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The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever

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Mr_Rose:
All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike. That is to say, actually behave like smart children instead of tiny, slightly ignorant but otherwise perfectly average, adults. And that author is Phillip Pullman; I spent most of Northern Lights and Subtle Knife not really liking Lyra that much and wondering what was going on until part way through Amber Spyglass when she finally finishes growing up. The difference is astonishing and incredibly obvious in retrospect but the way it's handled is masterful.

Masterpiece:
His Dark Materials <3

Loki:

--- Quote from: Mr_Rose on 15 May 2013, 11:15 ---All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.

--- End quote ---

Hermione? She is a somewhat insecure child.
(click to show/hide)Particularly I think of how she is deeply hurt by Ron insulting her in the first book, which leads her to hide in the bathroom which gets attacked by the troll on Halloween. She is also shaken after the experience.Personally, I think one Mister Yudkowsky caught her personality in his Harry Potter fanfic pretty well:


--- Quote ---No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."
--- End quote ---

Akima:
I think the problem with Ender's Game (it is the only OSC novel I have read, and I wasn't that impressed) is the basic premise that you need to trick kids into performing genocide because adults can't bring themselves to do it. History offers not the slightest support for this idea. I have the same problem with works suggesting that brainwashing, or raising children in special academies, is necessary to produce assassins. On the face of it, there has never been any shortage of people ready, willing and able to kill. Dehumanisation requires no special programmes, training or facilities; it is more like standard operating procedure. The problem is how to avoid it.

Method of Madness:
I don't think it was that adults wouldn't, I'm pretty sure the idea that Ender was the only one who would have even thought of the strategy he used, probably because it was so simple, yet so completely destructive. In other words, it was exactly like a child. It also helped that he didn't realize he was actually doing it, of course.

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