#more weird overwatch rants will of course come when the game actually comes out

[caden]

ohhh man okay ive said before i still play and enjoy overwatch (although less often now because the blizzard hong kong stuff is so gross) but anyways so im speaking as a fan and semi-involved member of the “““community””” here. literally no one fucking cares about the story and it’s a mistake to think they do. the game is fun because the mechanics are really really tight and relatively unique in the shooter genre. im cool with a dedicated co-op mode and the characters are... sort of charming sometimes but the writing style is so... fucking... earnest in the most misguided bland way... the world is poorly thought out and uninteresting and the characters are like cool as interestingly-designed archetypes with memorable lines (which is good for a class based shooter) but not as actual three dimensional characters. 

In the original game, where the story is completely secondary to the gameplay (even if the marketing says it isn’t, the design of the game is clearly oriented towards a competitive community and deep mechanics over a story since there isnt even a fucking story mode outside of some limited events) the only real purpose of any of the characters having a PERSONALITY is to instruct the player on how that character should be played. Like, for example, Zarya is big and strong because she should be played aggressively at the front line of the team. Every really good character design in the game is really good because it immediately communicates to the player how that character works, and I’m 100% convinced the design team knows this and leans into it-- the character designs probably come after the core mechanics have been developed. 

Anyways, the story could be good, who knows. I’ll be the first to forgive plot holes and inconsistent world building (which ultimately are superfluous 99% of the time anyways) if the actual narrative they’re telling ends up being interesting. They at least have a diverse cast and to some extent characters that I’m vaguely invested in already. But hopefully the real purpose of 2 is to revitalize the multiplayer community. 

That said, it also would be a mistake to dramatically change the heroes that are already in the game. The muscle memory of how to play them becomes so deeply ingrained in your head that, for example, when they changed the cooldowns on Zarya’s bubbles, or on D.Va’s matrix, I was like totally thrown off for the next few weeks of playing and had to unlearn some of the techniques I was using. And, unless the gameplay is REALLY different, many of the kits in the game really aren’t broken and don’t need to be changed. The whole “customizable character” thing is cool as long as it’s confined to the single player-- putting it into the multiplayer would hugely fuck with the way the competitive scene works and essentially alienate new players because certain “builds” would be more viable than others and probably would reward players who had leveled up more. It would just add a whole new, unnecessarily complicated meta to the game. 

Essentially my thoughts are that this would all be better if it was just, like, a 30 dollar story DLC add-on that gave us 10 hours of real co-op gameplay. Which it might literally pretty much be, except they slapped a “2″ on it so that it would actually sell (since the original game is near the end of its life)

[seyaryminamoto]

Yakuza Sokkla AU headcanons?

Well, for starters I can point you to a Yakuza AU fic that already exists and features Sokkla, though it’s not the main pairing... here you go!

Now then... let’s toy around with a set of headcanons, shall we?

Azula of course belongs to the biggest baddest yakuza clan in the nation, spanning back who knows how many generations, probably since the Edo period. It’s a pretty violent clan, with complicated and gruesome rites of passage. For instance, Zuko could’ve even been burned in this setting for the sake of proving himself a worthy successor to his father :’D it may sound insane, but there’s a real-life yakuza tradition of amputating their pinky fingers to settle conflicts or as punishments... so in their case, the burning is a rite done to the clan’s heir -- if the heir survives, he’s proven himself, so, strangely, in this AU Zuko’s burn is a mark of pride rather than shame :’D (and Ozai probably has a burn of his own too). Theirs could be, perhaps, the Homura clan (as a reading of Homura 炎 would mean “flames”).

Sokka would belong to a smaller yakuza clan, but his father could be a little like Hanzo and Genji’s father from Overwatch, a wise old man who actually reels back his more criminal and wild associates, who surely want their clan to outdo the Homura at all costs, even if by breaking their more traditional and respectful (and samurai-ish (?)) approach to their work. I’d think their clan can be the Kawakami clan (written  川上, means “above the river”).

The Kawakami are renowned for having THE coolest tattoos so that’s one nice thing they have over every other Yakuza clan around, bahahaha. Sokka has been learning (amongst other things) how to make tattoos of his own too, so he gets plenty of art education here and is damn good at what he does because this boy has the soul of an artist and if it were nurtured properly he’d go the distance with his talents, MARK MY WORDS!

Eh-hem, Sokka fangirl rant over... as they’re from rival clans, Sokka and Azula have bumped into each other on occasion, whenever friction rises between their groups. They’ve known of the other’s existence (and their respective siblings) all along, and they’ve been raised to hate each other’s guts :’D as kids they probably only saw each other on a few occasions, but once they’re old enough to take up missions of their own, their paths will cross more often.

The Homura clan traditionally handles most the drug trafficking and arms trading, and of course, the Kawakami are trying to deal in those things too... which results in frequent spats over suppliers, even outright fights between group members, until Hakoda Kawakami decides he’s had enough of the nonsensical rivalry and determines their clan will benefit most from a truce and an alliance with the Homura clan. He tasks his son and heir with arranging it, since this could be their rise to yakuza glory!

Of course, Sokka Kawakami has a lot of possible ways to achieve success at his father’s request. He starts by making peace offerings to the other clan, yielding some suppliers, for instance, in a show of good faith. But Ozai Homura is not amused and not impressed because he can tell these people are up to something: as he wants his heir Zuko to stay focused on learning the elements of the business that matter, such as learning to read stock markets and such (legit, it seems the Yakuza do this to find out which companies to extort :’D), he dispatches his daughter to handle the lesser threat of the Kawakami clan.

This means a huge cat and mouse struggle begins between Azula and Sokka: she decides to turn his displays of generosity against him, by extending Homura “protection” AKA extortion to people within Kawakami territories, arguing that the Kawakami’s displays of weakness these days mean they’re no longer upholding their duties to “protect” their people as they should. Naturally, Sokka is outraged that she’s fucked up his plan but he counterattacks by reaching out to the people she’s trying to steal away to prove that he’s indeed going to protect them. From HER! :’D The people in question are just plain confused because who should they believe at this point? xD

After a few weeks of this pretty pointless tug of war, Sokka decides he needs to step up his game and take a new approach to fulfilling his father’s request: he asks Azula for a peaceful private meeting in an empty park at night (and by private I mean they’ll talk alone while about 20 members of each clan point guns at each other from the shadows of the park), and he explains what’s going on and why he’s been up to what he’s up to. Azula is uninterested in any alliances, for the Homura are perfectly strong as they are, but Sokka points out... their tattoo game ain’t as good as the Kawakami clan’s. Azula is confused but intrigued.

Next thing Ozai knows, Azula is offering to take one bullet for the clan: she will receive a tattoo from the Kawakami heir to see if they have ONE worthwhile thing to offer their clan or not. Ozai is utterly uninterested but fiiiiiiiiiine, their artists have been pretty lackluster lately and it’s known decent tattoos are needed for people to respect a yakuza clan as it should be.

As these tattoos are very difficult, painful and time-consuming, it takes more than one session. Sokka of course insists he must be alone with Azula or he won’t be able to focus -- not that he’s focusing too much while she lies down naked to the waist on his tattoo parlor and he works on inking her back as best as he can :’D the very FATE of his clan rides on whether he can do wonders on Azula’s body or not... (?)

... Obviously, this ends up taking a whole other meaning when it’s time for him to work on other, more intimate parts of her body...

Ehem. Things are no longer PG-13. Not that they ever are when it comes to the yakuza. Or to me writing these two.

Azula goes home after the final session of her hugely-detailed epic tattoo with the biggest, stupidest smile on her face because ahaha that tattoo was good “ahaha yes father he’s TALENTED I mean, very talented, the things he does with his HUGE needle...! Um, y-yeah, I’m totally talking about tattoos, not about anything else, that’s not it (?)”

A temporary alliance is crafted then, despite Ozai thinks Azula’s approval of the Kawakami clan is super weird and isn’t exactly crazy about allowing this puny clan to even breathe in his direction, but he’s always had a weakness for his daughter + has no idea she’s doing the tattoo artist so he lets everything run its course (?)

I guess one day he finds out and legit war blows up between both factions (?) buuuut that’s too much plot to plot and I have enough big stories in my head as it is x’D feel free to imagine that war and its outcome for yourself, anon (?)

(as a bonus, looking into the yakuza wikipedia article revealed that, amongst their TONS of criminal activities, the real life yakuza actually offered relief and assistance during big catastrophic events in Japan, like the Kobe and Sendai earthquakes? How epic would it be for the Kawakami clan to offer relief and earn the loyalty of a fuckton of people, turning them into a clan big enough to rival the Homura before Ozai is the wiser... :’DDDD further spice into the clan war, eh, ehhhh?)

Well, that was fun xD I hope you enjoyed it too, Anon xD

[fureniku]

The return of my blog or something idk

Looks like in my last blog I said I’d not post my semi-private stuff here, only to a private blog.

Honestly, I can’t remember the name of the private blog; let alone the login/password. I think I only made one post there, to zero followers, and kind of lost the point of doing it. So fuck it, lets just go back to being here.

Days since last post: 614 Todays date: 30th September 2019 Start time: 20:39

Well, I guess we have some catching up to do.

I don’t know how many people on here were following me before. So, I guess I’ll start with a sum-up. My previous blog was just me ranting about anxiety/depression related things. It was a good platform for me to vent my thoughts without real life friends knowing; I had a few RL friends who followed it which was great as they could give me some support, but most of them didn’t know about the blog, which was also great as they then didn’t know a side of me I’d generally prefer to keep private. That blog was deleted in early January 2018, when the drummer from my then-band found it. I had made some comments about my frustrations in the band which were true, and I stand by them - but naturally it caused drama. I deleted the account, and instantly regretted it - I only had maybe 50 followers, but now I have two, so yeah.  Life since then has been... chaotic. Not specifically in a bad way, just a lot of things happened. When the blog ended I was; - Single - Playing guitar in a band - Working a dead-end job in a Warehouse - Had no ambition/drive to progress life

Three of those things have since changed; I’m still single (not for lack of trying but whatevs). I guess I’ll cover a timeline? Jan 2018: I deleted my old blog, and made this one, and a second one with a more secretive/anon name. I made a couple of posts on each, then abandoned it. Instead, I started relying mostly on just one friend to help me. May 2018: I got a new job, working for a games developer. It literally changed my life. Anxiety/depression started to clear up a lot, things just generally improved. June/July-ish 2018: I left my band. There was an argument about the fact another band was using our space for free, after we had offered it to them at a split rate and they declined. I instigated the argument, other members didn’t see eye to eye with me, so I quit. It was a final nail in the coffin kind of thing, but it was certainly the healthy thing to do. The whole situation had been kind of toxic for a little while, but I now get on just fine with all of them - I think if I had stayed much longer, that might not be the case. Our vocalist left very shortly after me as well - I don’t know the reasons why, but it seems the terms were... less happy.

September 2018: I started taking Japanese classes. Met a girl, had a crush on her for a bit, it didn’t go anywhere as usual. No biggie.

December 2018: Depression came back a bit, as it always does around then. Not much I can do about it so I just power through.

February 2019: I got made redundant from work. I was cool with it, I could see it coming for a while and there was like 12 other people too, my boss had fought hard to keep me but the game wasn’t doing so well, so I totally get it. I got a nice redundancy pay (which they by no means had to give me, so I’m super grateful). I applied for a job with another studio; quite a big one called Jagex. They were far from me so it would’ve involved moving and stuff, so quite scary. I made it to the final stages, but didn’t get it.

I now had a fair lump of cash (I had been saving for a house anyway), but not quite sure what to do with it. Followers of my previous blog can probably guess what I decided to spend it on...

April 2019: I went back to Japan! My mental-health-reset trip mark 2. I spent about two and a half weeks there (despite fucking up and accidentally buying a ticket to return mid-may... whoops). I got detained in China on my way home too but that’s a whole other story (it was all sorted and fine in the end).

While in Japan, I had time to clear my head and think. I decided I wanted to go back to university, so started thinking about how that would work. Here in the UK, we get a student loan to pay for university. It’s a bit complicated, but the way it works is you get your course length plus one year of funding. The day you set foot on campus, you use one year of funding. Now, I had already been to university previously - I studied music production. Totally dead industry, I dropped out about three weeks into my second year. That meant, I only had course length minus one year’s funding left available. So I have to pay the first year of university myself. At a cool £9,250.

My dad agreed to pay one term, so one third of that. I managed to save up another terms worth by working over the summer. I’m sat in my uni dorm right now, still not quite sure how I’ll pay for the third term... but I’ve got 6 months to figure that one out.

May 2019: I returned to my original job, back in the warehouse. Picking and packing sacks of bird food, so much fun. My mental health naturally slipped again, although everyone was really friendly to me while before it was kinda like I didn’t exist, so that was nice.

Around this time, I also joined an Overwatch team. It was a pretty big team with maybe 14-15 members, it was cool to make some new friends. Except one guy, was a dick. This OW stuff is like a whole side story from hereon... Anyway, I said to my squad leader (We’ll call her SN) that this guy is a dick. She said ok and she’d go talk to him. She said do you agree you’re being a dick, he said no. She said do you acknowledge one of the squad members thinks you’re being a dick? He said no again. Some other stuff I don’t know happened, and he got kicked off the team. He turned a load of people against her, caused loads of drama, and everyone blamed her when it was 100% my fault. So that was fun. The only reason I didn’t leave the team right then is because if I had, the entire drama would’ve been for nothing.

June 2019: My old boss who didn’t work there appeared at the end of may. I have a job for you. Ominous... but ok. Turns out, there was a new system being implemented on another contract. As I had experience with QA, and had done some IT stuff for them before, they wanted me to help with the testing and implementation. It was a job that would test my brain, while requiring little physical work - it was perfect for me. I really enjoyed it. It was supposed to be a four week thing, but we found lots of niggly little problems in the system... as far as I know, it’s actually only just gone live - but may have been delayed further.

While working up there, obviously there was downtime while waiting for fixes to be implemented. “What, you want this label a different size? oof, that’s gonna take about three weeks”. However, I got to stay in the office, doing odd jobs and stuff. One of the “odd jobs” ended up being a full on Android app, that my boss and me developed together. It was super fun to work on and really rewarding. That was worked on on-and-off between June and August.

July 2019: an interesting month. There was a major incident at work where a shelf holding very heavy metal shit stirrers collapsed. (The contract was a water treatment etc company, who provide all the clean water and water recycling for my local area. The things on the shelf literally stirred shit.) No one was hurt but it was a lot of drama, which was kind of entertaining to me as I was totally bunking off for the whole week where it happened. Not just the occasionally check Facebook on your phone at work kind of bunking off; I literally just messed about on Discord and worked on Minecraft mods for about two weeks straight. They had given me quite a big project to do, I automated the process... gg ez.

Around this time, the game I had been a part of before was to be officially cancelled. My old work invited me down to the studio to be a part of the formal funeral for the game, which was a big honour. I even got to fly the sky-whale which was awesome. It was bittersweet though, as the game meant a lot to me and had literally changed my life.

August 2019: haaaaaa august was a meme. I’d gotten kinda close with a girl (we’ll call her AP) in my Overwatch team. Like, we’d arranged to meet up at the end of August anyway but yeah, she was the first crush in a long time who actually knew I liked her. And she had certainly implied she felt the same way... like she’d been sending lots of hearts and stuff and talking to me 24/7, tagging me in “X has to take you on a date to Y place” memes and so on.  Anyways, so SN had apparently picked up on the fact I liked her, and started getting super pissy with me. I was pretty good friends with SN and we got on well, but in August she suddenly started getting crazy angry with me over tiny things. It all came to a head when I let AP kill me in a game (long story). Turns out, SN was like in love with me... despite breaking up with her boyfriend of over a year like 2 days before this conversation. So yeah, she told me to fuck off and that was that, she left the team etc, which thanks to chain of command meant that I was then in charge. fun. 

Anyways, get to the end of August, and I was due to meet AP. We met up, it was pretty cool. We hung out at a gaming festival, then suddenly like half way through she was like “lets split up for a bit” and I was like ........ok thats weird but alright. We didn’t meet up again until literally when she had like 2 mins to go, but it seems like she had a lot more fun without me being there. Clearly I’d done some major fuckup, which I still don’t actually know what it was. I had an anxiety attack before I even reached my car... and not a little one either. It’s quite possibly the biggest anxiety attack I’ve ever had, I barely made it to my car before having a total meltdown. It was the first one I’d had for about a year and it hit hard. It took me about 30 mins to calm down, then I headed home. 

I messaged her that night and asked her what happened, and she replied with “oh I never said I liked you”. It hurt a lot, like I’d been totally lead on. But hey whatever, that’s my life in a nutshell right? “Oh you want this happiness? this happiness right infront of you? HA nah”.  She said in the same message that I “seemed cool” and she’d like to hang out again sometime. But literally within a week she was clearly interested in another guy, so yeah whatever. We’re still friends and play games from time to time but I know she likes this other guy, so yeah. I still like her but whatever, not much I can do about it.

Work was a meme as well. I got taken off the fun and interesting projects to do paperwork. Literally, my job was to scan 35,000 documents because they couldn’t find a couple of bits of information. I suggested much better and more efficient ways, but the boss of the contract was like “no thats bad do it this old fashioned way we don’t want any fancy apps or anything” (I had suggested a spreadsheet or database). It took me about 3 weeks of just standing by a scanner which would jam up every 15-20 sheets in. It was mental health hell, especially in the last week after all the AP stuff had happened.

September 2019: I had one week left at work. I finished the hellish scanning project on Monday afternoon. “Oh as a thanks for your massive hard work we’ll make sure to find you things to do for the rest of the week” No it’s fine, I’m happy to just finish a few days early so I have more time to prep for uni. “No no no, we’ll find you stuff to do” They did not find stuff for me to do. I literally sat there, with nothing to do bar a few odd jobs “hey can you fix this printer”, for four days. It was incredibly mind-numbingly dull. The only thing ticking me over was “hey, maybe they wanna give me a card on my last day or something to say good luck and bye and thanks for doing this literal £20/hr job for half that because you’re agency staff”. But nah, a few people said cya later, but a lot forgot I was leaving entirely. So that was a fun way to finish what had mostly been a decent job...

I then had two weeks of freedom, before moving to university on the 21st. I was nervous; who wouldn’t be? but it was cool. I finally moved out of my house, and had a place where I could make a lot of new friends (LOL). On the day I moved in, I met up with someone I’d spoken to online a few times who was living in the same building as me, we’ll call her S. She was nice, we got on well, and it was kinda cool to have a friend who was a girl that for once I didn’t have a crush on (coz I’m still totally hung up on AP). We ended up going to a club in the evening which I’ve literally never done in my life, and she brought me out of my comfort zone a lot. She was great for my anxiety and really helpful. We’ve hung out a few times since, but I kind of feel like I was just a “filler friend” until she made new friends. She actually totally blanked me when I walked past her today, so that was fun. She has my Switch atm too coz I let her borrow it, I’ll probably just get it back later this week and then be done, its like I put in all the effort to be a friend and she couldn’t care less.

Anyways, so as I said I moved in on Saturday. I met one of my four flatmates on Saturday and another on Sunday, but hadn’t seen the other two at all. It gets to Thursday and I’m tidying the kitchen a bit, my mum’s about to pick me up so I can move in my last few things, and one of the mystery people appeared - she hadn’t actually moved in yet and was just unloading her stuff. She had loads of kitchen stuff, seems she’s really into her cooking.

Anyway, mum picks me up, we go to get my stuff, then we’re driving back, and my phone starts blowing up. S: Are you in? Me: No, why? S: Your building’s on fire. Me: lol nice joke S: no really *picture of everyone evacuated with fire engines outside* S: It’s your floor too, idk which flat. I wasn’t far out, so found her outside when I arrived. I’ve seen people going in, not being funny but one of them looked like [one of my flatmates]. Shit.  A few mins later, the girl who had just moved in came over. You know it’s our flat right? Shit. Turns out the extractor fan on the cooker malfunctioned. I won’t share the video itself coz one of my flatmates is in it, but yeah it just started spraying molten something all over the hob and surfaces. (They said it looked like molten metal, and they were there - but I don’t see how it would’ve gotten hot enough to melt any metal. My best guess is fat that hadn’t been cleaned from last years tenants)

So yeah, we got moved into another flat. The open cupboard right there was my one - I rescued my custom cup from it that the games studio had given me. It’s no good to drink from now, but it still looks ok so I’m glad I can keep it for decorative purposes at least. The rest of the food is waste, and I have to wait for the plates etc to get cleaned. I’m currently eating ready meals out of their cook-in containers, because I don’t have any plates, and only one fork and spoon. I bought some paper plates today though so I’ll use those from tomorrow, but I still don’t have any saucepans or anything.

I wasn’t around when they sorted out the replacement accommodation. Because of that, the other four from my flat went to the same new flat together, with one new person. I was put into a different flat which also had one other person in, my building manager assured me they’re “really nice”. I asked if they knew I was coming, BM said “they’ll know when we get up there :)”. That was Thursday, today is Monday. The only food in the kitchen is mine, I’ve not seen anyone. I’m 100% positive I’m alone in this flat.

And so yeah, that’s my uni experience so far. I had my first lectures today, it was cool because I already knew all the stuff so I got to feel smart (I’m doing computer games programming, and it was mostly about design docs which I read through extensively while working at the studio, so I knew exactly how they worked etc). But, I didn’t really make any friends. I kind of joined in with a couple of other people in each lecture, but it seems like they weren’t really interested, so whatever. I had an anime society taster this evening as well, and it was when I was on my way to that that S blanked me and I just got hit my like a wave of loneliness. I didn’t make any friends at the anime society, so I kinda just gave up and came back to my flat, and started writing this. As I was getting the fire picture from above though someone asked me if I wanted to hang out, so guess I’ll see how that goes. Not holding out much hope tbh and I’m at the point of becoming a full on hermit... I mean hey, at least I’d get a perfect score on my degree if I just focus on that and eliminate any social aspect right?

Finish time: 21:38 Length:  3,302 words/16,759 characters

[notdysfunctionaljustweird]

Since it’s pride month, I thought I would share some highlights from a conversation I was having with my cousin about representation in games (specifically Overwatch)

Background: My cousin (a hardcore gamer) was ranting about the overwatch community trying to push ships like Mchanzo and Pharmercy to happen, when it should just be fanfiction and stay on the internet. Reason being that games are set in a fantasy world and is a safe space that should be free of modern social issues such as sexuality. The highlights are direct replies to some of the comments he made

Why is it absurd and cringy to want a character to have a sexual preference? Would you then agree that that’s equivalent to wanting a character to be of a specific gender or race? Why is that any different? Or how there’s also a lot of heterosexual ships and yet I don’t see you complaining about those.

Why do you believe that Tracer’s sexuality reveal was rushed? All they did was just include a normal scene of her life in a comic. Just Tracer and her girlfriend. What were they supposed to do? A coming out party for her? Why did you think it was rushed? Because no-one saw it coming? The whole point is for sexuality, any sexuality to be perceived as something normal.

Then you said that we, the LGBTQ community are never happy. Happy with what? That one character that happened to be gay? Or all those characters that are used as queer baiting and then killed off or are forgotten? Well of course we were happy when we managed to get something that’s actually good. Very happy! But what’s so wrong with wanting to identify with more characters though? 

You yourself have a very specific description of what you want Doomfist to be like.. Since when is it bad for gay people to want gay couples in a game or movie or series or whatever to look up to..? It’s not a lie that most couples are typically straight. Fair enough, maybe it’s the majority.. Fair enough! But you can’t say it’s absurd and weird and bad for us to want gay couples, wherever, because we want representation of what’s real to US. And it’s definitely not unrealistic for there to be more gay people/characters, because for example my reality is that the majority of my friends are gay.

You specifically said that you want people to stop asking for stuff to do with gender or sexuality.. You said games are your safe-zone.. Well this might come as a surprise but.. Same for people like me. I want it to be my safe-zone too. What do you even mean by safe-zone? For there not to be gay characters in the game? Why would that be ‘safer’ for you..? For me safe would mean that I feel accepted, for who I am.. It’s not a safe space just for you it’s a safe space for everyone.. Also, sexuality matters are not really a big deal IN-game.. it’s all on the internet.. Tracer being gay has not affected the game or game-play whatsoever. It has just made a few people happy. People who probably needed it. Unless you are saying that knowing she is gay, has ruined the game for you?

Moving on, how is being gay an issue that affects the modern society? If anything.. it’s society that’s an issue to gays ;p.  We completely agree that gaming and games are a world, fantasy world, which STILL is free and people STILL find solitude in… I haven’t seen a gay person complain that Tracer, specifically, is gay… The fact that we want other characters to share our sexuality is another thing though I see your point but.. try to see it from our perspective.. Why would it upset you that you see people seeking more representation? Why can we not ask for more? Hell, if all the characters were gay and you were asking for a straight character, would it be okay for us to be pissed off? Or what if it was just one straight character, say a woman even.. wouldn’t you feel underrepresented? You already mentioned that black people are underrepresented (even though the game is trying to keep it equal with characters from all over the world).. so it does bother you too. It’s like you’re famished, and you go to a pizza party, as a pepperoni lover, and all they have to serve is their favourite vegetarian pizza (with philadelphia crust) and only a tiny slice of pepperoni pizza (that probably doesn’t even have Philadelphia crust).. You’re asking for someone to be happy with having a tiny slice of the pizza they want when everyone else can have as much of their favourite vegetarian pizza (with philadelphia crust!!!) I see what you mean, all new characters being released ended up being women, but the ratio of men/women was in favour of men to begin with so that might be why.. So you say that as a guy you feel underrepresented in the game and I say that I, as a lesbian, also feel under-represented in the game too! But obviously we both seek different representation.

[aesarctic]

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

It’s been a while since I’ve written a full-scale review. Sorry, guys!

Read on Goodreads

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

FOR THE SUPER NON-SPOILERY PEOPLE: Ready Player One is definitely a book that I'd read the back cover to. Maybe that's not your thing, but I find that some books are better going in knowing nothing, and some books you need to know a bit about. This is one of the books that I'd definitely read the back-of-the-book-blurb. I can tell you right now that any spoilers you may think are in it aren't actually spoilers. This book is also definitely five-star potential. Don't be put off by my four stars. FOR THE NON-SPOILERY PEOPLE (hidden for the SNSP): Expanding on what I said up there, anything in the back-of-the-book-blurb that you may think is spoilers is said within the first chapter. It's not even labeled "Chapter 1." It's labelled "Chapter 0." You're fine to read it. I really liked the concept of this book, and I when I finished it, I felt accomplished, but I also wanted more. Shout-out to Mark Vaders (mjvaders) on Spotify for a Ready Player One playlist of every song mentioned in the book. That's super cool. https://open.spotify.com/user/mjvaders (The User) https://open.spotify.com/user/mjvader... (The Playlist)

FOR THE SPOILERY PEOPLE: I have five pages of notes, front and back. Let's go. The book opens on chapter 0000. It's a slow introduction, the main points being: 1) The OASIS is a thing 2) The creator, Halliday, died and made a scavenger-hunt-like contest 3) It's been five years, and no one has found the first key. Until now. But the thing is, it gives us the entire video. Why can't we have a summary of the video? It took me a while to get hooked into the book because the video wasn't the most fun to read. I'd also like to note that this was the only time footnotes were used. Why didn't we get more of those? Why were they necessary? Why were they necessary for only that specific chapter? I'd also like to note that there are a lot of sections in this book that reads like a history lesson, and I'm not sure these are necessary. I'll get to that later. I was not alive in the 1980s. In fact, Halliday is two years younger than my mom. There were so many 80s culture references that probably went over my head, but I was surprised at how many I caught and understood. I've watched a few of the movies mentioned (though, I personally am not a StarWars fan), and I've heard some of the music, and I've played a few of the games. Call me cliché, but I always go straight to the Pac-Man machine in arcades. Either that or Skee-ball. My favourite mention, though is at the very end, when they mention Voltron. (Pages 332 and 336 in my paperback copy). June 10th of 2016, a remake of Voltron was created, and I definitely watched it when it came out. Then I watched the 2011 remake, and a good amount of the 1984 original show. The only one I have not watched (and like to pretend doesn't exist) is the 1990s version. Anyway, anyway, I like Voltron. At the beginning, we get this nice glimpse into the real world, featuring Aunt Alice. She took Wade's laptop, and I still don't understand why he didn't scramble to hide it when he heard her coming. He said he had backups, but he also mentioned it was a pain to redownload everything. I would have tried to hide my laptop. One of my favoruite settings in this book was Wade's secret hideout. I love how he rigged it, and I thought that was super cool. I was very upset when he left it. It also confused me when the Sixers didn't realize he was in there? They said they had proof he hadn't left the trailer in three days, and that proof was video, right? How do they not have video of him going to his hideout? Or at least exiting the trailer? They said they saw him enter the trailer, but they didn't see him leave? I predicted that someone would find it, but no one ever did. Props to Wade. I had a hard time imagining the OASIS. I should be imagining real life, since the graphics are that good. I could have at least imagined a Skyrim-looking game. But, nah. I imagined something more like Overwatch. Art3mis. I should have known she'd become a little more important in the story, but as he was ranting about her blog, I literally wrote "I hope she doesn't have a big role" and I did not like her. Aech. I pronounced this as "Ache" at first, but Wade corrected us. I did not follow that. I should have, and I tried, but I still said "Ache" in my head. As someone who gets their name mispronounced a lot, I should have known better, but I did not and I am ashamed. I didn't like Aech at first. Eventually she grew on me, and I was incredibly mad when Wade totally dissed her for Art3mis. Ugh. I hate romance stories like that. I hate romance stories in general, but this one was bad. I hated how Art3mis was set up to be his girlfriend. No thank you. I like the setting for this book--meaning how the Real World was set up and how that affects the OASIS and why the OASIS is used because of it. I mean, I don't fancy the idea of a Great Recession, but it's a cool concept in theory. The copper key was found on page 84. This book has 372 pages. At least, that's what it is in my copy. That seemed really early for me, especially since he immediately knew what the phrase on the copper key meant, and I was worried that the book would have something strange happen at the end after all of the keys and gates were found. Luckily there was nothing wrong at the end (besides an unnecessary romance) and the book was dedicated to the scavenger hunt. Thank the gods. Speaking of immediately knowing what the message on the copper key meant, he described where the first gate was, and it's a game, you know, so my immediate thought was that the game wouldn't be there and someone had stolen it and there'd be some complication. No. Of course, we have to meet Art3mis. Kill me. I like the fact that Wade wasn't the first one to find the temple, though. That's cool. He was just the first one to complete it. "I wanted to propose marriage." --page 93 K I L L M E When he figured out the message on the copper key, Wade says, "I didn't think it would matter which copy of his hometown I went to..." and I thought that it would. I thought that it would totally matter, and he'd have to go through however many worlds looking for the correct game, and the game wouldn't be there, and he'd have to track it down, or something. It was weird reading something that went so right on the first try. He also totally skips out on school, which he had previously mentioned that he needed to attend to not get into trouble. I've attended two high schools, one that requires 24 credits, and the one I'm currently at requires 26. I currently have 24 credits, so theoretically I only need to pass two classes that total up to two credits, right? Wrong. Schools tend to require a certain amount of credits in each subject--I did a research project on this my sophomore year. I still need to take two language arts classes and one science class. Some schools require four credits in language arts, science, and math. Then three in social studies. That's what I've seen most often. How much did he double up to accomplish being able to flake his senior year? You only have a certain about of blocks per semester/trimester, and in today's world we can take more with online classes, but his school is an online school. How did his credit system work? If anyone has any input or corrections to make, please feel free. I don't know everything. Wade mentions that it was a "beautiful Midwestern Day" and as someone who is from the Midwest, I'd like to ask where? Okay, so Wade signs something with the acronym "MTFBWYA" on page 127 of the paperback. I know I'm dense, but what does that stand for? Why is he signing so many contracts and giving people models of his avatar? Doesn't he want to stay as secret as possible? Doesn't that mean not letting people know what you look like? I love Wade and Aech's friendship! At the beginning, anyway. Wade didn't want to tell Aech any of the information, and she was totally chill with that. She understood and they stayed best friends. At that moment, anyway. I'm salty. How did Wade not predict that recording would be prohibited in the place he met with Sorrento? I thought that the comic book stack falling over was a Sixer. I was ever so wrong. If they recreated Ludus to make Ludus II, wouldn't that also have the tomb with the copper key? There's a huge amount of time where Wade didn't mention Art3mis' blog, and I felt that that was a bit out of character. He was checking it all the time before all of this. The next time we get an update on it is after Art3mis dumps him, blocks him, and stops posting on her blog. Speaking of Art3mis, I still think that their friendship and romance developed in a very strange way, and I definitely don't like it. I hate that she replaced Aech. The author made a huge point that we have no idea what Art3mis looked like. I felt as if this was way too built up. Wade is a lot like Frank Zhang from the Heroes of Olympus series, by Rick Riordan. SPOILER: He totally buffs up, and I feel as if it's erasing a bit of diversity in a way. END SPOILER Some points from my notes: -Art3mis is clearly way smarted than Wade -My aesthetic is doing research to play Pac-Man -I love that Aech found the key while Wade was playing Pac-Man I felt as if the trophy place that Wade checked out should have clicked for him a lot sooner. He had that knowledge. He even had the knowledge of Zork. Why didn't he skim through his journal the minute he didn't understand the next clue? That would have gotten him there a lot sooner. This book has a very good balance of dead characters. I appreciate important characters dying. It makes the story interesting. So Wade had that one job, but we never see him going to it after that initial time. What happened there? So Wade makes this entire plan to sneak into the Sixer's place, and readers are left in the dark. It's so weird reading, and a lot of my notes say things like, "This plan had better be good." When Daito died, Shoto handed over that weapon the three of them earned. I knew in that moment that that was probably the entire reason those characters existed, and I was a little upset. I laughed at the phrasing "101 IOI Plaza" There were four people: Wade, Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto. Three people were needed. Obviously someone was going to die. So does "P.S." stand for "postscript?" I was told it was "personal secret." Don't believe everything six-year-olds tell you. Marrow: *appears* Me: HE KNOCKED OVER THE COMIC BOOKS Me: *turns the page* Wade: HE KNOCKED OVER THE COMIC BOOKS Turns out Halliday and Marrow were in a love triangle, and things ended because of it. Ugh. Aech and Wade are friends again, by the way! That's good! And we end things with Art3mis and Wade, and I want to die. So, around the area where Wade was finding the copper key, I was beginning to realize that this book is a lot like The Raven Cycle series, by Maggie Stiefvater. Warning: TRC spoilers from here on out. The Raven Cycle is set up like a scavenger hunt, but complex and very real-worldly. In fact, one of the things I love about TRC is how complex, 3D, and life-like the characters are, and how 3D the plot is, and the settings are set up fantastically. Anyway, the story has a lot of history to it, in a way. One of the main characters, Gansey, is on this hunt for a Welsh king who lived centuries ago. History, right? But we don't get a lot of that history. We get the basics: "There is a dead king somewhere. If we find him, we get a wish." In Ready Player One, there's a dead game maker, and if you can follow the clues, you get the prize of money. It's a really similar plot--I'm not sure I'm conveying how similar it was in my mind. Anyway, in Ready Player One we get a lot of unnecessary history that I felt could be summarized like I just did. Maybe not quite like that because Ernest Cline is writing a book, not an informal review, but you know what I mean. The history wasn't interesting to me--I didn't need to know Halliday's backstory. Not really. I just needed to know that he was rich and someone was going to get that money. By following clues. The history bits really annoyed me, and I'd go on, but I think I've ranted enough. Next I'll get into the character differences and writing styles, and it goes on. Basically I did not need to read all of that history, and I'm citing a different series as my evidence. THANKS FOR READING