put through the same pace as as everybody, and he is being targeted in a specific way, which he immediately clocks where it's what does the Colonel Flag keep wanting to say, graph that's the one, yeah, right.

He starts things off with Ender being like, I'm going to set him up to be the teacher's pet and on the shuttle, I'm going to talk him up and make him seem like the perfect boy that everybody else has to live up to, just so that they all fucking despise him, and it immediately isolates him, It gets him targeted again by another bully, Bernard, which Ender deals with Bernard in a non vine way.

He actually manages to sort of like just make him ridiculous and take his power away in that method, which is a very satisfying thing to watch happen.

But the was there a rivalry within your group very much?

You know?

I was never.

Yes, there were, but I was never directly involved in that because fortunately for me, I think there were other kids that were obviously the Enders like I was.

I would like the Bean or the Petra, right, Like, yeah, I was one of the smart kids, but I wasn't the one.

I wasn't.

I was never a container for valedictorian.

So I never had like that going against me, thank goodness, because I think all of those people that I remember, you know, they were even who are fucked up?

So who wants that, right?

But yet, yeah, I'm very yes, there was plenty of ryemory for sure.

It's it's something that I felt like because this is what I kind of liked about this book versus other books, is in something for like say Harry Potter, he is well known already for something that had nothing to do with him ultimately, and he comes into the school with the sense of awe around him because everybody knows his story, and so there's a celebrity to him that is not his doing, not his fault, and it's still like part of his mystique even in later books.

But there is a feeling to it of like it probably has helped him when he starts school to be known for this thing.

It probably because people just wanted to know who he was and meet him, and you know that they it softened the way for him.

And I think a lot of things are written in such a way as to be like the kid who's the best is also the one everybody wants to be friends with.

And.

If in the right context, yes, but I have it's definitely been on the other end of it where I was at the top and I saw people that had been my friends start to turn on me a little bit because they thought we're all in these competitions together.

And then I kept winning and they weren't, and so what had been like a sort of group exercise now it felt like it was all about me, and they were pissed about it, you know, And I remember just the turn that it took with a like I've told this story before, but I was entered into a contest.

I had won the first round, and then I was being put into the second round, and I asked my friends if they could pray for me to win, because I was trying to save up money for a computer or something.

And one of them just said, no, I'm not going to pray for you.

I think you've won enough.

And she said this to me, and my other like best friend was sitting next to her and just went yeah.

And it was the first time in my life that I really felt that doing well makes people not like you actually sometimes, you know.

And I think that had a real effect on me, and it made me want to like dampen down sometimes because and another part of me that's very like just any time that anybody tells me to do anything, there's this other part of me that's like, fuck you.

So I was always fighting within myself of like, you want people to like you, tone it down, No, make it bigger, fuck them, make it bigger, you know, So the whole like, every time he succeeds, more and more people get angry with him.

I just felt that in my bones.

And it's such a weird thing here because it's much more easily quantifiable in the game than it is in something like what I was experiencing, which was art competitions like poetry and painting and pros like that kind of thing is so subjective that it's very easy to be like she didn't deserve to win.

Mine was better, Whereas with Ender, it's like numbers and that's it.

If you have this many wins, this many losses, this many people who were frozen versus not or partially or whatever, there's no arguing that.

But when it's a creative thing, you wander into this weird like then there can be accusations of preferential treatment, which it's very funny because like Enders given what's the opposite set of preferential treatment, Like they are every step of the way trying to ruin him.

Yeah, I wanted the other students at some point to just like be like, why are they trying to kill Ender?

Like is that it feels like they're trying to kill him?

Like what has happened?

Nobody ever?

Really The closest we get is is that one kid who tells him that it's the teachers who are the enemy.

I can't remember his name.

You don't even say Dink, what is it?

I think it is.

I think it is Dank, think Meeker or meet them.

Okay, okay, So here's my second confession.

I didn't think the buggers were real, and I didn't think the war was real.

So when Dink tells him, you know, it's not real, right, I was like, Okay, hold on, wait, you can't just be saying the true thing.

Then, Like I had a moment because, like, you know, there's these tropes in ya right where the kid thinks a thing and they're brought up believing the thing, and they fully invest and then they find out the thing is a lie.

Their adults were lying, and this does do that, but it's so differently approached.

I fully thought guys that either the buggers were made up, or that they had only been a threat one time, and later on in the footage where they're like slumped at their stations already, that they had just saved bugger dead bodies from the first war and like posed them for photos later on, and that it was all just like staged.

So I will say that when Dink says it's not real, even though I immediately was like, oh man, maybe it's real.

I also did appreciate the author acknowledging that trope in a way and just being like, I, this is a thing that many writers would do, and so there are going to be people who assume that because we all understand the way the world works in conspiracy theories and stuff, and there would have to be at least one character who suspects that all of this is bullshit.

So I really liked that.

Did you ever think the buggers were not real?

No?

I always thought they were real.

I was still completely surprised at the end.

And then I was trying not to ruin it for myself, I think by thinking about it too much while I'm rigging it.

And I was just like, like, especially when he's trying to piece together other the battle scenes and what's going on, and when he realizes that there's very little actual battle footage from the second Invasion, and I was like, I was so tempted to sit and analyze and come up with theories for why, and then I was just like, no, I want to be surprised.

I get that.

So I didn't.

I didn't let myself think about it.

But I think if I had been, you know, like reading it for a class or something, or like a literary group where you're you, or or something like like your show where you intentionally pace it.

I do wonder what I thought, but I didn't really give myself that opportunity.

If you watched Black Mirror.

I have not.

I've been thinking about it, but I haven't.

Look.

Don't don't not now, not in twenty twenty five.

Don't watch it now.

It will just ruin your life.

When it first came out, when I was first which it in twenty fourteen or twenty thirteen, it felt incredible and just like altering my brain.

And now I'm just like, ho hum, yeah, the world is garbage.

What But there's one episode and I won't say that I really believed this, but it occurred to me repeatedly in that way, that little nagging.

There's an episode where a there it's from the perspective of a soldier who is in this war where there are insects, insects aliens that have invaded Earth and are holding up in different places, and he and his fellow soldiers go in and just annihilate them, and he eventually finds out that they all had chips implanted that can create illusions in front of their eyes, and he actually has been killing people and they just disguise them and make them look like insects so that they are dehumanized and it's easier to kill them.

And that was also a thing that I started to be like, are these is this people?

Are we fighting other people and we're pretending that it's butters And that's just making it more palatable, especially for like kids, you know, to make it feel more gamy or something like that.

I'm glad it wasn't that, but also what it is is also terrible, so it's not better, really, I guess.

Yeah.

So as things progress, and Or keeps just knocking it out of the park and they keep finding ways to make it harder for him, They advance him too early, they give in to Bonzo, who sucks ass and winds up dead later.

And a part of me was just kind of like, oh well it was I just that kid sucked.

I really hated him.

He starts off is like, okay, maybe there's something here.

I get it that they made him a commander, and I really rapidly was just like, nope, you do not know how to handle yourself, sir, bad at this job.

Like reminder, I think he's eleven, Yeah, like an infant.

Yeah, children.

Like Jesus Grave child on child murder, two thumbs up, says Natasha Winters.

But yeah, so, like, what what Booms decides is that obviously Edder got promoted to just fuck with me personally, and so they're giving him to me, So I'm going to give them the finger by not using him at all, which is just so goofy that you really think they just this is all about you and that they promoted this kid for no reason other like really And then Ender like tries to obey orders for as long as he can, but there comes a point where Boneso is about to lose a game and Ender takes initiative and fires when he was explicitly told not to do anything, and him doing this wins the game, but it also makes Boneso look like a fucking idiot.

He was insubordinate, and he's got real high scores because since he's not allowed to do anything, it means that he has like no misses on his shots and that he's never like been hit by anybody.

So Boneso really like made his own bed on that one, and the fact that he would rather lose than just cop to maybe I miss I like underestimated this kid.

That's his real weakness.

His ego is way too tied up in the whole thing.

And if he hadn't been so determined to like make a point about Ender specifically, he could have been more objective about learning what this kid is good at and figuring out how to use him.

But I really thought it would end there, and it doesn't, because we get a time jump and Ender has been promoted again, and he has his own group, and he's given all of these like misfit nobody's that are supposed to be kind of incompetent in a lot of ways.

I have since had it a little spoiled for me that there's a book that's from Bean's perspective.

I am aware of that as well.

Are you aware of, like allegedly what happened here with these these recruits?

I do I suspect so, Okay, So I had his bow for me a little bit too.

Before I stopped the person I was talking to about this, I was like, I don't want any spoiler.

Okay, was that they said that being basically like a backup choice, But that's all that I have, Okay, that's all that I'm.

I will not say anything further on it, but there is like a retcon.

I think it's a retcon at some point, and it doesn't really matter because I'm just going to ignore it since it's not part of this.

But if you already knew about it, I was gonna ask.

But and Or of course winds up absolutely training the shit out of these kids.

Being this incredible commander.

He does some things that I think are very basic though, that are treated like these revelations that I was sort of like, I'm willing to except that their revelations for the sake of this story.

But it doesn't feel like it really like the whole their gate is down Oh yeah, I mean that's does it get more basic than it's the direction is downward.

I don't understand why that's this like revolutionary moment of completely recontextualizing our place and space.

Really, I would think that would be like part of the one oh one class is do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah?

Yeah.

And then there's a part later too where he after their first battle where he is like, you only get fifteen minutes for breakfast, and then he tells, like each of his tune leaders you can actually give him thirty minutes.

And he's like, it'll be good for them for me to be the bad guy, and they're they're two leaders to be the good guys, and I'm like, yeah, that's like.

And again one oh one leadership.

Yeah, yeah of it.

Yes, it did feel a little.

But then there were some things and I hate that.

I can't think of concrete examples where I'm just like, yeah, exactly, yeah, do it that way.

Making his feet the main target is the one that I keep thinking of where he's like coming feet first, so it's just this small little and it's harder to hit, which I think is it's it's very much not our instinct, because making ourselves vulnerable feet first feels really scary.

And it's also like you're not able to see quite as well, you know, like that makes sense why people wouldn't have been doing it that way already.

So that one I accept that's fine.

There's there's a point where Bean starts integrating these strings, and I was very much like is this allowed.

Me too?

I was like, wait, you can just bring shit in there?

Yeah, And that felt less like this is not tactics.

This is just like props that doesn't feel like it's I don't know, it just felt like cheating.

It really did.

It felt like cheating to me, like just and and I think that's actually kind of a great example in a way, because a lot of times being doing something new, it can feel like cheating because you're very limited in the way that you see a thing, and the point of breaking through that is somebody going but what if we didn't?

But what if we ignored that?

Like, you know, what if that just wasn't actually one of the rules and we just thought it was, you know, and yeah, like in his last game where they just go for the gate, and I'm like, the whole book, I'm like, why aren't you just going for the gate?

They said that's the goal, nobody said you had to kill the other guys, just do it.

And then at the end, I'm like, oh, you didn't do it because that was like your big surprise.

Okay, sure, I feel like that would have been a thing that somebody would have already tried.

Yeah, I agree that that one in particular, it was like, for a moment, I got tricked into being like brilliant, and then I was like, no, what if I have been playing this game, Like it's like basically doing a speed run of a video game where you just a more absolutely everything else and you just fucking go for it.

And that is just like literally a whole genre on YouTube.

Now, like that is not that genius, but you've got to set it aside.

I guess for the sake of it's fine, you know.

Yeah, well and everybody, you know, in the seventies, there wasn't such thing as the genre of video game speed runs on YouTube.

Are thank you for reminding me again.

This is probably incredibly novel at the time.

And now I'm like, now I want to go, like talk to my dad about what he thought when he read this, because that would be very a very different perspective.

Yeah, okay, So he begins winning, and he's like winning winning, Like it's not just like I'm squeezing out, it's I am dominating.

And all of my players are in the top fifty.

We are eighty percent of that list, like everybody is.

They all hate him because he is it's so funny.

So okay, he starts to get genuinely worried by the way the other commanders are treating him when they are really tripping him, spitting on him, fucking with him in a way that he recognizes as like this is just the lead up to something worse, but he doesn't fully let himself believe it.

And then we get like the conversation with the the two officers who were talking about how like, oh yeah, they definitely want to kill him, and I'm just gonna let that happen.

So he lets his guard down in the shower and when one of the kids, when they come in, the first thing they say is like, why don't you let us win a few?

And I just wanted to be like, really, this school, like the whole thing is like yeah, you know, and you're over here like fake it, let us think we're good.

What does that change about anything?

That doesn't?

It's so it's so meaningless, but it just goes to show that some people do value stuff that I find meaningless and they are satisfied with that.

I guess you know this scene.

What did you think of this scene?

Oh?

I this scene.

This is one of the ones that so when I read, it's like a movie, like I don't see the words on the page.

I'm watching a movie that I'm making up as I go, kind of right, And this was one of the most vivid scenes for me, and I was like, yeah, I don't I don't like it.

I don't want to do it.

Can we not?

I don't want to do this.

And it was going and it went exactly where I thought it was going, So I, yeah, it was not pleasant.

It was very not pleasant.

I was so hoping that there he was going to either be able to talk his way out of it, or what I was really hoping was that all of his soldiers would have spotted the commanders all heading into the bathroom and would all have been like, hold on.

So his feeling of nobody is coming to save me regarding the adults would be valid.

But the kids that he has grown close to and trained do have his back, and so there would be that sense of support that he has built with his own men, so to speak.

I was really disappointed that doesn't happen, and I don't like Based on the conversation between the officers, my guess is if his little guys were mobilizing to save him, they would have stepped in and stopped them somehow.

Probably, you know what I'm saying, because the point was for him to feel alone.

But I would have liked seeing that, because I feel like those kids are smart enough that they should have been clocking the vibe of everything, you know, being especially, it just bothered me that, like he really was totally alone, and it feels like that shouldn't have been true.

And eventually is it a lie that comes in and it's sort of like dank okay, but yeah, So so when he gets jumped what he does because Boneso comes in with like six guys and Ender's like, oh, wow, your dad would be so proud of you right now, and really just like fucking zeros in on this like pride that he has and gets Bonzo to agree to a one on one fight instead, which is his downfall because Ender crushes his head.

I mean, it's awful.

And again, we still don't know that Stilson died, and when this ends, we don't know that Boneso died either.

We find out about both of them in a conversation between the adults later.

And I'll tell you what, guys, I was fucking reeling the fact that they hadn't I it was the right thing to do to not tell him one hundred percent.

But then later he apparently like sees the video of it.

Yeah, yeah, like a video of both Yeah, are you those of the corpses, Like yeah, yeah, it's like, can we can we just can you just sprinkle in a little therapy?

Can just dishonestly?

Oh my god?

Oh yeah.

It's like it's so bizarre because it's we're gonna shield you from the consequences of your actions until we don't need you anymore, and then you get full technicolor consequences and no support whatsoever except from like strangers who tell you they don't blame you for it, which is useless because they don't know you or anything, so who cares what they think?

And the fact that they are trying to get him to do things without working about the consequences of those things is so fucked up, and it really I think if I were under I would become hyper paranoid about the consequences of everything I did after something like this, especially considering the ending, because I would always be worried either I'm being deceived actively or I'm missing something, which is kind of how I already live as a person with anxiety.

So right, yeah, that sounds fucking terrible.

It's true enough.

It's like I know I'm missing something.

I know something is about to go wrong, Like, am I about to commit a genocide?

Somebody would tell me, right, you tell me Jesus Christ.

So he kills this kid.

And they have been pushing him with these battles.

There's normally like one a week, and he's.

Getting every couple of weeks.

Yeah, and he's getting one a day occasionally two a day.

And after this whole thing with Bonzo, he really is like, no, fuck this, fuck it, forget it.

And this is when he does his little three month sabbatical.

Mm hmm, I guess we'll call it.

Let's talk about Valentine real quick, but I have to back up a little bit and talk about the Fantasy Game because she gets brought into the mix due to this weird thing with the Fantasy Game.

So the game, I'm not totally sure that I get what was going on regarding the game and the structures that he finds on the planet later.

Were they influencing the game itself or were they just seeing the images in his head somehow?

So I took it as they saw the images in his head and tried that as a means to communicate to him.

Okay, but like, not that there isn't any communication happening at this point when he's playing that game.

Gotcha, Gotcha.

So it's a game that has it's It's like when we hear the officers talking about it, they don't really even understand how it works.

It adapts to your mind in such a way that it creates puzzles that are like very personal and specific, and that causes reactions that are very personal in a way that the officers are watching this game and they don't understand why he keeps getting the results that he ends up with.

So the whole Giant's Drink thing, he apparently quickly realizes you can't win the drink game, like, no matter what they give you, you're gonna get poisoned.

So he finally decides, I'm just going to kill the giant and Evan nobody else has thought of doing this before, which I forget that it's I just absolutely don't buy it.

Guys.

Just let's let's just say you play this game fifty times and you keep getting poisoned just out of peak, I would wind up coming in and trying to kill that fucking giant just because I'm irritated now, like it would strategy.

It would just me being like fuck this asshole, I would just try it, you know, and and er has to like climb into his eyeball.

It's hideous, very mc yeah yeah, and then like he like scoops it up and like leads it to the bird or whatever.

I forgot about that.

Whoa, Okay, there's a choice of details to include, sure, but okay, so backing up one second, Like the thing with the Giant, the way that I took it was that part of the thing with the I think they call it the fantasy game, is that it's very like choose your own ending kind of thing, where like you could go over here and develop more as part of the world, and you can go explore this part, and that most people.

Got to the part with the giant realized that you couldn't live and just went and played with other parts as opposed to like, no, there's really cool stuff after the Giant.

Sure so so.

Yeah, yeah, much more open world is how I conceived of it.

But also like I was the kid that, like Mario Kart sixty four, I explored every fucking pixel of every map, right, like I didn't care, Like, yes, I beat I beat it, But then like I explored it, and then I was like, where are the where are the glitches in the matrix?

Right?

Right?

So of course you're gonna do weird shit like that in an even more immersive, cool game.

But again, like this is pre video gaming, so.

But it's like literally all these kids have to do on their downtime, you know, Like, so that's the only thing if this were like and there are other games to play, so it's not as if this is the only game any of them can choose.

So that does alleviate it somewhat, but nevertheless, it still feels like it's just the principle of being of failing to solve a puzzle that I would definitely keep going.

I can't.

I couldn't leave it alone, you know what I mean.

Even if I finally did come to the conclusion you can't win, I would still always kind of wonder at maybe I can if they just get find some other item in the game somewhere else and collect it and I can bring it back.

Or what I had thought was pour the two drinks together and mix them together and now it's not poisonous anymore.

Oh yeah, but it doesn't matter.

He kills the giant, He climbs into the giant.

There's a whole thing with like a playground and kids that turn into wolves later, so he has to kill them as kids now before they turn to wolves.

It's another preemptive strike game basically.

And then ultimately he winds up in this castle and looks into a mirror and he sees Peter's face and he gets fucking stuck.

And the officers watching him play this, which he isn't aware they're observing him.

It's been positive that maybe they watch us play these games, but he doesn't really.

Buy it, and yeah, why waste their time on us?

Yeah, exactly, but he they eventually start to like we find out that Graf is like trying to understand why this is even happening in the game because it's one nobody's gotten this far before in this part, and two the picture of Peter that shows up is recent, so this is not imagery from Ender's mind.

This is imagery being pulled from the net somehow or something, which I don't feel like we get adequate explanation of.

No, I don't think we do, okay, which I try to miss it, like, oh yeah, same, but also but for me, also I was just like, well, yeah, because a I just fucking went and ignored the rules and did what it wanted to achieve its ends, right, which again like this was the seventies.

Yeah, but it's so very AI was.

Yeah, it's like, okay, you're actually a time traveler.

Go on, Oh, I just I have to point out the little husky ears that I keep seeing pop up behind you.

God, it's so cute.

Who is there?

That's Oliver?

Oliver work.

Yeah, we have a unity great Pyrenees and he likes to he likes to keep mom the company.

I love it.

So so.

This is when they decide we have to go to Valentine and guys, I won't say that this is like the most heartbreaking part of the book, but I will say that it is something that will stick with me for a long time.

They talked to her and convince her to write this letter, and when Ender gets it, it is the saddest thing because she uses a bunch of language purposely to let him know it's her, in such a way that it's like, I get it, you're Valentine.

Like he immediately clocks you're trying a little hard.

And then while they never let me have any correspondence with my family at all up until now this one letter, which means they know about the game, because all she says in it is Peter Peter, Peter, Peter.

You're nothing like him, I promise by and so it's super transparent, And honestly, I was a little embarrassed for them, Like it does wind up pushing him through, but more because he has like kind of completely given up after that message, because they poisoned his world so completely that he doesn't feel like he has anything anymore.

They seem to think he's moving forward because we've reassured him, and I'm like, I don't think that's it at all, dudes, you know, Yeah, them using her this way and him seeing their fingerprints all over it and knowing that she and then it just it's something so special and sacred to him that they just invaded and violated, you know.

And I really hated this so much.

And later they bring him back for his sabbatical, or they bring her back.

I was a little surprised at her, how so.

I guess I just didn't expect her to really try to convince him.

Really, I kind of thought she was going to be like, yeah, sure, I'll convince him, and then it was just going to be all about her wanting to get to see him and commiserating with him on these fucking people trying to manipulate you.

Am I Right like, I thought it would be more of a I'm sorry this is happening to you, and instead she does do the whole like are you gonna let me die?

And I was like, oh, Balan, like that felts kind of harsh to me.

You know, yeah, I see that, but it also really that was another part that really resonated with me in and I wish there was a better I need to find a better way to two communicate about this than to be like the Slytherin in me, because right, like I can say that and you know exactly what I'm talking about, but I don't want soon.

Annoying about Harry Potter is that it has gotten into our psyches and made itself a shorthand.

And it's like, yeah, no, I get it.

I completely I do this great, but the podcast are you kidding?

I do this so much?

It's very irritating.

I get it so so and like I'll even like I'll even talk with my kids about things like this and they're like, oh, yeah, you're such as leather and slash ravenclaw, and I'm like, you don't you don't actually say the slash part out loud, kids, But that's okay anyway.

But like I can see this leatherin part of me where I'm just like, oh, well, I mean if I want them to do this, I'll let them think I want that, and then they'll do this, and then they'll get their idea and then I get what I want.

It doesn't matter, right, Like, so, like it was validating for me to see Valentine thinking things through that way and just being like, no, I'm going to do this other way because it achieves the thing that needs to get done, right, Like, to see somebody thinking about it multi dimensionally is not something you usually see in a YA book, true, right, And I mean you see plenty of it in in you know, contemporary fiction and things like that, Like yeah, but it was I really enjoyed seeing that.

I enjoyed seeing that she had thought through like the way she wanted to respond and the way they wanted her to respond and the way she wanted to respond to that response, and just it was very satisfying for me, Like she gets there and it's just like, let's cut to the bullshit.

You gotta fucking do it.

So, yeah, I guess you're right, like because I mean, I have that kind of reticence always that I don't trust my own judgment on anything, which obviously isn't her problem because she is taking over the world.

Yeah she's got that.

She's good.

Yeah she's fine.

So I think that is really like the disconnect for me of just I would never be confident enough in my judgment to make this sort of call, and her just coming in being like, hey, child who is related to me, sacrifice yourself?

Do it it?

Like it just it's really wild to me.

So but it does convince him, and he winds up going up to the Commander's school.

Now, guys, confession time again.

My first major confession was I thought the buggers weren't real.

My second confession is when he got to commander school, I immediately started to be like, I think this is real.

I think this is actually not a game.

I think he's doing the things.

And then right after I thought it, I remembered somebody told me that this was real.

So I don't want to say that they spoiled me and ruined it because I had thought of it already and that was what reminded me of the thing.

But and I think that they probably even asked me, is it cool if I tell you this?

Are you ever going to read it?

And I was like, no, I'm not going to read it.

I think I at the time was just like nah, And it somehow stuck.

But everything shifts enough with the way they're having him work that it was very suss, you know, like especially then bringing in all of the people he had been training with at the school and they're all of a sudden working right on it, like I just and why is the commander school all the way out here on this asteroid in this like it all of it felt like, no, we're we're for reals right now, kid.

I don't know how to tell you this, but they are pushing you like this because it's a genuine emergency, like you know, So when the twist comes, the whole time, I'm thinking that I think this is real, and I'm thinking I remember somebody telling me, but I wasn't totally sure if I really remembered that or not.

And I you know, so when it comes, it's not as much of a shock to me, but it's still it was a shock in the way it was done, because they basically clap him on the shoulder and they're like, you really killed the planet.

Look at you kid, as if it's fucking great and he should be so happy about it.

Yeah, you guys just spent literal years talking about how this kid is too sensitive to do anything, and now you're just gonna like just say it with No.

There's no need to preserve him anymore.

Right, my God brings out of his ears because he achieved the thing.

We're done with them.

Don't have him do this in a room full of people who all know it's real either.

How about that, guys.

Yeah, I was quest did that he was He still wasn't allowed to be face to face with his team at that point because like, no, you've already reunited them, They've got the camaraderie, they've got the respect, Like they all think that it's fake.

Still, so like, why can't why can't he have some positive human interaction?

Great?

Please?

Yeah, why do we need to deny him even an iota of that?

Like I felt like that was a weak spot, and not just because I wanted it, but like really.

Yeah, I really like, I don't really get the advantage of not bringing their them up there with him when they kind of wound up being commanders also, so yeah, maybe it's just because he could have gotten the job done from anyone, right, I guess maybe he's brought separately so that he can be around Maser.

Yeah, so maybe that's it is that they nobody else needed contact with Maser Rackham, and so it.

Was we do end up on Euros with him at the end.

Oh I forgot.

Yeah, he gets their way before them, and he has all the mentoring with Maser, Like what the fuck?

Yeah, they're they're there?

Why not?

Just a lot of weird.

I guess it's just part of the isolation thing that they really think he won't be able to perform unless he has like nobody else to lean on, which I really wonder if that's true.

I can't like, Okay, so what I had had sort of thought maybe we were gonna get was and I ultimately I don't know if this was intentional on his part, But what this feels like to me, if you really step back and look at it, is an indictment of our dependence on an individual to save us, you know what I mean, Like they keep on bringing up all of these tacticians through history, all of these generals, as if those people were simply incredibly brilliant on there, and maybe they were, but they talk about them like there was nobody by their sides advising them, like there was nobody influencing them as they grew.

They describe them as if they grew up in the sort of vacuum they're forcing on ender, which isn't natural.

The whole thing is that those people arose from their circumstances, whatever that may be, and you are trying to create this environment that is totally stilted and strange to get the same result, which is a weird approach to begin with.

But then also the fact that it's everything is always like a group effort.

He is able to eventually rely on his people to come up with their own ideas, and I was hopeful that it would reach a point where they realized isolating him actually doesn't help.

Once you get to a point like this, the support is absolutely necessary or he's not going to be able to do it.

But instead he's kept separate right up until the end, proving them right.

Ultimately, even though there's no control, so you don't know if that's true, if it wouldn't have worked had you done it the other way.

And so I had thought maybe going to get a criticism of that, but it never really happens.

And this is also part of me feeling like I think or since Scott card thinks this was justified, this was the right way to handle it, because there's no feeling coming through of this is a criticism of us believing that you have to be completely alone as an individual.

You do, as a commander, have to be apart from your troops.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't be close to anybody.

Nobody lives like that.

That's not how it works, you know.

So I think that bothered me was like, in the end, it felt like we were not meant to cheer for because that's not correct at all, but that we were meant to like grudgingly admit, well, it was for the greater good in the end, and like we don't know that because everything that they made happen was artificial and they were attempting to recreate great leaders from history who did not live like this.

You know, that wasn't how they were created, So why were you doing it this way?

I guess it's just because they were trying to like they were trying to do it with speed.

Maybe they didn't have thirty years for him to develop into this person.

They had to do it in like six years.

No, yeah, really very.

Maybe that's it.

I don't know though, but yeah, so they just they just fucking telling me, blew up this whole planet.

It's awful.

Mm hmmm, and like it has like a whole lass breakdown.

Yeah, real, same?

What is what is the teacher's name?

Again?

I just said it and I've already forgot its, Rackham Maser.

There is a conversation between the two of them earlier.

Maser is the one that introduces him to the idea of the queen and the hive mind, which apparently nobody really bought at when he presented this as an idea, which I find really weird.

Yeah I don't understand, Like, I don't know, it's fine, it doesn't matter.

And he explains that what he thinks happened is that because they are a hive mind, none of them as an individual really matters, and so when they killed human beings that were sent out in a shuttle, they didn't understand the gravity of what they were doing, because in their mind they were not killing individuals, they were just killing appendages.

And he compares the death of the buggers on their end to feeling like cutting off your toenails or something, so he basically puts it into Ender's mind.

I think they never intended to attack us the way that we interpreted that attack.

I think that they didn't understand how we work because they don't have language in a way we do, and we don't communicate how they do.

So to them, it seemed like we weren't sentient beings.

And basically, like he when Ender tries to be like, oh, so then they didn't know what they were doing, he very quickly does just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings, which is true.

But you have this theory, and nobody at all wanted to just test this out somehow.

More there was, like, as far as we know, not that much of an attempt to communicate outside of sending signals.

There was no like person, face to face moment, which, as we see later when Ender touches that egg that he finds that is how he can hear what they're saying, So we could have this all could have just been avoided if anybody had listened to Masor Rackham.

Yeah, but except that Major Rakham didn't figure this out until it was too late, right, Like the second invasion was over.

Yeah, I guess that's true.

But the second being over because they decided that weren't going to try and evade again, because they had realized we were real people.

So if his theory were pursued, they would simply get like confirmation, Yeah, sorry about that, we didn't get it, No harm, no foul, We'll just leave you alone.

Which granted, I don't know that anybody would have believed it and accepted it.

But there's also if more than one person was exposed to this type of communication, then maybe it would have won them all over.

Yeah, Like, did we have to it was inevitable that we would anticipate a further invasion, and maybe it was inevitable that we would go for a preemptive strike, But did it have to be strike?

Like could there have been one more attempt at communication?

Yeah, they would have been like, we see that you're doing something, let's let's do something back at you.

Make the same weird noises as the specially creatures.

Right, the Slimyes, it's very true.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, considering that that little.

Oh sorry, go ahead, No, I was just thinking, I want I want more.

I want more world building around that, Like I want to read like a whole book just around the buggers and and their society and all that, and maybe and maybe, you know, maybe Speaker for the Dead is like that and stuff.

I don't know.

I'm I'm very excited to read more of it.

But yeah, anyway, what were you saying?

Just that the egg that he finds is quite small, and it basically acts as like a transmitter of all of these ideas because that eggs some how has the memories of the battle itself in it.

And if they had just maybe ups this egg earlier to like somebody important and then we touched it and everybody understood, maybe that could have just you know what I'm saying, Like, yeah, but also I get why you wouldn't just like FedEx an infant to your enemy.

So it's just different when that infant is also like a thumb drive.

Yeah, so I don't know, you know, you just like made an extra thumb drive.

Yeah, you know, like yeah, it's like, oh, we were sure willing to sacrifice our young so uh.

Maybe yeah, yeah, that's a really good point.

So we get kind of this accelerated ending where we jump ahead in time.

How long does it take before they get to the planet to colonize it?

To them at relativistic speeds but fifty years in Earth time?

Gotcha?

Okay, So they are colonizing this planet, and like everything they're finding really indicates that these were beings that had culture, you know, and the things that they are like understanding about them without language that it actually doesn't have to be language that we communicate with every time.

And then and Ender is personally just like struggling with what he has done and the people who recognize him and know him and the like notoriety of this, as well as we hear about the fallout with the court martial and g like having to defend the choices that he made, which ultimately he doesn't get arrested for.

He's cleared, but there's definitely like a stain of disgrace a little bit, I think to him now.

And we find out that, like there are plenty of people that think Enders a maniac.

Yeah, which I mean I probably would do if.

Yeah, Valentine has stopped writing as Demosthenes because she is going.

She's gone to the planet with Ender.

But what she decides to do is tell everybody I'm Demosthenes and I'm going to the bugger planet so that everybody can just drive themselves insane trying to guess who on this shuttle is Demosthenes, which I think is some A plus level trolling.

I find that fucking funny.

She could have just retired it, and no, she's just like I'm was going to keep toy in with people and keep guessing, you know what.

She worked hard on this persona.

I like it.

Yeah, she leaves Peter in charge.

Mm hmmm.

I don't understand the political landscape on Earth.

I understand that basically it's we will all united against a common enemy, and now they're gone, so we're turning on each other again.

That that's like the main idea.

But and I think maybe that's just all I meant to really get about it.

But it feels like there's enough peppered in in the discussion that's specific enough that I felt sort of like I was missing something.

Okay, well I think I picked up more more of it, Like I the structure kind of coalesced a bit more for me on the second read through, okay, because well, okay, so I'll explain to you what I think it is and we'll see if it So that there's there's the oh and see, like I can't even remember the name for it, but like there's there's US Alliance.

Well, the Warsaw is basically like future Soviet states that are signed into the IF Treaty, which is International Federation.

Maybe I don't know, but so like we've got this treaty that says we're all gonna be nice and get along because there's an alien right and within the treaty there's a thing that says but within the Warsaw Pact, so basically like the US s R extended because because we know it covers like the Netherlands, it mentions and and a lot of Islamic states, and that within there that's internal affairs and we're not gonna mess with it.

And so that's why so it talks about how like you know, people are aren't necessarily treated as equally within those country the states area, and then the hegemon is like the president of the treatied nation or whatever, right.

Right, which that's what Peter winds up becoming.

Right, Yeah, that's what Peter ends up being, is the you know, the head of state for.

The planet mm hm planet president.

Yeah, basically okay, okay, And you know what, I think you're right about this.

And I also I'm wondering how relevant all of this is in later books, Like I don't wonder, I.

Say again, I I I imagine that it is like fleshed out significantly in later books like I.

I don't know.

I just assume that there's got to be one where we get a lot more about Peter.

And yeah, because there's a bunch of fos I want that, I know.

But then part of me feels like they're gonna take it and it's gonna make me actually really enjoy the book, and then I'm gonna be like, oh, and the question everything.

I don't know.

I don't know what to expect.

I disliked him so much.

I don't want to spend more time around him.

I don't know.

All I keep thinking about is at the very beginning, when he's talking to Valentine and he says one day, you're gonna find him dead and you're gonna think he can't have killed him.

You're gonna feel guilty for even considering it, because you're gonna be so sure I've changed and I will have done it.

And so just being like he's different, now he's changed, I just kept being like, you dumb bitch, even though there's a part of me that's sort of like, maybe she's right.

So I'm definitely you dumb bitching myself also, But I kept having these moments of just like this is kind of playing out the way, like I could see him wanting to kill Ender for whatever reason.

If Ender has enough people that see him as some sort of weird threat and a triumph over him would be symbolically helpful somehow, you know.

And is Valentine so willing to believe that Peter has changed that she wouldn't see it anymore.

Would even I as a reader kind of be like, I don't think he did it.

Will you have convinced me so thoroughly, But even I don't, you know, But that speech was so chilling that it really like embedded itself.

Yeah it was creepy, yeah, but it was like satisfying creepy.

I was like, yeah, you really wrote really fucked up kid here I believe it.

And it really is like it nicely points out the advantage because they frequently talk about how Peter can see people's weaknesses, and Valentine's weakness is often wanting to think the best of people, Like she's very kind and there's a generosity to her nature.

She's not stupid, but.

Her sence like.

Feeling guilty for even considering that he did it, like that does feel like accurate, you know, Peter gross Oh, and I also did want to briefly talk about because you know, talking about Demosthenes m the the weird thing that begins to happen where she's pretending to believe things, but then she starts to actually believe the things and is sort of like, maybe you can't just like pretend stuff without actually being that.

We don't really ever deal with that, Yeah, I don't.

Look, here's the thing.

I think this is like low key what happened with like Alex Jones.

I think that he used to be there was still like this paranoid aspect of him, but it was like more reasonable and based in fact, and then he began to realize like there is money to be made in going in this one specific direction and did it for the money and then found himself actually buying his own bullshit, And I like, this is not me trying to be generous with him and be like, Alex Jones isn't that bad a person?

Really?

No, he is still a very bad person because ultimately everything he touched was toxic and terrible, and he ruined the landscape of politics in many ways, you know, like irrevocable ways.

But I I really am willing to believe that a lot of it initially was like put on for the sake of sales and the shock value attracting new listeners, and it was rage b in like before we had that going on as much online as we do now, where it's just now this sort of thing is just part of the noise where, you know, but he was like at the forefront during an era where he could really step out and be noticed.

And he just I, she's not doing anything as dramatically overt.

I feel like as he like what she what she is saying doesn't sound like it's shocking to people exactly.

It sounds like she is going for a more nuanced approach where he was doing.

He was doing like Howard Stern but for Republicans is the way I think of him, you know what I mean.

So I think she's I think she's like less in there's less performance to what it seemed like she was writing.

Does that make sense, Yeah, it makes sense.

I didn't have that impression because she talks about how you know, he's Demosthenes is meant to be inflammatory and like so so extremely pro Russian and giving a voice to the extremists, and that Locke is the rational one that all the intellections.

And I guess you're right.

Yeah, he's meant to be the sort of like oil on water thing.

Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.

It's just like, I guess I'm not familiar enough with their situation, and we don't get enough of her writing for me to really get a sense of that, so I'm just sort of taking it from third party.

Yeah.

It is very funny at one point how he gets so mad at her that she's like taking off.

It's too lightful.

He's so pissed, and it's like she eventually he stops talking to her because she had been asking him for advice on writing the column, but she's gotten to know this voice so well that she doesn't need to ask for advice, so he thinks he's like forcing her to come to him on bended knee asking for help, and then she doesn't have to, and that makes him even more angry, and honestly, that was very delayful.

Good for you, Valentine.

Yes, yes, I know that this isn't really relevant because it's in books that neither of us have read yet.

But do you think that she will be outed as Demosthenes at any point or out herself?

I mean, I think it kind of has to be inevitable because I mean one would think it.

I mean, it does become evident that Peter is Locke is one of the Wiggans siblings.

Yeah, they do say that he comes out saying that he is right.

I feel like that's finally officially revealed.

I think, yeah, I mean, if nothing else, I mean, he had planned for it to be, because Valentine says that, like, you know, the physical resemblance between you two and him looking older, and people would just like transfer their adulation over to them, right, And that was Peter's plan, And that doesn't end up happening.

But then you know at the end when it says you can be the speaker for me, and then they end up talking to the anstable and stuff like, at that point it has to be public knowledge that you know, this is Peter was Locke, and er is here and Demosthenes went with the first group of colonists, and hey, so did the other sibling.

You know, like I would think that it that people have to put it together.

But at what point that happens, I don't know, but yeah, I mean, it seems inevitable to me that it becomes public knowledge that she was Demosthenes.

I'm really curious how much they factor into the next thing, Like I just I really have no idea, because the way this book ends, he takes this egg that is, you know, he he has a conversation with it where he's just like, buggers are Boogeyman to us, I can't just like bring you to life and you expect things to go okay for you.

They are going to kill you immediately.

And he decides he's going to hold onto it and find a place for it.

And so what he eventually writes is this the book that he signs Speaker for the Dead.

That is.

Everything from the queen's perspective.

And it's sort of odd because the way that the tone of the narrative winds up changing where it is not obvious to me when I'm listening in audiobook, but it's like, you know, he writes this book and then people begin to turn it into a religion, and it suddenly like we're talking very distant person in a way that we haven't been for most of the book.

And it kind of threw me off a little bit, how like jarring it was to jump to this, you know what I'm saying, And I didn't really even understand how is it that it was made into a religion.

It becomes like a sacred text eventually, would you I don't even understand how that works.

What about this?

Is it just the profundity of somebody else's perspective?

I think, yeah, I think it's well, that's true.

Yeah, Like I get I get the tradition of a speaker for the dead becoming a thing and there being a religion based around that, But that doesn't necessarily follow from from a book.

That's just the bugger's perspective.

Yeah, yeah, hm, I just I'm sure a little puzzled because it's just very abrupt, kind of like he wrote this book and then it was the Bible, and I was just like, hold on, what happened, Like there's just kind of no connective tissue there, and maybe that's what the next book is, is like that, that connective tissue.

But it just felt really like I don't understand, especially considering it seemed that a lot of people saw him specific but they don't know he wrote it, I guess as part of it.

So yeah, yeah, well I did really like the fact that there is an egg, that there's a possibility, not necessarily for him to undo what he did, because there's no undoing, but that maybe now that he knows more, he can make it right somehow now.

And the fact that they were building this place because they saw it in his head and it was the only way they knew how to communicate with him was so so devastating.

It was beautiful.

It was yeah, oh my god, just this gulf that existed between them, that like if you had literally just touched if you just sucks.

I hate it.

How did that man write this?

Though everything about him now feels just like other ring other human beings in a way that this whole book is about understanding that other ring fucks us up and ruins things.

It seems like, did he write this and not know what he was writing?

Did he think he was making a different point than what I think he's making.

Yeah, I don't understand it.

It's just like the whole thing feels.

So just see through each other's eyes and have compassion, and then it's I don't I think that gay marriage will ruin real marriages quote unquote for everyone.

And also Obama is going to mobilize inner city gangs to defend his policies with violence against white people, just like unhinged shit.

Dude, Yeah, I don't understand.

I got it.

Should I mean, there's all these people in China that I wasn't even seeing.

But Aschure says, he started Howard Sternham went right into Rush Limbaugh with Alex Jones and Michael says, I'm convinced he had a mini stroke at some point that changed him.

And astress has gotta be brain damage or demonic possession or something.

I vote demonic possession.

I like that one.

Let's go with that.

Oh yeah, no, I didn't even look at the chat, which is probably good because it would have been distracting to me.

Yeah, but if you're not used to it, avoid it because she can't handle it.

Even Rashaan, she's used to it, and she can't handle it.

I have to tell her all the time may come back.

Yeah.

Do you do you think it's possible that my takeaways about this book are the opposite of what he intended?

Like?

Could that be it?

I guess I have to read more than one of his books to really tell.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I'm not the right person to answer that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your friend who's read the whole series and tried to get you to read this for ages is the person.

They're very jealous.

Guys.

It's very funny to me.

She's pretty salty.

Michael says, this is one of my favorite books from my childhood.

It hit me hard when Card came out as a bigot.

I can only imagine this is such a weird thing that like a lot of people, especially Neil Gaiman, with this whole thing with him recently, that hit a lot of my friends hard who really loved him.

I haven't had this experience with anybody like jk Rowling.

It happened, but I didn't have.

It wasn't a real deep childhood attachment.

I started reading her books when I was old enough that even though it was a huge bummer, it didn't like rip my heart out the way that finding out something like there's all these writers that I read when I was really little, and they're literally all dead, So there's no possibility of that with any of them that I can think of.

But with Card like yeah, I can only imagine that would be such a bummer because he's not even cloaking his language.

It's just absolutely overtly bigoted, homophobic nonsense, and it's genuinely like I mean, I didn't buy I Downloaded with a credit because I already had purchased credits this book, but I didn't purchase a kindle copy.

I was trying to be like, all right, I'm just gonna do that, and normally I get both nowadays, but I just didn't want to, like, you know, feed into it.

And I definitely had my reservations about covering this at all, But I will say that I don't regret reading it or covering it.

I think it's there's arguments to be made in both directions and I'm not trying to pretend that what I decided today was particularly justified.

It really did come down to I wanted to do it, you know, And I'm not really trying to like defend it too much.

It's just it's my show and I get too.

And also, people voted for it, so you guys wanted to hear about it.

If it weren't for people clearly being interested, I probably would have been like, all right, well never mind.

But yeah, this is the only hang up I have about continuing to read this series is like I would rather probably torrent the audiobook or something than actually buy it, you know, library, as Michael is pointing out, So yeah, just food for thought everybody.

And well and used bookstores, right like this book this series is in every youth store, right because everybody's dad had it on their shelf, right, Yeah, so it's very find used copies.

But I really really enjoyed the audiobook production that I listened to, and I think it's the one that you ended up getting the twentieth anniversary one.

Yeah, I yeah, it was just it was a really well produced audiobook, and I don't know if you listened to the bit from the author at the end, but there's a portion where he says that he in his the way he writes his books, the way he imagines them being consumed, the ideal medium is in a full cast audiobook, and so that the audiobook version that we listened to is what the author considers the experience of the book, which you know, that's interesting, awesome, but your garbage.

But also putting that aside, knowing that you've you've consumed the content and absorbed it in the way that was intended most I think is an interesting way.

Yeah, definitely consider things becaee.

It talks about how you know, everybody says, oh, this should be a movie, and in our culture, like that's considered the peak form to consume something.

But for for this, for this creator of content, an audiobook is the best way to do it.

I'm always interested in hearing the the author's like viewpoint on the quality of the audio book or the medium itself or whatever.

And the last book club I did, covering Soula with Rashan, I didn't realize that the audiobook it was Tony Morrison herself reading, and once I realized that, I was like, oh shit, like that really changes the vibe to know it was the author.

You know, sometimes authors do not do a good job, so it's not necessarily something that I always like recommend.

But she fucking killed it.

So yeah, wow, yeah.

No.

My favorite audiobook where the author does the audiobook is Braiding Sweet Grass.

Have you read that by Robin Waalkimmerer.

I have heard of it.

It's it's really beautiful.

It's it's nonfiction.

The the author is a professor of Oh gosh, I'm gonna get this wrong, but she does.

She's a university professor, she's indigenous, and she she talks a lot about reciprocity and the lessons of nature and how we can interact with the world.

And it's not it's not like woo woo.

It's all I mean, well, I mean, yeah, I get what you mean, though, where it's like it sounds more woo woo when you say the summary than it really is in practice, because that's how it is with everything.

It's like it's a kid playing a video game who saves the World?

Does not sound like what this book is.

Actually, yeah, that's not the best pitch.

But now it's just like it's like being invited in for a cup in a warm blanket and talking with this woman who just knows all the right things to say, and it's just so comforting.

And I've listened to it like five or six times, but that's my favorite audiobook ever, hands down.

This was a really well done one too.

All right, well, is there anything about this book that we didn't get to touch on that you really want to make sure that we at least mentioned before we wrap this up?

I will say the part that broke my heart, I think the most is at the very end when Enders trying to convince Valentine to go off with him, and he's got the egg and we know that and Valentine doesn't.

But when Enders trying to convince her and says, no, I have to go, I'm almost happy here, and I was just like, yeah, that worked me a little bit because he's never been allowed to be happy and the fact that he might get there is terrifying.

Yeah, and it's that he has some like truly devastating.

That line as the summary of the book is really damning and awful as the summary of his experience, I mean, not really of the book, but there's and then there's a line earlier where she's like, you want to beat Peter, and he says, no, I want him to love me.

And just the confession of that, oh my god, literally rip my heart.

Out, like.

The truth, you know, like ouch.

And then of course the to know my enemy is to love them.

And as soon as I love them, I destroy them.

And that is I believe what is supposed to have been, like the impetus for the buggers to be able to like send him or read his mind at least a little bit, is because he was beginning to understand them in such a profound way that he was like literally on their wavelength in a sense, I think.

And there was also like I think a factor of it being the technology they were using was bugger technology.

Yeah right, yeah, the answerable yeah, which I don't fully understand.

Yeah, there's just it's it's it's like Ender is so willing to be vulnerable, because I think he just thinks of himself as vulnerable all the time.

Anyway, So what's the harm because they're already doing the worst thing to me kind of you know, which is just really awful.

I will say I had talked to a friend about this book, and she said the only thing that bothered her was that because ender doesn't know what he's doing the whole time.

It makes him able to sort of like we as the audience can fully not blame him, and he has clean hands in a way that is a little too easy.

And I could see that, you know, I almost feel like the fact that I grew suspicious when he goes on to eros, maybe he should have also, But maybe he should should have started to be like, there's something about the vibe here that's different.

Am I sure that this isn't exactly what it looks like?

Like so, and that could have been interesting flavor to things of him knowing that a part of him suspected and did it all anyway, And so maybe he did actively make the choice, but he was willing to not ask the questions, you know.

Well, and he does start he does start questioning major.

He says, you know, what happened to your others?

Dudes?

What happened?

You know?

Did they die?

Did they you know?

And it's from a different, a different angle, but he is starting to question, you know, the uniqueness of his situation and what exactly is going on here?

After guys, It's just that felt more like like on a personal level, like what's going to happen to me.

I don't succeed.

It wasn't questioning like the apparatus here and that something about a commander's school where it seems like I'm the only student, you know, like not really, but there's a he is kept so separate that one could maybe start to infer that you're the only one doing this sort of thing.

Perhaps, you know, like I don't have a problem with it the way that it is, but it could have been interesting to have him feel like a tiny bit more complicit somehow, at least with simply being such a good soldier that you don't ask any questions maybe being the problem, you know, But ultimately, you know, I I loved it.

I really loved it.

But also it is so sad, it's so devastating.

Oh my god.

So thumbs up.

Yeah, yeah, all right, last chance, anything else that you want to mention?

I can't think of anything.

No, this is great, Thank you for having me.

No, we're going to finish and I'm going to think of something and I'm gonna be so annoyed.

But what are we gonna do it?

Well, you know how it reached me?

Yeah, all right, guys, Well thank you all.

So much for coming to the life and being in the chat.

Thank you Kimberly for putting this book forward and for joining me for this delightful to have you.

It was super fun.

I'm glad that our connection held and everything seems to go okay, And hopefully the recording for this will work out, so fingers crossed and I will be I promise guys this month putting up the pitch post earlier than I did this past time, so that y'all will have a bit more time to pitch and to vote and all of that.

So keep an eye out, all right, everybody, until next time, do alone, motherfuckers.

That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.