Hello my
100,000 beautiful watchers. Sorry there will come a time when I stop crowing about that but it is not this day
So big old adaptation coming out. Spielberg directing lots of hype i couldn't really ignore it but i also can't do a lost in adaptation
For it because well i use film footage in those so i have to at least wait for the dvd to be out i think
It a good compromise would be if i reviewed the book just before i saw the film and then gave that review
sound's good? well i guess it doesn't really matter i'm doing anyway
Okay for those of you who haven't read the book yet but intend to SPOILER WARNING, I couldn't really think of a way to review
this without giving away something
Important so i'm not even gonna try sorry if you haven't read the book and don't care about spoilers don't worry about being lost i'm
gonna synopsis, on this bad boy in just a moment there is a lot of backlash circulating online right now against this book
so it might surprise you, to hear that i
Didn't hate it i mean i didn't love it but i didn't hate it
if you still feel inclined to grab pitchforks and torches over that statement just hear me out okay i'm gonna show my working though i
want
To make it clear that i have listened to people's reasoning for hating it and they have very
Legitimate points so i want to make it especially clear that i'm not trying
To change anyone's mind here and i'm definitely not trying to tell you that you're wrong for hating it this is just my personal
experience with this book
cards on the table though you should bear in mind that the last book i read before this was fifty shades darker
That might well be a factor with me being more lenient on it i should also mention that i am aware that the writer of
this book does appear to be a bit of a
problematic person he wrote and publicized a long poem about how porn should be full of nerdy girls of all shapes and sizes
instead of airheaded fake-boob  bimbos and it's a
Pretty vile to be honest i'm a well read this book again someday but i will sure as fuck never asked him to sign it
okay
Synopsis time i won't do the whole thing just the highlights and i'll probably stop here and there to talk about certain things when they
come up the year is
2044and the whole world's gone downhill somewhat after a massive fuel crisis most of the population of america is living in slums are
always on the verge of starvation and the government is nothing but celebrity candidates
hand-picked by large corporations to distract everyone while they run the world into the ground about
I think it was 30 years before but don't quote me on bad a famous video game designer named james halliday and his business partner
and best friend ogden morrow created a virtual reality
mmorpg called the oasis that became so popular it basically replaced the internet after years of
expansions and upgrades it now exists as like a combination of video game and second life and
Well an actual universe to be completely honest because people spend more time there than they do in the depressing reality outside their houses five
Years before the start of the main events of the book james hardy found out that he was dying and decided to leave
everything he owned like billions and billions of dollars in the controlling share in the company that runs the oasis to whoever could complete his
Final videogame he created what he called an easter egg and hid it in the oasis somewhere decreeing that the first person to find it
would win to do so you have to solve a bunch of riddles complete a bunch of challenges and collect three keys that would open
three gates somewhere in the universe he created
now
If you've seen the trailers for the upcoming film you're probably wondering where all the 80s comes from well basically
Holiday was a huge a nostalgia junkie for the time period he grew up in and he wanted everyone to share in that because
Well because he was a bit mental to be completely honest but
Because of that he made all the riddles and all the quests to find the keys and gates tied into 80's pop-culture somehow
mostly through references to iconic video games movies and music the whole world went mad looking for this easter egg for years
The people who dedicated their lives to finding it became known as egg hunters which got quickly shortened to gunter's because of fucking course it
did the main character of the story wade watts all
possible as he's known in the oasis is such a person at the start of the book he's just shy of his 18th
birthday and about to graduate from the virtual school
He attends in the oasis it's been five years and no one's found the first key some people have found hits about it but nothing
past that
the first big break in the hunt comes when part of all suddenly has a eureka moment and figures out exactly where it is and
I have to say i was actually impressed with the plot twist about where it turned out
To be he has to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to it
culminating quite amusingly with him playing an ancient arcade game of joust with a lich king programmed by holliday himself after finding the key he
immediately runs into another gunter a girl named
Artemis and it turns out she actually figured out all the hints just before him but had been failing to pass the final test for
Eeks she's really annoyed at first that possible snuck in and got there first but the competition inspires her to finally beat the lich
for his part artemis is super thrilled to meet artemis because she's a famous blogger and he's been harboring a
kind of creepy crush on her for years
parsa falls best friend is a guy called h and he's also a taunted gunther and he figures out where the key is based on
weights location then two more players a pair of young japanese brothers working together called die toe and shoto find it as well
they're both very committed to their culture so they just as samurai like
24/7 and the group of them become known as the high five and become instant celebrities the
antagonist of the tale are the employees of a mega broadband provider called ioi
they want halliday shares in the company so they can control the oasis and make it
subscription-based instead of free and put unskipable ads on everything and do all those other nasty things that big soulless corporations do they have an
Army of in-game avatars looking for the eggs that are referred to as the sixers because instead of names they all have employee numbers beginning
with six four
honestly four it sounds good in the book reasons that sort of thing does crop up quite a lot here after weight gets the first
key they tried to bribe him into telling them where to find it and when he refuses they then threatened to kill him with a
bomb they've planted underneath his trailer park he hopes that they're bluffing and knows that if they're not they're gonna kill him anyway so
refuses this too and they do follow through and blow up his home killing hundreds of innocents
fortunately he wasn't there at the time because he logs into the oasis from a secret hideout of his about half a mile away so
the bulk of the rest of the story is part of all contending with artemis
Hdto show - in the sixers in the race for the easter egg while also trying to maintain his friendship with h and the trust
Of the japanese duo try to date
Artemis and avoid being murdered by the sixers yeah despite being rivals and the greatest competition known to man possible and artemis hit it off
So much they start semi dating
spending all their time together living the rock star lifestyle as part of the mighty five at the top of the school board after about
six months of this wade confesses his love for her but this makes artemis realize they're hindering each other's chances of completing the quest so
She breaks up with him this is the point in the story where old
Possible loses quite a lot of goodwill with the audience because he doesn't take the break-up well i mean he basically
becomes a classic stalker ex sending her messages every day for weeks buying her gifts and air dropping them onto her base
operations he stands outside her window with a fucking boom box over his head because literally all he knows about
romance he learned from 80s rom-coms i
will swing back to this he eventually gives up and throws himself back into the hunt
sometimes he takes the lead sometimes it's someone else in the 5 quite often despite their being rivals they help each other along until right
At the end when the sixes jump ahead through a combination of luck and cheating so they all and by all i mean the five
and hundreds of thousands of other players who don't want the oasis to fall into the hands of io i
Team up for a huge final battle against the 6th army in the hopes of getting
to the last gate first so yeah not without it's deep deep floors vert i
Still kind of enjoyed this book first of all if you're thinking oh no
the power of childhood nostalgia is blind at the dawn then fuck you i'm not that old i was born in
1987 so i don't remember the 80s happening firsthand and i'm not only not obsessed of 80s culture i would say i have somewhat limited
patience for it i made the mistake of marathoning the second season of stranger things then immediately watching for
Ragnarok and while i enjoyed both of them i didn't want to hear another fucking
synthesizer for a long long time this apathy towards 80s pop culture resulted in a lot of things in this book flying right over my
Head, who just
not played that wargames
Not, seen that look well i've not played it but i am aware of it by reputation at least
Black tiger note back to having no idea what to imagine who rush
Nope have to admit i've never actually listened to a song by them but right at the end monty python and the holy grail
finally i knew how captain america felt in that scene that became a meme and
yeah i guess i got kind of a kick out of it i can't even imagine what it would have been like as someone who
Got all the references all the way through the book but i'll actually swing back to that in a second the point i'm trying to
Make is i did actually enjoy this book a regardless of the lack of?
Nostalgia it held for me that said i think it's only fair that i addressed the many and legitimate complaints people have about this book
Starting with the biggie many people consider the main character wade watts aka possible to be an absolute d-bag a stalker and generally a very
unlikable person and
Yeah, he kind of is he's incredibly condescending to people he thinks are less knowledgeable about his obsessions than him he casually drops transphobic
or sexist remarks all the time not
So much out of bigotry but more out of a willful ignorance he acts very entitled to a lot of things in a very unselfish
So fucking obsessed with spanking his dick i mean this comes up way too much even for me and you guys know i'm a guy
Who likes me porn the thing is we didn't quite ruin this book
for me for several reasons the first of which is i
Guess in regards to this i can't deny that i'm kind of privileged what i mean by that is i've never had to deal with
A wade in my life a potential or ex parte no
Hasn't taken leave me alone for an answer so his actions didn't resonate with me when i was reading the book
After i finished and i discussed the book with a few people who had i instantly understood how
narrow-minded that was but i was already done enjoying the book by then another reason is i
Kind of felt like i lacked the moral high-ground to judge wade because back when i was his age i was kind of a complete
douchebag - i mean it's not something i'm proud of and i've put a lot of effort into trying to improve myself since then with
the help of my friends but i
can't erase
That past when i was dumped for the first time in my life i spent a hell of a lot more time trying to think
up ways to get her back instead of reflecting on what i did to drive her away
For the record i didn't actually do any of the things i fought off i had some self control i guess i couldn't help but
see wade's behavior as just him being a dumbfuck kid just like i was and
hopefully just something he would grow out of like i did
100% not an excuse though believe me i know that and if you have had to deal with a person like that i can totally
See why you would want to rip this book up into a million pieces and burn the remains because it is basically a tale of
how your boundary issue riddled tormenta became a
Multi-billionaire the only thing i will say in the books defense not wade's defense but the books defense is i honestly disagree when people say
that wade is rewarded for his bad behavior at the end the online stalking
doesn't get wade the girl teaming up with the girl to save the world at the end for a great deal of personal wish -
His real life gets in the girl the stalking quite rightfully just pushes the girl further away from him it leads me to believe that
This book is slightly more self-aware than people give it credit for just just slightly i also just want to say that i dislike it
When people take his attempt to get artemis back out of context again not because i'm trying
to defend way just because i
dislike it when people take stuff out of context on general principle he wasn't
bombarding some girl he didn't know with messages they dated for six months and she made it clear when she was breaking up with him
That she wasn't doing it because she didn't have feelings for him but because
she felt their relationship was getting in the way of the egg hunt and
She was
also kind of convinced for in security reasons that he would no longer be interested in her when he found out that she has a
birthmark on her face in real life he was trying to contact her to assure her that he didn't care what she looked like and
Just, wanted to be with her yes he went way too far and yes that is not okay but if you're going
to hate something at least hate it for the right reasons that's all i ask me next and by many considered greater issue is all
the references you get a reference and you get a reference you all
get a reference a lot of people feel it came off as forced or was simply really annoying after a while
I've come to the conclusion that me not getting most of them actually
Helped me enjoy the book more when i had no idea what the fuck he was talking about it was easier to ignore i also
Feel compelled to mention that this book is very honest in its intentions
to be pop culture references the novel it's not like fifty shades where they're selling it as a romance novel but it's actually about
emotional abuse the teaser on the back of the cover literally contains the words pop culture and
Obsession so i can't help but feel that if you chose to read it and are still really complaining about it it's a bit of
A i don't know what you expected
Situation you know other complaints about the book involved the writing style and again i can see where the hate is coming from the entire
book
Is being narrated by wade so the whole thing is written in the syntax of a very horny 18 year old american hipster boy so
Yeah it does get a bit much after a while another is that the two japanese characters come off as complete?
Stereotypes i mean i have to admit i don't have any japanese friends so i can't say for certain but in their
interactions with other characters die too and shoto do very little besides bowing constantly and talking about honor more than zuko in the last airbender
i would
definitely say that the start of this book is by far its weakest part mean that's where most of the quinn gia slides were introduced
like we call the sixers that suck sores because they suck and
stuff like that there's also the issue that the world-building in this is almost exclusively
incredibly long exposition info dumps i'm inclined to be lenient about that because
something like the oasis its history in the way it came to work is not something that can be introduced without a shit ton of
expertise usually i would want a world to be built gradually around the character as
he
experiences it like in say harry potter but i don't think that would be possible with this kind of world because it's literally a whole
Universe and wade only interacts with a very small part of it during the story so yeah with all of that right at the start
of
The book i can see why a lot of people put it down very quickly
but if you can power through it does get better a
Personal issue i have with this book and with the concept of the oasis in particular is the fact that the entire business model that
it works on is
100% based on in-game micro
transactions which if you didn't know is the idea of selling virtual goods for small amounts of very real money
I won't go off on a tangent
explaining exactly how fucked up that is but if you're a regular online gamer or you've ever watched an episode of the angry joe show
you'll know that games that run on micro
transactions are kind of considered the devil when i was first reading this i was like wow this book must be much older than i
Originally thought for them to be touting the merits as this as if it were some new incredible invention but no
2011 it makes a bit more sense when you get to the
2044 time period as the oasis is often treated as more real than real life by then but when it first started it must have
Gotten some terrible reviews from the gamer channels that's all i'm saying making matters worse do you know how i know
the oasis would never have caught on real life as an mmorpg no matter how
Insanely immersive it was it's a single life video game one death is game over you have to create a new
avatar and start from scratch
No, game in the history of gaming has ever done that for a reason i mean it might occasionally be included as an optional insanity
difficulty setting but that shows fuck wouldn't be the only way you could play the game and just to be clear it's not just your
Avatar it's your entire
account that gets wiped with player death in the oasis we're not just talking about losing whatever items were on you at the time
everything gets deleted including your in-game money and property that i must add does have genuine value
because half of it would have been paid for with real life money what's that other thing that trying to tell a story about a
single life video game oh yeah that anime that everyone seems to hate with a burning passion it's almost like it's a terrible premise i
can see why it would be tempting to include this from a storytelling perspective because without it these stakes are infinitely lessened but the
difficulty level of any quest would be impossible to gage and one mistake could end up costing you years of your life and possibly
Thousands of dollars no one would play a game like that long enough for it to take over the world
Okay i should probably talk about some positives so you don't all think i'm completely
crazy, for saying i didn't hate this book i enjoy stories with two types of antagonists and they are amusingly complete opposite extremes
To each other either
sympathetic relatable characters that in another life you could have been friends with or utter
Hate sinks that you revel in the destruction of the baddies that don't do it for me are the ones that try to be both
or just somewhere in the middle and end up being kind of boring or
they're just sort of silly and incompetent and just there to be laughed at the author of this book ernest cline
Succeeded in making me hate the sixers they are scummy
cheatin corporate douchebags and the idea of them winning filled me with a cold fury this really helped me root for the lead despite him
being as we discussed earlier a bit of a wanker i also love that the egg hunt was broken as fuck
difficulty wise partly because we've all played games like that and also because this makes perfect sense in the story
Halliday actually mentions at the start that he obviously couldn't beta test the egg hunt before its release so there was bound to be some
issues with it as a result it took five years for anyone to pass the first and supposedly easiest challenge
finding the first key but everyone who found it instantly figured out the riddle for the location of the first gate
Then it took six months to find the second key but after that it was only a matter of weeks before the entire rest of?
The quest was completed i regret
to say that the whole society crumbling down while a puppet celebrity president dances around like a buffoon while other nations and large corporations
Control everything and want to destroy neutrality of the internet is a lot more real now but it was when the book was written
that might be another reason it resonated with me much more than i was expecting
amusing
fun fact i noticed that the audio book you can get for this on audible
not advertising no sponsorship was narrated by wil wheaton which is hilarious because wheaton is talked about in this book he's the vice
president of the oasis i was seeing player rights and is a known ally of the gunter's
There's also an entire sector of the galaxy named after him as well
Steven spielberg is mentioned too as it happens both halliday and part of all thought that he's one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live
i can see why he was willing to sign on to direct this adaptation
although it is cheap and slightly because they also consider kevin smith in the same
category and i mean come on guys i like cloaks and dogma as much as the next guy but
Okay i'm gonna end on some predictions for the film and some thoughts on the trailer because i've left doing this
So late a lot of you will already have seen the film by the time this video comes out?
So feel free to laugh at how wrong i'm being i foresee the same amount of nostalgia references but slightly different
Nostalgia to the book for copyright reasons i mean those big film corporations owned a lot these days but they don't quite own?
everything yet i didn't actually care enough to read the article but i saw a news headline that read
Why you're not gonna see any star wars and ready player one?
So i guess there's that we probably won't see the parts in the story where wade becomes extremely overweight because you know hollywood hates large
Heroes all the bits waste arts using a body wash that completely dissolves all the hair on his body so he'll fit into his vr
Suit better and i do mean all his hair we're talking like head body
eyebrows i know everyone's kind of pissed about the iron giant killing people on this which i mean if you're a big fan of that
movie i totally get because a huge part of his character was being nonviolent but i mean
You have to bear in mind that even in the context of the story that's not supposed to be v iron giant
towards the end of ready player one
Everyone who passes a certain test is offered a giant possible robot as a reward and the iron giant is mentioned as being one of
the options that no one picked i'm going to go ahead and predict that this is one of the examples of the nostalgia
Switcheroos due to copyright that i just mentioned so what you're seeing there is a robot that just happens to look like the iron giant
being controlled by a teenager so on one hand
complaining about this is a bit like complaining about someone using a spongebob squarepants skin to play minecraft because
spongebob would never kill someone with a diamond sword that's a complete betrayal of his character but on the other hand it was still a
really dumb move by the filmmakers to not predict this kind of backlash over it judging by the trailer they seem to be playing up
The video game aspects of the oasis quite a lot which should be fun to watch even if it is a bit off-book because that
actually skipped over almost all of the levelling up related gaming that possible did that wasn't directly related to the egg quest and
Bookpals of all very rarely took part in pvp unless he was forced to it does appear that they've decided to make everyone's avatar completely
different-looking to their real-life counterparts
I mean die toe and shoto did that anyways but
artemis looking almost exactly like her avatar with one exception of her birthmark is part of a character and each
looking and sounding like a caucasian male is also kind of a plot point but
I guess they decided they wanted to go with more
Fantastical looking characters in the oasis parts of the story they also seem to be playing up the back to the future delorean are locked
by the looks of things i mean it's really not in the book all that much i really hope they keep the visually hilarious things
like playing the arcade game with a giant lich i mean if they don't that would have been one of the biggest missed
opportunities of film adaptation history
Okay i think that's enough for now in no small part because i am a literally just about to go and see the film so
i will see you guys shortly in that review peace
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and his business partner and friend ogden morrow
created a virtual vrt mmm oh ah ba ba ba ba ba mmm
oh
Rpg called the oasis and his business partner and best friend ogden morrow created a virtual vrt mmo mmo
rpg
every time
Making matters worse do you know how i know the oasis would never have caught on in real life as an mmo are people
making matters worse do you know how i know the oasis would never have caught on in real life as an mmo but never about
making messes worse do you know how i know the oasis would never have caught on in real life as an
Mmm-mmm-mmm! Martha do you know how i know the oasis would never have caught on in real life as an mmorpg
Baby, baby baby boo boo bat bucket
I'm going crazy here it's single life it's a single life
it's a single life video game no game a
single life video game none
comes from well basically
goodbye a script you'll be remembered has ever done that for a reason
It's lunch tab this would never have caught on in real life as an mmorpg no matter how insanely in matters if it was
done for break
