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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Orson Scott Card To Retire From Writing (Page 2)

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Author Topic: Orson Scott Card To Retire From Writing
steven
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quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
OSC doesn't do romance well except for Peggy and Alvin. Their relationship was kind of cool.

Really? Whole chapters of those books are ruined for me by her pointless controlling henpecking. She deeply, deeply sucks at being simultaneously tremendously more far-seeing than other people, while still interacting with them in a normal way. If I were married to someone who acted like that, I'd be entirely miserable.
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PSI Teleport
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My OTP is Issi/Hush. FTR.
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Synesthesia
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quote:
Originally posted by steven:
quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
OSC doesn't do romance well except for Peggy and Alvin. Their relationship was kind of cool.

Really? Whole chapters of those books are ruined for me by her pointless controlling henpecking. She deeply, deeply sucks at being simultaneously tremendously more far-seeing than other people, while still interacting with them in a normal way. If I were married to someone who acted like that, I'd be entirely miserable.
Yeah, she does do that, but only because she can see the future, so she's almost always right. Still, I'd rather marry her than Novinhua who was not nice at all. [Wall Bash] But Peggy and Alvin are believable to me unlike Ender and Novinhua. Except their angst. It's no one else's fault but the person who shoots someone, dang it.
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steven
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quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
Yeah, she does do that, but only because she can see the future, so she's almost always right. Still, I'd rather marry her than Novinhua who was not nice at all. [Wall Bash] But Peggy and Alvin are believable to me unlike Ender and Novinhua. Except their angst. It's no one else's fault but the person who shoots someone, dang it.

I agree, Peggy has more excuse to be difficult. Novinha is like bottled misery-for-others, and for no discernible reason. Who would want to marry that?

And yes, I agree that Novinha's supposed reasons for her ridiculous behavior are less believable.

Personally, if I were a friend/brother to someone like Peggy, I'd advise her to just not get married at all. She has too much trouble with the balance between her gift and relationships.

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Elison R. Salazar
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:
Originally posted by steven:
quote:
Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:
"but EVERYBODY wants to have kids".
See, I wouldn't have said that. That's simply not true.
OK, let me restate. Something more like "everybody SHOULD want to have kids and raise a family, it's like the best".

You don't believe that? Certainly OSC does. He's made that plain, first in his essays, then later in multiple books.

It's jarring to someone like me, who thinks that overpopulation is one of the worst problems facing the world today, especially India/China. Especially India.

Which is ironic because in that universe folks with your opinion have put the boot to those wanting many children.
This hasn't happened; maybe to Card he truly felt a dystopia is a world where there's minor amounts of gun control, liberals winning elections, and sanctions placed on nations who don't enforce a 2-Child policy and Ender's Game might have hinted at something gruesome but its clear from the Shadow books that the world of the Triumvirate during the Formic Wars is hardly a dystopia by any significant reasonable stretch of the definition.

Maybe if Card was more explicit and drew a more clear comparison to Gaza for Poland it might be more believable but it just isn't based on the later writings.

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millernumber1
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quote:
Have read both books in both series. The Lost Gate series (a.k.a. the Mithermage series) is a bit derivative of "Jumpers" and "American Gods", but I'm not even sure that OSC even read either one of those books, so it may just be a case of convergent evolution, so to speak. The Lost Gate books are pretty good, I'd say in the top third of all his novels. I just finished the second one yesterday.
OSC has reviewed both Jumper (http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/f&sf/93-summer.html) and American Gods (http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2002-05-27.shtml). I actually think Enchantment did the "Gods are real and derive power from belief" thing before Gaiman (but after Pratchett, though I have no clue if he ever got around to reading Pratchett). I do think the Mithermages is an attempt to play with the same concept (and not quite as successfully as Enchantment), but I think Card is definitely doing his own thing there, not just rehashing.

quote:
OSC doesn't do romance well except for Peggy and Alvin. Their relationship was kind of cool.
Er...I really like Katerina/Ivan in Enchantment. One of my favorite romances. Even if we'll never get Carey Mulligan playing Katerina (sadly), I still want it to be a movie really badly.

I also adore Jane/Miro and Wang Mu/Peter in Children of the Mind (which is actually a huge reason Children of the Mind is my favorite of the Speaker books. And am aware that almost no one is with me on that one. But it's just so darn fuzzy and warm when SPOILER


REALLY SPOILER
Jane loses her temper for the first time in her human body, and Miro helps her understand what's happening.)
END SPOILER

I also thought romance was reasonably well done in the Women of Genesis novels.

I do agree that Ender/Novinha was really painful - but I don't know if I ever thought OSC intended us to find it romantic. Ender does, but he's deeply screwed up. [Smile]

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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:
Originally posted by steven:
quote:
Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:
"but EVERYBODY wants to have kids".
See, I wouldn't have said that. That's simply not true.
OK, let me restate. Something more like "everybody SHOULD want to have kids and raise a family, it's like the best".

You don't believe that? Certainly OSC does. He's made that plain, first in his essays, then later in multiple books.

It's jarring to someone like me, who thinks that overpopulation is one of the worst problems facing the world today, especially India/China. Especially India.

Which is ironic because in that universe folks with your opinion have put the boot to those wanting many children.
This hasn't happened; maybe to Card he truly felt a dystopia is a world where there's minor amounts of gun control, liberals winning elections, and sanctions placed on nations who don't enforce a 2-Child policy and Ender's Game might have hinted at something gruesome but its clear from the Shadow books that the world of the Triumvirate during the Formic Wars is hardly a dystopia by any significant reasonable stretch of the definition.

Maybe if Card was more explicit and drew a more clear comparison to Gaza for Poland it might be more believable but it just isn't based on the later writings.

Nope. Ender's Father and Mother have to sign away their son's life to the military just to have him. His grandfather fought against laws prohibiting more than two children and disgraced his daughter by association.

People who refuse to obey have sanctions placed on them and penalties.

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C3PO the Dragon Slayer
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quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
OSC doesn't do romance well except for Peggy and Alvin.

Have you read Enchantment?
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millernumber1
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Amen, C3PO, amen. Love that book so much.
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BlackBlade
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True story. I'd love to see the play or movie of Enchantment. Purely for Ivan and Katarina. Maybe also Baba Yaga.
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millernumber1
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Forgot to mention I quite like "Teacher's Pest" for the snippet of romance there. [Smile]
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Synesthesia
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quote:
Originally posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer:
quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
OSC doesn't do romance well except for Peggy and Alvin.

Have you read Enchantment?
I did, but it frustrated me. Every romance ever also has to start with the man and woman fighting with each other all the time. The woman in that book was so difficult too. He was like, put some clothes on, please and she was all skitchy about it going, but it's a MAN'S shirt.
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Rakeesh
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*shrug* It seems you missed the lengthy cultural explanations contained in the story for why that request *wasn't* as simple as 'put some clothes on'. One of the key points of the story was that, hey, two people from radically different cultures separated by, what was it, a millenia?, have a long bridge to build to connect.
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Synesthesia
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I understood that. But she still annoyed me.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
I understood that. But she still annoyed me.

She should, she's not from your time period.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
a millenia?

A millennium. Several millennia.
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millernumber1
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Aw, I loved Katerina. I thought OSC did a great job of capturing the cultural, religious, and personal differences that made their interactions so tense and awkward, while still showing the growth there towards their eventual love. Plus, it showed the good and bad of both cultures, instead of trying to have one "win" over the other.
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Hobbes
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quote:
Originally posted by Synesthesia:
I understood that. But she still annoyed me.

Most romances involve two people who have some obstacles to overcome to get together. If they don't get together it's not a romance, if they don't have obstacles it's not a story ("Hey, wanna get married?" "Sure!" "The End"). A lot of writers (TV/Movies) are either too dumb to think of real, meaningful obstacles or think the audience is too dumb to understand them. This results in movies like Love Happens, which is a sad, sad thing. It makes it easy to miss when a good writer has real obstacles resulting from legitimate human characters rather than just another crow-bar-ed in problem that no two rational people would ever let keep them from romance.

[ETA: Basically, when enough cheap tricks have been played on you, a good one can feel phony.]

Hobbes [Smile]

[ May 07, 2013, 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]

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millernumber1
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Well put! I still think that Enchantment is a very good one.
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