MoR Harry vs Ender

Since the Enders Game film is coming out (and also because there's no safety in a Who Would Win Fanfiction Thread), I figured why not:

Since this is fan fiction, Ender's opponent is Harry Evans-Verres from Methods of Rationality.

• Who would win in a fist-fight?
• Who would win in a philosophical debate?
• Who would win if they had to take over each others' roles? Harry in Battle School, and Ender in Hogwarts, given a rudimentary understanding of that world's physics and told to accomplish things?

edited 1st Jan '14 10:46:21 AM by FOFD

Neither can really succeed well in the other's world. Ender has been shaped since before birth to be the most ruthless killer and brilliant general the world has ever seen. MOR!Harry has been raised to be genius pacifist, and his world very fortunately tones even the limited violence of the Harry Potter universe down to accommodate this (canon!Quirrel/Voldemort would easily kill MOR!Harry during one of their many private meetings).

Ender gets expelled, and possibly even Azkaban'd for murder. MOR!Draco appears to be standard issue and becomes MOR!Harry's rival due to Harry acting differently, Ender won't take anything like that approach and if Draco takes his canon approach, he'll act threatening and have a broken neck and a crushed scrotum before the train reaches Hogwarts, especially if he's dumb enough to make any physical threats via Crabbe and Goyle and thus turn it into a triple homicide. Ender is basically a slightly more socially capable version of Sosuke Sagara when it comes to solving problems with extreme violence. The only reason he survived this was because Battle School was so harsh to start with and the teachers covered it up because they wanted a murderous general (and were the ones throwing lethal threats at him in the first place). Even if Draco survives Snape might make Ender's hit list if he acts too hostile.

MOR!Harry is smart enough to manage Ender's successes but the lack of ruthlessness will work against him, and sometimes even the rationality. For example having figured out that The Game is rigged to be unwinnable, Harry will rationally quit playing, rather than break The Game by winning anyway the way Ender did, and will fail to learn the important lessons Ender gains there. He'll excel at the non-lethal battles but might well figure out that he's controlling real people long before Ender did, have a BSOD at a critical moment, and/or fail to sacrifice his own troops when needed. He also will have trouble using his friends to death (Ender pretty much broke Petra). I think that Bean is more likely to wind up the ultimate leader and Harry becomes a supportive part of Bean's jeesh instead of the other way around.

Harry also might just get killed outright since he'll fail to kill potentially lethal threats like Bonzo. He's protected from that in the MOR world, but in the Enderverse the teachers are actively trying to throw lethal threats at Ender in order to shape him into a weapon so Harry won't have a friendly nemesis who wants to train him, instead he'll have cruel and evil kids who want him dead and have been trained in methods of making that happen.

Ultimately both of them are extremely optimized for their own specific environments, and will suffer a serious loss of performance in any other.

"Who would win" questions bore me, so I'm going to talk about themes instead. Judging from plot structure, these are very similar stories: a bright child moves into an institution woefully unready for their intelligence. They then make friends of nearly the same intellectual caliber but lacking a certain essential spark; form unlikely alliances; and proceed to thoroughly upend their adopted culture. Don't be fooled, though. The plot's about the least important part of both works.

Let's start with Ender's Game. The dust jacket of my 1994 edition rhapsodized about how accurately the book portrayed bright children; objectively speaking, this is a dirty lie. As marketing, however, it's brilliant. The book's aimed squarely at those same children and teenagers — if it had been written ten years later, it would have been called YA — and it's structured around a question likely to be on a lot of their minds: "why's everybody picking on me?"

The correct answer, nine times out of ten, is "because you've got the socialization of a freshly hatched lungfish". But that doesn't sell books. Ender's Game goes for "because you're smarter and more morally pure", a much more palatable option. It then proceeds to force its hapless protagonist kicking and screaming through a sci-fi monomyth that any fourteen-year-old boy would give a kidney to experience, carefully justifying everything from adolescent sulkiness through murder and genocide along the way.

But that's okay. It's not his fault.

Just like it's not yours.

Now, Methods is just as much a wish-fulfillment story. The dialogue isn't as tightly written, and the characters, while arguably deeper, aren't as well drawn. But it's built around fulfilling an adult hope, not assuaging an adolescent anxiety, and that makes all the difference.

edited 31st Oct '13 2:34:03 PM by Nornagest

Ender succeeds because he's converted into a tiny sociopath as this is "necessary" for a serious examination of certain subjects the author wishes to address.

MoR Harry succeeds because the author is attempting to prove the validity of their belief system which they have projected onto Harry.

If you swap places, presumably the authorial intent that makes both of them successes will remain untouched.

edited 31st Oct '13 7:47:45 AM by Night

Why would they fight? That's the question I would ask.

I think your assessment of Ender's Game's themes are a little to biased to be trustworthy.

edited 31st Oct '13 11:24:38 AM by CDRW

This isn't a formal book review. I'm optimizing for entertaining reading, not for rigor.

But if you do want a formal review that covers this territory, I'm not the first person to write about this.

edited 31st Oct '13 2:33:16 PM by Nornagest

I don't know. -shrug- I never said they were fighting, I thought that would be boring.

Trick question they are both Hitler.

I'd like to see how either of them handle Greed Island.

Ender wins, hands down. In the original work, Ender succeeds not because of his ruthlessness (although that is what the adults see in him) but because of his ability to form and maintain alliances and earn the loyalty of his troops. He is ruthless in battle, but it's his leadership skills that puts him over the top. Ender is in a situation where you cannot win on your own (that's the whole point of the Bean character, who is arguably more intelligent and just as ruthless as he is, but lacks the ability to inspire others). Ender will rise to the top of any para-military hierarchy he finds himself in, and MOR Hogwarts wouldnt present any special challenge in that regard. Ender wont invent new forms of magic, but he would unite Magical England to fight any force that threatened it. The Death Eaters wouldnt know what hit them.

MOR Harry, on the other hand, has the interpersonal skills of an internet gaming nerd (not a jab at the work- this is very much by design of the author- part of the point of this character is his journey dealing with this). Hence, while Harry may be tactically brilliant and show a lot of talent in terms of understanding how military technology works- he may even invent some new super-weapons- no one is going to give him command of anything. Bean ends up in charge, and maybe he's enough to destroy the Buggers and maybe he isnt, but Harry wouldnt end up having much influence on that outcome one way or another.

Now, I could see Harry swapping places with Peter in some of the sequels and coming out on top that way- his development arc is broadly similar to Peter's in many ways, with Valentine playing the role of Hermione.

That is exactly what I thought about Harry in Mo R even before this thread. Mo R Harry is more like Peter then Ender.

Yet Mo R lacks Peter's killer instinct too. Hermione's death is his fault. Instead of listening to Dumbledore and realizing that he should let the Slytherins win in meaningless confrontations he made himself and his friends a threat before he had either the power or ruthlessness to back it up. Despite the his "lesson" Harry still has not learned how to lose or why it might be worth losing.

Heck, I learned that lesson in about as dramatic a way as possible. In 7th grade a bully (about 60lbs heavier and 4" taller, I was always the smallest kid in my grade) decided to make me a target. Instead of cowering, I knocked him down. The bully's response was to ambush me when no one was around and try to kill me. Literally. He grabbed me, dragged me over to two flights of concrete stairs and threw me down them backwards, head first. All in a deliberate and calculating manner. It was obvious he had planned this so as to inflict a deadly or crippling wound that provided plausible deniability. (Sidenote, your life really does flash before your eyes when you are about to die). It was only through the grace of God that I caught the railing as I was falling, and so ended with a bruised back instead of a busted head.

I soon discovered that the police and the teachers were not going to protect me. Police said: "No witnesses" while the teachers had already suspended me instead of the bully the last time he attacked me (while I was naked in the shower - yeah those Ender scenes actually gave me some bad flashbacks in the movie theater. I've always hated public showers, people think because I'm modest, in reality I'm paranoid about being attacked- happened several times in school.) The teachers hated me because I read during class. My parents seemed helpless to do anything, so I realized I would have to do something myself.

So I tried to understand his perspective: I realized that the bully was bigger then me and would certainly win a fair fight. I only managed to knock him down the first time because of surprise, and hadn't even really injured him. The problem was that he was a coward and afraid of getting hurt, since he knew I'd fight. However, by knocking him down he had lost some of his aura of invincibility, so he felt he had to get rid of me to re-establish his authority.

Hence my plan:

1. Dramatic public challenge, given to him at lunch in front as many other kids as possible. Fight to be held off school grounds immediately after school.
2. This guaranteed a big crowds of kids who wanted to watch. Therefor he wouldn't be able to kill me.
3. Get beat up and lose the fight. Try to get a few licks in so as to make him want to avoid fights in the future, but not enough to encourage revenge.

My plan worked perfectly, and after that he never bothered me again.

So I completely understood what Dumbledore was trying to tell Harry. But Mo R Harry is too arrogant and sheltered to understand. He doesn't even understand how sheltered he is, so he has no survival instincts. Canon Harry would never have made these mistakes, because he knew what it was like to be weak, with a stronger enemy that you can't escape (his cousin Dursley). You have to find a way to appease the enemy without becoming a toady that he thinks he can order around at will. That means knowing when to fight, and when to lose.

It might not really matter, but what stage of Ender's life are we referring to?

I don't mean, "Oh, in the later books he's an old pacifist who eventually pulls an Obi Wan," or whatever. Battle school Ender is neither as exhausted nor as brutal as the Xenocide.

edited 31st Dec '13 6:50:31 PM by Rem

He did kill at least two people with his bare hands before he could shave though. That smacks of a certain kind of brutality.

Murdered the crap out of them, he did. I don't remember how he killed that Stilson boy, but he beat Bonzo bloody with nothing but the towel around his buttocks.

Harry will rationally quit playing, rather than break The Game by winning anyway the way Ender did

His win at any cost dark side might go for it.

I think Bean tried that in Ender's Shadow. The teachers weren't amused.

@Sackett: That is a fascinating story. I'm glad it worked out for you. What was the opinion of the other students regarding what happened?

It might be amusing to imagine Ender and Harry together in the same situation. I dont think it matters which one it is. I think Ender would stay Ender, but Harry would end up like Bean- Enders smartest follower. Harry isnt dark enough to go full Peter on Ender, which is the only cannon method of dominating him. I'd like to see Ender Wiggins as a general in Professor Quirril's battle games.

There's another face of for you: Quirril vs. Colonel Graff. Whose students are more successful?

Other students seemed to think I'd gotten my ass kicked, but that I was obviously crazy so better not to mess with me. So everyone left me alone, which is what I wanted.

It was pretty much the pattern. Since I was the smallest in my grade, every time we moved I'd have to get into at least one fight before people learned not to try and bully me. Never had any one try to kill me before this time though. Probably because no one was ever truly scared of me before Chris.