Books

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hngkong
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Re: Books

Postby hngkong » Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:48 pm

So I finished "Ready Player One". My review:

"Jerking off is amazing," I thought while staring at a picture of the Delorian from Back to the Future. As I whipped out my hog, I could only think of how amazing the song Come On Eileen (Dexy's Midnight Runners, Too-Rye-Ay, 1982) would be if it was playing while I worked my joystick like a man about to get a perfect score in Pac Man. "Uh, uh, DONKEY KONG KILL SCREEN IS COMING UP!" I screamed as I exploded just like the ship in Yars Revenge. Atari.

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mharr
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Re: Books

Postby mharr » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:17 pm

Careful now, you don't want to get sorted in with the GG crowd that hate Mr. Cline for cravenly writing a dystopian future where patriarchy and climate change are real.

Seriously though, RPO is... Fine. Competent. I'd totally upvote it on a fanfiction forum, but I really don't know where the massive wellspring of west coast digerati love came from. Was this somehow Wil Wheaton's first experience of written science fiction or what?

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Mongrel
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Re: Books

Postby Mongrel » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:25 pm

I confess, everything I ever heard about that book just makes it sound so completely repellent.
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Grath
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Re: Books

Postby Grath » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:29 pm

If you didn't pirate the book (or borrow it from a library), congratulations on contributing to the manchild author's ability to actually buy a Delorean and turn it into the bastard love child of every 80s pop culture car.

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mharr
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Re: Books

Postby mharr » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:34 pm

It's more uncanny valley than directly offensive. It's like an Alphabet corp experimental AI generated a novel length text file with left wing reddit upvotes as its fitness function.

You can't convince me those author photos aren't machine generated either.

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Mongrel
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Re: Books

Postby Mongrel » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:36 pm

mharr wrote:Careful now, you don't want to get sorted in with the GG crowd that hate Mr. Cline for cravenly writing a dystopian future where patriarchy and climate change are real.

Seriously though, RPO is... Fine. Competent. I'd totally upvote it on a fanfiction forum, but I really don't know understand where the massive wellspring of west coast digerati love came from. Was this somehow Wil Wheaton's first experience of written science fiction or what?


Well, this IS roughly the same crowd that also likes Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
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Mongrel
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Re: Books

Postby Mongrel » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:37 pm

Grath wrote:If you didn't pirate the book (or borrow it from a library), congratulations on contributing to the manchild author's ability to actually buy a Delorean and turn it into the bastard love child of every 80s pop culture car.

There's probably more DeLoreans converted to replica BttF Time Machines than ones that haven't.
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mharr
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Re: Books

Postby mharr » Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:42 pm

Mongrel wrote:Well, this IS roughly the same crowd that also likes Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Yeah, that feels like the level of success I'd have expected. A self-published meme with a fan reading podcast. This Spielberg movie deal is just more evidence that we're living on the Phantom Zone image of the real Earth.

Here's an uplifting thought: Maybe the world of RPO is the most optimistic future the latest generation can bring themselves to hope for. Us old farts are pissing on their thalidomide baby version of Star Trek.

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Blossom
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Re: Books

Postby Blossom » Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:37 am

mharr wrote:It's more uncanny valley than directly offensive. It's like an Alphabet corp experimental AI generated a novel length text file with left wing reddit upvotes as its fitness function.

You can't convince me those author photos aren't machine generated either.


I mean, no, it's directly offensive too.



It's a thread, but doesn't touch on the big gross racism in there.
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hngkong
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Re: Books

Postby hngkong » Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:12 am

Yeah, I was trying to touch on things like this:


It just wasn't good overall. I read tons of trash fiction, but none have felt as blatantly pandering to an audience as this. None have had all the Mary Sues know absolutely EVERY detail of EVERY pop culture thing from the 80s, or bragging about how they've spent literal days watching a single movie (10 and a half days for Monty Python and the Holy Grail specifically!), or memorizing every hit song. There's a character who discusses how another character kept trying to steal his wife away, because he thought he was in love with her, despite never saying anything to her about it. Several MacGuffins are so blatantly obvious when they were introduced that I said "That's going to be used in the final battle to do X" and I was right. EDIT: I also forgot that when he finally meets his best friend in the real world, he's initially upset that it's not a white guy, but rather a "fat black lesbian" since she lied to him. SECOND EDIT: And I completely forgot that the bad guys are totally willing to kill the heroes the moment they can initially, but when the villains literally control the final goal of the game with an impenetrable force field? Eh, let's not bother killing the people who have been threatening us the entire time who we've also somehow managed to get cameras inside their house, despite them never leaving the house...

Did I hate it? I'm not sure, but I don't think so? I've never come away from a book being this frustrated with every part of it. I should have been the target audience, but instead I'm coming away with a negative view. At least in the movie, TJ Miller is playing a giant scumbag.

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Grath
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Re: Books

Postby Grath » Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:41 am

Mongrel wrote:
Grath wrote:If you didn't pirate the book (or borrow it from a library), congratulations on contributing to the manchild author's ability to actually buy a Delorean and turn it into the bastard love child of every 80s pop culture car.

There's probably more DeLoreans converted to replica BttF Time Machines than ones that haven't.

Yeah but most of them don't also have R2D2 and elements from Knight Rider and Ghostbusters and...

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Silversong
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Re: Books

Postby Silversong » Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:59 am

I'd never heard anything about RPO except the title, thanks for saving me the trouble.

I'm halfway through The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. The first half is some heavy history, but it's important stuff as well as important to the story. I think I'm just about to get to the adventure part of the novel.

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mharr
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Re: Books

Postby mharr » Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:30 am

This is the greatest idea on the twitter thread:

Not that Starship Troopers the book didn't interrogate the hell out of itself.

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Büge
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Re: Books

Postby Büge » Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:54 am

hngkong wrote:None have had all the Mary Sues know absolutely EVERY detail of EVERY pop culture thing from the 80s, or bragging about how they've spent literal days watching a single movie (10 and a half days for Monty Python and the Holy Grail specifically!), or memorizing every hit song.


Not every pop culture thing or hit song. Just the ones that Ernest Cline likes.
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Büge
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Re: Books

Postby Büge » Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:09 am

Did the main character need to travel to the Lisa Frank Quadrant to visit Equestria, Care-A-Lot, Rainbowland, and Strawberryland to learn the true meaning of friendship?

I doubt it very much.
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Mongrel
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Re: Books

Postby Mongrel » Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:35 pm

hngkong wrote:Yeah, I was trying to touch on things like this:


Humans aren't even the only species that jerks off, not by a long shot.

AREN'T NERDS SUPPOSED TO KNOW SCIENCE STUFF? HUH? HUH?
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mharr
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Re: Books

Postby mharr » Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:52 pm

I can understand someone being raised in an oppressive puritan culture, hitting college and realising everything is lies, then going off on monologues like this. I can't understand an editor letting it reach press.

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nosimpleway
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Re: Books

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:16 pm

You can't knock a few protons off a hydrogen atom. Hydrogen has only one proton, otherwise it's something else.

So no, "science stuff" is pretty well beyond the capacity of the book.

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Friday
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Re: Books

Postby Friday » Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:50 pm

What the fuck is even the plot

I saw the previews for the movie and it looked, I shit you not, like a YA movie but aimed at nerds. You know, like the Hunger games, if every ten seconds someone said BAZINGA! and then made a reference to the 80s.

Given how much I hate nerd pandering and YA novels/movies, I think this may end up being my least favorite thing of all fucking time.
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Friday
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Re: Books

Postby Friday » Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:58 pm

Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by decapitating a fish and then using its body as a fleshlight, it's doubtful that early dolphins would have mastered the secrets of doing sick frontflips and shit
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