In the 100 Worlds
So If you follow me on social media, you probably noticed that I’m currently OBSESSED with all things related to the Ender universe.
I’d forgotten my earphones on the ride up to Michigan last week and decided to look through some books I’d downloaded a while back. I had Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead downloaded, but hadn’t made a lot of progress with them for whatever reason.
I was trying to go in canon order, so chucked my progress with Speaker for the Dead and went back to read Ender’s Shadow…
Can I just say I LOVE it WAY more than Ender’s Game?
Ender is the boo and all (age aside…*whistles) but I prefer Bean as the protagonist personally because he’s a bit more cold emotionally.
I can’t really explain that further without giving plot points away, but yeah.
I also realized that I think intelligence is very attractive.
Not the kind of intelligence where you can learn to be smart, but the kind that is innate.
Looking back to the people I’ve been in relationships with (or have had a pretty substantial respect/affection for), that was one thing they all had in common. While most were learn-ed, it was more their capacity for higher thought and awareness that got me into them.
Like Ender and Bean had (age aside… *whistles)
Also I agree with Anne of Green Gables in that she wanted an intelligent dude who COULD be wicked, but chose not to be.
Like a SUUUPER smart/wise beyond their years guy, who was still kind and used their powers for good and is aesthetically pleasing would be a dangerous person for me to be around, lol…
These are my ovaries…and so on and so forth.
Back to the Ender’s universe though, like I did with Ender’s Game, here are my favorite quotes from the companion book Ender’s Shadow :
“One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.”
“Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.”
“I’m not stupid!” In Bean’s experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.”
“Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?”
“The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.”
“People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why do you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don’t think they have any, so they don’t mind giving it up.”
“…you seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time.”
“a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.”
“I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.”
“Calm down, Sister Carlotta. We’ll consider what you’ve told us. We won’t be foolish.” “You’ve already been foolish. I have no high expectations for you now.”
“What you don’t seem to understand is, sometimes you have to just tell people the truth and ask them to do the thing you want, instead of trying to trick them into it.”
“If you don’t want to believe me, think what you want. My talking isn’t going to make you stupider than you already are.”
