Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

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chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Deptfordx posted:

I completely missed Ready Player One till the movie trailers hit.

I have to ask, what's the infamous excerpt that people keep referring to?

Edit: Wait is it the post above from Pastry that I literally just noticed?

Oh no, it's one in this next update. I'm just going to include a screenshot because gently caress transcribing it.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 13:55

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# ? May 22, 2024 09:23

Angry Salami: Jul 27, 2013; Don't trust the skull.

Drunken Baker posted:

Double points for when he refers to something as "classic" instead of describing it.

"He started doing some classic 80s dance moves."
"They wore classic 80s clothes."

Those are the only ones I remember cemented in my brain from 372 pages. I couldn't unsee it after that.

That's one of the weird things about the book - for all that it runs off referencing things, the author comes across as not particularly familiar with the things he's referencing. Like, even the conversation between Wade and Aech doesn't ever give me the impression that the author's actually seen Ladyhawke or the Ewok adventure; it's just "$THING bad!" "No, $THING good! I will now recite facts from its wikipedia entry!"

Like, if Wade was meant to be utterly mercenary and didn't give a poo poo about the 80s, he's just memorizing this crap so he can win the contest, I don't think you'd need to rewrite much.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 13:55

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

So energy is now expensive which is why we can afford to run all these VR headsets? But not run an electric car or something to get around?

He says that there's streams of electric cars going down the interstate to the city when Wade leaves for his hideout, but also that oil is so expensive that people need to use OASIS to get out because they can't even take road trips.

So...which is it?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 13:56

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

also why the gently caress would a guy obsessed with the 80s know or care about Firefly now that I think about it

# ? Mar 15, 2018 14:10

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

That also struck me reading through the thread.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 14:13

Calaveron: Aug 7, 2006

chitoryu12 posted:

He says that there's streams of electric cars going down the interstate to the city when Wade leaves for his hideout, but also that oil is so expensive that people need to use OASIS to get out because they can't even take road trips.

So...which is it?

Carrying goods and workers, yes
Ernest Cline wanted to have it both ways, with a post-apocalyptic future but also a future with easily accessible technological wonders and that creates a confusing mess but who cares do you remember Star Wars Droids and that toothpaste that came out starshaped and was three different colors?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 14:20

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

quote:

The rest of my school day passed quickly until my final class, Latin.

Most students took a foreign language they might actually be able to use someday, like Mandarin, or Hindi, or Spanish. I�d decided to take Latin because James Halliday had taken Latin. He�d also occasionally used Latin words and phrases in his early adventure games. Unfortunately, even with the limitless possibilities of the OASIS at her disposal, my Latin teacher, Ms. Rank, still had a hard time making her lessons interesting. And today she was reviewing a bunch of verbs I�d already memorized, so I found my attention drifting almost immediately.

While a class was in session, the simulation prevented students from accessing any data or programs that weren�t authorized by their teacher, to prevent kids from watching movies, playing games, or chatting with each other instead of paying attention to the lesson. Luckily, during my junior year, I�d discovered a bug in the school�s online library software, and by exploiting it, I could access any book in the school�s online library, including Anorak�s Almanac. So whenever I got bored (like right now) I would pull it up in a window on my display and read over my favorite passages to pass the time.

Over the past five years, the Almanac had become my bible. Like most books nowadays, it was only available in electronic format. But I�d wanted to be able to read the Almanac night or day, even during one of the stacks� frequent power outages, so I�d fixed up an old discarded laser printer and used it to print out a hard copy. I put it in an old three-ring binder that I kept in my backpack and studied until I knew every word by heart.

The Almanac contained thousands of references to Halliday�s favorite books, TV shows, movies, songs, graphic novels, and videogames. Most of these items were over forty years old, and so free digital copies of them could be downloaded from the OASIS. If there was something I needed that wasn�t legally available for free, I could almost always get it by using Guntorrent, a file-sharing program used by gunters around the world.

Ah, here we go. This is the "infamous excerpt", the one that decides whether you're going to love or hate this book. I'm not going to transcribe it because it would be way too much effort fixing the spacing and italics, so you get a screenshot instead.

So coming off that eye-glazing monologue, we learn that Wade already figured out the first clue 4 years ago!

While obsessively reading the Almanac, Wade noticed that some letters had a tiny notch on them (Minecraft reference spotted). He thought it was a printing error in his hard copy at first, but confirmed that they were in the electronic copy. Writing down the marked letters, he found that they formed another message:

quote:

Three hidden keys open three secret gates
Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits
And those with the skill to survive these straits
Will reach The End where the prize awaits

Other gunters had found this message, but kept it to themselves. Then after 6 months, an MIT freshman named Steven Pendergast publicized it and took credit in an interview. Going public with a clue thereafter became known among gunters as "pulling a Pendergast".

This rhyming phrase, the Limerick, spent years unsolved. Wade decided to figure out the meaning line by line, and started doing some research.

quote:

The Copper Key awaits explorers

This line seemed pretty straightforward. No hidden meaning that I could detect.

In a tomb filled with horrors.

This line was trickier. Taken at face value, it seemed to say that the key was hidden in a tomb somewhere, one filled with horrifying stuff. But then,during the course of my research, I discovered an old Dungeons & Dragons supplement called Tomb of Horrors, which had been published in 1978. From the moment I saw the title, I was certain the second line of the Limerick was a reference to it. Halliday and Morrow had played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons all through high school, along with several other pen-and-paper role-playing games, like GURPS, Champions, Car Wars, and Rolemaster.

Tomb of Horrors was a thin booklet called a �module.� It contained detailed maps and room-by-room descriptions of an underground labyrinth infested with undead monsters. D&D players could explore the labyrinth with their characters as the dungeon master read from the module and guided them through the story it contained, describing everything they saw and encountered along the way.

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. It changed my whole perspective on the Hunt for Halliday�s Easter egg. From then on, I began to think of the Hunt as an elaborate D&D module. And Halliday was obviously the dungeon master, even if he was now controlling the game from beyond the grave.

I found a digital copy of the sixty-seven-year-old Tomb of Horrors module buried deep in an ancient FTP archive. As I studied it, I began to develop a theory: Somewhere in the OASIS, Halliday had re-created the Tomb of Horrors, and he�d hidden the Copper Key inside it.

I spent the next few months studying the module and memorizing all of its maps and room descriptions, in anticipation of the day I would finally figure out where it was located. But that was the rub: The Limerick didn�t appear to give any hint as to where Halliday had hidden the drat thing. The only clue seemed to be �you have much to learn if you hope to earn a place among the high scorers.�

I recited those words over and over in my head until I wanted to howl in frustration. Much to learn. Yeah, OK, fine. I have much to learn about what?

Okay, I'm calling bullshit on this one too. Tabletop RPGs remain extraordinarily popular even now as we hit the 2020s and show no sign of disappearing. Wade was born in 2025, so he's not that far off from us. And yet despite OASIS having a planet literally called Gygax and filled with recreations of old D&D modules, he's never even heard of pen & paper roleplaying or known how they worked?

So the big problem with this clue is that there's thousands of planets. Gunterpedia has a comprehensive list of every quest on planet Gygax and the Tomb of Horrors isn't one of them, nor on any other pen & paper planets.

Also the chapter actually ends here, but I'm moving on to the next one because almost the entire chapter was taken up with Wade's rambling about all the 80s poo poo he's obsessed over.

quote:

Our teacher, Ms. Rank, was standing at the front of the class, slowly conjugating Latin verbs. She said them in English first, then in Latin, and each word automatically appeared on the board behind her as she spoke it. Whenever we were doing tedious verb conjugation, I always got the lyrics to an old Schoolhouse Rock! song stuck in my head: �To run, to go, to get, to give. Verb! You�re what�s happenin�!�

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

quote:

I was quietly humming this tune to myself when Ms. Rank began to conjugate the Latin for the verb �to learn.� �To Learn. Discere,� she said. �Now, this one should be easy to remember, because it�s similar to the English word �discern,� which also means �to learn.�"

Hearing her repeat the phrase �to learn� was enough to make me think of the Limerick. You have much to learn if you hope to earn a place among the high scorers.

Ms. Rank continued, using the verb in a sentence. �We go to school to learn,� she said. �Petimus scholam ut litteras discamus.�

And that was when it hit me. Like an anvil falling out of the sky, directly onto my skull. I gazed around at my classmates. What group of people has �much to learn�?

Students. High-school students.

I was on a planet filled with students, all of whom had �much to learn.�

What if the Limerick was saying that the tomb was hidden right here, on Ludus? The very planet where I�d been twiddling my thumbs for the past five years? Then I remembered that ludus was also a Latin word, meaning �school.� I pulled up my Latin dictionary to double-check the definition, and that was when I discovered the word had more than one meaning. Ludus could mean �school,� but it could also mean �sport� or �game.�

Game.

I fell out of my folding chair and landed with a thud on the floor of my hideout. My OASIS console tracked this movement and attempted to make my avatar drop to the floor of my Latin classroom, but the classroom conduct software prevented it from moving and a warning flashed on my display: PLEASE REMAIN SEATED DURING CLASS!

Halliday had donated billions to establish the OASIS public school system and Halliday Learning Foundation before his death, and clearly cared quite a lot about education, but there are thousands of schools on the planet and hundreds of private schools and universities elsewhere in the game. Wade figures Ludus could still be the location because, as one of the original planets, GSS handcrafted it and Halliday would have been involved enough to be able to mess with the source code. He also starts considering the implications of Halliday wanting a schoolkid to find the Copper Key, but doesn't tell us what he's implying.

Wade thinks that if the Tomb of Horrors is anywhere on Ludus, it'll look like the way it's described in the module: "a low, flat-topped hill, about two hundred yards wide and three hundred yards long� with a series of flat black stones arranged in the shape of a skull. Ludus is a big place, so it's very possible that nobody has stumbled upon it even by accident simply because it's a loving planet.

Wade has to spend the next 17 minutes sitting anxiously for class to finish and unlock his avatar. Once it's over, he remains in the empty classroom and opens up a 3D holographic map of the planet. It has a circumference of exactly 1000 kilometers; Cline says this is about 1/3 the size of Earth's moon, but a quick Google shows that the circumference of the moon is actually 10,921 kilometers and Ludus is actually less than 1/10th the size of the moon. There's no oceans, just grasslands and forests divided by rivers and lakes, and it's permanently daytime with a cloudless blue sky.

Wade searches through a warez site for a high-end image recognition plugin to download for OASIS and has it scan for any sites matching the image data of the Tomb of Horrors entrance. After 10 minutes, he's got a match. The only problem is that it's over 400 kilometers away, and at full speed it would take his avatar 3 days to run there. Teleportation would take minutes, but he hasn't got a single credit to his name. So he decides to cheat a little.

quote:

Each OASIS public school had a bunch of different athletic teams, including wrestling, soccer, football, baseball, volleyball, and a few other sports that couldn�t be played in the real world, like Quidditch and zero-gravity Capture the Flag. Students went out for these teams just like they did at schools in the real world, and they played using elaborate sports-capable haptic rigs that required them to actually do all of their own running, jumping, kicking, tackling, and so on. The teams had nightly practice, held pep rallies, and traveled to other schools on Ludus to compete against them. Our school gave out free teleportation vouchers to any student who wanted to attend an away game, so we could sit up in the stands and root for old OPS #1873. I�d only taken advantage of this once, when our Capture the Flag team had played against Aech�s school in the OPS championships.

When I arrived in the school office, I scanned the activities schedule and found what I was looking for right away. That evening, our football team was playing an away game against OPS #0571, which was located roughly an hour�s run from the forest where the tomb was hidden.

I reached out and selected the game, and a teleportation voucher instantly appeared in my avatar�s inventory, good for one free round-trip to OPS #0571.

Wade trades his books for his armor, shield, and sword at his locker and sprints out of the school. As he crosses the boundaries that indicate he's leaving the school zone, he turns off his floating nametag to keep from being identified. The transport terminal is a large domed pavilion supported by a dozen ivory pillars, each emblazoned with a T in a blue hexagon. Wade steps into the first booth (which he says reminds him of the TARDIS because it's a blue booth) and inserts the voucher, invoicing his school 103 credits for 462 kilometers of travel.

Wade instantly appears at the other school, which looks completely identical except for the surrounding scenery. He wonders why anyone would actually go to a game when they could just watch a video elsewhere, especially since NPC fans would be used to fill the stands anyway. I'm sure football has the same weight on Wade's mind as religion: it's for ugh, normal people.

quote:

I was already running in the opposite direction, across a rolling green field that stretched out behind the school. A small mountain range loomed in the distance, and I could see the amoeba-shaped forest at its base.

I turned on my avatar�s autorun feature, then opened my inventory and selected three of the items listed there. My armor appeared on my body,my shield appeared in a sling on my back, and my sword appeared in its scabbard, hanging at my side.

I was almost to the edge of the forest when my phone rang. The ID said it was Aech. Probably calling to see why I hadn�t logged into the Basement yet. But if I answered the call, he would see a live video feed of my avatar, running across a field at top speed, with OPS #0571 shrinking in the distance behind me. I could conceal my current location by taking the call as audio only, but that might make him suspicious. So I let the call roll to my vidmail. Aech�s face appeared in a small window on my display. He was calling from a PvP arena somewhere. Dozens of avatars were locked in fierce combat on a multitiered playing field behind him.

�Yo, Z! What are you up to? Jerking off to Ladyhawke?� He flashed his Cheshire grin. �Give me a shout. I�m still planning to pop some corn and have a Spaced marathon. You down?� He hung up and his image winked out.

I sent a text-only reply, saying I had a ton of homework and couldn�t hang tonight. Then I pulled up the Tomb of Horrors module and began to read through it again, page by page. I did this slowly and carefully, because I was pretty sure it contained a detailed description of everything I was about to face.

�In the far reaches of the world, under a lost and lonely hill,� read the module�s introduction, �lies the sinister TOMB OF HORRORS. This labyrinthine crypt is filled with terrible traps, strange and ferocious monsters, rich and magical treasures, and somewhere within rests the evil Demi-Lich.�

That last bit worried me. A lich was an undead creature, usually an incredibly powerful wizard or king who had employed dark magic to bind his intellect to his own reanimated corpse, thus achieving a perverted form of immortality. I�d encountered liches in countless videogames and fantasy novels. They were to be avoided at all costs.

Wade studies the map and memorizes all the traps and puzzles. If Halliday recreated the Tomb of Horrors perfectly, he's in big trouble trying to fight Acererak at the end because of his low level. If he dies, he loses all his items and progress and has to start over as a level 1 avatar. The only thing he's got going for him (other than being the only one he knows of to figure out the clues) is that as a level three, he won't lose a ton of progress and can theoretically just keep running back to try again over and over.

After passing through the forest (where trees are rendered in such detail that you can even see ants climbing over the bark), he climbs the low hilltop and sees the exact same image from the book:

Using his shield as a shovel, Wade digs through the spot in the cliff where the module says the tomb is buried. Sure enough, he finds a tunnel with a mosaic of colorful stones forming the floor and a red tile path leading deeper.

Clutching his sword and flashlight, Wade finally enters the plot.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 14:52

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Ok two things

First, why would Spanish, Hindi, and Chinese be good languages for a career in a Post apocalyptic future of oil and food shortages. It doesn't sound like there is a lot of globalization and international business going on.

Second, Latin? Latin!! A loving public school in a collapsing society has a Latin program?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:15

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Here's why those three would be good: over time more and more languages are disappearing, and some anthropologists and linguistics experts feel that in a certain timeframe (read: sufficiently long enough, but well within the next few centuries), we'll be down to those three and English, though some say Hindi will disappear as well.

Latin is just dumb.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:29

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

Uh...Acerak's not even a level check, he's a puzzle boss.

For someone as steeped in the 80s as Cline seems to be you'd think he'd figure that out.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:32

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

iospace posted:

Here's why those three would be good: over time more and more languages are disappearing, and some anthropologists and linguistics experts feel that in a certain timeframe (read: sufficiently long enough, but well within the next few centuries), we'll be down to those three and English, though some say Hindi will disappear as well.

Latin is just dumb.

Yeah but the strongest world economy is a virtual reality world built around the tastes of an eccentric anglophile with a nostalgia complex. If anything, English would be the only language left on earth because it was the primary communication method in an instant global economy

Also, no one ever noticed a giant hill with a skullface before? In 30 years?????

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:32

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Yeah but the strongest world economy is a virtual reality world built around the tastes of an eccentric anglophile with a nostalgia complex. If anything, English would be the only language left on earth because it was the primary communication method in an instant global economy

Also, no one ever noticed a giant hill with a skullface before? In 30 years?????

It�s a little justifiable, since as a planet with a 1000 km circumference and nothing but schools it wouldn�t really be a place for exploring. Wade says that none of the simulated animals in the forest grant XP for killing them so it�s not worth adventuring when you can go to the Star Wars universe or something.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:37

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

It�s a little justifiable, since as a planet with a 1000 km circumference and nothing but schools it wouldn�t really be a place for exploring. Wade says that none of the simulated animals in the forest grant XP for killing them so it�s not worth adventuring when you can go to the Star Wars universe or something.

I dunno, I feel like this universe has to have a ulillillia or two who spends all their free time mapping out poo poo no one cares about

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:39

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I dunno, I feel like this universe has to have a ulillillia or two who spends all their free time mapping out poo poo no one cares about

You have a point there.

Also I mentioned this in another thread long before I started reading this book, but Cline establishes that there were movies beyond Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull while still leaving Mad Max as "holy trilogy", despite Mad Max: Fury Road being known to be in production with the cast publicized at the time of this book's writing and publishing.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:48

Drunken Baker: Feb 3, 2015; VODKA STYLE DRINK

The whole 80s obsession was brought about BECAUSE of the "Easter Egg", right? I might be wrong here, but that's how it came off to me.

But like it's been said before, it's not even about 80s culture. It's about what Cline likes, the majority of which just happens to be from the 80s.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 16:37

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Drunken Baker posted:

The whole 80s obsession was brought about BECAUSE of the "Easter Egg", right? I might be wrong here, but that's how it came off to me.

But like it's been said before, it's not even about 80s culture. It's about what Cline likes, the majority of which just happens to be from the 80s.

Yeah, OASIS has every nerdy environment you could think of as a game world. That's why it has stuff like Firefly despite not being 80s.

Halliday's Hunt became such a phenomenon that it singlehandedly led to the 2040s becoming a repeat of 80s pop culture, with even fashion and music taking after the 80s. And it's the 80s because Cline loves the 80s, so he made Halliday almost the same age as him so he could justify the book being predominately about 80s stuff.

Also I read ahead to the fight with Acererak and you're going to loving die, either laughing or facepalming.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:14

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

And it's the 80s because Cline loves the 80s, so he made Halliday almost the same age as him so he could justify the book being predominately about 80s stuff.

So I just did some light research into the timeline of events in the book and it makes no loving sense at all

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:24

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

Ok. Today was my first exposure to Ready Player One, apart from watching that first trailer a few weeks ago, and I am officially all in on hating this bullshit. I think I actually just sprained my eyeballs from rolling them that hard.

Edit: I am old enough to remember the 80's myself and whoever it was said their Mom was aghast at the prospect of wading through that again. I know exactly how she felt.

Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:29

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Like, I don't think the book is worth hating, but it's definitely fun to riff on it

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:34

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Mel Mudkiper posted:

So I just did some light research into the timeline of events in the book and it makes no loving sense at all

Yeah, I think OASIS should be getting started around now. Wade was born in the stacks in 2025, which means the recession needs to get so bad (while still being called the Great Recession despite being even worse than the Great Depression) that people start living in 20-story shantytowns only 10 years after the publication of this book!

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:37

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Yeah, I think OASIS should be getting started around now. Wade was born in the stacks in 2025, which means the recession needs to get so bad (while still being called the Great Recession despite being even worse than the Great Depression) that people start living in 20-story shantytowns only 10 years after the publication of this book!

According to the timeline Oasis launched in 2012 which means it predates societal collapse

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:40

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I'm not sure whether it was you or Cline who missed it but that sure as hell is not a limerick.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:47

Old Kentucky Shark: May 25, 2012; If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Uh...Acerak's not even a level check, he's a puzzle boss.

For someone as steeped in the 80s as Cline seems to be you'd think he'd figure that out.

Acerak also famously doesn�t have a body, being only a jeweled skull, but... well, we�ll get to that in a bit.

I think that the book is worth hating because, when you dig past the references into the implied morals, it�s actually enormously contemptible if not downright evil. The book is fundamentally narcissistic on a level normally only seen in the Trumps.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:48

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

I think that the book is worth hating because, when you dig past the references into the implied morals, it�s actually enormously contemptible if not downright evil. The book is fundamentally narcissistic on a level normally only seen in the Trumps.

Well yeah but if we had to hate every book that appealed to the selfish narcissism of white male nerds we'd have to take a torch to sci-fi and fantasy in general

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:50

Renegret: May 26, 2007; THANK YOU FOR CALLING HELP DOG, INC.

YOUR POSITION IN THE QUEUE IS *pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt*

Cat Army Sworn Enemy

book is bad

don't hurt yourself, op

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:53

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

anilEhilated posted:

I'm not sure whether it was you or Cline who missed it but that sure as hell is not a limerick.

It's actually called the Limerick (as a proper noun) by the gunters.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 17:53

TheAwfulWaffle: Jun 30, 2013

That long list of '80's references reminds me of something that drove me bonkers when I read RPO.

For a book about an Easter egg, most of the references are painfully obvious. I mean, re-read that list. It's all greatest hits and no deep cuts. There are no surprises or hidden gems. It's just a list of really common pop culture signifiers. The book pretends that this stuff is deep arcana that requires hours and hours of study and memorization, but the references in the actual text are grossly predictable.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 18:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

TheAwfulWaffle posted:

That long list of '80's references reminds me of something that drove me bonkers when I read RPO.

For a book about an Easter egg, most of the references are painfully obvious. I mean, re-read that list. It's all greatest hits and no deep cuts. There are no surprises or hidden gems. It's just a list of really common pop culture signifiers. The book pretends that this stuff is deep arcana that requires hours and hours of study and memorization, but the references in the actual text are grossly predictable.

It's called the Frank Lloyd Wright effect. If they ever ask a question about an architect on jeopardy the answer will almost always be Frank Lloyd Wright. That's because most people don't know any architects other than him. If jeopardy actually asked really obscure, hard questions people wouldn't watch the show. The appeal is to make believe their general knowledge is obscure enough to make you special. If the 80s pop culture was actually abstract and obscure, the reader couldn't feel empowered by their own shared knowledge of the topic.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 19:04

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL: Feb 21, 2006; Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

The easter egg is done so poorly in this because look at how quickly ARGs and game secrets are solved these days. Scott Cawthon kept burying things in FNaF with increasing difficulty and people solved them in weeks, if not days after release. Ever since the Marble Hornets stuff people almost expect there to be hidden content of some kind and comb all sorts of games for them. Hell, when I played WoW I�d explore for fun and stumble into things!

# ? Mar 15, 2018 19:33

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I think this thread is active enough that I can get away with two updates a day.

quote:

The walls of the corridor leading into the tomb were covered with dozens of strange paintings depicting enslaved humans, orcs, elves, and other creatures. Each fresco appeared in the exact location described in the original D&D module. I knew that hidden in the tiled stone surface of the floor were several spring-loaded trapdoors. If you stepped on one, it snapped open and dropped you into a pit filled with poisoned iron spikes. But because the location of each hidden trapdoor was clearly marked on my map, I was able to avoid all of them.

So far, everything had followed the original module to the letter. If the same was true for the rest of the tomb, I might be able to survive long enough to locate the Copper Key. There were only a few monsters lurking in this dungeon�a gargoyle, a skeleton, a zombie, some asps, a mummy, and the evil demi-lich Acererak himself. Since the map told me where each of them was hiding, I should be able to avoid fighting them. Unless, of course, one of them was guarding the Copper Key. And I could already guess who probably had that honor.

I tried to proceed carefully, as if I had no idea what to expect.

Avoiding the Sphere of Annihilation located at the end of the corridor, I located a hidden door beside the last pit trap. It opened into a small sloping passageway. My flashlight reached into the darkness ahead, flickering off the damp stone walls. My surroundings made me feel like I was in a low-budget sword-and-sorcery flick, like Hawk the Slayer or The Beastmaster.

I began to make my way through the dungeon, room by room. Even though I knew where all of the traps were located, I still had to proceed carefully to avoid them all. In a dark, forbidding chamber known as the Chapel of Evil, I found thousands of gold and silver coins hidden in the pews, right where they were supposed to be. It was more money than my avatar could carry, even with the Bag of Holding that I found. I gathered up as many of the gold coins as I could and they appeared in my inventory. The currency was automatically converted and my credit counter jumped to over twenty thousand, by far the largest amount of money I�d ever had. And in addition to the credits, my avatar received an equal number of experience points for obtaining the coins.

As I continued deeper into the tomb, I obtained several magic items along the way. A +1 Flaming Sword. A Gem of Seeing. A +1 Ring of Protection. I even found a suit of +3 Full Plate armor. These were the first magic items my avatar had ever possessed, and they made me feel unstoppable.

When I put on the suit of magical armor, it shrank to fit my avatar perfectly. Its gleaming chrome appearance reminded me of the bad-rear end armor worn by the knights in Excalibur. I actually switched to a third-person view for a few seconds, just to admire how cool my avatar looked wearing it.

If you find this description incredibly boring, get used to it because that's how this book is. Rather than a detailed, action-packed description of Wade going through the Tomb of Horrors, we get paragraphs simply describing what he did over the course of minutes or hours. It's almost like an autistic person describing their favorite video game.

In the Pillared Throne Room, we get the first difference: Acererak is sitting on the throne, far sooner than he's supposed to be encountered. This is a huge problem, because Wade's level 3 avatar and +1 Flaming Sword can't do diddly squat against a lich. At least if he dies he can just come back and try again at level 1. He tries to activate his game's recording function, but finds that it's not allowed in here.

quote:

�I seek the Copper Key,� I replied. Then I remembered I was speaking to a king, so I quickly bowed my head, dropped to one knee, and added, �Your Majesty.�

�Of course you do,� Acererak said, motioning for me to rise. �And you�ve come to the right place.� He stood, and his mummified skin cracked like old leather as he moved. I clutched my sword more tightly, still anticipating an attack.

�How can I know that you are worthy of possessing the Copper Key?� he asked.

Holy poo poo! How the hell was I supposed to answer that? And what if I gave the wrong answer? Would he suck out my soul and incinerate me?

I racked my brain for a suitable reply. The best I could come up with was, �Allow me to prove my worth, noble Acererak.�

All right, in the real Tomb of Horrors you can get out without dealing with Acererak as long as you don't attack him when he first materializes (he just absorbs the energy) or touch his skull and let it suck out your soul. So how did Halliday program this fight to get the Copper Key?

quote:

The lich let out a long, disturbing cackle that echoed off the chamber�s stone walls. �Very well!� he said. �You shall prove your worth by facing me in a joust!�

I�d never heard of an undead lich king challenging someone to a joust. Especially not in a subterranean burial chamber. �All right,� I said uncertainly. �But won�t we be needing horses for that?�

�Not horses,� he replied, stepping away from his throne. �Birds.�

He waved a skeletal hand at his throne. There was a brief flash of light, accompanied by a transformation sound effect (which I was pretty sure had been lifted from the old Super Friends cartoon). The throne melted and morphed into an old coin-operated videogame cabinet. Two joysticks protruded from its control panel, one yellow and one blue. I couldn�t help but grin as I read the name on the game�s backlit marquee: JOUST. Williams Electronics, 1982.

�Best two out of three games,� Acererak rasped. �If you win, I shall grant you what you seek.�

Jesus Christ.

quote:

The fireball in Acererak�s hand vanished. He stretched out his leathery palm, which now held two shiny quarters. �The games are on me,� he said.

He stepped up to the Joust machine and dropped both quarters into the left coin slot. The game emitted two low electronic chimes and the credit counter jumped from zero to two.

Acererak took hold of the yellow joystick on the left side of the control panel and closed his bony fingers around it. �Art thou ready?� he croaked.

�Yeah,� I said, taking a deep breath. I cracked my knuckles and grabbed the Player Two joystick with my left hand, poising my right hand over the Flap button.

Acererak rocked his head from left to right, cracking his neck. It sounded like a snapping tree branch. Then he slapped the Two Player button and the joust began.

This is the funniest thing in the goddamn world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWoiLNri0OM

Acererak is much, much better at Joust than Wade is. Wade needs to take the first five minutes just to remember the controls, while Acererak is an AI that barely makes mistakes. The lich easily defeats Wade, who asks if he can switch sides because he's used to the other side of the cabinet. Hilariously, Acererak lets them switch players.

quote:

It worked. I slipped into the zone, and the tide began to turn in my favor. I began to find the flaws in the lich�s playing style, the holes in his programming. This was something I�d learned over the years, mastering hundreds of different videogames. There was always a trick to beating a computer-controlled opponent. At a game like this, a gifted human player could always triumph over the game�s AI, because software couldn�t improvise. It could either react randomly, or in a limited number of predetermined ways, based on a finite number of preprogrammed conditions. This was an axiom in videogames, and would be until humans invented true artificial intelligence.

Our second game came right down to the wire, but by the end of it, I�d spotted a pattern to the lich�s playing technique. By changing my ostrich�s direction at a certain moment, I could get him to slam his stork into one of the oncoming buzzards. By repeating this move, I was able to pick off his extra lives, one by one. I died several times myself in the process, but I finally took him down during the tenth wave, with no extra lives of my own to spare.

I stepped back from the machine and sighed with relief. I could feel rivulets of sweat running down my forehead and around the edge of my visor. I wiped at my face with the sleeve of my shirt, and my avatar mimicked this motion.

�Good game,� Acererak said. Then, to my surprise, he offered me his withered claw of a hand. I shook it, chuckling nervously as I did so.

�Yeah,� I replied. �Good game, man.� It occurred to me that, in a weird way, I was actually playing against Halliday. I quickly pushed the thought out of my head, afraid I might psych myself out.

Acererak once again produced two quarters and dropped them into the Joust machine. �This one is for all the marbles,� he said. �Art thou ready?�

Honestly this scene would be legitimately great if it wasn't so dry. I actually really like the idea of it. Cline just gets so wrapped up in boring descriptions of activity that he doesn't put any soul into it. There's no tension, one paragraph drifting to the next to an inevitable conclusion.

Wade defeats Acererak, who angrily smashes the console to pixels that scatter across the floor. As he and Wade exchange bows, Acererak transforms into Anorak, Halliday's avatar.

quote:

�Now,� the wizard said, speaking with Halliday�s familiar voice. �Your reward.�

The chamber filled with the sound of a full orchestra. Triumphant horns were quickly joined by a stirring string section. I recognized the music. It was the last track from John Williams�s original Star Wars score, used in the scene where Princess Leia gives Luke and Han their medals (and Chewbacca, as you may recall, gets the shaft).

As the music built to a crescendo, Anorak stretched out his right hand. There, resting in his open palm, was the Copper Key, the item for which millions of people had been searching for the past five years. As he handed it to me, the music faded out, and in the same instant, I heard a chime sound. I�d just gained fifty thousand experience points, enough to raise my avatar all the way up to tenth level.

�Farewell, Sir Parzival,� Anorak said. �I bid you good luck on your quest.� And before I could ask what I was supposed to do next, or where I could find the first gate, his avatar vanished in a flash of light, accompanied by a teleportation sound effect I knew was lifted from the old �80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

See, this is what I'm talking about. It's nerdiness distilled to the barest components: references. This would work much better in a movie, where things like the teleportation sound would be subtle Easter eggs for viewers to identify. In a book where the protagonist has to explain everything going on, it feels more like Cline made a list of every 80s sci-fi and fantasy work and checked off a box every time he referenced one.

Wade looks down at the key with wonder and elation. We know this because Wade says that he looks down at it with wonder and elation. It's a simple antique copper key embossed with a Roman numeral I. Engraved along the length of the key is �What you seek lies hidden in the trash on the deepest level of Daggorath.� Wade is such a nerd that he instantly understands its meaning: the TRS-80 computer was nicknamed the "Trash 80" back in the 80s, and Dungeons of Daggorath is an obscure 1982 computer game for the TRS-80 Color Computer 2. Wade also gets off topic by explaining how "dagorath" is Elvish for "battle" in Tolkien's works but he knows it's Dungeons of Daggorath because it has two g's.

The next place Wade needs to go, therefore, is the planet of Middletown. Halliday made a perfect recreation of his hometown, including an extremely detailed reproduction of his childhood home and room. While he's never been able to visit, Wade knows from pictures and videos that Halliday's room on planet Middletown has a TRS-80.

quote:

I checked the time: 11:03 p.m., OST (OASIS Server Time, which also happened to be Eastern Standard Time). I had eight hours before I had to be at school. That might be enough time. I could go for it, right now. Sprint like hell, back up through the dungeon to the surface, then hightail it back to the nearest transport terminal. From there, I could teleport directly to Middletown. If I left right now, I should be able to reach Halliday�s TRS-80 in under an hour.

I knew I should get some sleep first. I�d been logged into the OASIS for almost fifteen solid hours. And tomorrow was Friday. I could teleport to Middletown right after school and then I�d have the whole weekend to tackle the First Gate.

But who was I kidding? There was no way I�d be able to sleep tonight, or sit through school tomorrow. I had to go now.

I began to sprint for the exit, but then stopped in the middle of the chamber. Through the open door, I saw a long shadow bouncing on the wall,accompanied by the echo of approaching footsteps.

A few seconds later, the silhouette of an avatar appeared in the doorway. I was about to reach for my sword when I realized I was still holding the Copper Key in my hand. I shoved it into a pouch on my belt and fumbled my sword out of its scabbard. As I raised my blade, the avatar spoke.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 19:42

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

As an addition to that update, jdelgado made a very nice piece of artwork for this "battle".

# ? Mar 15, 2018 19:51

Solumin: Jan 11, 2013

you can't say you have no idea what's ahead when you just spent paragraphs describing how you know exactly what's going on!!!

Oh I missed a word. "as if I had no idea what's ahead." That.... doesn't really help?

# ? Mar 15, 2018 19:55

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

I can't believe they're going to use the Tomb of Horrors in the film.

It's Speilberg, it'll be something more visually interesting surely.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 20:39

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Deptfordx posted:

I can't believe they're going to use the Tomb of Horrors in the film.

It's Speilberg, it'll be something more visually interesting surely.

I think the best way to do it would be either:

1. Have the Joust game played up with dramatic music, beading sweat (on Acererak too), and Edgar Wright-style rapid cuts.

2. Have no music whatsoever and just have the sounds of the game for the entire sequence, including when Wade and Acererak awkwardly shuffle around to switch sides. Make it the lamest thing possible to put to film.

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:01

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Still reading ahead, and apparently the world outside of major cities is such a lawless wasteland that cross-country buses have armor plating and armed guards on the roof in case of raider attacks. This is a loving post-apocalyptic scenario.

but it's okay we have this video game guys

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:41

Old Kentucky Shark: May 25, 2012; If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.

chitoryu12 posted:

I think the best way to do it would be either:

1. Have the Joust game played up with dramatic music, beading sweat (on Acererak too), and Edgar Wright-style rapid cuts.

2. Have no music whatsoever and just have the sounds of the game for the entire sequence, including when Wade and Acererak awkwardly shuffle around to switch sides. Make it the lamest thing possible to put to film.

The obvious thing in a filmwould be to have the Joust game be, y'know, an actual game of Joust; Wade fighting Acerak with lances while aboard a giant ostrich-thing.

I mean, when I picked up the book because people were talking about it, I just kind of assumed that's what it would be about, because that's what it says on the back: Wade Watts enters a fantastic VR world to experience video games in real life. And that's fine; I'm not proud. I read lovely novels all the time. I would have been okay with a book about guys flying X-wings into gundams, or whatever the gently caress seems to be going on in RPO the movie. And then you read the book, and he is literally playing an arcade game in VR: he is using an advanced piece of fantastical computer technology to painstakingly simulate the experience of slinking around the dim and stinky corner of a bowling alley with the loser middle-school friends that he's not actually cool enough to have.

It would be a fantastic one-off joke to subvert natural audience expectations, if it were in any way a joke or the author were capable of understanding another human being well enough to judge what their expectations would be. But unfortunately, spoiler alert, this is how every single challenge in the book plays out. Just like this. Literally just playing 80's arcade games on 80's arcade consoles and quoting lines from movies verbatim until he is rewarded with money and fame and pussy.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Well yeah but if we had to hate every book that appealed to the selfish narcissism of white male nerds we'd have to take a torch to sci-fi and fantasy in general

Nah, this is a lot worse than most, both because it's surprisingly popular and because Cline is much much worse about it than all but the most dire white male nerd fantasists. He has drilled white male nerd fantasy to its hollow quaking bones. He is to nerd fantasy what John Ringo and Tom Kratman are to jock fantasy.

Like, check it out; traditionally, even the most sketched-in, hackneyed, paper thin power fantasies at least pay lip service to the idea of the Hero's Journey of Self Discovery, but Cline doesn't even do that much. You can see him cludgily stealing the framework of such stories from other media, but he does so in such a half-assed way he wrecks them utterly. Take Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a movie this book is often compared to because they start from similar premises. If RPO was just a bad copy of Willy Wonka, that'd be all right. But it actively undermines the main thrust of WW's moral, and it does it in an amazingly toxic way. In Willy Wonka, Wonka's factory is presented by its quirky creator as a fantasy dream-land, but it's actually a kind of moral crucible, weeding out the bad, selfish, arrogant, and greedy children with hidden traps until only Charlie, who displays optimism, tenacity, and honesty, is rewarded for his purity of spirit by gifts beyond his wildest dreams.

Halliday's Puzzle at first looks like a similar set up, with one major difference; there's no moral crucible. There's no value judgment whatsoever. The whole idea of moral value judgments seems toxic to Cline. The quixotic mystery man at the heart of the story is literally doing exactly what he said he was: testing his audience's tolerance for rote memorization of useless trivia and capacity for obsessive compulsion. It is a game that can only be won by being as good at the video games of Halliday's childhood as Halliday was. The ultimate prize, complete control over a billion dollar corporation, goes to the person most capable of narcissistic emulation of a man trapped in a vision of his own past. Think how creepy that is: to live your life entirely within the shadow of someone else's childhood, and then imagine what it would be like to voluntarily dive into that fate. Wade Watts doesn't prevail in the end because he's pure of heart, or because he has unique talents or insights, or because he learns the power of friendship, but because he's the biggest, nerdiest, hikikomori-est loser in the world.

The fundamental message of the book is that if you ignore your friends and the outside world and keep doing exactly what you've been doing and don't change in any way, you too can earn a billion dollars and be famous and gently caress the nerdy non-threatening girl next door.

Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Mar 15, 2018

# ? Mar 15, 2018 21:42