okay friends, as ready player one comes into the crosshairs of cultural mockery (as it deserves), I would like to take a moment to speak about a very important thing:
ready player one is not bad fanfiction
I know this seems like a relatively minor point! like, really, who cares? but not being fanfiction is actually critical to ready player one. not only is it not fanfiction, but it’s actually the polar opposite of fanfiction. it is the anti-fanfiction. not being fanfiction is integral to its existence
so, some background! in case you don’t know, ready player one is the story of A Dude who lives in a crapsack world. I actually think the first third or so of the book is pretty decent? yes, there’s an overload of “look at how large my nerd penis is,” but the worldbuilding is kind of interesting and author ernest cline does a decent job of setting up the ways in which the world is shitty and how an online virtual world has become both an haven for and crutch to society
because that is the big thing here: there is an immersive online world called the oasis, and it is big and people spend a lot of time there because the world is garbage
the creator of this online world is another dude, who died and left a treasure hunt within the game, and whoever finds the treasure will get his vast fortune and all his assets. it’s a fine setup, and it allows the author to make his hobby as important to his fictional world as it is to him, because there is only one way to find this treasure: you must know The Most about eighties nerd shit
what this means is that ready player one is the epitome of curatorial fandom: fandom that is expressed by having encyclopedic knowledge of canon, of how things were made and what promotion was done for them and, well, facts. ready player one is concerned with putting pop culture on a pedestal and appreciating at how flawless it is
and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, if you’re into it! but I cannot stress enough how much ready player one cares about the canon and defining what the canon is and what belongs to it. there is an actual argument between our protagonist and his friend about whether or not the movie ladyhawke is “canon,” by which they mean, “did the dude who created this treasure hunt like ladyhawke?” our protagonist likes it, therefore he wants it to be canon. it’s not enough for him to just like the movie, his enjoyment must be validated and elevated by this dude he idolizes. and (spoilers) in the end it is, so, like, good for you, bro
ready player one is proudly, aggressively, and oppressively non-transformative. that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. one of the single most baffling things things the protagonist enjoys, at least to me, is when, as part of the treasure hunt, he must reenact a movie. that’s it. that’s the whole thing. he is put into matthew broderick’s place in the movie war games, and he must do everything matthew broderick did in the movie at the same time and in the same way matthew broderick did it. he gets bonus points for nailing the same intonation and doing the same movements as broderick, and if he messes up lines or misses cues, he loses lives and, eventually, the game
now, I don’t know about you, but I am genuinely struggling to think of anything as boring as doing every single thing that the protagonist did in my favorite movie or tv show, exactly as it they did it, aside from maybe the parts where I get to kiss a hot person. and I say this as someone who really enjoys rewatching my favorite shows and replaying my favorite games! but, like, if you’re going to put me in a fully immersive recreation of my favorite world where I am playing my favorite character, I am absolutely going to be making some fanfic shit come to life there. I’ve already seen the movie, I don’t need to live it when I could go off book and make the decisions I always wanted to make, or try to see if I can make everyone bisexual and get them into a big orgy or something. like, the possibilities are endless here, right? they should be!
from what I can tell, it has never occurred to ernest cline that people might actually want to change their favorite media, or even that they could be interested in anything that isn’t on the page or screen. which, again, not everyone does fandom like that! but after the protagonist finishes his war games reenactment, he says that as soon as people find out about this marvelous “put yourself in your favorite movie and do it exactly the same way it happens on screen or else you lose” technology, it becomes wildly popular and I’m still just kind of like, is that really what people want? is that the dream?
so, yeah. when I say it’s important to emphasize that ready player one is not fanfic, this is what I’m talking about. ready player one is horrified by the idea of transforming works. ready player one cares about canon and only canon. ready player one does, admittedly, have scenes that look like a big cool crossover, because everyone shows up to a fight in their own favorite mecha, so you have, like, mecha-godzilla fighting the giant robot from the Japanese spider-man show, but it’s just window dressing. there’s no depth to it. these are literally skins, outfits that the characters put on
compare this to, say, kingdom hearts, which is actually licensed crossover fanfiction. in kingdom hearts, sora (nomura tetsuya’s original character, do not steal) meets up with donald duck and goofy and travels through various disney worlds on a ship crewed by chip and dale, the rescue rangers, having wacky adventures and trying to save both his best friend and mickey mouse from the darkness
(god, how did that game get made)
on his quest, sora interacts with various characters from disney and square enix properties, all of whom are retain their personalities and appear as (essentially) themselves. it matters that simba is simba and cloud is cloud; they’re supposed to be those characters, or alternate but recognizable versions of those characters. this is what professionally licensed crossover fanfiction looks like, and I’m not saying it’s what ready player one should have been, but it’s a simple way to highlight how uninterested ready player one is in thinking about characterization. the only reason it matters that a dude is in mecha-godzilla is that he has the powers of mecha-godzilla in combat. it’s the ultimate “who would win” fantasy because it’s focused entirely on power levels. would superman beat goku, but without any consideration as to why they were fighting in the first place or what they as characters bring to the mix
and the reason I think this is important to talk about is that many male nerds HATE ready player one, and they don’t get to fucking put that on us. fanfiction is a female-dominated and largely stigmatized part of fandom, and I am not fucking letting the internet decide that the problem with ready player one is that it’s bad fanfic. ready player one would be an infinitely deeper, richer, and more interesting text if cline put any thought into transforming the works he reveres, instead of just describing what happens in them in loving detail
so you don’t get to blame fanfic for this one, nerds. this is peak curatorial culture. he’s one of you
