posted
Which OSC character have you connected with the most and why?
I'll go first:
I first read Ender's Shadow when I was going through a time in my life when I really struggled to know whether God cared about me, or about my problems. I connected with Bean's character because Ender is such a Christ-figure in that novel, and because like Bean I wanted to know that the center of my worship knew and accepted me. Having read the novel again, I see that this interpretation was pretty obviously affected by my own experience at the time, but Bean will still always have a special place in my heart as the character that told me what I most needed to hear at the time that it was needed.
Wow, that's a lot of soul-bearing. Well, whatever.
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All readings are affected by the reader's life and experience. But your reading of Bean and Ender is absolutely a legitimate one. Not an INTENDED one, but obviously one consistent with and justified by the text.
Like the way that for me, the true hero of LOTR is Sam.
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I most connected with the Fletcher family in The Lost Boys, because their everyday lives were so similar to mine ... their beliefs, their rituals, the little idiosyncracies of the ward, the way the family interacted with each other. Those similarities made the book so real to me that the characters stayed with me for weeks afterwords. I couldn't even read anything else for a while, while I was "recovering" from that book.
And somehow, despite the immense popularity of Ender's Game, I also preferred Bean's story in Ender's Shadow to the original. I think it had to do with me being older when I read it and being better able to sympathize with the characters, because I'd experienced more myself.
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For me, it has to be a combination of Bean, Ansett, and Peter, though I cannot at the moment form a substantive explanation as to why this would be.
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I'd have to go with Ansset. I really connected with how isolated he seemed, even when surrounded by people who loved him in one way or another.
Posts: 187 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Hmm. I can't decide between Step, Ivan, Lared or Olhado.
Step and Olhado are sort of my template for what I hope I can be like if I ever have a family, kids. Ivan acts in ways I hope I would act with a lover. And Lared has as weird a relationship with his father as I have with mine.
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The penchant for mental solitary confinement, the 'distance', that the academic Wiggin family conjured up in their children always struck a chord with me. It always seemed a gift and a curse.
I just wish I had a Valentine.
Ender's frosty self-motivation matched with his ability to put himself in other people's shoes is just too cool, though Peter's temper and frustrations alway seem so real and human (indeed he was left behind on Earth to deal with the very human concern of humanity itself) and it remains a keen ambition of mine to play the cat some day.
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When i'm feeling particularly bad about myself and the way i interact with my brothers, i tend to compare myself to Elemak, but i'm probably not all that bad, just self depricating. More often than not, i connect with Lared, because i can get very upset when i realize how painful amd seemingly unfair life can really be.
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I guess Ender's Game being the first OSC book I read and at a time in my life when I was really depressed, I, for some unknown reason, felt a very personal connection with Ender. I think because at that time in my life I felt like I was carrying such a huge burdon that I couldn't continue on and Ender was in the same boat. I saw he prospered after getting out of the situation he was in and making the best of it!
Posts: 224 | Registered: Jan 2001
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For me it was Petra. I've grown up in the country as a tomboy, fishing, shooting. Stuff like that. I've always like sports, and the books I read other girls generally don't like. At a young age I was labled "smart" and that has had a huge affect on me and how people view me. So Petra's situation reminds me a little of my own.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Hm. I was surprised at the character that came to mind when I started to think about this. If you're asking who my favorite character is, I'd have to say Ivan. I think I'm still harboring a not-so-secret-anymore crush on him.
The character I seem to identify with (or maybe I sympathize with him) is Lovelock. Yes. A monkey. His journey to self-awareness is one that we go through. Mine was a little later in my life as I gained some confidence and started trying to identify how I really felt, or what I really believed/thought about things. I haven't grown up to be the best of critical thinkers, but I'm learning. I loved watching Lovelock find his own personality and start to make connections in his world. They weren't always pleasant, but it all became a part of who he was.
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I'm somewhere between Ender and Peter. I side with Peter because many of his ethics in the Shadow Series are much like my own, and Ender because I have much the same emotions towards humanity as he does by Xenocide.
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I personally felt a great connection with Ender. When I read Enders Shadow I felt that the character of Ender was kind of somehow marginalised and his achivements somehow lessened by Bean being "smarter". I felt that it damaged the character I had come to love in Game and Speaker. I know that this is not a logical reading of Enders Shadow but thats what I felt.
However by book 7 I had actually begun to like Bean, until then I had found him too cold and analitical, but when he begins to look at his own humanity he becomes a more Identifiable character, to me at least.
I also liked peter in the shadow series. Oh and i thought Jane was really cool.
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I always liked the mazer "niche" in the story. It wasn't fleshed-out that well, but it was an interesting one.
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I think I'm still harboring a not-so-secret-anymore crush on him. 
