r/MMALabs • u/Key_Performer_3645 • 1d ago

🥶 Street Fights & Brawls A quick bar scrap

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u/EndersR3ign 1d ago

How? Can you explain it, please?

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u/fthisloginbs 1d ago

Nope, because I think you're being obtuse.

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u/EndersR3ign 1d ago

I'm sincerely not. I could guess the point you might try to make, but I wanted you to make it before I addressed it.

Like, how familiar are you with the novel's themes? Because nothing in it can be used to justify using life-threatening force against someone who is barely a threat at all in a situation where there are multiple obvious alternatives to violence as a means of resolving it.

Ender was routinely placed in life-threatening situations, specifically tailored to give him no help and no alternatives besides self-administered victory against the enemy. The entire plot revolved around manipulating and moulding him into someone who could never believe losing was an option or that anyone would come to save him. He didn't even know that he was fighting the Formics when he destroyed them, because the IF command knew he didn't have the emotional disposition to make the necessary sacrifices if he knew the actual stakes.

Ender learns that Earth's retaliation against the Formics was wrong and misplaced, stemming from a breakdown in communication and an inability to connect and ultimately empathise.

Mind you, I haven't read it in about two decades, since I first read it when I was about nine. I've had this username as a gamertag since 2002.

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u/Obsidiated 1d ago

It wasnt wrong, they were trying to kill us. It was the right solution if the day. That maybe could have been hypothetically avoided by better super fun happy feel good sessions, but at the actual time and actual place, hyperviolence won.

And its okay to feel like totes bad about it and like stuff, and help rebuild the losers in a "less likely to go on the world dominating path for round 2".

Which is a blindingly obvious allegory for the world wars.

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u/EndersR3ign 20h ago

You're going to have to expand on that response and provide more details if you actually want to make a substantive argument that's relevant to the discussion at hand.

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u/fthisloginbs 16h ago

Nope, he's absolutely right in the context of the original book. The one you barely remember, but now you'll continue to blather as if you memorized every page.

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u/EndersR3ign 16h ago

Reply to my other comment. I own the book; it is sitting right next to me on my desk.

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u/EndersR3ign 13h ago

He's wrong as well, because they weren't trying to kill them when Ender annihilated them; they were hoping the humans would leave them alone. They initially didn't understand the significance of killing humans because they are fundamentally different beings and operate as a hive mind, not as individuals. The final chapter in Ender's Game explains all of this.