Books 18-19
In Real Life by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
About a 3.5 read thanks to some (most likely) unintentional things in here. First up, this GN is a decade old at the time of my reviewing it and the short story it's based on is I believe several years older. My biggest problem with this is it split its focus rather unsuccessfully. We have only one pov character, Anda, a young girl who is getting involved in her first MMRPG much to her mother's hesitation fearing (rightfully so) that her daughter could be preyed upon.
Anda was motivated by a speaker at the school, an Australian gamer girl (woman really, just not as alliterative) Liz is trying to put together a group of women gamers for this fantasy game and is giving these middle grade girls a free trial, talking at length about even in game girls tend to hide behind male avatars and gender neutral names (sadly a decade later that is still partially true).
Anda is swept away and is recruited by another girl to beat up gold farmers and she can earn IRL money for this. Knowing this might not be right, Anda goes along until she talks to a gold farmer and realizes this isn't an NPC. She's talking to a young Chinese man, Raymond, who has been too injured to work in a factory despite him being in his teens.
She learns that gold farming is when people get hold of and sell high value in-game objects to help players level up. The problem is the farmers tend to be people from developing countries and in poverty, selling to the wealthy first world players. So you have the problem of this illegal trade and it being someone's sole income (often working in bad conditions) plus ill feelings about a) people buying this stuff b) ESL players all being held as suspect in this activity.
Anda's attempts to help using her father's union's strike goes horribly wrong (not shocking in a communist country) and Raymond's situation gets more dire until she helps to spread his message (so it doesn't look like the whistle blower is within that company).
I think this would have worked better if it concentrated on just one thing, the farming or the misogyny. Doctorow is a long time activist and has a point that activisim only works if we ALL help regardless of race or gender. On the other hand, seeing this all through Anda's eyes there is an element of white savoir in this (even though the message that does it is coming from the Chinese players) Maybe if it didn't work so easily the ending might have sat better with me.
I think this had the best of intentions though. I wish gaming was a safer place. I've been a gamer girl since the 80s and it almost felt safer then (as you'd have to insult me to my face and not hide in the internet's shadows to do so). The sad part is if a woman gamer had written this, the ratings and the vitriol would likely have been worse.
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Alice in Borderland, Vol. 1 by Haro Aso
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was going to round up to 3 stars given the popularity of both manga and anime but then in the second game it pulled something that annoyed me far too much for that. To be fair, the whole fight or die/ fight and still die game trope was never for me and it's also very played out. Also so is the whole parallel world thing (though you're not sure if it is a parallel world or has some alien force taken over this world and we're seeing humans in stasis until they're needed for a game)
Ryohei Arisu and his BFF Chota are losers. Arisu is under pressure at home thanks to his perfect younger brother (top marks in school and pretty much anything he does and their father absolutely rubs Arisu's nose in it. Often 'can't you be more like your...' is something that leaves deep scars) Arisu is living down to people's low expectations and is rather self loathing about it. Chota well we don't know much about him other than he sexualizes women in the worst way on the daily. Their other friend Karube was a few years ahead of them at school. He now owns a bar working on saving money to buy a farm in Australia. He tries to get them to shape up.
Then the fireworks come and they wake up in a wasteland covered in dust. As they explore, trying to figure it out they end up in the first game we see as readers. They run into Shibuki who knows some of what is happening, games are ranked by playing cards a two of hearts being easier than say five of spades. She is annoyance number one. I've been reading sequential art stories since the 70s. I can handle the gravity defying boobs of doom we're always inflicted by. But why is she the only one swimming naked? Why is she the only one in high heels? Why does she defer to three men she's never met when she obviously has the superior grasp on the game.
Chota is unsurprisingly useless in this but Karube and Arisu have a head for death matches apparently and Karube is willing to take the leadership role (as being older) and sacrificial roles too) They survive with Chota being injured. They get visas for their wins, three more days in Borderland (if your visa expires, you're killed). Shibuki has obvious secrets and is willing to remains behind to help Chota.
The next game is longer vaguely more interesting. They have to play tag through a high rise apartment with many other characters with the goal of finding base before the serial killer finds them. Again we get to see Karube's sense of fondness and big brother (if you care to read it that was) vibes toward Arisu who is becoming less whiny and more adept at this.
We also get two more characters I suspect will become more important Usagi and Shuntaro. The latter is interesting as he mostly does nothing but observe and comment so is a feeder of info to the reader while giving hints he's at next level play. Usagi is annoyance number two. Not because of what she does (she's a rock climber in the real world and is smart) but because again how she's portrayed.
She shows up in skirt/heels but realizing what kind of game this is gets running shoes and bike shorts out of her backpack. I'm fairly sure this is to clue the reader in that she's good at this but OMFG WHY is she even in heels? You can tell this is written by a man for a male gaze and I'm fine with there being masculine slanted things but could we please stop deeming women in the process. No woman is going to choose a skirt and heels to play frakking death games that involve tons of running and fighting if she's packing shorts and running shoes!
The library got seven volumes of this so I could read more but I'm not sure I'll bother. It definitely didn't make me want to watch the anime either.
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