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Mel Mudkiper posted:so been doing some looking into Armada and it actually makes RPO look competent by comparison Armada is a fantastic disaster on pretty much every level. I tried to do the read along of it for the 372 Pages second season and I didn't make it even 50 pages. The only complimentary things I could say about the book was that every word in it was at least spelled correctly and it did not spontaneously combust in my hands while I tried to read it. So at least there's that.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:13
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I saw an AMA on reddit a while back and you cannot imagine my surprise and disbelief that Ernest Cline actually had an editor.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:18
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nine-gear crow posted:Armada is a fantastic disaster on pretty much every level. I tried to do the read along of it for the 372 Pages second season and I didn't make it even 50 pages. The only complimentary things I could say about the book was that every word in it was at least spelled correctly and it did not spontaneously combust in my hands while I tried to read it. So at least there's that. Guess I know what we’re doing after this thread!
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Mar 26, 2018 04:20
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chitoryu12 posted:Guess I know what we’re doing after this thread! Take a cleansing dive into someone who can write first. I'm currently plowing through all the Discworld novels after bashing my head against some particularly dry geochemistry texts for the entire latter half of last year. Most of the way through Moving Pictures now.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:26
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chitoryu12 posted:Guess I know what we’re doing after this thread! Please do, yes. Armada kind of has to be done in tandem with RP1 as an "Oh, you thought that was bad? Watch this." encore.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:26
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I'm in. I've got an ePub of it floating around here somewhere. Lots of storage does NOT mean remembering where things are.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:34
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chitoryu12 posted:Guess I know what we’re doing after this thread! The big thing that flabbergasts me is that it has the whole 80s nerd culture obsession thing but lacks the limited justification that even RPO provides for it being a dominant cultural force There is a secret elite military unit that plays DnD, references 80s movies, and play in a band together when not living in total isolation ON THE MOON as humanity's last line of defense against an existential alien threat. Like, its a world just like ours in every single way just with a secret army that fights aliens but for some reason they are also HUGE GEEKS DUDE. Like, Cline just up and asks us to believe a military force on-par with Seal Team 6 is totally into referencing obscure 80s movies to each other and snacking on cheetos during games of DnD
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Mar 26, 2018 04:43
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(Batman voice) welcome to hellquote:Just days after scoring a seven-figure deal for domestic and foreign publishing rights, bestselling author Ernie Cline (“Ready Player One”) has sold feature film rights to his next novel, “Armada,” to Universal, which has set the project up with Scott Stuber’s Bluegrass Films and Dan Farah’s Farah Films banner. https://variety.com/2012/film/news/universal-sets-sail-with-armada-1118063261/ Also, the Armada Wikipedia page has barely anything for “Reception” other than noting it was a bestseller. Cline’s staff (or possible him) must be keeping the awful reviews out.
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Mar 26, 2018 06:00
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It really is so much worse than RPO. My pet theory is that Cline actually wrote Armada first. No one wanted to publish it, but the least negative feedback he got was along the lines of "um, there certainly were a lot of Eighties references". So his next try was nothing but Eighties references, and the rest is history. Because God is dead and we're alone.
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Mar 26, 2018 06:17
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Maybe this is pedantry, but it is pissing me off to no end that he keeps calling it "indenturement". It's just indenture! Like, quote:Once my debt was paid in full, I would be released from indenturement. should just say "released from indenture". My guess is that Ernest Cline has only ever heard the phrase "indentured servant" and never bothered to look up what "indenture" is.
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Mar 26, 2018 07:57
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like, Cline just up and asks us to believe a military force on-par with Seal Team 6 is totally into referencing obscure 80s movies to each other and snacking on cheetos during games of DnD
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Mar 26, 2018 09:07
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You unholy bastards are going to make me find my copy of Armada again to read it, aren't you? AREN'T YOU?!?!?!??!?!?!
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Mar 26, 2018 09:14
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Just looked at the Wikipedia plot summary for Armada, and I'm not sure which it's ripping of more, The Last Starfighter or Enders Game.
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Mar 26, 2018 09:59
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I'm the farthest thing from an expert, but I thought burning titanium was a monumentally bad idea?
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Mar 26, 2018 10:12
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Deptfordx posted:Just looked at the Wikipedia plot summary for Armada, and I'm not sure which it's ripping of more, The Last Starfighter or Enders Game. Por que no los dos?
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Mar 26, 2018 10:12
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Choco1980 posted:I'm the farthest thing from an expert, but I thought burning titanium was a monumentally bad idea? Burning it would create titanium dioxide which is just run-of-the-mill bad for your lungs. It's much harder to get heavy metal toxicity from Ti than it is from things like lead or mercury. Again, more thought than the author etc.
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Mar 26, 2018 10:20
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Deptfordx posted:Just looked at the Wikipedia plot summary for Armada, and I'm not sure which it's ripping of more, The Last Starfighter or Enders Game. Enders Last Guardian of the Baby Starfighter Game Driver Galaxy, Vol. 2
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Mar 26, 2018 10:22
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I was thinking recently that this might have been more enjoyable if all this pop culture stuff actually was almost entirely forgotten in the distant future and, instead of knowing it all off by heart so he never really has to try, Wade had to go on a scavenger hunt through his VR internet to puzzle out what the references are so he can figure out the clues. The bad guy would be a shut-in nerd who's big into 80s movie trivia which gives him a head-start, but he doesn't actually enjoy any of it - all he does is amass this vast database of pointless minutiae for the sake of having it - whereas Wade discovers a genuine appreciation for, I don't know, storytelling or something, through his quest.
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Mar 26, 2018 11:16
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Wheat Loaf posted:I was thinking recently that this might have been more enjoyable if all this pop culture stuff actually was almost entirely forgotten in the distant future and, instead of knowing it all off by heart so he never really has to try, Wade had to go on a scavenger hunt through his VR internet to puzzle out what the references are so he can figure out the clues.  No way Cline would write himself as the villain of his own story...
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Mar 26, 2018 11:20
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:That is basically accurate to my experience with military vets of all kinds. The military is 80% dumb goons, and Dungeons and Dragons is a cheap and low tech way to waste time during the many, many, many long hours of nothing that occur on base. Trust me, read the section
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Mar 26, 2018 12:21
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Some competent person needs to rewrite Ready Player One as a good book because I want to read a version where the author actually thought about stuff. Like Ready Player One as written by Gibson or Stephenson.
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Mar 26, 2018 13:18
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Wheat Loaf posted:I was thinking recently that this might have been more enjoyable if all this pop culture stuff actually was almost entirely forgotten in the distant future and, instead of knowing it all off by heart so he never really has to try, Wade had to go on a scavenger hunt through his VR internet to puzzle out what the references are so he can figure out the clues. I almost want to do a fanfic-style rewrite of the book that follows the plot exactly but otherwise uses this version of the characters, in addition to expanding on all the gameplay, to see how much better we could make this story.
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Mar 26, 2018 13:21
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It would have been funny if at some point the not-obsessed-with-Clinestalgia protagonist beat his opponent in a challenge because Halliday got a very obscure part of a reference wrong which screwed over the Wade-like antagonist.
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Mar 26, 2018 13:26
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Zanzibar Ham posted:It would have been funny if at some point the not-obsessed-with-Clinestalgia protagonist beat his opponent in a challenge because Halliday got a very obscure part of a reference wrong which screwed over the Wade-like antagonist. alternatively the villain could be an 11 year old with aim assist hacks
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Mar 26, 2018 13:30
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:Some competent person needs to rewrite Ready Player One as a good book because I want to read a version where the author actually thought about stuff. Like Ready Player One as written by Gibson or Stephenson. Snow Crash is just RPO, complete with a gross attitude towards women, flagrant Orientalism, lengthy recitation of Wikipedia articles, and nonsense hypercompetent Protagonist. It's actually written with style and flair because Stephenson knows how to turn a good phrase.
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Mar 26, 2018 13:36
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chitoryu12 posted:I muttered, noting the fear in my own voice. I too, notice things about myself instead of feeling feelings.
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Mar 26, 2018 13:50
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chitoryu12 posted:I almost want to do a fanfic-style rewrite of the book that follows the plot exactly but otherwise uses this version of the characters, in addition to expanding on all the gameplay, to see how much better we could make this story. I'll admit I've actually started doing this, a fanficcy rewrite of this story, based loosely on the main beats but with characters and technology that are slightly different. Part of me feels a little guilty, like this is a silly waste of time, but I haven't done much creative writing in awhile so it's fun in its own way. It's probably going to be terrible, but it might be less terrible than RPO? 
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Mar 26, 2018 13:56
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:Some competent person needs to rewrite Ready Player One as a good book because I want to read a version where the author actually thought about stuff. Like Ready Player One as written by Gibson or Stephenson. Otherland has been recommended a few times in this thread and its pretty drat close.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:16
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So yeah, I think as an experiment after we finish the book (and before moving on to Armada), I'm going to try my hand at rewriting this using the ideas and input from this thread for how to make it better. I'm not a published author or anything, but I think I might be able to get some better characterization out of it. Follow the plot otherwise exactly but fix up the characters, describe everything important in detail, raise the stakes, and remove the creepy stuff. I'll post some sample chapters once I get around to it and we'll see if we can put lipstick on this pig.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:37
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I worry a bit about moving the focus from looking at how terrible Cline is to saying you or someone else could do better than Cline. I prefer to look at how terrible he is in an objective bubble without letting the ego hold influence
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Mar 26, 2018 15:12
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chitoryu12 posted:(and before moving on to Armada) You're the best. Mel Mudkiper posted:letting the ego hold influence Oops, sorry.
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Mar 26, 2018 15:33
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That might happen, but if anyone remembers the rollercoaster fursona book thread, the hatefics were better written and more interesting by a country mile. No I'm not going to look up that thread again. The book is called Twisted!, by Miranda Lake I think?
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Mar 26, 2018 15:35
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Oh I am all for some funny hatefics. I just want to make the focus on Cline being bad, not us being better
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Mar 26, 2018 15:37
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quote:lOI’s Technical Support call center occupied three entire floors of the headquarters’ eastern I-shaped tower. Each of these floors contained a maze of numbered cubicles. Mine was stuck back in a remote corner, far from any windows. My cubicle was completely empty except for an adjustable office chair bolted to the floor. Several of the cubicles around me were unoccupied, awaiting the arrival of other new indents. This is a little something we call "irony". Wade is complaining about how hellish it is that he's had to spend a week basically living exactly like he did back in his apartment, only now he's using his OASIS visor for work instead of play. He even has a bed now! He used to sleep in his haptic chair because his apartment didn't even have furniture. quote:The first caller’s avatar appeared in front of me in my support chat room. His name and stats also appeared, floating in the air above him. He had the astoundingly clever name of “HotCock007.” This is the closest the book comes to actually being funny. Cline still ruins it by painfully explaining the courtesy violations when the warning flashing on the page tells us all we need to know, but "shove it up your rear end and pretend you're a corn dog" is legitimately the best line in this book. Wade tells HotCock007 again that his only options are to "save it or sell it" and he leaves, giving Wade a 6/10 on the feedback system. His next customer appears, a red-skinned alien with huge boobs named Vartaxxx. quote:Doing tech support here was nothing like working from home. Here, I couldn’t watch movies, play games, or listen to music while I answered the endless stream of inane calls. The only distraction was staring at the clock. (Or the IOI stock ticker, which was always at the top of every indent’s display. You couldn’t get rid of it.) Wade returns to his cubicle and collapses onto his mattress, staring at the time on his entertainment console. At exactly 7:07 PM, he says "Lights" and the cubicle plunges into darkness. Anyone watching the live security feeds would have seen a brief flash as the cameras switched to night vision, followed by an image of Wade sleeping. His entertainment console's records show that he simply watches every Tommy Queue episode in a row before falling asleep, only waking up when his alarm goes off in the morning. Of course, that's not exactly what's going on. quote:About seven months earlier, I’d obtained a set of IOI intranet passwords from the L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus, the same black-market data auction site where I’d purchased the information needed to create a new identity. I kept an eye on all of the black-market data sites, because you never knew what might be up for sale on them. OASIS server exploits. ATM hacks. Celebrity sex tapes. You name it. I’d been browsing through the L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus auction listings when one in particular caught my eye: IOI Intranet Access Passwords, Back Doors, and System Exploits. The seller claimed to be offering classified proprietary information on IOI’s intranet architecture, along with a series of administrative access codes and system exploits that could “give a user carte blanche inside the company network.” So yeah, there you go. Wade is banking on backdoor access codes he bought on a sketchy black market site to let him break into IOI's intranet (without any way of knowing they would work until he arrived), steal their data, and make a getaway. He says they "looked legit", but you can have legit codes that someone changed in the seven months since you bought them. If Wade's plan failed, he'd have just sold himself into slavery with no way out except an inevitable suicide. We get a quick flashback to his second night as a slave, where he broke in for the first time: quote:Keeping my eargear camera pointed straight ahead, away from the screen, I pulled up the entertainment console’s viewer settings menu, which allowed me to make adjustments to the display’s audio and video output: volume and balance, brightness and tint. I cranked each option up to its highest setting, then tapped the Apply button at the bottom of the screen three times. I set the volume and brightness controls to their lowest settings and tapped the Apply button again. A small window appeared in the center of the screen, prompting me for a maintenance-tech ID number and access password. I quickly entered the ID number and the long alphanumeric password that I’d memorized. I checked both for errors out of the corner of my eye, then tapped OK. The system paused for what seemed like a very long time. Then, to my great relief, the following message appeared: Wade quickly found the Indent Monitoring System and pulled up his profile. Along with all of "Bryce Lynch's" vital statistics and records, there's live video from his eargear and habitation unit camera. Using one of the exploits, he replaced the feeds with archived footage of his first night sleeping, set to activate in the brief flash when the cameras switch to night vision. Wade spent the next six nights sneaking through the intranet in his hab unit, amazingly never being caught and having the passwords changed. This is why he's been falling asleep at his desk: he's running on 2 hours of sleep a night. He filed a phony requisition form with his bogus admin account for a 10 zettabyte (1 trillion gigabytes, for us pre-2045 mortals) flash drive to be delivered to a nonexistent "Sam Lowery" at an empty cubicle, which he picked up. Now on his eighth night, he's plugging it into his entertainment console. The Sixers' Oology Division has notes that make Wade's "grail diary" look like a scrap of notebook paper. They've even got Halliday's school report cards, emails exchanged with fans, and home movies. There's hundreds of hours of simcap footage of the inside of Castle Anorak, a massive golden vault with a single crystal door in the center of the back wall. The Sixers still haven't been able to figure out how to open the Third Gate without the clue that Wade found. As the data is copying over, he finds a Threat Assessment folder. It's got profiles on all the members of the High Five. quote:I opened the Parzival folder first. A detailed dossier appeared, containing all of the information the Sixers had collected on me over the past few years. My birth certificate. My school transcripts. At the bottom there was a link to a simcap of my entire chatlink session with Sorrento, ending with the bomb detonating in my aunt’s trailer. After I’d gone into hiding, they’d lost track of me. They had collected thousands of screenshots and vidcaps of my avatar over the past year, and loads of data on my stronghold on Falco, but they didn’t know anything about my location in the real world. My current whereabouts were listed as “unknown.” Oh hey, remember how Art3mis said that she was really hideous and looked nothing like her avatar? Turns out she looks exactly like her avatar and just has a big birthmark. Wade still gets a hot chick.  quote:The data below the photo said that her real name was Samantha Evelyn Cook, that she was a twenty-year-old Canadian citizen, five feet and seven inches tall, and that she weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds. The file also contained her home address—2206 Greenleaf Lane, Vancouver, British Columbia—along with a lot of other information, including her blood type and her school transcripts going all the way back to kindergarten. So yeah, IOI has also been illegally eavesdropping on everyone thanks to their control of so many international telecoms companies. The only reason they didn't know exactly where Wade was is because he sprung for a direct connection to the OASIS server vault. quote:I closed Aech’s file, then opened the folder labeled Daito, already dreading what I might find there. Like the others, they had his real name, Toshiro Yoshiaki, and his home address.Two news articles about his “suicide” were linked at the bottom of his dossier, along with an unlabeled video clip, time-stamped on the day he’d died. I clicked on it. It was handheld video camera footage showing three large men in black ski masks (one of whom was operating the camera) waiting silently in a hallway. They appeared to receive an order via their radio earpieces, then used a keycard to open the door of a tiny one-room apartment. Daito’s apartment. I watched in horror as they rushed in, yanked him out of his haptic chair, and threw him off the balcony. why would you film yourself committing murder quote:A wave of nausea washed over me. When it finally passed, I copied the contents of all five dossiers over to my flash drive, then opened the Mission Status folder. It appeared to contain an archive of the Oology Division’s status reports, intended for the Sixers’ top brass. The reports were arranged by date, with the most recent one listed first. When I opened it, I saw that it was a directive memo sent from Nolan Sorrento to the IOI Board of Executives. In it, Sorrento proposed sending agents to abduct Art3mis and Shoto from their homes to force them to help IOI open the Third Gate. Once the Sixers had obtained the egg and won the contest, Art3mis and Shoto would “be disposed of.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8 The memo was sent only 5 hours ago, so Wade still has time to warn his friends once he makes his getaway. quote:Before my arrest, I’d set up a timed funds transfer that would deposit enough money in my IOI credit account to pay off my entire debt, forcing IOI to release me from indenturement. But that transfer wouldn’t happen for another five days. By then, the Sixers would probably have Art3mis and Shoto locked in a windowless room somewhere.
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Mar 26, 2018 15:42
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poo poo, make it a chapter by chapter contest where you have to start and stop at the same narrative point with some global narrative rules like ”Wade hates all this pop culture bullshit, but is forced into it." It'd be like that RoboCop remake. Edit: Lol, I forgot about mycrimes.avi. Chef Boyardeez Nuts fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 15:44
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Alternatively, classic fiction as done by Clinequote:Many years later, as he found himself facing what could only be described as the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to suddenly remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover Ice Pirates, the classic 80s cult sci-fi film he had seen a thousand times.
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Mar 26, 2018 15:55
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I love that the supposedly evil corporation is actually arguably a better employer than current-day Amazon. They actually provide food and board!
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Mar 26, 2018 16:04
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Alternatively, classic fiction as done by Cline quote:"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view," explained Atticus with Yoda-like wisdom, "Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Although his dark hair and glasses compelled some people to remark on his resemblance to an older Harry Potter (absent the scar), personally, I had always admired how much my father looked and sounded like Captain Keith Mallory, star of the classic 1961 movie The Guns of Navarone, directed by J. Lee Thompson.
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Mar 26, 2018 16:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Oh I am all for some funny hatefics. I just want to make the focus on Cline being bad, not us being better I agree with everyone else who says that there's something better hidden in this book. It's obviously full of plot holes, but the big reason it fails has nothing to do with the setting or the basic plot (simple as it is). It's more that Cline is a crappy writer who struggles with anything but semi-autistic recitations of pop culture and how to beat video games. You could make a compelling story and characters out of this, but not the way Cline writes. Here's my initial thoughts on how it would go, based on suggestions from the thread: * Set it much farther in the future. The technology necessary to create OASIS, the economic degradation of society, and Wade not knowing basic 80s pop culture all make much more sense for a work 100 years in the future than 30 years in the future. * Halliday never lived through the 80s, but he has an obsession with it as the "perfect decade" for music, film, TV, etc. Wade and other gunters acknowledge that the Hunt is just a way of him getting posthumous revenge on everyone for thinking he was a weirdo for it. Society still ends up with a temporary 80s obsession because of the chance that someone could get rich from it, but after a while the Hunt becomes viewed as an urban legend or a dead man's prank when nobody is able to even begin finding the first clue. * Wade enjoys OASIS, but he doesn't particularly care for the 80s any more than the rest of the 20th and 21st century (stuff from the past is still popular, but he just treats it the same as any other old media that he may incidentally be a fan of). He finds the Tomb of Horrors completely by accident and immediately falls prey to the fake entrance trap, dropping him back to Level 1. He has to research what he's run into and actually solve the puzzles and avoid the traps of the tomb without simply being able to keep a guide up in the corner of his screen. Aech is still obsessed with the 80s and finding the Easter egg, but Wade finds it a bit ridiculous and resists Aech's attempts to get him interested in old crap. * All of the segments of playing virtual arcade games are replaced with the avatar being transported into the actual game, so Joust requires Wade to actually ride a giant flappy bird with a lance against Acererak and Pac-Man requires him to exhaust himself running through all 256 screens while being chased by flaming multicolored ghosts. Archaide doesn't just have arcade cabinets that you play with haptic gloves, but actually transports your avatar into games like Virtua Fighter and House of the Dead (where other people can watch you on the screen and cheer you on). * When Wade becomes the first avatar to get the Copper Key by accident and update the Scoreboard, he's almost immediately set upon by the media and verges on a panic attack from being assaulted by news drones on his way out of the Tomb of Horrors. He has to actually deal with being a shy, socially awkward kid with little to no socialization skills who becomes an instant celebrity. * Along with seeing the action scenes like shooting through the Tyrell building instead of having him killing 50 replicants in four lines, we actually spend some time with him on stuff. Like we get a chapter dedicated to him interacting with Art3mis on their "dates" instead of Wade just describing how they get along, and awkwardly going through the Rocky Horror shadowcast. Show Samantha and Wade actually building a relationship that could conceivably be called romantic so it has meaning when it ends. * Make Daito and Shoto less goddamn racist.
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Mar 26, 2018 16:23
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The biggest crime in this book is that Daito and Shoto are not a pair of weeabos who met at anime club and live in their parent's basements
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Mar 26, 2018 16:36
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