• UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Sounds like Starship Troopers and the Ender series. :disgost:

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Ender's Game has a lot of problems but at least the war in that one is shown to be the result of a misunderstanding, and it repeatedly emphasizes that genociding the bugs was in fact Very Bad

      Starship Troopers can fuck right off though

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Ender’s Game has a lot of problems but at least the war in that one is shown to be the result of a misunderstanding, and it repeatedly emphasizes that genociding the bugs was in fact Very Bad

        The chuddiest relative I know completely missed all of that and just saw Ender as some nonpolitical G!mer ubermensch that eventually conquers human civilization with Space :reddit-logo:

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Another one for the "media chuds completely missed the point of" pile

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I don't remember. It's all a blur now, but I remember the "and all the Epic G!mers formed a special oligarchy that was totally democratic and enlightened because they were smarter than the normies and knew what was best for them" and it made the chuds I knew around me (figuratively only, I hope) jerk off furiously.

          • RION [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Yeah Peter ends up as a big shot leader on earth once the coalition govt collapses

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Enlightened despots with eugenics implications as the basis for their rule never, ever go wrong, do they? :lmayo:

        • duderium [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Redsails has a good take (IMO) on Ender’s Game that basically agrees with your chud relative:

          https://redsails.org/creating-the-innocent-killer/

          Also, there are characters named Mazer Rackham, Bonzo Madrid, and, of course, Ender Wiggin.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The Speaker for the Dead series is pretty wacky at times, but the throughline of the first book is Ender seeking redemption for destroying the Formic homeworld by finding a planet to place the last remaining queen - simultaneously he comes into contact with a pre-industrial alien species, and by helping people come to understand them, he prevents a similar genocide from happening.

        I fukken love that book and its sequels, even though Card is :yikes:

        • Parzivus [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Speaker for the Dead and it's sequel are probably my favorite depictions of alien life. Like, truly different though patterns and cultures without just being meaninglessly evil.

        • FourteenEyes [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          There was, though, a famously non-charitable reading of it as Hitler apologia, since Space Hitler (Ender Wiggin) goes to a Portuguese-speaking colony to prove that his genocide was just a misunderstanding and he's just a regular guy who also happens to be a genius at interspecies diplomacy. I think it was at least a little tongue-in-cheek, seeing as Card has perfectly plausible mundane explanations for those influences (missionary work in Brazil, for instance).

          Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged. As far as I can tell it's been purged from the written record. Can't find it anywhere.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged.

            :surprised-pika:

      • ButtBidet [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Wait, I thought that the original Starship Troopers was anti imperialist???

          • ButtBidet [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Ohhh! Damn I would never survive a sci-fi struggle session.

            • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              That's what's so bizarre about the contemporary Starship Troopers content, is it's a fascist's re-imagining of an anti-fascist's re-imagining of a fascist's setting.

              Real simulacra hours, who up?

              • UlyssesT [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                The Japanese CGI movie was a blue curtain extravaganza. :pathetic:

          • Beaver [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Verhoven’s film is unironically better than the book, both as a piece of entertainment, and for having a better message.

        • FourteenEyes [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          In the book it opens with them doing space colonialism with the space South Vietnamese aliens, in their cool robot suits that can shoot out nukes like they're passing out Halloween candy. Very :so-true:

          Verhoeven found the book so depressing he literally threw it in the trash and decided to direct it as a satire of the source material