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Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer
Based on Real Events that happened to me earlier today for a few hours until now, imagine a scene where Wade needs to anxiously wait because their ISP lost connection to their entire city. Or maybe he could try and brave the Mad Max-like outside trying to reach a working internet node or whatever.

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Samizdata
May 14, 2007

Looks like it did. Cheers!

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

PJOmega posted:

The key is to strip any descriptors of actions. And repeat the same sentence transitions. And put everything in past tense, which I can't really do because it is so loving weird. It lays so poorly on the page.

Oh god I think I finally understand what passive versus active voice is all about. Is RPO written in passive voice?

It's not because I did____ /It was____ are active voice and at least 90% of the book.

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is also the object of the verb. I ate the apple-active, the apple was eaten-passive. I threw RPO in the trash- active. RPO was trash- active. In a better world, RPO was thrown in the trash instead of published -passive. Cline uses passive voice when talking about Daito's death

"Instead, a few minutes after Shoto obtained his copy of the key, Daito’s name disappeared from the Scoreboard entirely. There was only one possible explanation: Daito had just been killed."

because we don't know who killed him, and in context it's not really important.

Adnachiel
Oct 21, 2012

Spark That Bled posted:

I'm sure there are like ten novels you could write about the concepts that Cline leaves out of this novel.

I'd totally read a rewrite of this that just focused on the playerbase of the OASIS trolling IOI to keep them from winning the contest (and then maybe loving with the OASIS as it is in rebellion for good measure).

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Chekovs nuke is gon.a solve this problem with no protagonist involvement I bet

Evilreaver
Feb 26, 2007

GEORGE IS GETTIN' AUGMENTED!
Dinosaur Gum

Tunicate posted:

Chekovs nuke is gon.a solve this problem with no protagonist involvement I bet

What, the thing that kills everyone dead instantly, with no way to save/avoid it? No armor can withstand it? Can't imagine what you mean. The only thing that could possibly survive it would be PLOT ARMOR OF MARY SUE

Also at this point I'm pretty sure Cline doesn't know the difference between 'diameter' and 'circumference', he seems to use them interchangeably and/or at random (This shield has an 80 meter radius, which wasn't as small as I thought it might be but does mean the castle is pretty small for The Big Castle of the game)

Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Mar 25, 2018

nerdz
Oct 12, 2004


Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Grimey Drawer
Playing music has to be something like an MMO skill that goes automatically because lol if you think you can learn to play rush songs in 5 years.

This would be even more annoying to me. The worst nerds (like wade here) are the ones proud of how much poo poo they like and consume, instead of how much poo poo they actually produce and contribute. It would be the ultimate asspull if he just learned how to play guitar on a whim.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Evilreaver posted:

What, the thing that kills everyone dead instantly, with no way to save/avoid it? No armor can withstand it? Can't imagine what you mean. The only thing that could possibly survive it would be PLOT ARMOR OF MARY SUE

Yeah imagine if that would happen....

*nervous Clinean laughter*

HackensackBackpack
Aug 20, 2007

Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

The youth being literally forced to exist entirely within the confines of recycled Boomer nostalgia, for one.



Do you think the young people in this universe notice? Do they resent it, those outside of the (ugh) gunter community? (I hate that word so much). What you grow up with is considered "normal" until a certain age because you're not developed enough to know better. I have to wonder if the kids who don't give a poo poo about the egg, and just live in this virtual universe because you have to, even do the game elements. Does the bully from earlier in the novel level up, or give a crap about who Halliday even is?

At its core, Oasis is still a video game. Do the people who use it for virtual committee meetings and business and stuff still level up their avatars? Is the president of XYZ Inc. level 99 or is he like level 1 with leather armor, a wooden shield, and an iron short sword like Wade at the beginning of the book?

Another thought I wanted to address: there are a couple of passages that (probably unintentionally) depict Wade as a child who was raised on VR and what that can do to someone.

quote:

As I learned more about how these early role-playing games worked, I realized that a D&D module was the primitive equivalent of a quest in the OASIS. And D&D characters were just like avatars. In a way, these old role-playing games had been the first virtual-reality simulations, created long before computers were powerful enough to do the job. In those days, if you wanted to escape to another world, you had to create it yourself, using your brain, some paper, pencils, dice, and a few rule books. This realization kind of blew my mind.

and

quote:

The first text adventure game I’d ever played was called Colossal Cave, and initially the text-only interface had seemed incredibly simple and crude to me. But after playing for a few minutes, I quickly became immersed in the reality created by the words on the screen. Somehow, the game’s simple two-sentence room descriptions were able to conjure up vivid images in my mind’s eye.

To me, this shows that Wade has no imagination of his own. Why would he, when every kind of dream world he could conjure in his mind could be rendered in front of him in perfect detail in some video game? The second one is especially egregious, in my opinion. "Somehow, words that describe things make my brain imagine those things and I can sort of picture it! Wow! What a revelation!" Also, D&D as the first simulations? Escapism and fantasy have been a thing for as long as we've had language.

I don't know what Cline's intention was with these lines, how this was meant to portray our hero, but these are some of the more dystopian descriptions, in my opinion, when describing the state of the world and mental and creative capabilities of its younger generations.

Either that, or Wade is just dumb.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Also Wade says he got his armor and sword from his occasional forays with Aech to try and level up. The implication is that you start OASIS with nothing but the pixels on your back.

TheAwfulWaffle
Jun 30, 2013

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

The youth being literally forced to exist entirely within the confines of recycled Boomer nostalgia, for one.

Cline's an X-er. If you want to drown in Boomer nostalgia, you gotta go Gump.

Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer

chitoryu12 posted:

Also Wade says he got his armor and sword from his occasional forays with Aech to try and level up. The implication is that you start OASIS with nothing but the pixels on your back.

It's 80's Nostalgia World, you're expected to find an old man in a cave to hand you your first weapon.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

chitoryu12 posted:

Also Wade says he got his armor and sword from his occasional forays with Aech to try and level up. The implication is that you start OASIS with nothing but the pixels on your back.

:psyduck: I’m kind of ignorant in this area but don’t a lot of people mod games in a myriad of ways from buying/swiping assets and using them willy-nilly to ground-up making assets and whole games on their own? Minecraft? RPG Maker? The countless clones of the last decade of indie horror? And it seems a lot of younger people went into programming, art, etc. as a result of modding for fun.

This all implies Wade has no concept of making something on his own, even to the extent of acknowledging “I’m not really creative, so I commissioned someone to make a sword in a style I liked.” But why am I seeking an iota of self-awareness in Cline’s work?

Zanzibar Ham posted:

It's 80's Nostalgia World, you're expected to find an old man in a cave to hand you your first weapon.

Good point, yet there were folks in the 80s making their own games, or crackers with flashy screens. One of the earliest C64 games Wizard had a robust level builder/editor and is hardly obscure.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Mar 25, 2018

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

TheAwfulWaffle posted:

Cline's an X-er. If you want to drown in Boomer nostalgia, you gotta go Gump.

I was part of the Gumpers, a group of people devoted to finding where the Boomers had hidden their wealth.

"You're missing the Forrest for the trees," Aitch said to me.
"Run, Forrest, Run", I replied, which was a reference to the movie Forrest Gump, where he ran and saved a bunch of people. The clues to the Boomers Wealth had been hidden in the movie, and all the Gumpers had watched it many times.

HackensackBackpack
Aug 20, 2007

Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?

Tunicate posted:

The clues to the Boomers Wealth had been hidden in the movie, and all the Gumpers had watched it many times.

It was actually just hidden in their houses. :v:

PJOmega
May 5, 2009

there wolf posted:

It's not because I did____ /It was____ are active voice and at least 90% of the book.

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is also the object of the verb. I ate the apple-active, the apple was eaten-passive. I threw RPO in the trash- active. RPO was trash- active. In a better world, RPO was thrown in the trash instead of published -passive. Cline uses passive voice when talking about Daito's death

"Instead, a few minutes after Shoto obtained his copy of the key, Daito’s name disappeared from the Scoreboard entirely. There was only one possible explanation: Daito had just been killed."

because we don't know who killed him, and in context it's not really important.


Honestly thank you for this. Active/passive voice is, to me, like the rules for cricket. I can have them explained a dozen times and still end up without a god damned clue of what is going on.

Back Hack
Jan 17, 2010


SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

This all implies Wade has no concept of making something on his own, even to the extent of acknowledging “I’m not really creative, so I commissioned someone to make a sword in a style I liked.” But why am I seeking an iota of self-awareness in Cline’s work?

But don't you see, Wade is also a master programmer as well, as he coded his completely unique super secret base all on his own. Your move, Sixer. :shepicide:

Hoover Dam
Jun 17, 2003

red white and blue forever



BUY A loving THESAURUS


chitoryu12 posted:

Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times

...and apparently thought that was where Arthurian legend was born

And you just know the idea of the stacks came only from stories about Kowloon Walled City, and not, you know, large clusters of ad hoc tenements existing currently as Brazilian favelas or similar.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

What really baffles me is the idea of all this stuff like tabletop RPGs being some kind of lost knowledge that even adults don’t know about until clued in by the Hunt.

In reality, all of this poo poo is still popular. WarGames is still quoted and watched, though you probably don’t have it completely memorized. D&D is incredibly popular. Everyone reads old comics.

Cline seems to think that within 20 years, everything that’s popular will just be forgotten unless obsessive nerds force us to watch it.

Paladin
Nov 26, 2004
You lost today, kid. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.


Hoover Dam posted:

And you just know the idea of the stacks came only from stories about video games set in Kowloon Walled City

there wolf
Jan 11, 2015

by Fluffdaddy

chitoryu12 posted:

What really baffles me is the idea of all this stuff like tabletop RPGs being some kind of lost knowledge that even adults don’t know about until clued in by the Hunt.

In reality, all of this poo poo is still popular. WarGames is still quoted and watched, though you probably don’t have it completely memorized. D&D is incredibly popular. Everyone reads old comics.

Cline seems to think that within 20 years, everything that’s popular will just be forgotten unless obsessive nerds force us to watch it.

It'd say Cline is actually just playing us all and deliberately using pretty accessible pop culture a lot so everyone can relate to his obsessive protagonist, but there are a lot of nerds out there who still hold the delusion that their interests are super niche because their self-image as holders of esoteric knowledge is too central to their identity.

Also what would it matter if the stuff was even popular now or twenty years from now? Everything that exists exists in an easy to access digital format. All Wade has to do is look it up. And because Cline is a lovely writer, even that isn't any kind of challenge since he's got a reference guide to steer him through the impossible amount of data he's have to go through, and his character has memorized the incredible amount that's in the guide. Maybe it's just the old adventure gamer in me, but that Wade never gets stuck on too many options is one of the bigger flaws in the story for me.

nerdz
Oct 12, 2004


Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Grimey Drawer
The book would be 10 times cooler if instead of The Hunt being the single most important thing in the entire world for everyone, it was sort of a very niche urban legend that a small obsessed community still believed in and tried to crack, kinda like speedrunners trying to find new glitches and exploits to reduce their times.

like, this video feels way more interesting than the book, with more tension, and it's all about real world stuff with real people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sllAIF99h3s

nerdz fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Mar 26, 2018

PetraCore
Jul 20, 2017

👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

nerdz posted:

The book would be 10 times cooler if instead of The Hunt being the single most important thing in the entire world for everyone, it was sort of a very niche urban legend that a small obsessed community still believed in and tried to crack, kinda like speedrunners trying to find new glitches and exploits to reduce their times.

like, this video feels way more interesting than the book, with more tension, and it's all about real world stuff with real people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sllAIF99h3s
It'd also make a bunch of the plot make a lot more sense.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

nerdz posted:

The book would be 10 times cooler if instead of The Hunt being the single most important thing in the entire world for everyone, it was sort of a very niche urban legend that a small obsessed community still believed in and tried to crack, kinda like speedrunners trying to find new glitches and exploits to reduce their times.

like, this video feels way more interesting than the book, with more tension, and it's all about real world stuff with real people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sllAIF99h3s

or the attempts to get past that forcefield in wind waker

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

We've begun Level Three, which is arguably the best part of the book.

quote:

Going outside is highly overrated.
—Anorak’s Almanac, Chapter 17, Verse 32

quote:

When the IOI corporate police came to arrest me, I was right in the middle of the movie Explorers (1985, directed by Joe Dante). It’s about three kids who build a spaceship in their backyard and then fly off to meet aliens. Easily one of the greatest kid flicks ever made. I’d gotten into the habit of watching it at least once a month. It kept me centered.

I had a thumbnail of my apartment building’s external security camera feed at the edge of my display, so I saw the IOI Indentured Servant Retrieval Transport pull up out front, siren wailing and lights flashing. Then four jackbooted, riot-helmeted dropcops jumped out and ran into the building, followed by a guy in a suit. I continued to watch them on the lobby camera as they waved their IOI badges, blew past the security station,and filed onto the elevator.

Now they were on their way up to my floor.

“Max,” I muttered, noting the fear in my own voice. “Execute security macro number one: Crom, strong in his mountain.” This voice command instructed my computer to execute a long series of preprogrammed actions, both online and in the real world.

“You g-g-got it, Chief!” Max replied cheerfully, and a split second later, my apartment’s security system switched into lockdown mode. My reinforced plate-titanium WarDoor swung down from the ceiling, slamming and locking into place over my apartment’s built-in security door.

On the security camera mounted in the hallway outside my apartment, I watched the four dropcops get off the elevator and sprint down the hallway to my door. The two guys in front were carrying plasma welders. The other two held industrial-strength VoltJolt stun guns. The suit, who brought up the rear, was carrying a digital clipboard.

I wasn’t surprised to see them. I knew why they were here. They were here to cut open my apartment and pull me out of it, like a chunk of Spam being removed from a can.

The WarDoor slams shut, and won't open even when the rest of the apartment doors open up to IOI's warrant. As the IOI suit walks up to the door and presses his thumb to the intercom, Wade sees that it's Michael Wilson from the IOI Credit & Collections Division. It seems "Bryce Lynch" is suddenly in debt in excess of $20,000 on his IOI credit cards and is unemployed, which means there's now a valid warrant for his arrest to be put into indentured servitude.

Yeah, in case you thought this universe couldn't get any worse, IOI has legalized slavery.

quote:

After a brief pause, I replied through the intercom. “Sure thing, guys. Just give me a minute to get my pants on. Then I’ll be right out."

Wilson frowned. “Mr. Lynch, if you do not grant us access to your residence within ten seconds, we are authorized to enter by force. The cost of any damage resulting from our forced entry, including all property damage and repair labor, will be added to your outstanding balance. Thank you.”

Wilson stepped away from the intercom and nodded to the others. One of the dropcops immediately powered up his welder, and when the tip began to glow molten orange, he began cutting through my War-Door’s titanium plating. The other welder moved a few feet farther down and began to cut a hole right through the wall of my apartment. These guys had access to the building’s security specs, so they knew the walls of each apartment were lined with steel plating and a layer of concrete, which they could cut through much more quickly than the titanium WarDoor.

Of course, I’d taken the precaution of reinforcing my apartment’s walls, floor, and ceiling, with a titanium alloy SageCage, which I’d assembled piece by piece. Once they cut through my wall, they would have to cut through the cage, too. But this would buy me only five or six extra minutes, at the most. Then they would be inside.

I’d heard that dropcops had a nickname for this procedure—cutting an indent out of a fortified residence so they could arrest him. They called it doing a C-section.

Wade checks the Scoreboard one last time (he sent Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto emails with how to get to the Crystal Key so they're at least in the top ten, and Art3mis is now leading the board), then logs out and sets his OASIS account security to maximum. He types the command "SHITSTORM" into his virtual console, wiping the hard drive....including Max Headroom.

quote:

As the welder stepped back, another dropcop stepped forward and used a small canister to spray some sort of freezing foam around the edge of the hole, cooling off the metal so they wouldn’t burn themselves when they crawled inside. Which was what they were about to do.

“Clear!” one of them shouted from out in the hallway. “No visible weapons!”

One of the stun-gun wielding dropcops climbed through the hole first. Suddenly, he was standing right in front of me, his weapon leveled at my face.

“Don’t move!” he shouted. “Or you get the juice, understand?”

I nodded that yes, I understood. It occurred to me then that this cop was the first visitor I’d ever had in my apartment in all the time I’d lived there.

The second dropcop to crawl inside wasn’t nearly as polite. Without a word, he walked over and jammed a ball gag in my mouth. This was standard procedure, because they didn’t want me to issue any more voice commands to my computer. They needn’t have bothered. The moment the first dropcop had entered my apartment, an incendiary device had detonated inside my computer. It was already melting to slag.

When the dropcop finished strapping on the ball gag, he grabbed me by the exoskeleton of my haptic suit, yanked me out of my haptic chair like a rag doll, and threw me on the floor. The other dropcop hit the kill switch that opened my WarDoor, and the last two dropcops rushed in, followed by Wilson the suit.

I curled into a ball on the floor and closed my eyes. I started to shake involuntarily. I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was about to happen next.

They were going to take me outside.

“Mr. Lynch,” Wilson said, smiling. “I hereby place you under corporate arrest.” He turned to the dropcops. “Tell the repo team to come on up and clear this place out.” He glanced around the room and noticed the thin line of smoke now pouring out of my computer. He looked at me and shook his head. “That was stupid. We could have sold that computer to help pay down your debt.”

I couldn’t reply around the ball gag, so I just shrugged and gave him the finger.

They tore off my haptic suit and left it for the repo team. I was totally naked underneath. They gave me a disposable slate-gray jumpsuit to put on, with matching plastic shoes. The suit felt like sandpaper, and it began to make me itch as soon as I put it on. They’d cuffed my hands, so it wasn’t easy to scratch.

As Wade is rushed into the elevator, he hums along to the muzak to show that he's not afraid until one of the cops threatens him with the taser.

They throw a hooded coat on him as he enters the lobby, as Wade's first trip outside in over half a year has him in the snow and slush under a frozen gray sky. Inside the transport truck, two more idents arrested earlier that day are already in the back with VR visors on; one of them has what looks like a gas mask hooked up to a tube leading into the truck floor, which takes his panic vomit. The rest of the cops are likely already removing everything from Wade's former apartment so it can be repaired and the next gunter on the waiting list can be brought in, as if he never existed.

The visor shows a relaxing beach setting to keep idents calm on their drive downtown, but Wade flips it off so he can see the real world for the first time in a while.

quote:

A thick film of neglect still covered everything in sight. The streets, the buildings, the people. Even the snow seemed dirty. It drifted down in gray flakes, like ash after a volcanic eruption.

The number of homeless people seemed to have increased drastically. Tents and cardboard shelters lined the streets, and the public parks I saw seemed to have been converted into refugee camps. As the transport rolled deeper into the city’s skyscraper core, I saw people clustered on every street corner and in every vacant lot, huddled around burning barrels and portable fuel-cell heaters. Others waited in line at the free solar charging stations, wearing bulky, outdated visors and haptic gloves. Their hands made small, ghostly gestures as they interacted with the far more pleasant reality of the OASIS via one of GSS’s free wireless access points.

Finally, we reached 101 IOI Plaza, in the heart of downtown.

I stared out the window in silent apprehension as the corporate headquarters of Innovative Online Industries Inc. came into view: two rectangular skyscrapers flanking a circular one, forming the IOI corporate logo. The IOI skyscrapers were the three tallest buildings in the city, mighty towers of steel and mirrored glass joined by dozens of connective walkways and elevator trams. The top of each tower disappeared into the sodium-vapor-drenched cloud layer above. The buildings looked identical to their headquarters in the OASIS on IOI-1, but here in the real world they seemed much more impressive.

The truck drives down a set of concrete ramps into the underground parking garage. After they're herded off the trucks, their retinas are scanned to bring up their biometrics and criminal records.

quote:

Then I was led into a warm, brightly lit room filled with hundreds of other new indents. They were all shuffling through a maze of guide ropes, like weary overgrown children at some nightmarish amusement park. There seemed to be an equal number of men and women, but it was hard to tell, because nearly everyone shared my pale complexion and total lack of body hair, and we all wore the same gray jumpsuits and gray plastic shoes. We looked like extras from THX 1138.

The line fed into a series of security checkpoints. At the first checkpoint, each indent was given a thorough scan with a brand-new Meta-detector to make sure they weren’t hiding any electronic devices on or in their persons. While I waited for my turn, I saw several people pulled out of line when the scanner found a subcutaneous minicomputer or a voice-controlled phone installed as a tooth replacement. They were led into another room to have the devices removed. A dude just ahead of me in line actually had a top-of-the-line miniature Sinatro OASIS console concealed inside a prosthetic testicle. Talk about balls.

Wade is ushered into one of hundreds of soundproof cubicles and given a comforting pair of cheap haptic gloves and a visor, which puts him through a battery of aptitude tests. We don't find out anything about the test of course (that would require Cline to be creative), only that "Bryce" intentionally bombs all the stuff about James Halliday and the Easter egg hunt to avoid getting put in the Oology Division just in case Sorrento could recognize him.

quote:

Hours later, when I finally finished the last exam, I was logged into a virtual chat room to meet with an indenturement counselor. Her name was Nancy, and in a hypnotic monotone, she informed me that, due to my exemplary test scores and impressive employment record, I had been “awarded” the position of OASIS Technical Support Representative II. I would be paid $28,500 a year, minus the cost of my housing, meals, taxes, medical, dental, optical, and recreation services, all of which would be deducted automatically from my pay. My remaining income (if there was any) would be applied to my outstanding debt to the company. Once my debt was paid in full, I would be released from indenturement. At that time, based on my job performance, it was possible I would be offered a permanent position with IOI.

This was a complete joke, of course. Indents were never able to pay off their debt and earn their release. Once they got finished slapping you with pay deductions, late fees, and interest penalties, you wound up owing them more each month, instead of less. Once you made the mistake of getting yourself indentured, you would probably remain indentured for life. A lot of people didn’t seem to mind this, though. They thought of it as job security. It also meant they weren’t going to starve or freeze to death in the street.

My “Indenturement Contract” appeared in a window on my display. It contained a long list of disclaimers and warnings about my rights (or lack thereof) as an indentured employee. Nancy told me to read it, sign it, and proceed to Indent Processing. Then she logged out of the chat room. I scrolled to the bottom of the contract without bothering to read it. It was over six hundred pages long. I signed the name Bryce Lynch, then verified my signature with a retinal scan.

Even though I was using a fake name, I wondered if the contract might still be legally binding. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really care. I had a plan, and this was part of it.

Wade is lead through a sort of "human car wash" not unlike his former apartment shower, and is given a new jumpsuit and some squeaky plastic shoes. He's put through a complete physical, including blood tests (there's a mention that it's illegal for IOI to do genetic testing so he's not worried about them finding out that he's actually Wade Watts, but I can't help but feel that IOI doesn't really care about federal law at this point) and a set of inoculations from automated needle guns. Above the queue is a lighthearted informational/training video starring Johnny the indentured servant, telling everyone in line about how their job works and what to expect.

At the last station, Wade is fitted with a security anklet that serves as a combined positional tracker, stun gun, and tranquilizer injector and his "eargear", a comlink and forward-facing camera that pierces his earlobe to let IOI Human Resources send messages directly to him and monitor what he's doing.

quote:

As I stepped off the conveyor, the HR computer directed me to a nearby cafeteria that looked like something out of an old prison movie. I was given a lime green tray of food. A tasteless soyburger, a lump of runny mashed potatoes, and some unrecognizable form of cobbler for dessert. I devoured all of it in a few minutes. The HR computer complimented me on my healthy appetite. Then it informed me that I was now permitted to make a five-minute visit to the bathroom. When I came out, I was directed onto an elevator with no buttons or floor indicator. When the doors slid open, I saw the following stenciled on the wall: INDENT HAB—BLOCK 05—TECHSUP REPS.

I shuffled off the elevator and down the carpeted hallway. It was quiet and dark. The only illumination came from small path lighting embedded in the floor. I’d lost track of the time. It seemed like days had passed since I’d been pulled out of my apartment. I was dead on my feet.

“Your first technical support shift begins in seven hours,” the HR computer droned softly in my ear. “You have until then to sleep. Turn left at the intersection in front of you and proceed to your assigned hab-unit, number 42G.”

I continued to do as I was told. I thought I was already getting pretty good at it.


The Hab Block is a mausoleum-like vault full of 10-story rows of sleeping units. 42G is near the top, so Wade's got a bit of a climb to reach his. It's a simple sleeping pod, 1 meter high and wide and 2 meters long, that smells of burnt rubber. The only amenity is a flatscreen entertainment console and wireless visor; until Wade earns an above-average rating for long enough as an indentured employee, his only entertainment option is IOI's 24/7 news network and a company-produced sitcom about indentured servants, Tommy Queue.

quote:

I selected the first episode of Tommy Queue, then unsnapped the visor and put it on. As I expected, the show was really just a training film with a laugh track. I had absolutely no interest in it. I just wanted to go to sleep. But I knew I was being watched, and that every move I made was being scrutinized and logged. So I stayed awake as long as I could, ignoring one episode of Tommy Queue after another.

Despite my best efforts, my thoughts drifted to Art3mis. Regardless of what I’d been telling myself, I knew she was the real reason I’d gone through with this lunatic plan. What the hell was wrong with me? There was a good chance I might never escape from this place. I felt buried under an avalanche of self-doubt. Had my dual obsessions with the egg and Art3mis finally driven me completely insane? Why would I take such an idiotic risk to win over someone I’d never actually met? Someone who appeared to have no interest in ever talking to me again?

Where was she right now? Did she miss me?

I continued to mentally torture myself like that until I finally drifted off to sleep.

chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Mar 26, 2018

Karia
Mar 27, 2013

Self-portrait, Snake on a Plane
Oil painting, c. 1482-1484
Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1591)

And even after he's been thrown into slavery there's not a single trace of emotion in Cline's writing. It's actually impressive how terrible this is.

HackensackBackpack
Aug 20, 2007

Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?

nerdz posted:

The book would be 10 times cooler if instead of The Hunt being the single most important thing in the entire world for everyone, it was sort of a very niche urban legend that a small obsessed community still believed in and tried to crack, kinda like speedrunners trying to find new glitches and exploits to reduce their times.

Yes, like if Wade, who was 12 or 13 when the Hunt started, was just living his normal lovely life and forgot about it. Five years later, no one has solved it, almost everyone has moved on, except for the obsessive hunters (can we just call them hunters, please?) and he finds the copper key entirely by accident. He's an otherwise normal, kinda nerdy teenager who doesn't have a magically encyclopedic knowledge of everything Halliday loved. He uses the Oasis like everyone else.

So, Wade is out for a lonely walk one day, loses track of time and space because he's just off in his own head, and stumbles across the Tomb of Horrors. He has no idea what it is or why it's there on the high school planet. He goes in and a bit of dumb luck allows him to get to the gold that gives him a bunch of money and experience. This is exhilarating! What a rush to suddenly have money and a bit of power! But he gets killed a few moments, loses it all and has to be level 1 again. He goes back a couple of times to try and figure it out because he's got a competitive streak and doesn't want to be beaten. So far, no one he knows has ever talked about this, and he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He gets to the lich and he remembers it from a game he played or something. This clues him in to look up what to do and he learns just what this dungeon is.

He solves the puzzle and gets the key. Then, all of a sudden, everyone wants a piece of him. There are clans trying to recruit him, clans trying to kill him, and the evil ISP gets involved as they do. In this version, Aech is the goony friend who is obsessed with the Hunt and Wade used to always tease him about it. Aech gets jealous, there's a falling out, but Wade realizes he needs Aech's knowledge to solve the puzzles and navigate this weird internet underworld. Wade then has to learn about and discover these pop culture things which starts off kinda fun but becomes a chore. He succeeds through tenacity and determination, but also because he is able to form friendships with the right people. He has an idea of what the hunter community is all about, so he can sort of pass as one of them but has to do a lot of work behind the scenes and is constantly at risk of being outed as a fake who got lucky.

chitoryu12 posted:

We've begun Level Three, which is arguably the best part of the book.

This is actually my favourite part of the book, if not just for the idea that Future Comcast can legally kidnap you and force you to work for them as a slave if you don't pay your internet bill, but also this "plan" of his. Cline manages to keep a bit of tension for a few pages while Wade gets arrested before he goes, "Aha! I'm now a slave. All is going according to keikaku (translator's note: keikaku means plan.)" and then it all fizzles out because of course this is all part of his loving plan.

HackensackBackpack fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Mar 26, 2018

Gnome de plume
Sep 5, 2006

Hell.
Fucking.
Yes.
So uh, how about that guy who had a piece of computer hardware installed in his scrotum.

TheAwfulWaffle
Jun 30, 2013

Gnome de plume posted:

So uh, how about that guy who had a piece of computer hardware installed in his scrotum.

Talk about balls, eh! Balls. Get it? Balls.

HackensackBackpack
Aug 20, 2007

Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?

TheAwfulWaffle posted:

Talk about balls, eh! Balls. Get it? Balls.

It's funny because the computer was in a prosthetic testicle, and testicles are called "balls" colloquially, because of their spherical shape.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Gnome de plume posted:

So uh, how about that guy who had a piece of computer hardware installed in his scrotum.

The book should have been about him instead.

Calaveron
Aug 7, 2006
:negative:
Wardoor, sagecage, dropcop, joltvolt motherfucker was Dr Seuss all of a sudden
Also you can get cushy tech support jobs with housing and food and utilities and stuff that fine it's indented servitude but lmao there's years long waiting lists for lovely mcjobs in a post apocalyptic hellscape with Mad Max raiders and also luxury goods

Memento
Aug 25, 2009


Bleak Gremlin

Calaveron posted:

Wardoor, sagecage, dropcop, joltvolt motherfucker was Dr Seuss all of a sudden
Also you can get cushy tech support jobs with housing and food and utilities and stuff that fine it's indented servitude but lmao there's years long waiting lists for lovely mcjobs in a post apocalyptic hellscape with Mad Max raiders and also luxury goods

Memento posted:

Congratulations on putting more thought into it than the author did.

This should probably just be the thread title at this point.

nerdz
Oct 12, 2004


Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Grimey Drawer

Leofish posted:

Cline manages to keep a bit of tension for a few pages while Wade gets arrested before he goes, "Aha! I'm now a slave. All is going according to keikaku (translator's note: keikaku means plan.)" and then it all fizzles out because of course this is all part of his loving plan.

To be fair, after wasting a shitload of time explaining his security measures that lasted all of 6 minutes (and three lines in the book), I was pretty sure Cline wouldn't be able to allow his mary sue to make a mistake. When they came for him I was already sure this was how he would infiltrate IOI. It's also funny to me how obsessed Cline seems to be with security devices. He has to write every single time that someone activated the alarm on their vehicles once they set out, and that the security measures were still standing when they got back. He also tries real hard to make sure he didn't create any plot holes on the defense mechanisms (why only a reinforced door? what if they break into the walls?)

The lack of references really makes this part a lot more palatable, though.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Yeah, what's coming is basically no OASIS for a while. Instead, we've got a lot of technical descriptions and explanations of exactly how and why Wade is doing a bunch of stuff in his plan. Still very dry, but better to hear about defeating security measures than how to play Pac-Man real good.

Chef Boyardeez Nuts
Sep 9, 2011

The more you kick against the pricks, the more you suffer.

nerdz posted:

The book would be 10 times cooler if instead of The Hunt being the single most important thing in the entire world for everyone, it was sort of a very niche urban legend that a small obsessed community still believed in and tried to crack, kinda like speedrunners trying to find new glitches and exploits to reduce their times.

You're thinking of William Gibson's Pattern Regocnition, which predates RPO.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

chitoryu12 posted:

What really baffles me is the idea of all this stuff like tabletop RPGs being some kind of lost knowledge that even adults don’t know about until clued in by the Hunt.

In reality, all of this poo poo is still popular. WarGames is still quoted and watched, though you probably don’t have it completely memorized. D&D is incredibly popular. Everyone reads old comics.

Cline seems to think that within 20 years, everything that’s popular will just be forgotten unless obsessive nerds force us to watch it.

Hell, Tomb of Horrors itself was re-released last year by WotC. We played it at a gaming con over the winter. It's fun, if brutal, but hey that's 40 year old RPG design.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.
so been doing some looking into Armada and it actually makes RPO look competent by comparison

theflyingorc
Jun 28, 2008

ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS
Young Orc

quote:

I curled into a ball on the floor and closed my eyes. I started to shake involuntarily. I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was about to happen next.

They were going to take me outside.

this is the Cline-est part of the whole book, calling it right there, nothing will ever beat these 4 sentences

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Paingod556
Nov 8, 2011

Not a problem, sir

Mel Mudkiper posted:

so been doing some looking into Armada and it actually makes RPO look competent by comparison

:hai:
I nodded. Not in agreement, but simply to indicate that I understood the reference.

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