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antishurtugal_reborn2023-08-31 12:03 am
Ready Player One: Part Eight - We're Almost Halfway Through and Very Little Has Happened
Welcome back. Today, we end the first section of the book.
Chapter 15 starts with Wade logging in and reappearing on Ludus, with a bunch of Sixer gunships scanning the planet. So Wade letting a bunch of people die in the last chapter was pointless, then. Glad that’s all cleared up.
Wade thinks about hiding, but remembers PVP doesn’t work on Ludus. Still, won’t the Sixers RECOGNIZE YOUR DAMN AVATAR and wonder who is operating it? The Sixers don’t seem to see him, and Aech messages Wade.
Wade video calls Aech, and tells him everything. It’s also confirmed that I-r0k’s posts were the ones who led the Sixers to Ludus and Wade’s house. Because I-r0k is so stupid as to spoil his own chances, and no one else would leak a rumor like that.
Wade has a cry over “Mrs. Gilmore”, the friendly old lady who was one of the “sweetest people” he’d “ever known”, and I have no sympathy for him. He didn’t even TRY to save her life.
The reader probably cares even less about these deaths, as Aunt Alice and Rick (her boyfriend) only had one scene where they were jerks, and Mrs. Gilmore had one scene where she greeted Wade and he exposited about her. No one else is named. It really lessens the emotional impact.
Aech is enraged on Wade’s behalf, and reveals that he was also contacted by the Sixers, but assures Wade that he “stays mobile”, so they won’t catch him.
Wade then says that Art3mis and the other two, Daito and Shoto, should be warned, which is decent of him, to which Aech agrees. They invite the others to Aech’s virtual hangout, the Basement.
Wade arrives early, and, in a genuinely touching moment, Aech give Wade a hug that comforts Wade, despite him not being able to physically feel it.
By the way, everyone knows where the Tomb of Horrors is now.
Art3mis arrives, and reveals that the egg hunters on the scoreboard are called the “High Five”, which isn’t bad. She also starts geeking out over the Basement, which is a replica of Morrow’s. Aech is happy that she likes it, and invites her to come anytime. And we get this creepy moment from Wade:
They really seemed to be hitting it off, and it was making me crazy jealous. I didn’t want Art3mis to like Aech, or vice versa. I wanted her all to myself.
Ew. No. Absolutely not. Remember, he has no idea who she is in real life. He’s never seen her in real life. I’ll also remind you that at no point has Art3mis shown romantic interest in Wade. She’s just been friendly.
Then Daito and Shoto appear. They’re the whole shebang, with samurai outfits complete with katanas, and “wakizashi”s, whatever those are, and even bow. Everyone bows back, and there’s some individual bowing before the meeting actually gets started.
Art3mis reveals that the Sixers have found the tomb and have put two forcefields over it, so they can lower them one at a time when new troops come. This also prevents others from accessing the tomb.
Everyone is mad about this and Shoto literally says “the Sixers have no honor”. Of course the Japanese guy brings up honor. Especially a Japanese teenager from the 2040’s. Because that’s how real people talk.
Wade then tells everyone about the events of the last chapter, and everyone is obviously shocked.
Art3mis asks how they even knew and we get a whole recap of the message boards thing, with Daito and Shoto having found the Key through them, and then Aech says that Wade tipped him off, too, and then Wade says that Art3mis found it first, and for some reason Art3mis explains how Wade and her met, and how good Wade was at Joust, and Wade thanks Aech for the practice, and can we just get on with everything already?!
Do these people sound like they’re in possibly mortal danger? Because they don’t act like they’re in possibly mortal danger.
Art3mis finally gets everything back on track, and has to remind people that they were supposed to be talking about the Sixers. Epic Adventure, everyone.
Everyone realizes, since multiple people can battle the lich in Tomb of Horrors at the same time, that the Sixers can just send avatar after avatar through with ease. Wade also mentions the advantages the Sixers have. Daito AGAIN says that “the Sixers have no honor”.
“Yeah,” Art3mis said, rolling her eyes. “We’ve established that.”
I’d knock her for being rude, but she’s channeling my thoughts right now.
Wade and Aech suggest that the egg hunters could ally against the Sixers. Daito refuses, and Aech points out they wouldn’t be on the Scoreboard without Wade, which causes Daito to get mad, and he and Shoto leave.
Art3mis, Aech and Wade agree that they don’t want to help each other, and she leaves. Then, Aech teases Wade about his creepy-ass crush on Art3mis, and they briefly discuss the riddle of the Jade Key. In teasing banter, the insult “asshead” is used, so it seems Cline tried to be original and clever with his phrases again. It doesn’t work.
And we get a jumpscare. In a virtual world. A bunch of comic books get knocked down, but there’s no one there. Wade’s alarmed and asks if there could be an invisible avatar hiding. Aech says his chatroom is secure and that it’s just a glitch, despite Wade having never seen “a chat-room glitch like that”. Wade just drops it and leaves. Despite being in mortal danger. And IOI possibly tracking his connection right now. Dumbass.
Chapter 15 ends.
Chapter 16 begins with Sixers, Sorrento being the first, having gotten the Copper Key and gone through the first gate. Which makes Wade getting those people killed extremely pointless. It bought no time at all. What was the point of all that?
Ludus is copied into Ludus II, as the original Ludus has been taken older. Scores of egg hunters siege the force fields, finally buying two antimatter bombs on Ebay (which I found genuinely funny), and exploding both of them. Now both Sixers and egg hunters can get into the tomb (they can’t stop each other since you can’t attack other avatars on Ludus), but the Sixers can’t get their force fields back up since egg hunters are destroying their ships whenever they try. This is all told to us, by the way. We don’t see any of it.
The explosion gets a bit of news coverage, and it is chalked up to a meth lab explosion due to planted evidence. Since it’s too dangerous to move the wreckage due to the stacks being closely built together, it's left “to slowly rust into the earth”, which is actually a good line.
When Wade gets his money from the endorsements he did, he buys a bus ticket to Ohio and takes only a few possessions. He also uses a “retinal scan” to get his ticket, so that should immediately alert IOI that he’s not dead if they are tracking him.
There’s some interesting worldbuilding around traveling in this world. Since the areas between major U.S. cities are “lawless badlands” with “road agents” and “scavengers”, there is “armor plating”, “bulletproof windows”, a “bulletproof Plexiglass box” for the driver, and “six heavily armed guards”. (The lack of a hyphen between ‘heavily’ and ‘armed’ is straight from the book.) There is renewable energy due to fossil fuels running out, with wind turbines around the city and solar panels on the bus. There’s also visors to the OASIS there, too.
Wade now has to make a new identity. This sounds like it would pose a challenge. What obstacles will he have to face in order to-
None. Instead, because he’s “world-famous”, he gets “underworld credibility” we don’t get to see. Imagine if we got to see one of those bargaining scenes instead, where Wade’s avatar walks up in a virtual club and says to a guy “I need to disappear.” That would be cool.
But instead he just gets access to the “L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus”, a site where he can purchase data. That name… Cline actually thinks people speak like this. Leet speech is no longer that common, unless it is to circumvent censors, and neither are extreme misspellings like this. No one that wanted to be taken seriously would use “haxorz”. Come on. Even using “z” in place of “s” is considered silly now.
Wade erases his prints and retinal scan from his file and replaces them with his father’s, and then puts his own prints and retinal scan into a new identity. Why didn’t he do this before he purchased a ticket? Also, wouldn’t a good computer be able to find a match between the prints IOI has probably already accessed (and we later find out that IOI has a whole file on Wade), and this new identity?
Wade buys an apartment from a complex that’s designed for gunthers (which I find hilarious, that there’s an industry that specifically caters to people who stay online all day and never go outside). The phrase “new digs” is used. It dates this book.
After he gets to Columbus, he gets nervous, with “a heavy weight resting on [his] chest”. (Cline clearly can show instead of tell, so the previous instances were just laziness.) However, he says that if he gets in the hotel room he would be safe. Of course he does, and there’s no obstacles on the way there, because that would get in the way of the wish fulfillment. He makes “a silent vow not to go outside again” until he finds the egg. Still your only motivation? You don’t want to stop IOI from killing more people? You don’t want to get revenge? I know Aunt Alice and Rick were jerks, but there were others living with him, including kids. You don’t want to bring Sorrento and the others to justice? Maybe even a little bit? … … … Okay.
The set dressing that was Aunt Alice, Rick, and the others has now served its purpose and can be forgotten about. After all, characterization and plot take a backseat to having your self-insert be the best at things.
We are around 45% of the way through the book. Almost halfway. Let’s list the major plot developments, shall we?
Wade, an underdog with a terrible life, is trying to win the contest.
We are introduced to Aech and I-r0k, who will be relevant later.
Wade wins the Copper Key
Wade meets Art3mis.
Wade passes through the First Gate.
Wade gets famous.
IOI meets with Wade and blows stuff up.
Wade meets the other egg hunters.
Wade moves to Columbus.
This should not take half of the book. The part before the adventure actually kicks off should be one-third at most. Cline puts unneeded exposition (seriously, what relevance does Halliday’s entire life story have), but spreads the actual action thin. Just look at other YA adventure novels. Even in Eragon, it doesn’t take half the book before Garrow is killed and Eragon is travelling. Nothing important, like worldbuilding, characterization, or setting up the plot takes this space up. There is no reason for the story to drag like this. Any editor should have caught this. Except, of course, that there were a lot of people who saw the potential market of those who wanted their childhood to be relevant again, and knew that only a thin veneer of story was needed to cover this cash-grab.
With this, we end the first section, “Level One”.
[...]
[...]
[...]
[LEVEL ONE COMPLETED]
[Upgrading…]
[UltimateCheetah has ascended to LEVEL TWO]
[NEW WEAPON UNLOCKED: SPORKING SWORD]
Well, this is new. I don’t know what it does, but it looks cool. It is a plain metal blade, except for its cerulean color and glow. If you look closely, faint, light blue words float across the surface.
See you next time, for when we begin the next part, “Level Two”.
no subject
A wakizashi is basically a Japanese short sword.
no subject
Thanks.
no subject
The pacing of the book makes it seem like the second and third acts are going to be kinda rushed which isn't what a story that already has issues needs.
I can sort of see Daito and Shoto dressing up like samurai. Samurai have been "in", culturally speaking, for a while now. It's no different from a hypothetical user named "Grace Alderson" dressing her avatar in 1800s-era pioneer clothes. It becomes questionable if Daito and Shoto are the primary representation of Japanese folks in this book.
Even if you wanted to go the whole samurai angle, you could have one of them be super into it (And thus adopting the way samurai talked and what they were allegedly focused on in a pop culture sense) and the other one being like "Yeah the outfit's cool and it's something I can do with my brother, but I'm not really into it".
Katana and wakizashi are both kinds of traditional Japanese sword. Katanas are generally (Generally - there's a lot of different kinds of katana. Katana the word just means "sword". So a wakizashi is a kind of katana. Typically folks mean "Tachi" when they say "Katana".) meant to be used with two hands as a primary weapon, wakizashi are usually meant to be used with one as a secondary weapon. Frankly the description of their gear is questionable. If one were going to go all in on portraying these kids as samurai cosplayers, I'd expect the daikyu instead of bows (daikyu being a Japanese longbow), and instead of both of them carrying the same weapons one having a yari or naginata (Polearms - yari is a shorter stabbing spear, naginata is basically a sword blade on a long pole. Typically considered a woman's weapon).
What this shows to me is that the writer didn't do enough research into the culture he was possibly appropriating.
no subject
It becomes questionable if Daito and Shoto are the primary representation of Japanese folks in this book.
Exactly.
Also, thanks for the weapons info. Cline could put enough 80's references for one per page, but he couldn't research this.
no subject
This is why we see as a historical trend japanese swords getting shorter and easier to handle. There's not a lot of tachi around anymore because a whole lot of them were converted to uchigatana. Uchigatana are shorter swords with less killing power, but they're designed to play nice with a fighting style called Iaijutsu, which uses rapidly sheathing and unsheathing the sword to perform fast, dangerous strikes (It's a lot more technical than that and involves using the sheath to hold the sword in place while you increase pressure on the blade, so when finally drawn the weapon comes out at speed). If the only time you're drawing your sword is when someone ducks around your spear point and is coming for you, being able to rapidly draw the weapon into an attack could be the difference between life and death.
So if we're gonna have a pair of japanese twins dress up as samurai in a hypothetical video game, we need to decide how much of the history they're aware of. I would argue that because of where they're from they would have more immediate access to information like what I've just been talking about so it'd be weirder for them not to be aware of what weapons historical samurai actually used and preferred and when and why. Then you as an author can have Wade notice that Daito carries a bow, and Shoto a spear, and ask them about that since samurai use katanas. Then they can talk about the history with Wade and as a result there is both a more meaningful interaction between them and Wade and the reader potentially learns something they didn't know before and in more detail than what I've picked up just being around people who are nerds for historical japanese weapon disciplines.
Hell, if you even wanted to go further you could have something innocuous one of them said turn out to be key to the strategy to take down the sixers or whatever. "The sword is the secondary weapon" referring to a strategic feint later in the book or something. I don't know. There's just a lot of potential once you introduce not one but two characters so obsessed with what amounts to knights that they dress up as them and talk like they did.