So I heard about Ready Player One, it sounded interesting, finally got a chance to read it.

Jesus.

Like, I would describe the prose as “workmanlike”, in the sense of Homer Simpson making that spice rack. The thing is seriously held together not only by ‘80s geek pop culture references, but '80s geek pop culture references that get called out by name and explained in depth when they appear, like the novelization of a fucking Seltzer-Friedberg movie.

and this is all set in the what, 2020s? 30s? but the plot at least accounts for that, foregrounds it even and I guess there is that weird geek retro thing, girls at Ground Kontrol with 8-bit Samus tattoos across their colllarbones like wow I"m pretty sure we were into the 32 bit era by the time pooping became volitional for you

Also it’s got this quest narrative that gets interrupted for a bizarrely long middle section that’s all boy meets girl/boy gets girl/boy loses girl, except it’s really boy impresses girl on the internet through nerd trivia and then obsesses over her in a way that ultimately skeeves girl out, and maaaaybe this is a riff on John Hughes movie structure?

But it was a decent page-turner and I kept reading it, up to right before the end boss fight, and yes it was shaping up as a literal boss fight because of fucking course it was, and –

okay I’m not a “good guy” here. I’ve been reading a lot of tumblr “voice of the underdog” communists lately and honestly feminists for years, I came to tumblr by way of Sady Doyle, and maybe picking a bit up from them and that’s kind of conscious and intentional because I’ve long been aware of how impressionable I am by good writers and recently my superego was getting its eyebrow pretty high about how firmly I’d been nodding to fascists and white nationalists, and

while I’ll understand how people different from me are totally real and have totally legitimate desires that kind of only reaffirms me in looking out for #1 because I realize with everyone being real and legitimate there’s not a way everyone can win, there’s just not, fulfillment of one is always experienced as limitation of another and I want good people to win but myself first of all –

okay, when the book made the point that the liberating thing about the internet is that it enables School Choice, so that the smart deserving poor can escape the violent undeserving poor – I mean I’ll nod and affirm the critiques, but allowing the smart deserving poor to join me in ruling the world is basically the extent of my fantasy social uplift politics so whatever.

When it made the point that the liberating thing about the internet is that it makes cool old guys who think of themselves as wizards rich, so they can wisely use their money to enable the deserving poor persecuted geeks to escape their lives towards Oregon, I mean, that’s not how I’d put it but wow glass houses.

But when it made the point, and I’m barely even paraphrasing, page 320 of the Broadway Paperbacks first edition, that the liberating thing about the internet is that anyone can pass as a thin straight white boy, as long as they like Rush and objectifying women, I honestly yelled “fuck this!” and threw the book on the ground.

I would’ve used it to pick up dogshit and thrown it in the trash, too, if it were my copy.

The wonderful thing about genre fiction is the way it’ll be spiced with completely unreflective takes on the author’s kinks.