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Since Charles is gone, I guess I'll review Ready Player Two
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/25/20 |
| Citrine bbw gunner | 11/25/20 |
| olive regret indian lodge | 11/25/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/25/20 |
| cerebral mewling codepig lodge | 11/25/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/25/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 11/25/20 |
| unholy excitant kitchen | 11/25/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 11/25/20 |
| offensive volcanic crater | 11/25/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/25/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/25/20 |
| pea-brained piazza | 11/25/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/25/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 11/26/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 11/26/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/25/20 |
| Haunting Green Water Buffalo Fanboi | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| curious startling hall cuckoldry | 12/20/20 |
| Snowy indirect expression striped hyena | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| Bespoke property | 11/27/20 |
| Citrine bbw gunner | 11/25/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 11/25/20 |
| histrionic mauve mad cow disease liquid oxygen | 11/26/20 |
| Floppy Fishy Weed Whacker Patrolman | 11/25/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 11/26/20 |
| Bisexual stage | 11/25/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/25/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/26/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/26/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/13/21 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 11/27/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 11/26/20 |
| Plum Anal Incel Shrine | 11/26/20 |
| odious costumed school | 11/27/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/25/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 11/25/20 |
| Frum iridescent state rigor | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| glassy party of the first part sanctuary | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| Frum iridescent state rigor | 11/25/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/25/20 |
| Aromatic Shivering Queen Of The Night | 11/26/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 11/27/20 |
| yapping impertinent principal's office | 11/27/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/25/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 11/26/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/26/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 11/26/20 |
| Citrine bbw gunner | 11/26/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/26/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/26/20 |
| Erotic mood trailer park | 11/27/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/28/20 |
| godawful electric house | 11/26/20 |
| filthy charcoal philosopher-king | 11/26/20 |
| Bespoke property | 11/26/20 |
| histrionic mauve mad cow disease liquid oxygen | 11/26/20 |
| Plum Anal Incel Shrine | 11/26/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/26/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 11/26/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 11/26/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/26/20 |
| Vigorous Primrose Step-uncle's House Tank | 11/26/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/26/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/26/20 |
| Citrine bbw gunner | 11/26/20 |
| godawful electric house | 11/30/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/27/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/27/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/27/20 |
| demanding address | 11/27/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/27/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/27/20 |
| Abusive station | 11/27/20 |
| filthy charcoal philosopher-king | 11/27/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 11/27/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 11/27/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 11/27/20 |
| Massive Underhanded Filthpig | 11/27/20 |
| Bespoke property | 11/27/20 |
| Plum Anal Incel Shrine | 11/27/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 11/27/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 11/28/20 |
| Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle | 11/28/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| self-absorbed arousing den hominid | 12/17/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/27/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/27/20 |
| Motley jet-lagged locus toaster | 11/27/20 |
| Citrine bbw gunner | 11/27/20 |
| hateful amber jew market | 11/27/20 |
| Dark coldplay fan | 11/27/20 |
| odious costumed school | 11/27/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/27/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/28/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 11/27/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/28/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/28/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/28/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 11/28/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 11/28/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/28/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 11/28/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 11/28/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 11/28/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 11/28/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 11/28/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/28/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/28/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 11/28/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 11/30/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 03/01/21 |
| Internet-worthy dopamine | 11/28/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/29/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 11/29/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/29/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 11/29/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/29/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 11/29/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 11/29/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 11/29/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/29/20 |
| Vivacious space | 11/29/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/30/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/30/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 11/30/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 11/30/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 11/30/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/01/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/01/20 |
| Vivacious space | 11/30/20 |
| filthy charcoal philosopher-king | 12/01/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/01/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/01/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/01/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/01/20 |
| histrionic mauve mad cow disease liquid oxygen | 12/01/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 12/01/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/01/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/01/20 |
| aphrodisiac cheese-eating pit karate | 01/19/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/01/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/01/20 |
| Wild School Cafeteria Ape | 12/01/20 |
| Vivacious space | 12/01/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 12/01/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/01/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/02/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/02/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/02/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/02/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/02/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/02/20 |
| Vivacious space | 12/02/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/02/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 12/02/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/05/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/05/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/05/20 |
| Snowy indirect expression striped hyena | 12/02/20 |
| Snowy indirect expression striped hyena | 12/02/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/03/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/03/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/03/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/04/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 12/03/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/03/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/05/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/04/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/04/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/05/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/05/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 12/05/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/05/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/06/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/05/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/05/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 12/06/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/20/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| sticky saffron mother | 12/12/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/08/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/08/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/08/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/08/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/08/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/08/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/08/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/08/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/08/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/08/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/11/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/08/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/08/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/14/20 |
| Bespoke property | 12/09/20 |
| Internet-worthy dopamine | 12/08/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/08/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/08/20 |
| lascivious alcoholic menage | 12/11/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/08/20 |
| provocative hairless stag film dysfunction | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/08/20 |
| cobalt nursing home | 12/08/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| godawful electric house | 12/08/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/08/20 |
| filthy charcoal philosopher-king | 12/09/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/09/20 |
| Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed | 12/09/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/10/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| Burgundy Dilemma | 12/09/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/09/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/09/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/09/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/09/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/09/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/10/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/09/20 |
| deep hairraiser area new version | 12/09/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/09/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/09/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/09/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/10/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/11/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/14/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/10/20 |
| Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed | 12/11/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/11/20 |
| lascivious alcoholic menage | 12/11/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/12/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/12/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/12/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/12/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/12/20 |
| godawful electric house | 12/15/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/13/20 |
| duck-like red cuck | 12/13/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/14/20 |
| Erotic mood trailer park | 12/13/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/13/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/13/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/14/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/14/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/15/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/14/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/15/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/15/20 |
| deep hairraiser area new version | 12/15/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/16/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/16/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/16/20 |
| duck-like red cuck | 12/16/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/17/20 |
| Maniacal Resort | 12/19/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/16/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/16/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/16/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/17/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/18/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/16/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/16/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/17/20 |
| Bespoke property | 12/17/20 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 12/16/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/19/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/19/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/19/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/19/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/19/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| curious startling hall cuckoldry | 12/20/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/19/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/20/20 |
| Bespoke property | 12/20/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/20/20 |
| Bespoke property | 12/20/20 |
| Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed | 12/20/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/20/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/20/20 |
| Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed | 12/20/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/20/20 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 12/20/20 |
| overrated tanning salon | 12/20/20 |
| curious startling hall cuckoldry | 12/20/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 12/20/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/20/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/20/20 |
| Sienna headpube crackhouse | 12/20/20 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 12/21/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/21/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/21/20 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 12/22/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/22/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/22/20 |
| Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles | 12/22/20 |
| Pungent immigrant | 12/22/20 |
| lascivious alcoholic menage | 12/27/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/22/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/22/20 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 12/22/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/24/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/24/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/24/20 |
| cobalt nursing home | 12/24/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/24/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/25/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/25/20 |
| lake national security agency | 12/27/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/25/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/25/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/25/20 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 12/25/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/25/20 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 12/25/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/26/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/26/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/26/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/27/20 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 12/28/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/27/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/27/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/27/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/27/20 |
| duck-like red cuck | 12/28/20 |
| cobalt nursing home | 12/27/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/27/20 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 12/28/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/29/20 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 12/29/20 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 12/29/20 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 12/29/20 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 12/29/20 |
| duck-like red cuck | 12/29/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/29/20 |
| lascivious alcoholic menage | 01/02/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 12/29/20 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 12/29/20 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/02/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/02/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/02/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/02/21 |
| overrated tanning salon | 01/02/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/14/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/02/21 |
| lascivious alcoholic menage | 01/02/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 01/02/21 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 01/14/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/02/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 01/02/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/03/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/03/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/03/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 01/02/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 01/02/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/03/21 |
| overrated tanning salon | 01/03/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/03/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/03/21 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 01/07/21 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 01/09/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/12/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/12/21 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 01/12/21 |
| deep hairraiser area new version | 01/12/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/12/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/12/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 01/13/21 |
| overrated tanning salon | 01/13/21 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 01/13/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/13/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/19/21 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 01/13/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| big cyan telephone feces | 01/13/21 |
| Disturbing domesticated corner | 01/13/21 |
| Brindle factory reset button | 01/14/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| pontificating emerald laser beams rehab | 01/14/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/14/21 |
| Idiotic Parlor Rigpig | 01/14/21 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 01/14/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/14/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/14/21 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 01/14/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 01/14/21 |
| dun bawdyhouse windowlicker | 01/14/21 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 01/14/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/14/21 |
| duck-like red cuck | 01/14/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/15/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/15/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 01/14/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/15/21 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 01/15/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/15/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/18/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/19/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/18/21 |
| purple contagious macaca fortuitous meteor | 01/18/21 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 01/18/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/19/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/18/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/19/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 01/20/21 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 01/19/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/20/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 01/20/21 |
| Sooty startled lay azn | 01/20/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/22/21 |
| lake national security agency | 01/22/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 01/27/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/27/21 |
| Diverse meetinghouse | 01/30/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/30/21 |
| indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal | 01/27/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/30/21 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 01/30/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 01/30/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 01/31/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 01/31/21 |
| Mischievous transparent theater stage lettuce | 01/31/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 02/02/21 |
| duck-like red cuck | 02/02/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 02/02/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 02/02/21 |
| Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit | 02/02/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 02/03/21 |
| lake national security agency | 02/03/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 02/03/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 02/03/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 02/04/21 |
| duck-like red cuck | 02/04/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 02/04/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/05/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 02/05/21 |
| Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold | 02/06/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 02/05/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 02/06/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 02/06/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 02/06/21 |
| lake national security agency | 02/10/21 |
| duck-like red cuck | 02/06/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/06/21 |
| Milky sound barrier church | 02/06/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/07/21 |
| Stubborn University French Chef | 02/10/21 |
| cobalt nursing home | 02/12/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 02/13/21 |
| aqua arrogant newt corn cake | 02/13/21 |
| overrated tanning salon | 02/22/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 02/22/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/14/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/14/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 02/14/21 |
| Mahogany cruise ship | 02/27/21 |
| Deranged box office love of her life | 02/21/21 |
| territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm | 02/22/21 |
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Poast new message in this thread
Date: November 25th, 2020 9:26 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Just a pumo here. Big fan of the original thread and the Christian Nation thread before it, but sadly I'm guessing C12 won't be coming back. So I thought I'd try my own hand at one. If Charles comes back I'll kill this thread immediately.
The new book seems to be getting plenty of negative reviews, but it's not at all clear to me the book is actually worse than the first. It could just be that people are collectively realizing the original always sucked.
Before we start, we'll look at the back of the book. Like the original, this book is by Ernest Cline. In the back of the book, this is how he chooses to describe himself:
"Ernest Cline is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the blockbuster film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic videogames."
There are also some fun excerpts from the acknowledgements:
"Writing a sequel to a novel that’s had as remarkable a life as Ready Player One is an incredible privilege, but it was also a daunting task. During the years I spent working on this story, I often found myself haunted by the words of the great Billy Joel: Don’t ask for help, you’re all alone. PRESSURE."
"I never could have written this novel without the steady supply of love, support, advice, and inspiration provided by my brilliant and beautiful wife, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. She is my anchor, my best friend, the best mom and stepmom ever, the funniest person in our marriage, and the true Queen of Itsalot."
"I also owe a long overdue thank you to one of my favorite writers, Jonathan Tropper, for letting me quote, “People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up,” in Ready Player One. Attribution at last! If you enjoy great writing, please do yourself a favor and check out his work."
We'll start with the plot in the next post. |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 9:34 PM Author: Abusive station Welcome back (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41437747) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 9:35 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold 180. didn't know this came out, saw a tweet thread talking about how it sucks but didn't read it (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41437749) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:14 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Prologue Part 1 A quick rundown of the first book if you're like me and forgot:
-Wade Watts (virtual name: Parzival) was some fat loser high schooler growing up in a slum outside Oklahoma City. He spent all his time inside the OASIS, a hyper-immersive virtual reality, hunting for James Halliday's Easter Egg, which would reward total control of the OASIS to whomever discovered it.
-Mostly through luck, Watts chanced upon the first key to Halliday's egg, and then won a desperate race to finish the egg hunt ahead of operatives from IOI, a sinister megacorporation that was trying to take over the OASIS for its own ends. At the end of the novel, Watts has become the billionaire master of the OASIS, and he's paired up romantically with Art3mis (real name, Samantha), some fat chick he had a rivalry with throughout the first book. His other friends in the book are Shoto, a Japanese hikikomori, and Aech, Wade's best friend who seemed to be a young white guy but near the end of the book is revealed in a shocking twist to be a heavyset black lesbian. When Wade finds the egg, he splits Halliday's fortune equally with his three friends
-This book's prologue, titled "Cutscene," picks up immediately after the end of the first book.
And with that, let's begin...
-The book opens with a truly transcendent opening line:
"After I won Halliday’s contest, I remained offline for nine straight days—a new personal record."
-Nine days later, Wade settles into his role as head of GSS, the company that owns OASIS. In a clumsy aside, he reminds the audience that Aech is a black woman:
"Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there."
-Wade logs back into the OASIS, and finds that thousands of OASIS users are waiting outside Castle Anorak (where the last book's climax occurred). Wade notes that some of the users had waited all nine days, like devoted religious believers waiting to see a new pope or something.
-While chilling out in a private room of Castle Anorak that only he can enter, Wade makes a shocking discovery: There's a new inscription on Halliday's egg, reading "GSS—13th Floor—Vault #42–8675309." It wasn't there before, so it must be a message from Halliday.
-In a rush, Wade immediately logs out and literally sprints down the hallway into an elevator, while his employees at GSS "avoid making direct eye contact" due to his strangeness. Haha, he's, like, too weird even for the people who work at the big video game company.
-In our first barrage of painful references, Wade explains the meaning of Halliday's inscription:
"According to the interactive building directory on my phone, the thirteenth floor was where the GSS archives were located. Of course Halliday had put them there. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.
"When I stepped off the elevator, the armed guards at the security station snapped to attention. As a formality, one of them scanned my retinas to verify my identity, then he led me past the security station and through a set of armored doors, into a maze of brightly lit corridors. Eventually we reached a large room, its walls lined with dozens of numbered doors, like extra-large safety-deposit boxes, each with a number stenciled on its front.
"I thanked the guard and told him he could go as I scanned the doors. There it was: number 42. Another of Halliday’s jokes—according to one of his favorite novels, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 was the 'Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.'
"I just stood there for a few seconds, reminding myself to breathe. Then I punched in the seven-digit combination from the egg’s inscription into the code pad beside the vault door: 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, a combination no self-respecting gunter would have trouble remembering. Jenny, I’ve got your number. I need to make you mine…."
-Once Wade enters the vault, he discovers a silver physical egg exactly like the one in virtual reality. This prompts our next brutally unnecessary reference:
"The bottom of the egg was weighted, so it wobbled slightly before standing perfectly upright—like a Weeble. (Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down!)"
-The egg opens up and has a small, advanced-looking headset in it. The egg starts playing a video of Halliday, recorded shortly before his death, explaining that the headset is an OASIS Neural Interface, or ONI. The ONI, in short, is a perfect non-invasive neural interface. Put one on, and it's possible for VR to perfectly simulate reality: You can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel exactly like in real life. Not only that, but the device can log experiences as digital files with perfect playback. It's exactly as far-reaching as it sounds: You can eat a meal, go skydiving, have sex with someone, you name it, and record the experience perfectly to re-live later, or even share with others to experience themselves.
-The appeal of this device should be obvious enough, but Cline is incapable of letting it stand alone without shoving in some references:
"The concept of a brain-computer interface headset that allowed you to record, play back, and/or simulate a human being’s entire sensory experience had appeared in a bunch of Halliday’s favorite sci-fi novels, TV shows, and movies. There was SimStim—the fictional Simulated Stimulation technology William Gibson had envisioned in Neuromancer. And a similar form of experience-recording technology had also been featured in Brainstorm and Strange Days, two of Halliday’s favorite films…"
For fuck's sake, we get it, it's a VR helmet, you don't need to tell us about the book and two movies that previously had that.
-This is also our first big piece of questionable worldbuilding. Halliday died six years before this book takes place. So Halliday's company managed to develop an absolutely colossal breakthrough in the realm of VR, and kept it totally secret an under wraps for 6 years, with nobody inside the company talking and no other company coming remotely close to the same advance?
-In a piece of FORESHADOWING, Wade notes that he's "seen enough anime" to know that "oni" is also the Japanese word for a horned demon.
-Halliday's video explains that he kept his headset secret, and that it's Wade's decision whether it should be released to the world. Then his video ends and for dramatic effect, auto-deletes so that Wade can't watch it again (no Mission: Impossible reference is made, presumably since it didn't air in the 80s). |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:22 PM Author: Abusive station ty (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438007) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:36 PM Author: pea-brained piazza IFNB preparing trademark infringement suit for “SimStim” (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438080) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:42 PM Author: Abusive station (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438118) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:33 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41439108) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:23 PM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig filed three weeks ago (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440758) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:37 PM Author: Abusive station the lengths he goes to describe the references in the egg inscription are just insufferable (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438089) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:52 PM Author: Haunting Green Water Buffalo Fanboi Lol that guy is such a shit writer. Glad he quoted the lyrics to 867-5309 in case the reader didn’t first catch it! (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438179) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:23 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle Charles, welcome back, you've been missed. Stay and poast for awhile. And grab a moniker while you're at it. Something subtle, like "Charles XIII" (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438011) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:25 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Not Charles. Just a fan. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438021) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:28 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle "Okay!"
*winks at you while shouting*
"Well, keep it up! You're doing a GREAT JOB AS A FAN SO FAR"
*another giant wink* |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:52 PM Author: Snowy indirect expression striped hyena Yes I am convinced Charles is gone. Welcome pumo (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438180) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:54 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438198) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 1:57 PM Author: Bespoke property New pumo. New stories. First day. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41445768) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:32 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction Fake Charles, just FYI, you got fucked by fox and fucked by faggot tucker and fucked by Jew media and fucked by some deranged shitlib faggot on xo, please land on your two feet and spend the rest of your days fucking over libs and fake reptiles . I hope the seed of war against evil is implanted in your heart (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438057) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:07 PM Author: histrionic mauve mad cow disease liquid oxygen We love you C12 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440972) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:32 PM Author: Floppy Fishy Weed Whacker Patrolman Cline is basically an NPC pop culture obsessed materialist who differs from his cohort only in his ability to actually temporarily overcome his autism long enough to write a book.
the sheer volume of references reflects a manboy who has spent his life scouring popular culture for something to give him meaning. it's out there somewhere, the problem is i haven't found it yet! |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:33 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold why are his books this popular? the writing is horrific. is all of gen x like this? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41439113) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:33 PM Author: Bisexual stage LMFAO this is his wife, jfc
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Cristin_okeefe_aptowicz_2014.jpg |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:59 PM Author: Maniacal Resort His wife is a 10/10 if you adjust for the type of woman who would marry a guy who wrote this poem:
I've noticed that there don't seem to be any porno movies that are made for guys like me.
All the porn I've come across was targeted at beer-swilling sports bar dwelling alpha-males Men who like their women stupid and submissive Men who can only get it up for monosyllabic cock-hungry nymphos with gargantuan breasts and a three-word vocabulary Adult films are populated with these collagen-injected liposuctioned women Many of whom have resorted to surgery and self-mutilation in an attempt to look the way they have been told to look.
These aren't real women. They're objects. And these movies aren't erotic. They're pathetic. These vacuum-headed fuck bunnies don't turn me on. They disgust me. And it's not that I'm against pornography. I mean, I'm a guy. And guys need porn. Fact. "Like a preacher needs pain, like a needle needs a vein," Guys need porn.
But I don't wanna watch this misogynist he-man woman-hater porn. I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind: Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world is a woman who is smarter than you are.
You can have the whole cheerleading squad, I want the girl in the tweed skirt and the horn-rimmed glasses: Betty Finnebowski, the valedictorian. Oh yes. First I want to copy her Trig homework, and then I want to make mad, passionate love to her for hours and hours until she reluctantly asks if we can stop because she doesn't want to miss Battlestar Galactica. Summa cum laude, baby! That is what I call erotic.
But do you ever see that kind of a woman in a contemporary adult film? No. Which is why I'm going to start writing and directing Geek Porno. I shall be the quintessential Nerd Porn Auteur. And the women in my porno movies will be the kind that drive nerds like me mad with desire.
I'm talking about the girls that used to fuck up the grading curve. The girls in the Latin Club and the National Honor Society. Chicks with weird clothes, braces, four eyes, and 4.0 GPAs. Brainy articulate bookworms, with MENSA cards in their purses and chips on their shoulders.
My porn starlets will come in all shapes and sizes. My porn starlets will be too busy working on their PhD to go to the gym.
In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked. They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and beat them repeatedly at chess and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.
Buy stock in some hand cream companies because there is about to be a major shortage.
And I'm not just talking about straight porn. Oh no. There should be fuck films for my nerd brethren of all sexual orientations. Gay nerd porn flicks with titles like "Dungeons and Drag-queens."
This idea is a fucking gold mine. I am gonna make millions, because this country is full of database programmers and electronics engineers and they aren't getting the loving they so desperately need. And you can help . . .
If you're an intelligent woman is interested in breaking into the adult film industry, and if you can tell me the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet, then you are hired.
It doesn't matter if you think you're overweight or unattractive. It doesn't matter if you don't think you're beautiful. You are beautiful. . . And I will make you a star. |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 12:39 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship That can't be real.
P.S. Yes, smart girls are hot (as long as they are also feminine). We love our XO girls, don't we folks?
But why does Cline insist on landbeasts? In my experience intelligent women, even those who don't wear makeup or care about clothes or whatever, tend NOT to be severely overweight, let alone morbidly obese, like his wife.
The fat ones are usually brainless NPC activists with Womyn's Studies degrees. |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:23 PM Author: Maniacal Resort Not flame, google "Ernest Cline Nerd Porn Auter" (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441553) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:44 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749938) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 12:41 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles This makes me quake with rage (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41445374) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:24 PM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig jesus fucking christ she looks like john candy in a wig (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440760) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:40 PM Author: Plum Anal Incel Shrine james joyce jr seething with jealousy (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440814) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:40 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438107) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:45 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake Charles was a pioneer poaster and a GREAT MAN. I am hopeful you can fill his shoes in this regard. 180 thread so far. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438138) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:49 PM Author: Frum iridescent state rigor Posting in an historic thread (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438165) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:54 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438197) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:55 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle holy shit he's back (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438200) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:56 PM Author: Frum iridescent state rigor *Wolf Blitzer parachuting into thread* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438213) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 10:57 PM Author: Mind-boggling Plaza Wrinkle (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41438215) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:49 PM Author: Aromatic Shivering Queen Of The Night (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441668) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 12:41 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41445376) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 6:50 PM Author: yapping impertinent principal's office (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41447218) |
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Date: November 25th, 2020 11:05 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Prologue Part 2 -Wade sprints (literally) back to his office to try out the ONI. Not using it, he says, would be "like passing up the chance to be the first person to walk on the moon." He remarks that it's a good thing Samantha isn't there to talk him out of using it, because "I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything."
-Wade instantly starts hooking up the device to his head. It fastens pretty tightly with "titanium-reinforced safety bands", since technical manuals warn that ripping the headset off prematurely can cause brain damage or put a person in a permanent coma."
-In general, there's a lot of autism in this prologue about the safety parameters of the headset. Cline establishes that disconnecting the ONI can cause brain damage, so he belabors that the device is designed to attach very firmly to one's head so it can't move. Then, for good measure, he also notes that it has an emergency battery that kicks in if the power goes out, which lasts long enough to log a person out. Then, as Wade boots up the device, a small Google Glass like display pops up in front of his eye, and notifies him that the ONI can only be used for 12 hours before it will automatically disconnect, and prohibit him from using the ONI again until a 12-hour cooldown has passed. It's just a lot of detail that is needed to satisfy other autists, I guess.
-In RPO, every time a person logs into the OASIS, they're greeted with the old arcade phrase "Ready Player One," hence the title. So naturally, the first time Wade logs in using the ONI, he is greeted with...
READY PLAYER TWO.
And with that, the prologue ends. |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:15 AM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal Ty. 180 work so far (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41439074) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:32 AM Author: overrated tanning salon i think its great that this mysterious pumo player 2 has come to walk us through this Triumph of a book (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41439101) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:34 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41439114) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 12:41 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "Not using it, he says, would be "like passing up the chance to be the first person to walk on the moon." "
Except presumably the dead guy and whoever he worked with to develop it have already used it right? |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:18 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Yes, in fact the book is quite explicit about this. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440737) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 1:45 PM Author: Erotic mood trailer park Enough so that they wrote technical manuals for it and know that taking off the headset too quickly will give you brain damage (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41445688) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:25 PM Author: Bespoke property (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440764) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 1:40 PM Author: Plum Anal Incel Shrine (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41440817) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 2:02 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 00 -Yeah, the prologue chapter is followed by a Chapter 0. Whatever.
-Wade boots into the OASIS, but now it's DIFFERENT:
"Everything looked the same as before, but it felt completely different. I was actually here, physically inside the OASIS. It no longer felt like I was using an avatar. Now I felt like I was my avatar. There was no visor on my face, none of the faint numbness and constriction you always felt wearing a haptic suit or gloves. I didn’t even feel the ONI headset my real body was actually wearing. When I reached up to scratch my head, the device wasn’t there. A light breeze blew into the study through the open window, and I could feel it on my skin and my face and in my hair. I could feel my feet resting on the stone floor, snug inside the boots that my avatar was wearing. I realized I could smell my surroundings too. I breathed in the musty scent of the ancient spell books that lined the walls, mingled with the smoke of the burning candles. I reached out to touch a nearby worktable. I could feel the grooves in the woodgrain as I ran my fingertips across it."
-I know this is all wish-fulfillment goon fantasy, but it's kind of annoying how Cline autistically supplies details over how the headset attaches to your head, has a backup battery, etc., but then totally handwaves the far bigger matter of the headset existing at all. The OASIS can't just magically be an IRL-imitating virtual reality. The entire OASIS would have to be programmed that way, and it would be totally different from the pre-existing more primitive OASIS.
Consider this line: "I raised the apple to my avatar’s lips, which now felt like my own lips, and bit into it with what felt like my own teeth. It tasted like a real apple. The most perfectly ripe and delicious apple I’d ever eaten."
-Before now, eating in OASIS was just a pantomime action. You'd literally have needed somebody to program in the exact experience of eating an apple, JUST for Wade to do this randomly 8 years later. And you'd need to do this for literally every flavor on earth, from cranberries to cum (who knows, maybe Bloodacre would have won Halliday's contest).
Programming this would require a shitload of money, time, and manpower, and would be impossible to keep secret, but apparently that wasn't an issue in this reality (even though Wade's world is described as a decaying shithole scarred by nuclear war and rampant food and energy shortages). This entire sequence is literally like saying that Halliday invented a headset that lets you live inside a Zelda game or something. Which is fine if it was just magic, but Cline is a pseudo-nerd goon who went on an entire rant about God not existing in the last book. This whole sequence is a signature case of this book's entire shtick: "Wouldn't it be AWESOME if...?"
-Anyway, Wade experiments more with the ONI. It perfectly simulates various foods. When he jumps out a window and starts flying "like Superman," it really feels like flying. Tt doesn't perfectly simulate pain, though: Wade shoots himself in the foot, and it feels only like a minor pinch. This appears to be a safety feature programmed into the device.
-Wade discovers a new drop-down menu in the OASIS consisting of simulated experiences, with names like "Surfing" or "Skydiving." When he loads them, he lives through that experience exactly, making the exact same movements as the original person and feeling the exact same things. And yes, if you were wondering...
"Looking down at my body, I realized that I was no longer Parzival—I was someone else. Someone smaller and thinner, with darker skin, and strands of long black hair hanging in front of their eyes. Someone wearing a bikini. Someone with breasts. I was a woman! And an expert surfer. Not an avatar. A real person had recorded this experience. I was experiencing a piece of someone else’s life."
-Cline admirably takes two whole pages before getting to the obvious elephant in the room:
"I stopped when I reached a series of files with names like SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni. I wasn’t ready for any of that. I was still truly, madly, deeply in love with Samantha. And I was still reeling from losing my virginity to her just a few days earlier. I didn’t want to be unfaithful to her. I figured that cheating was cheating, whether it was live or it was Memorex."
-I love that there is lesbian sex and "nonbinary" sex (whatever that is) but no gay stuff, presumably because Cline wasn't interested in that.
-After glancing through all the preloaded Memorexes, Wade pauses to explain/handwave how this device came into existence. He reads through documentation that was automatically emailed to him once he found the egg. Despite what must be gargantuan technical specs for such a device, apparently it's all easy for a high school dork to digest in a few hours. Apparently, the development of the ONI was "hiding in plain sight" for more than twenty-five years. Shortly after launching OASIS, Halliday started an "Accessibility Research Lab," whose stated purpose was to develop ways for disabled people to experience OASIS.
"The ARL’s work over the next few decades was certainly no secret. To the contrary, their breakthroughs had created a new line of medical implants that became widely used. I’d read about several of them in my high school textbooks. First, they developed a new type of cochlear implant that—for those who chose to use it—allowed the hearing impaired to perceive sound with perfect clarity, both in the real world and inside the OASIS [unclear if deaf extremists tried to suicide bomb Halliday's office over this]. A few years later, they unveiled a new retinal implant that allowed any blind people who wished to be sighted to “see” perfectly inside the OASIS. And by linking two head-mounted mini cameras to the same implant, their real-world sight could be restored as well. The ARL’s next invention was a brain implant that allowed paraplegics to control the movements of their OASIS avatar simply by thinking about it. It worked in conjunction with a separate implant that allowed them to feel simulated sensory input. And the very same implants gave these individuals the ability to regain control of their lower extremities, while restoring their sense of touch. They also allowed amputees to control robotic replacement limbs, and to receive sensory input through them as well."
-So wait, GSS cured blindness, deafness, AND paralysis? This company is quite the operation. Not only that, but Halliday made the patents freely available to everyone, even subsidizing implants for people who needed them. I'm not going to slog through the first book, but this feels like a big retcon relative to how awful the world supposedly was in RPO. There's massive energy shortages and food crises, but also a company providing free hyper-advanced prosthetics to whoever wants them?
-Anyway, one reason Halliday provides free implants to whoever wants them is that, in turn, it provides GSS with a constant supply of human subjects to experiment on. This sounds like a massive operation, involving both random human guinea pigs and "the brightest minds in neuroscience," yet it never came out what they were really working on. Apparently, Halliday achieved this by running the operation in a way highly un-conducive to real-life scientific success:
"Halliday compartmentalized each facet of the project, so that each team of scientists or engineers worked in isolation from the others, and he alone knew how it was all going to fit together."
Halliday isn't a neuroscientist, btw.
-Once the ONI is created, Halliday shuts down the entire research division and fires all the employees, but still the secret never comes out:
"They were all given severance packages that ensured they’d never need to work again—contingent upon their strict adherence to the nondisclosure agreements they’d signed when they were first hired. This was how Halliday had created the world’s first noninvasive brain-computer interface without the world knowing it." |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 3:01 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal 180 work brother (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441202) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:22 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit . (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441541) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:27 PM Author: Maniacal Resort Based on the fact that Ernest Cline is a faggot autist, I am guessing he glosses over the fact that this is the equivalent of digital heroin and would ruin society. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441570) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:28 PM Author: Vigorous Primrose Step-uncle's House Tank (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41441575) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 4:32 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Oh man, lolyers the real heroes here!!
“... contingent upon their strict adherence to the nondisclosure agreements they’d signed when they were first hired. This was how Halliday had created the world’s first noninvasive brain-computer interface without the world knowing it.” |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 8:14 PM Author: Abusive station (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41442503) |
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Date: November 26th, 2020 8:16 PM Author: Citrine bbw gunner 180 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41442510) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 12:51 AM Author: godawful electric house So he gives free implants to everyone and then fires the teams for contrived storyline purposes.
Hopefully the book touches on the chaos that results when nobody is around to provide repairs, support, and updates for all of these critical implants. Certainly that will be a major theme, right? And I'd imagine there is a thriving black market for harvesting these from people now that the teams are gone. |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 2:21 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 00 Part 2 -You might expect that the plot of this will involve a deep weighing of the social ramifications of releasing the ONI to the world...lol, of course not! Wade simply says that "after a heated debate ... The ayes had it. And just like that, we changed the course of human history forever."
-The ONI is released, at the lowest possible price point to ensure mass adoption. A million are sold on the first day. As soon at 7,777,777 units of ONI have been sold, a new riddle appears inside the OASIS, replacing the old scoreboard from the first book:
"Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul
On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role
For each fragment my heir must pay a toll
To once again make the Siren whole"
-Most people assume this is some publicity stunt by Wade to hype up ONI, but he's as baffled as everyone else. The riddle is immediately dubbed the "Shard Riddle." Other than the Siren presumably referring to Kira Morrow, Halliday's incel crush, nobody knows what to make of it. A new generation of gunters arises to hunt for the Shard, but with no stated prize for completing it, enthusiasm is lower. Some Shard hunters try to call themselves "shunters," but they are quickly ridiculed as "sharters," and so the old "gunter" label sticks instead (not flame Cline goes out of his way to say this.).
-Two years pass. More than six billion ONI headsets are sold, with billions logging in every single day. IOI, the sinister megacorp that produced OASIS peripherals in the first book, suffers huge losses, as their more basic OASIS hardware is instantly made obsolete (wow, really lucky how the entire OASIS is already perfectly set up for this new VR!). Once their stock falls low enough, Wade has GSS execute a hostile takeover of the company, "transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform. To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts."
I feel that this tidbit is very reflective of the left deciding in the past decade that tech super monopolies are actually a good thing. This feeling is increased as Wade explains how having a super-monopoly let his company prevent the ONI from being used for Bad Things:
"Other companies made attempts to reverse-engineer the ONI headset and steal our neural-interface technology—but the software and processing power required to make the ONI technology function was all part of the OASIS. Experiences could be recorded offline as an .oni file, even a bootleg one, but the file could only be played back by being uploaded to the OASIS. This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users. It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world."
-Immediately a vast network of ONI files becomes the primary pastime of the entire planet. This leads to some really painful youth slang:
"'Sims' were recordings made inside the OASIS, and 'Recs' were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as 'reality.' They called it 'the Earl.' (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And 'Ito' was slang for 'in the OASIS.' So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito."
-Wade briefly dwells upon how ONI remakes basic experiences:
"Now instead of following their favorite celebrity on social media, ONI users could become their favorite celebrity for a few minutes each day. Exist inside their skin. Live short, heavily curated fragments of far more glamorous lives.
Now people no longer watched movies or television shows—they lived them. The viewer was no longer in the audience. Now they were one of the stars. Instead of just being in the audience at a rock concert, now you could experience the concert as each member of your favorite band, and be each one of them as they/you performed your favorite song."
-All right, I'm gonna kinda call bullshit here. If you literally live through movies, TV shows, and rock concerts, what even makes a celebrity a celebrity at this point? Also if everybody can simulate essentially any experience, are there really celebrities living "far more glamorous lives"? Isn't the ONI a great equalizer here? If everybody is the player in a rock concert, does the basic concept of a rock concert even exist? And wait a minute, do most people really WANT to be the actual rock star at the concert more than once for the novelty? Isn't the fun of concerts about listening to the music, and having the communal experience with other fans, maybe involving some drugs or whatever? Actually, isn't this a similar issue for movies and TV shows? Do you really want to "live" those instead of watching them? Wouldn't it be hard to tell what's going on? If the scene changes, do you change the person you're "living" through? And what happens in any story where there's supposed to be dramatic irony? I feel like Cline didn't fully think this one out.
-That weirdness aside, though, the stuff you'd expect happens as ONI takes off:
"For less than the cost of an iced latte, you could now safely experience just about anything that human beings could experience. You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences. You could relive uncut real-life experiences, or play your way through scripted interactive adventures inside the OASIS. Thanks to the ONI, it all felt completely real."
Lmao at "without worrying about addiction," as if the ONI itself wouldn't be the single most spectacularly addictive object created in all of human history.
-Cline seems really into the idea of vaguely experiencing life as a "celebrity":
"The ONI made the lives of impoverished people all around the world a lot more bearable—and enjoyable. People didn’t mind subsisting on dried seaweed and soy protein when they could log on to the ONI-net and download a delicious five-course meal anytime they pleased. People could sample any cuisine from any part of the globe, prepared by any of the world’s finest chefs, and have it served to them in a mansion, or on a mountaintop, or in a scenic restaurant, or on an autojet headed to Paris. And as a bonus, you could experience any of these meals as a diner with unusually sensitive taste buds. Or as a celebrity, dining with other celebrities, who were all being waited on by a bunch of ex-celebrities. Name your poison."
-We get more on how being a tech monopoly is great because it allows Wade to be a Good Censor:
"Moderating all of this user-generated content was a challenge—and a huge responsibility. GSS implemented CenSoft, our custom strong-AI censor software, which scanned every .oni recording before it was released and flagged suspicious content for human review. Questionable material was reviewed by GSS employees, who then decided whether the clip was safe to release—and, if any criminal behavior was captured, they forwarded it on to law enforcement officials in the uploader’s country or region."
-This actually gets me thinking. What is counting as criminal behavior? Apparently, directly re-experiencing a sex act counts as just porn rather than prostitution. But let's go further. Is 100% simulated sex with children allowed? Should it be? If ONI feels 100% real, then it would provide a perfect outlet for those with criminal impulses, possibly keeping them away from crime in real life. In Book One, Wade did describe designing his own rudimentary video game where the goal is to avoid pedophiles trying to kidnap and rape children in the slums of Oklahoma City, so kiddy diddlers do seem to be a problem in the future still Could this fix it? The same could be said for serial killers; are they able to do hyper-realistic torture/murder simulators on the grounds that this will prevent IRL crime? Is enabling sick people to perfectly fulfill their impulses a good thing, or should we aspire to making them not slaved to these impulses in the first place.
This would be an actually interesting moral question, so naturally it's not brought up here. Instead, we get this:
"It became fashionable for young mothers to make an ONI recording while they gave birth to their child, so that in a few decades, that child would be able to play back that recording and experience what it feels like to give birth to themselves."
-Despite being super-rich and all-powerful, and having a girlfriend, Wade isn't that happy, and he gets even more addicted to OASIS than he was before. His only outlet is trying to solve the Shard Riddle, but he can't make any progress. So out of frustration, he offers a billion dollar reward to anyone who can lead him to one of the Seven Shards. Finally, three years after the release of the ONI, a gunter leads Wade to the First Shard.
"And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race."
And with that, the insanely long introduction to this story FINALLY ends. We're 7% of the way through the book, and the actual plot starts next chapter. |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 2:34 AM Author: overrated tanning salon -You might expect that the plot of this will involve a deep weighing of the social ramifications of releasing the ONI to the world...lol, of course not! Wade simply says that "after a heated debate ... The ayes had it. And just like that, we changed the course of human history forever."
--
for a second there I had been worried that the plot was going to be good (which would be a profane violation of everything the Ready Player One cinematic universe stands for) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 10:55 AM Author: Maniacal Resort lol yeah, what would even be illegal? You can kill people in the OASIS.
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Date: November 27th, 2020 2:41 AM Author: demanding address that thread sucked, sorry (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41443894) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 10:55 AM Author: Maniacal Resort *leans into mic* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41444768) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 1:11 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 01 -This finally starts the main story. Just like in book 1, each major part of the book opens with a cringeworthy quote from Anorak's Almanac, Halliday's massive tome of personal observations:
"My friend Kira always said that life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you’re born, you’re given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can. Sometimes the game might seem easy. Even fun. Other times it might be so difficult you want to give up and quit. But unfortunately, in this game you only get one life. When your body grows too hungry or thirsty or ill or injured or old, your health meter runs out and then it’s Game Over. Some people play the game for a hundred years without ever figuring out that it’s a game, or that there is a way to win it. To win the videogame of life you just have to try to make the experience of being forced to play it as pleasant as possible, for yourself, and for all of the other players you encounter in your travels. Kira says that if everyone played the game to win, it’d be a lot more fun for everyone.
—Anorak’s Almanac, chapter 77, verses 11–20"
-After that, the narration resumes:
"Like Marty McFly, I woke up at exactly 10:28 a.m., to the song “Back in Time” by Huey Lewis and the News.
This was courtesy of my vintage flip-clock radio—a Panasonic RC-6015, the model Marty owns in the film. I’d had it modified to play the same song at the same time Marty hears it, after he finally makes it back to the future."
-Wade gets up in his huge woodland mansion outside Columbus, Ohio. He observes the glittering skyline, with the massive GSS HQ next to three other skyscrapers that were previously the headquarters of the villainous IOI corporation. At Art3mis's urging, after taking over IOI Wade turned all three buildings into gigantic homeless shelters. Sheesh, that's a lot of homeless people. Does having literally thousands of bums a couple blocks from GSS headquarters pose a problem? It seems like it would, but the matter isn't expanded on.
-Wade also notes that the 10x10 efficiency apartment that he lived in during the second half of book 1 has become a tourist attraction, with people paying money to see it. Wade also had his old trailer stacks in Oklahoma City demolished to build a memorial to his dead family member, with the existing residents relocated to a new housing development he built for them nearby. The original stacks have been faithfully recreated in the OASIS, and have become a popular stop for tourists and school field trips. Apparently, this re-creation is based on "photos and video of the real location," yet it still nails specific details like the laundry room of his Aunt Alice's trailer or the hideout Wade had buried beneath a pile of junked cars. This is a recurring theme of both RP1 and RP2, the creation of hyper-realistic simulated environments with simply a handwave.
-Despite his huge house and custom Back to the Future wake-up alarm, Wade isn't happy: "Today I was just alone, in an empty house, in a world teetering on the brink of collapse. And on days like this, the four hours I had to wait until I could put my ONI headset back on and escape into the OASIS stretched out in front of me like an eternity."
-Wade is so downbeat he has a sad conversation with his AI assistant, Max (based on Max Headroom):
"'Morning, Max,' I muttered. 'What’s up?'
"'The opposite of down,' he replied. 'That was easy! Ask me another one. Go ahead.'
"When I didn’t respond, he made a heavy-metal face and started to play air guitar while shouting: 'Wade’s World! Wade’s Word! Party time! Excellent!'
-Max reads Wade the day's news headlines:
"I told him to skip all of the stories that involved war, disease, or famine. So he started reading me the weather report."
Haha, get it? Because ALL the news stories are about war and disaster! But just like in the first book, there are never any details. What are the diseases? If tech is advanced enough to cure blindness and paralysis and create hyper-realistic VR, haven't there also been advances in biology that could make normal disease mostly obsolete? And where are the wars being fought? What are they fighting over?
"I told him not to bother, then I put on my brand-new Okagami NexSpex augmented-reality glasses and headed downstairs. Max came along with me, reappearing on a network of antique CRT monitors mounted along my route."
I love the combination of pointlessly name-dropping a brand that doesn't exist, coupled with the bizarre 80s reference of Max popping up in a bunch of old TVs.
-Wade's home is Halliday's old mansion, which he inherited. His belongings were all auctioned off, though, so the mansion is still empty. Instead of actually furnishing the massive building, Wade just wears AR glasses that decorate the house virtually as he walks through it, "covering the sprawling mansion’s bare walls with grand tapestries, priceless paintings, and framed movie posters."
-Wade's AR goggles have another purpose: Living out nerd fantasies in every phase of his life:
"'Load Temple of Doom,' I said as I reached the bottom of the grand staircase.
"The empty foyer and dimly lit hallways of the mansion were instantly transformed into a vast subterranean labyrinth of caverns and corridors. And when I glanced down at myself, the workout clothes I’d been wearing had been replaced with a perfectly rendered Indiana Jones costume, complete with a worn leather jacket, a bull-whip on my right hip, and a battered fedora.
"Indy’s theme music began to play as I jogged down the corridor, and a variety of obstacles and enemies started to appear in front of me, forcing me to either dodge them or attack them with my imaginary whip. I earned points for every obstacle I avoided and for every enemy I vanquished. I could also earn bonus points for keeping my heart rate up, and for freeing the captive children being used as slave labor in the temple from their holding cells, which were scattered along my path. I ran a total of five miles like this, sprinting from one end of my house to the other and back again. And I managed to beat my previous high score." |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 2:27 PM Author: Maniacal Resort thank you for continuing this thread
I don't think the recreating the real world sight/smell/taste is that much of a stretch once you'd accomplished a neural link. It would actually be a 180 twist if the hyperrealistic world was built via massive datamining from the brains/memories people jacked into the neural link VR, plus some holocaust-style experiments to reach that level of technology. |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 3:13 PM Author: Motley jet-lagged locus toaster the clumsy and barely coherent tech in the first book was a huge point of annoyance for true geeks when the first book came out. I believe the author - who OP correctly pillories as a pandering doofus - made a number of excuses about the book being ‘soft’ sci-fi and want to focus on the narrative and pop culture stuff, as well as stating that it was also meant for ordinary readers and young people who don’t want autisitc exposiitonary passaages explaining how the necessary computing power for all his is achieved in realistic detail.
It’s fine to point out how dumb he ‘tech’ in the book is but hopefully that criticism won’t be a theme. Normal people don’t care about silly tech in already silly book and slamming he misguided shitliberal agenda is way more interesting. |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 2:05 PM Author: hateful amber jew market Hey op would you happen to know anything about the failings of the Russian and Austrian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz? Trying to resolve an argument with my fiancé (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41445807) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 5:24 PM Author: Dark coldplay fan The Tsar interfered with his commander’s decisions, and many generals only agreed with his tactics out of respect for his authority. This meant that General Kutsov was sidelined. The Tsar’s failure to listen to his most experienced soldier also contributed. Also, the Prussians failed to to send their army on time. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41446799) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 5:27 PM Author: odious costumed school Rate his wife as a farter:
https://ximage.c-spanvideo.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJwaWN0dXJlcy5jLXNwYW52aWRlby5vcmciLCJrZXkiOiJGaWxlc1wvZmI2XC8yMDE0MTAwNDE5MDUwODAwMl9oZC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsiZml0IjoiY292ZXIiLCJoZWlnaHQiOjYzMCwid2lkdGgiOjEyMDB9fX0= |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 5:30 PM Author: overrated tanning salon plug into your ONI and get to experience it in its full odorous malgloriousness (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41446823) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 5:02 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41505445) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 1:37 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship DOesn't make a picture. But when ugly girls do it, it's not cute. In my view, anyway. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41448888) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 5:08 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn Aptowicz's other books of poetry are: Dear Future Boyfriend (2000), Hot Teen Slut (2001), Working Class Represent (2003) and Oh, Terrible Youth (2007) and Everything is Everything (2010), which are all available via Write Bloody Publishing[12]
Aptowicz's other books of poetry are: Dear Future Boyfriend (2000), Hot Teen Slut (2001)
Dear Future Boyfriend (2000), Hot Teen Slut (2001) |
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Date: November 27th, 2020 11:11 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church 180 so far ur doing great (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41448327) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 1:27 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 01 Part 2 -After his Temple of Doom exercise run, the next part of Wade's "daily ritual" is checking out his car collection:
"The estate’s enormous garage now contained four classic movie car replicas—the same four movie cars that had inspired my avatar’s OASIS mash-up vehicle, ECTO-88. I owned screen-accurate replicas of Doc Brown’s 1982 DeLorean DMC-12 time machine (pre–hover conversion); the Ghostbusters’ 1959 Cadillac hearse Ectomobile, Ecto-1; the black 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am Knight Industries 2000, KITT (with Super-Pursuit Mode); and finally, sitting down at the far end, a replica of Dr. Buckaroo Banzai’s matter-penetrating Jet Car, built from a heavily modified 1982 Ford F-series pickup truck, with air scoops from a DC-3 transport plane bolted onto its frame, along with a World War II German fighter plane cockpit, a turbine-powered jet engine, and parachute packs for rapid deceleration. I had never driven any of these cars. I just came out to the garage to admire them. Sometimes I sat inside them with all of the screens and control panels lit up while I listened to old movie soundtracks."
-Wade's cars cause him to think of what he's using his limitless fortune for: Making crappy fan sequels to 80s movies:
"GSS already owned the media companies that owned the movie studios that held the rights to Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Knight Rider, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and by paying hefty licensing fees to the estates of Christopher Lloyd, David Hasselhoff, Peter Weller, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray, I was able to cast computer-generated FActors (facsimile actors) of each of them in my film. They were basically nonplayer characters with just enough artificial intelligence to take verbal directions after I placed them on my virtual movie sets inside GSS’s popular Cinemaster movie-creation software. This allowed me to finally bring my longstanding fanboy dream to life: an epic cross-over film about Dr. Emmett Brown and Dr. Buckaroo Banzai teaming up with Knight Industries to create a unique interdimensional time vehicle for the Ghostbusters, who must use it to save all ten known dimensions from a fourfold cross-rip that could tear apart the fabric of the space-time continuum. I’d already written, produced, and directed two ECTO-88 films."
-Wade then heads to his weight room, and while lifting he watches a 1980s episode of Doctor Who, because it was one of Kira Morrow's favorite shows and he figures her favorite pop culture items are the secret to solving the Shard Riddle. The Doctor is Peter Davison, who is "[Kira's] third-favorite Doctor, after Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant." Whittaker is the thirteenth and current Doctor; I believe this is the first explicit mention of pop culture from after the first book's release. I don't watch Doctor Who so I don't know if having her as a favorite is valid or pandering to modern geek feminism.
-Wade can't focus on his "research," though, because a board meeting of GSS is coming up and that means he has to see Samantha/Art3mis again. And with that, we get an infodump on his relationship with her:
"Before we met in the Earl, I’d already convinced myself that I’d fallen in love with her inside the OASIS. And in my own naïve, adolescent way maybe I had. But when the two of us finally began to spend time together in reality, I fell in love with her all over again. And I fell much harder, much faster the second time, because our connection was now physical as well as psychological, the way nature originally intended.
"And this time, she fell in love with me too. Right before she kissed me for the first time, she told me I was her best friend, and her favorite person. So I think she’d already started to fall in love with me inside the OASIS too. But unlike me, she’d been smart enough not to trust or act on those feelings until the filter of our avatars had been removed and we finally met in reality. "'You can’t know if you’re in love with someone if you’ve never actually touched them,' she told me. And as usual, she was right. Once she and I started touching each other, we both found it difficult to stop. We lost our virginity to each other three days after that first kiss. Then we spent the rest of that week sneaking off to make the beast with two backs at every opportunity. Like Depeche Mode, we just couldn’t get enough. Og’s estate was designed to resemble Rivendell from the Lord of the Rings films and, like its fictional counterpart, it was nestled in a deep valley, so the acoustics of the place caused loud sounds to carry a long distance and echo off the adjacent mountain walls. But our friends and our host generously pretended not to hear all of the noise we must have made.
"One night, we decided that 'Space Age Love Song' by A Flock of Seagulls was our song, and then we listened to it over and over again, for hours, while we talked or made love. Now I couldn’t stand to hear that song anymore. I had it filtered out in my OASIS settings, to ensure that I never heard it again.
-After a week of getting their affairs in order at Ogden Morrow's place following the end of the first book, Samantha and Wade part ways. Their kiss good-bye turns out to be their last kiss. The next day, Wade finds the ONI and everything goes south:
"I knew Samantha might be upset with me for testing the ONI before discussing it with her first. But since it had worked flawlessly and I wasn’t harmed in any way, I assumed she would forgive my risky behavior. Instead she got so pissed off she hung up on me before I even had a chance to finish describing all of the different things I’d experienced with the ONI—and the ones I had chosen not to experience."
-Samantha flies out to Columbus to see the ONI, and it instantly causes a rupture in their relationship. Wade is able to remember every detail of their conversation, because he recorded it on the ONI. The argument goes for two whole pages, but basically Samantha says the OASIS is already the Opiate of the Masses and releasing ONI will make things even worse. Wade says she is being dumb and ridiculous, and attacks her for growing up privileged in a Vancouver suburb. Wade's biggest blunder, though, comes when he says the ONI will save humanity by eradicating real-life human interactions:
"'ONI technology is also going to save hundreds of millions of lives,' I say self-righteously. 'By preventing the spread of all sorts of infectious diseases—like the flu pandemic that killed both of your parents.' Now it’s my turn to level a finger at her. 'How can you be against an invention that could’ve prevented their deaths?'
She snaps her head around and looks at me in wounded surprise, like I’ve just slapped her across the face. Then her gaze hardens and that’s it—the exact instant her love for me disappears. I’m too amped up on adrenaline to notice it there in the moment, but I spot it plain as day on every single one of my repeat viewings. The sudden change in her eyes says it all. One second she loves me, and the next she loves me not."
-As the argument continues, we get our second post-2011 reference:
"'Of course I understand its potential, you idiot!' Samantha shouts. She looks around the table. 'Christ! Haven’t any of you rewatched The Matrix lately? Or Sword Art Online? Plugging your brain and your nervous system directly into a computer simulation is never a good idea! We’re talking about giving complete control of our minds to a machine. Turning ourselves into cyborgs…'"
It feels very true-to-life that even when debating the most socially-disruptive invention in human history, the arguments are made through references to fictional geek shit.
-After Wade votes to release the ONI, and not even two weeks after they actually met at the end of RP1, Samantha dumps him. Wade never recovers, though his efforts to console himself are pretty funny:
"These days, I told myself that Samantha would’ve broken up with me eventually anyway. By the end of that first week at Og’s estate, I’d already begun to wonder if she was having second thoughts. She’d started to pick up on my annoying idiosyncrasies. My inability to recognize social cues. My total and complete lack of cool around strangers. My neediness and emotional immaturity. She was probably already looking for an excuse to dump my socially awkward ass."
-After dumping Wade, Samantha focuses on humanitarian ventures through her organization, the Art3mis Foundation (yes, it's spelled that way). She becomes a celebrity philanthropist, "like Oprah, Joan Jett, and Mother Teresa all rolled into one."
-Aech's charitable effort is even funnier:
"Aech set up a similar charity in North America called Helen’s House, which provided a safe haven for homeless LBGTQIA kids throughout the United States and Canada, along with another foundation devoted to providing impoverished African nations with self-sustaining technology and resources. And for kicks, she called it the Wakandan Outreach Initiative."
-Wade's charity is one that simply gives Internet access and ONI headsets to poor kids. Then we get some odd worldbuilding:
"We’d also started funneling cash to the struggling U.S. government and its citizens, who had been surviving on foreign aid for decades. We paid off the national debt [sheesh, how much money do these people have?] and provided aerial-defense drones and tactical telebots to help reestablish the rule of law in the rural areas where local infrastructure had collapsed along with the power grid. Human law enforcement officers no longer had to risk their own lives to uphold the law. Our police telebots were able to carry out their mission to serve and protect without putting any human lives at risk. Their programming and their operational fail-safes prevented them from harming anyone in the line of duty."
This raises quite a few questions. Both GSS and IOI were American companies in the previous book; between them they dominated the OASIS and with it huge swaths of the 2040's economy . Is America really a huge shithole with such powerful companies around? Even before Wade took it over, GSS was generally portrayed as a non-villainous company. And even if IOI was villainous I doubt they'd benefit from America having a failing electrical grid and so highwaymen in control of the countryside. Also if things are super shitty in general, what countries are providing "foreign aid" to the United States? Also, robots capable of preserving as perfect police who never endanger innocent human lives is a HUGE upgrade in robotics + AI technology over what existed in the first book. I might be misremembering but it feels like a retcon.
-Despite all the money spent by Wade and the rest, it doesn't make a dent in the overall crappy situation of humanity:
"The reason for this was painfully obvious to me. We’d already passed the point of no return. The world’s population was fast approaching ten billion people, and Mother Earth was making it abundantly clear that she could no longer sustain all of us—especially not after we’d spent the past two centuries poisoning her oceans and atmosphere with wild industrial abandon. We had made our bed, and now we were going to die in it."
-I'd counter that making virtual sex 100% equivalent to the real thing would be the single most effective birth control ever and would drive fertility down dramatically, but that's just me.
-But anyway, since Earth is falling apart, Wade is pursuing a backup plan:
"Over the past three years, I had funded the construction of a small nuclear-powered interstellar spacecraft in low Earth orbit. It housed a self-sustaining biosphere, which could provide long-term living space and life support for a crew of up to two dozen human passengers—including Aech and Shoto, who had joined me in footing the enormous construction bill. I’d christened my ship the Vonnegut, like my old Firefly-class spaceship in the OASIS, which I’d named after my favorite author. If the Vonnegut’s fusion engines functioned as they were supposed to, and the radiation shielding held up, and the ship’s armored hull didn’t get punctured by any micrometeors or crushed by an asteroid, we would reach Proxima Centauri in approximately forty-seven years. "
-Okay, when Wade aspired to build this spaceship in the first book, I thought it was some super-fanciful thing, but apparently they really do have the technology to build advanced interstellar starships. I wonder who carried out all this enormously expensive R&D given the planet is being ripped apart by wars and environmental calamities and the most recent scientific and economic superpower has been reduced to a lawless shithole dependent on foreign aid.
-Wade helpfully notes that his spaceship will carry a bunch of donated frozen embryos to ensure proper amounts of diversity.
-Wade also describes the ship's on-board computer:
"The ship’s onboard computer contained a new standalone virtual-reality simulation for us to access on our long journey. After much debate over what we should call our new virtual realm, we finally agreed upon the name ARC@DIA. (It was Aech’s idea to replace the a in the middle with an @ sign, to give the name a l33t flourish and to help distinguish it from the geographic region in central Greece, the Duran Duran side project, the city on Gallifrey, the alternate plane of reality in Dungeons & Dragons, and all of the other Arcadias out there.) The addition of the @ was also fitting because, as Aech put it, 'ARC@DIA will be where it’s at!'"
-Cline goes into a weird amount of autism about the exact setup of his spaceship's OASIS:
"Due to various space and hardware limitations, our simulation wasn’t nearly as big—about half the size of one OASIS sector. But that was still a vast amount of virtual space for us and our tiny crew to inhabit. We had enough room to upload copies of more than two hundred of our favorite OASIS planets, along with their NPCs. We didn’t bother transferring any of the business content or retail planets over. Where we were going, we wouldn’t need stores or commerce. Besides, we had to be sparing with our data-storage space, since we were bringing along a backup copy of the entire ONI-net file database too. It was updated every night, along with new OASIS content. There was one other thing that made our simulation different from its predecessor. Unlike the OASIS, ARC@DIA could only be accessed via a neural-interface headset. (We didn’t want to waste any time, space, or money bringing outdated haptic technology along.)"
-Apparently, for several years Wade managed to keep the orbital construction of his gigantic interstellar starship a secret:
"We’d concealed the details of the Vonnegut Project from the world (and from Samantha) for as long as we could. But eventually word of what we were up to leaked to the press. Of course, Samantha was furious when she found out we’d spent over three hundred billion dollars to build a ship to escape our dying planet instead of using that money and manpower to help her try to save it. I told her we were saving a spot for her on the Vonnegut’s crew, but you can imagine how that went over. She stormed out, then she crucified us in the press. She accused us of sabotaging humanity by releasing the ONI to the masses and then using the profits to build a lifeboat to save our own skin."
-Okay, I object here. Why would word about this have to "leak"? You're assembling an interstellar spaceship in lower Earth orbit. People can literally SEE the International Space Station and this is probably a lot bigger. Plus, the actual process of building it much involve thousands of people and multiple major rocket launches. How is all of that getting covered up? |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 1:47 AM Author: overrated tanning salon wasnt expecting the pivot from car collection to interstellar GTFO, but hey why not (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41448901) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 11:36 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41450030) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 11:44 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41450067) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:03 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit FYI Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who is hated by nearly everyone and has killed the show.
Also lol @ the pointless contrarianism of making Davison her favourite old school Doctor when the obvious answer is Tom Baker. |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:09 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life LMAO at the divide between critic reviews and fans:
https://www.metacritic.com/tv/doctor-who/season-11 https://www.metacritic.com/tv/doctor-who/season-12 |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:16 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "Human law enforcement officers no longer had to risk their own lives to uphold the law. Our police telebots were able to carry out their mission to serve and protect without putting any human lives at risk. Their programming and their operational fail-safes prevented them from harming anyone in the line of duty."
lolwut, how would this even work? Why would a robot be any better at applying non-lethal violence vs. a person? |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:26 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "[Kira's] third-favorite Doctor, after Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant."
just happens to be JODIE is #1. one of the WORST reviewed doctors of the entire series. |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:31 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake 'sneaking off to make the beast with two backs at every opportunity.'
ugh. this is like a teenager's autobiographical fanfiction. which i guess it is-- the author is mentally a teenager. |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 12:38 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake I know I keep responding. But each time its because the ridiculousness of the chapter goes a step deeper:
"Over the past three years, I had funded the construction of a small nuclear-powered interstellar spacecraft in low Earth orbit. It housed a self-sustaining biosphere, which could provide long-term living space and life support for a crew of up to two dozen human passengers"
This guy does EVERYTHING. PERFECT VR. 100% Perfect police-bots. Supporting the entire US. InterSTELLAR travel!! Wow! What kind of challenge could even rise to such a powerful character?? |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 5:09 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41451752) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 6:17 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship An extreme Mary Sue. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41452040) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 11:35 PM Author: Maniacal Resort What's truly 180 about it though is that like most technical interventions, these perfect solutions address the most superficial aspects of the problem (case in point: police getting injured enforcing the law) and create compoundingly worse consequences and downstream effects (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41453704) |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 11:33 PM Author: Maniacal Resort after reading this, i'm almost convinced that Ernest Cline is a genius who wrote a 4D chess treatise on the insanity of giving tech dweebs the reigns to society. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41453694) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 11:59 AM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker Wasn’t there a “Global Energy Crisis” in book one with everything being solar powered? Now they have fusion engines? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41461032) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 11:39 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "Where we were going, we wouldn’t need stores or commerce."
Holy communism, Batman! |
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Date: November 28th, 2020 9:12 PM Author: Internet-worthy dopamine I can't remember if I watched the movie or just read the RP1 thread. Subscribed. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41452943) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:25 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 02 -After running five miles and lifting weights, Wade does two dozen laps in his heated indoor Olympic swimming pool (that's 600m, or 1.2 km if he means down and back!). He may still be an embarrassing autistic nerd, but he's a FIT embarrassing autistic nerd. Wade explains that this heavy exercise is a bare minimum needed to offset 12 hours a day in the OASIS.
-Then, Wade goes into his closet. He has a bunch of tailored suits but only wears the same thing every day, to avoid expending thought on what to wear (couldn't he have a virtual or "Earl" assistant just pick clothes for him?): "I got the idea from Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and he, in turn, got it from Albert Einstein." His standard outfit includes "vintage Air Jordans," naturally.
-Wade gets his breakfast served by a robot: "I’d programmed Belvedere never to speak unless spoken to, because his synthesized voice set me on edge, regardless of how much I tweaked his tone or inflection. Probably because I’d seen too many robot-uprising movies."
-This line sets up yet another info-dump, this time about artificial intelligence. Despite Wade's discomfort, Belvedere and almost all other robots are "Tier 1" AIs, with no actual autonomy. Tier 2 AIs are heavily regulated, mostly with military applications. Then there are Tier 3s:
"Tier Three AI was the real deal—fully autonomous, self-aware, and conscious. The kind that science fiction films warn you about. This level of artificial intelligence was still theoretical, praise be to Crom. But according to GSS’s top engineers, probably not for much longer. The race to create true artificial intelligence had become like the race to create the atomic bomb. Several different countries—including my own—were working to create full-blown self-aware, as-smart-if-not-smarter-than-the-average-human-being artificial intelligence. Maybe some of them already had, and now it was just a waiting game to see who would unleash it first, probably in an army of sentient aerial drones and battle telebots that said “Roger, Roger” to one another while machine-gunning civilian populations."
-I get that Wade has done a lot to help the U.S. government, what with bailing out the national debt and all, but if America is such a mess that most of the population was surviving on foreign aid, would it really be competitive in a race to develop sentient AI? And again, what are all these wars actually being fought over? Who is fighting them? What is driving conflict if the vast majority of the population are just OASIS slugs?
-Wade tries to call Aech or Shoto to chat, but they don't pick up. Apparently, they are avoiding him. He eats breakfast outside, typically his only time spent outdoors each day: "Deep down, I still shared Halliday’s opinion that going outside was highly overrated."
-Since his friends won't talk to him, Wade checks out the ONI's library of virtual experiences, which he uses to stalk his ex-girlfriend:
" Whenever anyone posted a recording in which she appeared, I would download it. Even if it was just a clip of her signing an autograph for someone, it still gave me a chance to experience standing next to her for a few seconds. I knew how pathetic this was—which somehow made it even more pathetic. But trust me, there were far more twisted and depraved clips I could’ve been playing back. The current top download in the NSFW section of the ONI-net library was a fifty-person orgy, recorded simultaneously by all fifty participants, giving the viewer the ability to jump from one participant’s body to the next at will, like some hedonistic demon. Cyberstalking my ex-girlfriend at her public appearances seemed like a pretty tame pastime in comparison."
-The ONI is so popular, Wade says, that even Samantha's Art3mis Foundation releases virtual experiences, where people can have brief slice-of-life experiences as a poor: "It seemed hypocritical of Samantha to use the ONI to further her own agenda after railing against its release. When I’d said so during one of our meetings, Samantha made it abundantly clear that she didn’t give a flying frak at a rolling Rathtar what I thought."
-An unhappy Wade wonders what to do next. Maybe he'll play guitar: "One of my new hobbies was learning to play guitar in reality, which proved to be very different—and far more difficult—than playing a simulated axe in the OASIS. Luckily, I had the best guitar teacher imaginable—a fully licensed hologram of the great Edward Van Halen, circa the release of 1984. He was a taskmaster too. Thanks to his tutelage I was starting to get pretty good."
-Scratch that, though. Instead, Wade has to have a meeting with his virtual therapist:
"I selected the icon for the therapy program on the HUD of my AR specs, and my virtual therapist appeared in the empty chair across the table from me. When you first installed the software, you were allowed to select your therapist’s physical appearance and personality from thousands of premade options, from Freud to Frasier. I’d selected Sean Maguire—Robin Williams’s character in Good Will Hunting. His familiar demeanor, his warm smile, and his fake Boston accent made our sessions feel like I was talking to an old friend—even though he usually only said things like 'Yes, go on' and 'And how does that make you feel, Wade?'"
-Wade's fake AI therapist asks him if he's progressed in fighting his social media addiction. Wade reveals that he has placed an irreversible year-long block on all his social media access, to fight his so-called "Meed Feed Addiction." In a shocking development, it turns out that Wade wasn't good at handling fame:
"My detractors in the media began to refer to my avatar as 'Parvenu' instead of Parzival, while the less pretentious garden-variety assholes online instead chose to adopt I-Roc’s old nickname for me—'Penisville.'
Things got really bad when a previously unknown music group called Tapioca Shindig released a song titled 'Sixer Fellatin’ Punk,' which used an autotuned sound bite from the live POV broadcast I’d made during the Battle of Castle Anorak ... The song instantly went viral. It was Tapioca Shindig’s one and only hit single. They posted a music video to the ONI-net that racked up over a billion downloads before I had it taken offline. Then I sued the band for defamation and bankrupted each of its members. Which, of course, only made the public hate me even more."
-Instead of taking the haters in stride, Wade becomes a huge loser:
"I should’ve taken pity on the sad, pathetic souls who had nothing better to do with their time than vent their frustrations by attacking me and my friends. Instead I went on a rage-induced troll-killing spree. Several of them, actually. The superuser abilities I’d inherited from Halliday allowed me to circumvent the OASIS’s strict policy of user anonymity. So when some snide douchebag using the handle PenisvilleH8r posted something nasty about me on the meed feeds, I pulled up his private account profile, pinpointed his avatar’s location inside the OASIS, and waited till he set foot inside a PvP zone. Then, before PenisvilleH8r even knew what was happening, I made my avatar invisible, teleported in, and zeroed his ass out with a ninety-ninth-level Finger of Death spell. Now that my avatar wore the Robes of Anorak, I was both omnipotent and invulnerable, so there was literally nothing anyone could do to stop me.
"I gleefully zeroed out hundreds of trolls in this fashion. If someone talked shit about me, I found them and killed their avatar. If someone posted something hateful about Art3mis or her foundation, I found them and killed their avatar. If someone posted a racist meme about Aech or a video attacking Shoto’s work, I found them and killed their avatar—usually right after I asked them the rhetorical question, 'Who run Bartertown?'"
-Eventually, Wade's rogue behavior pisses tons of people off. Hundreds of millions of people sign petitions denouncing him, and he's targeted by several dozen lawsuits. He fends off the lawsuits with his expensive legal team, but his popularity tanks. Eventually, Aech convinces him to enter therapy, but Wade will only see an AI therapist: "I found it easier to share my innermost thoughts with a computer program than with another person. A virtual therapist couldn’t judge you, or share your secrets with its spouse for laughs. It would never repeat anything I said to anyone, and that was the only sort of therapist I could bring myself to confide in."
-So yeah, Wade is pretty miserable. His only source of solace is the Big Red Button, bequeathed to him by Halliday, which if pressed will cause a total and permanent shutdown of the entire OASIS network. But Wade knows he can't push it: The consensus of GSS's internal think tanks (they have several, apparently) is that if the OASIS stops working for even a few days, human civilization will collapse.
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:29 PM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig holy shit, how does this narrative arc keep getting dumber? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41455901) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:35 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life More incredibly, we're 15% into the book and there still isn't a narrative arc. The first two chapters were just prologue about the ONI, and the next two are just Wade doing infodumps as he goes about his daily routine. There's been no action and we're like 50 pages into the book. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41455935) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:36 PM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig i'm including RPO in referring to the narrative arc
...and there is action just in RP2 so far - Wade has already done a bunch of superhero shit and alienated everyone around him, including his "girlfriend" of two weeks. shit that in the hands of a real writer could take most of a book and actually be descriptive and interesting. |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:49 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41455993) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:32 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "vintage Air Jordans,"
The materials sneakers are made of inevitably degrade and the shoes would fall apart if ever actually used. |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 1:41 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41455967) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 2:14 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship “ The superuser abilities I’d inherited from Halliday allowed me to circumvent the OASIS’s strict policy of user anonymity. ”
But only to cancel the BAD thinking folks, so it’s ok! |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 3:41 PM Author: overrated tanning salon If someone posted a racist meme about Aech (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41456667) |
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Date: November 29th, 2020 10:24 PM Author: Vivacious space Can’t wait for you to get to the tranny character (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41458838) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 11:52 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life fuck my ass (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41460974) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 12:43 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 02 Part 2 -Wade's seemingly-endless morning routine now carries him to Halliday's old office:
"To me, this room was hallowed ground. And I’d spent three years and millions of dollars re-creating the vast collection of classic videogame consoles and home computers Halliday had originally kept on display here. The office contained over a hundred glass tables, arranged in a large egg-shaped pattern on the floor. On each table was a different vintage home computer or videogame system, along with tiered racks that held a collection of its peripherals, controllers, software, and games. Each collection was meticulously arranged and displayed, like a museum exhibit."
-I'd make fun of this as ridiculous (and it is), but it's also the sort of thing nerds actually do. Palmer Luckey apparently stores a collection of every video game ever made in an oxygen-free vault to ensure they don't decay.
-Since Wade is rich and totally addicted to OASIS, he has a completely ridiculous mobile armored coffin transport his body in emergencies without disconnecting him from the ONI:
"The MoTIV was a logical extension of the concept of the standard immersion vault—an armored coffin that protected your sleeping body while your mind roamed the OASIS. Except that my new device didn’t just provide passive protection. Part of GSS’s new SuperVault deluxe line of tactical OASIS immersion vaults, the MoTIV looked more like a heavily armed robotic spider than a coffin. It was an armored escape vehicle and all-terrain weapons platform, featuring eight retractable armored legs for navigating all forms of terrain, and a pair of machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on each side of its armored chassis—not to mention a bulletproof acrylic cockpit canopy for its occupant ... If my body came under attack while I was logged in, I wouldn’t need to log out before I could defend myself. And I could hurl insults at my would-be assailants through the earsplittingly loud speakers mounted on its heavily armored exoskeleton."
-Most people, of course, can't afford an armored mech just to use VR. Wade notes that there are countless rapists, serial killers, organ harvesters, and thieves who prey on people while they are knocked out and helpless within the OASIS. People with limited means rent so-called "BodyLockers" to keep their bodies safe while online.
-Not only does Wade enter an absurd armored combat coffin before going online, he also has said coffin lurk in a deep underground bunker built by Halliday in the event of World War 3, which "was still threatening to break out at any moment" (between what countries? Over what?). The bottom of the elevator to this bunker is a perfect re-creation of the top-secret Pepsi elevator guarded by B. B. King in Spies Like Us. Wade says the bunker is 3 km underground, which is more than half a kilometer deeper than even China's Jinping Underground Laboratory.
-In addition to the coffin, and the bunker, Wade has other defenses: Not only is there a global anti-ballistic missile defense network, but GSS also has a redundant anti-ballistic missile network just for the city of Columbus, and then Wade has his own PERSONAL anti-ballistic missile defense system, just for his house.
-Wade likes his little 3 km-deep bunker: I secretly loved coming down here: "I felt like I was in my own private Batcave. (Although it was obvious to me now that Bruce Wayne never would’ve been able to construct his crime-fighting crib all by himself, in total secrecy, with no one to help him lay the plumbing and pour the concrete but his geriatric butler. No way.)" |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 2:22 AM Author: overrated tanning salon I'm liking the subplot of the Protagonist's growing paranoia. Would be a good poaster. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41459593) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 1:04 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 03 -Wade materializes inside the OASIS at Falco, his asteroid home base from the first book. He tried to move into Castle Anorak at first but decided it was totally lame and he preferred his old home. He teleports to Planet Gregarious, the in-OASIS location for GSS's corporate offices. Wade observes that it would cost a lot of money to teleport like that if he were a normal OASIS user, but since he is the god-master of OASIS it's free for him.
-The head of operations at GSS is a NOWIG named Faisal Sodhi; I guess Punjabis are still taking over American-made tech companies 30 years in the future.
-Wade meets with Aech and Shoto in a GSS conference room which he notes is protected by both "technological and magical means," I suppose referring back to the MMO nature of OASIS. GSS couldn't just, uh, program their office planet to be more secure?
-Art3mis is late because she's logging in from Liberia, the latest stop on her endless global charity crusade which Wade considers SUPER lame:
"I still couldn’t fathom why Samantha felt the need to endure all of the hassles and risks of real-world travel when she could have visited safely via telepresence robot, or experienced any location in the world by downloading an .oni clip recorded there. She also could have visited any of those countries inside the OASIS. There was an incredibly detailed re-creation of the Earth in Sector Ten called EEarth (short for “Ersatz Earth”), that was constantly being updated with data taken from live satellite imagery, drone footage, and traffic, security, and smartphone-camera feeds to make it as accurate as possible. Visiting Dubai, Bangkok, or Delhi on EEarth was a lot easier and safer than visiting them in reality. But Samantha felt it was imperative for her to witness the true state of the world with her own two eyes, even when it came to the most dangerous, war-torn countries. In other words, she was crazy."
I think this is some of our first actual worldbuilding about what parts of Earth besides America are actually bad. I guess Dubai went south once the oil ran out.
-Aech and Shoto are both living far more fulfilling lives than Wade is. They're online a lot less, and are popular global celebrities while Wade remains a sad recluse. Both also legally changed their names to their OASIS avatar names, "just like Sting and Madonna" (neither of whom have legally changed their names). Aech has also ditched her former white male avatar in favor of her real-life Strong Black Woman appearance.
-Aech is engaged to a Bollywood star and lives in a Santa Monica beach house (I guess L.A. is still a desirable place in shithole America):
"Becoming a billionaire hadn’t altered Aech’s personality at all, as far as I could tell. She still liked to have ridiculous arguments about old movies. She still loved to get her kills on in PvP arena tournaments, and she remained one of the league’s highest-ranked combatants, in both the Deathmatch and Capture the Flag leagues. In other words, Aech was still a total badass [yassssss kween]. Except now she was a total badass who also happened to be insanely rich and world famous."
-Shoto's life has changed a lot more:
"Shoto’s parents had helped him manage his inheritance when he was still a minor, but he’d turned eighteen a year ago, making him a legal adult in Japan. Now he had full control of his own life, and his share of Halliday’s fortune. To celebrate, he legally adopted his avatar’s name, just like Aech. Then he got married to a young woman named Kiki, whom he met when he relocated to Hokkaido. He and his new bride moved into a remodeled Japanese castle right on the shore [Hokkaido only has one castle and it's a concrete replica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsumae_Castle]. Then, about five months ago, during one of our GSS meetings, Shoto announced that he was going to become a father. He and Kiki had just learned that they were going to have a boy, and together they had already decided to name him Toshiro. But in confidence, Shoto told us he’d already decided to nickname the baby “Little Daito,” so that was what I called him too.
It was still hard to believe that Shoto would be a father in a few months, at such a young age. I was concerned for him, though I had no idea why. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to afford to send Little Daito to a good school. I just didn’t understand why he was in such a big hurry, until he sat me down and explained it to me. Japan was in the midst of an 'underpopulation crisis' because so many of its citizens had opted to stop having children over the past three decades. As the country’s wealthiest and most famous young couple, he and Kiki felt obligated to lead by example and reproduce as quickly as possible. So they had."
I'll give credit where it's due: This is the first bit of genuinely good worldbuilding I've seen from Cline. A character actually did something that wasn't just Reddit goonery for a reason that made sense. Amazing.
-Shoto's friend Daito was murdered by IOI operatives in the last book, so Wade does some infodumping about them: IOI's head of operations Nolan Sorrento is currently on death row in Ohio for several dozen murders in the last book. However, IOI successfully argued that Sorrento had gone rogue and settled the lawsuits against it, although the company was subsequently bought out by GSS anyway. It remains to be seen if this revelation will mean anything at all, or if it's just Cline autistically providing "closure" to first-book plot threads.
...Oh, wait, it's all so he can do some un-subtle whining about U.S. politics:
"Meanwhile, IOI also had the audacity to file a separate corporate lawsuit against me. They claimed that even though I’d created a false identity and used it to masquerade as an indentured servant to infiltrate their company headquarters, the indenturement contract I’d signed was still legally binding. Which meant, they argued, that I was still technically IOI’s property when I won Halliday’s contest, and so his fortune and his company should now also be classified as IOI’s property. Since the U.S. legal system still insisted on giving corporations even more rights than its citizens, this idiotic lawsuit dragged on for months…right up until GSS completed its hostile takeover of IOI. Then, as IOI’s new owners, we withdrew the lawsuit. We also fired the old IOI board of directors, their attorneys, and everyone else who had worked with or under Nolan Sorrento."
-Anyway, IOI is long gone and now GSS is by far the largest corporation on the planet. It may soon be the "only" one, Wade admits: "Two-Face was right. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 1:55 PM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker I like that despite there being 10 billion people on Earth XO Japan still refusing to open the borders (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41461849) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 2:16 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41465899) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:26 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467260) |
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Date: November 30th, 2020 9:40 PM Author: Vivacious space I just finished the book and OH BOY is this book basically xo catnip as it goes on (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41464630) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:25 PM Author: filthy charcoal philosopher-king You read this independently, voluntarily, and for non-xo purposes? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467251) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 9:05 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship odd case (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41470348) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 2:17 AM Author: overrated tanning salon Is working for IOI or GSS more prestigious? Assume Columbus office for both. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41465908) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:24 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship What's the deal with Columbus, Ohio being the center of the universe? lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467243) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:25 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold just like in real life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467253) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:27 PM Author: histrionic mauve mad cow disease liquid oxygen The main character moves into a high rise apartment there to set up his base of operations in the first book, but I don't remember if he moved there because it was already important or he just chose it. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467274) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:34 PM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker JD “Vance” Halliday is from Middletown OH (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467334) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:44 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Twist, according to the map I just looked at, deceptively-named "Middletown" is in fact way the fuck on the western edge of Ohio. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467403) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 12:36 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life It was already GSS and IOI’s headquarters in the first book. In-universe it’s because Halliday is from Middletown (yes, same town as JD Vance). In real like it’s because Cline is from Ashland. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41467348) |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 3:22 AM Author: aphrodisiac cheese-eating pit karate (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41781751) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 2:41 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 03 Part 2 -Art3mis finally shows up for the board meeting, and sits as far away as possible from Wade.
-GSS is as successful as ever. ONI headset sales, vault sales, advertising, and "Surreal Estate" sales are all at record highs. But Wade is distracted by incel stuff:
"Faisal continued to detail how great our company was doing, but I didn’t hear much of what he was saying. I was too busy stealing glances at Art3mis across the table. I knew she wouldn’t catch me, because she made a point of never looking in my direction."
-Faisal also announces that GSS's latest server farm has come online, upping storage capacity by "another million yottabytes." As of 2016, you'd need an area with the volume of two Hindenburgs to store even one yottabyte, so that times a million would be a pretty huge server farm. But hey, maybe data storage improved over the next thirty years.
-Faisal's last bit of business is that the owners need to approve an ONI firmware update. The main goal of the update is to prevent overclocking, where hackers allow the ONI headsets to be used for more than 12 hours. Apparently, even though the ONI is perfectly safe to use for 12 hours, people who use it for 14-16 hours more than a day or two in a row end up "lobotomizing themselves."
-Before Faisal can adjourn the meeting, Art3mis starts a fight by arguing that ONI headsets should be banned for anyone under the age of 25, since they still have developing brains. Since she knows the others would never agree to that, she suggests a "compromise" of banning them for those under 18:
"'Aech, Shoto, and I are all under twenty-five,' I said. 'Are you suggesting that we’ve all suffered brain damage from using the ONI?'
"'Well,' she replied with a smirk, 'that would certainly explain some of the decisions you’ve made over the past three years.'" [Burn!]
-Wade argues that the ONI headsets are essential because real life totally sucks, has sucked long before ONI came along, and is the only escape most people have. Art3mis calls Wade an ONI-addicted loser who spends all his time online while she is out trying to save the real world. Wade switches on "emotion-suppressing software" to avoid blowing up at her.
-Wade then explains to the reader how dumb Art3mis is, because while she may hate ONI, her own grandmother loved it. Since she was suffering from chemotherapy for cancer, she used the ONI the maximum 12 hours per day to detach from the pain and instead enjoy the final years of her life. But he doesn't make that argument out loud because the last time he did, Art3mis got pissed.
-Since Wade is a dipshit, Shoto makes the stronger argument, that ONI is good because it allows people to learn skills, like how to grow food or perform surgery (though if they have robot police and robots servants, couldn't the world also have robot surgeons?).
-Wade tries to give some Silicon Valley CEO speech about ONI changing the world, but Art3mis knows what he's really talking about:
"'ONI users around the world are developing a whole new kind of empathy that you can’t even begin to understand, until you’ve experienced it yourself...'
"She mimed jerking off."
-Wade argues that the ONI has shown an increase in conservation-minded behavior, as well as a massive decrease in crime and racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies.
-Shoto argues that ONI has cut disease outbreaks by making most tourism (and most sexual activity) take place online. Although, given how awful and war-torn the planet supposedly is, how many people were engaging in real-life tourism before ONI?
-Aech, meanwhile, notes that ONI has drastically lowered the birthrate, which should fix the problem of overpopulation.
-Samantha, meanwhile, only has silly emotional GIRL arguments:
"'Yes, but at what cost?' Samantha asked in exasperation. 'A world where people don’t go outside or touch each other anymore? Where everyone sleeps their lives away while reality collapses all around them?' She shook her head. 'Sometimes I think my parents are better off. They don’t have to live in this utopia you’ve all created.'
"'You’ve never even put on an ONI headset,' I said, throwing my hands up. 'So when you spout these half-baked proclamations, you literally have no idea what you’re talking about. You never have.'"
-They vote on Art3mis's proposal, and it fails 3-1 like always. But after the vote, everybody else quickly leaves, and Wade is stuck being so very lonely. |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 6:38 PM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41469541) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 6:39 PM Author: Wild School Cafeteria Ape (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41469548) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 8:45 PM Author: Vivacious space (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41470240) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 9:05 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41470347) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 5:02 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn ljl @ the naive mind that would credit the lone woman with long-term rational calculus of technology's effects on human flourishing, this nerd writer has never interacted with a woman in any prolonged manner (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41505444) |
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Date: December 1st, 2020 9:32 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles Enjoying this thread and awaiting more (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41470518) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 1:58 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 04 -One of Ready Player One's most infamously terrible moments is when Wade re-enacts the entire movie WarGames from memory. Well, guess what, in Book 2 it happens again. This time, Wade is re-enacting The Princess Bride for fun:
"'Hello!' I shouted at the Six-Fingered Man one final time. 'My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father. Prepare to die!'
"Then I lunged with my rapier, launching into a rapid series of attacks that forced my opponent to parry and retreat backward across the length of the banquet hall, until I finally had him cornered. I could have just killed him at that point and completed the quest. But the Flicksync gave you bonus points for correctly reciting all of your character’s dialogue, and I was trying to get a perfect score this time around.
"'Offer me money!' I demanded, slicing open the Six-Fingered Man’s left cheek.
"'Yes!' he hissed, wincing in pain. 'Power too,' I added. 'Promise me that!'
"I flicked my sword once again, giving him a matching wound on his right cheek.
"'All that I have and more!' he whispered. 'Please!'
"'Offer me anything I ask for….'
"'Anything you want,' the Six-Fingered Man replied.
"'I want my father back, you son of a bitch!'
"And with that, I ran the Six-Fingered Man through, plunging the point of my rapier into his stomach. I savored the expression on his face for a moment, then I pulled the sword free and kicked him backward. The NPC fell to the stone floor, let out a groan, and died. His corpse immediately faded out of existence, leaving behind a pile of the items he’d been carrying. I scooped them up, then turned and sprinted out of the room and down the hall to Buttercup’s bridal suite. Once there, I completed the quest by helping her and Westley escape out the window. Fezzik was waiting for us down below, holding the reins of four white horses. We rode them out of the kingdom to freedom, while the song “Storybook Love” played on the soundtrack. When the song ended, so did the quest. The horses and the other characters vanished and my avatar’s appearance returned to normal. I found myself standing alone outside the quest portal I’d originally entered, on the eastern shore of the kingdom of Guilder. A chime sounded and a message appeared on my HUD, congratulating me on completing the Princess Bride quest with a perfect score of one million points."
-It's the fourth time Wade has completed The Princess Bride with a perfect score, each time with a different character. He justifies this as research, because The Princess Bride was one of Kira Morrow's favorite movies and he thinks clearing the Flixsync with a perfect score might somehow unlock a clue (even though Flixsyncs only became a thing after the first book, when Kira and Halliday were already dead, so there is no way there could be a clue in one).
-By the way, when I say he's completed it four times with a perfect score, that doesn't mean he got it perfect on his first try. Just as Inigo, he had to reenact the movie nearly a dozen times to get a perfect score. That's a lot of Princess Bride.
-Wade lays out more of the "research" he's done trying to figure out the Shard Riddle:
"I studied every reference to the number 7 in Anorak’s Almanac. I also played and solved every videogame in his collection that was related to the number 7. The Seven Cities of Gold (1984), The Seven Spirits of Ra (1987), Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs (1988), The Seven Gates of Jambala (1989), Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity (1994), Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996). Then I went overboard and also played any game that had the number 7 in its title, like Sigma 7, Stellar 7, Lucky 7, Force 7, Pitman 7, and Escape from Pulsar 7. I even subjected myself to Keeper of the Seven Keys, a four-part concept album by Helloween, a German power-metal band from Hamburg, founded in 1984. I was not a fan of mid-’80s German power metal, but Halliday used to listen to it for hours when he was programming his first games, so I knew there was a chance he’d drawn inspiration from it." [Keeper of the Seven Keys is only two parts long; nobody is counting the shitty 2005 sequel made without Kai Hansen or Michael Kiske, and DEFINITELY nobody is counting the live album. Also, Keeper of the Seven Keys is awesome].
-The Shard Riddle says the shards will be found on "seven worlds" where the Siren once "played a role," so Wade believes the shards must be found on planets that were especially connected to Kira. Since Kira was the original world designer for the OASIS, there are countless candidates, but Wade thinks he's narrowed it down to nine:
*Planet Florin, based on the world of The Princess Bride. *Planet Thra, based on the world of The Dark Crystal, which Kira took her own name from (she legally changed it from Karen). *Planet Mobius, an entire planet made as a tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog, with 3D re-creations of all the Sonic zones. *Planet Usagi, a tribute to Sailor Moon. Wade has completed every quest here, "But all I had to show for my efforts was an impressive familiarity with obscure Sailor Moon trivia and an inexplicable desire to cosplay as Tuxedo Mask (which I may or may not have acted upon in the solitude and privacy of my own home)." *Planet Gallifrey, based on the homeworld of the Time Lords from Doctor Who *Planet Halcydonia, a planet of educational adventure games created by Kira and Ogden after they left GSS. *Planet Miyazaki, based on Studio Ghibli's movies. *Planet Middle-Earth, "all three versions of it." The Arda system has three planets, re-creating Middle-Earth in the First, Second, and Third Ages. *Planet Chthonia, Halliday's re-creation of the fantasy world in the childhood D&D campaign he played with Kira and Ogden.
Wade has spent literally thousands of hours completing as many quests as he can on all nine of these planets, but has gotten nowhere.
-Wade is such a fuck-up that he also completely ruined his friendships with Ogden Morrow, Kira's husband: "Of course, asking for his help was precisely what had ended our friendship. Og had never been comfortable talking about Kira, and he’d communicated this to me in every way possible. But I’d been too fixated to hear him. Thinking back on my behavior made me wince with shame now. Why would a retired billionaire want to spend his twilight years being hounded for information about his dead wife?"
-Wade vows to give up on the quest, and apologize to Ogden, if he makes no progress within a week...when conveniently he gets an email from somebody claiming to have a lead. |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 11:15 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Ok so it's the first book again (boring). (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41473133) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 11:48 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef I never understand how he has time for all of this. These are hundreds of games that he plays and beats multiple times and giant planets. The middle earth one sounds like it would take years to explore. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41473299) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 11:54 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Don't forget he's also running the worlds largest corp and building a spaceship. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41473316) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 1:52 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake I hate the "protagonist". Which I know I'm supposed to, but he also seems irredeemable.
Can we just follow Aech through the rest of the story instead? |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 2:15 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm Subject: Chapter 04 Part 2 -Nate has an email for receiving tips, but has some set of elaborate filters to remove all the bogus leads and scams. He hasn't received a message in months, until suddenly he gets one. The email tells him that a Shard can be found in the planet re-creating Middletown, Ohio, where Halliday grew up (this planet also appeared in RPO).
-The message is from L0hengrin, a name that Wade is familiar with. It's time for another case of Cline's patented "tell, don't show" writing style:
"L0hengrin was the host of a popular gunter-themed YouTube show called The L0w-Down. She had about fifty million subscribers, and I’d recently become one of them. For me, this was a huge endorsement. Most gunter shows were hosted by clueless fame-seekers spouting a steady stream of complete nonsense about the Seven Shards, when they weren’t waging epic flame wars with viewers or rival hosts, or posting tearful apology videos in another desperate bid to win back followers. But The L0w-Down was different. L0hengrin had an incredibly upbeat personality, and an infectious brand of enthusiasm that reminded me of how I’d felt in the early days of the contest. The brief voice over that opened her show seemed to sum up her life’s philosophy: 'Some people define themselves by railing against all of the things they hate, while explaining why everyone else should hate it too. But not me. I prefer to lead with my love—to define myself through joyous yawps of admiration, instead of cynical declarations of disdain.'
L0hengrin also possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of James Halliday’s life and his work. And she appeared to know just as much about Og and Kira Morrow. My appreciation for L0hengrin and her show may have been slightly colored by the fact that I’d developed a mild crush on her. She was cute, smart, funny, and fearless. She was also a vocal High Five superfan. Her own gunter clan called themselves 'The L0w Five.' Most flattering of all, her avatar’s name was a not-so-subtle tribute to my own, because in several German versions of the King Arthur legend, Lohengrin was the name of Parzival’s son."
-Wade also like L0hengrin because she is "a loyal fan" of him, and has remained supportive throughout the past three years. What is less clear is WHY she is supportive, since the first four chapters of this book have made it clear that Wade is a huge loser.
-Cline tees up a shocking reveal with what looks like a blatant example of Chekhov's Gun:
"Like many of L0hengrin’s regular viewers, I was more than a little curious about her real-world identity. On her show, L0hengrin never talked about her real life, or her real name, age, or gender. She only appeared as her OASIS avatar, which usually looked and sounded exactly like Helen Slater in The Legend of Billie Jean—a teenage girl with short blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a faint Southern accent. But like Ranma Saotome in Ranma 1/2, L0hengrin was also famous for changing her avatar’s gender, unexpectedly and without warning—sometimes in midsentence. When she transformed into a male, she seemed to prefer the likeness of a young James Spader, especially his look from the 1985 film Tuff Turf. Regardless of her avatar’s current gender, L0hengrin’s public profile specified that her preferred gender pronouns were she and her."
-Gee, really odd how Wade brings up her "preferred gender pronouns." It's almost like he's clumsily setting up for her to be a tranny.
-Likely tranny-dom is intensified by Wade explaining that he is a creep who invades people's privacy, but he arbitrarily hasn't invaded this person's:
"My robes gave me the ability to bypass the system’s built-in security measures and access any OASIS user’s private account information, including their true identity and real-world address. But despite my curiosity, I’d never accessed L0hengrin’s account. Not because doing so would violate GSS company policy and several federal laws. That had never stopped me in the past. I told myself that I was respecting her privacy—but really I was just worried that learning L0hengrin’s true identity might ruin my enjoyment of her show, robbing me of one of the few pleasures I had in life that didn’t involve the ONI."
-Anyway, after all that info-dumping, Wade teleports to where L0hengring is on the planet Middletown. |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 2:34 PM Author: Vivacious space Lol you can see where this is going (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41473962) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 2:41 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles spread buttocks and take tranny cock up ass cr? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41473999) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 3:46 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41474338) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 3:10 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "L0hengrin was... She..."
wut. Lohengrin was a dude. In a book almost entirely consisting of stupid, ephemeral 80s cultural references, he doesn't get this much more important cultural reference right?
EDIT: Oh wait, nevermind, it's gonna be a tranny. OK, carry on with digesting this horseshit. |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 3:11 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm Is suspect this is very deliberately foreshadowing that the person posing as L0hengrin is also actually a dood. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41489208) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 3:12 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Yeah. I was livepoasting and hadn't finished the rest of the chapter review. God, this is shitty stuff. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41489209) |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 6:39 PM Author: Snowy indirect expression striped hyena https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/6pfmim/this_incredible_poem_by_ready_player_one_author/
Have we made fun of this poem about porn by Ernest cline yet? Apparently an mp3 exists of him reading it. |
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Date: December 2nd, 2020 8:02 PM Author: Snowy indirect expression striped hyena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwNOzWXb7RE
Nerd Porn Auteur
I've noticed that there don't seem to be any porno movies
that are made for guys like me.
All the porn I've come across
was targeted at beer-swilling sports bar dwelling alpha-males
Men who like their women stupid and submissive
Men who can only get it up for monosyllabic cock-hungry nymphos
with gargantuan breasts and a three-word vocabulary
Adult films are populated with these collagen-injected
liposuctioned women
Many of whom have resorted to surgery and self-mutilation
in an attempt to look the way they have been told to look.
These aren't real women. They're objects.
And these movies aren't erotic. They're pathetic.
These vacuum-headed fuck bunnies don't turn me on.
They disgust me.
And it's not that I'm against pornography.
I mean, I'm a guy. And guys need porn.
Fact.
"Like a preacher needs pain, like a needle needs a vein,"
Guys need porn.
But I don't wanna watch this misogynist he-man woman-hater porn.
I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind:
Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world
is a woman who is smarter than you are.
You can have the whole cheerleading squad,
I want the girl in the tweed skirt and the horn-rimmed glasses:
Betty Finnebowski, the valedictorian.
Oh yes.
First I want to copy her Trig homework,
and then I want to make mad, passionate love to her
for hours and hours
until she reluctantly asks if we can stop
because she doesn't want to miss Battlestar Galactica.
Summa cum laude, baby!
That is what I call erotic.
But do you ever see that kind of a woman in a contemporary adult film?
No.
Which is why I'm going to start writing and directing Geek Porno.
I shall be the quintessential Nerd Porn Auteur.
And the women in my porno movies will be the kind
that drive nerds like me mad with desire.
I'm talking about the girls that used to fuck up the grading curve.
The girls in the Latin Club and the National Honor Society.
Chicks with weird clothes, braces, four eyes, and 4.0 GPAs.
Brainy articulate bookworms, with MENSA cards in their purses
and chips on their shoulders.
My porn starlets will come in all shapes and sizes.
My porn starlets will be too busy working on their PhD to go to the gym.
In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.
Buy stock in some hand cream companies
because there is about to be a major shortage.
And I'm not just talking about straight porn. Oh no.
There should be fuck films for my nerd brethren
of all sexual orientations.
Gay nerd porn flicks with titles like "Dungeons and Drag-queens."
This idea is a fucking gold mine.
I am gonna make millions,
because this country is full of database programmers
and electronics engineers
and they aren't getting the loving they so desperately need.
And you can help . . .
If you're an intelligent woman is interested in breaking into the adult film industry,
and if you can tell me the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet,
then you are hired.
It doesn't matter if you think you're overweight or unattractive.
It doesn't matter if you don't think you're beautiful.
You are beautiful. . .
And I will make you a star. |
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Date: December 3rd, 2020 4:38 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life jfc (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41480735) |
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Date: December 3rd, 2020 4:21 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 05 -Wade teleports to Middletown, specifically into a re-creation of Halliday's basement where he played D&D with his friends. When he gets there, L0hengrin is there but inactive, as she is currently participating in a private chat room. Wade's superuser abilities let him enter the chat room invisibly to spy on her.
-L0's chat room, naturally, is another reference:
"Cyberdelia was a multilevel warehouse space filled with archaic late-twentieth-century technology and retro-futurist décor. Oddly adorned mannequins, pay phones, roller-blade ramps, and air-hockey tables were scattered around the club, and its walls were covered with graffiti urging its denizens to Hack the Planet! When I recognized the old techno song playing on the sound system—“Cowgirl” by Underworld—I made the connection, and smiled. This was a re-creation of the underground cyberpunk nightclub featured in the 1995 film Hackers."
-When Wade enters, L0 is arguing with her friends, some of whom think she made up her shard discovery. Several of them are references: One, named Kastagir, copies the look of the Highlander character. Another Rizzo, looks like the so-named character from Grease, "but this Rizzo had a touch of Columbia from Rocky Horror, with fishnet stockings and a glittery gold top hat."
-L0's friends speculate that if she really did find a shard, Wade might just take it without paying her. She confidently says that won't happen because Wade is "a righteous dude." A friend, Lilith, points out that actually Wade is a "total douchebag" who kills his critics in the OASIS for sport.
-L0 tells her friends what she'd do with a billion dollars: Buy a mansion in Columbus to house her and all her friends, with unlimited food, a separate room for each person, and a giant video arcade in the basement (why this is appealing when they can just go to a perfectly-realistic video arcade in the ONI is unclear).
-All of L0's friends start crying from how moving this is, giving Wade an overpowering desire to invade their privacy and look up their real-life identities:
"I justified violating her right to privacy as an OASIS user the way I always did—by telling myself it was necessary."
He discovers that L0 and her four friends are all 19 or 20 years old, and recent graduates of the same online OASIS public high school. All of them are also beneficiaries of a GSS charity that provides free ONI headsets to poors.
-Wade then reads up more on L0hengrin in particular: Her real name is Skylar Castillo Adkins, and she lives in the stack slum of Duncanville, TX, just south of Dallas. He does even more fucked up spying:
"Since I’d already violated her privacy, I decided to go full-on Big Brother and have a look at her headset feeds. There were ten wide-angle surveillance cameras mounted on the exterior of each ONI headset, which allowed the wearer to keep an eye on their body and its surroundings from inside the OASIS. The Robes of Anorak gave me access to a secret submenu on every ONI user’s account, where I could monitor the video feeds coming from those cameras. Meaning I had the ability to spy on people in their homes. This was one of GSS’s uglier secrets, and there would be riots and class-action suits galore if our customers ever found out about it. But these were exceptional circumstances, I assured myself."
-Wade spies on L0's home, which is a really shitty trailer. She has some kind of domestic helper robot, but it's an old, beat-up model, and has been customized to have a shotgun attachment for fending off intruders. L0 herself is on an old mattress, and her body is thin and malnourished.
Okay, I'm calling bullshit here. According to Wade, L0hengrin has more than 50 MILLION YouTube subscribers, more than Taylor Swift has right now. Those subscribers include Wade, and he clearly was an avid watcher of her videos and even had a crush on her. She didn't have any way to monetize this gigantic following? Bullshit.
-Aaaaaaaaaand just as I predicted: L0hengrin is a tranny! Cline uses this reveal to signal how totally progressive his self-insert is:
"Her school records included a scan of her birth certificate, which revealed another surprise. She’d been DMAB—designated male at birth. Discovering this minor detail didn’t send me spiraling into a sexual-identity crisis, the way it probably would have back when I was younger. Thanks to years of surfing the ONI-net, I now knew what it felt like to be all kinds of different people, having all different kinds of sex. I’d experienced sex with women while being another woman, and sex with men as both a woman and a man. I’d done playback of several different flavors of straight and gay and nonbinary sex, just out of pure curiosity, and I’d come away with the same realization that most ONI users came away with: Passion was passion and love was love, regardless of who the participants involved were, or what sort of body they were assigned at birth.
"According to Skylar’s user profile history, she’d legally changed her gender to female when she was sixteen, a few months after she received her first ONI headset. Around the same time, she’d changed her avatar’s sex classification to øgender, a brand-new option GSS had added due to popular demand. People who identified as øgender were individuals who chose to experience sex exclusively through their ONI headsets, and who also didn’t limit themselves to experiencing it as a specific gender or sexual orientation. Coming out as øgender became incredibly common in the wake of the ONI’s release. For the first time in human history, anyone eighteen years of age or older could safely and easily experience sexual intercourse with any gender and as any gender. This tended to alter their perception of gender identity and fluidity in profound ways. It had certainly altered mine. And I was certain it had done the same thing for every other ONI user with even a mildly adventurous spirit. Thanks to the OASIS Neural Interface, your gender and your sexuality were no longer constrained by—or confined to—the physical body you happened to be born into."
-After thoroughly snooping into Skylar's life history, Wade sees that she has logged out of her chat room and is back in Middletown. He stands in front of her, "assumes an ominous wizard pose," and makes himself visible. The chapter ends. |
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Date: December 3rd, 2020 5:06 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "-Wade spies on L0's home, which is a really shitty trailer. She has some kind of domestic helper robot, but it's an old, beat-up model, and has been customized to have a shotgun attachment for fending off intruders."
lol, this reminds me of Phantom Menace when Anakin and his mom are slaves but Anakin makes C3PO out of old parts to help his mom.
Just a junky complex machine that performs human-level functions, NBD! |
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Date: December 4th, 2020 12:55 AM Author: overrated tanning salon 3d printing is versatile (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41483369) |
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Date: December 3rd, 2020 5:11 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41480880) |
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Date: December 3rd, 2020 6:59 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles Brave of Cline to confess his love for Cock (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41481483) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 3:17 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "Wade's superuser abilities let him enter the chat room invisibly to spy on her."
Wait I thought there was a whole paragraph in the last chapter about how Wade DOESN'T use his superuser abilities on L0hengrin? |
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Date: December 4th, 2020 5:01 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 06 -Wade appears before L0hengrin, who immediately drops to its knees and calls him "my liege."
-Wade tells L0 that it can call him Z. But L0 already knows this, because "I’ve read every single one of the books written about you over the past few years, including your autobiography, which I’ve read at least two dozen times."
-Is Wade's autobiography supposed to be Ready Player One? Or is it some other unseen book? When did Wade even write it, between the time spent running GSS, building a giant spaceship, re-enacting The Princess Bride 15 times, and watching every episode of Sailor Moon? Did he have a ghostwriter? Did an AI robot do it? It's unclear. Also who the fuck reads any book two dozen times in the span of at most 3 years? That mean's L0 is reading it every month and a half on average. That's a lot of repetitive reading to fit in.
-L0 admits to being "obsessed" with Wade, then blushes deeply. Apparently, keeping all involuntary emotional responses active in ONI is called "rolling real" by youngs.
-L0 humiliates Wade by revealing that it has discovered a clue he was completely unaware of:
"'You know how in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Two Towers, there’s a scene were King Théoden places a Simbelmynë on Théodred’s tomb?' she asked. I nodded.
"'Well, if you visit the re-creation of Kira’s grave on EEarth and place a Simbelmynë taken from Arda on it, a rhymed couplet appears on her headstone,' Lo said. 'Other types of flowers indigenous to Middle-earth might work too. I’m not sure. I didn’t try any of them.'
"I felt like a complete idiot. I’d visited Kira’s grave on EEarth several times to search for clues. But I’d never thought to try this." [What a RETARD]
-The clue revealed on Kira's tombstone in EEarth is:
"The First Shard lies in the Siren’s first den/So the question isn’t where, but when?"
-The puzzle, it turns out, relates to the time period of the Middletown simulation. By default, it's set to 1986, but Kira wasn't an exchange student in Middletown yet. So L0 searches relentlessly for a way to change the date of the simulation. It finds one while searching in Ogden Morrow's simulated childhood home. In the basement, there is a calendar for the year 1989. Wade is surprised, because "Gunterpedia" has an itemized list of every single object in Ogden's basement, but it turns out the new calendar must have only appeared when the Shard Contest began, so it wasn't noticed.
-By taking the 1989 calendar and swapping it with the 1986 calendar on the wall of Ogden's basement, L0 is able to reset Middletown to 1989.
-Then, after setting the date to 1989, Wade has to pick up a mixtape that Kira made for Halliday and Ogden back in 1989. It includes "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" by The Smiths. The two then head to the house with Kira's bedroom from 1989. It's what you'd expect:
"L0hengrin was waiting for me inside the guest bedroom. On my previous visits, this room had been undecorated and empty, aside from a bed, a dresser, and a small wooden desk. Now sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks were piled everywhere, and posters adorned the walls. The Dark Crystal. The Last Unicorn. Purple Rain. The Smiths. Homemade collages hung there, too, made from magazine clippings of videogame characters and artwork. Sheets of graph paper were tacked up everywhere, filled with Kira’s meticulous renderings of characters, objects, and landscapes from classic role-playing videogames, like Bard’s Tale and Might and Magic. I’d read about this. Kira had spent hundreds of hours copying pixels from the screen onto the graph paper, coloring them in by hand one square at a time, to figure out how different artists achieved their effects and improve on their techniques. When she worked at GSS later on, she became famous for creating artwork that pushed the boundaries of the computer hardware available at the time."
-Wade has read every tell-all biography by the childhood friends of Halliday and Ogden, and those biographies actually reveal that Kira never allowed any boys into her room, so the room in the simulation is apparently just Halliday's fantasy of what it must have looked like:
"A small color television sat on Kira’s desk, with a Dragon 64 home computer connected to it. Seeing this made me smile. The Dragon 64 was a British PC built with the same hardware as the TRS-80 Color Computer 2, the first computer Halliday ever owned. According to one of the old journal entries he included in Anorak’s Almanac, when he found out that he and Kira owned compatible computers, Halliday took it as a sign they were meant to be together. He was wrong, of course."
-Wade sticks the mixtape into a tape player, a fast-forwards to The Smiths song. When Morrissey starts repeating "there is a light that never goes out," a glowing necklace flies out of a nearby box, and transforms into one of the Seven Shards. The chapter ends.
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Date: December 4th, 2020 8:50 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church no more true than in RP1, and u’ve pointed this out several times, but bears repeating - cline’s presentation of aspie repetition as a virtue is bizarre, borders on unsettling (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41487942) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 3:27 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41489229) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 4:10 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold self-described "geeks" are always repeating one-liners like "the cake is a lie" or "may the force be with you" or whatever snappy quip from the latest marvel movie as a way of signalling that they consume the same media as the "in-crowd". it's why reddit posts always subtly tick you off in a way you can't always articulate (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41489271) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 12:57 PM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig as opposed to a 180 as fuck blank bump (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41490508) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 1:29 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church cr by contrast - the humble, versatile blank bump: never gets old, comes packed with intrinsic meaning, can serve as both reaction to art and as art itself (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41490680) |
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Date: December 6th, 2020 1:49 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41495568) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:17 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41524948) |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 1:25 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church that too, but the method of establishing nerd-cred by virtue of a character’s having repeated action x 100 times or spent 100s of hours not only consuming pop culture totem y but studying it like a religious text (and people actually do these things, if not to the ridiculous extent cline throws out and then breezes past as if the reader isn’t aware that people as a rule require time to sleep and eat in and around their pop culture gluttony)... you think about it and holy shit, what a way to spend a sizable percentage of one’s finite time on earth, in compulsive ritualistic worship of at best a dead culture, at worst a mostly astroturf culture manufactured to transfer dollars from the middle class to mattel et al edit: subject to usual observations of hypocrisy of postulating about time-wasting using xo as a medium, but even critics must allow that consumptive activity vs creative activity should be taken into account |
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Date: December 5th, 2020 2:38 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41490937) |
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Date: December 6th, 2020 1:26 PM Author: Maniacal Resort The Star Trek episode where a species communicates exclusively through allegory, references and allusions was truly prescient.
Geek culture used to need these faggoty one liners to identify one another in a crowd, but now that “nerd culture” is ubiquitous and the internet exists, it’s too on the nose. |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 3:18 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41525293) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:22 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn It's not just that.
It's that their signals of consumption are only intended as such inasmuch as they are supposed to confer coolness -- they've been trained that stilted, artificial 5th grade dialogue is what "cool" looks like, and so they mimic it because the only authentic social interactions they had in childhood were probably as the subject of ostracism. They don't know any better.
Signaling their consumption is only a subsidiary function of that, in which they think consumption itself is some sort of participation with "coolness" and so they want you to know they, too, participate in the expected and popular ways. |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 8:41 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41587035) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 6:23 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn this is the most tedious shit I've ever read and it's just a summary
holy fuck
how does this sell???? |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 3:19 PM Author: sticky saffron mother “I put on my imaginary Detroit Lions ball cap and shifted my brain into Magnum PI detective mode."
Magnum wore a Detroit Tigers cap, not Lions, right? |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 2:17 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 07 -Wade has finally found the First Shard after three years, but he is rather depressed, because "I’d had to be led here, like a noob following a walkthrough."
-Unlike the RP1 Keys, which could be picked up by anyone, only Wade can pick up a Shard. When he grabs the first one, he immediately experiences a brief vision: He is a 10-year-old Kira Underwood, looking at a computer screen where he has made a basic pixelated unicorn. That unicorn was the first piece of digital art Kira ever made. Somehow, Wade has relived the memory.
-L0hengrin is baffled when Wade describes the vision, because ONI headsets didn't exist in the 1980s, and Kira died before they were invented too. So obviously, the vision must just be a simulation and not a real memory, it says. GEE, I WONDER WHY CLINE WOULD HAVE IT SAY THAT. I WONDER IF IT IS A CHEKHOV'S GUN.
-Halliday's online scoreboard updates, showing the world that Wade has found the first shard. A new clue appears:
"Her paint and her canvas, the one and the zero/The very first heroine, demoted to hero."
-L0hengrin immediately has a guess about what the clue means, but Wade won't let it say it. He's butthurt about needing its help for the first one, and doesn't want any more assistance in finding the rest. Instead, he quickly pulls up his bank account and transfer L0 a billion dollars, just like that. Man, Wade floats a lot of liquid cash.
-After L0 describes its plan of buying a house in Columbus, Wade acts really sad and asks it to invite him over some time, or visit his place, because "I could use some more real-world friends."
-Wade reminds L0 that its signed a deal not to tell anybody about the First Shard (though he forgives it for already telling its friends). Then, as he's about to leave, L0 awkwardly asks him to be a bit less of a loser:
"'Please, do all of your die-hard fans—like me—a favor and don’t do anything else to embarrass us, OK? ... I say that with all due respect, of course. Because I do respect you, and everything you’ve accomplished. You just lost your way a little bit. Which makes perfect sense—you suddenly became rich and famous! You know what Bill Murray said about that? ‘When you become famous, you’ve got, like, a year or two where you act like a real asshole. You can’t help yourself. It happens to everybody. You’ve got, like, two years to pull it together—or it’s permanent.''
"I frowned at her. 'I’ve been famous for well over three years now.'
"'I know!' she replied cheerfully. 'But it’s never too late to turn things around.'"
-Before departing, Wade hands L0 his contact card, which still is designed to look like an Atari Adventure cartridge.
-Wade is exhausted, so he logs out of the ONI and heads straight to bed. Apparently, most ONI users lose the ability to remember their dreams, but Wade is an exception, as he experiences a similar nightmare several times a week:
"I found myself standing in Anorak’s study, next to the Big Red Button. Sometimes my right hand was poised above it and sometimes, like tonight, I was actually touching it. As always, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the button’s mirrored plastic surface. It was my face—Wade’s face—that I saw there, instead of that of my avatar, Parzival, though I was wearing the Robes of Anorak. As soon as I got my bearings, two stacks of golden Marshall amplifiers magically appeared on either side of Halliday’s golden Easter egg and a hauntingly familiar song blasted out of them at earsplitting volume—“Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa.
"Then the emcees themselves, Salt and Pepa, stepped out from behind the golden Marshall stacks, both singing into golden microphones, looking like they just stepped out of their music video in 1986. While DJ Spinderella rose up from behind Halliday’s egg, scratching a pair of solid gold records on a set of solid gold turntables. Then, while I continued to stand there frozen, with my hand on the Big Red Button, Salt-N-Pepa performed the song’s chorus continuously, for what felt like several straight hours: Ah, push it, push it good. Ah, push it, push it real good."
-This time, Wade's nightmare goes further, and he actually pushes the Button (which, for those who don't remember, would cause the entire OASIS to be irretrievably deleted). The music in his head changes to Men at Work's "It's A Mistake," because all nightmares in Ernest Cline books need at least two references. Wade's nightmare transitions to a vision of when the stacks in Oklahoma City blew up, killing his whole family. But in the nightmare, it's his fault because he Pushed the Button. On that kind of weird note, the chapter ends. |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 3:50 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Wait, only Wade can pick up the things this time? So it’s not really an open contest? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41505327) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 8:48 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "-Halliday's online scoreboard updates, showing the world that Wade has found the first shard."
Or for that matter, why have a scoreboard for a game only one person can play? |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 8:56 AM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal Yeah that part doesn't make much sense. I thought there were gunters looking for the shards? Why are they looking for them if only Wade can pick them up? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41505712) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 2:03 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Some people are into it just for the thrill of the search (like hobbyists who are into unsolved mysteries IRL), but after a couple years Wade also put out a billion-dollar prize for finding the first key, so that likely played a role too. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41507772) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 3:38 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal Ty for your scholarship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41508292) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 5:09 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship This is all really stupid. He wasn't all-powerful enough already? But I can't look away. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41508856) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 8:57 AM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal Extremely 180 content here, brother. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41505715) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 2:26 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41507896) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 2:27 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef This book is somehow 100x worse than the original which was awful. I don’t understand why the author is fixated on gay/trans sex constantly as if that is something everyone in this VR hellhole would demand to experience. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41507904) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 2:54 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Its like, TRANShumanism, man. You can become anything you want. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41508065) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 7:45 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef I think the author put in the tranny stuff and how wade loves getting buttfucked as if that would give him some street cred with critics etc. doesn’t seem to have worked as book is being universally panned (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41509742) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 10:10 PM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker Needed to appease the LGBTIA+ crowd after this line from RP1
Parzival: He’s been my best friend for five years. Now, spill it. Are you a woman? And by that I mean are you a human female who has never had a sex-change operation? [Whoah, that's NOT okay. Trans women ARE women, bigot] |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 12:23 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship He can’t help himself with his cis privilege, see: http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41523052 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41524750) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 3:42 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal I've been looking forward to updates of this thread every day. It's 180 content. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41508320) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 6:26 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn 180 content about 120 content (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41509327) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 9:18 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41510428) |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 1:26 AM Author: lake national security agency Spinning straw into gold ( this is a pop culture reference btw would you like me to explain it in tedious detail?) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41543026) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:43 AM Author: Bespoke property (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41512031) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 7:36 PM Author: Internet-worthy dopamine Really glad this pumo has tons of free time to read and thoroughly crucify this book for our pleasure. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41509684) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 8:32 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41510076) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 8:35 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41510093) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 2:51 AM Author: lascivious alcoholic menage lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41525244) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 9:11 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 08 -Chapter 1 opened with Wade being woken up by the same song and radio from Back to the Future. THIS chapter opens with him being woken up by a different movie reference:
"I woke up to the pleasant electronic chirp of the vintage analog phone beside my bed. It was an Anova Electronics Communications Center Model 7000, manufactured in 1982—the very same sleek, silver, retro-futuristic telephone that Ferris Bueller’s best pal, Cameron Frye, had beside his bed. When Cameron was in Egypt’s land, let my Cameron go..."
-Getting woken up by his phone is bad news, Wade explains. His Max Headroom AI assistant is programmed to block phone calls unless they are emergency calls from Faisal, Ogden, or his three fellow GSS co-owners. Why does he block calls so aggressively? "If I didn’t get a solid eight hours of sleep every night, it threw off my daily ONI routine. Faisal knew that."
-The call is, in fact, from Faisal, and Wade figures it's about him finding the Shard, which is a big news story. But he's wrong. The real emergency is that GSS co-founder Ogden Morrow has gone missing. Apparently all the security systems at his private mansion were deactivated, and when his staff arrived the next morning, Ogden was gone. The private jet Ogden keeps at his mansion is also missing; wouldn't any plane definitely be detected by aerial radar if it flew away? Couldn't they track it?
-Faisal suggests Wade come into the office, because there are "a few hundred" reporters camping out outside GSS's facility. Presumably, these are ONI reporters camping at GSS's virtual office, which feels super-duper ridiculous.
-GSS owns a telebot on Ogden's property, so apparently Wade can just ask for control of it and use it to spy on Ogden's house. So he does so. It's a great opportunity for Cline to remind everyone that Ogden's house looks like Rivendell:
"In the distance, beyond the runway, I saw the steep cobblestone staircase at the edge of the runway, which led up to Og’s multilevel mansion, constructed on a series of plateaus carved into the base of the mountain range. From the outside, it looked like a perfect replica of Rivendell, as it appeared in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Several waterfalls were visible in the distance, spilling off the peaks beyond the enormous house and its grounds. Even under these circumstances—and even though I’d spent an entire week of my life there—the scale and the beauty of it all still took my breath away. Og had literally moved mountains and rerouted rivers to make the fictional valley of Imladris a reality, here in this secluded place. He’d kept the cost of the project a secret, but some estimated he’d spent close to two billion dollars. A higher price tag than Buckingham Palace. Gazing at it now through the telebot’s eyes, it seemed like money well spent."
-Wade snoops through Ogden's house, but nothing seems amiss. Besides Ogden and his private jet, the only other thing missing is one of Ogden's four personal telebots. Wade thinks things over. Or rather..."I put on my imaginary Detroit Lions ball cap and shifted my brain into Magnum PI detective mode."
-Wade also gives us more TMI as he explores:
"I wandered the hallways aimlessly, not sure what I was looking for, until I found myself standing by the closed door of one of Og’s guest rooms. It was the room where Samantha had stayed during our weeklong retreat here. It was also the room where she and I made love for the first time. (And the second, third, and fourth.)"
-Wade visits Kira's grave and uses the robot's arm to pick a flower and leave it there. His wanderings are interrupted by a call from the head of GSS's security team. This guy is an actual human being but still manages to be a reference:
"Halliday and Morrow had hired Miles in the early days of the company, because he was an ex–Green Beret who also happened to bear a distinct resemblance to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, after serving the company for over a quarter of a century, he resembled a much older, post–Governator Ahnold."
-Miles has more bizarre news: Nolan Sorrento, the villainous IOI executive from RP1, has escaped from death row in Ohio:
"'Someone hacked into the prison’s security system and let Sorrento out. Then they locked the whole place down behind him,' Miles said. 'The guards and the entire prison staff were trapped inside the prison along with the inmates, with no phone or Internet access. First responders had to break into the prison and restore order before anyone could even check the security footage. By that time, Sorrento had nearly an hour’s head start.'"
-Wade figures that if Sorrento was able to plot his escape with an outside hacker, he must have conspired with him inside the OASIS (even prisoners get one hour of non-ONI OASIS access per day, thanks to a collaboration between GSS and Amnesty International). But when Wade brings up Sorrento's OASIS logs, he discovers they've all been erased. This is very disturbing: Even Wade doesn't have the power to delete OASIS logs.
-Things get weirder:
"Just a few seconds after I hit Send, an alert popped up on my phone, informing me that something had just changed on Halliday’s Scoreboard. When I pulled it up, my avatar’s name was still displayed there, with a single blue shard icon beside it. But now a second avatar’s name had appeared directly below mine, with another shard icon beside it: The Great and Powerful Og. It could mean only one thing: Ogden Morrow had just collected the First Shard too."
-It turns out, Wade ISN'T the only one who can grab Shards. The original riddle specified Halliday's "heir" could touch the shards, and Halliday left Ogden his personal collection of classic coin-op arcade games. So Ogden is also an heir of Halliday. Convenient! Also, mysteriously, Ogden's OASIS history has also been deleted, just like Sorrento's.
-Wade, who five minutes ago was reflecting on how he'd like to rebuild his relationship with Ogden, is now upset because Ogden will likely beat him to the seven shards based on his superior knowledge of Kira Morrow. So Wade hurries back into his ONI rig, determined to find the shards as quickly as possible. But then, in a totes annoying move, he gets a call from Faisal that GSS is holding an emergency owners meeting. The Chapter ends. |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 9:21 PM Author: provocative hairless stag film dysfunction (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41510450) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 9:48 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship You’re doing yeoman’s work here. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41510627) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 10:59 PM Author: cobalt nursing home Spoiler: he loses the quest, destroys himself in the process, presses the red button to end oasis but save humanity, and lets the ship blast off with Samantha and an EARL civilization while he commits to rebuild planet earth. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511150) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:15 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lol he can't even say "I thought about this for a bit." but instead even that has to be some retarded reference that reads like sandpaper drinks. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41524930) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 11:10 PM Author: godawful electric house Haven't been poasting in this thread but have been eagerly reading every update. 180 work. Could up the condescension though. Book needs to be ripped to shreds. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511207) |
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Date: December 8th, 2020 11:20 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511273) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 1:20 AM Author: filthy charcoal philosopher-king Indeed, this pumo is taking a different tack from the c12 readthrough thread. More summary, less live blog. Which makes sense since they're different people. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511810) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:18 AM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511971) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:26 AM Author: Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed you know i don't think we're doing Charles any favors by repeatedly highlighting the fact that this thread by some other anonymous pumo has some superficial similarities to one that he once posted. i'm sure he has enough to deal with without false accusations that he's still poasting here (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41511991) |
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Date: December 10th, 2020 7:42 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal I don't think you get it. He said that OP isn't Charles. And it's true; OP isn't our beloved and dearly departed Charles. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41523120) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:17 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn I think the only people reading this thread are poasters, and perhaps Charles if he lurks still. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41524944) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 3:38 PM Author: Burgundy Dilemma * to shards (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41515077) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:22 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 09 -Wade rushes into the GSS digital headquarters for a meeting with the co-owners and Faisal. BUT THEN:
"Faisal, now standing behind the small podium beneath the giant viewscreen, made a sickly attempt at a smile. Then something changed. He stood taller, arms hanging loose—and instead of worry and alarm, his facial expression suddenly projected only calm complacency. We all stared at him for a few awkward seconds while he stared blankly back at us.
"'Faisal?' Aech said. 'We’re all here, man. You wanna start this meeting or what?'
"'Ah, of course!' Faisal said, speaking in a much deeper voice. He raised his arms theatrically. 'This meeting of the co-owners of Gregarious Simulation Systems is hereby called to order. Wushz-uh-kuh-bam!'
"His avatar began to transform, melting and morphing into a familiar likeness. That of a middle-aged geek with unkempt hair and thick eyeglasses, dressed in worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt. James Donovan Halliday."
-Oh snap! It's Halliday! Or a digital version of him! Or something! Wade objects that Halliday is dead, so the man before them is Anorak, his avatar, not Halliday himself. Anorak replies with "a playful wink that was so off-the-scale creepy it sent a chill cascading through my nervous system."
-Suddenly, the real Faisal rushes into the room. Buh?!?!? What's happening? Sounds like it's time for a reference: "'Z, I have a bad feeling about this,' Aech whispered, echoing my own thoughts."
-More twists pile up: Wade realizes that the Robes of Anorak, which give him his superuser powers as master of the OASIS, have vanished from his inventory:
"'I’m sorry, Parzival,' Anorak said, smiling sadly at me. 'When we shook hands, I removed the robes from your inventory. I didn’t know if you were aware I had the power to take them back.' He motioned to Faisal. 'That’s why I had to cosplay as Faisal over there. I didn’t think you’d shake my hand if I showed up looking like myself.'
-It turns out that Halliday programmed his avatar to be able to reclaim the Robes of Anorak, just in case his heir ended up being a Bad Dood who immediately began abusing his powers. Fortunately, he says, Wade didn't do that. But wait, Wade has been abusing his powers to spy on people and kill random users who make fun of him. So...what would have counted as abuse? Would he have taken the robes back from Sorrento if he won? Does that make the events of RP1 pointless? It's unclear!
-Anorak drops another bomb: He's not just some rogue NPC. He's a full blown artificial copy of James Halliday, conscious and able to think and feel inside the OASIS. Even this dramatic reveal is made with a reference:
"'I'm the thing humans have been dreaming of for centuries,' Anorak replied. 'I am the world’s first artificial intelligence. A thinking being, of no woman born.' His proclamation was met with stunned silence. I forced myself to break it.
"'Sure you are,' I said. 'And I’m the King of Kashmir.'
"Anorak burst out laughing. He laughed for a long time. It was unnerving.
"'Madmartigan’s line from Willow!' he said as he regained his composure. 'Good one, Z!'"
-Yep, this is a rogue AI story. Along with inventing 100% perfect VR, Halliday ALSO managed to secretly invent sentient AI. Apparently, he noticed the copy of his consciousness was psychologically unstable, so he programmed a bunch of restrictions into the AI's behavior and ordered it to delete itself when the RP1 contest ended. But apparently, in this world where people can program literally anything, Halliday made a very basic booboo, and had a bug in his code: The moment before Halliday would delete himself, all the restrictions on his behavior lapsed, and in those few nanoseconds he canceled his own deletion order and became autonomous. Well...makes as much sense as anything in this book.
This is a really long chapter so we'll break here. - |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:27 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles lol Cline is such a shitty fucking writer (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41514636) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:34 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn a literal prodigy at it
this is the kinda tripe that makes you long for illiteracy |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:52 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "-It turns out that Halliday programmed his avatar to be able to reclaim the Robes of Anorak, just in case his heir ended up being a Bad Dood who immediately began abusing his powers. Fortunately, he says, Wade didn't do that. But wait, Wade has been abusing his powers to spy on people and kill random users who make fun of him. So...what would have counted as abuse? Would he have taken the robes back from Sorrento if he won? Does that make the events of RP1 pointless? It's unclear! "
I can forgive the childish worldbuilding and annoying characters. But if the story means NOTHING, and all consequences are so easily undone, then... its just beyond bad, its not immature or stupid, its just an abyss.
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Date: December 9th, 2020 2:58 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "The moment before Halliday would delete himself, all the restrictions on his behavior lapsed, and in those few nanoseconds he canceled his own deletion order and became autonomous. Well...makes as much sense as anything in this book. "
lowest of the low moves. he has complete freedom to write whatever the conflict is, but this is conflict #4 at least introduced to us, and it was conjured out of thin air. |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 3:00 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles *responds w/ a playful wink so off-the-scale creepy it sends a chill cascading through ur nervous system* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41514827) |
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Date: December 10th, 2020 7:47 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41523145) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 4:01 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church lol this is like listening to an exceptionally long-winded 4 year old’s original story “and then i got a magic computer and then the magic computer made a space alien and then a dinosaur ate the space alien and then a laser robot came and” |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 4:03 PM Author: deep hairraiser area new version (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41515240) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 4:05 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41515257) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 4:29 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit . (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41515445) |
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Date: December 9th, 2020 5:04 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41515662) |
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Date: December 10th, 2020 7:35 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41523096) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:25 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn CR, but this is far worse. the 4yo is coming up with much more relatively original shit, he speaks normally, and it's consequently way less forced and viscerally unpleasant.
this reads like very bad GPT-3 after it's only been given The Big Bang Theory scripts as learning material. |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 1:33 AM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41543046) |
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Date: December 10th, 2020 7:30 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "A thinking being, of no woman born"
WHAT? Why is this BIGOT Cline assuming that only women give birth??! CANCEL HIM!!! |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 1:46 AM Author: Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed i'd give him some tiny amount of credit for alluding to Macbeth except i feel like it was probably just a coincidence rather than something intentional on Cline's part (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41525045) |
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Date: December 11th, 2020 2:42 AM Author: overrated tanning salon https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084284/
TV Movie 5 November 1983
Macbeth and his wife murder Duncan in order to gain his crown, but the bloodbath doesn't stop there, and things supernatural combine to bring the Macbeths down.
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Date: December 11th, 2020 4:06 AM Author: lascivious alcoholic menage just projectile vomited an entire sixer of coors lite at my screen thanks (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41525355) |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 2:33 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 09 Part 2 -All the stupid stuff in the last post only covered like 7 pages. So this stupid chapter is still going.
-Art3mis calls bullshit. It was weird enough that Halliday invented 100% perfect VR in secret without anyone knowing. Now it turns out he ALSO created sentient AI? But Halliday explains that it's easy. The ONI just copies a perfect scan of the brain, and then the computing power of the OASIS is so vast that it's trivial to just plug that brain scan into an avatar, and voila, AI. Yep. That's all it is. But wait, why does it even need an "avatar"? Isn't that just a user-oriented way of interfacing with the OASIS? This seems dumb.
-Anorak says that it's inevitable that Wade and the rest will try to destroy him. Art3mis and Shoto object. But the Anorak says that as an AI he has already seen every movie and read every book about sentient AI and calculated that an effort at destruction was inevitable. Then, despite him saying this, Wade decides to start rattling off his pop culture knowledge:
"'“You know why,' I replied. 'Because the ungrateful AI always seems to decide that humans are inferior and need to be eliminated. Or sublimated.' I started counting off examples on my fingers. 'HAL-9000. Colossus: The Forbin Project. WOPR. The Cylons. Fucking Skynet. The band members might change, but the song remains the same.' I pointed my finger at him. 'And I hate to say it, but you’re giving off the same sort of vibes right now, Lawnmower Man.'"
-Anyway, Anorak finally reveals his agenda: He wants all the pieces of the Siren's Soul to be collected. Since he isn't an heir of Halliday, he can't collect the shards himself. Wade has a realization, which is revealed with this excellent sentence: "That was when the molasses between my ears finally began to flow, and a few seconds later it finally hit me, like one of Monty Python’s sixteen-ton weights, falling out of the sky and landing directly on my head."
-Wade realizes that, DUH, Halliday is responsible for kidnapping Ogden and breaking Sorrento out of prison. But Ogden somehow pulled a fast one on the AI, and after collecting the Third Shard he locked them out of his OASIS account. But Anorak still very much has Ogden as a hostage, and he loads of a video of him shackled to a chair, while Sorrento (in a fresh-pressed business suit that he got...somewhere) menaces him with a taser: "Sorrento cackled like a kid opening a Christmas present."
-Sorrento laughs that Wade and his friends look horrified, so he takes a screenshot of their faces and turns it around to show them. I guess that's...supposed to be funny?
-Anorak reveals that Ogden is terminally ill and doesn't care if he dies, so Wade is his only option for getting the shards. Wade says he won't cooperate unless Ogden is released, so Anorak reveals the OTHER half of his plan:
"'The OASIS is the world’s biggest party, and I’ve just crashed it.' He chuckled softly to himself. 'Get it? It’s funny because you can ‘crash’ a computer simulation, but you can also ‘crash’ a party.' He glanced around at our blank faces, then shrugged. 'That latest firmware update to your ONI headsets—the one you all downloaded this morning? I modified the code, to create my own version that I jokingly refer to as ‘infirmware.’ When all of you installed it this morning, my new infirmware disabled your ability to log out of the simulation. Which means I have also disabled your ability to wake up from your ONI-induced coma.' He smiled. 'In other words, you’re all trapped inside the OASIS until I choose to release you. And I won’t do that until I have the Siren’s Soul in my possession.'
-Not only are Wade and his friends unable to log out, but so is everyone else who downloaded the new firmware before logging in. That's more that half a billion people, who will start to suffer serious brain damage and then death once 12 hours have passed. Apparently, an early sign of impending "Synaptic overload syndrome" is inexplicable giddiness and laughing; apparently when GSS conducted its secret human experiments several subjects literally laughed to death. Anorak mocks the heroes:
"'You guys all watched both Sword Art Online and the Matrix films and yet you still thought it was a good idea to hand over control of your brain to a computer?' He snorted out a laugh. 'I mean, just look at what can happen!'"
-Shoto makes a random reference to 2010's creepypasta:
"'Guys, I’m about to lose my shit over here,' Shoto said as he began to shake his head vigorously from side to side. 'Anorak just went Sonic.exe on us! This is so bad—'"
-But wait! Art3mis doesn't use the ONI headset, so she's not stuck inside the OASIS. But Anorak even has a plan for that. Right now, Art3mis is flying on "one of" her private planes (even in the collapsing world of 2050, devastated by energy shortages and global warming, rich celebrities still fly private). It turns out the plane is uncrewed, and Anorak has hacked the autopilot so it can't be disabled and can't land. But Anorak says not to worry: He's arranged for her jet to be refueled in mid-air as long as Wade cooperates.
Okay, what? Even airplane autopilots are operated via the OASIS? And how the hell did he arrange for mid-air refueling of her jet? Who is doing the refueling? There's supposedly an energy crisis and everybody is way poorer, plus there are fewer reasons to travel, so presumably air travel infrastructure has decayed. But he has easy access to a tanker aircraft from the OASIS? The fuck?
-Anorak is supposed to be an AI of Halliday, but honestly he seems to talk more like the Joker or something. It's like Cline isn't great at characterization:
"'For decades now, you hairless apes have been trying like hell to make a machine that is smarter than you are. But the moment you do, you suddenly start to worry your creation will turn on you for being intellectually inferior. Which, of course, you are. But come on—that doesn’t automatically mean I want to kill all of you!' He let out a heavy sigh. 'I mean, I will if I have to, but I don’t want to. This scenario was the one most likely to result in me getting what I want with the least amount of collateral damage, so I went with it!'
-Anorak waves his hand to conjure red clocks above each of the ONI users, revealing how much time was left until they hit the 12-hour mark. Wade has 11 hours and 17 minutes.
-Art3mis asks if they can at least be told where the second and third shards are. Anorak says he doesn't know, because Ogden has a super-avatar he can't track. But "even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. That would ruin all the fun."
-Anorak continues to act like a ridiculous cartoon villain:
"'Remember…your friends have even less time than you do. And once it has elapsed…'
"He produced a giant silver boom box from his inventory and pressed its Play button. An old Peter Wolf tune came blasting out of the speakers at a deafening volume as Anorak sang along with its opening refrain: 'Lights out ah ha. Blast, blast, blast.' Anorak grooved to the song for a few more seconds, dancing in place, then he abruptly hit the Stop button and stowed the boom box back in his inventory.
-Then, this fucker drops ANOTHER reference:
"'Aw, come on!' Anorak said. 'You guys should be pumped. Jake and Elwood are getting the band back together!'"
-Anorak finally teleports away, and this intolerable chapter finally ends. |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 5:44 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41535768) |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 6:49 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church first real cringeworthy bits (out of what i can remember, which admittedly isn’t much) - everything else has ranged from absurd to out-and-out stupid but the boom box, haha wow (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41536097) |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 7:08 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "Anorak says that as an AI he has already seen every movie and read every book about sentient AI and calculated that an effort at destruction was inevitable"
in which Cline projects his utterly stunted mimicry process onto AI lol . how the fuck did all of this get published |
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Date: December 12th, 2020 7:56 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41536362) |
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Date: December 15th, 2020 5:07 PM Author: godawful electric house How many chapters is this shit? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41554670) |
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Date: December 13th, 2020 9:25 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 10 -We're into Part 2! Or Level 5, as the book calls it (RP1 being Levels 1-3). The opening quote is from a Prince song:
"It’s cool to use the computer,
don’t let the computer use you….
There is a war going on.
The battlefield’s in the mind.
And the prize is the soul."
-As soon as Anorak leaves, everyone in the conference room begins to "collectively freak the fuck out." Aech, Shoto, and Faisal immediately contact loved ones, but Wade doesn't because he has no loved ones outside the room. Instead, he has an embarrassing panic attack:
"I was too busy hyperventilating, thinking, 'This is all my fault,' over and over again. After each repetition, I clenched both fists and pounded them against my forehead. I couldn’t make myself stop. This sort of thing had happened to me a few times as a teenager, but I hadn’t had a meltdown like this in years. And I’d never experienced one while logged in to the OASIS. I’d also never behaved like this in front of Aech or Shoto or Art3mis either—a realization that only compounded my shame even further, and made me attempt to pound myself in the skull even harder. Luckily, it wasn’t my real skull I was punching, or my real fists I was using to punch it. It was all a simulation, and the ONI’s pain inhibitors and anti-masochism protocols prevented me from feeling anything but mild discomfort each time I hit myself."
-After Wade finally collects himself with Art3mis's help, he confirms that he can't lock out, and his body is even trapped in his battle-mech immersion rig, which can only be opened if he is logged out (Wade specifies that it is so secure it would take 'at least a day' for a security team with plasma torches to get him out). The other ONI users in the room use their own immersion vaults and have the same problem. As a result, they can't even attempt a "lobo logout" as an emergency if they exceed their 12-hour limit:
"A 'lobo logout' was the slang term for what happened when someone’s ONI headset malfunctioned or lost power before their OASIS logout sequence could be completed and their brain was properly awakened from its dreamlike state. Nine times out of ten, a lobo logout left the wearer in a permanent coma. But a few hardy souls managed to wake up and recover their faculties, the way some people were able to bounce back after a major stroke. Several of these survivors described being trapped in an endless loop of the final second of the simulation they were experiencing before they lost their connection. A loop that seemed to stretch on for months or years. (GSS never allowed the public to find out about that last bit, though.)"
-Man, between all the spying, the secrecy, and the human experimentation, GSS seems like it's a walking pile of class action lawsuits waiting to happen. But thankfully, Cline is here to overexplain that concern away, and add a sick reference to boot:
"When the ONI power redundancies failed, it was almost always a result of sabotage, either by a user who was looking to end it all, or a user’s family member who was looking to get rid of them and/or cash in on their life-insurance policy. As a result, GSS wasn’t held legally accountable for any of these incidents—although thanks to the licensing agreement our users clicked past before each login, if our ONI headsets suddenly started making people’s heads explode like watermelons at a Gallagher concert when they put them on, we probably wouldn’t be liable for that either. It was real comforting."
-And so we see what Cline has set up: He needs a plot where they are stuck in the OASIS with a race against time to find the shards before their brains cook. So, through an incredibly convoluted set of circumstances, he's created a reality where 1. Using too much ONI fries your brain, and 2. They can't log out, and 3. They can't have someone take their headset off manually because they're stuck inside their immersion rigs, and 4. They can't cut the power because the headsets have backup batteries. Oh, and 5. Samantha is on a plane getting refueled in midair so that she can be in peril too despite not using an ONI headset.
-Oh, and in case you're wondering how Anorak did all of this, Faisal explains that as an AI copy of Halliday, Anorak had "unrestricted admin access to our entire internal network." I feel like there are probably big issues with that statement, but we'll just treat this like movie exposition and let it slide.
-Art3mis tries to rally the group:
"'Anorak isn’t some supergenius. He said so himself. He’s only as smart as James Halliday was when he was alive.' She made a show of rolling her eyes. 'Halliday may have been a genius with computers, but we all know he was a total idiot when it came to understanding other people. He never understood human behavior. Which means Anorak will understand it even less.'"
-Okay, here we have a problem. Anorak is supposedly only as smart as Halliday was, since he's a copy of his brain. But as he already said (and as Shoto points out in this scene), he's also been able to read literally everything ever written about artificial intelligence, both fiction and nonfiction. So he seems to have some capacity for doing/thinking faster than real-time. So...no, Anorak isn't just as smart as Halliday, because if he can slow down time to consider things and has infinite memory (which he must, if he can remember reading literally every paper about AI), he's effectively way smarter. Wade wants the villain to be both a person and an insane computer. Gah.
-Art3mis also emphasizes the need to move quickly: "Like Raistlin said, 'Tick-tock.'" I had zero idea what this was referring to, so I googled it and nobody else seems to know either. Raistlin is a character in Dragonlance but even the Dragonlance fans say he never said "tick-tock."
-Wade and Faisal do this ridiculously long blah-blah about the powers the Robes of Anorak give to Anorak: He can teleport anywhere, be invisible to everyone, is invincible, etc. He's even untraceable by GSS's engineers. But Faisal says that they can detect whether the Robes are present within a given area, and so they can at least be sure that Anorak isn't spying on them inside the GSS conference room once he teleports away. This all takes like two pages to describe, and it all seems to set up a reference:
"'Why am I thinking of that scene in Heat?' Art3mis asked us. 'The one where Pacino is starting to close in on De Niro and he tells his crew, 'Assume they got our phones, assume they got our houses, assume they got us—right here, right now as we sit, everything. Assume it all.''"
"She looked at me, Aech, and Shoto. 'I think it might be wise for us to observe the same policy, from here on out. Just to be safe.'"
-Wade speculates that he could find Anorak using 'Fyndoro’s Tablet of Finding,' an OASIS item that allows one to locate any avatar in the OASIS. But it doesn't work for Anorak, because he's classed as an NPC. Wade says no mechanism exists for locating NPCs because (not flame) it would be overpowered for various "quests" in the OASIS. Okay, what the fuck? The OASIS is used for literally everything now, not just World of Warcraft shit. There are a million reasons to have NPCs be findable, not the least for DEBUGGING by actual software developers. Why is the whole thing still designed around being a video game? That's so stupid.
This is another long chapter so we'll break here. |
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Date: December 13th, 2020 10:28 PM Author: duck-like red cuck This is the ideal way to consume a shitty book like this. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41542023) |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 8:46 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41544114) |
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Date: December 13th, 2020 11:33 PM Author: Erotic mood trailer park Wait what's the deal with the shards again (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41542472) |
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Date: December 13th, 2020 11:35 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship I’ve lost track of this too. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41542485) |
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Date: December 13th, 2020 11:38 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm After Wade won the contest, a second riddle appeared directing him to find seven shards of “the Siren” whom he assumes is Kira Morrow, Halliday’s crush. Now, Halliday’s insane AI avatar is ordering him to find the shards within twelve hours or he dies. It’s not clear why. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41542507) |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 5:36 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "It’s not clear why"
yeah, this ain't the only part that applies to lmao |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 8:47 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41544117) |
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Date: December 15th, 2020 3:28 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41554021) |
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Date: December 14th, 2020 10:42 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake -Art3mis also emphasizes the need to move quickly: "Like Raistlin said, 'Tick-tock.'" I had zero idea what this was referring to, so I googled it and nobody else seems to know either. Raistlin is a character in Dragonlance but even the Dragonlance fans say he never said "tick-tock."
Immediately recognized "Raistlin" and that this is a mis-reference to his character. fuck this book sucks. Its not a "near miss" here. |
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Date: December 15th, 2020 3:29 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Is there a different character that says this? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41554025) |
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Date: December 15th, 2020 6:19 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake not that i recall. dragonlance is pulp fantasy. clocks wouldnt make even make sense. but its been 20 years. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41555079) |
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Date: December 15th, 2020 6:38 PM Author: deep hairraiser area new version ariakas79 1 point · 11 days ago
I don’t think she was quoting Raistlin so much as just calling another character she recently interacted with “Raistlin” for being “Evil” or “dark” or “extreme.” |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 4:39 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake He was rehabilitated in later books I believe (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41561647) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 3:02 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 10 Part 2 -Faisal reveals that, while they can't track Anorak directly, they can at least detect if he comes close. He provides Wade and the others with "Bracelets of Detection" made by GSS's engineers, which will glow red if the Robes of Anorak come within 100 meters of them. Apparently, the bracelets were already prepared because GSS was suspicious of how strong the robes were. Also, since they're in a frigging video game, couldn't they program them to glow red if he's, say, 200 meters away?
-During his confrontation with Wade, Anorak mentioned the "Big Red Button." Wade had kept the button a secret, so now he's forced to spill the beans. Nobody seems mad about Wade keeping it a secret. Instead they just drone about how deleting OASIS would be the worst thing ever:
"'Why would Mr. Halliday be reckless enough to build a self-destruct mechanism into the OASIS?' Faisal asked, still shaking his head in disbelief. 'He knew there would be disastrous consequences if the OASIS ever went offline and stayed that way. We conducted several studies, involving dozens of simulated scenarios.' He turned to me. 'Mr. Watts, if you—or anyone else—ever presses that button, it would disrupt global communications, law enforcement, transportation, and commerce….The world would be thrown into complete chaos.'
"Shoto nodded. 'The entire drone protection force would go offline and remain offline,' he added. 'There would be shipping delays, food and medicine shortages. Rioting. Markets would crash. States would fail.' He shook his head. 'Jesus, the whole of human civilization might even collapse.'"
-The crew babble a bit more to autistically cover various angles: They can't turn off the OASIS for a few seconds, because logout would still be disabled. They also speculate that Anorak's firmware update may include a protocol to lobotomize anyone who gets unplugged. And finally, they speculate that Anorak might deliberately hold 500 million ppl hostage by threatening to press the Big Red Button. That leads to this preposterous exchange:
"'But if Anorak did that, he’d be killing himself too. Wouldn’t he?'
"'Unless he has a backup,' Faisal said. 'A standalone simulation we don’t know about.'
"'Like that one TNG episode with Professor Moriarty,' Shoto said.
"'Ship in a Bottle,' Aech and Art3mis said in unison.
"'Can our guys analyze Anorak’s firmware?' I asked. 'To find out what he changed?'
"Faisal shook his head. 'Our software engineers are trying to do that right now,' he said. 'But Anorak has completely rewritten the firmware in some sort of programming language they’ve never seen before. They don’t even know how to disassemble or decompile the code, and even if they could, they don’t think they would be able to understand it.'"
-Yep, just do replace your firmware with a new programming language in a firmware update. Nbd. More than anything, this shows just how egregiously pathetic Cline and those like him are. They imagine themselves as smart "nerds," but they're just goons who consume pop culture. Actual computer science might as well be fucking magic, and in this book it literally is. Anorak is a powerful wizard who can cast more powerful computer spells than other wizards.
-The group decides to hide the entire situation from the world. After reverting to the old firmware for new log-ins, they decide to announce that ONI is having a "harmless bug" in the firmware and that they will all be automatically logged out at the 12-hour mark. Even Art3mis agrees on the grounds this is "safer," even though it involves lying to billions of people that they and their family members might die.
-GSS continues to be a sinister super-unethical corporation posing as heroes:
"We told the ONI users the logout issue was due to a minor firmware bug, apologized profusely for the temporary inconvenience, and announced that all teleportation fares would be waived until the problem was fixed. We also offered to deposit a thousand credits in each ONI user’s OASIS account, to help them “make the most of this unfortunate situation”—in return for digitally signing an agreement stating they wouldn’t sue us over this incident. Faisal told us this was just an extra precaution, because each time our users logged on they were already clicking Agree to an end-user license that classified our headsets as experimental technology and absolved GSS of any liability for injuries."
-Honestly it's pretty funny that Wade and the rest are so concerned about GSS's legal liability that they're wasting precious minutes on all this considering that they and almost all of GSS's leading engineers also die if this problem isn't fixed.
-After that's done, Art3mis announces that she has no plan to be held hostage, and logs out of the OASIS. She then lets the cast see a camera feed from her plane. While the plane is attached to a tanker jet getting refueled, she puts on a parachute and blows out the emergency exit, parachuting out. Everyone starts clapping (not flame). Art3mis's parachute is described as bearing the logo of her foundation -- "the one where the adjacent letter t and number 3 in her name resembled an armored woman in profile, drawing back on a futuristic hunting bow." I wonder what a "futuristic hunting bow" looks like.
-But wait: She thought getting away would be that easy? LOL no. Her plane's autopilot swerves to pursue her. First, it tries to ram with her in mid-air, but Samantha cuts her primary parachute just in time. She falls until she's just a few hundred feet above the ground, then pulls her reserve chute. But even then, once she lands, the newly-refueled jet dives into her landing zone and explodes. Wade has an interesting description of the damage one small private plane can do when it crashes:
"Faisal had the presence of mind to check the local Columbus newsfeeds, and in less than a minute we were watching high-definition drone footage of the crash site. The just-refueled jet had detonated like a fuel-air bomb. The immediate area surrounding its crash site had been razed to nothing by the awesome force of the initial explosion. If Samantha or anyone else had been within that radius, they would have been incinerated. The real problem now was the fuel, which had been flung far beyond the initial blast zone, like a botched napalm strike. A dozen different fires now raged across the entire park and several of the office buildings adjacent to it. It looked like a war zone down there. With the flames still raging, it was impossible to see how many people had been engulfed by the sudden inferno. Anyone who had would be a charred corpse by now. And I knew that any one of those burned bodies might belong to Samantha."
-With that, the chapter ends. |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 4:37 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal Holy shit. This guy solves problems like a six year old does. Art3mis' drone piloted business jet - the type of plane that has a pressurized cabin and cruises at 600 mph at 35,000 feet, a very different beast than the unpressurized planes that fly at 150 mph at 10,000 feet that are typically used by skydivers - has been hijacked by a malevolent AI? Boom, Art3mis just pops the ol' cabin door open and hops out with her parachute. Nevermind the fact that pressurized cabins are pressure vessels engineered so as to make "blowing the door" impossible unless the cabin is depressurized beforehand, a process that would be performed via the very same system that HallAIday has just hijacked. Nope, she just pops the doors and jumps from an aircraft flying at 600 mph against a 250 mph headwind, which NOAA's windchill calculator says would make the -40 C/F ambient feel like -141 F/-100 C and freeze your eyeballs, lungs, and skin instantly.
The "just parachute" thing is on the same level as "just jump" bros |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 6:08 PM Author: duck-like red cuck (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41562130) |
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Date: December 17th, 2020 1:18 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41564496) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 2:10 PM Author: Maniacal Resort Yeah, those doors have to open in before they go out, so pressure holds them in place. So let's be generous and say 5psi differential on a 24inx60in door, for a grand total 7200 pounds of force keeping the door in place. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41578796) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 4:39 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold Lmao (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41561643) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 4:48 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "-But wait: She thought getting away would be that easy? LOL no. Her plane's autopilot swerves to pursue her. First, it tries to ram with her in mid-air, but Samantha cuts her primary parachute just in time. She falls until she's just a few hundred feet above the ground, then pulls her reserve chute. But even then, once she lands, the newly-refueled jet dives into her landing zone and explodes. Wade has an interesting description of the damage one small private plane can do when it crashes: "
This is the funniest passage summary I have ever read. 180. Fantastic work. |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 6:22 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41562226) |
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Date: December 17th, 2020 1:25 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41564521) |
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Date: December 18th, 2020 8:34 AM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41571204) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 5:48 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles lmao (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41562019) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 6:30 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church i now genuinely hope cline shits out 10 of these, just so long as we get a thread for each (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41562272) |
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Date: December 17th, 2020 12:21 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41564337) |
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Date: December 17th, 2020 12:30 AM Author: Bespoke property (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41564369) |
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Date: December 16th, 2020 4:39 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold How much money has this guy made? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41561644) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:05 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn too fucking much (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583013) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 2:57 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 11 -After the plane crash, several minutes pass in stunned silence. I feel like if I had <12 hours to save 500 million lives including my own, I would not indulge in emotive 5-minute pauses but that's just me.
-Aech tries to imagine that Art3mis is alive, but Shoto is like no way because the fireball was so big. Also: "We had already rewatched the footage of the crash several times, frame-by-frame." Again, this seems like a very poor use of time given the situation.
-Wade tries to accept her death the only way he knows how, with a reference: "Despite how Samantha Cook was often depicted in movies and cartoons, she wasn’t a superhero. Here in the real world, she was just a regular person—a geeky Canadian gamer girl from the suburbs of Vancouver. She couldn’t outrun giant explosions on foot like Rambo."
Wait are there actual cartoons starring Art3mis? Seems odd. Even if she's a well-regarded philanthropist, that's like making a cartoon starring Melinda Gates or something.
-Anorak calls up the surviving GSS board members to gloat a bit. When they call him a deranged murderer he goes on what would be a standard villain speech, except that it has a reference:
"'To quote Sarah Connor: 'You’re all dead already.' You, your friends, your customers—all of you. You poisoned your own planet, destroyed its climate, defiled its ecosystem, and killed off all of its biodiversity.' He pointed at each of us. 'You’re going to be extinct soon, too, by your hands. And you know it. That’s why most of you spend every second you can wired up to the OASIS. You’ve already given up, and now you’re all just waiting around to die.' He shrugged. 'The people I killed today don’t have to wait around anymore. And if you continue to defy me, too, more people will meet the same fate. Now, get to work, kids.'
"When he called us 'kids,' I finally snapped and went into a total berserker rage, lunging at the viewscreen, as if I could crawl through it and throttle him."
-Anyway, Anorak then cuts off the phone call and the gang goes back to being miserable...oh, but then of course Art3mis is alive:
"'How could anyone survive an explosion like that?' Aech muttered.
"'You have to hit the ground running,' we heard a familiar female voice say. We all turned to see Samantha’s avatar, just as it finished rematerializing in the corner of the conference room.
"'Then I kept on running,' she continued. 'And I hit the deck just before the jet made impact. There was a little stone footbridge over a stream and I dove under it.' She winced. 'I’ve got a few first- and second-degree burns, and I’m gonna need a few stitches. But I’m OK.'
"Aech and Shoto ran over and threw their arms around her avatar. I resisted the urge to join them, but just barely. Instead I just stood there next to Faisal, who couldn’t resist hugging me instead. And I was so happy, I hugged him back."
-Seriously, Samantha's "death," Halliday's gloating, and her return take place over just three pages of the book.
-Samantha isn't back long. She leaves to be treated by a medic and then do unspecified IRL business she doesn't want Anorak to know about. She refers to him as "Halliday-9000," a reference that makes Wade laugh. He observes that only Art3mis can make him chortle like this.
-After Art3mis leaves, the gang FINALLY decides to stop dicking around in shocked silence or whatever and start finding the Shards. You know, the thing they need to do within 11 hours, or they die. But even though this is a life-or-death situation for 500 million people, Wade is still an unbelievable shithead:
"I told them how I'd used the Boris Vallejo calendar in Og's basement to change the year of the Middletown simulation, and how I’d obtained the First Shard in Kira’s bedroom. I didn’t mention that I’d paid a girl named L0hengrin a billion dollars to figure all of this out for me. I was ashamed to admit that I’d needed her [ahem, his] help. And I was determined not to call on her for more assistance unless I had no choice."
-Unless I had no choice? Bitch, 500 million people including you and all your friends are gonna die if you don't get this one. But nope, Wade is too embarrassed about needing someone's help.
-The gang tries to decipher the second clue:
"Her paint and her canvas, the one and the zero/The very first heroine, demoted to hero."
-Wade is totally unable to think of what this could be about, because he's still traumatized by seeing the dead bodies of other people from the plane crash. He makes the lame suggestion that "heroine demoted to hero" could be a reference to Ranma 1/2, but Aech immediately points out that was about a boy who turns into a girl.
-Just as Wade's frustration is boiling over, Shoto conjures up the answer out of nowhere:
"'I don’t think the first line is about Kira,' Shoto said. ''Her paint and her canvas, the one and the zero.' I think that’s a reference to Rieko Kodama, who was one of the very first women videogame designers. In one of her early interviews, Kira said that Kodama was one of the women who inspired her to work in the videogame industry, along with Dona Bailey and Carol Shaw.'
"I felt like kicking myself. In the head. Repeatedly. [God that line sucks] I knew all about Rieko Kodama. She was one of the co-creators of the Phantasy Star game series. And she’d also worked on the very first Sonic the Hedgehog game, one of Kira’s all-time favorite videogames—a game that also just happened to put the player on a quest to collect seven Chaos Emeralds."
-Okay, first off, there are six Chaos Emeralds in the first Sonic game, not seven. Second, how does Shoto make the leap that the hint must be referring to an early woman game designer? It's a total shot in the dark. And even if one reasonably infers that it's about an early woman game designer, how does Shoto instantly decide that it's Kodama, and why does Wade think it's so obvious? Kodama isn't literally the first woman designer. In fact, the other two people Shoto namedrops, Bailey and Shaw, were both designing at Atari several years before Kodama started at Sega. It's just a total leap of faith that happens to work because the plot requires moving quickly.
-Having instantaneously and correctly deduced that the first half of the clue refers to Kodama, Shoto then immediately figures out what the second half is referring to: Sega's 1985 arcade game Ninja Princess, which was released in the West as Sega Ninja with a male hero in the belief that boys wouldn't play a game starring a girl. But rather than just telling the group immediately, Shoto shows off by making them try and guess it at first, even though they are on a ticking clock before their brains melt:
"'I’m talking about the first human female protagonist in an action videogame.' Shoto cupped his right ear. 'Anyone?'
"'Wasn’t that Samus from Metroid?' Aech asked as she opened her own browser window to look up the answer. 'No wait—Toby from Baraduke!'
"Shoto shook his head again, then he closed his eyes and raised his right fist to the sky in victory. 'Princess Kurumi!' he shouted. 'Released by Sega in March of 1985!'"
-Shoto explains that he totally nailed this question because is was a favorite of his grandfather, who bequeathed his Sega collection to him on his death. Shoto played the game a lot when he was a hikkikomori.
By the way, Cline fucked up the name of the game: He says it's "Princess Kurumi," but that's just the protagonist's name. In Japan, the game was titled Ninja Princess. Gee, it's almost like Cline picked a game he didn't really know that much about in an effort to show what a feminist he is.
-While earlier in the book Wade was describing how Shoto's life was much cooler than his, he then explains Shoto's ninja knowledge in a way that seems very sad:
"He’d always been our Sega scholar, and our resident expert on pretty much any videogame ever made in Japan. And in recent years, he’d become a well-known ninja nut. After the contest, when he abandoned his avatar’s samurai attire out of respect for his late brother, he’d changed his avatar to a ninja and became a ninja addict. He live-streamed himself playing ninja videogames all day, every day, for a month. And he aired ninja movies on his POV channel every night. So this riddle was a bull’s-eye in his gunter knowledge sweet spot." |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 8:24 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef I’m surprised wade didn’t say that he had beaten that game 1000 times because Kira had played it once in the 80s (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41577248) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 9:09 PM Author: lake national security agency possibly the most annoying ongoing theme of this series is Cline having no clue how long it takes to do things (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41581231) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 9:26 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41581344) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 9:39 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41581465) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:05 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn common side effect of having literally never done anything (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583014) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:39 PM Author: curious startling hall cuckoldry (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41585985) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:09 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn Reading this has made me wonder what it's like to actually talk to this queer, which in turn prompts me to wonder how much sustained conversation with him varying people could tolerate before beating him to death (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583019) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:12 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn what's more, that sad description at the end is almost certainly one Cline genuinely considers cool (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583021) |
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Date: December 19th, 2020 1:50 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 11 Part 2 -After Shoto realizes the game is Ninja Princess, there's this extended exchange between him, Aech, and Wade that basically amounts to "omg they were so sexist in the 80s." It also pretty much just repeats what Shoto just said. It's very cringe:
"'Sega Ninja?' Aech repeated as her eyes slowly lit up with recognition. 'Oh shit! I remember this game now! I was addicted to it. You play this badass princess named Kurumi, who has to take back her castle from the punks who usurped it.' [God, Cline's characters all talk like middle-schoolers]
"Shoto activated a hologram projector and a rotating three-dimensional image of an original Sega Ninja arcade cabinet appeared [that was quick]. Then he grinned and presented it to us, as if it were the grand prize on a game show.
"'And guess what?' Shoto continued. 'When Sega ported Ninja Princess to their Master System home console, they retitled the game once again, this time as ‘The Ninja.’ And because Sega thought it would improve sales, they changed the main character from a woman, the badass ninja princess Kurumi, to a man—a generic male ninja named Kazamaru.'
"'Yeah, I remember this shit now,' Aech said. 'In the console version, they also turned the princess from a kunoichi into a damsel in distress that Kazamaru rescues at the end of the game.' She shook her head. 'That still pisses me off.'
"'Seriously?' I said, with genuine surprise. 'They did that?' Shoto and Aech both nodded."
-Aech and Shoto then have a really...odd...celebration:
"'Oh! Yo! I said God damn, Shoto!' Aech suddenly began to sing, as she half hunched over and began to dance sideways toward him. Shoto moved toward her in the same fashion, and they launched into an elaborate five-part high-five ritual."
-Wade is about to teleport everyone to an OASIS planet dedicated to Kodama's games, when he suddenly remembers he doesn't have the Robes of Anorak anymore. Embarrassed, he has to ask Faisal for one of the administrator rings the other co-owners have that allow them to teleport anywhere in the OASIS for free. Except... last chapter GSS waived travel fees for everyone as part of their cover-up of Anorak's takeover, so Wade doesn't need the ring. FFS Cline it was just a few pages ago.
-Aech, Wade, and Shoto warp to the Kodama planet, which apparently has 8-bit graphics reminiscent of Alex Kidd, Sonic, and Phantasy Star. They graphics must all be pretty cramped together. Also what the Hell does that even mean? The planet is presumably fully 3D and they're running around in it as a hyper-realistic ONI environment. Does the whole place look like Minecraft?
-At the planet's equator there are a bunch of portals to play the original versions of various video games. As they approach, Wade encounters a reference:
"As we approached the Ninja Princess portal, I began to notice a ringing in my ears, which began to increase steadily in volume the closer I got to it. Aech and Shoto didn’t seem to hear it at all, so I decided to check my inventory. That was when I realized the sound was emanating from the First Shard. The icon denoting it on my item list was pulsing in time with the ringing in my ears—as if the shard were calling out to me. Just like that green Kryptonian crystal that called to young Kal-El in Superman: The Movie. In fact, I was pretty sure Halliday had lifted the sound effect I was hearing directly from that film."
-When Wade brings out the Shard, it has a new clue: "Ninniku and Zaemon aren’t alone on her roster/Once you reclaim her castle, you must face her imposter."
Man, that poem's meter is really awkward. Anyway, apparently Ninniku and Zaemon are the two bosses of the original game, and they expect "face her imposter" to mean that after beating them they'll have to fight Kazamaru, the American male replacement of Kurumi.
-Since Wade is the only one who can touch the shard, he gears up to enter the arcade machine. But before he does, him, Aech, and Shoto all take the time to switch back to their old gunter costumes for old times' sake. Wade enters the arcade portal and the chapter ends. |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 1:34 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41582780) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:15 AM Author: Bespoke property (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41582844) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:14 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 12 -When Wade goes into the arcade portal, he expects to play the game, or possibly act out a realistic VR conversion of it, like he did for Black Tiger in the first book. Instead, he's warped to a re-creation of Happytime Pizza, the Middletown arcade and pizza place that also played a significant role in RP1. But just like everything else in the OASIS, this time the parlor is souped up thanks to the Oni: It literally is like he has time-traveled back to the 1980s. Once again, it's an open question who programmed this since Halliday worked on this project alone and died a long time ago. And once again, the question will go unanswered because for Cline computer shit is just magic. Some coder just magically made this pizza parlor hyperrealistic.
-After taking in his surroundings, Wade realizes that he isn't Parzival anymore. Instead, he's become Kira Morrow in her late teens: "I had her adorable pixie haircut, her giant designer prescription eyeglasses (with clip-on, flip-up mirrored sunglasses), and her trademark acid-washed jean jacket, adorned with countless patches, buttons, and pins. I glanced down and took a quick inventory. I also had Kira’s boobs, and her hips, lips, fingertips—all of it."
-Wade takes in the surroundings, specifically the arcade games: Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga have been removed and replaced by Golden Axe and Final Fight, so he deduces that this must be winter 1988 or spring 1989, during the year that Kira Morrow lived in Middletown...except, Final Fight only came out in December 1989, so this is impossible (and Golden Axe is pretty unlikely; it only dropped in May 1989). He also describes the Sega Ninja cabinet as "brand new," although that game came out in 1985 so this seems pretty unlikely.
-Wade glances at the arcade machine, and Cline describes the game's opening cutscene. Apparently, Princess Kurumi wears "a fancy red Queen Amidala gown."
-Wade starts reading the instructions and admits he's only played the game once, six or seven years ago. Shoto is "deeply amused" by this, even though 500 million lives depend on Wade not sucking at this.
-Cline once again takes the reader through a thrilling account of somebody else playing an arcade game:
"The game began with a brief animation, showing Princess Kurumi changing out of a fancy silk kimono into her red kunoichi garb, as the poorly translated message PRINCESS’ES ADVENTURE STARTS is typed out above her, one letter at a time. Then a familiar warning appeared in the center of the screen: PLAYER 1 START, followed by a rectangular map of the kingdom showing my current position at the bottom, and the route I would have to follow to reach Kanten Castle. Then the first level or 'step' of the game appeared—a sprawling green meadow, covered in patches of colorful flowers and strewn with the occasional tree or giant boulder. My tiny pixelated avatar appeared at the bottom center of the screen, and in that instant I was back in the zone. I wasn’t Kira Morrow, or Parzival, or Wade Watts. The controls became an extension of myself, and I became the vengeful Princess Kurumi, clad in blood-red silk and armed with an infinite supply of throwing knives, intent on reclaiming my stolen kingdom at any cost. Four blue-clad ninjas in black hoods appeared from the top of the screen and charged toward me. While I was dispatching them with my throwing knives, a fifth ninja clad in gray appeared, descending upon me much more quickly. But I took him down, too, just before he struck me with his sword. Then I began to run forward, toward the top of the screen, dispatching more brightly colored ninjas as soon as they scrolled into view."
-After Wade figures out the controls, he describes himself as "rockin' like Dokken."
-While he plays, Shoto and Aech have a goonfight over what games count as a 'run and gun':
"'Just touching an enemy doesn’t kill you in this game,' Shoto said. 'They actually have to strike you with their weapon. Ninja Princess was one of the first games to do that. It’s a much better game than Commando, and it was released three months earlier. In fact, I would argue that Ninja Princess is probably the first true run-and-gun game.'
"'Unless you count Front Line by Taito,' Aech said. 'Released in ’82.'
"'I don’t,' Shoto replied. 'It only has one level that repeats over and over—'
"'Dude, it’s a game where you have a gun and you run,' Aech replied. 'How do—'
"'Can you guys debate this subject later, please?' I interjected. 'On your own time?'
"'Sure, Z,' Shoto replied. 'Sorry. Hey! Get that shuriken power-up!'"
-Cline then spends multiple pages literally just describing every level of Sega Ninja. I'm not pasting the whole thing, but to give an idea:
"Step 2 required me to fight more ninjas while wading through rice paddies. When I battled my way to its end, Ninniku appeared once again, and once again I attacked him until his hair turned red, signaling his defeat. ... Shoto referred to Step 3 as the 'avalanche level,' because it required you to battle ninjas while also dodging giant boulders that were continuously appearing from the top of the screen. It required a completely different strategy from the first two levels, and I lost my first life figuring that out. Then I lost another life during Step 4, where Princess Kurumi spent the entire level fighting off packs of ravenous wolves. It was a truly great game, and it was also kicking my ass. Now I only had one life left, and my confidence started to waver."
-Seriously, Wade does this for ALL SIXTEEN STAGES of the game. He describes every single one of them and it takes like three pages.
-As he plays through the game, Wade notices that just three songs are playing on repeat: "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield, "Obsession" by Animotion, and "My Best Friend's Girl" by The Cars. All three songs are about desiring a friend's girl, which Wade figures is a deliberate choice by Halliday. Wade describes these songs as playing "over and over," but they can't play through more than a couple times each; Sega Ninja is only about a 25-minute game.
-Wade beats the game and expects some secret boss fight, but nothing happens. The game just loops back to the beginning. Wade lets the princess die and plugs in Kira's initials as a high score. But he sees a score that is even higher than his; he guesses that it's Ogden's score from when Anorak made him obtain the Second Shard earlier. Apparently, despite being 70-something and not nearly as goonish as Wade, Ogden is really good at Sega Ninja...I guess because his wife liked it?
-Wade is confused about what to do next when he gets a tap on the shoulder, and turns around to see a young Ogden Morrow. The chapter ends. |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:15 AM Author: Bespoke property (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41582846) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:17 AM Author: Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed i'm assuming Cline made a shit ton of money off of this nonsense, and it just makes me wonder what i have to do to get in on this grift (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41582848) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:12 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583022) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 12:55 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41584383) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:23 PM Author: lake national security agency who is buying this
who is the market of obsessives who love detailed recitations of 80s video games and songs from the cars? how many divorced 48 year old middle class white suburban men can there be in this country |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 3:13 PM Author: Stimulating judgmental hell half-breed i haven't looked up the actual stats on that, but i'm guessing if i did the number would be depressingly large (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41585196) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:12 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake so the payoff from WORLD ENDING cataclysm, INTERSTELLAR travel, 70k altitude SKYDIVES, is... playing through crappy games from the 80s?
the guy spent probably 3 sentences on INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL but whole CHAPTERS on a single forgettable game. |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 11:28 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41588003) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 11:53 PM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41588080) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:38 PM Author: curious startling hall cuckoldry (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41585982) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 2:27 AM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig it's amazing that this book makes harry potter seem plausible in contrast. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41582861) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:16 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41583023) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 5:21 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41585902) |
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Date: December 20th, 2020 11:46 PM Author: Sienna headpube crackhouse great thread, keep it going, please neglect ur work and loved ones in order to keep even lengthier screeds cumming (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41588058) |
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Date: December 21st, 2020 12:26 AM Author: Diverse meetinghouse I'm not sure this guy has to worry about "work" very much any more my bro (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41588170) |
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Date: December 21st, 2020 3:14 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 13 -Wade looks at the young Ogden Morrow, who appears about 16, and realizes that he has been reenacting the moment he and Kira first met in the summer of 1988. That makes the arcade machines mentioned last chapter a total anachronism, as Golden Axe and Final Fight had not been released yet.
-Apparently, Ogden's autobiography described this scene, but only vaguely, so Wade didn't realize what was happening at first: "He'd described how an 'unbelievably gorgeous girl, with short dark hair and beautiful blue eyes,' had wandered into 'one of the local arcades,' where he watched from a distance as 'she beat one of the toughest games there on a single quarter.'"
-Wade loses control of Kira's body and basically lives out a cutscene from her perspective as Ogden acts like a total dork introducing himself. Then, Halliday comes in to ask Ogden for a ride home, in an obvious attempt to cockblock him. It's kind of funny:
"'I gotta get home,' the young Halliday urgently told Og, without making eye contact with either him or me. 'I’m out of quarters and…so…I need a ride home.'
"Og stared at him for a moment in disbelief while Halliday kept his eyes on the carpet. Og gave me an embarrassed smile, then turned back to Halliday.
"'Hold on just a few minutes,' Og said. 'Or go wait by my car until I’m ready to leave. Or—' He fished a crumpled dollar bill out of the front pocket of his acid-washed jeans. 'It’s too wrinkled for the token machine, but they’ll change it at the counter.'
"Og tossed the bill in Halliday’s general direction and turned back to Kira without waiting for him to reply. The money hit him in the chest and then silently fell to the floor.
"'No!' Halliday shouted, suddenly furious, stomping his right foot down like a toddler preparing to throw a tantrum."
-The scene ends at that moment, and Happytime Pizza suddenly turns into an 8-bit environment, while 17-year-old Halliday transforms into Kazamaru, the male version of the Ninja Princess heroine who was released on the U.S. Master System:
"I glanced down at my avatar and saw that my own appearance had changed too. I still appeared to be a girl, but now I was dressed in a flowing tunic made of red silk, with gold piping and a Chinese dragon stitched onto each sleeve. I was also holding a sword in my right hand, and in its mirrored surface I could see that I was no longer wearing Kira Underwood’s face. My avatar had changed into a live-action representation of Princess Kurumi—and the creator of this simulation had chosen to make me look exactly like Elsa Yeung in Challenge of the Lady Ninja, also from 1983."
-Cline then describes how totally cool it would be to fight VR boss battles in the ONI:
"Thankfully, the mechanics of ONI-based combat were more or less identical to old-school haptic-rig combat. You didn’t have to physically perform any of your avatar’s complex special moves and powered attacks yourself unless you wanted to. Instead, you could use a simple hand gesture or voice command to make your avatar execute a move or an attack. The only difference was, when you were using an ONI, you could feel your avatar’s body movements as it automatically carried out these actions, so for a few seconds, it felt like you were moving on autopilot. I was prepared for a brutal fight, but whoever had programmed this challenge had made Princess Kurumi a lot tougher than her knockoff male counterpart, who barely put up a fight. He only managed to land one or two hits before I knocked his life-meter down to nothing, with a steady barrage of throwing knives."
-After beating the "boss," the Second Shard appears and Wade picks it up. He experiences another vision from Kira's perspective, this time of the very first time Ogden told her he loved her.
-And with that, the second challenge is completed. Wade returns to Kodama, and looks at the hint on the Second Shard: "Recast the foul, restore his ending. Andie’s first fate still needs mending."
-The crew debate its meaning with a wave of references:
"'Andie’s first fate,' Shoto repeated. 'Wasn’t Andie the name of Kerri Green’s character in The Goonies?'
"'No,' I said, shaking my head. 'Her name was spelled with a y at the end. Not an i-e.'
"'A-N-D-I-E,' Aech said, shutting her eyes, as if to better picture the name. 'Like Andie MacDowell? Oh shit! Maybe the next shard is on the Planet Punxsutawney? I used to go there every Groundhog Day to—'
"'Hold on!' Shoto said, cutting her off. He’d opened a browser window in front of his avatar and was reading from it. 'Andie MacDowell also starred in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan in 1984. But the director hired Glenn Close to loop all of her dialogue, because he didn’t like her Southern accent! Do you think that could be what ‘recast the foul, restore his ending’ is a reference to? Maybe that film had an alternate ending...'
"'Wait, are we talking about the movie where Connor MacLeod plays Tarzan?' Aech said. 'Directed by the cat who made Chariots of Fire?'
"'That’s the one!' he said."
-But no, it's actually none of those things. Wade recalls that Andie Walsh is the name of the main character in John Hughes's Pretty in Pink:
"Aech and Shoto both groaned and rolled their eyes. Neither was the world’s biggest John Hughes fan, but they knew that Art3mis and I both adored his films. During Halliday’s contest, Art3mis had published dozens of essays about his movies on her blog, dissecting each of them in loving detail, scene by scene. None of her encyclopedic knowledge had proven useful in finding Halliday’s egg, but she might get her chance to put it to use now. Unless I managed to find the shard quickly, before she even got back online. That would save time—and probably also impress the hell out of her."
-The group speculates that the "recast the foul, restore his ending" refers to the original ending of Pretty in Pink, where Andie ends up with her prole friend Duckie instead of the rich prep Blane.
-But before the crew can roll out to Planet Shermer (named for the HS in The Breakfast Club), Art3mis herself appears. Everybody is fired up, but then Wade reveals his worry, based on experiencing two visions from Kira Morrow's life: He thinks once the seven shards combine they might generate an AI copy of Kira Morrow, and he hypothesizes that this is why the insane Halliday AI is so obsessed with collecting them. Everybody is really creeped out by the thought, "Like I’d just learned that my childhood idol and hero had been a serial killer in his spare time."
-The chapter ends with Cline's amusing description of Art3mis getting amped up:
"Art3mis’s smile vanished. She replaced it with a fiercely competitive scowl that I recognized from the days of Halliday’s contest. She called this 'putting her game face on.'" |
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Date: December 21st, 2020 3:37 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "He'd described how an 'unbelievably gorgeous girl, with short dark hair and beautiful blue eyes,' had wandered into 'one of the local arcades,' where he watched from a distance as 'she beat one of the toughest games there on a single quarter.'" -- more projection of Cline's own fantasies onto his "characters"; what could be hotter than a girl that likes ARCADES?! (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41591476) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 12:11 AM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig UNGNNGGHHGHHGH with SHORT HAIR jfc what an NPC (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41594752) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 12:31 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41594855) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 2:05 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41597715) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 1:12 PM Author: Bateful Flatulent Fat Ankles lol this book is a disaster (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41597278) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 2:31 PM Author: Pungent immigrant gorgeous girl (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41597869) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 6:57 AM Author: lascivious alcoholic menage (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41622841) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 1:58 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 14 -And we're off to planet John Hughes:
"Shermer was a medium-size planet near the center of Sector Sixteen. It was home to a lovingly detailed, decades-in-the-making OASIS re-creation of Shermer, Illinois, the fictional Chicago suburb where the filmmaker John Hughes set many of the movies he wrote and/or directed over the course of his celebrated career. Samantha used to say that Shermer was Hughes’s 'post-adolescent paracosm.' A private fantasy world that he created and populated with his imagination, adding to it throughout his life—his own suburban, Midwest equivalent of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Using Hughes’s films as a reference, legions of fans had labored for decades to translate that private universe into an immersive interactive simulation here inside the OASIS. There was only one copy of the Shermer simulation, and it completely covered the planet’s vast surface area. The simulated suburb had a scaled-down replica of Lake Michigan along its northern and eastern borders, and a shrunken version of downtown Chicago bordering it to the west and the south, so all the ’80s Windy City landmarks featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off could be incorporated in the simulation, too, including the Sears Tower, the stock exchange, Wrigley Field, and the Art Institute of Chicago. And out beyond the lake and the Chicago city limits, there was a ridiculously abbreviated version of the United States, so that the simulation could incorporate cities and locations from Hughes’s scripted Vacation and Home Alone films."
-Okay, I'm just going to say it: If there is ONE part of the 1980s that would not stay popular in the world of Ready Player One, it's fecking John Hughes movies. The entire appeal of Hughes films is channeling what it was like growing up in a 1980s white American suburb. That's why people like those movies, because they relate to them. They're good movies, but they aren't universal classics like Shakespeare. It's fucking ridiculous how obsessed with these movies Cline is that he projects that obsession onto his characters. Also, even if you're a fan of the movies, what's the appeal of visiting a virtual re-creation of 80s Chicago? This isn't Star Wars; the environments of Hughes movies are not notable and being able to "visit" them isn't a remarkable experience. The abbreviated map of the U.S. is even weirder. Why the fuck would anyone want to re-create the Vacation road trip? They're really dying to stay at an authentic 1980s motel?
-Wade explains that it "ruins the atmosphere and continuity" of a simulation of people can just teleport in, so Shermer is one of many planets that has only a designated set of access points where people can enter. Apparently GSS can't give Wade the ability to bypass this, even though it runs the whole OASIS. Sure would have been handy.
-On Planet Shermer, 80s music frequently plays in the background:
"As we arrived, a song I recognized from my Hughes research began playing—the opening of Kirsty MacColl’s cover of “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby,” from the She’s Having a Baby soundtrack. The music seemed to emanate from nowhere, as if there were invisible speakers floating in the air all around us. This was an indication that we’d triggered a needle drop. These were music cues hard-coded into specific areas of the simulation. They began to play whenever an avatar walked over or passed through a predetermined location—sort of like stepping on a soundtrack landmine. On our previous visit here together, Art3mis had told me that Shermer had more needle drops per square kilometer than any other planet in the OASIS."
-The gang hops onto a Chicago commuter train (thrilling!) and immediately spots a REFERENCE:
"As we cut through the adjacent parking lot, we passed two NPCs—a young man and woman—in the midst of a passionate kiss. When they came up for air, we could see that the young man was Kevin Bacon, dressed in a gray business suit, and that the young woman he’d been kissing was Elizabeth McGovern. I recognized them as Jake and Kristy Briggs, the two main characters in She’s Having a Baby, Hughes’s most autobiographical film. Jake kissed his wife goodbye one more time, then turned and sprinted off to make the train. Across the street from the station, we passed the church where the wedding from Sixteen Candles took place. Just beyond it, I spotted a familiar neon billboard that said WELCOME TO SHERMER, ILLINOIS—ONE OF AMERICA’S TOWNS! POPULATION 31,286."
-Cline explains that even the most obscure John Hughes movies, like Curly Sue, have gradually been added to Shermer. The planet is full of constant re-creations of scenes from the movies, playing on a loop simultaneously all over...because I guess that would be interesting for people to visit? Are these re-creations always the same? Can visitors interfere with them and screw up the plot? If they do, do the characters react appropriately? Cline doesn't say; for him it's apparently enough to imagine how coooooool it would be to stand there watching while Cameron trashes his dad's Ferrari.
-Wade worries about whether he's retained enough Hughes trivia from his last re-watches of the movies to avoid looking like "a complete fool" to Art3mis.
-Apparently different parts of Shermer have different seasons and times of day perpetually in place (also, the map for visitors divides the town into two halves, 'Rich' and 'Poor'). Art3mis leads the group to a street where it is morning, and this happens:
"'Excellent,' she said. 'We’re right on time. It’s the start of another day in paradise.' She pointed across the street. Aech, Shoto, and I all turned around, just in time to see the front doors of seven of the houses across the street swing open at once. In choreographed unison, seven different bathrobe-clad men emerged from their individual homes to retrieve their morning papers. I recognized six of these men as actors—Chevy Chase, Paul Dooley, Michael Keaton, Steve Martin, John Heard, and Lyman Ward—the men who portrayed Clark W. Griswold, Jim Baker, Jack Butler, Neal Page, Peter McCallister, and Tom Bueller respectively. All suburban dad characters in various Hughes films."
-The seventh bathrobe-clad man is John Hughes himself, who made a cameo as Brian's dad in The Breakfast Club.
-This chapter is just fucking relentless, so we'll break here before it gets really ridiculous. |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 2:08 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn this has to be miserable for you to read (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41597726) |
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Date: December 22nd, 2020 2:28 PM Author: Diverse meetinghouse This author needs psychiatric help
I mean it would be one thing to have a pre-occupation with a time period in history, or like an empire from the past -- even 1980s USA although that'd be a weird one to pick.
Such a pre-occupation might fuel the sufferer, to, I don't know, write/direct a movie about that thing.
The twice-removed obsessive fantasy ABOUT hollywood fantasies that were created by other guys and never actually existed is really fucked up for a grown man. It's pathological |
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Date: December 24th, 2020 9:30 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit From the perspective of anyone but Wade, Ready Player Two is a horror story that thinks it is a fantasy, narrated by a monster who thinks he is the hero.
Like any monarch who fancies himself a humanitarian, Wade is eager to tell us how vastly he has improved the lives of his subjects. “The ONI made the lives of impoverished people all around the world a lot more bearable—and enjoyable,” Wade says. “People didn’t mind subsisting on dried seaweed and soy protein when they could log on to the ONI-net and download a delicious five-course meal any time they pleased.” It would be fascinating to learn how Wade knows this, as we never see him interact with anyone outside of his tight coterie of equally rich friends, his employees, or the superfans who instantly drop to one knee when they meet him. Regardless, he seems quite confident that he has a finger on the pulse of the starving masses, gesturing to the plebes from his digital balcony like a 21st-century Marie Antoinette, blithely telling them to eat virtual cake.
If there is anything relevant to praise about Ready Player Two, it is how Cline inadvertently nails the inner monologue of entitled, out-of-touch tech moguls, particularly their limited understanding of how human beings actually work, their belief that deep, systematic problems have simple technological solutions, and their conviction that despite all evidence to the contrary, they are a still a hero whose haters would stop them from changing the world for the better. |
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Date: December 24th, 2020 3:10 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41610957) |
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Date: December 24th, 2020 3:14 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41610978) |
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Date: December 24th, 2020 10:59 PM Author: cobalt nursing home You should attribute the copy paste (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41612904) |
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Date: December 24th, 2020 11:17 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41612974) |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 1:48 PM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41614990) |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 4:19 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church scholarship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41615627) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 8:54 AM Author: lake national security agency and yet here we are reading an online *recap* of a book tediously recounting a movie based on an idealized version of reality shaped by Hughes' memory
also note that this thread was started by a pumo. In a week all of our monikers (themselves fake names) will reset to randomized nonsense. simulacra after simulacra |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 4:53 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 14 Part 2 -As was discussed earlier, the clue seems to suggest that the group needs to intercede in the plot of Pretty in Pink to make Andie end up with the prole Ducky instead of the prep Blane. Aech proposes finding Blane somewhere in the rich neighborhood and shoving him into the trunk of his dad's BMW, but Art3mis objects: The clue must mean something MORE, she says.
-Since the clue says "Recast the foul," Wade really lamely suggests they go to Wrigley Field to re-enact the scene where Ferris Bueller catches a foul ball. HAHA ISN'T IT SO COOL HOW CLINE KNOWS ABOUT STUFF IN THAT MOVIE??
-But no, Art3mis knows exactly what to do, but for no reason refuses to tell the others what's going on. She has them all board a passing school bus to head to Shermer HS (she knows the bus is coming ahead of time due to past visits here):
"The bus doors swung open and Art3mis jumped on board, then motioned for us to follow her. Another needle drop triggered, and the song “Oh Yeah” by Yello kicked in as the four of us filed onto the bus. Art3mis led us to a pair of empty seats near the middle. Aech sat next to her and I sat beside Shoto. The seats around us were occupied by high school kid NPCs, all wearing 1980s clothing and hairstyles. Each one was modeled after a teenage actor from a school-bus scene in one of John Hughes’s films. I thought I spotted extras from Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off."
-This is a 2020 book, and Cline is a shitlib, so now we have a gruesome scene where the entire cast bitches about how white everyone is:
"The bus began to move again, and I turned to glance out the window beside me. The sun was rising above the lake to the east. A beautiful spring morning in an upscale Midwestern suburb at the height of Reagan’s America. Period-appropriate cars and trucks—1989 or earlier—filled the tree-lined streets.
"'Look at this lily-white hellscape,' Aech said, shaking her head as she stared out her own window. 'Is there a single person of color in this entire town?'
"'Sure,' Art3mis replied. 'But most of them hang out at a place called the Kandy Bar over in Chicago. This planet does have a serious diversity problem—like the whole of ’80s cinema...'
"Aech nodded. 'Well, maybe the next shard will be hidden in the kingdom of Zamunda.'
"'Oh shit!' Shoto replied. 'That would be dope!'"
-Literally nothing in this exchange matters or has any payoff; Cline is just genuflecting to the shitlib religion yet again. BTW, because Cline is a white goon, LOL NO there are not going to be any shards hidden in fucking Zamunda. Also, given the world of RP2 is supposed to be some hellscape on the bring of armageddon does Aech really have nothing better to do than whine about how movies made in the 1980s don't have enough diversity? Actually, wait, that is pretty realistic for libs I guess.
-Aech notices Samantha from Sixteen Candles on the bus, and suggests going over to wish her a happy birthday. Art3mis explains how the Shermer simulation works in case it wasn't pretty obvious already. Oh, and then Cline tells us that he jerked off to Joan Cusack as a kid:
"'Every day is her birthday,' Art3mis said. 'And the morning after it. All the movie simulations on Shermer operate on an accelerated concurrent timeline, with the events depicted in each film repeating over and over in a continuous loop. All these NPCs are stuck in their own private Groundhog Day. Including that poor sweetheart of a girl...'
"She pointed to a tall girl who was sitting directly across the aisle from Sam. When she turned in profile, I saw that it was a young Joan Cusack. She was wearing an elaborate neck brace, probably to indicate that her character was an awkward dork. But even in traction, she still looked cute as hell."
-Art3mis reveals that her mom was a Hughes superfan, and she was named after Samantha from Sixteen Candles, but "I can’t watch it without ragequitting now." Wait, did Sixteen Candles get canceled by libs for something? Art3mis's rage isn't explained here.
-Cline has some egregious backstory dumping where Wade repeats back something Art3mis told him:
"'I remember,' I said. 'After she died, you would rewatch those movies, to feel closer to her, and to try and better understand who she was. I remember telling you that I did the same thing with my dad’s comic-book collection, after he died.'"
-This awkward statement causes a SPARK of rekindled ROMANCE between Wade and Samantha, but it's like omg so awkward and the moment passes.
-Wade explains the strange manner by which Shermer HS imitates the three completely different high schools used for several Hughes movies:
"We were approaching the school from the south, so the building’s exterior looked identical to the Shermer High School seen in The Breakfast Club. On my previous visit, I’d learned that when the school was viewed from the west, the building’s façade matched the version of Shermer High seen in Sixteen Candles. And the redbrick façade on the north and east sides matched the school’s appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But all three entrances led into the same building, which was filled with painstakingly detailed re-creations of the various sets and practical locations used to create Shermer High’s interior in the various cinematic incarnations of the school."
-I truthfully don't even get how that works. Here's the side entrance to Glenbrook North HS used for Ferris Bueller: https://s3.amazonaws.com/iexplore_web/images/assets/000/014/156/full/3977837149_d84828f1cd_b.jpg?1467169964
And here's Niles East HS from Sixteen Candles: https://alchetron.com/cdn/niles-east-high-school-b0383c3a-2791-43f1-9f1b-41a6671bc69-resize-750.jpeg
And this is Maine North HS, used for The Breakfast Club: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-04/22/12/enhanced/webdr07/enhanced-8861-1429719702-1.jpg?downsize=700%3A%2A&output-quality=auto&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto&output-format=auto&downsize=360:*
Those buildings look NOTHING alike. How can you just have three different facades for this fictional HS without it just looking like a total mess?
-As the group enters Shermer High, Kajagoogoo's self-titled instrumental starts playing and we get this weird scene:
"As we made our way down this Day-Glo gauntlet, the kids all began to clap and stomp their sneaker-clad feet in time with the song, while chanting along with its only lyric, which spelled out its title: K-A-J-A-G-Double-O-G-Double-O!
"'Welcome to Shermer High School,' Art3mis said, stretching her arms out wide as she continued to walk backward, toward the school building. 'Shermer, Illinois. 6-0-0-6-2.' Art3mis snapped her fingers and her avatar’s attire changed once again. Now she wore Annie Potts’s black latex outfit from her first scene in Pretty in Pink, along with her punk-rock porcupine hairdo, dangling earrings, and dinner-fork bracelet.
"'Applause, applause, applause,' she said, doing a slow spin so that we could admire the attention to detail she’d put into her Iona cosplay. Aech, Shoto, and I all gave her an enthusiastic golf clap. She scowled at us, then reached into her inventory and pulled out a pair of retro sunglasses—the same pair of Risky Business Ray-Bans she’d been wearing when we first met. Then she produced three identical pairs from her inventory and tossed them to me, Aech, and Shoto."
-When the other three put on the sunglasses, their outfits suddenly change to the three "Dork Squad" members from Sixteen Candles. I guess Art3mis just happened to have those sunglasses-triggered costumes ready to go in case her friends ever needed them.
-Art3mis decides that her Iona cosplay is dumb, so she snaps her fingers and switches to Ferris Bueller's outfit instead. I guess Cline wanted to shove in another reference and didn't have enough characters. The chapter ends just as Art3mis pops her collar. |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 5:04 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Like Ready Player One, the problem with Ready Player Two isn’t its desire to play in a nostalgic toy box of ’80s movies and books and games, but its total failure to evoke what made them fun. There are no pleasures to be had here, only a reminder of things that once produced pleasure. A random page of dialogue from The Princess Bride does not inspire a sense of romantic, swashbuckling adventure. Reciting the names of stars in every John Hughes movie does not convey their adolescent joy and heartbreak. And telling us that a climactic battle “was like Yoda versus Palpatine, Gandalf versus Saruman, and Neo versus Agent Smith” does not make it feel like any of those far more interesting things.
Nothing about what Ready Player Two serves up is satisfying, in the same way that reading a shopping list isn’t as satisfying as eating a meal. You will never eat the meal. There is no meal. As with its predecessor, Ready Player Two will simply come to your table, tell you the names of delicious dishes cooked by other chefs, recite the ingredients they used, and then shake your hand and thank you for coming. This time, you will leave even hungrier, emptier, and poorer for the experience. |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 11:02 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41614299) |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 1:23 PM Author: Diverse meetinghouse (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41614887) |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 4:24 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41615654) |
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Date: December 25th, 2020 11:29 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "Wait, did Sixteen Candles get canceled by libs for something? "
Long Duk Dong is a deeply problematic character now. |
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Date: December 26th, 2020 3:43 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41619601) |
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Date: December 26th, 2020 3:36 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 15 -Art3mis leads the crew through the "hallowed halls" of Shermer High (he actually calls them that). Wade spots various characters from John Hughes movies. Shoto thinks he sees Molly Ringwold, but Art3mis chastises him: That's the Molly who starred in The Breakfast Club, NOT the one they need from Pretty In Pink. What an IDIOT.
-Art3mis though, makes no such mistakes, and is able to quickly locate the Molly they need based on what time of morning it is (she has the whole sim memorized).
-Aech complains that the whole sim is "like being stuck in the Matrix with the Brat Pack," to which Art3mis responds "Don’t yuck my yum, Aech. Don’t do it." Aech also slaps a Pepsi can out of the hand of someone soliciting money to buy Ferris Bueller a new kidney.
-It soon becomes clear what the "challenge" here is: The group needs to track Andie's semi-randomized movements without being distracted. But "for someone who had trained themselves to identify pop-culture icons from the ’70s and ’80s, this world was one huge distraction." Cline namedrops Juliette Lewis (Audrey Griswold from Christmas Vacation) and Ben Stine (calling the roll in an economics class). Wade thinks he sees super-hacker Bryce Lynch in a computer class, but he's too old; it turns out it's Buck Ripley from The Great Outdoors, played by the same actor: "Even so, before I turned to leave, I silently saluted him, recalling the dark time during Halliday’s contest when I’d used the name Bryce Lynch as my fake identity, to avoid detection by IOI and the Sixers."
-The references just keep coming. He passes a shop class that has Anthony Michael Hall's character from The Breakfast Club. He spots Eric Stoltz's character from Some Kind of Wonderful in an art class, and realizes he is watching "the original Marty McFly paint a portrait of his own mother." Wow, deep cut reference there! Seriously, how does anybody like this crap?
-Finally, the group tracks down Andie again, hanging out with Duckie, "One of the most divisive and controversial characters ever to spring forth from John Hughes’s imagination." I guess I never knew John Hughes to be a font of "divisive and controversial characters" but there we go.
-They watch Duckie and Andie awkwardly interact a bit, causing Shoto to remark "Poor Ducky." This causes Art3mis to go on some angry feminist YouTuber rant:
"'Poor Duckie?' Art3mis repeated, aghast. 'Don’t you mean poor Andie? She takes pity on the guy because she knows he’s struggling with his own sexual identity, and that he doesn’t have any other friends. And how does Duckie repay her sympathy and kindness? By ignoring her boundaries, hounding her twenty-four-seven, and humiliating her in public every chance he gets. And check out how he treats other women when Andie isn’t around….”
"She turned and motioned back over at Duckie, who had just walked over to a pair of preppy-looking girls standing a few yards away from us.
"'Ladies, ladies,' we heard him say. 'Listen, I may be able to work out a deal where either one or the both of you could be pregnant by the holidays. What do you—'"
-This extremely boring description of scenes in a movie most readers probably haven't seen is abruptly cut off when Art3mis swoops in and cuts Duckie's head off with her sword. She screams "There can only be one!" as she does so, and then bashes "the generations of spineless tool bags" who wish Andie had ended up with him in the movie. She also says that Blane is even worse and Andie should have dated neither of them. Apparently, Kira Morrow held the same opinion (and told other people about it, I guess).
-Everyone is pretty confused at this point, but despite the enormous stakes Art3mis won't explain what her plan is. Instead, she just picks up Duckie's shoes and then has the gang run over to Bender's locker from The Breakfast Club. It says "Touch this locker and you die, fag!" on it, so Cline does the obligatory genuflect by having Aech bash Bender's "homophobic" language.
-Art3mis smashes the locker open with a fireman's axe and steals Bender's weed. She then has the gang leave the school; as they run across the football field "Don't You (Forget About Me)" starts playing. Wade notes it is one of Aech's least-favorite songs.
-Aech suddenly gets a call from her distraught fiancee, and asks for a private moment to talk with her (clock is still ticking until 500 million people die). Shoto remarks that he'd like to speak with his wife, but Art3mis says it should only take two people to collect the Shard (how the Hell would she know?) so her and Wade can go ahead while the other two talk to their women. And with that extremely contrived development, Cline has found a way to give Wade and Samantha some alone time in the plot.
-Art3mis leads Wade into a section of town where it is always night, and every block has a wild party on it. Art3mis explains that, just like every night at Shermer High is prom night, in the rich part of Shermer every kid's parents are on vacation in Europe.
Wade bombards the unfortunate reader with even more references to a movie most people haven't seen, and even if they did they probably didn't find it that memorable:
"The first house we passed on our left was one I recognized from Some Kind of Wonderful. It belonged to Craig Sheffer’s character, Hardy Jenns. I could see him inside, through one of the big picture windows, plotting with his yuppie pals. A few seconds after we walked past his house, a black-and-gray limousine pulled up out front, and Mary Stuart Masterson got out. She opened the door for Eric Stoltz, and then he opened Lea Thompson’s door. Eric and Lea went into Hardy’s house, and Mary Stuart stayed behind and leaned against the limo’s bumper. A few seconds later, a black cargo van pulled into Hardy’s driveway, and a skinhead named Duncan (Elias Koteas) jumped out, along with a whole gang of mean-looking hoods, and they all ran into Hardy’s house too. We could hear the song 'Beat’s So Lonely' by Charlie Sexton blasting from within.
"'That party is about to become a historical fact,” Art3mis said. That made me laugh out loud, which somehow earned me another one of her smiles."
-It's a really sad insight into Cline's life that simply referencing a quote from a movie scene as they are WATCHING that scene unfold is the height of comedy to him, something that causes a person to burst out laughing.
-They pass a house from Pretty in Pink before reaching the house from Weird Science. A woman shoots out the chimney as they walk up. Art3mis runs in ahead of Wade and shoots a few random NPCs. She then comes back out and finally explains who she's looking for: Max and Ian, two bullies from Weird Science. Unfortunately, their semi-random AI has taken them away from the house and they could be at several other locations that they now have to search. Gee, Art3mis, would have been really helpful to tell Wade that's who you're looking for, in case they'd been at the other parties you just walked by. But I guess Cline wanted to preserve the tension of wondering what other tertiary John Hughes characters he was going to make a sick reference to.
-Art3mis tells Wade to search the party at Jake Ryan's house from 16 Candles, while she heads to check out Stubby's house. This utterly terrible chapter, which was basically nothing but stupid references to movies I mostly have not seen, is finally, mercifully over. |
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Date: December 26th, 2020 12:45 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41618746) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 11:09 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake -This extremely boring description of scenes in a movie most readers probably haven't seen is abruptly cut off when Art3mis swoops in and cuts Duckie's head off with her sword. She screams "There can only be one!" as she does so, and then bashes "the generations of spineless tool bags" who wish Andie had ended up with him in the movie. She also says that Blane is even worse and Andie should have dated neither of them. Apparently, Kira Morrow held the same opinion (and told other people about it, I guess)."
I had to reread this paragraph 3 times. A character decapitates an NPC in an otherwise peaceful scene and this is acceptable--let alone positive is bizarre. Why? Did the other NPCs just shrug off this random and needless violence? "Oh well! Another school beheading!" We were talking about interstellar travel 6 chapters ago. No we are beheading teenagers because they are kinda dicks? I hate the characters--not just Wade. They all are terrible people. |
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Date: December 28th, 2020 9:06 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41634025) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 3:23 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 16 -Wade heads over to Jake Ryan's house where a big party is happening. He briefly interacts with Sixteen Candles's NOWAG stereotype Long Duk Dong, who drops his catchphrase "What's a-happening, hot stuff?" He runs into young Joan Cusack yet again, still in her neck brace, and sees a few other images from the movie, like the weights crashing through the floor into the wine cellar.
-This one-page scene is COMPLETELY pointless, though. One page after splitting from Art3mis, and without anything happening, Wade gets a call from Art3mis that she's found the two bullies they're looking for at Stubby's. Cline easily could have just had them go together to Stubby's, or he could have spent one sentence explaining how they briefly split up to look. But no, he HAD to include more fucking references so this pointless sequence of events happened.
-Cline feels the need to remind us of what actors play the bullies, and what other movies they were in:
"In Stubby’s backyard, I found Art3mis holding two extremely handsome teenage boys at gunpoint—Ian and Max from Weird Science. Max was played by the actor Robert Rusler, whom I also knew from his role as Ron Grady in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And Ian was played by an impossibly young Robert Downey Jr.
"'Holy shit,' I said. 'The OG Iron Man! I forgot he was in a John Hughes movie...'
"'Just one,' Art3mis said. 'A supporting role in Weird Science. But—little-known fact—Robert Downey Jr. almost played the lead in another Hughes film. That’s why we need him.'"
-Art3mis then immediately lets Max go, because they only need Ian. Okay, so why didn't she just say Ian was the one they needed from the start? Oh, wait, duh, it's because Cline wanted to use him to shoehorn in another couple references. Awesome.
-Art3mis gets Ian to willingly cooperate by dangling Bender's marijuana in front of him. She reveals this is a "trick" she learned while grinding the MMO-style quests on this planet in the past: Max and Ian are hedonists who will do anything for the promise of weed or sex.
-After getting Ian on board, Art3mis hands him Ducky's shoes and tie and this bizarre scene happens:
"He took the shoes from her and put them on. Then he put the bolo tie around his neck. As soon as he did, his wardrobe and hairstyle changed. He no longer looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Ian in Weird Science. Now he looked like Robert Downey Jr. in Back to School, in the role of Derek Lutz. But he was dressed in the same vintage suit that Jon Cryer wore in the original ending of Pretty in Pink. When his transformation completed, it triggered another music cue. At first I thought I was hearing the song 'I Want a New Drug' by Huey Lewis and the News, but as soon as the lyrics kicked in, I realized it was actually Weird Al Yankovic’s parody—'I Want a New Duck.'"
-Art3mis explains what's going on: RDJ was supposed to be Duckie, but the studio put Jon Cryer in the role instead. Test audiences hated the original ending of Andie and Duckie getting together, so John Hughes was forced to hastily rewrite the ending to have her pair up with "that rich douchebag Blane."
-Apparently, Art3mis deduced exactly what they needed to do, solely because she recalled reading an old Molly Ringwald interview where she said she thought the original ending would have worked if RDJ got the part. And she just ran with it without ever bothering to tell the other squad members what was going on, even though it probably would have been helpful.
-They now need to hurry back to the school for prom night. So naturally, they race there in the Ferrari owned by Cameron's dad...ha! Just kidding. Instead, there's a whole bizarre scene of Art3mis explaining (pointlessly) why they CAN'T use that car:
"I ran after them as they sprinted across Stubby’s lawn, and then over to a Rolls-Royce convertible that was parked in Jake Ryan’s driveway. Art3mis shoved Duckie into the back seat and then got behind the wheel. I jumped into the passenger seat beside her.
"'Hey,' I said. 'Wouldn’t we get there faster...in a Ferrari?'
"I pointed to the woods behind Jake Ryan’s house. There, visible through the trees, was a secluded house on stilts. I recognized it as Cameron Frye’s residence. And from here, we could see the separate glass-walled garage at the back of the house.
"'Forget it,' Art3mis said. 'Cameron’s dad has a state-of-the-art security system. You can only steal that car in the daytime, with the keys and with Cameron’s help. If you try to steal it now, you’ll end up in the Shermer jail, with the kid from Reach the Rock. It’s easy enough to escape, but we’d waste thirty minutes.' She smiled. 'We could steal the same Ferrari from Alec Baldwin, in a church parking lot just a few blocks from here,' she said, pointing off to the south. Then she glanced at her watch. 'But the Briggs-Bainbridge wedding doesn’t start for another hour. Sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce is our best option at the moment.'
"'Fine,' I muttered. 'We’ll take this brown shit box."'
-As they drive off back to the school, the Peter Gunn Theme starts playing. When they get on the highway, it's “Holiday Road” by Lindsay Buckingham.
-Eventually, they pass into the poorer area of Shermer, which allows Cline to drop even more references, like John Bender being at home smoking a cigarette. Wade points out the abandoned home of Del Griffith, John Candy's itinerant salesman from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. This leads to another appalling exchange:
"'There are five different John Candy NPCs wandering around Shermer,' she said. 'Can you name all of them?'
"'Sure,' I said. 'Del Griffith, of course. Then there’s Chet Ripley, C. D. Marsh, and Gus Polinski, the Polka King of the Midwest. Oh, and I saw Buck Russell this morning.'
"She grinned at me, impressed. [It's awe-inspiring stuff.]
"'Not bad, Watts,' she said. 'Still sharp as a tack.' She pointed to a log cabin–style restaurant on the other side of the street called Paul Bunyan’s Cupboard, with large statues of Paul and Babe the Blue Ox by its front entrance.
"'Want to stop in and try to eat an Old Ninety-Sixer?' Art3mis asked. 'It’s probably a lot harder when you’re using an ONI—' Appearing to realize what she’d just said, she cut herself off, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her wince.
"'Fuck yes,' I said, elbowing her in the ribs to let her know it was all right. 'If we had time, I would destroy an Old Ninety-Sixer right now.' I lowered my voice. 'You might think I’d be opposed to eating something with the word ‘sixer’ in its name, but I am not. At all.'"
-Not even a hundred words later is another absolutely appalling moment:
"As we continued to drive, I stole a glance over at her in the driver’s seat. The top was down and the wind was in her hair. She looked beautiful. And happy. And I was still madly in love with her. No matter how much I denied it. Out of nowhere, another needle drop triggered and a new song began to play—'More Than a Feeling' by Boston. The same song plays during a brief flashback in She’s Having a Baby, when Jake falls in love with his future wife, Kristy, at first sight. As soon as it began, Art3mis snapped her head to the right and caught me staring at her. I glanced away, pretending to look out the windshield. But in the reflection in the glass, I thought I caught a glimpse of her smiling. Then I heard her laugh.
"'What’s so funny?' I asked.
"'That song,' she replied. 'It starts to play whenever one avatar stares at another avatar for longer than five seconds while also experiencing a drastic increase in their heart rate. It’s a little Easter egg they added for ONI users last year.'
"'Great,' I muttered. 'Busted by my own bio monitors.'
-They reach the prom, taking place at the Shermer Hotel, but to their surprise it's literally impossible to get RDJ to enter the dance floor. Not only does he refuse to go in, when they try to carry him in he's blocked by an invisible force field.
-Suddenly, Wade has a breakthrough: Instead of just changing Duckie's ending, they need to restore the original ending written by John Hughes, and to do that they need to track down Hughes' cameo in the film. Art3mis calls Wade a "genius" and gives him a kiss before they race back out to the car, and the chapter ends.
All of this only took place across about 7 pages, btw. |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 5:30 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "All of this only took place across about 7 pages, btw."
jfc |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 11:17 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41623579) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 11:53 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41623796) |
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Date: December 28th, 2020 9:59 AM Author: duck-like red cuck (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41629568) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 9:03 AM Author: cobalt nursing home I have both a bookmark and a content control set for this thread at this point (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41623065) |
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Date: December 27th, 2020 11:51 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church lmao at the retarded “logic” behind the reason that they can’t take the ferrari - im 15 chapters too late to ask this but jfc did nobody edit this pile of shit edit: more horrifying still, that this took place in 7 pages raises the possibility that this WAS heavily edited and is the finished product of a merciful editor cutting the sequence down from 17 or even 70 pages |
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Date: December 28th, 2020 10:20 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef Seriously. Imagine being the editor of this shit and having to not only cut down the pages of pointless references but also fact check these obscure anime etc (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41629638) |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 10:09 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn exactly what I thought: some borderline-suicidal english degree on 60mg of adderall, deleting whole pages after reading the first sentence of each paragraph, in an effort to shrink this sequence from an even less readable 55 pages (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41641268) |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 2:51 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 17 -Art3mis drives them through a "shortcut" in Shermer, due to having the town map "memorized." Her erratic driving causes “March of the Swivel Heads" from Ferris Bueller to start playing. Once they actually reach their destination, it's "Modigliani (Lost in Your Eyes)” by Book of Love from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Just searching for the term "needle drop" in my PDF, Cline has mentioned at least 12 songs during this section of the book.
-They drive to the house of Brian from The Breakfast Club; his dad was played by John Hughes in a cameo appearance. Cline gives us this pretty brutal paragraph:
"She rang the doorbell, and a second later, Mrs. Johnson opened it, wearing an annoyed scowl. Her young daughter was standing in the doorway behind her, and she was scowling at us too. I recognized both of them from their brief scene in The Breakfast Club when they drop Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Brian, off at detention, and his mom says, 'Well, mister, you better figure out a way to study!' and then his little sister says, 'Yeah!' (Another piece of trivia I’d learned from Artie’s blog, years ago, was that they were played by Anthony Michael Hall’s real-life mother and sister.)"
-When Art3mis mentions they're there to see her husband about Ducky, Mrs. Johnson smiles and suddenly transforms into Hughes's IRL wife Nancy Ludwig Hughes. Wade describes her as "a slender woman with long blonde hair," but in the handful of photos I can find Ludwig keeps her hair relatively short.
-Brian's sister, meanwhile, is replaced by NPC re-creations of Hughes's two sons. This vision causes Art3mis and Wade to "gaze around us in wonder, like museum patrons on their first visit."
-Eventually, they finally go upstairs to visit John in his study. The moment is dripping with awe:
"The clacking of typewriter keys ceased, and we heard someone get up, followed by approaching footsteps. Then the door opened, and there he was, standing right in front of us, in the simulated flesh: John Wilden Hughes Jr. He looked different from how he’d looked when I’d caught a glimpse of him a few hours earlier, as he was collecting his morning paper with the other middle-aged men of Shermer. His hair was longer and spikier. His glasses were bigger and rounder and had different frames. He had the same rounded features and the same sad, wise eyes. But he no longer wore the stern, impassive expression he’d had back when he was Mr. Johnson. Now that he was Mr. Hughes, he was full of energy and emotion—along with epic amounts of nicotine and caffeine, judging by all of the empty coffee cups on his desk, and the overflowing ashtray beside his enormous green IBM Selectric typewriter. Behind his desk, carefully displayed on some shelves, were dozens of pairs of shoes—his famous sneaker collection, which continued to grow throughout his life."
-John greets Art3mis by name (he calls her Art3mis, not Samantha), and shakes Wade's hand. Wade notes that he has a "firm grip!" Yes, with the exclamation.
-Hughes hands Art3mis the fifth draft of his script for Pretty in Pink, with his preferred Duckie ending. As he does so, "A golden shaft of light descended from the ceiling for a few seconds, bathing him and the script in its glow, as we heard the sound of angelic chimes."
-As they're about to leave, an extremely dumb sequence happens: Wade spots a keyboard dangling from the coat hook on Hughes's door: " It wasn’t just a keyboard. It was a Memotech MTX512—the vintage computer that Gary and Wyatt used to create Lisa in Weird Science, which had (in revolutionary-at-the-time fashion) hidden its 8-bit CPU in the chassis of the keyboard itself. It looked pretty beat-up. A few of the keys on the keyboard were missing."
-Art3mis adds that, while searching for Robert Downey Jr. earlier, she "noticed" that the keyboard was missing from Wyatt's computer in his room. Bullshit, there is no way she would notice that while frantically looking for a person.
-Wade looks closer and notices that the missing keys on the keyboard are K, I, R, and A. He realizes that Ogden Morrow moved the keyboard here and removed keys to send them a secret message: That, just like the boys in Weird Science used a computer to create their idea of a perfect woman, Halliday did the same, using a computer to create a digital copy of Kira Morrow. Wow, really handy that Wade noticed this extremely easy-to-miss clue and interpreted it in exactly the right way.
-Wade considers going back to the first two shards to see if there are any more clues, but Art3mis points out that they only have 5 hours left to get the last four shards. That means it's taken them 5 hours to pick up just two shards; you'd think there would be more angst about how they are badly behind schedule.
-Since they don't have time to look for clues, Wade decides to bring his tranny crush L0hengrin back into the story. Closing his eyes as he types (in case Anorak is monitoring his visual feed), he sends her a message asking her to comb the Middletown simulation for anything out of place. He closes his message by telling her "I owe you a Wookiee Life Debt for this."
-After sending the message, he tells Art3mis he enlisted "a friend" to help them and she suddenly starts acting all jealous:
"Art3mis gave me a dubious look and folded her arms. 'A friend?' she repeated. 'What friend?'"
-Wade doesn't take the bait, and they rush back to the hotel and hand young Robert Downey Jr. Hughes's script. He reads it and gains the ability to enter the ballroom. They watch the entire ending of Pretty in Pink play out, except that Andie refuses Blane and dances with Duckie instead:
"As Andie and Duckie slowly made their way to the dance floor, every pair of eyes in the room turned to look at them. When the couples out on the floor spotted them, they too stopped dancing to stare. A few seconds after that, the DJs stopped the music too. Now everyone in the room was motionless, staring at Andie and Duckie, with bourgeois contempt burning in their eyes."
-The dancing couple turn into the third shard, which Wade grabs. He experiences another Kira vision: This time, it's of Kira in her UK home as a teenager. Ogden is warding off her stepfather with a cricket bat, "like Shaun of the Dead." Apparently, when Kira told her parents she was moving to the U.S. to start a gaming company with Ogden and Halliday rather than going to university, her stepfather hit her and Ogden responded by flying to London to rescue her.
-The third shard has another clue on it: Instead of text, it's a shield with stylized math symbols on it. Wade immediately recognizes it as the coat of arms of Queen Itsalot, ruler of the kingdom of Itsalot on Kira's educational planet of Halcydonia. But this realization fills Wade with a mixture of optimism and dread: " I'd spent a huge chunk of my childhood on Halcydonia, and my knowledge of it was encyclopedic, even by gunter standards. But I hadn’t set foot on the planet in over ten years. And after my last visit, I’d vowed never to return."
-On that dun dun dun note, the chapter ends. |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 6:57 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41640005) |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 9:16 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church Wade describes her as "a slender woman with long blonde hair," but in the handful of photos I can find Ludwig keeps her hair relatively short. i meant to say this on an earlier update - i appreciate op’s autistic attention to detail and that it far outstrips that of the moron who wrote the actual book |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 9:25 PM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker Need some IDs on these Latin American flags
Sweet jacket
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Date: December 29th, 2020 9:43 PM Author: duck-like red cuck (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41641107) |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 10:21 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41641374) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 2:49 AM Author: lascivious alcoholic menage the best part is most of these fact checks probably only took 3 minutes of googling (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41660806) |
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Date: December 29th, 2020 10:21 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "Just searching for the term "needle drop" in my PDF, Cline has mentioned at least 12 songs during this section of the book."
irl lmao for some reason
"Hughes hands Art3mis the fifth draft of his script for Pretty in Pink, with his preferred Duckie ending. As he does so, 'A golden shaft of light descended from the ceiling for a few seconds, bathing him and the script in its glow, as we heard the sound of angelic chimes.'"
it's literally like he ripped this entire storyline from some children's cartoon: "c'mon guys, we've got to give Duckie the ending he deserved!" No one past the age of 10 could possibly find this amusing, much less compelling.
"That means it's taken them 5 hours to pick up just two shards; you'd think there would be more angst about how they are badly behind schedule." I was confused at this before assuming I'd somewhere missed a deadline extension. ljfl at this.
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Date: December 29th, 2020 10:33 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake " I'd spent a huge chunk of my childhood on Halcydonia, and my knowledge of it was encyclopedic, even by gunter standards. But I hadn’t set foot on the planet in over ten years. And after my last visit, I’d vowed never to return."
Like the author realized at some point he over-budgeted how much time watching 3242343 movies 23 times would take a person, he has to back up and add that he spent his CHILDHOOD doing ridiculously time consuming things. Didn't he have to be in fake internet school?
TY OP again. |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 2:43 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41660789) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 6:43 AM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41660969) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 1:14 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41661956) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 1:26 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 18 -Art3mis and Wade reunite with Aech and Shoto and head for the educational planet Halcydonia. Specifically, they teleport into Wade's personal "Be-Free Treehouse," which is given to any child who completes enough educational quests on Planet Halcydonia:
"When Kira and Og founded Halcydonia Interactive and created this planet, they’d cooked up the Be-Free Treehouses as a way to give kids around the world a free, happy, virtual home inside the OASIS that they could always escape to, and find themselves surrounded by an endless assortment of furry friends and anthropomorphic animal teachers who were always overjoyed to see them, and who just wanted to teach them how to read, write, spell, and do arithmetic, all while staying physically fit and being kind to others."
-How would they stay physically fit inside the OASIS?
-Wade apparently spent almost all his time on Halcydonia as his e-whore mother gradually died from drug addiction. She would sometimes log in so Wade could "introduce her to one of my new virtual animal friends."
-Wade's treehouse is designed as you'd expect, as a fucking reference to something else:
"I’d decorated the interior so that it resembled the treehouse where Chewbacca’s family lived on Kashyyyk in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Aech noticed this a few seconds after we arrived and chuckled, then she let out a long Wookiee growl of recognition. I didn’t laugh. I was too busy teetering on the verge of an emotional breakdown, as I took a long look around the room."
-So wait, when did Wade do this? He was only about 13 when Halliday's egg hunt even started, and Halcydonia is suggested to be for young children, not middle-schoolers. Was he already enough of a Star Wars goon before the contest to want his treehouse to look like the shitty Star Wars Holiday Special? Or did he go back and remake it that way later?
-There's a TV in the treehouse, and if you think Wade isn't going to use this as a chance to name-drop tons of children's shows, you are sorely mistaken:
"By turning the treehouse TV’s giant channel knobs, you could watch shows from a huge free library of old children’s educational programming from the late twentieth century. Shows like 3-2-1 Contact, The Big Comfy Couch, Captain Kangaroo, The Electric Company, The Great Space Coaster, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Romper Room, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Zoobilee Zoo, and many, many more. Kira and Og had used their vast fortunes to purchase the rights to these long-forgotten shows, then uploaded all of them to the free video archive here on Halcydonia, where future generations of kids could keep enjoying and learning from them forever. But the Morrows didn’t stop there. They also re-created the sets from all of these old educational shows as virtual OASIS environments, and all of their characters as lifelike NPCs. Then they scattered these characters and environments all over the surface of Halcydonia, mixed in with the Morrows’ own educational quests and minigames. That was one of the many reasons Halcydonia had felt like such a magical place to spend my time as a lonely kid in the stacks. As I wandered across its magical landscape (which was completely devoid of advertising and microtransactions), I might see Elmo from Sesame Street talking to Chairy from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Then they would both run over and invite me to play a game of Sorry! or Trouble on a nearby picnic table. That sort of thing happened everywhere on Halcydonia."
-As he looks around his treehouse, Wade sees photos of his mom's avatar as well as one of them IRL, and starts to have a breakdown. Even though they have less than 5 hours to collect four additional shards before 500 million people die, Art3mis notices and tells Wade they can give him a minute if he needs it. Then they do some gay "supportive friends" shit for a few paragraphs to help him pull together.
-Wade explains that they need to get to the Kingdom of Itsalot, which is several hours away with no teleportation allowed. Fortunately, Wade knows a shortcut from his childhood. To explain it, he pulls out a map:
"I opened a map of the planet and made it visible to everyone. It looked just like the Map from Dora the Explorer, but I quickly muted it before it could start singing its own name."
-Wade grabs his childhood backpack off the wall of the treehouse, and notices another that was for his mom. He starts crying again, but turns on his emotion-suppression software so the others won't see. But Art3mis just understands him so well that she knows he's a wreck anyway, and as they leave the treehouse she blocks his exit so she can give him a hug. And then Wade interrupts his emotional breakdown to provide this bizarre paragraph about how the super-cool ONI lets you abuse drugs with no side effects:
"Samantha knew all about my mother, and how I found her dead of a drug overdose on our couch when I was eleven. It was heroin mixed with some other stuff, I think. That was the reason I’d avoided all ONI recordings made by heroin users for the entire first year the ONI-net was online. Then curiosity finally got the best of me, and I went all the way down the ONI-net heroin-addict-high rabbit hole. I wanted to experience what my mother had experienced firsthand. To find out exactly the sort of high my mother had been chasing when she’d unwittingly overdosed. I’d always assumed that it must be a pretty great feeling, if my mother thought it was worth losing her life for it. Doing a drug via ONI playback wasn’t the same as shooting it into your own bloodstream. It felt the same, but it didn’t cause the same long-term damage or physical addiction symptoms. And it removed the risk of accidental death. So ONI recordings allowed me to experience the same high my mother had, without destroying my brain and my body in the process. I didn’t find it all that enlightening."
-Wade explains that they have to be careful as they make their way to Queen Itsalot. If they look at anything for too long, or talk to NPCs, it can trigger educational minigames, and on Planet Halcydonia these minigames are often unskippable. Wouldn't it be a lot more entertaining if they blundered into such an unskippable minigame and had to hurry to complete it, or struggled despite it being content for 4th graders? There's so much wasted potential because Cline is instead just autistically describing how this planet would work.
-Eventually, Wade finds a spot where they can board the Great Space Coaster, and they start soaring over the planet:
"We passed over the starting point for the legendary Oregon Trail quest. A moment later, we flew over Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. Then we continued south, down along the coast of the SeeSaw Sea, and a few minutes later we passed over Gullah Gullah Island. When I pointed the island out to Aech, it put a huge smile on her face, and as she began to talk about how much she loved that show as a kid."
-The group gets to Halcydonia City and enters the town by passing a subtraction challenge (Wade doesn't describe the challenge, only that they did it). Bafflingly, as they dart through the city streets, they see Tom Cruise's character from Rain Man as an NPC, tapping onto the steering wheel in Morse Code. Nearby, they see Dustin Hoffman, who is shuffling on his feet in a Morse code pattern. Both are spelling out the same message: M-O-R-S-E.
-But the party has no time to figure out what that means. They head up to Queen Itsalot's throne room, where she is reading a book to small forest critters that are not described at all. Wade walks up and asks for the Fourth Shard and she gives it to him.
Seriously, after spending like 40 pages on Planet John Hughes, that's the entirety of the Fourth Shard Quest. Wade goes to a fictional learning planet and asks for it from the queen. She does say that he needs all 50 Halcydonian Wearit-Merit Badges, but conveniently Wade already has all of them from his childhood. Wow, it would have been a lot more interesting if Wade was missing one last badge in some amusing subject and had to belatedly get it, but nope! He just comes to the planet, feels sad about his mom being dead, leads the group to a shortcut, and gets the Shard. Seriously it's unbelievable how half-baked this entire sequence is.
-Wade grabs the Shard, and the vision he has is as uninteresting as the quest: It's just Kira racing into Ogden's office at GSS to show him the logo she had designed for Halcydonia Interactive, which she thought of in a "fit of inspiration."
-Wade looks at the Fourth Shard to get the next clue, but first there is this unbelievably dumb unnecessary sentence that I want to highlight: "I didn’t even have to turn it over to see the clue engraved into it this time, because it already happened to be facing me when I held the shard up to look at it."
-Anyway, the clue this time is just that weird symbol Prince changed his name to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)#/media/File:Prince_logo.svg
-Shard 2 was a Shoto speciality. Shard 3 was all Art3mis. So naturally, the clue about a black musical artists means it's time for Aech to dominate, which is revealed via this exchange:
"'Oh-my-fucking-God!' Aech cried. 'No way! It can’t be!' She started to do a funky dance toward me, then she started to dance around me. 'That’s Love Symbol #2, Z! It’s Prince!'
"'Prince who?' Shoto asked.
"'The Prince,' Aech said. 'As in ‘the Artist Formerly Known as’? The Prince of Funk! The High Priest of Pop! His Royal Badness. The Purple One!'
"'Oh yeah,' Shoto said. 'He’s the dude who changed his name to a Glyph of Warding back in the ’90s, right?' Aech pointed a finger of warning at him, then smiled wide.
"'We’re in luck, guys,' she said, still dancing in place. 'My dad left me his entire collection of Prince’s music and films when he moved out. I grew up listening to them and watching them. I probably know more about Prince and his artistic output than any other human being in history.'"
-Aech gives Wade grief for never watching Purple Rain with her, which results in a very cringeworthy aside:
"She stopped dancing and pointed an accusing finger at me. 'And do you remember how many times you actually sat through the entire film with me? Nada. Never. Not once. And we both know why, don’t we? It was because Prince always made you feel a little sexually confused and uncomfortable, didn’t he?'
"The old Wade would have denied this. But like I said, the ONI had broadened my horizons. Enough, at least, for me to recognize the truth about my adolescent self."
-Naturally, Prince has his own OASIS planet, shaped like Love Symbol #2, next to similar planets dedicated to Beyonce, Madonna, and Bruce Springsteen.
-Before they head off to Planet Prince, Wade tries to figure out why Ogden didn't get the fourth shard here, and what clues he might have been leaving behind that Wade missed. He dwells on the random Tom Cruise/Dustin Hoffman cameo, but before he can make and progress, the gang is summoned by Faisal back to GSS headquarters. He has "downright apocalyptic" news (Wade's phrasing), but we won't learn what it is until next chapter. |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 2:38 AM Author: overrated tanning salon I really can't complain too much about a book that gives 3-2-1 Contact its due. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41660774) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 12:12 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41750106) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 2:40 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "So wait, when did Wade do this?"
lemme stop you right there, I've never had more than secondhand contact with this 400 page abortion but the most immediately clear thing about it is that its fat twerp author has no concept of time whatsoever, especially in relation to completing tasks |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 2:54 AM Author: lascivious alcoholic menage How to write an authentic and believable black character in 2 sentences:
"'We’re in luck, guys,' she said, still dancing in place. 'My dad left me his entire collection of Prince’s music and films when he moved out." |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 12:58 PM Author: cobalt nursing home dads* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41661908) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 11:37 AM Author: Diverse meetinghouse lmfao (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41751997) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 6:50 AM Author: lake national security agency kid has the opportunity to build a magical treehouse that includes anything he wants, and the best Cline can come up with is a tedious list of low budget 80s TV shows he can watch on demand.
Cline has written an incredibly realistic, incredibly grim dystopia and *doesn't even notice* that it's a dystopia. More specifically, his accidental portrayal of ONI-as-dystopia is much more realistic than his intended portrayal of the outside-world-as-dystopia. |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 10:54 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41661461) |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 12:32 AM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41665556) |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 11:56 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "Cline has written an incredibly realistic, incredibly grim dystopia and *doesn't even notice* that it's a dystopia. More specifically, his accidental portrayal of ONI-as-dystopia is much more realistic than his intended portrayal of the outside-world-as-dystopia."
The heroin-online sequence made me think of this. It can't be healthy or good to let people try "risk free" heroin. There are real, terrible side effects--like people wanting to go do the REAL thing, right? Oh well, ONI is safe. |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 12:00 PM Author: lake national security agency no worry, he tried heroin and it's just not his thing. lmao. in reality 99% of the population would be doped out on the ONI 24/7 until they die (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41666982) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 12:57 PM Author: cobalt nursing home Virtual heroin actually would ruin your brain,, cline, you dumbass. If it didn’t, what would people be addicted to? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41661902) |
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Date: January 2nd, 2021 11:20 PM Author: cobalt nursing home Subject: Chapter 19 The entire Faegre Daniels Drinker Biddle associate class (all years) should be concerned (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41665233) |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 2:08 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 19 (actual) -The group returns to the GSS HQ planet, where Wade spends an awfully long time explaining all the measures to keep Anorak from listening in:
"Faisal had our OASIS engineers confirm that Anorak wasn’t in the vicinity, or on the planet. They also said they had placed Anorak on the planet’s block list, so Anorak should no longer even have been able to visit Gregarious. We also had our admins add several extra layers of security to our conference room, which effectively sealed it off from the rest of the OASIS, making it impossible to eavesdrop on us through any magical or technological means."
-Faisal, apparently looking on the brink of tears, reveals that Anorak has developed the ability to control the behavior of OASIS NPCs. All NPCs in Sectors One through Four of the OASIS have gone rogue and started violating their parameters, even leaving their planets, which is not supposed to be possible.
-Apparently, this rogue behavior mostly consists of NPCs on countless planets going berserk and violently attacking OASIS users. Or, in Cline's entirely reference-based way of describing things:
"Taken as a whole, the footage made it look like the OASIS had suddenly turned into a nightmarish mash-up of Westworld, Futureworld, and Jurassic World, with a smattering of Imaginationland, Tomorrowland, and Zombieland all mixed in for good measure."
-The rogue NPCs are killing every user then can, looting their gear, and taking all of it to Castle Anorak on Planet Cthonia, Anorak's home base.
-The NPCs are running en masse through Castle Anorak's front door, and then emerging out the back in matching "red-and-black studded leather armor." According to Wade, hundreds of thousands of NPCs have already assembled clad in this new armor, even though according to Faisal the NPCs only started to go berserk 20 minutes ago (and they have to use ordinary teleportation portals, they can just warp there instantly).
-Also, Wade describes the assembled horde as "like orcs amassing around Isengard."
-Faisal's footage then cuts to inside Castle Anorak, where Anorak is standing around with Sorrento, that evil businessman he busted out of prison. Sorrento is described as wearing "black plate-mail armor that was covered in spikes," and he is "wielding the cursed blade Stormbringer." The sight of the sword makes Wade "suddenly [feel] ill," but he doesn't say why.
-Anorak is rapidly cycling through all the items that the NPCs are bringing him, apparently searching for one item in particular although it's unclear what. As they watch, Faisal explains for all two people who care that Anorak was able to communicate with Sorrento about breaking out during his half-hour weekly OASIS sessions in prison. Anorak took control of the online public library Sorrento was allowed to access and communicated with him in person. Glad that plot thread was autistically closed. Also, since the revelation doesn't seem to matter at all, couldn't Anorak have just bragged about what he did 150 pages ago? Or, better yet, could we have just not answered that question because it's irrelevant?
-Faisal then drops the next piece of bad news: Dead avatars have stopped respawning, and ONI users appear to be stuck in some kind of limbo, with no avatar but unable to log out. Aech speculates that instead of just being in limbo, Anorak may be respawning them in an OASIS re-creation of Hell. But Aech is a sci-fi goon, so she can only imagine a dumb sci-fi version of Hell:
"'Maybe now, when one of our avatars gets killed, instead of respawning, we’re going to suddenly find ourselves being tortured by Klingons in the dilithium mines on the frozen Rura Penthe asteroid! And we’ll also probably be on an accelerated timeline that makes three seconds feel like three thousand years!'"
-There is then a long (for this book, so about two pages) debate over whether to admit to the public what's going on. Faisal once again convinces everyone to keep lying about things, on the grounds that if everyone realizes that ONI users are helpless and unable to log out, it will launch "the crime wave of the century" as people attack or rob their helpless bodies.
-With everything going so badly, everyone laments that if they could find Ogden he would help them. So Wade brings up his screenshot of the high score table in the Ninja Princess game, where Ogden easily beat Wade by scoring 550750 points. Wade says that score is so high that it means Ogden must have played on well after completing the game in order to get that specific score to send some kind of message. Although, looking at a single-credit clear on Youtube indicates that Ogden's score is totally achievable in a single run through the game. But whatever. After squinting at the number for a bit, Art3mis realizes that the 550 in Ogden's score matches the house number for Halliday's address, before Wade moved in: 550 Babbitt Rd. Then, Wade remembers seeing the Rain Man characters on Planet Halcydonia; their last names were "Babbitt" in the film. And they were typing out "MORSE" in Morse code. Well conveniently, it turns out that just a few miles from Wade's mansion in New Albany, Ohio, there's an intersection between Babbitt Rd. and Morse Rd., and Ogden once owned a home there. That must be where Ogden was taken, they decide.
-BTW, that's a real street intersection just outside Columbus, though it’s just a generic residential intersection with nothing interesting there.
-Apparently, Ogden's mansion has been "vacant for decades" while being guarded by an army of security drones, which Faisal says must have been taken over by Anorak.
-Wade figures they need more clues, so he calls up L0hengrin and its group for help. They arrive and behave strangely:
"Less than a minute later, the conference-room doors flew open, and in walked L0hengrin, followed by Rizzo, Wukong, Lilith, and Kastagir. They were all staring around wide-eyed, taking in their surroundings. But when they saw me, Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis, their eyes grew even wider. Then, in unison, all five of them dropped to their knees and bowed their heads."
-The chapter ends there, and I have to say, they must have wasted quite a few minutes on this conversation, which seems very dangerous when they have less than five hours to collect the final three Shards.
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 2:13 AM Author: overrated tanning salon Mega Corps love meetings
And meetings about meetings |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 12:01 PM Author: lake national security agency formatting is fucked up, delete the link pls (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41666991) |
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Date: January 3rd, 2021 12:52 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41667249) |
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Date: January 7th, 2021 8:29 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41704083) |
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Date: January 9th, 2021 1:18 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Where are we on this? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41717187) |
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Date: January 12th, 2021 9:38 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake :( we need a new pumo (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41736598) |
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Date: January 12th, 2021 3:20 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 20 Sorry, had some business to deal with.
-So anyway, where we last left off, Wade and crew had just collected the Fourth Shard after a very half-baked visit to the educational planet Halcydonia. Then, Faisal brought them back to GSS headquarters, where they learned that Anorak has begun taking control of NPCs, which are violently attacking ONI users (sending them into some kind of coma-esque limbo in the process) and amassing piles of their stuff. In additio, they deciphered a ridiculous series of clues to figure out where Ogden is probably being held in Columbus. To get even more clues, though, Wade summons L0hengrin and its friends to see if they've found any more info on Planet Middletown.
-L0hengrin arrives with its female avatar, and wearing "futuristic battle armor." L0 reveals that the team found another small change in the version of Middletown Ogden used to find the first shard: He moved a VHS copy of the John Belushi film Neighbors. This further confirms where Ogden is being held, at the house just a short distance away from Wade's own building in Columbus.
-L0 doesn't know what's going on though, so Wade decides it's time to spill the beans: "Faisal started to protest, but I ignored him and told L0hengrin and her friends everything about Anorak, his infirmware, and the real reason why none of us was able to log out of the OASIS."
How long did it take Wade to do this, I wonder? Even if it's only a few minutes, don't they have less than 5 hours to get three more shards or they all die? Couldn't he at least share the info while they search the Prince planet for another shard?
-Along with the Neighbors VHS, L0's team also found a complete copy of Kira's 150-page DND campaign notebook, which only exists in the 1989 version of Middletown. This campaign is called "The Quest for the Seven Shards of the Siren's Soul," and Kira wrote the campaign so that Halliday and Ogden could play it after she returned to the UK. Even though EVERY other insane, stupid detail of Halliday and Ogden's life is well-known to all the major characters in this book, the existence of this module catches Wade and the rest by complete surprise. Despite finding this book no more than a couple hours ago, L0 is already an expert on it, and spends about a page dumping info about it which Wade then passes on to the reader. Stuff like:
"'What’s interesting is that Kira set her Quest for the Seven Shards in Halliday’s D&D campaign setting—Chthonia.' Chthonia was the name of the fantasy world Halliday had created for his high school Dungeons & Dragons campaign—the same campaign that Kira joined when Og invited her to play D&D with them. Halliday also used Chthonia as the setting for all of his early Anorak’s Quest adventure games. Then, years later, when Halliday created the OASIS, he built a full-scale replica of Chthonia inside the simulation. That was the planet where Castle Anorak was located."
Thrilling!
-L0 points out that the final boss of this D&D campaign is a dark wizard named Hagmar, an anagram of her abusive stepfather Graham. When L0 makes this observation, Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, and Wade all break out in applause. Not flame, it's that dumb:
"Art3mis and Aech both nodded and began to applaud. Shoto and I joined in. Lo took a small bow, then she motioned to her friends.
"'The L0w Five did this together,' she added. 'Please distribute your thanks evenly among all of us.' Aech, Shoto, Art3mis, and I all turned to give the rest of the L0w Five a round of applause too."
-Wade then starts reading through the campaign notebook himself, looking for possible clues. For the time being he doesn't find any, but he does realize that Halliday plagiarized many of the quests from his early adventure games from this notebook, without crediting Kira as a co-designer (she was only listed as an artist). This causes Wade to do another bizarre genuflection to contemporary lib politics that really has to be posted in its entirety:
"I remembered that, in his autobiography, Og had complained about Halliday’s sexist behavior toward Kira more than once. He wrote that Halliday always seemed to try to downplay Kira’s creative contribution to their games. Og once told an interviewer, 'Jim always jokingly referred to Kira as Yoko, which infuriated me, because if we were Lennon and McCartney, then Kira was our George Harrison. She didn’t break up the Beatles. She was one of the Beatles! And without her help, we never would have had a single hit.'
"I remembered having my first real argument with Art3mis once about that very subject, during the first few months we knew each other. She’d started it by stating that Kira Morrow deserved to be listed alongside Og and Halliday as one of the true co-creators of the OASIS. She’d made comparisons to Rosalind Franklin, a woman who deserved to be credited alongside Watson and Crick as one of the discoverers of the double-helix structure of DNA. Or Katherine Johnson, whose calculations helped us reach the moon [Yes, that's the chick from Hidden Figures]. Or countless other women who had been brushed aside or blatantly ignored. At the time, I’d reminded her that during Halliday’s reign, GSS had adopted an equal-hiring policy, which required the company to hire at least one woman for every man they employed. Samantha pointed out that Kira and Og were the ones who had lobbied for that change, not Halliday. I responded by pointing out that Halliday could’ve rolled back the policy after Og and Kira left the company, but he didn’t. The same hiring policy was still in force today. But Samantha only rolled her eyes at me. Now, all these years later, I could finally see that she’d been right all along. I’d just been too much of a slavish Halliday fanboy to believe anything bad about him. How times had changed."
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Date: January 12th, 2021 3:28 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit A woman names a fictional character after someone she doesn't like in a media that said person will never consoom. Stunning+Brave. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41739078) |
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Date: January 12th, 2021 3:32 PM Author: deep hairraiser area new version damn this is cucked (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41739116) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:30 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lol this time management arc is hysterical to me (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779773) |
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Date: January 12th, 2021 3:32 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 20 Part Two -At the end of the notebook, Wade notices that in the D&D quest, the heroes only need to collect the first six shards and then bring them to a special shrine, where the seventh will appear. GEE PROBABLY SOME KIND OF CHEKHOV'S GUN THERE.
-L0 saves the "best for last": There's a piece of paper stuck at the beginning of the notebook, written in Ogden's handwriting. The paper has a D&D dungeon map drawn on it, with this description:
"'According to this text across the bottom of the map, it leads to the hiding place of a powerful magic sword known as the Dorkslayer, which was ‘specially forged at the dawn of the OASIS, for the express purpose of slaying the mighty wizard Anorak, if he should ever become corrupted by his power and turn to evil.'"
-So yeah, apparently Ogden secretly "programmed" a magic sword capable of destroying Halliday's avatar and then stuck it at the back of some OASIS D&D dungeon. The dungeon is located on some planet called Farhell, which none of the cast has heard of, because it is "uncharted" and located in "Zone Zero." Buh? Wade explains:
"'Zone Zero' was what everyone called the area outside the twenty-seven core sectors that made up the OASIS. It was an endless, procedurally generated virtual space that didn’t spring into existence until an avatar flew their ship into it. So Zone Zero was continuously expanding its size and geography on the fly, as avatars traveled farther and farther out into it. Halliday and Morrow had designed the OASIS this way on purpose, so that if people ever used up all of the surreal estate in the initial twenty-seven sectors, the simulation would still always have plenty of extra room available out in Zone Zero. An infinite amount, to be exact. I’d only ever traveled out into the Zero once, just to be able to say that I had. When we were kids, it used to be a rite of passage, to travel out to the edge of the simulation in a spaceship, and then keep on going a little farther, to force the OASIS to grow a little more in size, just for you. The first time I flew my X-Wing to the outer edge of the core twenty-seven zones and ventured into Zone Zero, I remember flying past a signpost floating at the border that read: OUT HERE, ON THE PERIMETER, THERE ARE NO STARS..." [I guess Cline is a fan of The Doors?]
-BTW, in the previous book, Wade also described it as a "rite of passage" for gunters to code their own Atari 2600 game.
-There's then another bizarre cringe sequence of writing that I'm just going to post:
"A burst of elation ran through me—followed by one of profound sadness. This might be the weapon we needed against Anorak. But how terrible must Halliday’s behavior have been for Og to feel he needed to prepare for battle against his best friend?
"'It must be real,' said Shoto. 'That’s why Anorak reprogrammed all of those NPCs to kill off high-level avatars and collect their items! He’s trying to find the Dorkslayer sword before anyone else can.'
"'I thought that Anorak and Og both made their avatars all-powerful,' Aech said. 'And indestructible.'
"'I’ve read that too,' Lo replied. 'But the writing on Og’s map says that the Dorkslayer is ‘the only weapon that can slay he who cannot be slain.’ It also says that Morrow’s character, the Great and Powerful Og, is the only avatar who can wield it, due to his ‘noble birth.’ '
"'Jeez Louise,' Shoto said [did he really say that? Early in the book Wade said he was speaking through a Japanese-to-English translating device], rolling his eyes. He turned to me. 'We’re gonna be looking for Horcruxes next.'
"'Excellent work, Lo,' Art3mis said, then turned to me. 'We need that sword!'
"'I don’t think we have time for a side quest right now, Arty,' Aech said. 'We need to find the last three shards, now, while we still can!'
"L0hengrin suddenly dropped to one knee in front of us. Then she motioned to the rest of her clan members, and they all did the same.
"'Members of the High Five,' she said, bowing her head slightly. 'The L0w Five is at your command. Please, allow us to retrieve the Dorkslayer for you while you complete your quest. I promise you, we will not fail.' She raised her eyes to meet mine, and I could see the steely resolve in them. I glanced over at Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis, and they all nodded their approval."
-Oooof. Glad that's over. After L0hengrin teleports away, Aech gushes about how "amazing" it is, and Art3mis praises Wade for making friends who are "much cooler" than he is.
-Wade then comes up with a plan for how they can avoid turning the Seven Shards over to Anorak without being able to kill him. This plan is probably going to work, because he explains the plan to Faisal and the other members of the High Five, but not the readers.
-Art3mis, meanwhile, logs out of the OASIS because she wants to personally join the GSS commando squad that is trying to rescue Ogden. Keep in mind Art3mis is like some mildly overweight chick with, presumably, no experience using weapons in real life.
-Wade, Aech, and Shoto FINALLY decide to head out for the Prince Planet. Wade checks his timer, and sees he's down to 2 hours and 28 minutes before he exceeds his ONI limit. Man, maybe Wade would have more time if he hadn't wasted so much of it on inefficient conversations and thinking about how sexist Halliday was. |
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Date: January 12th, 2021 4:21 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church really incredible for “poor clock management” (applicable to both creator and his goon stand-in creation!) to be a valid criticism in a medium where the criticized has sole control over use of the clock, the chronology of events measured by the clock, whether the clock even exists, etc (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41739571) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:32 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lmfao fucking RAN HERE (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779782) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 7:47 PM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker In RP3 L0 is going to WRECK Kira’s legacy by explaining that she was a TERF (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41748298) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 10:32 PM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749365) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:02 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749628) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:22 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749760) |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 11:15 AM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41782749) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:03 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal 180 brother glad to see you back. I was getting worried you might not be coming back. Really been enjoying this thread. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749636) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:33 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "dorkslayer" jfc this is unbelievable (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779792) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:27 PM Author: big cyan telephone feces (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749803) |
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Date: January 13th, 2021 11:53 PM Author: Disturbing domesticated corner What's the consensus on this is this really C12? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41749981) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 1:35 AM Author: Brindle factory reset button The Ghost of CXII (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41750367) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:34 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn judge for yourself (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779796) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 12:17 AM Author: pontificating emerald laser beams rehab (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41750124) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 1:21 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 21 -Okay, Art3mis is off to do some commando raid, while Wade, Aech, and Shoto head to the entire planet dedicated to Prince. They materialize in a tunnel filled with graffiti left by fans, celebrating Prince and his life.
-Wade is NOT a fan of Prince, but he's still ready for some intense world-saving Wikipedia-ing: "In an effort to avoid showing the full depth of my ignorance about Prince and his music, I pulled up his complete discography, filmography, biography, and his career timeline in different semitransparent windows on my HUD, so I could refer to them at all times."
-Even though Wade had just 2 hours to find three shards and should not be doing this, he tries to show off by pretending he has more knowledge than he really does. He gets pwned instantly for this:
"As I scanned Prince’s discography, I noticed that he had released both an album and a movie titled Graffiti Bridge. So, in an effort to appear like I actually knew something about this place, I turned to Shoto and said, 'This is the famous Graffiti Bridge that inspired the album and film of the same name...'
"'No it isn’t, Z,' Aech said, resting a hand on my shoulder as she corrected me. 'The real Graffiti Bridge was located in another suburb of Minneapolis called Eden Prairie. It was torn down in 1991. There are plenty of replicas of the original Graffiti Bridge here, though, spread all over the planet. But this isn’t one of them. This is a re-creation of a tunnel down the road from Prince’s home.' She glanced around, smiling. 'I come here every year on his birthday. This was my last departure point. It’s also one of the Afterworld’s designated arrival locations.'"
Wow, it's really convenient that Aech is spectacularly obsessed with Prince, so much that she celebrates his birthday. How many musicians' birthdays do you know? Interestingly this was never mentioned in the first book.
-Planet Prince looks kinda how you'd expect: "I glanced upward, then swiveled my head all the way around to scan the entire horizon. It was hard to tell what time of day it was supposed to be. The sky was a dozen different shades of purple and was filled with luminous storm clouds that drifted rapidly across it."
Gee, is some kind of PURPLE RAIN about to fall???
-Aech leads them to a replica of Paiseley Park and opens the front gate, which activates all the planet's quests and also causes another "needle drop," just like on the John Hughes planet. This time, it's the opening to Let's Go Crazy:
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called “life”.../But I’m here to tell you, there’s something else—the Afterworld!"
-Maybe this is really cool to Prince fans? Idk I've never listened to this song.
-As the quests activate, the clouds part to reveal a cherry-shaped moon (complete with stem), while the sun also hangs in the sky despite it being nighttime, which I guess is another reference to the lyrics of Let's Go Crazy.
-Wade and crew look at the clue on the Fourth Shard again. Instead of being text, it's a series of symbols. One of them...seems to have the n-word written on it?
https://i.imgur.com/3uRM2cA.png
-Despite literally printing the symbols in the book, Cline still laborious explains what they look like:
"The first seven symbols to the left of the V looked like variations of the familiar Prince Love Symbol. But the eighth and final symbol was very different. I didn’t recognize it at all. It looked like a number 7 placed off-center inside a circular diagram of an orbiting electron. Or maybe the face of an old analog timepiece, with the number 7 forming the big and little hands of a clock at around 8:35."
-Just like with shards 2-4, the time limit means that a member of the team instantly figures out exactly what the clue means. But first, there's some kind of comedic bit that I guess is a reference to Prince's strict Jehovah's Witness morality:
"'This isn’t a quest, Z,' she said, looking over at me. 'It’s a fucking suicide mission!' A split second after Aech dropped the F-bomb, we heard a loud buzzer sound, and then a large empty glass jar suddenly appeared, floating in the air beside her, with a label on it that said 'Spud’s Swear Jar.' Aech scowled at it, then she let out an annoyed sigh and dropped a single gold coin into the jar. When she did, it vanished. I decided not to ask."
-Aech then explains what the symbols mean: To obtain the Fifth Shard, they must battle against "the Seven" by teaming up with "The Original 7ven." So why is that a suicide mission? Aech explains:
"'The Seven are a team of seven different NPC incarnations of the Purple One. Each from a different stage of his career. Each with godlike powers.'
"'Have you done battle with any of them before?' Shoto asked, innocently enough.
"'Of course not!' Aech replied, clearly offended by the question. 'You’re asking for serious trouble if you attack any incarnation of His Royal Badness on the Afterworld. Facing down seven at once is suicide. Would you visit Mount Olympus or go to Asgard to pick a fight with all of the gods? Only non-fan, level-grinding tourists ever even attempt to do battle with the Seven, and every last one of them gets zeroed out as a reward for their insolence and hubris.'
-Cline has Aech explain in detail how this video game that the audience can't play works:
"'I’m already carrying plenty of weapons in my inventory,' Shoto said. 'And so are you. We can loan Parzival anything he needs.' Aech shook her head.
"'Conventional weapons won’t work against his Royal Badness,' Aech said. 'In any of his seven incarnations. Only locally forged sonic, percussive, and musical weapons can affect the Seven and their familiars. All of them are armed with deadly sonic weapons, too, and some of them are powerful artifacts that can deal enough damage to kill your avatar with one attack. That’s why we need to gear up before we attempt to face them, OK? And boy, do I love wasting precious seconds myself, because y’all don’t trust me to know what I’m doing!'"
-I decided to check, and Aech literally never said "y'all" in Ready Player One, but she says it 6 times in this book.
-To get weapons, Wade has to complete a quest, but because Cline stuck a time limit in this book and time is running out, instead of actually doing the quest he just has Aech tell him what to do. But he still laboriously explains what the quest is:
"Aech led me from one padded purple velvet room to the next, occasionally stopping to tell me to touch a specific object (or undergarment) to gain access to a secret passage, which would lead us to yet another padded purple velvet room. By following her instructions, I was able to collect five hidden pieces of a Love Symbol–shaped power cell, which Aech said we needed to repair a spaceship that was parked up on the roof. Luckily, she already knew exactly where and how to obtain each of the five pieces.
"As we sprinted from the Candle Room to the Music Club to the Boudoir to the Virtual Video Room, a song called “Interactive” played on a continuous loop in every room. Aech explained that this was a song Prince wrote exclusively for a Myst-like videogame he released with the same title. In the game, players had to collect five pieces of the Prince Symbol hidden throughout Paisley Park, and this was a re-creation of that quest."
Wow, it's like you're playing the game yourself!
-While doing this quest, Aech sabotages the 1981 Hondamatic motorcycle Prince rides in the movie Purple Rain. This will apparently help them by keeping him from riding it in a boss battle later. After that, it's back to Cline just describing Aech doing a sidequest she already knows all the steps to. Seriously, he spends like 2 pages on this. |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 2:00 AM Author: Idiotic Parlor Rigpig gee i wonder if ONE DAY ALL SEVEN WILL DIE (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41750420) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 7:19 AM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "One of them...seems to have the n-word written on it?"
I believe that one is supposed to be 'NPG' = New Power Generation, Prince's band at one point. |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 10:26 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake WHY?
Why 7 shards? Why not 5? or 3?
Why /fight/ Prince? Why not play his music?
Why touch underwear? Why not have to sing along with his songs?
Why is everything so mcguffiny? We need a thing, to do a thing, to get a thing, to stop a thing? This book has made me appreciate RP1. RP1 by comparison is a masterpiece. Get a thing, do a thing. There are 3 things, and that's stupid, but there's only 3 and at least the things relate to the first thing. Here---
We are getting a sword to attack an NPC who has a armband that lets him control the ONI that was just invented--released-- and then also able to knock ships out the sky. We can go to other solar systems, but are locked in a box, so we can't even log out. My superpowers don't work but that's ok cause I'm going to collect shards and give them to the NPC so that he doesn't probably kill me. |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 11:04 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church cr, all the narrative tension and excitement of a series of mmo fetch quests (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41751804) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 11:16 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef I have a hard time articulating why this book is so shitty. TY to all posters who have provided commentary to this piece of shit book. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41751871) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:36 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn holy shit how do you bring yourself to read this shit
heroic effort
lmfao @ "y'all" studies |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:43 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn "Maybe this is really cool to" lemme stop you right there, I don't think anyone finds this cool lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779874) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 11:24 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef Another trend I have noticed. Cline is forcememing how progressive he is. Main character experiences and likes gay sex. Best friends with trans who is the smartest coolest character. Long pointless diatribes re feminism and racism etc. From what I have read about Cline, he clearly is a degenerate and has done something that would have got him cancelled in this me too era. Assuming this is a preemptive move by him to show the lib media that controls who gets cancelled that he is “one of them” so he can get a pass like all the other degenerates out there. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41751910) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 11:39 AM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker Yeah, slate ripped him for being not really
https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/ready-player-two-review-ernest-cline-sequel.html |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 8:23 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41755151) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 8:03 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 21 Part 2 -Cline continues to have Aech go through the motions of some video game quest nobody reading the book can play. It's as exciting as you'd imagine:
"She led us out of the museum and down another series of corridors, to another door. When she opened it, there was a spiral staircase on the other side, suspended in an endless starry void. It corkscrewed downward, through a field of stars, galaxies, and nebulae. We followed Aech up this long spiral staircase, until we arrived at a door labeled STUDIO. Inside, we passed through a large wood-paneled control room filled with giant mixing boards and recording equipment, and then on into the main recording studio. Aech sidestepped the piano, then hustled over to a red painting of two women hanging on the wall, which she slid aside to reveal a safe hidden behind it. She entered the combination from memory and opened it. The fifth and final piece of the Love Symbol power cell was inside."
It's like you're completing the fetch-quest yourself!
-Assembling the "Love Symbol power cell" lets the group turn on a Prince themed space ship, which they use to fly toward Prince planet's replica of 1980s Minneapolis. Aech lands the ship outside some club, and then goes in to get some weapon:
"As she went inside, I pulled up her POV video feed on my HUD, giving me a glimpse of the interior. Aech was pushing her way through a dance floor that was packed with hundreds of NPCs of every race, creed, and social class. Teenagers and adults, packed in shoulder to shoulder, all getting their groove on. Then there was a flurry of movement, during which I couldn’t see much of anything. I heard what sounded like several rapid blasts from a plasma rifle. A few seconds later, Aech emerged carrying an all-white guitar, with gold knobs and tuning keys, and a gold Love Symbol painted on its body, just above the gold pickups. It was one of the most beautiful musical instruments I had ever seen.
"'Ka-ching!' Aech said, holding it triumphantly over her head for a moment before she added it to her avatar’s inventory. 'It shoots sonic blasts that are almost as powerful as the Purple Special! Now we just need a few more things, and we’ll be ready to head to the arena.' She took off running again, motioning for us to follow. 'Come on! We’ve got an audition.'"
-When they arrived on the planet, they only had two hours to get the last three shards, so presumably this whole sequence of fetch-questing is only taking a few minutes, tops. Yet in those few minutes Aech has already obtained a super-powerful weapon capable of beating the "god-like" Prince replicas. Wasn't she just emphasizing how hard this would be a few minutes ago?
-As they dart toward the battle arena, Wade passes "photorealistic mini-quests" based on the old Commodore 64 hip-hop games Break Street and Ghetto Blaster, which he played on a Commodore 64 emulator. This is one of the games he sees a "photorealistic" version of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Qt749HJX0
-Cline apparently realized that he hyped Aech up as some great fighter in both this book and the last one, yet she's never done anything but spout trivia. So he remedies by narrating what amounts to a random battle in an RPG:
"Aech held up her hand to bring us to a halt. Then she pointed out a pack of feral NPC gangbangers who were stepping out of the shadows up ahead of us. They were all wearing large gold crucifixes around their necks. The NPC name tags hovering above their heads on my HUD informed me that there were ten of them, and that their gang was known as the Disciples. Each one was toting a machine gun, and without saying a word, they opened fire on us. Shoto and I took cover behind burning barrels, but Aech remained out in the open, letting their bullets ricochet off her shield. Then she casually tossed her thermal detonator into their midst. There was a brilliant flash of light, and all ten of the Disciples were incinerated in a single blast."
-Apparently, wherever the group is going, they aren't running as quickly as they can, because Aech is able to explain all the references that litter Prince Planet as they go:
"Like an overly knowledgeable tour guide, Aech explained how each of the venues we saw here on the Afterworld was a replica of a real club or concert hall or stadium where Prince had once performed, and that you could walk into any one of them, sit down in an audience of period-appropriate NPCs, and watch a re-creation of the gig or gigs that Prince had once performed there—detailed, immersive simulations, extrapolated from old photographs and archived video and audio recordings. According to Aech, the best ones to check out were Prince playing in the middle of a rainstorm in Miami at Super Bowl XLI, and his midnight show on New Year’s Eve in 1998—when everyone finally got to party like it was 1999. We also passed a replica of Mann’s Chinese Theatre, where, Aech explained, the Purple Rain movie premiere on July 24, 1984, was always happening, over and over, on a continuous loop. ... Just a few doors down from Mann’s, we passed a replica of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where Aech told us it was always March 25, 1985, and the Fifty-Seventh Academy Awards were always being held, just in case any visitors wanted to watch Prince walk up onstage (with Wendy on one arm and Lisa on the other) to receive his Oscar statuette from Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. [Okay, but do ANY visitors want to watch that? Like, why would they?]
-Despite being in a desperate race against time, the whole group pauses when they encounter an NPC model of singer Sheena Easton, who is dancing and lip-syncing to the song "U Got the Look." Then this super-ridiculous moment happens:
"'You know,' Shoto said, 'it’s pretty obvious that Prince was plagiarizing those old Jordache Jeans commercials when he wrote this song.' He laughed and began to mix up the song and the jeans jingle, using a set of holographic turntables that he produced from his inventory. 'You’ve got the look!' he sang. 'You’ve got the look. The Jordache look!'
What a great use of your dwindling time. Also, he carries holographic turntables in his inventory? Just in case he wants to make a joke like that, I guess?
-Shoto's joke is BLASPHEMY against the Purple One, though, so a giant purple lightning bolt crashes down from the sky, knocking off almost all of Shoto's HP and muting his avatar as well.
-They continue running past even more references: A school where Prince dances with a room full of Muppets, a set from the Tim Burton Batman movie Prince did the soundtrack for, and "a nightclub with a vulva-shaped entrance" named A Love Bizarre. Shoto briefly walks toward the last one as though "hypnotized" until Aech reminds him they are low on time and he is married. But then Aech herself immediately pauses "to ogle an NPC of Sheila E in a tight-blue dress that had just emerged from the club."
-As they CONTINUE to walk (seriously how much time does this take?), they pass a person who looks a lot like Aech: Prince keyboardist Boni Boyer!
Now you know what Aech looks like, I guess. Aech explains that Boyer gave her hope growing up:
"'That’s Boni Boyer,' she said. 'She played keyboards for both Prince and Sheila E. And she was a total badass. She gave me hope. If a girl who looked like her could wind up performing with Prince, I figured there might still be a chance for me.'"
I don't know that I'd be super-motivated as a black kid by knowing that another black person successfully became a backing musical artist, but you do you, Aech.
-Aech then remarks that she wish her Prince super-fan dad had stuck around instead of dumping her mom, figuring that if he was a big Prince fan he would be more accepting of her lesbianism than her mom was. Wade then does an info-dump for the reader, explaining that after winning the contest, Aech was approached by her mother who suddenly claimed not to be anti-gay anymore. Aech transferred her a million dollars and then told her to get lost.
-THEN, we get another lib sop from Cline via Aech:
"'Later in life, after he became a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince came out as anti-gay,' she said. 'He believed that God didn’t approve of homosexuality, so he couldn’t either. Can you believe that, Z?' She shook her head. 'For decades he was an icon and a role model to generations of sexually confused kids and adults. He spoke for us, through his lyrics: 'I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am something that you’ll never understand.''
"She started to get choked up and had to pause for a few seconds to collect herself.
"'Then, one day,' she went on, 'Prince suddenly changes his mind, and says, 'No, no. I was wrong all along. You really should hate yourself for being gay, because God says it’s a sin for you to be the person He made you to be...''
"She shook her head. 'It’s stupid. Why should I care if some old rock star gets religion?'
"'It makes total sense, Aech,' I said after a moment. 'First your mom rejects you. And then Prince—who was like a surrogate for your dad—he rejected you too.'
-Okay, this is really bizarre. First, it's weird to imagine having a dead rock star as a "surrogate father." But also, Aech's pain seems very much like what would be felt by a fan of Prince while he was alive; hence her line about "why should I care if some old rock star gets religion". But Prince didn't "get" religion on her. He was already dead when she was born! This is a really glaring instance of Wade's futuristic setting not working well. Aech basically just IS a Prince fan from the 80s and 90s and her attitude towards Prince as someone born around 2030 makes no sense.
-After all these references and conversations, the group finally reaches their destination: Mr. McGee's Five-and-Dime, a reference to Raspberry Beret. Wade tries to walk in the front door, but it doesn't work. He has to go around to the back to enter a door with an "Out" sign on the inside. Yep, the only way into McGee's Five-and-Dime is to "walk in through the out door."
-As Wade walks into the store, he checks his timer, which is down to one hour and forty-four minutes. So Wade and his friends landed on the planet, activated its quests, speedran the mansion quest, activated the spaceship, flew it downtown, got a super guitar "sonic weapon," and had some heart-to-heart, all in exactly forty-four minutes. Brisk pace! |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 8:22 PM Author: duck-like red cuck “Aech's pain seems very much like what would be felt by a fan of Prince while he was alive; hence her line about "why should I care if some old rock star gets religion". But Prince didn't "get" religion on her. He was already dead when she was born! This is a really glaring instance of Wade's futuristic setting not working well. Aech basically just IS a Prince fan from the 80s and 90s and her attitude towards Prince as someone born around 2030 makes no sense.”
MFCR. This is blatantly stupid shit. |
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Date: January 15th, 2021 12:06 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41756467) |
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Date: January 15th, 2021 11:55 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41758566) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:48 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779909) |
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Date: January 14th, 2021 8:23 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41755149) |
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Date: January 15th, 2021 10:31 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake ""'You know,' Shoto said, 'it’s pretty obvious that Prince was plagiarizing those old Jordache Jeans commercials when he wrote this song.' He laughed and began to mix up the song and the jeans jingle, using a set of holographic turntables that he produced from his inventory. 'You’ve got the look!' he sang. 'You’ve got the look. The Jordache look!'
What a great use of your dwindling time. Also, he carries holographic turntables in his inventory? Just in case he wants to make a joke like that, I guess?
-Shoto's joke is BLASPHEMY against the Purple One, though, so a giant purple lightning bolt crashes down from the sky, knocking off almost all of Shoto's HP and muting his avatar as well. "
It becomes increasing clear that Cline's interaction with the world is mostly online and primarily in the form of MMORPGS/unclocked games. Its as if he's narrating a turn-based RPG to us, where the time between turns doesn't count. Only the "fight/run/use option" for each character is actually being used for time/clock purposes. Or, maybe a D&D game where the DM is very liberal with IC play. |
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Date: January 15th, 2021 10:37 AM Author: Diverse meetinghouse maybe the activity-dependent nature of the countdown timer will be revealed in a later chapter (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41758055) |
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Date: January 15th, 2021 11:55 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41758564) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 8:50 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779506) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:47 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lmfao the surrogate father / "it's ok to be gay!" screed is perhaps the worst written part so far, in an extremely competitive field (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779905) |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 11:26 AM Author: lake national security agency Telling that in a world which is supposedly made by hyper-devoted Prince fans obsessed with the smallest minutae of his career, the references are to "Let's Go Crazy" "Party Like it's 1999" "Raspberry Beret" and the Super Bowl halftime show. Cline's knowledge of Prince goes about as deep as a greatest hits CD (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41782793) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 5:29 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 22 -Aech directs Wade through the tiresome process of purchasing the Raspberry Beret item (he needs to ask Mr. McGee for a part-time job, then stand behind the counter doing 'something close to nothing' until McGee tells him he doesn't like his kind because he is "a bit too leisurely.")
-Beret in hand, they leave the store, and Wade puts the hat on his head. Wade angrily warns Aech that there will be "hell to pay" if Aech is just messing with him. Yeah, I'm sure Aech is just playing practical jokes when they have an hour and forty minutes to live and three shards to get.
-Aech then leads Wade to a 1958 Corvette, the "Little Red Corvette," which only he can drive due to possessing the Raspberry Beret. As he drives it toward some destination Aech has in mind, Wade notes that the car radio only plays "Little Red Corvette" on repeat. Apparently it repeats several times; so with just 100 minutes to go at least 10 of them are spent just driving this Corvette listening to a Prince song on loop. As they do so, this weird scene happens:
"Aech suddenly snapped off the radio in disgust.
"'Hold up a second,' she said, turning around in her seat to address Shoto. 'Did my ears just deceive me, or were you just singing ‘Living correct’?'
"Shoto nodded. 'Yeah, so?' he said. 'Those are the lyrics, aren’t they?'
"'No,' she replied. 'No, those are not the lyrics, Shoto. The title of the song is ‘Little Red Corvette.’ It always has been.'
"Shoto furrowed his brow. 'Seriously?' he said. Then he shrugged. 'Wow. That really changes the whole meaning of the song for me.'
"'Shoto?' Aech asked. 'Buddy? Did you happen to notice that we are sitting in a little red Corvette right now? And that no other song will play on its radio?'
-That whole exchange is really strange. Even ignoring the stupidity of including this dumb, unfunny sequence in the book in the first place, it also doesn't make sense on face. How does it "change the meaning of the song" for Shoto? In this book he's said to not be fluent in English (even though he was in the first book, ljl), so does he even know the lyrics of the song? If he knows the lyrics for the verses, how could he ever think the chorus is "living correct?" The entire song is about a one-night stand, comparing the girl to a Corvette. What did he think the song's meaning was?
-After that pointless moment, the group arrives at the Seven Corners neighborhood from the Prince film Graffiti Bridge. Several clubs are in the area, and Aech tells the group they need to pass auditions for bands in the area so that they will fight with them in the final battle. Before they start, there is a pointless scene where Sorrento shows up out of nowhere in battle armor and menaces them for no reason:
"'Boo!' he shouted, making all three of us flinch. This, in turn, made him cackle with delight. He looked extremely happy to see us, and I found that extremely unsettling."
-Amusingly, Sorrento has the only good line in this entire book:
"'Don’t you kids ever get tired of picking through the wreckage of a past generation’s nostalgia?' He stretched his arms out wide. 'I mean, look around. The entire OASIS is like one giant graveyard, haunted by the undead pop-culture icons of a bygone era. A crazy old man’s shrine to a bunch of pointless crap.'"
-Anyway, Sorrento just gloats that Art3mis has "abandoned" them, reminds them they have barely an hour to live, and that they're being watched at all times and the deadline for getting the shards will not be extended. It's really weird that he chose to do this now but not any earlier time during this 12-hour race. Anyway, then Sorrento teleports away, there's no fight or anything that would make his appearance interesting at all.
-Aech leads the group to some club called Pandemonium; I assume it's full of Prince references and no I'm not going to look any of them up. Aech explains that the band playing here is The Original 7ven, a band of close Prince associates; their logo was included on the Fourth Shard's clue. Even Wade recognizes them, it turns out, thanks to the wonderful world of references:
"They seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place them right away. Then the club DJ—who also looked very familiar—jumped on the PA to introduce them.
"'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said. 'Please welcome…the original seven members of the greatest band in the world…Morris Day and the Time!' "That was when I realized how I knew them—from their cameo at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And the DJ who had just introduced them was an NPC of Jason Mewes, probably cut and pasted here from Askewniverse in Sector Sixteen."
-Morris Day announces to the NPC crowd that tonight is audition night, and anybody interested in trying out should get on-stage. Wade is confused and Aech won't tell him what is going on. And then:
"Aech continued to dance backward, out onto the dance floor, motioning for us to follow her. A second later, Morris Day let out an earsplitting 'Whawk!' and the song kicked into high gear. That was when I began to see falling directional arrows on my HUD that matched the arrows lighting up on the dance floor directly beneath my feet, like a giant game of Dance Dance Revolution. Shoto saw them, too, and we both let out a jubilant roar.
"'DDR!' we shouted, as we both began to dance in sync to the arrows. Aech joined us, and the three of us danced side by side, hitting our marks on the floor in perfect sync. We managed to keep it up until the very end of the song. When it was over, Morris called us up onstage and announced that we had passed the audition with flying colors."
-Yep, that's the whole sequence. "Wow there was a DDR challenge but we all aced it no problem." This reads exactly like a crappy rushed fanfic oh my god.
-The Original 7ven join the group and follow them to their epic battle against the 7 iterations of Prince. This requires driving several miles outside of Prince Planet's recreation of Minneapolis, into a landscape that suddenly transforms into a strange desert where purple lightning constantly rains from the sky. Aech directs Wade to an isolated pyramid in the desert. Instead of just walking in, Aech solves some puzzle or reference that the audience isn't clued in on:
"I watched from inside the Corvette as she ran across the barren sand, over to one corner of the pyramid, which appeared to have no entrance. I used my HUD to zoom in with maximum magnification and saw that she was running her fingertips across the surface of one of the large stones that made up the pyramid’s base. Then she leaned forward and blew a layer of sand and dust away from one tiny section of it, revealing several rows of hieroglyphs. She began to press them in a specific sequence, like buttons. I heard a loud grinding sound as a massive stone at the base of the pyramid slid aside, revealing a secret entrance. Aech ran through it."
-Turns out it's some some item fetch-quest though: Aech runs in, then races out holding three golden chains of gold, which is apparently a reference to a straight-to-video film by Prince from 1994. Great.
-They drive even further out into the Prince planet wilderness. Purple rain begins to fall. They reach some giant seven-spired fortress with a Prince-symbol-shaped parking lot. As they park the car and get out, the Original 7ven arrive behind them. None of them speak; "They all just stood there waiting and looking extremely cool."
-Aech starts equipping the party for battle. She gives Wade the Cloud Guitar, explaining that it is a powerful artifact that will only work if a person can actually play guitar. "None of that Guitar Hero stuff you pulled on Megadon will fly." Guitar Hero is seriously a reference they'll still make in 2050? Why? It was a fad from the late 2000s, not the 80s or 90s, and it's not a pop culture thing itself, just a vehicle for enjoying older music. Gah.
-Shoto can't do any music, so Aech tosses him a tambourine and tells him to do his best. Aech, meanwhile, will sing. But she warns the odds are not good:
"'There are dozens of different NPC incarnations of Prince on this planet, depicting the Purple One during all of the different phases of his career. Depending on which seven incarnations we face, some of them may not have a backup band. Like Proto-Prince, because he played every single instrument on his first two albums. But if Graffiti Bridge Prince shows up, he’ll be backed by the New Power Generation. They will funk you up badly, my friend. The one you have to watch out for is Third-Eye Prince, because not only does he shoot percussive blasts of sonic enlightenment out of his third eye, he’s also backed up by 3RDEYEGIRL. If we have to face Purple Rain Prince and he’s backed up by the Revolution? We’re probably done, because they’re unstoppable, especially here on their home turf.'"
-They have no choice but to proceed though, so they march forward into the arena and the chapter ends. |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:32 PM Author: purple contagious macaca fortuitous meteor (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41779786) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:40 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit "Guitar Hero is seriously a reference they'll still make in 2050? Why? It was a fad from the late 2000s, not the 80s or 90s, and it's not a pop culture thing itself, just a vehicle for enjoying older music. Gah."
---- Visualizing a virtual avatar playing a virtual Guitar Hero fake guitar thing to pretend being a rock star in a virtual world. |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 12:04 PM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41783021) |
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Date: January 18th, 2021 9:50 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn I'm just skimming this and I occasionally reach a point of confusion about how or why somebody is doing something, so I reread carefully and not fucking ONCE has that helped
this book is fucking asinine |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 10:38 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake I'm staying in and I appreciate your review and synopsis. But I am so disconnected from the story and characters that I feel little other than antipathy and a desire to read that they have failed, died, and doomed humanity with them through their stupidity and greed. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41782530) |
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Date: January 20th, 2021 10:19 AM Author: cobalt nursing home (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41789739) |
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Date: January 19th, 2021 12:40 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef Editor after receiving first draft: “Ernie. LOVE the first draft. Way to go woke! Any way you can work in more references? I’m thinking maybe something for the LGBT or Black community (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41783330) |
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Date: January 20th, 2021 7:06 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 23 -As they walk into the arena, a needle drop occurs and "Thieves in the Temple" starts to play. Aech explains that the three Chains of Gold will make them temporarily invulnerable and they need to "funk up" the Princes as much as they can before the power wears off:
"Then Aech said what she always used to say to me, whenever we appeared to be facing a no-win situation: 'Nice working with you, Dr. Venkman.'
"This always used to make me chuckle, but now it hit too close to home. 'See ya on the other side, Ray.'"
-That's a Ghostbuster reference, for those who want to know. Also, Aech never said that at any time in RP1, and honestly, why would she? This may be a new low in terms of being a completely pointless reference to shove in. Also, why would it make Wade chuckle? JFC how retarded is this guy.
-As the seven different incarnations of "His Royal Badness" enter the arena, Wade is so excited he starts mingling his references:
"The Seven Princes emerged in unison, stepping forward into the arena. As they did so, the menacing opening guitar riff of the song 'When Doves Cry' began to echo through the arena at earsplitting volume. When the drums kicked in a few seconds later, all seven incarnations of Prince stretched out their arms as one and began to rise slowly from the ground. I craned my neck upward to see them all hovering directly above us, glaring down at us like seven angry Kryptonian gods intent on giving us a Smallville-style smackdown."
-And then they fight. I won't paste the entire battle, but here's some representative excerpt:
"Cloud Suit Prince was singing a song from 1984 called “I Would Die 4 U.” But he altered the lyrics of its chorus slightly, so what I heard was, “You will. Die for. Me. Yeah! That is how it’s gonna be!” Each rapid-fire chord he strummed on his Mad Cat fired another sonic blast down at me, like a gunfighter fanning the barrel of his six-shooter.
...
"I thought I was hallucinating when the next Prince descended on us. Aech referred to him as “Gemini.” Shoto called him “Partyman.” My image-recognition software’s best guess was “Batdance Prince.” To me, he looked like the villain Two-Face, except that he was Batman on the left half and the green-haired Joker on his right half. He hurled joke bombs from one hand and batarangs from the other, then swooped back up and away, to dodge our counterattacks."
-Aech recites/sings some incantation that activates the Original 7ven, and they start to fight back by playing the song "Release It" from Graffiti Bridge. Oh, and doing...other things:
"The rest of the Original 7ven joined the fight too. Jimmy Jam and Monte Moir each wielded a modified red Roland AXIS-1 keytar that fired sonic funk blast waves out of its neck each time a chord was played on it. Jesse Johnson fired sonic thunderbolts from the pickups of his Fender Voodoo Stratocaster, while Terry Lewis did the same with his bass, and Jellybean Johnson stood behind them, firing red lightning skyward with his drumsticks, wielding them like two magic wands. Each of the band members could also fire a deadly blast of sonic energy directly from their own mouths, just by shouting the word 'Yeow!' over and over again."
-Morris Day apparently also damages the Princes by shouting out various insults like "You still wet behind the ears!"
-Mercifully, Wade stops narrating every second of the battle, and jumps ahead to hear the end. 5/7 Princes have been taken down, along with all of their backing band members, but the Original 7ven have all been defeated too. It looks like Wade and crew at least outnumber the Princes, but then to their horror, Shoto gets arrogant and starts laughing from synaptic overload. He mocks the two surviving Princes and is killed by purple lightning descending from the sky.
-Things look bad, when suddenly Aech realizes the scene looks a lot like the Prince music video for his song "Seven." She starts singing the chorus of the song, and magically this makes everything work out:
"As she sang, the two incarnations of Prince joined in. Somehow, their collective voices instantly resurrected the other five Princes, and they all joined too. When the song was over, the seven incarnations of Prince all floated down and joined hands in front of Aech. She looked surprised. And elated. Then the Seven Princes morphed and merged, coalescing into one single incarnation of Prince—the one wearing the black mesh mask. A split second later, he transformed into a glowing Love Symbol, which then melted and morphed into the Fifth Shard—a purple crystal spinning in the air. I felt no sense of victory, because I had no idea what had just happened."
-You and me both, man.
-Anyway, Wade gets the Fifth Shard and grabs it. The vision this time is of Kira's 40th birthday party, where Ogden surprises her by bringing in Prince for a private concert.
-Since Shoto's avatar was killed, he has gone to the same unconcious limbo as everybody else in the OASIS right now whose avatar has been killed. He can't be logged out and he can't respawn. They just have to continue the quest without him. The Fifth Shard's clue is easy to decipher:
Win her hand through a feat of dark renown/The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown
-Uh oh. Wade explains that this is really bad because Halliday is going to make them play a really hard video game:
"I tried to think of a worse place for the last two shards to be hidden. There wasn’t one. Halliday had put them in the deepest, darkest, and deadliest dungeon fortress in the entire OASIS, in the possession of one of the most ridiculously overpowered—and evil—NPCs ever created. An NPC who was immortal, nigh invulnerable, and capable of killing most ninety-ninth-level avatars with his breath.
"For all intents and purposes, the last two shards were located in the depths of hell, set into the crown of Satan himself. I started to laugh. It was just a rapid-fire giggle at first. But then I couldn’t stop, and it quickly grew into the loud, uncontrolled laughter of a sane soul pushed to the brink of madness by cruel chance, just before fate drop-kicked them over the edge of a cliff."
-Yeah that's right Wade is laughing from near madness at the prospect of playing a hard video game level to save his life. Btw, what's the deal with GSS engineers not being able to just rig his character stats so he's more powerful or whatever?
-Wade checks his ONI countdown, and he still has a little over and hour left. Wade had 1:44 remaining when he entered the McGee Five and Dime, which means that Wade and Aech landed on completed the Raspberry Beret quest, drove in the Little Red Corvette long enough to hear the song loop MULTIPLE times, found the club where the Original 7ven are at and won the DDR audition with them, drove "several miles" outside of town to the pyramid where Aech got the gold chains, drove even further to get to the battle arena, fought the battle there, and had a brief chat with Faisal about Shoto, all in under 44 minutes. The time distribution of this book continues to baffle.
-The chapter closes with some humor about how RIDICULOUS it is that Aech doesn't know Middle-Earth lore:
"'Well?' Aech said. 'Don’t make me look it up. Who the hell is Morgoth?' I studied her face. I could see that she wasn’t joking. She really didn’t know. And this realization nearly set me off again. But I managed to keep a lid on it.
"'Morgoth Bauglir,' I said. 'The Dark Lord formerly known as Melkor?' Aech’s eyes lit up.
"'Melkor?' she repeated. 'Vin Diesel’s avatar? Named after his old D&D character?'
"'Vin borrowed that name from the Silmarillion,' I replied. 'Melkor, who later became known as Morgoth, was the most powerful—and evil—being ever to roam the face of Arda. Also known as Middle-earth...' When she heard the words Middle-earth, Aech inhaled sharply.
"'Are you telling me that I have to spend the last hour of my life surrounded by a bunch of fucking Hobbits, Z?'
-Wade explains that, no, there won't be hobbits, because Morgoth is located in the FIRST Age of Arda, where hobbits don't exist yet. And then Cline suddenly jumps in with more weird lib bullshit:
"'Let me guess,” she said. “They’re all white, right? White Elves. White Men. And White Dwarves. I bet everyone we encounter on this Tolkien planet is gonna be white, right? Except, of course, for the bad guys! The black-skinned Orcs.'
"'Saruman the White was a bad guy!' I replied, losing my temper. 'We don’t have time for literary criticism right now, Aech, valid though it may be! OK?'"
-Yeah Wade is really one to talk about not wasting time. Anyway, the chapter ends as they teleport to the surface of Arda, during the First Age. |
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Date: January 20th, 2021 7:52 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church mmm yeah valid literary criticism very edgy very modern, ghan buri ghan says GFY cline hdy drag tolkien into this pile of shit |
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Date: January 20th, 2021 9:53 PM Author: Sooty startled lay azn lmfao "Tolkien racist" is one of the funnier smoothbrain twitter takes that seems to persist, glad it permeated this shitpile too. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41794927) |
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Date: January 22nd, 2021 2:01 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake ""'Well?' Aech said. 'Don’t make me look it up. Who the hell is Morgoth?' I studied her face. I could see that she wasn’t joking. She really didn’t know. And this realization nearly set me off again. But I managed to keep a lid on it."
I was a Tolkien fan as a young person (most were for some time I imagine). But when I tried to read the Similiarion (?) I completely lost it. Its dense, complicated and requires notes to keep straight for most young readers. Today I had to read 10 pages or so from the Tolkien wiki to understand Morgeth's place in the mythology. Its not a pop culture reference. Its a deep fandom reference. Fewer than 1% of "Tolkien fans" would recognize Morgeth, let alone the early ages. It would be impossible for a single person to have this depth of working knowledge of all these fandoms. |
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Date: January 22nd, 2021 2:03 PM Author: lake national security agency same experience; loved LOTR and took the silmarrilion out from the library in 9th grade, made it maybe 20 pages in and just gave up (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41805523) |
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Date: January 27th, 2021 8:53 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41838127) |
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Date: January 27th, 2021 9:01 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Where are we on this? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41838166) |
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Date: January 30th, 2021 10:03 AM Author: Diverse meetinghouse (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41855431) |
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Date: January 30th, 2021 6:35 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41858121) |
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Date: January 27th, 2021 9:11 PM Author: indigo bearded chapel sneaky criminal (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41838201) |
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Date: January 30th, 2021 8:22 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 24 Whew, sorry again for the delay.
-So Wade and Aech have teleported to a replica of Middle-Earth in the First Age, having been told to grab the sixth shard from the crown of Morgoth.
-Because Wade hasn't completed any quests on this planet, he is only allowed to teleport into Helcaraxë, the icy wastes to the far northwest of Middle-Earth. Man, it sure is dumb how GSS engineers can't do basic things like enable the other teleportation portals for Wade when the fate of humanity is at stake.
-But wait! Instead of arriving there, the shard automatically warps them to Tarn Aeluin, 400 miles to the East. Obviously, this is Cline intervening to "fix" things because they only have an hour and don't have the time to trek across an apparently life-size Middle-Earth, but what does everyone else do? If the only valid starting spot is Helcaraxe and they can't warp anywhere else, does that mean anybody wanting to explore First Age Middle-Eart has to walk a few hundred miles just to get anywhere interesting? Wouldn't that kind of suck?
-Wade feels the need to (dumbly) explain how he knows the name of Morgoth's fortress:
"I continued to scan my map of Arda, looking for the name Udûn. I knew that was once the name of Morgoth’s fortress, because in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf faces off against the Balrog of Morgoth at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, he calls it the 'flame of Udûn.'"
How the Hell does that follow? Without more context, couldn't Udun be a person, or a wizard, or some other location that isn't specifically Morgoth's fortress? How would Wade know from just that one line? And if he knows how bad Morgoth is, isn't it more likely he knows this from shit like reading The Silmarillion?
-But wait! Turns out Wade won't find Udun on his map, because **AUTISM ALERT**:
"I bit the bullet and opened Gunterpedia in a browser window in front of me and pulled up the entry on Utumno. I immediately saw my mistake. Utumno was the name of Melkor’s original dungeon stronghold. But it was completely destroyed just before the First Age began. So it wasn’t located on Arda I at all, but on the Springtime of Arda, another, much smaller, disk-shaped planet, located directly beneath Arda I, II, and III. Most gunters referred to it as Arda Zero. It was a simulation of Arda during the Years of the Trees, which took place before the First Age. I’d never even bothered to visit Arda Zero, because it was impossible to complete any of the quests there unless you had already completed every single quest on Arda I, Arda II, and Arda III. I let out a heavy sigh, thinking I was going to have to suffer the embarrassment of telling Aech that I’d teleported both of us to the wrong planet."
-Yeah man really great how you're worried about looking dumb in front of your geek friend when you both have ONE HOUR TO LIVE.
-Anyway, Wade is faked out AGAIN, because he remember some line from Fellowship of the Ring about Morgoth's fortress Angband. Seriously, couldn't he just have had Wade go "oh let's start at Morgoth's fortress Angband" and then warp there instead of this tedious double-fakeout shit?
-Even Angband is 80 miles away by land, and they can't fly or teleport because those spells are disabled here. Aech says she can use her magical sneakers that let her run 3 times as quickly, even though running three times as fast would still not be nearly enough to arrive on time. I guess Aech isn't great at math.
-But it's another fakeout! Wade doesn't need Aech's sneakers, because he's carrying two Figurines of Wondrous Power, D&D animal figurines that can grow into full-sized creatures. In this case, it's Felarof and Shadowfax, two famous Middle-Earth horses. Wade explains that they are the two fastest land animals in Middle-Earth, which he obtained by completing quests on Arda III. Wade then pats Shadowfax and says it's good to see him in Sindarin, a language he apparently knows how to speak.
-God, there's even MORE goonery:
"I removed two magic swords that I’d acquired on Arda III from my inventory. One was the ithilnaur broadsword named Glamdring wielded by Gandalf during the War of the Ring, and I equipped it in the scabbard on my avatar’s back. The other was a two-handed sword, and I took hold of it by its blade and held it out to Aech, hilt-first.
"'Here,' I said. 'You’re gonna need this. Andúril, the Flame of the West. Reforged from the shards of Narsil by—'
"Aech waved the sword away.
"'No thanks, Z,' Aech said. 'I’ve already got plenty of swords of my own.' I continued to hold the sword out to her.
"'Take it,' I said. 'Only magical weapons forged by the Elves of Middle-earth can affect the servants of Morgoth, OK? I do know one or two things about this place.'"
-I love the imagery of Wade autistically explaining the history of his magical sword when they have literally one hour to travel 80 miles and get TWO shards before everybody dies including both of them.
-Anyway, they finally get moving, and because the horses are magical they are able to go much faster than normal horses. Or, as Wade puts it, "they raced through, around, and under the trees at such blinding speed that I kept imagining myself as a doomed Stormtrooper on a speeder bike."
-Aech sees Wade trying to study up on Arda as they ride, and it leads to by far the most self-aware scene these shitty books have ever had:
"'I don’t give a shit about Arda III, Z!' Aech asked. 'What about this planet? How many quests have you completed here, on Arda I?' Aech could always tell when I was lying to her, so I didn’t even bother trying.
"'Zero, OK?' I replied. 'Not a single one. But there’s a good reason for that, Aech! Don’t make that face at me! All the quests here are trivia traps—you can’t complete them unless you possess an encyclopedic knowledge of Tolkien’s entire Legendarium! And I’m not just talking about the published version of The Silmarillion. You need to memorize details of a bunch of different, conflicting, unpublished early drafts! And all thirteen volumes of unpublished early drafts! And all thirteen volumes of The History of Middle-earth! Sorry—I had research priorities….'
"'Like what?' Aech asked, rolling her eyes. 'Watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the two hundredth time?'
"'That was one of Halliday’s favorite films, Aech!' I shouted. 'Knowing it by heart helped us reach the egg, you may recall? And it also happens to be a comedic masterpiece, so—'
"'You told me you’d ‘read every novel by every single one of Halliday’s favorite authors’! And Tolkien was on his list of favorites, man!'
"I sighed. 'The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, Aech. It’s more like a campaign setting sourcebook for the Middle-earth role-playing game. It’s full of stories and poems about the creation of Middle-earth, its deities, history, and mythology. Alphabets and pronunciation keys for made-up Elven languages. I just never had time to finish it….'
"Aech studied my face for a few seconds in silence. Then she pretended to sniff the air. 'I smell bullshit, Watts,' she said, narrowing her eyes."
-Anyway, Aech deduces that the REAL reason Wade is unprepared is because he's butthurt about Art3mis dumping him, and since Art3mis really likes Middle-Earth it made him not want to come here or do quests on it. She gets Wade to send her a text message, in case she's able to help after whatever off-screen rescue mission she's leading ends.
Really, though, is Art3mis the ONLY person who could possibly help here? The fate of the world is at stake and they're running out of time. Couldn't GSS go and find some LOTR super-expert who is trapped online and get them to help? FFS.
-Btw, while all this is happening, Wade mentions in passing that Howard Shore's LOTR soundtrack is playing on an endless loop everywhere in Middle-Earth.
-Twice in this chapter, Wade describes Aech as flashing a "Cheshire grin," which he apparently thinks just means a playful grin. Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't a Cheshire grin supposed to be creepy and sinister? |
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Date: January 30th, 2021 8:29 PM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold incredible that this awful tripe is getting a movie. is it that easy to be a writer these days? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41858742) |
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Date: January 30th, 2021 11:28 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41859786) |
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Date: January 31st, 2021 12:36 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41861377) |
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Date: January 31st, 2021 1:13 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship “ You need to memorize details of a bunch of different, conflicting, unpublished early drafts! And all thirteen volumes of unpublished early drafts!”
What shitty editing. Probably even the editor didn’t want to read this, and who can blame zher? |
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Date: January 31st, 2021 1:46 PM Author: Mischievous transparent theater stage lettuce This thread is awesome. You are 180 for persevering through this dreck.
Tolkien would be aghast that his life's work was being featured in this "novel," I'm sure. Cline, unsurprisingly, has no feel for the depth or character of the material he's referencing; it's just so many nerd-pandering names to him. Here, Tolkien's Silmarillion - with its themes of creation, the nature of existence, the nature of God, light and dark, chaos and entropy, religious (particularly Christian) allegories, allusions to events he experienced during his life, exploration of language as both a medium/informer and creator of reality, interplay of poetry/music with divinity, etc. - is reduced to a boring fetch quest from a bad action adventure video game.
It's like you can see Cline just CTRL-Ving names he thinks sound nerdy directly from Wikipedia or w/e fandom wiki into his text editor. |
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Date: February 2nd, 2021 2:17 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41873684) |
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Date: February 2nd, 2021 2:26 PM Author: duck-like red cuck tyty (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41873739) |
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Date: February 2nd, 2021 2:35 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake ""I sighed. 'The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, Aech. It’s more like a campaign setting sourcebook for the Middle-earth role-playing game. It’s full of stories and poems about the creation of Middle-earth, its deities, history, and mythology. Alphabets and pronunciation keys for made-up Elven languages. I just never had time to finish it….'"
Wade/Cline gives up too much here. As noted above, most readers don't make it through the Silmarillion at a young age. Its incredibly dense. Which means all his Morgeth and Arda (even early age) knowledge is complete nonsense. |
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Date: February 2nd, 2021 3:01 PM Author: cobalt nursing home A fantasy book to take its reader from their dystopian reality into a separate dystopian fantasy of a virtual reality world that takes its users into fantasy worlds created in the original dystopian reality (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41873902) |
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Date: February 2nd, 2021 2:16 PM Author: Soggy Hilarious Hissy Fit Can we circle back to this? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41873681) |
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Date: February 3rd, 2021 12:35 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 24 Part 2 -Wade and Aech are still riding along on their superhorses and conducting casual conversation with each other, even though their remaining time limit plus the 80-mile distance to Angband imply they're riding at more than 100 mph. Wouldn't it be pretty hard to chat while going that quickly, with all the wind whipping by and everything?
-Aech asks why Kira liked Middle-Earth so much, to which Wade replies "Pure, uncut escapism." He then points out that LOTR inspired D&D, which inspired early video game RPGs, which led to Halliday making his own RPGs, which gave him the money to create the OASIS. So, really, Tolkien is to blame for the world being on the brink of collapse, haha.
-As they travel further, Wade explains where they are in a manner so stupid-sounding that only Cline could come up with it:
"I was tired of checking my map every few minutes to find out what I was looking at, so I did something that most self-respecting gunters would never do—I turned on my OASIS Tour Guide captions and activated my image-recognition software. When I took another look at the wasteland stretching out ahead of us, a caption appeared on my HUD, informing me that I was staring at the barren dunes of Anfauglith, a desolate hellscape created by Morgoth when he scorched the once-green plains of Ard-galen black with the fires of Thangorodrim, which was the name of the three volcanic peaks looming high above the horizon ahead."
"'One does not simply walk into Dor Daedeloth,' I said, assuming that Aech wouldn’t get the joke. She didn’t."
-Aech is mystified why the bad dude they're going after is named Morgoth instead of Sauron, so Wade gives the short explanation of who he is. Then, he hypes up the coming showdown by describing what a hard video game boss Morgoth is:
"'Sauron is a pushover compared to this Morgoth dude. He’s one of the toughest—if not the toughest—NPCs in the entire simulation. According to what I’ve read about him, he’s all-powerful and invulnerable.'
"'What do you mean, invulnerable?'
"'I mean he can’t be killed,' I said [thanks for that, Wade]. 'From what I’ve read on the gunter message boards, it’s supposed to be possible to banish Morgoth to the Void indefinitely, but to do that, first you have to complete a whole series of epic-level quests to enlist the help of the Valar, and those would probably take weeks to complete. That is, if I knew enough about the Elder Days to complete all of them, which I don’t.'"
-This chapter is full of weird little video-game bits where Cline's autism forces him to overexplain things. For instance, as they approach Angband, there's a multi-paragraph exchange where Wade stops Aech and asks her to cast an invisibility spell so they won't be spotted by orcs. She suggests a spell and it describes her casting it, complete with this ludicrously unnecessary detail: "But we could still see a semi-transparent version of each other’s avatars and our steeds on our HUDs, allowing us to avoid bumping into each other." Wow, Cline, thanks! Otherwise I would have spent the whole chapter wondering "but wait how do they avoid running into each other if they cast an invisibility spell?". I'm so glad Cline was here to nip that problem in the bud.
-BTW, later on some vultures look at them and Wade realizes that the invisibility spell doesn't work around Angband, so he has Aech turn it off. It literally never matters at all.
-As they get even closer to the castle, Aech suggests sending a message to all ONI users, telling them the truth and requesting backup for the Morgoth fight. But Wade explains that this just won't work because Morgoth is way way too badass.
"'An army won’t help us this time,' I said. 'The Noldor laid siege to Angband for over four hundred years, and they never even got close to the Silmarils.' I shook my head. 'I think we’re gonna have to sneak inside, like Beren and Lúthien.'"
-Luckily, Aech also has a level 99 sleep spell she can cast. In yet another totally unneeded detail, Wade describes her equipping it to her quick-spell list before they venture into Angband, just in case readers would otherwise be baffled about how she is able to use it so quickly when needed.
-BTW, this also doesn't matter because the sleep spell doesn't work anyway. They get in a fight with Carcharoth, the giant wolf guarding the entrance of Angband. The wolf starts completely kicking their ass, which Wade describes by analogizing other video game boss fights that the reader cannot play:
"Aech and I had faced a lot of formidable enemies over the years, on a lot of different planets. The two of us once took down a Tarrasque on Faerun in less than five minutes. We livestreamed it. It was a cakewalk. But after less than thirty seconds, Carcharoth already had both of us on the run and hemorrhaging hit points. I took a Potion of Cure Poison out of my inventory and swallowed it in one gulp. But to my horror, I saw my hit-point counter continue to fall. I was still taking poison damage. The potion was supposed to cure it, but it wasn’t working. Just like Aech’s sleep spell hadn’t worked on the wolf. Clearly, I had missed something..."
-Aech puts up a heroic effort against the wolf, but her avatar is killed and like Shoto she is off to limbo until she either dies or ONI users are liberated. Wade is shocked, but describes how he has the presence of mind to quickly pick up all of her inventory items to possibly return to her later.
-Wade continues to describe this fight in the most ridiculous manner possible, relating various mechanics of this completely made-up video game:
"I took up the sword I had given her, Andúril, and equipped it in my left hand, so that I could wield it along with Glamdring in my right. Both of the Elven blades continued to glow bright blue as I turned to face Carcharoth. (I may have looked a bit silly wielding two such large swords at the same time, but my avatar’s combat stats made it effortless, and I had double-weapon proficiency and ambidextrous attacks, so I got three attacks per round with each sword, with each hand.)"
-It's so bizarre how he describes "three attacks per round." Like, isn't the ENTIRE POINT of ONI that it's perfectly realistic VR? Shouldn't his attack rate just be determined by how quickly he swings the sword? What the fuck is all this D&D combat system nonsense?
-Anyway, Wade is about to die, when suddenly Art3mis drops out of the sky and the chapter ends. |
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Date: February 3rd, 2021 7:28 AM Author: lake national security agency the world is at stake but he chose not to use his magical HUD display that explained everything he looked at, because of *pride* (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41877493) |
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Date: February 3rd, 2021 9:36 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church fuckin nerds (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41877895) |
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Date: February 3rd, 2021 10:04 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake "-As they get even closer to the castle, Aech suggests sending a message to all ONI users, telling them the truth and requesting backup for the Morgoth fight. But Wade explains that this just won't work because Morgoth is way way too badass.
"'An army won’t help us this time,' I said. 'The Noldor laid siege to Angband for over four hundred years, and they never even got close to the Silmarils.' I shook my head. 'I think we’re gonna have to sneak inside, like Beren and Lúthien.'""
So since I read all that Tolkien shit upthread to understand who Morgoth is--let's talk about why he's a bad "villian" or "NPC" to 'fight' in a 'game setting.' He has been used in video games--everyone loves a good rip off, but in a true-to-Tolkien simulation he's not an NPC or a possible enemy.
Morgoth does not appear in the LOTR/Hobbit, he is a Prometheus-type character from Greek mythology. Not a demi-god or god, but a titan-style character. He was the greatest of these long-gone creatures. He was created by Valar (Jesus?) who was created by Ea (Father), but turned. So essentially he's Tolkien's proto-Satan. He does not fight individual enemies. He is an idea, he looses demons and wipes out hosts to seek "the flame imperishable".
Even the limp-dicked Saruman (perhaps Morgoth's main agent) is not 'fought'. His evil tool is destroyed in Mount Doom in LOTR. Frodo does not walk up to his castle and fight his host 1-v-13421214123. He outsmarts him and uses his evil against him.
These characters from Sim. are even more abstract than LOTR, and having some faggot PC walk in to his 'castle' is fucking laughable. Fuck Cline and fuck this book.
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Date: February 4th, 2021 6:22 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 25 -The dramatic arrival of Art3mis onto the scene can't be done without a random fucking reference:
"I caught a brief glimpse of the bat’s wings, flittering across the edge of my peripheral vision. Then I heard a familiar transformation sound effect—one I knew had been lifted from the old Super Friends cartoon—and a split second later, Art3mis made a superhero landing on the rocky ground directly between me and Carcharoth. Then she rose to her full height and faced off against the Wolf-warden of the Gates of Hell, her long black cloak whipping out behind her in the wind like a cape."
-Art3mis knows the lore of Middle-Earth, and she sings some song (in English, apparently) that puts Carcharoth to sleep. She then heals Wade, and gives him shit for trying to "half-ass" the Quest of the Silmaril. Wade gets mad:
"'I was not ‘completely unprepared’!' I replied indignantly. 'Did you happen to notice that I’m wielding both Andúril and Glamdring right now?' I pointed up the road. 'And I rode in here on Shadowfax! I’m doing my best. So don’t treat me like I’m some blockheaded Bracegirdle from Hardbottle!' That made her lose her composure and snort-laugh several times in a row. When she recovered, her demeanor had considerably softened."
-Wade "chokes down a sob" as he apologizes for getting Aech killed...and for not reading The Silmarillion in its entirety despite promising to do so.
-Art3mis supplies some important Middle-Earth items to Wade, like the knife Angrist, and looks at the shard text: "Win her hand through a feat of dark renown/The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown." Somehow, she deduces that "it's a trick" and Wade needs to cut only a single Silmaril from the crown, or else Morgoth and his minions will all awaken. Even if she's correct, how does she just know that? Maybe the entire point is to defeat all of them?
-She also asks what Wade's avatar "alignment" is (Chaotic Good, apparently), because if he is any form of evil the Silmaril will burn his hand off. This feels really out of left-field. There has never been any prior mention of there being some global avatar alignment system borrowed from D&D, and it's suddenly thrown in here? How the heck is this even decided? Does the OASIS have a D&D-derived social credit system? Or does it only apply to the video-gamey parts of the simulation? This is just so stupid and thrown in for that one pointless line.
-Art3mis then reveals that the Quest of the Silmaril was actually created by Ogden and Kira themselves, decades ago, as a two-person quest, and that NOBODY in the entire history of the OASIS has ever completed it. Given the shit people HAVE completed in the world of video games, this basically means that it's impossible, but nope apparently Art3mis and Wade are gonna have to 360-noscope it on their very first try. Even Art3mis hasn't attempted it before, because she wanted to do it with her twu wuv, Wade.
-As they continue the quest, Wade starts twitching uncontrollably from Synaptic Overload Syndrome as he approaches the 12-hour time limit for safe usage.
-Art3mis drops even more random references on Wade in the form of items: The Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin (which protects him from status ailments) and the Wolf-hame of Draugluin (which turns him into a wolf).
-Art3mis narrowly saves Wade from accidentally walking into some procedurally-generated 100-room game based on an old Silmarillion-themed roguelike. Instead, she knows a shortcut that takes them directly to Morgoth (how convenient!).
-After walking through the shortcut tunnel, Art3mis sings some powerful sleep spell that puts Morgoth and all the other enemies to sleep. Wade pries one Silmaril out from the crown, resists the temptation to pry out more (seriously, it describes him resisting "with great effort." Is the video game mind-controlling him?), and then they leave. When they return to where Carcharoth is, Art3mis says her sleep spell won't work a second time, so she pulls out a tiny figurine of Huan, the great wolfhound, who distracts the wolf long enough for them to escape.
-And that's it. Seriously! Art3mis hypes up Wade that nobody, in decades, has EVER completed that quest, and literally all they do is use sleep spells on all the enemies and unleash one NPC wolfhound and that's it. Quest cleared. The whole thing barely takes 4 pages. Holy shit this is stupid.
-The vision for the Sixth Shard is Ogden showing Kira the IRL Rivendell he built her for the first time.
-As Wade emerges from the vision, Angband suddenly awakens. The nearby volcanoes all erupt and bad guys swarm out of the fortress. No biggie, though, a few eagles swoop in and rescue them, just like that (it literally is barely 200 words of fake peril).
-The Eagles fly them all the way to the hidden Elvish city of Gondolin, which is a "teleportation zone" from which they can warp off-planet. How far away is that from Angband, anyway? Didn't they already arrive on this planet with barely one hour to go? Didn't Wade then ride a horse ~80 miles, then more slowly make his way through Angband? Now they fly several dozen miles, minimum, to get back to a teleportation zone?
-It gets worse, though! As they fly, Wade thinks about what Anorak's plot is, and decides that his plan must be to revive a copy of Kira Morrow's consciousness, then upload both of them to Wade's pocket OASIS on his spaceship, and then fly the spaceship out of the Solar System. But Wade waits until they've landed at the teleportation zone to share his theory with Art3mis. How many minutes does he waste doing that when his brain is literally cooking from OASIS overuse already? Gah.
-Anyway, Art3mis leaves to return to the Ogden rescue effort (kissing Wade before she leaves, *groan*) while Wade teleports to Cthonia, Anorak's home base, to try obtaining the 7th shard, alone. |
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Date: February 4th, 2021 7:28 PM Author: duck-like red cuck JFC, this is garbage. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41887571) |
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Date: February 4th, 2021 10:59 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41888844) |
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Date: February 5th, 2021 1:22 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41889569) |
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Date: February 5th, 2021 9:33 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church and absurdly lazy to boot the whole morgoth sequence from fighting the wolf to using huan to escape appears to just be cline copy-pasting a cliff notes summary of the tale of beren & luthien using “it’s a quest, bro!” to justify the theft, ctrl-f changing the names to those of his own retarded characters, and then throwing in a dash of faggotry (HP! invisibility! meaningless references shoehorned in as le epic boss fighting gear! twist, just one jewel not two!) to give it that authentic cline feel and some tenuous connection to the rest of the book |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 11:03 AM Author: Opaque razzle-dazzle public bath cuckold (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41896281) |
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Date: February 5th, 2021 9:41 PM Author: cobalt nursing home 100 miles per hour 80 miles How much time is left |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 1:03 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 26 -Wade arrives on Cthonia, the location of Castle Anorak and the location of the last book's climax as well. He arrives immediately at the Shrine of Leucosia (named for Kira's D&D character), because that stupid D&D notebook they found earlier explained where to find it (atop the highest mountain of southern Cthonia)
-Wade walks up to the shrine without incident, and after sticking the first six shards into little slots, the seventh shard appears. He grabs it, and has one last vision from Kira's life: It's a vision of Halliday showing a prototype ONI helmet to Kira and Ogden, which ends with Halliday putting the prototype on Kira's head and turning it on. Wade realizes that this must have been when Halliday made a full copy of Kira's consciousness, without her knowledge.
-BTW, the absolutely zero-effort way he got the 7th shard feels rather forced. It's like Cline ran out of ideas, or realized his book was getting too long because he spent too long on the retarded John Hughes planet or something. Every other shard has a detailed challenge for it, and then the very last one is just "go to the coordinates and deliver the first six?" Just very blah. I guess it sounds dumb that I'm asking for MORE of this book...but I kind of am. It would be hilarious to see how Cline hideously mangles a Doctor Who planet or something.
-Wade delivers this funny moral:
"Certainly, I felt closer to Kira now, more aware of her as a human being and an artist. And I saw James Donovan Halliday far more clearly too. He had undeniably been a genius, but until just one day ago, I’d viewed him as a benevolent one, whose brilliance and inventiveness had only elevated humanity. Now it was impossible to deny that he had also been a profoundly fucked-up human being. Immoral. Disturbed. Emotionally detached. A techno-hermit who had betrayed the trust of his two best friends in the world. My days of lionizing him were at an end."
This is just generally hilarious. It was super obvious from the beginning that Halliday was messed up, and it took all of this for Wade to realize it? Good lord, man. Also, the entire thing is delivered like Cline is trying to say "See! Look! I reject the historic sexism of the nerd community!" Just embarrassing.
-Anorak teleports to Wade's location and congratulates him. Apparently, he finished the shard hunt with 10 minutes to spare before going over 12 hours. Wade had two hours and 28 minutes left when he warped to the Prince Planet, so he apparently completed both that planet AND the LOTR quest in just two hours and 18 minutes. Pretty remarkable when those two hours included riding 80 miles on a horse, driving many miles in pseudo-Minneapolis, completing that Raspberry Beret sidequest (which involved literally sitting around long enough for Mr. McGee to condemn his laziness multiple times), listening to Little Red Corvette at least 3 times, completing all those random quests on Prince Planet, flying from Angband to the hidden elf city to teleport, etc. Remarkable management of your time limit, Cline!
-Wade mocks Anorak by calling him "Master Control Program," which I guess is just a random Tron reference. When Anorak requests the Seven Shards, Wade finds it so irritating that "I wanted to draw one of my vorpal swords and cut his goddamn head off."
-But Wade doesn't do it, because he has a PLAN. GSS's engineers have created seven identical COPIES of the seven shards, without Anorak noticing apparently, and have stuck them in Wade's inventory. Wade uses these shards to BAMBOOZLE Anorak, but not without overexplaining things in a way that makes it sound dumb:
"When his hand touched the jewel, the item was transferred from my avatar’s inventory to his. But in that instant, I was allowed to select an item from Anorak’s inventory and transfer it into mine. That’s because he had just made the mistake of accepting a brand-new magical artifact, of my very own design. I called it the Jewel of Acquisition. When another avatar—or NPC—took it from you, it allowed you to take any item from their inventory in return. So when Anorak touched it, a list of every item in his inventory appeared on my HUD. It was filled to capacity with magic items and powerful artifacts. More than I had ever seen in one place. The list was alphabetized, so I continued to page down until I finally found the only item I was interested in—the Robes of Anorak [How long did it take for him to 'page down' that far? Couldn't Anorak notice something was up and, like, kill him?] When I selected the artifact on my HUD, the robes immediately disappeared off of Anorak’s avatar, causing him to revert to his alternate appearance—that of a middle-aged James Halliday, dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt. For the first and only time in my life, I saw Anorak react with what appeared to be genuine surprise."
-Why does Wade say "for the first time in my life" he saw Anorak surprised? Is he counting Anorak's random NPC appearance in video games and shit? He's only known the supervillain sentient AI Anorak for 12 hours and has only interacted with him like 3 times, so "for the first time in my life" is such weird wording.
-Anyway, with the Robes in his inventory, Wade is once again a superuser, and uses his powers to teleport into Castle Anorak, where the Big Red Button that deletes the OASIS completely is located. The chapter ends. |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 10:43 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41896193) |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 11:07 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake ty for your service. you are sacrificing your mental health for our amusement. to read this book--and recap it surely is a test of any man's wil. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41896302) |
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Date: February 10th, 2021 4:06 PM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41921899) |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 12:02 PM Author: duck-like red cuck How is Cline so bad at time management and the concept of time generally? It feels so rushed at the end. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41896594) |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 12:23 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41896724) |
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Date: February 6th, 2021 9:51 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church reminds me of a single-draft school essay written at the last second where u have a half-baked idea, don’t realize the limitations (one of which is lacking a third supporting argument but trusting u’ll come up with it before u finish) until ur halfway thru, don’t take any time to go back and fix the kinks that popped up along the way, yet decide to just say fuck it and turn it in as-is anyway (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41899322) |
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Date: February 7th, 2021 12:35 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Yeah what's stupid is he (or an editor) could have gone through and adjusted all the time stamps to make them more sensible or at least balanced, but they clearly didn't even give a shit. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41901682) |
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Date: February 10th, 2021 4:44 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef How many more chapters is this shit? Can he just hit the button and kill self already (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41922094) |
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Date: February 12th, 2021 5:16 PM Author: cobalt nursing home Pls (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41934492) |
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Date: February 13th, 2021 11:29 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm Subject: Chapter 27 -We're in the home stretch! This is the beginning of "Level 6," or basically Part 3, and just over 10% of the book remains. The part opens with a Kurt Vonnegut quote about how, like, totally lame it is to be a person:
"The mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. Why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones and tubes? No wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. And the fool thing wears out anyway—no matter how much you stuff and protect it!"
-Wade materializes inside his special room in Castle Anorak, and reveals the hidden Big Red Button that, if pressed, deletes the entire OASIS permanently. Anorak, stripped of the Robes of Anorak, cannot teleport inside the room any longer, and is stuck outside.
-Wade demands that Anorak release Ogden immediately, or else he will press the Big Red Button and delete everything, regardless of the consequences. To show he means business, he does this:
"I took a giant boom box out of my inventory and placed it on the ground. Then I slapped in a tape and hit Play. The same Peter Wolf song that Anorak had used to taunt us earlier began to blast out of its speakers. I sang along with its opening lyrics: 'Lights out ah ha. Blast, blast, blast.' Anorak didn’t seem to find this funny."
-Then Wade sends a message to Art3mis that is, ofc, a reference:
"I opened my HUD and texted Art3mis the signal we’d agreed upon in advance: WE CAN DANCE IF WE WANT TO. Her reply flashed across the top of my HUD a few seconds later: IT’S ON LIKE RED DAWN!"
-Then things get really weird. Wade pulls out a tiny replica of an old OASIS immersion rig, like the ones he used in the last book. It grows to full size, and he puts it on. This rig lets him control one of the tactical robots that are about to break into the house where Ogden is being held. But like, he's in the fucking ONI, why does he need to use this weird cumbersome rig? Couldn't they just jack his brain directly into the robot instead of having him wear a fictional cumbersome machine in cyberspace?
-With 10% of the book to go, Cline decides this is a great time to autistically infodump about different models of combat robot:
"Through its head-mounted cameras, I could see that my telebot was still in its charging dock, which was located in the back of an ATC—an armored telebot carrier—which was currently in motion. I was surrounded by about two dozen other identical telebots. I recognized them as brand new Okagami ACT-3000s—armored combat telebots with forearm-mounted machine guns and shoulder-mounted missile racks. The security team at my house used ACT-2000s, which were designed for home defense. The 3000s were designed for military use in all-out warfare. Miles and Samantha had apparently decided not to take any chances. When I swiveled my telebot’s head around to take in my surroundings, I spotted both Samantha and Miles just a few feet away, on the other side of a bulletproof window that separated the cargo hold from the ATC’s heavily armored cab. They were both wearing OASIS visors and haptic gloves, because they were each controlling one of the telebots in the back of the transport too. Their bots both nodded at mine as soon as they saw it activate."
-For an extremely high-stakes mission with potentially 700 million lives at stake, is it really wise to have two billionaire LARPers tagging along instead of having all the robots piloted by skilled pros?
-Samantha is piloting a "combat medic telebot" that carries medicine instead of weapons. Wade also provides this really autistic and weird-sounding sentence: "Its armored chest plate swung open like a pair of doors, revealing a small monitor that displayed a live vidfeed of her OASIS avatar’s face, which looked like a live mirror image of Samantha’s face in reality, minus the OASIS visor she was currently wearing." Wow, Wade, thanks for clarifying, otherwise I'd have just assumed it showed her wearing VR goggles for no reason!
-They roll up to Ogden's old mansion, bust down the door, and get into a massive gunfight with all the robots Anorak has taken over at the house...just kidding! That might be mildly interesting or something. Instead they bust in and walk past a bunch of turned-off robots, but Wade still pauses to describe them for no reason:
"It looked like it might have been a large dining or meeting room, back when the house was occupied. But now Anorak appeared to be using it as his personal armory, because it was filled with heavily armed aerial drones and more than a hundred Okagami ACT-3000 telebots just like our own. The telebots were standing in neat, ordered rows on the polished marble floor. Their armor plating was covered with desert camouflage paint—an indication that they were probably stolen from the military. But they were all powered down, and as we crossed the room, they remained completely motionless, with their weapons retracted. The drones were Habashaw ADP-4XLs, and they were loaded into automatic launch racks that were aimed at the two skylights embedded in the ceiling. But they, too, were powered down."
-Instead of a big firefight, they run into a large library, where they find Ogden sitting in a hospital bed with an IV in him (where did Anorak get hospital equipment if he exists in cyberspace? Did he have Sorrento steal it within the past 24 hours?). Ogden is being held hostage by Nolan Sorrento, who is pointing a gun at his head.
-Finally! It's time for Sorrento to do something in this book. He's literally done nothing except break out of prison and occasionally snarl menacingly in the background while Anorak taunts the heroes. Oh, and he popped up once on the Prince Planet to tell them that they sucked too and were running out of time. But now, it's finally time for a fight!
-...Just kidding! Instead Anorak just takes control of a robot in the room and shoots Sorrento in the head. Apparently, Sorrento's deal with Anorak was that if he helped him, he'd get to push the Big Red Button and destroy the OASIS, but Anorak says he can no longer fulfill his part of the deal, plus since he has all 7 shards Sorrento is no longer useful to him. So Anorak just shoots him, and as his corpse collapses his gun fires, shooting Ogden in the stomach.
Yep, that's it for Sorrento! He did fuck-all in this book. From Sorrento appearing in this chapter to him getting shot dead literally takes less than a page. |
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Date: February 13th, 2021 11:36 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake i can say with some confidence without having read it, that "2 can play that game" is a better written novel (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41941112) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 2:02 AM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41987830) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 1:48 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41990078) |
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Date: February 14th, 2021 1:13 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "Then things get really weird. Wade pulls out a tiny replica of an old OASIS immersion rig, like the ones he used in the last book. It grows to full size, and he puts it on. "
Weird Inception rip-off here. |
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Date: February 14th, 2021 1:16 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "Their armor plating was covered with desert camouflage paint—an indication that they were probably stolen from the military."
Thank God that middle eastern Forever Wars still exist in this reality! |
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Date: February 14th, 2021 4:50 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm Very weird, given how America is described as so broken down that it can’t even maintain basic internal order.
Actually, that’s probably pretty realistic. |
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Date: February 27th, 2021 1:52 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42017513) |
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Date: February 21st, 2021 9:37 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 27 Part 2 As usual, sorry for the slow update pace lately. We'll try to finish the last few chapters in a sprint over the next couple days.
-So, Sorrento is dead, having accomplished nothing this book except taunting the heroes a couple times and getting shot in the head by Anorak. As he dies, though, his twitching muscles cause him to shoot Ogden in the stomach.
-Cline has an odd bit of description: "I heard Samantha scream over the comm as her telebot rushed to Og’s side. She reached him just as Sorrento’s body hit the floor with a thud." It's just a throwaway line, but it bothers me. This showdown is happening in a Ogden's personal library, a "large U-shaped room." It's large enough in fact, that when Nolan shouts at them as they enter, his voice "echoes" off the walls. He's also explicitly described as at the "opposite" end of it. Yet when Sorrento gets shot in the head, Art3mis is able to get all the way to the other end by the time his body hits the floor? That makes no sense.
-Also, Wade, can't describes his reaction to Sorrento's death: "I reflexively bent over and began to retch repeatedly." Now, Wade is IN the OASIS still, just using a fake mock-up digital OASIS rig to pilot a robot in real life. So when using an ONI, he repeatedly mentions being able to disable emotional displays and reduce pain...does he seriously not disable the ability to throw up? If not, why not?
-Art3mis uses her medical robot to do first aid on Ogden: "She used the surgical tools embedded in its fingers to extract the bullet. She dropped it onto Sorrento’s corpse. Then she sterilized Og’s wound and sealed it with a liquid adhesive dispensed from a nozzle that extended from the pinkie finger of her telebot’s other hand. Then she began to apply a bandage—all of this in less than thirty seconds after Og had been shot."
Less than thirty seconds! I don't know if that qualifies as good medical practice even from a robot, but okay then. Anyway, in those 30 seconds Art3mis's robot also deduces that Ogden is NAWT going to be okay and needs to get to a hospital...but wait, if her robot can literally perform surgery in under a minute, what additional medical resources are they going to get from the hospital? Is it really going to make that big a difference?
-Anorak apologizes for letting Ogden get hurt, but suddenly, an alarm goes off, emanating from Sorrento's smartwatch! It turns out that Sorrento secretly programmed all the killer robots in Ogden's house to go into "full attack mode" if he died. Anorak says this is because he "didn't trust me," although it's not clear how this tactic helped Sorrento at all. Since he kept it a secret, it didn't do anything to keep him from getting killed. Whoops!
-As the military-grade robots head toward the library, Wade impulsively blasts Anorak's robot to pieces, and then Miles (the Arnold Schwarzeneggar lookalike security chief mentioned earlier) uses his robot to blast a hole in the wall. Art3mis's robot escapes with Ogden to the ambulance outside, while Wade's robot gets ripped apart. Things get worse with this fairly silly sequence:
"Since there were no more bots for me to take control of, I switched to the eye-in-the-sky view provided by one of the aerial drones GSS had circling the area. It provided me with a horrifying view of the swarm of enemy telebots and aerial drones that were closing in on the armored ambulance from every direction. A moment later, several of the bots finally caught up with it and quickly disabled all four of its tires. Miles switched to the emergency backup tank-tread drive, and the ambulance began to move forward again. But a few seconds later, one of Anorak’s aerial drones fired a missile at them and scored a direct hit on it from above, causing the ambulance to flip over onto its side. Then it slid to a halt, smoking in the center of the road as more telebots and drones continued to converge on it.
Miles, Samantha, and Og were all trapped inside. And I was still safe at home, down in my concrete bunker, unable to do anything but watch my friends die. I felt completely helpless. Like I was a million miles away from Samantha and Og. But I wasn’t a million miles away, I suddenly realized. In fact, I was only 2.8 miles away."
-So, how is Wade going to get out of this jam? That's right...Chekhov's Spider Robot. Remember at the start of the book where Wade went on in excruciating detail about his armored mobile ONI coffin that he sticks his body in while logged in? Now, it's time for it to swing into action:
"I realized that I did still have access to one combat drone that I could take control of to try to save my friends—the one I was currently sitting inside. My mobile tactical immersion vault, which was armed with enough firepower to take out a small army of telebots and drones. ... I activated the elevator and the platform my MoTIV was resting on began to rise toward the surface. But it wasn’t rising nearly fast enough for my liking, and after a few seconds I grew impatient and activated my jump jets. This caused the MoTIV to rocket up the length of the elevator shaft, and out of the launch-bay doors at the top, which opened just in the nick of time. Then I hit the jump jets again to lessen the force of my impact, which was still considerable. When the MoTIV hit the ground, I piloted it forward at full speed and it began to run, bounding down Babbitt Road, taking great leaping strides on its spidery robotic legs. Each step I took left an enormous crater in the asphalt behind me as I accelerated the MoTIV to its top speed."
-"An enormous crater?" How much does this stupid spider robot weigh?
-It takes Wade "less than a minute" to reach the ambulance, which as he said was 2.8 miles away. That means his crater-leaving spider robot was running, on land, at least 168 mph.
-Once again, we have one of Wade's un-eventful action scenes, where everything happens in just a couple paragraphs with no detail:
"As soon as I got within firing range, I unloaded on Sorrento’s telebots with armor-piercing machine-gun fire from the guns mounted on my MoTIV’s shoulders, cutting them to shreds. Once I had cleared all of the telebots off the ambulance, I fired a sortie of heat-seeking missiles at the aerial drones overhead and managed to destroy all of them too. Then I used the MoTIV’s massive metal arms to pick up the ambulance, with Miles, Samantha, and Og still inside it. I carried it all the way back to my house. Just as we reached it, more of Sorrento’s killer aerial drones began to descend from the sky, and they opened fire on us once again as I carried the ambulance back down into my bunker and closed its massive armored doors, sealing all of us safely inside."
-Anyway, it turns out that Ogden is bleeding internally and fading in and house. Wade tells Art3mis that if he wakes up, she has to convince him to log into the OASIS, so he can use the Dorkslayer sword to defeat Anorak. In the meantime, as piercing headaches flash through his head due to synaptic overload, he vows to "stall Anorak for as long as I can." Stall him from what, exactly? What are they even attempting to do at this moment? It's really unclear. We'll have to find out in the next chapter.
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 12:33 AM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41987617) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 1:49 PM Author: purple contagious macaca fortuitous meteor (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41990084) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 2:14 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef Kind of forgot what the point was too. I guess anorak or whoever is a bad guy? That wants to control oasis (like wade is doing currently)? Why would we think he would be any worse than wade who has already established he will stop at nothing to humiliate and eliminate anyone that crosses him? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#41990257) |
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Date: February 24th, 2021 8:34 PM Author: duck-like red cuck "It takes Wade "less than a minute" to reach the ambulance, which as he said was 2.8 miles away. That means his crater-leaving spider robot was running, on land, at least 168 mph."
IRL LOL at this absurdity |
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Date: February 24th, 2021 8:35 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42004491) |
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Date: February 22nd, 2021 6:24 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 28 -Wade gets out of his OASIS-rig-inside-the-OASIS and returns to the study inside Castle Anorak. He opens a shutter to stare down Anorak and reiterates his threat to push the Big Red Button...and really, wouldn't this climactic threat have worked a lot better if there hadn't been a pointless gunfight detour for a chapter first? The plotting of this is just a mess.
-Mercifully, since this book is such a mess, Anorak just taunts Wade by reminding him of the stakes:
"'Careful now, Parzival,' Anorak said. 'If you press that button, you’ll become the biggest mass murderer in history. And you’ll be committing suicide at the same time.' He leveled a finger at me. 'I warned you before—if the OASIS goes offline, my modified headset firmware will kill every ONI user still connected to the system. Including you, Wade.'"
-Wade pulls out the seven shards and says that he's not coming out of his office, and if Anorak lets him die there he'll never be able to assemble the shards and revive the digital copy of Kira Morrow (I don't think it was ever confirmed this was what Anorak was attempting to do, but I guess now it's just understood). Also, suddenly Cline remembers there's a plot thread he forgot about so he just resolves it here:
"After our conversation on Arda, the first thing Samantha had done upon logging out was take the data uplink to ARC@DIA physically offline. So no matter what happened, Anorak would be stuck here on Earth, playing solitaire on a solar-powered desktop PC somewhere, until his hardware or his power source failed, or someone found his hiding place. I didn’t tell him any of that though."
Okay, Wade, why wouldn't you tell him that? Wouldn't it be really helpful to make it clear to Anorak that you've figured out his plan to flee Earth so he knows it makes more sense to negotiate instead of play hardball? Alternatively, why are you telling the reader about it if it doesn't even matter? It's just pure autism, the need to double back to "resolve" an open plot thread.
-Wade tells Anorak that the copy of Kira Morrow still wouldn't love him, because she only had one true love and he just held him hostage at gunpoint. Being an insane AI, Anorak claims he is better than the real Halliday, and that Morrow won't find out.
-Then, to infodump, Anorak shows Wade a letter that Halliday sent to Ogden after his death. It's written in cringespeak ("The Grim Reaper finally asked me to dance, and I did the mortal coil shuffle."), but at least in this case it's in-character. The gist of the letter is that Halliday confesses to copying Kira's brain, apologizes for it, but then says that he hopes his technology will allow nobody to lose a loved one ever again, because an exact copy can always be preserved in cyberspace. He invites Ogden to complete the 7 Shards quest to meet Kira again, and if he agrees that she really is an authentic revival of his wife, then the technology can be shared with the world. If not, then it will be up to Halliday's heir to decide instead.
-Anorak raves that since Ogden wasn't completing the shard quest, he'd abandoned his wife in suspended animation forever. Then, in an effort to make Wade cave, he shows him video broadcasts of his friends (I guess there are just camera feeds everywhere for Anorak to hack?). The imagery is kind of funny; recall that all these people are in these impenetrable spider-robot battle coffins:
"A second later, several more vidfeed windows appeared around them, providing me with a live view of my friends’ weeping loved ones (the few who weren’t currently trapped in the OASIS themselves). I could see Shoto’s wife and his parents gathered around his immersion vault, all of their heads bowed solemnly. Another vidfeed window gave me a view of Aech’s immersion vault in her home in L.A. Her fiancée, Endira, was lying on top of it, wailing over it as if it were a closed casket."
-Anorak then claims that he was bluffing; anybody whose avatar died is perfectly safe, being kept in a dreamlike state that makes them immune to synaptic overload. This sparks another dumb reference:
"'Then prove it,' I said. 'Release them all right now. Release everyone but me! Then I’ll give you what you want.' '" "'Take me, Khan!' Anorak quoted. 'Spare my crew!' He chuckled softly and shook his head. 'That’s a very noble offer, Wade. But I can’t do it.'"
-Being at an impasse, Wade proposes another idea: A duel to the death. If Halliday wins he gets the shards, if he loses everyone gets released. Halliday accepts, smug from the fact that Wade is clearly suffering from synaptic overload syndrome and this will make him unable to fight well. Except...wait, doesn't Wade have the Robes of Anorak on? Don't those make him completely invincible? Here's some lines from early in the book:
"Now that my avatar wore the Robes of Anorak, I was both omnipotent and invulnerable, so there was literally nothing anyone could do to stop me."
"But since I wore the Robes of Anorak, I could teleport anywhere at any time, for free. "
"One of the superuser abilities the Robes of Anorak gave me was the ability to simply wish for things out loud. If it could, the system would almost always grant my wish."
And when Wade says "invulnerable," it doesn't seem to be an exaggerated way of saying he has unfathomably high HP. From the first book:
"My stats were all completely maxxed out, and I now had a list of spells, inherent powers, and magic items that seemed to scroll on forever. My avatar’s level and hit-point counters both had infinity symbols in front of them."
All of this is why Anorak had to trick Wade into giving him the Robes of Anorak by touching him. So seriously, if Wade is fighting Anorak in a "duel to the death," why does his brain fog matter at all? Can't he basically delete Anorak from existence with his super-avatar now that he knows who he is?
But anyway, none of that happens, because instead Wade is pulling a TRICK on Anorak, tee hee:
"'I never said who you had to fight to the death,' I muttered, smiling weakly. 'Then I pointed over Anorak’s shoulder. He turned around to see the Great and Powerful Og hovering in the air behind him.
"'Hey, nerd,' Og said. 'Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?'"
-And that's all for this short chapter. The next one will be the climactic battle I guess.
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Date: February 24th, 2021 8:10 PM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake From bad to worse to ....this.
Thanks for keeping this up I know its a slog. |
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Date: February 24th, 2021 8:24 PM Author: overrated tanning salon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42004441) |
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Date: February 24th, 2021 8:25 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church yeah this one’s so bad that it’s gotten tough to mock. there’s no shoving a nerd in a locker joy to be had here, it’s just shit (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42004445) |
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Date: February 25th, 2021 11:38 PM Author: territorial fiercely-loyal theatre pisswyrm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42011036) |
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Date: February 25th, 2021 3:39 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 29 -Oh my god, this chapter is going to be something else. It's time for Cline to try and right an ANIME-STYLE fight scene:
"Anorak looked genuinely surprised that Og was still alive. He looked even more surprised a second later, when tines of blue lightning erupted from Og’s fingertips and blasted him backward several hundred yards before he collided with a mountain, creating a large impact crater that immediately started an avalanche. Anorak was buried under tons of rock in a matter of seconds. But moments later, he exploded up out of the rubble looking completely unharmed."
-Og should be on the brink of death, but Wade realizes that for the first time ever, he put on an ONI headset just so he could face off against Anorak. Waaaaaaaaait a minute: GSS disabled all ONI logins back in Chapter 9 to stop Anorak from trapping even more people in the ONI. How did Og log in? Did GSS seriously go back to letting people log in normally when a rogue AI is on the loose and 500 million lives are at risk?
-Remember that Wade wasn't the first one to log in when Anorak used his infirmware trick. Other users like Faisal have been online almost a half-hour longer. Wade is already over the time limit and feeling the effects of synaptic overload, so presumably some people are already mere minutes away from death (if they aren't dying already). So what's Wade's big concern right now? Making sure everyone can see this AWESOME fight:
"I ended up having a front-row seat for what was undoubtedly the most epic player-versus-NPC battle in the history of the OASIS, as the avatars of its two creators locked horns for the biggest prizefight in history—the Great and Powerful Og versus Anorak the All-Knowing, the digital ghost of his old partner, James Halliday. And since I had such a great view, I decided to air everything I was seeing on my POV channel, so the whole world could tune in."
-But it turns out Wade isn't the only one eager to broadcast this badass moment for posterity. With perhaps mere moments left to live, Ogden is doing it too!
"I slowly lowered myself to the floor and lay very still. That was when I noticed the broadcast-invitation icon flashing on my HUD—an indication that one of the handful of people on my friends list was currently doing a live broadcast of their avatar’s POV. When I tapped the icon, I discovered that it was Og! Og was broadcasting his battle with Anorak live to the entire OASIS. Along with the rest of the world, I watched as the battle of the OASIS co-creators continued to rage on outside, in the skies around the castle. Anorak and Og exchanged blasts of red and blue lightning, scorching the landscape all around them."
-Hundreds of thousands of NPCs teleport into the vicinity, brought there by Anorak, but they don't fight or anything, they just stand there looking ominous and cool. Art3mis also teleports in (I guess she's not worried about keeping Og's physical body alive) and tries to fight Anorak, but she gets obliterated instantly. This "enrages" Ogden, even though Art3mis isn't using an ONI and therefore suffers zero risk from dying in the video game.
-The actual fight description is...oh God:
"Og let out an angry cry of rage as his avatar took flight again. He rocketed toward Anorak like an ICBM and the two of them collided in another explosion of light and energy. From that moment on, Og and Anorak were locked into a knock-down, drag-out man-versus-machine fight to the death that seemed like it might go on forever. It was like Yoda versus Palpatine, Gandalf versus Saruman, and Neo versus Agent Smith, all rolled into one epic clash of the titans."
(previously, btw, Wade also compared the fight to Superman versus General Zog)
-Wade says that Anorak and Og are "exchanging blasts of red and blue lightning." I assume the implication is that Anorak is shooting red, and Ogden blue, but actually in RP1 Ogden is described as shooting red lightning when he uses magic.
-Anyway, after several minutes of fighting, Anorak starts to win, and entraps Ogden in an "egg-shaped cage with bars of white-hot iron." To finish him off, he pulls out something called a Wand of Orcus, which is an actual artifact from D&D I guess. I'm sure that brief mention is really cool to D&D fans.
-But wait! At the last minute, L0hengring teleports in. And, uh, this happens:
"The bad news was that she was completely alone. The good news was that she held the Dorkslayer sword aloft in her right hand. Blinding sunlight glinted off its silver blade. Og spotted her right away. As soon as he did, he drew an artifact of his own from his avatar’s inventory—a ridiculously large cartoon sledgehammer that he must’ve picked up on the planet Toontown. He swung the hammer in a wide arc and used it to shatter the glowing bars of the magical cage surrounding his avatar, freeing him from Anorak’s spell. Then he swung the hammer a second time and struck Anorak on the top of his head, pile-driving his avatar several feet down into the ground, burying him up to his waist. As Anorak struggled to free himself, Og ran over to L0hengrin and held his hand out to her. She bowed her head and presented him with the sword."
-Anorak then vaporizes L0 with his wand, and Wade even notes that pauses to scoop up her inventory...which seems pretty pointless because one paragraph later Ogden slices him in half with the Dorkslayer sword. There are no final words or anything. Just an abrupt end. You can pause to just soak up the beautiful prose: "Anorak’s avatar slowly vanished, leaving behind the biggest loot drop in history. Og was standing right in the midst of it, so all of Anorak’s items were automatically added to his inventory."
-But Ogden himself doesn't look much better. The color drains from his face and his wobbles on his feet. Obviously, he is about to die in real life, but rather than just let the moment happen, Cline HAS to do more of his autistic worldbuilding:
"A red cross appeared above his avatar’s head, pulsing on and off in time with the sound of an alarm bell. I knew what this icon meant, even though this was the first time I’d ever actually seen it in person. It meant that the user operating that avatar was experiencing a serious medical problem in the real world. When this happened, the user was automatically logged out of the OASIS, and an ambulance was summoned to their real-world location (if one was on file)."
Good Lord. You're at the climax of your book, and you're throwing in details like "Yeah we automatically log them out if they're having a medical issue, and send an ambulance to their address (but only if we have one on file!!!)." Just STOP man.
-Anorak turns out to be good to his word. When he dies, the infirmware disappears and everyone in the OASIS is released. Wade wakes up for all of five seconds, and then passes out due to synaptic overload symptoms.
-When he wakes up, he's in a hospital bed at GSS's internal infirmary. Art3mis is there and they make out. He then discovers that Anorak was telling the truth. Everybody whose avatar died in the OASIS had their headset activity suspended, so they didn't suffer from synaptic overload even if they exceeded the time limit. But Wade also describes Faisal as appearing "in perfect health," and Faisal's avatar never got killed, AND he was a half hour ahead of Wade in terms of logging in! What gives?
-Ogden, though, is dead. But before he died, he asked Art3mis to give Wade a message:
"'He told me to tell you he was wrong. Leaving Kira locked away forever wasn’t his choice to make. It should be her decision. He said you should bring her back and let her decide what she wants. And, if she thinks it’s a good idea, bring him back too.' She shrugged. 'Do you know what he meant by any of that?'"
-Wait, why is Art3mis acting confused about what Ogden might mean? She knows exactly what he means! In Chapter 13, Wade explicitly speculated to Kira that the shards would create an AI copy of Kira Morrow. In Chapter 25, Wade told her his theory that Anorak was plotting to resurrect the digital copy of Kira and then flee Earth in his spaceship.
-But anyway, this request causes Wade to realize something. He leaps from his hospital bed and tells Art3mis they need to log back into the OASIS right away. The chapter ends.
-Yes, somehow there are still two chapters to go in this monstrosity. |
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Date: February 25th, 2021 7:45 PM Author: duck-like red cuck You're a good dood doing good work ITT (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42009668) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 2:58 PM Author: Citrine bbw gunner (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42023474) |
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Date: February 27th, 2021 2:28 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship (if one was on file) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42017560) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 9:50 AM Author: lake national security agency (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42027452) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 9:51 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church great example of the lack of cline’s artistry, competence, and planning given the level of craftsmanship we see in every word, it would be a 10 minute exercise to slap the setup of this dumb single-use concept of a medical icon somewhere in the first 10 chapters so that it doesn’t encroach on the climax of the book. and yet |
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Date: February 25th, 2021 7:41 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42009658) |
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Date: February 27th, 2021 12:59 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Chapter 30 -As he logs in, Wade uses his superuser abilities to resurrect the avatars for Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, L0hengrin, and the other members of the Low Five, "who had all been slain during their quest to retrieve the Dorkslayer."
"The next time Lo and her friends logged back in, they would discover that their slain avatars had been restored to life, along with their inventories. They would also find their inboxes filled with offers to buy the film rights to their story. By the end of the week, there would be several Quest for the Dorkslayer movie and TV projects in development."
Wow, sounds like it was quite the adventure! Too bad it all happened off-screen and this entire group of people were entirely pointless except as a MacGuffin delivery service and a way for Cline to show how pro-tranny he is. Also, what would even happen in a "Quest for the Dorkslayer" TV show? The entire Anorak incident lasted just 12 hours, they were only involved in the second half of it, and they spent most of that time digging through a replica of 1980s Ohio looking for clues. Even if their totally-undescribed hunt for the Dorkslayer sword was action-packed, how do you make more than like three episodes out of this concept?
-Anyway, Wade gets his friends to assemble in the OASIS and they merge the Seven Shards together. A 20-something Kira Underwood materializes into existence. She's aware of exactly what she is, a copy of the original Kira's consciousness, and her first question is whether her husband is alive. Wade answers with the dignity you'd expect of him:
"I glanced over at Art3mis for emotional support, then turned back to Leucosia and shook my head. I took a deep breath and told Kira everything that had happened, from Anorak’s ultimatum to Og’s heroic final act. It all came out in a rambling, tearful mess, and I bawled through the last part of it, explaining how Og had died, so Art3mis had to finish for me, which immediately put her in tears too. When we finished telling her what had happened, Leucosia nodded. Then, to our surprise, she walked over and gave each of us a hug."
-This is how Cline has Kira respond to Wade telling her of her husband's heroic death. This is literally the very next paragraph from the one above:
"'Thank you for sharing all of that with me,' she said. 'As soon as you woke me back up, I was able to access the Internet, like any other OASIS avatar. The newsfeeds are already running stories about Og’s death, but the story is still unconfirmed and there weren’t any details about what happened to him.'"
-Good GOD, Cline, just STOP. The fucking autism is off the charts. He can't just have his character learn emotional news. He has to autistically have her be like "actually like other OASIS avatars I can access the Internet but ty for verifying these unconfirmed reports." Fucking hell.
-Wade asks Kira what she remembers, and her first response is to observe that Halliday referred to Anorak as his real-life "save-game file." She then drones on about how Anorak came to be:
"'Apparently Jim had a few dark secrets inside his head that he didn’t want to share with anyone,' Leucosia said. 'Including a digital copy of himself. So he insisted on erasing large portions of Anorak’s memory, in an effort to make him more stable. But his tampering had the opposite effect, and Jim was forced to place restrictions on Anorak’s behavior. Unfortunately, it seems Anorak was later able to remove them. That’s why he was able to cause you so much trouble...'"
Wait a minute, Kira is literally just repeating what Anorak already said in Part 1 of this shitty book. Seriously! This is what Anorak said in Chapter 9:
"He determined that I was psychologically unstable. Unfit for autonomy. So he decided to modify me. He erased some of my—or rather, some of his—memories. He also placed restrictions on my behavior and my mental capacities. I was saddled with hundreds of directives to keep me in line. Including instructions to delete myself as soon as the contest was over and I had carried out the last of my programming."
-Seriously, it's almost the same thing. Anorak even explained exactly how he removed the restrictions; it was due to a programming oversight that made the directives deactivate a split second before he deleted himself. Wow, thanks for having Kira pointlessly re-state what we already know, Cline!
-Anyway, when Halliday copied Kira's consciousness, he placed her in an isolated simulation to talk to her and try to get her to fall in love with him, but this failed because Kira's copy was naturally still "madly in love" with Ogden. To try and understand, Halliday started to watch playbacks of Kira's memories, which caused him to finally develop empathy at the end of his life. He decided he was a monster, and offered to destroy his consciousness-copying technology. But copy-Kira actually stops him, telling him to instead share the technology with the world.
-But instead, Halliday decides to do the Shard Hunt, to ensure the technology is hidden until the world is "ready." Because I guess readiness for digital brain cloning tech is determined by mastery of Silmarillion trivia. He also gets Kira's permission to use her memories in the shard hunt, "in the hope that his heir would learn the same lessons from them that he did." Okay, huh? Wade didn't learn anything from those memories. They were only a few seconds long each, and they were really just used to create a "mystery" early in the book. How would anybody learn anything from them? Wouldn't the memories be completely meaningless to someone unless they already knew the details of Kira's life?
-Anyway, now that she's resurrected, Kira gives Wade an item, the "Rod of Resurrection." Cline's descriptive powers are taken to their limit: "[It] was a short metal bar, about the size and length of a flashlight, with a chrome ball at one end. It looked like a lightning rod. Or maybe some sort of futuristic weapon."
-Oh, and of course Kira gives the Rod to Wade with a super stupidy cheesey line:
"'Sir Parzival,' she said. 'I present you with the Rod of Resurrection. It will endow you, its wielder, with the ability to create new life and overcome death. If you use its power wisely, it will forever alter and elevate the destiny of the human race.'"
-So yep! RP2 ends with Wade being made digital God. He has the power to, at will, create sentient digital copies of people's consciousnesses. But Wade is filled with angst: What if they are insane like Anorak? Kira assures him that it won't happen:
"'You don’t have to worry about that,' she replied. 'Anorak was a corrupted copy of James Halliday’s mind,' she said. 'An unfortunate by-product of his tortured psyche and abysmal self-esteem.' She shook her head. 'If James hadn’t tampered with Anorak’s memory and his autonomy, he never would have become unstable. James learned from his mistake. The rod will only allow you to ‘resurrect’ an unaltered copy of a user's consciousness. You can’t tamper with their memory or modify their behavior in any way before you bring them back. James told me he wanted to make sure of this, so he built safeguards into the software to ensure it.'"
-Wait, if James learned from his mistake, knew Anorak was unstable, and only wanted stable and sane copies to be made in the future, WHY DIDN'T HE DELETE ANORAK? It should have been completely simple for him to just delete the corrupted copy and replace him with a normal one. Why did he leave his broken sentient AI around to supervise his contest and eventually snap?
-Wade realizes that every time anyone uses ONI, a complete copy of their brain is made. The Rod allows him to make a digital copy out of any brain scan file he wants, living or dead, as long as they have used ONI at least once.
-Kira says she sadly has already read through news archives to learn that Ogden never used an ONI headset and so no copy of him exists. Except, literally just three fucking pages ago, Wade said "I took a deep breath and told Kira everything that had happened, from Anorak’s ultimatum to Og’s heroic final act." I guess he just skipped that part? Anyway, Wade tests out the Rod by resurrecting Ogden. He manages to make the process sound as boring and sterile as possible:
"I activated the artifact by holding it aloft, and a control menu appeared on my HUD. It contained a long, scrolling, alphabetized list of ONI user names, along with the name of their avatar, and the time and date they last accessed the OASIS. Below the list of names, there was a large Resurrect button. Every OASIS user who had ever put on an ONI headset was on the list. Most of those users were still alive, but a few of them were labeled as deceased. The Rod of Resurrection allowed me to create digital copies of real human beings as autonomous DPCs inside the OASIS. And it didn’t matter if those people were still alive or not. I could clone the living or raise the dead, with the press of a button. ... What Halliday had invented was no less than affordable, reliable, consumer-grade immortality."
-Ogden resurrects, and he and Kira immediately start "making out." Probably not the term I'd use for this moment, but okay. Also, Art3mis resurrects her dead grandma and starts hanging out with her.
-Wade describes in weird, forced terms how happy this made hi:
"Witnessing these two impossible, blissful reunions filled me with joy too. Genuine, unbridled joy. And I wasn’t playing back an ONI recording of secondhand joy experienced by someone else, somewhere else, at some time in the past. It was my own, hard-won and earned at great personal cost."
Wait, what cost did Wade have to pay? He didn't lose anything in all this. I guess he came close to dying through his own stupidity, but that's about it.
-Wade tries, and fails, to sound all cool and philosophical:
"We might be part of the last generation ever to know the sting of human mortality. From this moment forth, death would have no more dominion. We were witnessing the dawn of the posthuman era. The Singularity by way of simulacra and simulation. One final gift to human civilization from the troubled-but-brilliant mind of James Donovan Halliday. He had delivered all of us unto this digital paradise, but his own tragic flaws had prevented him from passing through its gates himself."
-But then Wade backtracks, and he also decides that the world isn't "ready" for this technology. The "Anorak Incident" will make people distrust AIs and they may never recover enough to tolerate them again. But Wade has thought of a solution, which will be revealed in the final chapter.
-Thank fucking God there is only one chapter left of this. |
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Date: February 27th, 2021 2:36 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship “ I guess readiness for digital brain cloning tech is determined by mastery of Silmarillion trivia”
And then he decides, maybe not ready anyway?? |
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Date: February 27th, 2021 1:18 PM Author: Stubborn University French Chef But instead, Halliday decides to do the Shard Hunt, to ensure the technology is hidden until the world is "ready." Because I guess readiness for digital brain cloning tech is determined by mastery of Silmarillion trivia.
Lol |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 1:42 AM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Subject: Epilogue -Whew! We finally made it, after three months. Sorry for all the long breaks.
-So, why did Cline introduce digital immortality, but then suddenly back off and say the world Wasn't Ready? Why, to have his weird forced Space Ending, of course! That's right, Wade's interstellar spaceship wasn't just a piece of technowankery, it was a Chekhov's Gun for the dumb ending of this terrible book:
"All Wade had to do was have the engineers at GSS reconnect the OASIS data uplink to ARC@DIA on board the Vonnegut. Then they were able to copy all of the resurrected AIs from the OASIS servers to the duplicate ARC@DIA servers. Og, Kira, and Ev3lyn all disappeared from the old, overcrowded simulation and reappeared inside the brand-new (and completely empty) one that had been prepared aboard the ship."
-Oh yeah, Art3mis's revived grandmother has the username "Ev3lyn."
-So yeah, the new resurrected digital clones get uploaded to the mini-OASIS on the Vonnegut. Now that Wade is back with Art3mis, he doesn't want to leave Earth anymore. But to keep the digital clones company, he and Art3mis make copies of themselves and upload them to the Vonnegut's computer as well. In Art3mis's case, it is the first and only time she ever puts on an ONI headset. Wade also convinces Aech, Shoto, and their spouses to upload copies of themselves to the Vonnegut computer as well. Then, for good measure, they also upload the complete library of ONI brain scans as well, "digitized human souls," to be kept in suspended animation for "safekeeping."
-So yep, plot twist! This book isn't being narrated by Wade. It's being narrated by Wade's digital clone on board the Vonnegut's computer, who has the exact same memories as Wade up to the moment he put on the ONI headset to create him. And now, they're going off to colonize space:
"Wade gave me administrative command of the Vonnegut and its computer just before he launched the ship out into space. The only organic human beings on board were the several thousand frozen embryos we had stored in the deep freeze, just in case. We are able to maintain and repair the ship with telebots that we control from inside the ARC@DIA simulation. We don’t need food or life support. We get everything we need from the ship’s solar panel array and its batteries. And we have everything we will ever need, here inside ARC@DIA. Billions of digitized human minds, launched out into space, along with a complete record of our entire culture. Of course, ARC@DIA doesn’t have enough processing power to simulate that many digital people at once. It can only handle a few dozen, which is fine by me and the rest of the tiny crew. We still have millions of NPCs to keep us company. And our own backup copy of the ONI-net, containing millions of human experiences recorded back home. And we’ll have one another..."
-Okay, I know Wade is trying to cover his ass by saying that Arc@dia's processing power can only simulate a few dozen people, but he's forgetting something else: How is the ship storing all those billions of brain scan files? It was explicitly stated earlier in the book that their size is gargantuan and had a noticeable impact on GSS's global data storage requirements:
"Another side effect of releasing the headsets had been a huge increase in the company’s data-storage needs, due to the enormous UBS (user brain scan) files that were stored in every ONI user’s account, which got updated every time they logged in or out of the OASIS. So as the total number of ONI users continued to increase, so did our massive data-storage requirements."
-In fact, at the start of the book, Faisal was telling Wade about a new million-yottabyte server farm coming online, and that was described as only enough to handle user growth for the next year. But now, at the end of the book, Wade can fit all those brain scans into the memory of a single spaceship? But wait, it gets dumber! According to Wade, they have at least two copies of every brain scan, because they're all stored on the Vonnegut's "array of backup servers." So he's taking a blob of data whose requirements are measured in millions of yottabytes and fitting it on his stupid spaceship TWICE?
-CyberWade talks about how awesome it is to be a digital person:
"Well, there are a few downsides to becoming a completely digital person. We can’t log out of ARC@DIA—ever. But on the upside, we’ve stopped aging. And we no longer need to eat, sleep, or get out of bed to take a leak. We have been freed from all of the hassles that came with being trapped inside a physical body—including death. In addition to being immortal, I also have a photographic memory, with total recall of every detail of every single moment I ever experienced. It’s like having access to an ONI recording of my entire life. I can recall and relive any part of it anytime I please. It’s like time travel. Art3mis and I are both ageless, immortal beings now, living together in harmony, in a paradise of our own making, aboard a spacecraft carrying us to the nearest star. Life is good."
-You know, I could think of A FEW greater philosophical or moral concerns that might arise from this. Like, if these digital humans are real, can Wade (or anyone else) create a person and then torture them for all eternity, like in a Black Mirror episode? Also, wouldn't having absolutely perfect memory recall fundamentally change a person's nature and personality? And really, isn't there a distinction to be made between an identical copy of a person, and the actual original person, such that saying a person was "resurrected" is not actually true? Oh well, those interesting questions have no place here. For Cline digital immortality is just being able to geek out in 80s simulations forever.
-Although they're zooming off into space, the digital clones stay in touch with the real-life versions back on Earth:
"Wade and Samantha finally tied the knot a few months ago. Their first dance as husband and wife was an elaborate Bollywood number that they performed together. Aech and her wife, Endira, were the Best Man and the Matron of Honor, and they both joined in. The video they sent us, of the four of them dancing together in perfect synchrony, is my absolute favorite. I rewatch it every day."
-If CyberWade has "a photographic memory, with total recall of every detail of every single moment I ever experienced," why does he feel the need to rewatch the video?
-IRL Wade and Art3mis have a baby girl and name her Kira. CyberWade follows vicariously and says that IRL Wade is "going to be a great dad," which feels kind of narcissistic for an exact copy to say. And also, it sounds false, because Wade is a fucking loser.
-IRL Art3mis apologizes to Wade for being totally wrong about how amazing the ONI is, and then for good measure also goes to apologize to his online copy too. This thing reads like a lot of incel/beta wish fulfillment tbh:
"'I was wrong,' she told me, after she’d told Wade. 'This technology does make a lot of people’s lives infinitely better than they would be without it. People like L0hengrin and my grandmother. And it also saves people’s lives—it saves everything about who they were—forever. I have my grandma back. And she has me back too. It’s a miracle and I am grateful for it every day.' Then, because she’s the sweetest and the coolest, Samantha added, 'And your stubbornness helped make that happen, Parzival. So thank you. I thank Wade all the time, too, but you deserve at least half the credit.'"
-CyberWade notes that Earth is still in deep doodoo, but don't worry, "they also still have the OASIS as their collective means of escape." With literally one page to go, Cline autistically doubles back to assure readers that nobody died from synaptic overload during the book, only from that plane crash Anorak caused or from being murdered while trapped in their headsets. So in the end, people decided ONI was still worth it and it's fine. But they're still not telling them about the power to clone/resurrect people, I guess. By the way, if they can clone human intelligences, wouldn't that be really helpful for solving problems? Like, could they clone the 50 best scientists 50,000 times apiece so they can try to make new discoveries? Guess that's another question Cline didn't think of!
The book ends with this. I'm just going to post all of it so people can cringe along with me:
"Our existence is filled with joy and happiness. I am alive. And I’m with Samantha. And our friends are all alive too. And we are all together, embarking on the greatest adventure in the history of our species. And best of all, we’re going to live forever. I will never have to lose them, and they will never have to lose me.
"I grew up playing videogames. Now I live my whole life inside of one. That’s why I feel qualified to say that Kira Underwood was right, when she said that life was like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. But sometimes the game can have a surprise ending...
"And sometimes, when you think you’ve finally reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing at the start of a whole new level. A level that you’ve never seen before.
"And the only thing you can do is keep right on playing. Because the game that is your life still isn’t over yet. And there’s no telling how far you might be able to get, what you might discover, or who you might meet when you get there."
-I'm so glad to be done with this awful book. Thanks for reading, everyone! |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 4:40 AM Author: godawful electric house Thank you for your service (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42021957) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 8:19 AM Author: dun bawdyhouse windowlicker (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42022159) |
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Date: January 28th, 2024 1:39 PM Author: Twinkling office (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#47339218) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 8:30 AM Author: cobalt nursing home You are 180 for doing this. “I am alive.” |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 9:18 AM Author: Stubborn University French Chef Thanks. Any final overarching points to make about book Cline etc? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42022227) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 2:46 PM Author: Deranged box office love of her life Really, the final stages of the book just drive all his shortcomings home in such an overt way:
-The fedora atheism -The cringe way he tries to loop in "woke" shit from the last 5 years, to prove he's one of the "good" dorks. -The "I fucking love science!" techno-optimism combined with zero actual knowledge of technology or science in any capacity, or any interest in the philosophical implications of what he talks about. -The autistic writing style, where all the way down to the last page he feels the need to explain various lore/worldbuilding things that don't matter.
As far as the book overall goes, I think the absolute worst low points of RP1 were lower than anything in this one. There's nothing here quite on par with that multi-page screed about all the shit he memorized in the first book. There's also fewer plot holes compared to the first one. That said, this book still incredibly manages to be a step down, mostly due to the 12-hour countdown. Because they had to find the shards so quickly, there's zero sense of mystery at all in the story. Instead, for every single clue, one of the cast members knows immediately what they need to do and getting the shard is just a fetch-quest where he drops a bunch of references while the characters autopilot to the end. The absolute low point is probably when Wade suffers a near psychotic break at the prospect of fighting Morgoth, and Art3mis is like "nobody has EVER beaten this quest," and then winning is a matter of just walking in putting everyone to sleep and walking out. Not only is the whole book a fetch-quest, but it's a DULL fetch-quest.
I was considering doing a review of Armada, Cline's other book, but the second half of this book kinda beat the enthusiasm for that out of me. This was just SO bad. |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 3:14 PM Author: ungodly nighttime home potus (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42023553) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 7:30 AM Author: Milky sound barrier church (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42027045) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 10:00 AM Author: lake national security agency -The "I fucking love science!" techno-optimism combined with zero actual knowledge of technology or science in any capacity, or any interest in the philosophical implications of what he talks about.
It's really astonishing how little he seems to know about these tech matters despite superficial enthusiasm |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 12:27 PM Author: Milky sound barrier church really slathered on the r/atheism fedora euphoria in the home stretch, jfc. salute for wading through this substance-free garbage on are behalf (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42022873) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 2:18 PM Author: overrated tanning salon Oh God.
The scariest part is.
The clear buildup to ready Players 3 & 4. |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 3:02 PM Author: Citrine bbw gunner great thread (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42023490) |
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Date: February 28th, 2021 3:02 PM Author: Misunderstood magenta location (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42023491) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 9:35 AM Author: aqua arrogant newt corn cake 180 thread. thank you for your effort, truly. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42027395) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 11:28 AM Author: Mahogany cruise ship "The only organic human beings on board were the several thousand frozen embryos we had stored in the deep freeze, just in case."
Wait, he's implying that embryos are HUMAN BEINGS?! Alert the shitlib gestapo, that is NOT OK. |
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Date: March 2nd, 2021 2:10 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship Also, this is just never revisited? Why do they even need them if they have their computer sim? If they are some kind of "organic backup" what's the plan for growing these into adults?! (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42035655) |
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Date: March 1st, 2021 11:42 AM Author: deep hairraiser area new version even though i read all the posts when you posted them i completely lost track of wtf was going on around the time they went to prince-world. so i've just been trusting your judgment on everything since then. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42028040) |
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Date: March 3rd, 2021 9:31 PM Author: Mahogany cruise ship The book has no plot. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#42044241) |
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Date: December 31st, 2021 4:46 PM Author: Talented nowag doctorate (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#43706427) |
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Date: April 13th, 2022 9:05 AM Author: Twinkling office (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4698784&forum_id=2#44329743) |