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

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

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

Chapter One

It was gamemasteranthony's birthday...

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 04:53

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:16

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

Oh no not an important figure in Oklahoma

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 13:13

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

Darth Walrus posted:

Big civil-rights hero. Which does make calling your liberator of the nerds Wade Watts faintly suspect.

See thats the context that matters

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 13:19

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

oh you were shot on the street for wearing a hoodie?

Well, a jock pushed me into a locker once

we are brothers in the struggle

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 13:39

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

hey guys

fyi google "nerd porn auteur"

njoi

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 14:43

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

chitoryu12 posted:

I helpfully included a link in the OP! But just in case you've been trying to avoid reading it:

It takes a very strange level of delusion to declare that you masturbate to traditionally unattractive women as some sort of statement of feminist empowerment

Not to give anything away, but this weird sort of anti-objectification as objectification shows up hard in the book

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 15:21

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

Does he ever explain why a world in which trailers are stacked on top of each other to form unstable towers of rusted death can afford to supply hundreds of thousands of VR headsets to children in public education

Like, he goes to #1873

That means there are roughly 2000 digital schools giving loving VR headsets to hundreds of random kids each

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 17:10

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

Also apparently the OASIS is completely free to use if you have a headset, which leads to the question of who funds the servers and where do they get the energy to maintain a consistent virtual world for billions of people.

It really raises the question of whats the point of the post-apocalyptic setting at all.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 17:43

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

See, if it werent for the fact he objectively sees the oasis as a good thing, the author could have at least made the oasis the reason for society's collapse.

Like, the world going to poo poo because everyone is addicted to a virtual paradise is way better of a concept than a magic vr heaven that somehow exists despite the state of the world.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 18:02

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

chitoryu12 posted:

It’s almost entirely pointless.

I think that's a pull quote from the back

There is one chapter coming up I think you should just use the one sentence summary from Wikipedia to describe. Its a series of events so dumb that a dispassionate reporting of events is hilarious

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 18:12

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

Any sufficiently advanced technology or Cline premise is indistinguishable from magic.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 14:05

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

The thing is, I didn't really hate RPO until Armada came out

Like, in pure isolation, RPO isn't that offensive of a novel

A nerdy guy said "Hey, lemme write a dumb comedy novel about a guy who makes a universe of 80s references in a VR world and these nerds who have to prove to be the master of pop culture to win a trillion dollars." As far as dumb comedy sci-fi conceits go, its pretty tolerable.

Hell, its not even like he Sanem'd his way into popularity. It organically became a big hit, and good on for him for that happening to him.

Then he wrote Armada.

Armada, I think, is when you realized he was actually an empty manchild raising pop culture knowledge to a sort of intellectual holy grail. You realized RPO wasn't a lark, it was a treatise. Like, rather than exploring other ideas, he decided he was gonna be the "80s nerd guy" forever. And thats when you can kind of go back and see RPO not as a cute novel in isolation but a relic of this sort of toxic self-absorbed "geek" culture.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 15:21

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

Wheat Loaf posted:

Compared and contrasted with other stories which are built on references and allusions to other works, what is it that really sets RPO apart from, say, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula or Philip Jos� Farmer's Wold Newton concept?

What separates Airplane! from Epic Movie?

references can be used eloquently to explore the significance of the character or story, or to analyze the premise exported into other contexts. A good transformative work uses the past works as a template to explore new interpretations.

RPO just points at a yoda and goes "look its yoda"

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 15:38

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

my bony fealty posted:

I did not realize how goddamn BORING the writing in RPO is. It is so...mundane. The entire thing is really just boring description loaded with nostalgia, isn't it.

Why attempt to use the English language in an interesting way when you can make millions off of reminding 40 y.o. IT guys of their preteen years? Ernest Cline surely does not know why.

One of the most horrifying moments on the forums thus far for me was a couple sci-fi fans being like "What do you mean you care about the quality of the prose?"

chitoryu12 posted:

RPO is about the references. The plot itself is one that's been rehashed over and over and the book would be 1/4 its length with all the 80s references excised. It's about pointing at stuff that's popular for nerds to be into and combining it all for the sake of it. The thread title I chose, in case you haven't seen it, is an old Flash animation that's basically the same thing as RPO but 3 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

It gets even worse in Armada, where the plot ITSELF is an 80s reference and the characters in the story explicitly acknowledge that what they are doing is "just like that 80s movie"

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 16:24

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

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

yes

At least when Stranger Things made me realize "holy poo poo, the eighties is to kids now as the 1950's was to me when I watched Back to the Future", I could at least respect the craft involved.

This book poo poo just makes me feel old and makes a mockery of everything I value in art.

I think Stranger Things gets a bad rep because its referential stuff is entirely window dressing.

Theres a new critical idea in the geek sphere I actually find kind of interesting despite the fact its troper poo poo. There is this idea that a work cannot simply be deconstructed but also reconstructed. Which is what stranger things feels like to me. Its not explicitly referencing 80s tropes as much as its taking our joined cultural memory of 80s cinema and acknowledging the tropes while creating a new narrative

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 16:35

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

Pastry of the Year posted:

I loved this

also

https://twitter.com/leonardpierce/status/974018822121324544

reminds me of a fun game for this book

keep track of how many times he describes something as "classic"

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 12:22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calaveron posted:

That�s literally his superpower though. Like the dude in his 18 years of living has memorized 25 years of nerd bullshit. Every time there�s some sort of challenge you can count on the phrase �he had watched <80�s movie or series that relates to the problem> <over a hundred times> and memorized it by heart�

there's a point coming up that is so insane in what the protagonist does casually and not even as part of the "challenge" of the game that it elevates the protagonist to the level of superhuman and its not even pop culture related

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 14:13

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

quote:

�Greetings,� I said, bowing slightly. �I am Juan S�nchez Villa-Lobos Ram�rez.�

She smirked. �Chief metallurgist to King Charles the Fifth of Spain?�

�At your service,� I replied, grinning. She�d caught my obscure Highlander quote and thrown another right back at me. It was Art3mis, all right.

I love this part.

It's a genuinely obscure reference and it would have worked as a subtle joke that would have flown over most people's heads and gotten a chuckle out of people who recognized it. However, Cline refuses to let any reference go unexplained so he is like "HIGHLANDER. ITS HIGHLANDER. I AM TALKING ABOUT HIGHLANDER."

It would be like going

quote:

I looked at her and said "Here's looking at you kid." Which was a reference to the CLASSIC 40's era noir film Casablanca.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 14:54

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

a few thoughts

A. How did Halliday manage to earn a fortune of 240 Billion Dollars when his product came into being DURING the crash that destroyed the global world economy
B. Why is the money calculated and stored in dollars when the US economy is destroyed and the most stable currency is the OASIS credit
C. Why do they even care about the money when they also get control of OASIS, and ergo, the ability to produce unlimited amounts of the worlds most valuable currency at will?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 18:27

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

chitoryu12 posted:

I mean you'd still end up with inflation if you did that (the "Why don't they just print more money?" argument to solving poverty and paying the national debt), but this thread will not actually end with the finale of the book!

Well sure, but its still a prize where you get both a dollar printing machine and then a billion pesos and everyone is like "oh man those pesos"

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 18:33

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

chitoryu12 posted:

Andy Weir, author of The Martian, loved the book so much that he wrote a fanfic from the antagonist's perspective. Ernest Cline in turn loved the fanfic so much that he declared it canon. Once the book proper ends, we'll finish the Let's Read with Lacero and learn the real motivation behind everything.

How the gently caress did a dude so obsessed with plausibility he forgot to add characters fall in love with a book so obsessed with references it forgot to add plausibility

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 18:34

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

Deptfordx posted:

It might be hyperbole to say that whole Wargames section was the worst thing I've ever read. But off the top of my head I can't think of anything worse.

Goddamn.

Its ok

Its not like they are gonna have him re-enact a whole second movie as a challenge later on

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 01:10

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

roomforthetuna posted:

It seems weird to me that people in this thread are like "this book is poo poo and stupid, how did it get so popular?!"
The answer is pretty much in the question. Large numbers of people are poo poo and stupid, and like poo poo, stupid things.
For example, Captain America: Civil War made more money than Watchmen. Cap isn't a badly made movie, but it is a very well-made stupid poo poo movie for the masses.
Cline managed to tap into this market by being, himself, a poo poo, stupid person, and writing what he knows. A book for people who wouldn't normally read a book.

CD is thataway chief

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 02:16

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

Choco1980 posted:

So what I'm seeing between the lines is that the 2 creators of Oasis had a falling out because the one stole the other's waifu?

Wait, you mean this novel of pure white male fantasy might have a character who is still in love with a tragically died too young woman who was the only one who ever understood him buy married someone else and yet he still dedicates his greatest works to her because he is a tender and noble soul who truly would have lived her most

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 20:11

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

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

...Beatrice, is that you?

I mean yeah it's a stupid modern Nice Guy thing, but it's not exactly a new concept.

well yeah but the idea of middle ages romantic love is a bit different from this

Like, Beatrice never even knew who Dante was

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 01:49

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

wait, if they are the biggest ISP in the world, don't they already essentially own the OASIS? Like, they don't control the system, but they control all access to it.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 15:37

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

Proteus Jones posted:

That would be like saying Comcast owns WoW.

if comcast is the only provider and there is no enforcement of net neutrality, then yes

chitoryu12 posted:

. Presumably this is a future that actually instituted Net Neutrality so they can't just throttle bandwidth.

Yeah see I have trouble believing a post-apocalyptic hellscape of biker gangs and garbage towers has a rigorously enforced federal oversight of telecomms

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 15:45

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

the whole pvp zone thing is weird from a narrative perspective because its the author is arbitrarily removing a sense of danger from his own story

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 15:59

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

Darth Walrus posted:

In a competent story, I�d assume it�s setup for an �oh poo poo� moment when the bad guys get partial access to OASIS�s systems and start turning safe zones into PVP zones. Here, it�s... less guaranteed.

Yeah but even then why not make the PvE safe zones things like towns, or the school. Like "Oh no, the sixers are coming, everyone hide in the school"

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 16:10

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

I read that whole article waiting for the point when he actually justifies its claims and it never comes

The only quote he uses comes from a book that isn't even the right book

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 17:30

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:16

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

quote:

you find a story that speaks to a generation�s loneliness with great profundity and heart.

where?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 17:34

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

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