Content warning: suicide, male entitlement, toxic masculinity.
I... really don't think I can do this. Does anyone even want me to do this? Is it worth it?
Well, okay, I'll try to do the best I can with this material, because... let's just get it over and done with quickly.
Infodump, infodump, the Sixers are getting the upper hand on the gunters on the Scoreboard. Wade sends Shoto messages, asking what happened to Daito, but no dice - so he assumes Shoto is just really focused on finding the Second Gate like everyone else. Or he's grieving, which does turn out to be the case.
Yeah, grieving: an alien concept to Wade, as we've seen.
Wade tries to decipher the clue on the Jade Key:
Continue your quest by taking the test.
Yes, but what test? What test was I supposed to take? The Kobayashi Maru? The Pepsi Challenge? Could the clue be any more vague? (Page 236)
Pepsi Challenge. Pepsi advertisement. Again, this book has not aged well.
Wade wisely decides that he should log out of the OASIS and get some sleep, but then he sees the wrapper which came with the Key, and thinks the riddle must have something to do with it. He thinks it might be a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory reference - hey, there's another obvious reference that managed to restrain itself for this long! But he dismisses it. He finally goes to sleep.
He wakes up to find that Sorrento has cleared the Second Gate, and is on top of the Scoreboard.
I suddenly felt ill, and I was also having a difficult time breathing. I realized I must be having some kind of panic attack. A total and complete freak-out. A massive mental meltdown. Whatever you want to call it. I went a little nuts. (Page 237)
It's just a game, Wade. Calm down. So much for video games being harmless fun, then.
I tried calling Aech, but he didn't pick up. Either he was still pissed off at me, or he had other, more pressing matters to attend to. I was about to call Shoto, but then I remembered that his brother's avatar had just been killed. He probably wasn't in a very receptive mood. (Page 237)
You already tried to call Shoto! One page ago! Consistency!
Wade considers stalking Art3mis again. He weighs his options - every single one of them points to how calling her would be a very bad idea.
He calls her anyway. No answer.
He really doesn't learn anything, does he? He has no sense of empathy, no forethought for boundaries and personal space. His inflated head is so far up his own arse that he is living off his own shit.
Leave Art3mis alone! Sheesh!
Desperate to talk to someone, he resorts to Max, who isn't a real person:
You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software. (Page 237)
No comment.
Sixers rule the Scoreboard now. They are winning, They are close to the egg.
Sorrento then acquires the final key, the Crystal Key.
I sat there in my stronghold, staring at the monitors, watching all of this unfold in stunned horror. There was no denying it. The end of the contest was at hand. And it wasn't going to end like I'd always thought it would, with some noble, worthy gunter finding the egg and winning the prize. I'd been kidding myself for the past five and a half years. We all had. This story was not going to have a happy ending. The bad guys were going to win. (Page 238)
Welcome to real life, shithead! Now you know how most people felt at the end of the 2016 presidential election.
More and more Sixers acquire copies of the Crystal Key. Wade sinks deeper and deeper into depression.
I'd already lost Art3mis, and now I was going to lose the contest, too. (Page 239)
Priorities!
FYI, for the last time, Art3mis was never yours! She. is. not. a. possession!
I'd already decided what I was going to do when it happened. First, I would choose one of the kids in my official fan club, someone with no money and a first-level newbie avatar, and give her every item I owned. Then I would activate the self-destruct sequence on my stronghold and sit in my command center while the whole place went up in a massive thermonuclear explosion. My avatar would die and GAME OVER would appear in the center of my display. Then I would rip off my visor and leave my apartment for the first time in six months. (Page 239)
...
...
...
Oh.
Oh.
Oh... oh no. This... this isn't going where I think it's going, is it?
He wouldn't. He really wouldn't. Even he wouldn't go that far.
Am I talking about Wade or Cline?
Both.
I can't even stop to give the above quote a little praise for the female pronoun given to the person Wade wants to give everything to after he destroys his avatar and OASIS account. Because... oh god... surely he wouldn't--
There was an arboretum on the roof of my apartment building. I had never visited it, but I'd seen photos and admired the view via webcam. A transparent Plexiglas barrier has been installed around the edge to keep people from jumping, but it was a joke. At least three determined individuals had managed to climb over it since I'd moved in. (Page 239)
It's not a joke, Wade. It's not a fucking joke. Why are you being so casual about this?
Please, please do not go there--
I would sit up there and breathe the unfiltered city air for a while, feeling the wind on my skin. Then I would scale the barrier and hurl myself over the side.
This was my current plan. (Page 239)
Jesus. H. Christ.
Ready Player One - a YA novel - a supposedly fun YA novel - has the hero seriously contemplating - no, not contemplating, planning - suicide.
Out of fucking nowhere, he shrugs and plans his suicide - because a glorified video game/his very life and self-professed reason for existence, might be changed. Changed into something he doesn't like anymore, because it would not cater to his specific privileges, whims and fantasies any longer. It won't be the easy way he wants it to; what he's always been used to.
This privileged, entitled, territorial little shit cannot handle the least change and difference, which he automatically thinks is bad. He is giving up what he perceives to be a fight. So he wants to just off himself then and there.
PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED AND SURVIVED THROUGH FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR WORSE THAN YOU, YOU SELFISH, SELF-ABSORBED, RICH, FAMOUS, EGOTISTICAL, FRAGILE, PATHETIC SHITHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is never once challenged. There is no further thought to this. No introspection. The author consciously chose to throw in the extremely sensitive, delicate, heavy, distressing, traumatizing subject matter of suicide into his novel for no reason other than to show how bad Wade is feeling at a devastating moment in his life.
His depression has gotten this far. Not when real people in his life had died, which he was partly responsible for. He doesn't care about that. No. Not human life. His utmost despair is at its zenith when he's made to consider the prospect of losing the virtual reality he knew and loved since childhood. He is literally planning to kill himself because someone is about to take away his favourite toy.
This is undermining suicide.
This is glorifying suicide.
This is dangerous.
The message here is, whether it was intended by the author or not: "When things don't go how you want them to, when you don't get your own way, when life and the world turn upside down around you and you are feeling helpless and scared, when you are feeling hopeless, when life gives you lemons, then killing yourself is a perfectly valid option."
In a novel read by teenagers.
It gets worse. This suicide plan of Wade's? It is never mentioned again ever in the rest of the book, after it is thrown at us like this. Not even in passing. Cline casually put it in and didn't come back to it. Didn't bring it up a second time. Apparently the jumping-off-the-roof plan was made only for a single page, for shock value.
A serious issue such as suicide. In a novel read. by. teenagers. By young people.
Shame on you, Ernest Cline. And I mean it. How dare you do this. How dare you decide to be this callous, blase, thoughtless and insensitive about suicide in your ALA/YALSA Alex Award-winning book.
Shame. on. you.
=sighs=
As much as I seriously don't want to continue reading this fucking book anymore - that I feel I've reached the end of my fucking tether - I know I have to. I've already come this far.
Wade decides "what tune I should whistle as I plummeted to my death" (I. HATE. YOU. GO. FUCK. OFF.), when suddenly Shoto calls him, wanting to visit his stronghold to talk about something Daito left Wade in his will.
When I returned his call to arrange a meeting, I could tell Shoto was an emotional wreck. His quiet voice was filled with pain, and the depth of his despair was apparent on the features of his avatar's face. He seemed utterly despondent. In even worse shape than I was. (Page 239)
YOU THINK!?
It is called grieving, Wade. Try expressing some empathy and human emotion that don't concern only you. Not everything is about you. Though apparently it is, since Daito left something important to you in his will, even though you did not know each other very well. In fact you didn't know each other at all.
"Something Daito had left to me in his will." (Page 239) - Fuck off.
Wade asks Shoto why Daito had created a will for his avatar, and not left everything to Shoto. And why not simply create a new avatar? The poor, bereaved boy says he'll explain when he sees Wade in person (meaning: in the OASIS, of course). Yeah, spoiler: Daito is dead in the real world. The Sixers killed him like they killed Wade's home, family and neighbours. Not that our dear, caring, thoughtful, noble hero ever makes that connection. Or thinks of his losses at all - ones that don't involve pixels, anyway.
End of chapter 24.
Now I hope that anyone who reads this will understand why I had been dreading doing this particular chapter blog post.
I officially, legitimately, unquestionably, seriously, 100%, hate Wade Owen Watts. And at the same time I feel bad for hating him. Because it is not his fault. He is a victim of James Halliday's OASIS; of Halliday's evil, monstrous scheme that is the OASIS Easter egg hunt. He is a victim of Halliday's '80s indulgence. A victim of an entitled generation. Of the unchallenged toxic masculinity zeitgeist.
Wade has been brainwashed by toxic nostalgia. He is in its clutches, deep in the rabbit hole of unreality to the point of no return. One of the most tragic figures in literature.
Not that Cline had noticed this, of course. He seemed to have thought that all of this, including the throwaway suicide plan, was fine and dandy. Nothing to be taken seriously.
Chapter 25 coming soon, after I've recovered. I need a fucking drink.
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