Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Haven't seen the trailer yet, but I this book was getting a lot of hate on Twitter over the weekend. From the few passages I've read it seems like nothing but references, and comes off as overly pandering. Pretty sure I'll skip this one.
Edit: I do have a soft spot for Scott Pilgrim though, so who knows.
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Nah, it's a cool concept. The writing is just ridiculously poor. Reading Armada is what really made it stand out for me. Armada is pretty much exactly the same book, but with a lesser concept. Seeing the same style of prose and the same gimmicks in his writing made me reflect on just how bad the writing and story structure of RPO is.
That said, I'm interested to see if Spielberg can elevate the concept beyond what Cline is capable.
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
I feel like the book is being misrepresented a bit in this thread:
-The characters in the story are obsessed with 80s pop culture because mega-nerd James Halliday has died and coded an 80s themed easter egg hunt with a gazillion dollar prize. There is an obvious incentive for the mass obsession, it's not an organic event.
Which is what I find so sad about the premise; Halliday is essentially bribing people to love the same things he does. It screams for a need for validation on the part of the author, a justification for liking something "nerdy" or "geeky" that would presumably otherwise be a waste of time.
-Halliday's taste in 80s pop culture is adopted by those who want to win the contest. The real world is getting worse and worse, so people are more and more drawn to his escapist quest.
-Wade Watts (the protagonist) is a friendless, orphaned, isolated weirdo. It is established that he is completely obsessed, beyond the norm. He has nothing else in his life. We see the world through the eyes of someone who has wrapped all of his hopes and dreams around the quest.
It's his knowledge of 80s pop culture that facilitates Wade's growth from nobody weirdo into the Chosen One. It's not meant to be sad, but rather empowering, which ends up being sad.
-At a few points it is even acknowledged that Halliday's taste (and by extensions, Wade's) is not particularly quality driven. When Wade declares Python's Holy Grail to be perhaps the greatest movie of all time, that's not a statement the reader is to take seriously, it's just evidence of how completely Wade is obsessed with the pop culture relevant to his goal. This is not a thoroughly rational, mature, or unbiased narrator. OBVIOUSLY. He's a kid!
I think you are giving RPO too much credit here. Your comments seem to point to the idea that RPO is trying to be subversive with it's slavish references, that the author wants people to read this book and realize the dangers of escapism and how damaging too much time spent on video games and movies can be. To be fair, there is some element of that in the story, most notably in the ending
where Halliday shows up to congratulate Wade as a hologram only to tell him he needs to focus on the problems of the real world, showing him the OASIS self-destruct button.
The problem is that the narrative of the story only reinforces the idea that movie trivia, arcade mastery, and knowledge of music lyrics makes you super cool and special. The book really wants the reader to believe that Wade is a special snowflake for having mastered Joust, memorized War Games, and listened to Rush. Wade's knowledge of Halliday's hobbies isn't portrayed as a means to an end but rather a lifestyle Wade has internalized as the most important thing in his life, and that's something the book ultimately thinks is a good thing. There is no obstacle overcome or challenge in the story that isn't solved through trivial knowledge, or video game mastery, or some other such skill. Wade's love of all things 80s isn't challenged, it's reinforced by everyone else cheering him on to succeed. The descriptions of vehicles and environments, the way the challenges work, the way everyone talks about the culture that's been hoisted upon them, all of it is positive and reinforces the notion that these things were and are really that cool. This unironic lionizing undercuts the "message" at the end,
because if Halliday really wanted to fix the world and get people to stop spending all their time in the OASIS, then why did he design an Easter Egg Hunt that would only get more people to spend more of their time in it? Why didn't Halliday declare that he would award the money to whoever spent the most time building sustainable housing, or growing community gardens, or doing volunteer work, or anything actually productive?
The ending feels like a cop out, a moral that feels obligatorily slapped on that contradicts the events of the narrative.
RPO doesn't want you to question nerdy obsessiveness, it wants you to play "spot the reference," it wants to make you feel special and empowered for being a geek. RPO wants to ultimately validate, not tear down, "geek pride."
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
Oscar knew he had to do the right thing. The list of names was in front of him, like high scores on a Galaga machine. What would Ferris Bueller do in a situation like this? It was clear, he would employ Jews at his factory. This would be the wildest trick pulled on the Nazis since Indiana Jones pretended to be a Scottish lord.
It was then that Oscar remembered Amon Göth. Colossal jerk, the Biff Tannen of Birkenau.
Oscar turned to Itzhak Stern.
"Got our work cut out for us this time, Mr. Stern Pinball. High stakes. No cheat codes. No extra lives."
"Oscar. The list IS life. Every life saved is a 1-up."
If you're an intelligent woman is interested in breaking into the adult film industry, and if you can tell me the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet,
then you are hired.
This guy is the worst. Look, we've all done things that were lame when we were young, but this is just... ugh. How could someone write this up and publish this.
I could only read a few lines before the cringe started to reach lethal levels.My hat is off to any bold pioneers who saw that through to the bitter end.
This guy is the worst. Look, we've all done things that were lame when we were young, but this is just... ugh. How could someone write this up and publish this.
She writes sometimes for io9.... so i would assume so. She also wrote and edited porn in college and published a book called 'Hot Teen Slut' back in 2001.
This guy is the worst. Look, we've all done things that were lame when we were young, but this is just... ugh. How could someone write this up and publish this.
This is the way it's going to be going forward, to a certain degree. Unless people take the time as they grow older to go back over all their old forum posts, blog posts, social media comments and other things, a person's entire digital youth is going to be available for everyone to see. Jokes in poor taste, casually racist comments that you've outgrown as you've matured, cyberbullying remarks that were partly responsible for someone committing suicide... all this stuff is just there, unless people take an active interest in periodically cleaning house once in a while.
Anybody born in the last ten years can potentially have every incriminating remark they've ever made online since they became techno/literate preserved forever. It's going to be interesting to see how people going for job interviews 10 years from now clean up their online presence to make sure nothing incriminating comes out that could cost them a job.
This is the way it's going to be going forward, to a certain degree. Unless people take the time as they grow older to go back over all their old forum posts, blog posts, social media comments and other things, a person's entire digital youth is going to be available for everyone to see. Jokes in poor taste, casually racist comments that you've outgrown as you've matured, cyberbullying remarks that were partly responsible for someone committing suicide... all this stuff is just there, unless people take an active interest in periodically cleaning house once in a while.
Anybody born in the last ten years can potentially have every incriminating remark they've ever made online since they became techno/literate preserved forever. It's going to be interesting to see how people going for job interviews 10 years from now clean up their online presence to make sure nothing incriminating comes out that could cost them a job.
This is the way it's going to be going forward, to a certain degree. Unless people take the time as they grow older to go back over all their old forum posts, blog posts, social media comments and other things, a person's entire digital youth is going to be available for everyone to see. Jokes in poor taste, casually racist comments that you've outgrown as you've matured, cyberbullying remarks that were partly responsible for someone committing suicide... all this stuff is just there, unless people take an active interest in periodically cleaning house once in a while.
Anybody born in the last ten years can potentially have every incriminating remark they've ever made online since they became techno/literate preserved forever. It's going to be interesting to see how people going for job interviews 10 years from now clean up their online presence to make sure nothing incriminating comes out that could cost them a job.
