/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22090372]

Aight so why did Orson Scott Card have his life ruined and career demolished (he was a faggot self described “neoconservative” anyway so not a tragedy or anything) while Frank Herbert was intensely homophobic in his personal views and is still beloved? There’s obviously the gay pedophile Baron Harkonnen as the example of a totally morally corrupted tyrannical homosexual but in God Emperor of Dune there’s an entire chapter explicitly equating homosexuality with decadent perversion. It causes Duncan Idaho to fly into a murderous rage after he spots two lesbians kissing. In his personal correspondence he was homophobic as well up to and including theorizing that homosexuality was a symptom of or related to bureaucracy. He believed the two were linked. GE of dune isn’t even old. It was released in 1981

So like… why do leftoids love this series so much? Herbert would be posting troonjaks if he was alive today.

[Anonymous No.22090489]

>>22090372
That's a damned good question. Short answer, I don't know.
I tend to excuse his issues as good faith ignorance, and I do sincerely believe he'd have handled things differently with more information available to him, and that Uncle Vlad was not so much homosexual as decadent, revelling more in the pleasure of violating taboo and exercising power over the vulnerable, but that's at least fifty percent cope on my part. However, it is in Leto's voice that we read Herbert's bizarre and uninformed opinion on why gay men are bad but lesbians are hot and just going through a phase, and while Leto had more raw data to process than any human could, he lacked context, being not only virginal but prepubescent, a true Puer Eternal, embodying The Fool for all his seeming sophistication.
But I think it's simpler than that. Card made statements in his narrative, and Herbert asked questions in his inner monologues. Card spewed hate to appease the leaders of his cult, while Herbert offered up polished musings on a topic he knew was important and genuinely wanted to understand. There's a dismissiveness, a curt closing-off of any validity to dissent, in Card's just -so style of saying all villains are gays and all gays are villains and that everybody exists to pay tithes and producer tithe-paying producers of tithe-paying producers of.... etc etc etc. Meanwhile Herbert shared his thoughts in earnest, in a way that didn't seem immediately hostile to discussion and argument. I'm afraid the LDS will send the IRS for me if I criticize Card's shitty fantasy novels, but if Herbert hadn't died mere months after my birth, I'm positive I could have had a conversation with him on this, asked him for clarification, offered up my own thoughts, experiences, and opinions, and that he'd have heard me out, even if he didn't change his mind, and that if he were writing today, he'd exercise care not to accidentally provide justification for pointless violence against marginalised groups whose worst sin is that they've voluntarily removed themselves from the gene pool. Once again, I'm probably projecting, but that's my take on the subject.
TL;DR Card punches down, Herbert punched up, nobody likes a bully, and everyone loves an underdog

P.S. Thank you for your question. Even if we disagree on a topic, a good-faith effort to understand the opposition speaks well of an individual's character, and indicates the possibility of peaceful and mutually satisfactory resolution of conflict.

[Anonymous No.22090510]

>>22090372
He's dead and dead people are much less often targets for criticism
Also, 80% of people only ever read the first book

[Anonymous No.22090518]

>>22090372
The same reason they don't really care that Lovecraft was a racist and that Tolkien was a tradcath Francoist, they're all dead but Card is alive.

[Anonymous No.22090526]

>>22090372
as everyone else has said, he died long before people ever cared about that sort of thing

[Anonymous No.22090664]

death of the author, even if they are alive.

also, most people are liars and say they read a book when they've only seen a film or youtube analysis.

Ender and the series around bean that i cant remember the name of were great. so was dune.

[Anonymous No.22090855]

>>22090372
Duncan is written nna way that Herbert rebukes him. He shortly after gets his ass handed to him. Herbert was pro gay. His last two books are strong feminist material though I did like it b dude it was honest about women’s strengths but f manipulation

[Anonymous No.22091168]

>>22090855
lmao you are retarded Herbert was not pro gay. He literally disowned his gay son and didnt even let him see his dying mother. That lesbian thing is at best out of context and at worse Herbert just thinks lesbians make his dick hard so they are relatively fine compared to sodomites.

[Anonymous No.22091175]

>>22090372
>homosexuality was a symptom of or related to bureaucracy.
Prove. Him. Wrong.

[Anonymous No.22091216]

>>22090372
Herbert was an environmentalist Reaganite cynical Nietzschean Islam appreciator. His worldview maps so awkwardly onto the American political spectrum that few people really have a coherent opinion of his views.

[Anonymous No.22091231]

Duncan Idaho is a military man who gets a little tiffed when the God emperor explains to him that the military is always filled with rapists and faggots. Simple as

[Anonymous No.22091239]

>>22090372
Leftoids love muh tribal people uprising story.

[Anonymous No.22091270]

>>22090372
Great, now I have to like Dune.

[Anonymous No.22091376]

i have nothing to add because i've not read Dune but I saw this review yesterday and it's so fucking ridiculous it has to be bait

[Anonymous No.22091477]

>>22090372
Herbert is more talented and he died leaving his audience wanting more. Card is maybe one third as talented, wrote a couple of decent books before writing the book of Mormon in space etc.

[Anonymous No.22091493]

>>22091477
It was fun reading Card's schizoposting. I remember reading the one about that portal/gate mage as a teenager up to the point where his chad magic pheromones made all of his classmates want to be impregnated by him

[Anonymous No.22092052]

>>22090855
>Herbert was pro gay
he doesn't know

[Anonymous No.22092294]

>>22090372
That would require troons 2 actually read his books, and not pretend they did for clout.

[Anonymous No.22092356]

>>22091493
I had such high hopes for that series after the first book since I loved Jumper and its sequels. Then as each subsequent Gate book came out the story more and more shit the bed until it literally became "the good guy is the strongest because he's also the goodest" and "the bad guy is just literally satan as a ghost possessing people". Like the powerlevels introduction was bad enough, but I had no idea how bad powerlevels could GET.

It's similar to me how the Ender's Game series also shit the bed. A great short story expanded into a great novel that then gets to the story Card really wanted to write in Speaker for the Dead, which ignores everything good from Game to focus on moral dilemmas surrounding the death of objectively bad people. Then IIRC the sequel to that is about the moral dilemmas about AI and I can't even remember what's after that. I know he recently published ANOTHER book in that branch and I just can't bring myself to re-read the series and cap it off. The Shadow branch stays better longer, with more of what made Shadow really good, but then Card shoots way off track to send people into the future with FTL time dilation, and again, there's books that finish off the series but they're as trite and uninteresting as War of Gifts.

I only read one of his other series, the one where humanity is watched over by an AI/God on some planet and they have to travel a continent with no tech to get to a spaceship or something. They stop twice to have families and raise children for 20 years at a time before the next generation continues the journey. I never read anything else in the series it was just boring.

Anyway in the course of writing this essay I've realized I just find morality dramas uninteresting.

[Anonymous No.22092420]

>>22090372
a healthy disdain for deviants and perverts is essential for a well-rounded and functional society

[Anonymous No.22093413]

>>22092356
It's funny that you brought up Ender's Game - I completely agree, it's another perfect example of him being all over the place. When I read further into the series, I believe I was 16 at the time, I got up to the end of Speaker for the Dead and tried to convince myself it was "wow so deep" but couldn't bring myself to continue the series. I would check out the Shadow stuff but like you said, Card will invariably loop you in with great and creative fantasy writing, then hit you with the weird shit like a Jehovah's Witness. "Actually this bad guy's literally Satan and my MC is the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. ALL his classmates are no longer unique characters, they just want his hot steamy mage spum. Now read this dissertation on morality. And don't get blood transfusions." On some level I feel bad for him, it feels like he'd start out with ideas and writing that he knew would sell, then the story would slowly devolve into what he actually wanted to talk to people/write about.