Ready Player One

Ultimately, I was entertained and engaged, but found the sexism reprehensible and short-sighted. I had to do 4 stars out of admiration for the concept and execution, which I couldn't deny, but I'll be damned if I give it 5 stars.

2 female characters, one is the love interest and the other is believed to be a male until almost the end, and then the main character still sees her that way and uses male pronouns anyhow. We are told that few girls/women are gamers in the future, just as we're falsely told few are gamers now, and so Wade falls for Artemis since she is a real girl and a real gamer, and her prowess is on display. If her prowess had not been on display, I am sure he would have tested her to prove she was real, harkening back to, oh, today, when all females around geek culture are assumed to be attention seekers rather than fans.

Wade asks her (paraphrasing) if she is a real girl, making clear trans girls don't/won't count. I mean, the future is painted as a hellscape, but this is presented as a reasonable, normal, funny?, thing to ask.

On a discussion board talking about Matt Lauer, I wrote:

Straight white guys have empathy for other straight white guys, which is how they can argue a guy shouldn???t lose everything for an assault/assaults that only lasted for a short time. They can relate to this other man more than the woman he???d assaulted because they???ve rarely to never been asked to imagine being anything else other than a cis white man. In their minds, they???re always the dude over the unconscious woman. Never, ever the woman, or the trans person, or the PoC just wanting to make it home.

As if this isn???t advantage enough, everyone who isn???t a cis white man has also spent a lifetime being asked to relate to the cis white guy through books, movies, etc. It becomes second nature for ???the other??? to do this in a culture that limits portrayals of someone who better represents you.

token gay representation/minor surprise.