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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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# ? Mar 25, 2018 18:11 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 19:53 |
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anonumos posted:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B266OPeGFR5Lc1F3MzVZWmE1S28/view?usp=drivesdk Looks like it did. Cheers!
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 18:15 |
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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. 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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 18:16 |
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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).
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 18:42 |
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Chekovs nuke is gon.a solve this problem with no protagonist involvement I bet
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 18:49 |
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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 |
# ? Mar 25, 2018 19:08 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 19:13 |
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*
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:17 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:31 |
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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:35 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:36 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:42 |
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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. 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 |
# ? Mar 25, 2018 20:51 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 21:24 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 21:47 |
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there wolf posted:It's not because I did____ /It was____ are active voice and at least 90% of the book. 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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 21:57 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 22:25 |
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chitoryu12 posted:classic chitoryu12 posted:grinned 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.
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# ? Mar 25, 2018 22:32 |
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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 00:11 |
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Hoover Dam posted:And you just know the idea of the stacks came only from stories about video games set in Kowloon Walled City
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 00:18 |
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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. 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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 01:02 |
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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 |
# ? Mar 26, 2018 01:17 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 01:38 |
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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. or the attempts to get past that forcefield in wind waker
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 01:41 |
We've begun Level Three, which is arguably the best part of the book.quote:Going outside is highly overrated. 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. 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." 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 01:54 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:00 |
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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 |
# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:18 |
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So uh, how about that guy who had a piece of computer hardware installed in his scrotum.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:23 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:33 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:36 |
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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:46 |
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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
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:47 |
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Calaveron posted:Wardoor, sagecage, dropcop, joltvolt motherfucker was Dr Seuss all of a sudden Memento posted:Congratulations on putting more thought into it than the author did. This should probably just be the thread title at this point.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:50 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 02:53 |
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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 03:06 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 03:43 |
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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. 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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 03:51 |
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so been doing some looking into Armada and it actually makes RPO look competent by comparison
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 03:57 |
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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. 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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# ? Mar 26, 2018 04:08 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 19:53 |
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Mel Mudkiper posted:so been doing some looking into Armada and it actually makes RPO look competent by comparison I nodded. Not in agreement, but simply to indicate that I understood the reference.
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# ? Mar 26, 2018 04:08 |