History Headscratchers / EndersGame

[[spoiler:Not All-Seeing Government]]

[[spoiler:Video Cruelty Non-Potential]]

* What happened to Wu? If you don't remember (you probably don't because she was mentioned once), in ''Ender's Shadow'', it's revealed that Bean is the one who makes up Ender's army, and he decides to put a girl, Wu in there, saying that she was brilliant in school and great in the Battle Room, but when she was put up to be a toon leader, she stopped playing and put herself up for trading (we never find out why). But the rest of the book (and ''Ender's Game'') makes it clear that there aren't any girls in his army. Seems like TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot to me.

** I may need to rescind the question as possibly not answerable in a way that's satisfying. As in-universe explanations go, I guess "Ender is a messiah-like genius at almost everything but not working out things by talking to people" is an acceptable explanation, though I do think it's problematic that it's never explicitly explained that way, especially considering that we're repeatedly told how vast his capacity for understanding people is. At it stands, it felt to me like Card was insisting that communication just plain doesn't work. That's fine when you're taking about a fictional war with an alien species you made up, because then as the author you pretty much get to decide whether peaceful communication will be an option. When you're talking about dealing with bullies in school, though, that absolutely flies in the face of real world logic, because school bullies are people and also children and frankly, the politics of middle school are not literally impossible. You might think so when you're a kid, but that's because you're a kid, not because no possible amount of social intelligence, maturity, or strategic thinking could ever make a loser into homecoming queen. The contradictions drove me up the wall while I was reading this book: Ender is brilliant, the Wiggin children are smarter than most college professors by age 10, Ender can just watch a kid playing a video game for a half hour to understand all the strategy involved so completely that he knows he doesn't need to play it, even when many of the other child-geniuses play every day... but at the same time, Ender apparently cannot be expected to have come up with some proactive strategy for dealing with Bonzo before the attack he was warned of, Ender is powerless to prevent the student body from hating him for being so awesome at everything, Ender had no way of knowing Stilson wasn't actually trying to kill him, etc. It's frustrating to hear the definition of words twisted around so assertions like "everyone hates him because he's great at everything" almost seem plausible.

For why this happens, I think one point of the book is that just because Ender understands his enemy doesn't mean he can convince them. As he puts it himself: "At the moment I kill my enemy, I also love them." We see this demonstrated just before he fights Bonzo when Dink tells them to stop because otherwise Earth's fleet won't have a commander, and Ender thinks to himself that all Dink's done is make Bonzo hate Ender more, because: "That's what he hates the most about me, that it means I'm important and he's not." This ties into Ender's campaign against the Formics, where he tries to learn all he can about them even though all this information will be used to destroy them. Until the war is over, neither side can understand each other and make peace. I think that's why Graff wanted the Bonzo-Ender fight to occur, because he wanted Ender to learn to use his empathy as a weapon and discourage him from seeking out a peaceful solution, since Graff is certain there is none to find.

Ender's problems weren't just with authority figures -- he was bullied by his ground-school classmates before he left Earth and then bullied by his classmates generally at Battle School(particularly right after he's made commander of his own team, it's mentioned that most of the students despise him and throw things at him in the hall.) Bonzo also apparently has a lot of students on his side, just like Stilson had buddies who helped him attack Ender (see the scene where his practice group is attacked in the battle room). People hating Ender routinely ends in horrible violence (Stilson, Bonzo, the zero-gravity fight scene) but we almost never see Ender applying any of his genius to improve his PR. The one time we DO see him attempt to non-violently resolve a situation with a bully, it works so awesomely that it's hard to claim that he couldn't get along with people if he exerted himself. Bonzo is probably the worst example, because Bonzo makes it incredibly clear that he's likely to attack Ender well in advance, but we actually see Ender ''taunting'' Bonzo on more than one occasion prior to the attack (berating his intelligence and ability as a commander even when he's proven himself superior so many times that he's basically just rubbing it in). Stilson's case is less clear since we don't get to see Ender and Stilson interact before the attack, but it's stated that only the monitor kept Stilson from attacking Ender before, so we can assume their history is not pleasant.
My question, ultimately, is why? If the author is content with making Ender the best at everything he touches in the manner of a Chosen One/Messiah figure, why does that abruptly stop before "making people not want to beat me up and murder me"? That would be an odd choice on Card's part even if he'd said "Ender is amazing at all things except having social skills", but Card makes it even more ridiculous by insisting that Ender is brilliant because he understands people so well and has such incredible empathy. It's like he's saying absolutely brilliant people skills will just make people want to kill you, so you better start working on your left hook.

Ender's problems weren't just with authority figures -- he was bullied by his ground-school classmates before he left Earth and then bullied by his classmates generally at Battle School(particularly right after he's made commander of his own team, it's mentioned that most of the students despise him and throw things at him in the hall.) Bonzo also apparently has a lot of students on his side, just like Stilson had buddies who helped him attack Ender (see the scene where his practice group is attacked in the battle room). People hating Ender routinely ends in horrible violence (Stilson, Bonzo, the zero-gravity fight scene) but we almost never see Ender applying any of his genius to improve his PR. The one time we DO see him attempt to non-violently resolve a situation with a bully, it works so awesomely that it's hard to claim that he couldn't get along with people if he exerted himself. Bonzo is probably the worst example, because Bonzo makes it incredibly clear that he's likely to attack Ender well in advance, but we actually see Ender ''taunting'' Bonzo on more than one occasion prior to the attack (berating his intelligence and ability as a commander even when he's proven himself superior so many times that he's basically just rubbing it in). Stilson's case is less clear since we don't get to see Ender and Stilson interact before the attack, but it's stated that only the monitor kept Stilson from attacking Ender before, so we can assume their history is not pleasant.//

Additionally, it makes plenty sense for Ender to value his career over submitting to Bonzo. Remember, he ''wanted'' to be in charge of the fleet because he was certain humanity's existence was on the line. Bonzo's idea of submission was "lose a few battles once in a while", and Ender didn't want to lose any because it'd risk his chances of becoming admiral. Placing a bully over everyone else's survival is an unreasonable option. As for why he didn't prepare for Bonzo when he had warning, it's because he was in denial about it and hoped the teachers' might intervene if it was this potentially deadly. [[SarcasmMode If they don't intervene, then there's no threat of death, is there]]?

*** I'm not saying he didn't use tactics in fights, or that he killed intentionally. I'm saying that since Ender is supposed to have a gift for understanding how other people think, it's difficult to believe he couldn't have used ''social tactics'' to prevent himself from endlessly landing in deadly fight after deadly fight. For me, it was hard to believe Ender had this amazing gift of empathy and incredible intelligence when at home he hadn't found a way to deal with Peter, at ground school he thought it was necessary to put a 7-year-old in the hospital to avoid being picked on by other seven-year-olds in the future, and at Battle School, when he has ample warning that Bonzo had it in for him, he neither backed down, nor came up with an effective plan to deal with it. Lastly, considering how deeply horrified Ender is at the outcome of the fight with Bonzo (even without knowing he's dead) and how much he's supposed to love his enemies, I'm not sure it makes sense to claim that Ender valued his career as a future-commander so much that just submitting to Bonzo was out of the question when it might have prevented all of that.

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** First, each time he killed them it was an accident. What he was ''intending'' to do was demoralize them and their goons from ever attacking him again. But each time he accidentally smashed their nose into their brain. Being a tactical expert still can't stop a too-hard stamp to the face. Second, only one of them was a school bully. The other was 'definitely'' out to kill him. Third, Ender DID use tactics in both fights, like covering himself in soap or attacking spots they didn't expect him to aim for. Fourth, the only way to have had Bonzo treat Ender kindly and not be out for his blood would have been to submit to his command and not perform well. As that runs counter to his goal to be the best commander, it's not an option. Bonzo can't stand a "newbie" doing so well and humiliating him each time their armies fight. As the two-on-one battle and the final assault on the Formic homeworld show, there are some situations where you ''can't'' just run and wait for a better outcome. Sometimes all you can do is charge and fight the absolute best you can.

** Each time he killed them it was an accident. What he was ''intending'' to do was demoralize them and their goons from ever attacking him again. But each time he accidentally smashed their nose into their brain. Being a tactical expert still can't stop a too-hard stamp to the face.

* If Ender is supposed be specifically one of the greatest tactical geniuses humanity has ever seen, why is he never able to deal with schoolyard bullies without literally killing them? I understand he's small and his teachers are trying to undermine him socially for their own evil purposes, but both of those things should be pretty minor compared to the fact that he's supposed have this great gift that lets him understand people completely and use this knowledge to defeat them. It seems like the book is saying World's Greatest Tactician and Greatest Empathizer of All Time still can't figure out how to game the social politics of high school.

The ages of the characters are weird, but Virlomi is special in that way. Considering all her opponents are boys barely starting puberty, she could win half her battles just by jiggling [which is partially how she beat Alai.]

* In the sequel, why is it that the people of Lusitania have a culture practically identical to modern-day Portugal despite living 3000 years in the future? Even their language hasn't changed.
** It could be a kind of ReplacementGoldfish homeworld. That, or WriteWhatYouKnow.
** No faster than light travel. Yeah, 3000 real-time years have passed, but subjectively, how long did it take to get there?
** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in ''Shadow of the Giant''; the colony ships were deliberately made monocultural as an attempt to encourage diversity in human culture.
** It's also implied that humans have gone and colonized an assload of worlds in the three milennia prior to the sequels, allowing for a staggering array of very specific diversities. Thus, Lusitania was for people who just happened to enjoy the 20th-century Brazilian Catholic lifestyle.
** Plus they were Brasilian.
** Part of the reason is because they have very strict guidelines about what they can do because they're on a planet with the only known sentient life in the Galaxy other than the (as far as they know) extinct Buggers. The rules are to prevent cultural contamination or affecting their development as an intelligent species. They're only allowed to use a certain area of land and have to keep a small population. They can't build large buildings or use any overt displays of technology. The rules they have to live by keep their way of life pretty simple (although that doesn't explain the language).
*** The language is TranslationConvention - Evolved!Portuguese (keeping subjectivity in mind) translated to Modern!Portuguese to allow for {{Bilingual Bonus}}es. /FanWank.
**** WordOfGod explicitly mentions TranslationConvention in the introduction to ''Speaker for the Dead.''

* Did no one else have a problem with the "Think it and it appears" plot point in one of the later books (it's been too long to remember which one)? That seemed like an AssPull to me at the time.
** Philotic physics was a bit of [[AppliedPhlebotinum Applied Phlebotinum]] that fit well with the already-established canon. In the Enderverse, Philotes are the smallest fundamental building block as well as the physical (metaphysical?) expressions of will. The idea is not "Think and it appears", it's "Find your way to the unplace where philotes come from, and any pattern real or imagined will be adopted and replicated by the infinite unassigned philotes floating around Outside". For instance, no one could even go Outside in the first place before a philote that controlled a powerful enough mental system (Jane) could adopt the complex patterns of people and ships into her own philotic being. Likewise, Ela couldn't simply think "I need an organism that will perform functions necessary to the Lusitanian flora and fauna without killing humans", she had to plot out the bacteria's physical structure exactly and hold it perfectly in her mind for the philotes to assume that form.
** LampshadeHanging Quara wonders the same thing: "This whole solution seems [[AssPull awfully miraculous]] to me." (So, in short: yes, we did, and I think we were supposed to.)
** As Valentine puts it: "It would be too idiotically convenient if the universe could be manipulated this way". It was a rather anti-climactic way to end the two major conflicts, even if it did introduce new problems.
** [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann Spiral Energy.]] Oh, and Ender is a Time Lord.
* Why does ''Children of the Mind'' end exactly at the point when it was finally getting interesting? What's the thought process? "Well, Ender's obnoxious adopted family who don't do a goddamned thing but argue about stupid shit are finally shutting up so we can meet the potentially fascinating aliens and find out the answers to several ongoing mysteries. I think we're done here."
** I wrote the exact same thing in TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot. And if the ''Shadow'' series has taught us anything, it's that Card can write a series without Ender. Maybe now that the ''Shadow'' series is done he'll finally get back to it, though I'm worried about the quality.
*** According to Wikipedia, the next shadow book "Shadows in Flight" will take place after ''Children of the Mind'', with Ender's and Bean's children meeting up for the first time; that is, apparently Bean's children pulled the same trick Ender and Valentine did, skipping 3000 years (plus the few years for the sequels to play out) and showing up after ''Children of the Mind'' ended.
** Also, one way of looking at it: The story is about Ender. Ender just died. Story ends.
*** Actually, no. He didn't die.
*** Depends on your definition of "death". His soul survived and fled to another body, true, but Ender's body died and his personality, thoughts, memories, etc. vanished along with it. For all intents and purposes, Ender's dead.

* In ''SpeakerForTheDead'', it's revealed that Pipo and his son were killed by the piggies because the piggies thought they were helping them become father trees, which is granted after they do something significant. As far as I remember, in both cases, the xenologers discovered the truth behind the life cycles of the piggies moments before their deaths, and the xenologers let the piggies vivisect them because they didn't want to "kill" the piggies they were friends with. But if this happened right after Pipo and Libo had (independently) discovered that "killing" the piggies meant them moving on to their third stage in life, why would they refuse to kill the piggies, sacrificing themselves instead? From a logical standpoint, it makes perfect sense to want to help the piggies, since it would let them reach their final stage of their life. But they refused to shed blood, instead letting themselves die, robbing the piggies of becoming trees and causing Libo (in the case of Pipo) and Novinha (in both cases) to be horribly crushed by despair. Sure, cutting open their friends would have felt like a bad thing, but they would have known that they weren't killing them, and dying and hurting the people who really love you seems like a much worse price to pay (sorry if that was kind of long winded and convoluted, I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it all).
** ''Cutting open their friends would have felt like a bad thing'', you are trying to assign a logical reason to an emotional decision: it's easier for them to die than to kill someone.
** Also one of the points of the whole series was how disastrous results arise when people do not allow themselves to think in terms of a different context. Pipo and Libo made their choices based on their context as human beings and their Catholic upbringing. They weren't able to let go of a moral compass in their action despite the fact that it was inapplicable to the piggies. This is in contrast to Ender, who was raised to consider the perspective of another living being.
*** Ender later joined the Catholic Church on Lusitania and it could be revealed that he considers that moment especially hard to bear, having killed [[spoiler: both Stilson and Bonzo]] unknown to him at the time of their deaths, finding out about it later after the Third Formic War. He was a reviled monster for killing off an entire species, countless military personnel in the Third Formic War, and two kids from his childhood. Purposefully killing a sentient being, even without a religious background, would be difficult, especially coming from that background.
**** I'm sorry, but having read this series several times, I think it's ridiculous how all problems could have been solved just by asking how the piggies reproduce. How hard is it to say, "I'm sorry, piggies, but we cannot turn into trees, please do not cut us"? Problem solved. It's incredibly dippy how that plot point was presented. Neither of these two men could say, "We don't turn into trues, do not kill us?" It's not like the Piggies cracked them over the head with a rock either. They could have gotten out of this. It's contrived. It seemed to have been written this way to make Ender come from the stars and save everyone.
***** Maybe it was. But the {{Watsonian}} reason was the AlienNonInterferenceClause put in place to prevent cultural contamination. As it happens, your exact complaint is echoed by an off-planet xenologer, who sends a snippy e-mail to Libo about how stupid it is that he (Libo) can't explain yet how piggies make babies. Libo responds, point blank, "''We're not '''allowed''' to ask. There is a '''law'''.''" Ridiculously obstructive? Absolutely, and nobody denies it; OSC even lampshades it in the very same e-mail. But you asked about the reason, and there it is.

* The fact that no one figured out the piggies secret and a way to get the piggies to live in peace with each other and with humans for more than 100 years before Ender set foot on their planet reeks of MightyWhitey. I mean, come on, no one else in the entire colony was remotely curious about the Descolada or the lack of biodiversity or the piggies, even after they killed two men who were supposed to be ambassadors to their tribe? It seemed like a problem that no one had applied logic to before Ender got there, with the UnfortunateImplication being that the Brazilian-cultured colonists were being too emotional and not rational enough to examine their world correctly, but Ender with his superior American/White/Nordic culture was able to save the day with his rational prowess and ability to make more emotionally detached decisions, like when he "killed" Mandachuva. Also, why didn't anyone ever think of giving the piggies a written agreement to sign before?
** You need to remember the strict rules placed on them: only observe, do not interfere. They couldn't give them a written agreement because they weren't allowed to introduce writing. And they were extremely curious about the Descolada, seeing as it was a plague on the entire village that killed hundreds of colonists. But the fact that it was a plague focused their curiosity on the curing aspect, not the biological function aspect. They also theorized the lack of biodiversity was caused by the descolada causing a genetic bottleneck. The only reason their theories moved forward after Ender's arrival was because his mindset was based on breaking the rules, while their Catholic culture places a huge taboo on breaking the rules.
*** Those are all perfectly good in-text reasons, but the original troper was critiquing author choices, not character choices. The author controls the text; this is fiction, he makes the decisions of how things are handled. And, yeah, with that in mind, the whole idea that these Brazillian people can't manage in 100 years what a white guy can in only a few reeks of MightyWhitey and UnfortunateImplications. Yeah, there are limitations on what the Lusitanian colonists are allowed to do, but the author set those limitations on them to give Ender the win, and at the end of the day it's still a white guy landing on soil owned by non-white people to show them how their world works, because they apparently couldn't figure it out due to rules they were 'too stupid and emotional' not to question.
**** I think you're trying too hard. Remember that the presumably white offworld xenologers are doing even worse than the Lusitanians before Ender gets there. Ela mentions outright in ''Speaker'' that she's not allowed to get any biological samples from the pequeninos, or even from outside the fence, and the one biologist who actually probably could have figured it out before Ender (Novinha) shut down her inquiry (and her lover's and daughter's inquiries) for understandable emotional reasons. And given that the other major heroes of the Shadow series are the Afro-Greek Bean and the Armenian woman Petra, and most authors wouldn't even bother to specify that the entire planet's human population is black Brazilian...