Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 2

Content warning: sexism, misogyny, references to online harassment.



Wade is now in the OASIS as his avatar, Parzival, in his virtual high school. The OASIS is described as being breathtakingly realistic and awesome, and the real world has become so desolate, disorganized and neglected that the US educational department has termed the OASIS as a legit public school system and place of learning for children, with scholarships available, not just for the privileged kids.

Basically, the OASIS is reality now. Deal with it, like you can't be bothered to deal with real problems in the real world. Hail James Halliday as your lord and saviour.

There is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as a group photo in Wade's school locker (which also contains a Princess Leia poster with her blaster - thankfully there is taste and restraint enough not to include her in her infamous slave bikini from Return of the Jedi.) This is a reference that does actually come back later in the book and is significant to the plot, unlike a lot of other references.

There is exposition on how OASIS users can choose their avatars, how anonymity works, privacy, etc. Then there's naming your avatar:


Students weren't allowed to use their avatar names while they were at school. This was to prevent teachers from having to say ridiculous things like "Pimp_Grease, please pay attention!" or "BigWang69, would you stand up and give us your book report!" (Page 29)


Yes, teachers having to call out "dickrapesfeminazi" and "fuckingcuntbuster" wouldn't sound very professional. What? It's the internet. The OASIS would get abused like this in real life.

Oh but this isn't real life, is it?

So on the way to class Wade gets called out and insulted by another avatar, to which he hurls an equally childish insult - he acknowledges that it is childish, but "this was still high school--the more childish an insult, the more effective it was". (Page 30). Except that trolls typically don't want to listen to words at all, reasonable or not, no matter how skilled and witty the person speaking is.

He also mutes the avatar so he can't hear what else he has to say.


The ability to mute my peers was one of my favorite things about attending school online, and I took advantage of it almost daily. The best thing about it was that they could see that you'd muted them, and they couldn't do a damn thing about it. There was never any fighting on school grounds. The simulation simply didn't allow it. (Page 30)


Muting players is optional in this virtual reality game. Gee, is the author aware of what kind of harassment female gamers put up with in interactive games in real life? And violence is not allowed in some areas of the OASIS - could one of the reasons be to protect female avatars?

The mute option is never brought up again, and the disadvantages and dangers of being female on the internet is an issue that never comes up - not seriously, anyway. So consider this another example of social commentary that is lost.

The OASIS - Wade has no social skills because of it. He is a "painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem", thanks to spending his childhood in virtual reality. Talking to people online is fine for him - in reality, it is his personal hell. He is an OASIS addict; an overweight kid subject to a limited time spent outdoors and exercising - because apparently going up and down the stacks almost every day doesn't count as exercise.

And we are meant to view the OASIS as a good thing. As good for our "hero".

Then there's this gem:


Even so, I tried my best to fit in. Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000 , searching for a clique that might accept me. But even the other outcasts wanted nothing to do with me. I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. Whenever I got near one of them, I invariably broke out in a cold sweat and lost the ability to speak in complete sentences. (Page 31)


Girls are "like some exotic alien species". Are you serious? Are you serious? Could you be any more cliche and pathetic?

Girls are not some pretty, mysterious hive mind who exist only to arouse and intimidate you! Read some feminist articles and books from the OASIS! Or just read anything written by women! Or has Halliday deliberately not included them there or in any other archive he has control over? That wouldn't surprise me.

Not once in the book does Wade think that maybe the problem lies with himself, not other people. In the fake fantasy world of the OASIS, he can talk to the female of the species; as long as they are not real and are not of the scary real world, with real human feelings and consequences to deal with, right? You socially-challenged, eighties-emulating geek?

Truly, my heart bleeds for you.

So because Wade can't talk to girls, he has enrolled in an OASIS school. There are hundreds of school campuses there, and travelling within the virtual world costs money just like travelling in the real world does.

Long story short:


On my first day at OPS #1873, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Now, instead of running a gauntlet of bullies and drug addicts on my walk to school each morning, I went straight to my hideout and stayed there all day. Best of all, in the OASIS, no one could tell that I was fat, that I had acne, or that I wore the same shabby clothes every week. Bullies couldn't pelt me with spitballs, give me atomic wedgies, or pummel me by the bike rack after school. No one could even touch me. In here, I was safe. (Page 32)


The OASIS is explicitly stated to be safe for everyone - this is later confirmed, as well. Safe from bullying and ostracize-ing. Where anyone can be themselves and express themselves however they want.

Remember this, as this is going to bite this book in the arse many, many times.

Is the OASIS really safe, though? It is a system like any other; one that can be easily corrupted and abused. Furthermore, the above line implies that losing yourself in virtual reality is good and healthy. It isn't. But reality sucks, and that justifies everything in this book.

Also, "atomic wedgies"? What the hell?

In Wade's World History classroom (I almost typed in Wayne's World there - this book is a bad influence), he logs on to the Hatchery, one of the most popular gunter message forums. He says it's cool, so we have to take his word for it.

Then:


I didn't see much of interest this morning. The usual gunter flame wars. Ongoing arguments about the "correct" interpretation of some cryptic passage in Anorak's Almanac. High-level avatars bragging about some new magic item or artifact they'd obtained. This crap had been going on for  years now. In the absence of any real progress, gunter subculture had become mired in bravado, bullshit, and pointless infighting. It was sad, really. (Page 32)


Wow. Wow. Just, wow.

Never have I encountered a sentence that seemed self-aware but at the same time completely unself-aware. I mean, "the "correct" interpretation", "In the absence of any real progress", "gunter subculture", and "It was sad, really". This is a satire, right? It has to be. This must have been included as an intentional rebuttal on our own internet culture - on our fandoms -  and all its microaggressions. If not, then... wow. That is an achievement all on its own. Even if it is meant to be ironic, it comes across as annoying, patronizing, and pretentious.

Then there's infodump dedicated to bashing the Sixers, a derogatory term gunters give to the employees of the Innovative Online Industries (IOI). It is an eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiillllll corporation hellbent on a hostile takeover of the OASIS and its Gregarious Simulation Systems, by way of exploiting a loophole in Halliday's will.

IOI (pronounced eye-oh-eye, as the author unnecessarily points out) is evil and capitalist and monetary and an enemy of free speech and so on and so forth. Wade and other gunters hate it because it wants to take over their internet "safe haven"; their "safe, happy refuge".


These days, most gunters referred to them as "the Sux0rz." (Because they sucked.) (Page 33)


Thank you, author, for informing us idiot readers that that's what Sux0rz means, and for explaining the joke.

So, are the Sixers a military organization? A commentary on military procedures and how its recruits are like mindless soldiers and drones? Especially in a virtual world where individuality and free-thinking becomes easier to suppress and eradicate?

The Sixers' avatars all look the same, and are all male, regardless of the real person's gender. Hmm, social commentary on how some female gamers and internet users would present a male identity in order to avoid sexist and misogynistic harassment? Commentary on how male is always seen as the default?

Are we going to come back to this? Ever? No? Okay then, thanks for nothing.

Wade, in unflinching disgust and hatred, refers to the Sixers as evil drones, with no respect for other users, and "whose goal is to hand the OASIS over to an evil multinational conglomerate intent on ruining it." (Page 34).

Hypocritical much, novel? Halliday was just as evil as IOI if not more so; he was just less honest about his goals. He was as selfish as they are, and so is Wade, as we shall see.

Wade is still going on about the Sixers, by the way:


The Sixers gave gunters a common enemy, and Sixer bashing was a favorite pastime in our forums and chat rooms. A lot of high-level gunters had a strict policy of killing (or trying to kill) every Sixer who crossed their path. Several websites were devoted to tracking Sixer activities and movements, and some gunters spent more time hunting the Sixers than they did searching for the egg. The bigger clans actually held a yearly competition called "Eighty-Six the Sux0orz", with a prize for the clan who managed to kill the largest number of them. (Page 34)


This is glorifying killing people you don't like, even if it's not real. It desensitizes people from facing the reality and consequences of violence. Wade and the other impressionable young gunters have become desensitized from a lifetime spent in the OASIS. It reeks of toxic masculinity and entitlement, and it enables a violent "us-vs-them" mentality. There is no awareness of this presented in the narrative, ever.

Not to mention it's a further hypocrisy - how do we know that any gunter who might win the egg hunt might turn out to be like a Sixer? Again, there is abuse and corruption in positions of power, and the privilege in gaining control of the whole of the OASIS is a very powerful one indeed. Wade is not immune to this, either.

After the Sixer bashing/Stormtrooper bad guy fodder intro, we are introduced to the book's love interest, Art3mis:


After checking out a few other gunter forums, I tapped a bookmark icon for one of my favorite websites, Arty's Missives, the blog of a female gunter named Art3mis (pronounced "Artemis"). (Page 34)


Why point out how her name is pronounced when it is obvious?

Art3mis - might as well be called "Lov3 Int3r3st". We are told that she is smart and funny - hysterical, even - that "She wrote with an endearing, intelligent voice, and her entries were filled with self-deprecating humor and witty, sardonic asides." (Page 35)

Gee, it would be great if we were shown a sample or two of these so-called amazing and entertaining written essays. An example of why we should think that Art3mis is awesome and not just a Manic Pixie Dream Girl? This breaks a slew of "show don't tell" rules of storytelling.


It probably goes without saying that I had a massive cyber-crush on Art3mis. (Page 35)


A girl writing stuff on the internet?! Such a thing is unheard of!


I sometimes (always) saved them [her avatar screenshots] to a folder on my hard drive. (Page 35)


Ew.

Wade goes on to describe Art3mis's avatar face as real-like, and pretty, but not "unnaturally perfect". She is "unbearably attractive". What a prince, and not a creepy stalker. He says she doesn't have a supermodel's body - it's "All curves"; she chose her avatar to look "natural". Again, what a Nice Guy Wade is. He isn't objectifying and judging a girl he doesn't know at all!

He is aware that his crush on Art3mis is "both silly and ill-advised", for anyone can look like anything they want in the OASIS:


What did I really know about her? She'd never revealed her true identity, of course. Or her age or location in the real world. (Page 35)


"This makes it even harder for me to stalk her!" is what this passage comes across as saying.


She could be fifteen or fifty. A lot of gunters even questioned whether she was really female, but I wasn't one of them. (Page 35)


"I couldn't objectify her and fantasize about her otherwise! No homo!"


Probably because I couldn't bear the idea that the girl with whom I was virtually smitten might actually be some middle-aged dude named Chuck, with black hair and male-pattern baldness. (Page 35)


Am I even needed here? This whole thing speaks for itself.

Wow is Wade insecure. "She isn't a middle-aged, ugly bald guy because I couldn't bare the thought of her not fitting into my poor, lonely, pathetic male fantasies!" "She has to look like her avatar because I say so!"

What wish-fulfillment BS.

As an aside, there is no mention whatsoever of Art3mis ever being trolled and harassed online as she became more popular and a "celebrity", as the book puts it. Not even in passing. She is a woman on the internet. A sign of 2040s progression? Doubtful. Cline ignores reality as much as Wade and Halliday do.

Now, to be fair, Ready Player One was published in 2011, before movements such as Gamergate existed. However, Reddit, 4chan, and other sites, forums and methods of trolling and abusing marginalized groups of people online - lives being destroyed by online harassment - have existed long before Ready Player One was published. There were articles discussing the problems - the risks - of being female or anything other than straight, white and male on the internet, even back then. When reading Ready Player One, you'd think that Cline had never heard of Twitter before writing it. Indeed, hardly any mention is made of any other internet access than the fictional OASIS.

Anyway, Wade talks about Art3mis's famous blog posts, specifically her essays on John Hughes movies and why they're awesome, at least as fantasies (again, told and not shown). Or as "Dorky Girl Fantasies" and "Dorky Boy Fantasies" (excerpts? No? Okay, we'll take your word for it then, as usual). Why is she a fan? It's not explained.

So the chapter ends with the first mention of Aech - Wade's only friend in the OASIS. Yes, even as a confident and witty virtual reality boy, he still has only one friend in the entirety of the virtual world. I totally believe that he is happy and not lonely and pathetic like he is in the real world.

He enters Aech's chat room, conveniently with enough time before his class starts. End of chapter 2.

Ready Player One Read-Through: Level One: Chapter 1

Content warning: references to drug use, drug-related death, abuse, rape.



Below the Level One (get it? Because this book is about video games!) part we get a taste of this:


Being human sucks most of the time. 
              Videogames are the only thing that makes life bearable.
          - Anorak's Almanac, Chapter 91, Verses 1-2


Hatred of entitled nerd Halliday rising...

And seriously, chapter 91! Who in this future would have the time, patience and endurance to read that much in one book? Especially one containing useless 1980s trivia; now made vital for survival by Halliday himself.

So the chapter properly begins with Wade Watts going about his business in his home of Oklahoma City, in a trailer park where people live in abandoned vehicles stacked up on top of one another, called, appropriately enough, "the stacks". He possesses a lot of gaming consoles and hardware, deep from the trash of the eighties, and he refers to old games - his escape from reality - as "hallowed artifacts", and the "pillars of the pantheon". Er, what? I don't get a sense of reverence here; just parroting what Halliday probably said.

Yeah, this is a constant feature in Ready Player One.

Anyway, there's exposition on everything eighties that Wade owns. The only thing I feel is worth highlighting is this:


I shut down the emulator and began to browse through my video files. Over the past five years, I'd downloaded every single movie, TV show, and cartoon mentioned in Anorak's Almanac. I still hadn't watched all of them yet, of course. That would probably take decades. (Page 14)


This is a misleading line - Wade practically knows and owns everything that Halliday did, as we'll see how effortlessly he uses a vast knowledge of the eighties, plus an expert gaming experience, to get through the egg hunt. He is only eighteen.

Wade is a Gary Stu, I am warning you now.

He mentions watching a lot of the sitcom Family Ties, because it was a favourite of Halliday's.


I'd become addicted to the show immediately, and had now watched all 180 episodes, multiple times. I never seemed to get tired of them. (Page 15)


Ahhh Family Ties - a white, middle-class people show, filled with "smiling, understanding people", and where "there was nothing so wrong with the world that we couldn't sort out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something serious)." Of course you'd find it comforting, Wade.

There is no mention of any eighties' shows with black protagonists in the whole book - no Family Matters, no The Jeffersons, nothing with predominately African-American cast members or female protagonists, really. Make of this what you will.

Wade goes on to explain how he was practically raised in the OASIS. His father was shot dead when he was a baby, and his mother was an OASIS employee who used it as "a virtual babysitter" for her child. How charmingly neglectful. His mother was also a druggie who later died of an overdose. Don't worry, this tragedy is never mentioned again. For Wade - and the author - do not think this is a problem, being raised by virtual reality because a parent can't or won't raise you themselves. In fact, the author seems to think this is ideal.

Wade's father had also named him Wade Watts because of alliteration; like a superhero name, like Peter Parker and Clark Kent. But Wade is not a superhero - as we come to know more about him, we discover that he is in fact a pathetic shut-in who prefers not to go outside at all or exercise; just live in his virtual reality forever. Just like Halliday.

His Gary Stu status is only confirmed by the fact that he is an orphan living with a mean, "malnourished harpy" aunt (also a druggie) in abject poverty, yet this doesn't hinder him from doing what he wants all the time, from getting whatever he wants all the time.

The next few pages consist of Wade whining about how the world and life are meaningless and pointless, because the OASIS, as well as being a safe haven and the only thing making things bearable for him, revealed this depressing stuff to him as well. Essentially the OASIS showed him the truth, taught him about reality - whilst paradoxically it also serves as a fantasy land that has been his only educational tool throughout his life. He talks about having trust issues as a result of "finding out the truth" - reflecting his avoidance of human contact in general? Who knows.

We learn that the OASIS depressed Wade, made him distrust humanity. But it "saved" him, you see. Saved him from reality and its consequences. He can only trust in it. Doesn't this sound exceedingly - exceedingly - unhealthy? Like an abusive relationship?

And about Wade's depression? It doesn't manifest proper in the story, not until he loses his precious virtual reality! His long diatribe, in a nutshell, says, "The real world sucks" - and we are meant to agree. What a happy, positive influence for a Young Adult novel!

Afterwards there's this:


The year after my mom died, I spent a lot of time wallowing in self-pity and despair. I tried to look on the bright side, to remind myself that, orphaned or not, I was still better off than most of the kids in Africa. And Asia. And North America, too. I'd always had a roof over my head and more than enough food to eat. And I had the Oasis. My life wasn't so bad. At least that's what I kept telling myself, in a vain attempt to stave off the epic loneliness I now felt.
      Then the Hunt for Halliday's Easter egg began. That was what saved me, I think. I'd found something worth doing. A dream worth chasing. For the last five years, the Hunt had given me a goal and purpose. A quest to fulfill. A reason to get up in the morning. Something to look forward to. (Page 19)


Except it's not real. But whatever, each to their own, I guess.

How noble of you to acknowledge the poverty in places like Africa and Asia, too - as lipservice with no further thought or any action taken to follow up on it. Such is the advantage of white privilege. Boo freaking hoo to you, Wade. Some poor kids wouldn't even have internet access, therefore no OASIS.

Next we have Wade's horrible aunt being typically horrible and taking his laptop in order to pay rent in the stacks (how...? Okay, whatever). He erases the hard drive before the aunt's typically horrible boyfriend - he has prison tattoos so you know he's evil - threatens him and snatches the laptop, because apparently the aunt couldn't do that herself. It's mentioned that the aunt - whose name is Alice - as well as being a drug addict, has a new boyfriend practically every week. This is beyond cliche.

The author really wants you to feel sorry for Wade by having people who don't matter to him be irredeemably nasty, and by having the people who do matter be dead.

One long exposition on the stacks later we're... still talking about them. Wade references Donkey Kong games in how the stacks remind him of those arcade classics. Thanks, because the readers wouldn't have figured that out on their own!

As Wade makes his way out of the stacks and escapes into his junkyard hiding place, he casually uses the word "rape" in running away from dangerous and desperate people. Reality is horrible, in case you didn't get that before.

Then, as Wade climbs further down the stacks (later he mentions that he is overweight and hates exercising - this doesn't count as exercise? And how is he being discreet and quiet from everyone?), we are introduced to Mrs Gilmore, his only friend in the real world. She literally only appears on one page, in-story, in the entire book. Apparently this typically "sweet old lady" - she owns lots of cats, for fuck's sake -  shares Wade's love of the eighties. Overall she is pointless to the plot, except as a weak, cliched device, which I will get to later on.

Also Mrs Gilmore is "super-religious". Which religion? Not specified, though it might likely be Christianity, from what I could gather. I have a feeling that Cline added her in as a half-arsed way of saying he doesn't hate religious people, at least not all of them.


I never had the heart to tell her that I thought organized religion was a total crock. It was a pleasant fantasy that gave her hope and kept her going--which was exactly what the Hunt was for me. To quote the Almanac, "People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up." (Page 23)


Oh you don't say, Halliday from the Almanac? Not taking your own advice then?

Well, here is a better quote: "People who live above the glass ceiling should shut the fuck up." The glass ceiling is not broken to privileged white men like Halliday and Wade because they can choose to ignore it altogether, to not know it even exists.

The rest of the chapter is more info on Wade getting to his hideout, which he had found "in a stroke of luck". Yeah, Wade is VERY, VERY lucky throughout this book, as we shall soon witness. The hideout inside a stack of crushed old cars is, "most important, it was a place where I could access the OASIS in peace." (Page 25)

A sprinkling of pop culture references later ("Batcave", "Fortress of Solitude", very predictable stuff), and Wade grabs his OASIS console and plugs into the Matrix-- er, I mean OASIS. His avatar name is Parzival - a reference to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. How noble.

Also, Percival is the knight who founded the Holy Grail. Subtle!


This message had been embedded in the log-in sequence by James Halliday himself, when he'd first programmed the OASIS, as an homage to the simulation's direct ancestors, the coin-operated videogames of his youth. These three words were always the last thing an OASIS user saw before leaving the real world and entering the virtual one:

READY PLAYER ONE (Page 26)

End of chapter 1.

Halliday's brain was stuck in the eighties. He was a "genius", but he was also an emotionally-stunted, insecure manchild. And Wade is set on following in his footsteps. With dire consequences. 

Not that the author ever realizes this. "It's just the way things are - as it always was and will ever be" seems to be the mantra of Ready Player One.

To be continued in chapter 2.

Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 0

Ernest Cline, at the beginning, dedicates the book 'For Susan and Libby', along with the line:


Because there is no map for where we are going.


This is a lie - it is unrelated to Ready Player One, as the characters use a lot of maps in order to get to Plot Point A to Plot Point B throughout.

There is a prologue titled 0000. The first page exposits how the death of the powerful internet and virtual reality mogul, James Halliday, billionaire and world's richest nerd, has led to everyone in the world becoming obsessed with finding an Easter egg hidden in the OASIS, a virtual reality simulator created by Halliday, used by practically everybody in the 2040s.

It's worth pointing out that no one, not even the protagonist, Wade Watts, really cared about Halliday's death - since there were far more pressing concerns in this craptacular future where resources are scant and poverty has reached an all-time high. That is, until the "eccentric" rich man took the OASIS - a world everybody uses and is reliant on for everything in their lives - hostage, forcing them to care more and look for his Easter egg. The winner will have full control of the OASIS and thus, every person on the planet's livelihood.

The search for the egg involves seeing, reading and playing every 1980s pop culture product there is, because Halliday grew up in the eighties and thought it was the best decade ever. Because it was a good time for him, a heterosexual white man, specifically. So his dying wish is to force others to think and act exactly like him, to like everything he did, for the fate of the world depends on it.

What better way to force people to like what you do than this? The sound that you are hearing now is multiple geeks ejaculating at once. This is an internet troll's fantasy right here. And not once in the novel is this pointed out as the evil mastermind's plan that it is.

Anyway, the second page notes that Halliday, unsurprisingly, had no heirs, no friends. no social life whatsoever - yet he is considered a role model, a hero; not the lonely shut-in that he was.


He'd spent the last fifteen years of his life in self-imposed isolation, during which time--if the rumors were to be believed--he'd gone completely insane. (Page 2)


Hmm. Any further thoughts on this?

No.

Get used to moments like that. Self-awareness is an afterthought in Ready Player One.

Exposition on Haliday's Anorak's Invitation: a video of himself explaining his Easter egg hunt, and how the winner will receive all his vast fortune and complete control over the OASIS. The video would be released unto the world upon his death. It is really narcissistic, and contains references to eighties music and films such as Heathers, because the eighties is literally all that defines Halliday. The references are pointed out in footnotes: thankfully this chapter is the only one in the book that does this.

All this does is highlight how lonely, greedy and pathetically obsessed with the past Halliday was, but the narrative wants you to think this is cool and eccentric. He thinks very highly of himself, as does the book.

In the video, Halliday presents himself as a child with an Atari 2600 game console, and goes on to explain how his love for gaming began in the 80s (obviously he hasn't grown up since then), plus a long, long diatribe on the history of the games developed from that era, and the first famous video game Easter egg. Here is one example of a footnote:


Halliday now looks exactly as he did in a school photo taken in 1980, when he was eight years old. (Page 4)


Why did that need to be a footnote? It isn't a pop culture reference.

I'll spare you the further exposition and footnotes. There are three keys to collect in order to find the egg, there is the Scoreboard, the Almanac which is Halliday's eighties pop culture bible and list that is required reading for every egg hunter - called "gunters" - etc. By the time the contents of the whole video is done being explained, and its effects on the world are subject to further infodump, nobody raises any kind of awareness of how incredibly narcissistic and self-absorbed this hunt of Halliday's is, nor care for its implications.

Now nearly everyone in the 2040s is obsessed with reliving one rich privileged guy's childhood - eighties styles are back in fashion. I find this hard to believe for a number of reasons, though I suspect that people don't necessarily like the eighties as they are merely going along with this fad as a survival tactic - the OASIS, and therefore their way of life in a dystopian future, is at stake, after all. One may claim that the hunt had helped the OASIS to grow and develop in popularity, but that isn't a good thing, as we learn more about this virtual reality nightmare.

Halliday also didn't test out his hunt before releasing it for others to play in it because... he couldn't be bothered to, I guess. Rich, lonely, selfish bastard.

Everything about this contest - this plan - of Halliday's screams, "Please care about me and my worthless life and knowledge again!"

Then, as the years fly by and nobody in the OASIS has even gotten close to finding the first clue to finding the first key in the egg hunt;


The general public lost all interest in the contest. People began to assume it was all just an outlandish hoax perpetuated by a rich nut job. (Page 8)


"Rich nut job" is right. Halliday could well have been trolling the entire world. Tricking people into the 80s again from beyond the grave. His revenge against everyone who ever thought poorly of him. Oh, poor rich bastard.

Until it is revealed that someone does find the first clue after five years of searching, and who ultimately wins the contest. Guess who?

Yep, our point-of-view protagonist, the eighteen-year-old Wade Watts.

So there is no tension, no need to read what happens next - we already know, the narrator just told us the outcome and who will win the egg hunt.

Here is the last paragraph of the chapter:


Dozens of books, cartoons, movies, and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but every single one of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, once and for all. (Page 9)


Blowing your own trumpet much?

Honestly, this is the most harmless chapter of Ready Player One. Halliday's diabolical scheme is made clearer as we read further. This is the story of how he had made himself into an awfully elitist god after his death. It is about his villain's legacy. He is Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy if his antagonism was accidental. Willy Wonka - more like No-Willy Wanker.

Plus, as you read on it quickly becomes obvious that both Halliday and Wade are levels of the author's self-insertion and wish-fulfillment fantasies.

That's the end of that chapter, folks. Further thoughts coming soon in the subsequent chapters.

Ready Player One Read-Through

Introduction


Chapter 0


Level One: Chapter 1


Chapter 2


Chapter 3


Chapter 4


Chapter 5


Chapter 6


Chapter 7


Chapter 8


Chapter 9


Chapter 10


Chapter 11


Chapter 12


Chapter 13


Chapter 14


Chapter 15


Chapter 16


Level Two: Chapter 17


Chapter 18


Chapter 19


Chapter 20


Chapter 21


Chapter 22


Chapter 23


Chapter 24


Chapter 25


Chapter 26


Chapter 27


Level Three: Chapter 28


Chapter 29


Chapter 30


Chapter 31


Chapter 32


Chapter 33


Chapter 34


Chapter 35


Chapter 36


Chapter 37


Chapter 38


Chapter 39

Ready Player One Read-Through: Introduction

All you need to know from my Goodreads review:



After some time to calm down and soul search, I'm finally ready to do this.

I cannot remember if a book has ever made me this angry before. Maybe not since 'Hush, Hush' by Becca Fitzpatrick, and 'Bitten' by Kelley Armstrong, has a published piece of literature sent me into an inexplicable rage and all-consuming hatred not just of its content, but most importantly, its messages. Its dangerous, toxic messages.

Because 'Ready Player One' is toxic. And it should come with many trigger warnings.

It represents everything wrong and harmful not only in fandom today - not only in gaming and pop culture - but in our culture at large. Our still-frustratingly, predominately, oversaturated heterosexual white cisgender male culture and how it stubbornly persists in catering to that same niche group of the human race. 'Ready Player One' is a mirror into our internet and political age, and it does not look hopeful. In fact it seems content with the way things are right now; it enables issues such as bigotry, ignorance, male power fantasies, male entitlement, toxic masculinity, never growing up and accepting change, never being an adult, never facing reality, male fragility, and male violence.

And what makes it all worse is that most people I know - people who are feminists - love this book. They don't seem to realize or care that 'Ready Player One' is a "geek fantasy" that only caters to a very limited and exclusionary area of geek and pop culture fandom. Whose nostalgia is it for? Eighties white fanboys. Everything and everyone else don't matter - they don't exist according to this dystopia-that-doesn't-realize-it's-a-dystopia set in the 2040s. The eighties, with all its maleness and male power fantasy cliches, is the one true geek decade, according to the author of 'Ready Player One'. No one is allowed to disagree.

Doesn't that sound incredibly narrow-minded, immature, selfish, self-indulgent and elitist to you? Not to mention stunningly, stubbornly un-creative. The rise of the underdog story is not and never really has been anything new in storytelling, especially if the main characters are still white and mostly male, plus adding in token minorities with very little effort made to characterizing them. 

'Ready Player One' is ultimately about toxic nostalgia, and it doesn't even know it.

Now, I didn't grow up in the eighties, so that particular zeitgeist would escape me. But I would never claim that the nineties is the best decade ever and that it produced the best pop culture media ever just because I grew up at that time. I mean, everything would seem great when you are a kid: because everything was new to you then. What excuses this book? 

In my opinion, if you want to read a fun book about geeks and geek culture that manages to be up to date and takes seriously the toxic issues surrounding fandom - where straight, white and male are clearly not the default - I recommend reading 'Queens of Geek' by Jen Wilde instead. Heck, if you want a story that celebrates arcade games and gaming culture going back to the eighties, that at the same time acknowledges that gaming has evolved and become more inclusive since the basement-dwelling days of 1983, just watch 'Wreck-It-Ralph'.

I care about pop culture and positive representations in media being used as a vehicle for positive change in our society and politics. I consider myself a geek. That's one of the reasons why I care enough to rant about this popular book "for geeks". I consider it an offence against myself and everything I believe in.

'Ready Player One' has made me so angry, so upset, that I have decided to do something that I have never done before: I am going to do a chapter-by-chapter read-through of it on my blog, in an effort to clearly make my case everything wrong and harmful in it. I ended up using over 300 post-it stickers noting the problematic content. It may take a long time as I make updates, but hopefully I will be able to specifically make my point as I force myself through it all again. I am not doing it for myself, but for others - for people who have read the book and people who haven't, so that they can come to their own conclusions regarding the novel's content, based on what information I reveal.

Fuck this book and everything it stands for.



So yes, my project is about reading through the forty chapters of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and pointing out things in them that I view to be problematic. Feel free to disagree with me, as it is overall my personal opinion on the piece.

Disclosure: I have not seen the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg, nor do I want to see it anytime soon and give money to it. From what I could gather from the reviews I've seen and read, it looks like it could be better than the book, though not by much. Either way, I won't be comparing the film to the book in this read-through, because it is the book that I will be criticizing.

Also, I am not a gamer. I am more of a reader kind of geek, so expect no gaming insights from me here; no more than what the book tirelessly gives.

When it comes to the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) references Ready Player One is known to make, I have not seen every single eighties movie ever, and I will not be pointing out all of them as they appear on a page, because that would make this experience even more tedious and self-indulgent than it already is, and I would like to come out of this with at least a significant bit of my sanity left intact.

Well, without further ado, lets dive headfirst into the exercise in eighties male-centered geek masturbation that is, Ready Player One.

Scribble #74

Memories are not for sale.

A line a day diary? What would I say? Would I be grateful for all the little recorded thoughts and memories in the future?

I don't know if I've ever been this hot. Nor had a sore throat this bad. Gaia I feel ill. Bloody English weather. Bloody, stuffy retail work with no air conditioning and tiny fans at the tills.