Ready Player One Read-Through: Level Three: Chapter 28

Content warning: drug use, fat shaming, sexism, references to police brutality and slavery.



Hey, you wanna hear more of what Halliday had to say?


Going outside is highly overrated.
- Anorak's Almanac, Chapter 17, Verse 32


Fuck you, James Halliday. Everything bad that has happened so far in this book is all your fault.

This is the man so universally admired. A lonely, secluded, pathetic egomaniac with a god complex. Your messiah, everyone!

So, Wade has put into motion his complex, dangerous plan that will likely get him killed for real. Many, many things can go wrong with it. What does he do once the action starts, where there is no going back?

He watches a children's film.


When the IOI corporate police came to arrest me, I was right in the middle of the movie Explorers (1985, directed by Joe Dante). It's about three kids who build a spaceship in their backyard and then fly off to meet aliens. Easily one of the greatest kid flicks ever made. I'd gotten into the habit of watching it at least once a month. It kept me centered. (Page 269)


Priorities!

What a smug bastard.

Also, why include the year that the film came out, along with the name of its director? This didn't happen before whenever a film was referenced in the narration. Did Cline's lawyers come knocking on his door around this point of him writing and editing Ready Player One, like how the IOI police are at Wade's apartment complex now? Couldn't the author have just cited the film in a footnote? It's kind of distracting in the text like that, especially in first-person narration.

Also also, the "three kids": meaning "three boys." Three boys building stuff and going off on adventures. When are we going to actually see either Wade or Halliday liking female-led movies? Any female-led movies that are mentioned in Anorak's Almanac?

The IOI "dropcops" or "drones" force their way into Wade's secluded stronghold in the real world using welders. Wade lets us know that the dropcops call this "doing a C-section." Wow, you could not have used more misogynistic language if you tried.


I dry-swallowed two of the antianxiety pills I'd ordered in preparation for this day. I'd already taken two earlier that morning, but they didn't seem to be working. (Page 271)


Wait, Wade is a pill-popper now? Since when?

From how he describes his usage he's going to have an overdose!

Didn't both his mother and his aunt also take drugs irresponsibly in order to cope with reality? And look how well it turned out for them!

This isn't brought up again. It literally only exists in a single small paragraph. Terrific. Yet another serious issue the author introduces out of nowhere and then drops just as quickly.

Wade thinks that now is the perfect time to look at the Scoreboard. Art3mis, Aech and Shoto have a copy of the Crystal Key, through no effort of their own, but thanks to Wade's helpful email to them. You bet he's proud of himself.

Art3mis is in first place again, and Wade doesn't think much of it, which is something. Gotta acknowledge the nuggets in a river of bullshit.

Wade wipes out his hard drive and melts his computer using a self-destruct sequence. Max is deleted (for now) - and I've realized how very little the reader gets to know him, even as an AI. We don't know how much of an effect he has had on Wade's miserable, lonely existence. No room for feelings and attachments for our hero!

The dropcops use police brutality on him:


I curled into a ball on the floor and closed my eyes. I started to shake involuntarily. I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was about to happen next.
    They were going to take me outside. (Page 273)


Oh the horror!

That is meant to be funny, right? Right?

They take him out to their transport truck. Wade expresses no emotions, no relapses, from being in the sun and breathing fresh air for the first time in over half a year. It is snowing, too, and he only describes feeling very cold. He is cutting it close to voicing the inner thoughts of a calm sociopath.

After letting himself be captured by the IOI, the very company that murdered his family and neighbours, as part of his grand plan, Wade unintentionally shows how less human he has become in locking himself up in complete and utter isolation for so long.

Other people are in the truck with him, also IOI's prisoners. One is a malnourished man. The other--


The other indent was morbidly obese, and I couldn't be sure of the person's gender. I decided to think of him as male. His face was obscured by a mop of dirty blond hair, and something that looked like a gas mask covered his nose and mouth. (Page 274)


Of course the morbidly obese person would be a guy to you. Heaven forbid poor little Wade be exposed to any fat women in his life - now that would severely traumatize him! Sexist pig.

In fact, wouldn't it be a neat twist if the person turned out to be Art3mis in real life? Show how totally not shallow and superficial our hero is after all? Or show him to confront and then overcome his prejudices and preconceptions of women?

Nah! Ready Player One is nowhere near as clever and risky as that. Male power fantasy plows on. Objectifying women and shaming fat people (when the hero himself was once fat) remain unchallenged. The poor, suffering, morbidly obese guy, who is in the same situation as Wade, is there for the oh-so empathetic Wade to be disgusted by him. Our hero!

I've read too much of this book. Let's end with saying that Wade and the other inconsequential indents are on their way to IOI headquarters, to basically work as slaves. The word "slave" is even used on more than one occasion in the following chapters. No reference to any real life, historic slavery is made, whatsoever. Issues of race and class and how privilege works are never discussed. In a book that just included police brutality, drugs, and forced incarceration and internment.

Critically-acclaimed sci-fi dystopia, everyone!

Next up, chapter 29.