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Ernest Cline DMCA's Laura Hudson's Ready Player Two review thread on Twitter
- Thread starter Syriel
- Start date
So like is Ernest Cline an actual transphobe shithead or is he just an utterly shit writer that his work becomes transphobic? Ever since learning more about Reki Kawahara (SAO's author) I try to find out if an author is actually a shithead or if they're just such a bad writer that any topic they touch turns to shit.
Also very scummy DMCA strike.
Also very scummy DMCA strike.
well i'd pull up the quote from the book where this content is touched upon and give it a charitable read but i literally cannot do that since ernest cline took it down (and according to some posters, deserved to be.... i disagree cuz it was very much used for it's intended purpose of review and was literally transformative and makes this conversation a bit messier without direct quotes)
it wasn't like, openly transphobic or anything, if anything it was attempting to be the opposite as far as i can tell. key word attempt.
don't remember what the passage said but it was very much a guy who doesn't understand anything about trans/gay/non-binary people very much attempting to wrap his world around these lgbt politics he doesn't understand but still wanted people to know existed in his world too since i guess he thought it would be weird if it wasn't touched upon but watching and experiencing your own birth was
And that passage was a direct attempt to undo the first books outright transphobia with it's "Are you an actual human female not someone who has had a sex change operation" bullshit. So an attempt was made and still he got it wrong.
That Ready Player One theme song is fantastic. I died laughing when he started playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
As for the Twilight and RP1 comparisons... Twilight could have been a compelling story in the hands of a more capable writer. Meyer isn't abjectly horrible, but I think the book could have been much more than it was. I remain convinced, however, that most of the vitriol directed toward Twilight is because it was a thing for young girls. RP1 is just "Remember This Thing: The Book." Drivel.
As for the Twilight and RP1 comparisons... Twilight could have been a compelling story in the hands of a more capable writer. Meyer isn't abjectly horrible, but I think the book could have been much more than it was. I remain convinced, however, that most of the vitriol directed toward Twilight is because it was a thing for young girls. RP1 is just "Remember This Thing: The Book." Drivel.
I think in it´s core RP1 could be an interesting idea of how he use midia and nostalgia as a form and escapism specially in a doomed world and I think the movie play with it in one scene (with the oasis creator and generic protagonist having a talk in the creator bedroom) but a copetent writer would need to start it from the scratch
Good point. I think you're right though, pretty much the entire work would have to be completely discarded. As a concept, it could be interesting.
I remember being kind excited by the movie because I think if anyone could save the book this person was Spielberg, but nope, he doubled down on the nostalgia wank
Oh I agree with that but I also think these last few years things have started to change since Nerd culture is becoming more mainstream.
What I object too is the nostalgia for what Ernest Cline calls the good old days since those days were not really good and to be honest I find his nostalgia really misplaced.
Movies that he idolizes the breakfast club the John Hughes movies that gets endlessy mentioned in RPO and RP2 are really fucked up films that even the actress Molly Ringwald had some big issues with now.
are game reviews all you read when it comes to reviews?
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I'm not surprised when a gaming forum's members are more inclined to corporate apologism, which can involve defense of DMCA abuse by more powerful agencies to the target.
What do you think the Venn diagram is for posters complaining about criticism of RPO and "living rent free in people's heads" who also complained about Twilight and 50 Shades? One perfect unbroken circle?
Well this thread got my curious so I just bought the Ready Player One audiobook from Audible. Let's see if it is as bad as everyone says. Outside of Era, I've always heard it is a good read.
RPO is alright by the standards of the YA sci-fi genre. 7/10. Armada on the other hand is everything people attack RPO to be and then some. The book is so bad it´s bad so I can´t recommend more than looking up samples but I still finished the audiobook as I couldn´t believe what I was hearing.
en.wikipedia.org
Cline might be a one-hit-wonder with zero reach. Who knows. I´ll form my own opinion on RPT next week but he belongs locked up for Armada. Cline himself sucks, I know. Look up his interview with the writer of the putrid Sword Arts Online Web/Light Novels. Our 2 literally giants met up in Japan and got along.
Early reader reception of RPT is positive but the alt-right hates it for being too "woke". More and more diverse LGBT+ representation in a sci-fi sequel than had all of that already in the original? Clutches pearls. The original is legit beloved by its sizable fanbase so expect people were too harsh on Ernest Cline think pieces in like a decade when nostalgia (for nostalgia) sets in and when those teen readers get media jobs.
Edit: Damn. That is amazing.
Armada (novel) - Wikipedia
Early reader reception of RPT is positive but the alt-right hates it for being too "woke". More and more diverse LGBT+ representation in a sci-fi sequel than had all of that already in the original? Clutches pearls. The original is legit beloved by its sizable fanbase so expect people were too harsh on Ernest Cline think pieces in like a decade when nostalgia (for nostalgia) sets in and when those teen readers get media jobs.
Edit: Damn. That is amazing.
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Did anyone end up reading this?
The whole thing is basically the first book, except now they're looking for what are repeatedly likened to the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic (could not stop laughing at that). I just got to the part where the protagonist admits his crush on the cute trans YouTuber and then immediately hacks her webcam to stalk her and now I'm doing the opposite of laughing. What the hell, Cline.
The whole thing is basically the first book, except now they're looking for what are repeatedly likened to the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic (could not stop laughing at that). I just got to the part where the protagonist admits his crush on the cute trans YouTuber and then immediately hacks her webcam to stalk her and now I'm doing the opposite of laughing. What the hell, Cline.
wow, ernest cline got some shit on his chest huh???
oh im well aware, i just did not know it manifested like this in his recent work lol
So he goes from transphobia in first book to fetishization in second book?
He tried.
I just read a like 60 page multi-chapter sequence where they go through the John Hughes planet and interact with a bunch of John Hughes characters to restore the original ending of Pretty in Pink, culminating in them going to the home of John Hughes, an NPC on the planet, to get his original screenplay. This is my life. This is what I do now.
Anyone ever get the feeling of, like, "man, this is really private material, should I be reading this?"
cuz I do lol
cuz I do lol
It really kind of feels like a 14 year old's embarrassing self-insert mega-crossover wish fulfillment fan/fapfic, only instead of leaving it half finished on their AO3 account they instead somehow got it published and turned it into a massive hit.
I was reminded of the incredibly stupid shit I used to write in elementary school while reading the original.
It's a thinly veiled version of himself going through fiction he likes to get a girl who clearly is a thinly veiled version of girls he had a crush on.
You misspelled Armada. And yes, RPO2 is a worse train wreck than 1 and that's saying something.
Eh I think it's less interesting than that. It's a thinly veiled girl version of himself. He literally only knows how to write ONE type of character, and that's Ernest Cline. It was a huge problem in Armada, where the love interest was Earnest Cline but girl, the mother was Earnest Cline but mother, the cool guy is Earnest Cline with a little charisma, etc
He is a godawful, lazy writer.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out these rankings. All three books are virtually indistinguishable in quality to me. All are beyond the the extreme where I no longer have any dynamic range left to discern different levels of badness.
I have friends who loved RPO but hate RPT, and it is completely baffling to me. When I try asking them to articulate the difference, it is always something really vague like "the first one just worked".
So I know the plot of the first book was a trashy, exploitative rip-off of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but is the sequel just a rip-off of SOMA? Because the whole human minds uploaded into AIs in VR on a spaceship exploring the cosmos is the plot of SOMA.
No. It's literally the same plot as RPO. The singularity stuff is in there, but it's not the main plot point.
Ah. Given RPO is a book I genuinely couldn't finish because of how bad it was, I'll give the second a miss.
Literally threw the book aside in disgust at page 60. I finished Twilight and would happily reread it before RPO.
I read 50 Shades of Grey and it's a superior book to RPO.
I read the iOS User Agreement and it's a superior book to RPO.
I read Where's Waldo by interpreting the drawn characters in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and it's a superior book to RPO.
GOOD LORD, he is literally singing page 60 out of the book, where it's just a laundry list of all the pop culture things Cline is desperately trying to piggyback off the popularity of without analogy, without metaphor, without clever references, it's just this song.
I mean I don't want to downplay that Twilight is a racist sexist trashfire that gives teenage girls a harmful idea of healthy relationships or that 50 Shades of Grey is an extremely inaccurate and dangerous portrayal of BDSM but it really is. inch resting. that a misogynistic transphobic dudebro nerdgasm is supposed to be exempt from the same criticism as those books. makes you think
I watched RPO the movie and was like "eh, that was pretty ok" but my friend kept insisting that the book was better and he liked it more so I finally read it. It was fucking HORRIBLE and I screamed at him on our podcast about it.
I read a blank notebook and it's a superior book to RPO.
I tried my best to read it but I couldn't finish it. Everyone was saying it was great but I just didn't get it.
Dude. That sounds cool.
I think you've really missed with your analogy attempt lol XD.
So far that stuff was a one sentence aside while the narrator just info dumps at the start, it's not the focus of the plot at all.
Right now our heroes are going through the Prince Planet so they can collect Prince iconography and have a battle of the bands with multiple iterations of Price, which is a sentence I actually typed