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PJOmega posted:Plz dun dox me. Wait, poo poo 
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Mar 26, 2018 21:57
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I dunno why but I'm imagining that the IOI replacement in the fix fic has a subsidiary of a video game company that has specialized worlds on the OASIS. They're all combat-themed and they're full of IOI drones that are basically real players being forced to play bots in competitive shooters or fighters, so you have people that have to take calls for a day and a few days a week they're an Assault Sharpshooter that has to deal with getting shot in the head a bunch.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:57
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Hostile V posted:I dunno why but I'm imagining that the IOI replacement in the fix fic has a subsidiary of a video game company that has specialized worlds on the OASIS. They're all combat-themed and they're full of IOI drones that are basically real players being forced to play bots in competitive shooters or fighters, so you have people that have to take calls for a day and a few days a week they're an Assault Sharpshooter that has to deal with getting shot in the head a bunch. Or do it like a less-lethal version of Gamer where instead of death row convicts being controlled for video games, indentured servants have to run shifts to keep the "bots" available 24/7 for gamers around the world.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:04
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chitoryu12 posted:Or do it like a less-lethal version of Gamer where instead of death row convicts being controlled for video games, indentured servants have to run shifts to keep the "bots" available 24/7 for gamers around the world.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:06
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chitoryu12 posted:I think I'd have it play as the latter, and make part of Wade's character that he doesn't share Halliday's obsessions. He never gave any thought to the Hunt after he couldn't get into the 80s research like die-hard gunters have been, and finding the Tomb of Horrors on Ludus is a complete accident. He suddenly finds himself needing to take a crash course in the 80s and run through everything with Aech and Art3mis to try and figure poo poo out, in addition to all the stress of becoming a socially awkward celebrity. I'd kicked around going a reader response fic or novel in this vein too. I'd have it so that there was a huge disparity between the public opinion of Halliday (or a Halliday stand-in) and the real person, kind of like the one surrounding Steve Jobs, and that the more Wade found out about him, the more terrible of a person he's slowly revealed to be--abusive, obsessive, narcissistic, manipulative, domineering, politically backwards, and a beneficiary and perpetuator of the broken system that makes everyone's lives hell, but apotheosized into a nerd god by a great PR team the cultural mythos forged by a public desperate for some kind of a hero in this terrible times, and whatnot. My plan for the endgame was to go with the "winning" the Hunt actually kills the OASIS without any input from the winner, because the Hunt was actually an elaborate long-con troll specifically designed by Halliday to see if he could get at least one uber-obsessed and utterly broken weirdo to jump through a series of increasingly bizzare and demanding hoops on the sketchiest of promises, with the real "reward" being becoming famous for being the person who destroyed the OASIS by being overly obsessed with it. And instead of the mystical wizardly paternal Halliday that appears at the end of the story, it's just a canned pre-recorded beratement of the winner excoriating them for falling into someone else's obsession, or worse yet, being consumed by their own obsessions to the point of self-destruction and the ruination of probably the one good thing in their life, if even. But yeah, the basic thesis should be "Obsessive nostalgia is bad, and if you want to properly grow as a person you need to learn how to Kill Your Gods."
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Mar 26, 2018 22:31
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You can tell Cline doesn’t listen to music because Rush is the only band Halliday cares about despite other names on the list. Wade having to go to a planet like the cover of REM’s Murmur or Planet Morrissey’s Manchester would be way more fun, 80s, and not even that obscure!
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Mar 26, 2018 22:42
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Shark Sandwich posted:You can tell Cline doesn’t listen to music because Rush is the only band Halliday cares about despite other names on the list. There's a 27 Club planet out there that's just recreations of the lives and music videos of every famous musician who died young.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:47
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PJOmega posted:Spoiler Alert, all that security will never come up again. This is from a little back in the thread but I think that Cline was trying to go for the good book interpretation of this. There's basically no other reason to go into such detail about how much Wade's sealing himself off from the world. It also fits in with the rest of Halliday being a loner, his estrangement from his friend Ogden, and the coming ending. It doesn't work, partly because Cline is a hack writer and also because Cline can't get over his own nostalgia long enough to bother to make that point. Basically: nine-gear crow posted:But yeah, the basic thesis should be "Obsessive nostalgia is bad, and if you want to properly grow as a person you need to learn how to Kill Your Gods." This is what would pass as a message, at least halfway, if Cline could stop masturbating to the pop culture he likes long enough to put it to paper. But he can't. It's there because the book needs a message but it's entirely unearned and badly enough illustrated that the book just reads as endorsement of the obsessive nostalgia that Cline is full of. Armada is worse not just because it has an even more idiotic justification for the references it uses, but because there isn't even a skeleton of a message there.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:49
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In case you guys want to know how close we are to the end of the book, we have at most 8 more updates before we're finished.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:54
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chitoryu12 posted:There's a 27 Club planet out there that's just recreations of the lives and music videos of every famous musician who died young. That wouldn’t be all that entertaining though. Also wonder if Cline knows more than 2 members of the 27 Club. I read Foucault’s Pendulum and Illuminatus! a while back because I love kooky conspiracies and it was amazing how each page of them could send me down a wiki wormhole. Cline clearly uses references to cover for a lack of any descriptive writing ability so it’s just, “I did a classic 80s move from a classic 80s song in a classic 80s dance” and it’s so terrible. This book fails on the basic premise of being for pop culture obsessives
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Mar 26, 2018 22:58
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The most irritating part of this whole book to me is that I am convinced that Cline himself hasn't touched a loving video game since the mid 80s and knows exactly as much about MMOs as the Wikipedia article told him. (XPs!) Fossil-tier console and arcade games are the only things he ever played, and as a child at that; he doesn't have the tiniest inkling of how things have advanced in the past forty years beyond "they look SO REAL now!" I'm getting dragged off to see this horrorshow on Friday. At least the movie will probably be better than this steaming pile, if only because it wont be desiccated by Cline's Sahara-esque prose.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:59
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You can’t even call this book a labor of love because as near as I can tell there’s no labor expended in its creation. Barely comprehensible screeds on UFOs from schizophrenics are imbued with more authorial care than this
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Mar 26, 2018 23:01
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Shark Sandwich posted:You can’t even call this book a labor of love because as near as I can tell there’s no labor expended in its creation. Barely comprehensible screeds on UFOs from schizophrenics are imbued with more authorial care than this No, if nothing else, the man definitely loves this stuff. He's just never actually thought about any of it. These pieces of media are to be worshiped and adored but never considered. He doesn't have to put any effort into describing things because, like a schizophrenic, he assumes that Using the Right Words will cause your mind to catch fire with the glory of Terminator II, because invoking the name of Rush will flood your brain with the same whirlwind cocktail of emotions that floods his own. e: wow, reading this thread has really made me hate this book and author.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:06
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Shark Sandwich posted:You can’t even call this book a labor of love because as near as I can tell there’s no labor expended in its creation. Barely comprehensible screeds on UFOs from schizophrenics are imbued with more authorial care than this Pretty much. Here's a spoiler from an upcoming "fight" scene. Cline isn't able to convey tension, or action, or description. It's just three references strung together as an attempted metaphor/escape hatch to get out of actually writing what happens. It's just "Hey? Are you familiar with the things I just namechecked? Okay. Just transplant your memories of what happened during those action scenes into this one, and that's what happened. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to move on to something else unexciting."
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Mar 26, 2018 23:14
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nine-gear crow posted:Pretty much. Here's a spoiler from an upcoming "fight" scene. Cline isn't able to convey tension, or action, or description. It's just three references strung together as an attempted metaphor/escape hatch to get out of actually writing what happens. It's just "Hey? Are you familiar with the things I just namechecked? Okay. Just transplant your memories of what happened during those action scenes into this one, and that's what happened. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to move on to something else unexciting." We actually already passed that scene! I'm going to assume you've been drinking heavily since completing it. I am too. I mean, I was before I read the book. But now I have something to blame.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:31
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Ixjuvin posted:The most irritating part of this whole book to me is that I am convinced that Cline himself hasn't touched a loving video game since the mid 80s and knows exactly as much about MMOs as the Wikipedia article told him. (XPs!) Fossil-tier console and arcade games are the only things he ever played, and as a child at that; he doesn't have the tiniest inkling of how things have advanced in the past forty years beyond "they look SO REAL now!" You can actually zero in on Cline's personal interests pretty quickly, from the book, as 80's computer console and Atari games, japanese tv shows, and prog-rock. It's the only area of the books where he actually reaches for any kind of deep cuts, as opposed to the shallow knowledge he shows all the other times.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:34
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Hell, he barely even mentions Nintendo games, which is half or more of all 80's video game nostalgia. Just imagine Wade patiently over-explaining that when Halliday says Final Fantasy 2 ("Fainaru Fantajī II") he actually means the Japanese version of Final Fantasy 2 ("Fainaru Fantajī II"), and not the American version of Final Fantasy 2 ("Fainaru Fantajī Fō"). his game references are mostly really shallow cuts too
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Mar 26, 2018 23:48
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Tunicate posted:his game references are mostly really shallow cuts too All of his references are shallow cuts. It's very rare that any reference wouldn't be a first layer answer on Jeopardy.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:57
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You know for all I've seen people making GBS threads on stuff like roleplaying or making your own characters for a fictional setting at least doing that well involves engaging with and thinking about media on a deeper-than-surface level. Not like there isn't a lot of shallow fanfiction or whatever but Cline is just... idk. It's an alien mindset to the one I've gotten into before.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:02
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PJOmega posted:All of his references are shallow cuts. It's very rare that any reference wouldn't be a first layer answer on Jeopardy. Yeah. If he went full into 80s cult and outsider art even with the same bland prose and story it’d be better just because it would be a nerd trying to resurrect forgotten things. As it is it’s just him half heartedly remembering things that aren’t even forgotten. Hell I watched WarGames recently and tech aside it’s still a well-constructed thriller
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Mar 27, 2018 00:21
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And sorry for the double post but related to the labor of love thing this is what damns the book the most to me. There’s no sense of joy. If Halliday, and then Wade loved these things it should show through. I know that’s not even a writing limitation because goddamn gamemasteranthony showed more joy in his dumb post than Cline does. It’s just a dull recital
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Mar 27, 2018 00:30
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When the story first got to his brilliant l337 hax0rz plan to get into and out of Future Comcast slavery, I was worried we skipped over the email he sends to Artemis about how hot she is. I misremembered and it was a few pages later it turns out and I'm glad it was highlighted because it's the best. Like, it's the worst, but it's the best because Wade is a selfish rear end in a top hat who thinks he's too cool for school and I can only assume Cline thought that line was awesome and/or romantic in some way. But it's basically this: nerdz posted:Hey, sending this message just to warn you that some pervs have hacked your laptop and were taking snapshots of you through your camera. You should format your computer
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Mar 27, 2018 00:55
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Ways to improve Wade’s IOI escape: -Throw some unexpected moral hazards into the escape. Maybe Wade has three roommates who are there for various reasons, and if one escapes the rest are punished. Have one roommate with a family be one week from release. -When he flips off the elevator camera, it triggers an obscenity alert and he’s hauled away. Book switches to Art3mis‘ perspective. -Keep it the same, but as he walks out of the building the IOI intranet escape simulation ends and it’s time for his next shift.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:01
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So thing #429 bugging me: There's a throwaway line (like 98% of this book) about Artemis using her newfound endorsement money to start her clothing line for "full figured women". Aha! Here's a clue to why she tells Wade he would find her repulsive: she must be mega fat. Right? Then we finally get info on her IRL appearance, and she's 5' 7", and 168 pounds. She's got a few extra pounds, but is by no means in land whale territory. If you have any familiarity with women's sizes, that's about a size 10. If not, consider the usual internet barometer of Marilyn Monroe, who was 5' 5" and 140-ish. She's probably curvy, and not in the "healthy at any size" eating mayo on your mobility scooter tumblr category. I'm having a hard time articulating my confusion on this, but I guess it boils down to: If Artemis thinks she's super fat at her height/weight, and she really isn't, it'd be nice if the author focused on that rather than a port wine stain. Instead we get a toss away line about her making clothes for fat chicks, and then a reveal that she's (gasp!) about 20 lbs overweight. Why add those two details if the point of artemis's self consciousness is about the port wine? All I can imagine is that Cline thought that that weight was fatty fat Ms. Fat, and threw the bit in about her starting a post apocalypse Lane Bryant. Conclusion (and a real shocker): Cline has never known the touch of a woman, let alone her dress size, and just made poo poo up. And not thought about the impact on young women readers would be, writing what would become a wildly popular YA novel wherein being 5' 7" and 168 makes you a "repulsive" ham beast. Again, I feel like I'm not conveying my feelings on this properly. As a former librarian who was horrified by the potential impact the Twilight series had on female YA readers, though, that poo poo was just making me bristle. Chi, I have no idea how you're powering through this, because just the synopses are giving me headaches. Godspeed.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:07
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Conclusion (and a real shocker): Cline has never known the touch of a woman, let alone her dress size, and just made poo poo up. And not thought about the impact on young women readers would be, writing what would become a wildly popular YA novel wherein being 5' 7" and 168 makes you a "repulsive" ham beast. It may horrifying (and possibly delight) you to know that Cline is in fact married, to a woman who is an author/poet in her own right, and her books are infinitely better than her husband's and much more well received, if nowhere near as popular.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:12
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Conclusion (and a real shocker): Cline has never known the touch of a woman, let alone her dress size, and just made poo poo up. And not thought about the impact on young women readers would be, writing what would become a wildly popular YA novel wherein being 5' 7" and 168 makes you a "repulsive" ham beast. Ernest Cline's Wikipedia entry posted:In 2016, he married poet/nonfiction writer Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, whom he met at the 1998 National Poetry Slam. I'm pretty sure that even a man who has a long standing relationship with a woman can gently caress up sizes like that, but, well...
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Mar 27, 2018 01:12
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Hyrax Attack! posted:
Dude, earlier in the book IOI held his immediate family hostage, not with punishment but death. He just walked away without thinking twice, killing them. Do you think he understands the concept of moral hazard?
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Mar 27, 2018 01:16
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nine-gear crow posted:It may horrifying (and possibly delight) you to know that Cline is in fact married, to a woman who is an author/poet in her own right, and her books are infinitely better than her husband's and much more well received, if nowhere near as popular. I think back to myself in my early-mid 20s (I'm in my early 40s now) and I realise that even though I had a few medium to long-term relationships, I doubt very much I ever knew what size they were or how much they weighed, because of how self-centered I was. I my defense I've grown up a lot since then. What's Cline's excuse?
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Mar 27, 2018 01:18
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Yeah, in total fairness, women's clothing sizes are stupid arbitrary and even I don't get them. Wasn't my point really, it was just that he had no idea that that height weight combo isn't exactly the "eating a block of cheese on a Rascal" jpg I was imagining. And that putting stats out like that hurts young impressionable women who are already struggling with self image. Full disclosure: I'm 5' 6" and rocking about 130 to 140. I got no horse in this race, except being sensitive to how young women might read that poo poo, after working for a library and cringing at all the copies of twilight being checked out. Pretty much comes back to Memento's mantra of putting more thought in than the author did. Edit while thinking about this and Smashing Pumpkins came on the radio as I was taking the garbage out: Wade probably looks less like Pinhead and more like Billy Corgan, in his hairless, white, whiny state. Yeah, you're one to make judgement calls on appearances, protagonist. JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 01:31
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I just wear men's clothing. Problem solved. Plus pockets! Then again I'm probably about as massive of a tomboy as you can get 
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Mar 27, 2018 02:01
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My disgust for the 'I can use guns in VR therefore real life ones are easy' line is only reduced because Cline had a reference in that last section that I understood, without him outright explaining it. More drops like Harry Tuttle, less 'a Firefly ship from Firefly which starred a Firefly' anvils.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:08
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Paingod556 posted:My disgust for the 'I can use guns in VR therefore real life ones are easy' line is only reduced because Cline had a reference in that last section that I understood, without him outright explaining it. You know, I was just thinking about this: Wade has a line early on where he talks about his Super-80s DeLorean with KITT and Ghostbusters on it and how it's his character's "trademark" ride or whatever, but he never mentions it ever again, after that one paragraph about how he mashed a bunch of 80s nerd cars together. He spends far more time and attention on his Firefly-class ship from Firefly than he does his DeLorean. Why isn't the Vonnegut his trademark?
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Mar 27, 2018 02:13
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Paingod556 posted:More drops like Harry Tuttle, less 'a Firefly ship from Firefly which starred a Firefly' anvils. The difference seems to be that the overly explained references are ones that Wade or other characters are making, but the ones like Tuttle, Bryce Lynch, and Sorrento's ID are all things Ernest Cline is inserting into the setting and would just cause more problems if actually mentioned in the book (why would Wade use fictional 80's characters as his fake identities in a building full of people specifically looking for 80's references? Are IOI employees allowed to choose their ID numbers, or is it just coincidence?) Edit: Im a good book, this would actually be part of the narrative- Wade can't help himself, even subconsciously, from referencing the 80's, and someone catches him because they recognize his alias. Robot Style fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 02:30
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JacquelineDempsey posted:
You had me laughing at the last bit. Also, "Hi, I am [famous person]! Your ISP is evvvvvvvvvul!" Straight to my well-trained spam filter. Guess I am not going to be around to HACK THE PLANET!
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Mar 27, 2018 03:28
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Leofish posted:You know, I was just thinking about this: Wade has a line early on where he talks about his Super-80s DeLorean with KITT and Ghostbusters on it and how it's his character's "trademark" ride or whatever, but he never mentions it ever again, after that one paragraph about how he mashed a bunch of 80s nerd cars together. He spends far more time and attention on his Firefly-class ship from Firefly than he does his DeLorean. Why isn't the Vonnegut his trademark? Because, if you are too poor to go to space, you don't have a chance to wank it to his ship. But he can drive most everywhere so you have a chance to wank over Parzival's Magical Meme Machine.
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Mar 27, 2018 03:32
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Perhaps this book is actually brilliant because it’s written by Wade and Wade is meant to be terrible and unfamiliar with the editing process! But also I think it should have been written as events unfolded and maybe had multiple perspectives. If care were taken, this book could be re-written from any of the other characters’ POV and then Cline would make it canon! and then we’d have all won. Kinda.
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Mar 27, 2018 03:32
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Leofish posted:You know, I was just thinking about this: Wade has a line early on where he talks about his Super-80s DeLorean with KITT and Ghostbusters on it and how it's his character's "trademark" ride or whatever, but he never mentions it ever again, after that one paragraph about how he mashed a bunch of 80s nerd cars together. He spends far more time and attention on his Firefly-class ship from Firefly than he does his DeLorean. Why isn't the Vonnegut his trademark? Because it's not an 80s reference that Cline can recreate irl that he takes to conventions to show off for other nerds.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:02
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Was there ever any point to Halliday's co-founder being in the book at all? I mean, props to the guy for not going the obvious route and making Morrow the head of IOI and eeeeevvviilllll. But he's not even the Hero's Journey mentor. Or anything at all, really. There's just that one appearance as a loving DJ. What's the point of that whole scene? Anything at all beyond, "Look how cool I, the author, am now - I get invited to the best parties."
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Mar 27, 2018 04:06
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Stand by for answers, Gorilla Salad.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:18
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Gorilla Salad posted:Was there ever any point to Halliday's co-founder being in the book at all? He's there to fill out the requisite Wozniak role of all the implied Steve Jobs allusions swirling around Halliday: the guy who actually did all the hard work and heavy lifting on OSASIS while Halliday got all the credit and attention for being the media-savvy idea man of the duo. Despite all the descriptions of Halliday that Cline offers actually painting him as an agoraphobic boor that no one would ever come to revere ala Jobs.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:21
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