You know what, I think Ender's Game should be taught in school. (if it could be done without being a payday for the author...)
Because it's a great lesson in "the author chooses the scenario, not just the character choices," and I think a lot of readers forget to consider that.
This is something I run into again and again when pointing out media transphobia, because so often the characters it's channeled through are explicitly not trans in the text, which fans will instantly seize on and reject the premise that transphobia is a relevant topic.
But of course a transphobic author's characters are not trans! Probably the single most common vector of transphobia is believing transness doesn't really exist at all! So this one is a victim of childhood trauma dealing with it by concealing their gender, and that one's just a psychopath so who even knows what's going on in their head, and oh yes the idle rich always have their eccentricities because they can afford to be detached from reality, and and and
