I loved this story, just finished listening to it and immediately had to post about it, and I had to make a profile and register to do so (ugh! Making me do things!) Bravo Rich Larson. This was so good.
I've not skulked around any of the EA forums enough to know if this will be blasphemy but, I hated Ready Player One. I guess I can see why it has good reviews, why people liked it. Taps into a nostalgia and has a good base of a futuristic rags-to-riches type story. But I hated it. Retroparty Freestyle immediately reminded me of the book, illuminated the reasons I didn't like it, and really made me feel there was a fair comparison to the two stories, at least in world building terms.
The reason I disliked Ready Player One is that, to me, Ernest Cline does not know how to write dialogue for younger people of a future generation. I'm not talking about the first person narration, or even the narration that was inner monologue or talking to the reader, that was fine, more than fine, more than competent. But every single piece of dialogue of the characters, especially the younger and main characters, had the exact same voice. It's like he has no idea how to write dialogue or give characters different voices. And man, does that take a weight off my shoulders now because not one of my friends has read it yet so I've never had a chance to give that criticism, that's been building to a boiling point ever since the movie was announced. I guess I could have told them anyway, but for the most part I don't like to influence my friend's (or anyone's) opinions before they get a chance to form their own, and I figured at least a few of them would read it eventually.
It got to the point where, I was about 7/8ths of the way through and just gave up. Couldn't stand it anymore, it had become boring and that lack of difference in the characters, lack of difference in their voices, took me completely out of the suspension of disbelief and I just couldn't continue. Well, it was mostly that. 95% that. The other 5% was realizing I was reading Hunger Games for the 30 year old nostalgia worshiping crowd and felt like I was being pandered to. Maybe not quite the level of patronizing of that of Big Bang Theory, but enough to put me off for sure.
Rich Larson's story got everything spot on. I understand the "sameness" of each character in Ready Player One may have been on purpose. A commentary on our time, integrated into a story about our future. Even if that's the case, it still doesn't make me like it and I'd still tell you it was an unsuccessful attempt at a statement. Yes, I also understand RPO takes place much further in the future than Retroparty Freestyle, but it doesn't make my criticisms any less valid to me.
Retroparty Freestyle gets this SO right. Everyone has these programs that would give them a sameness. The story does have a statement about our culture, as speculated above about RPO. Regardless every character still retained their own voice, their own personality and character - and that is a tightrope because we are talking about young people just learning how to be adults, so of course they have to emulate their peers lest they be cast out among the weirdos, nerds, geeks, or "freestyles".
Larson still nails it. In that short story he gets that across while at the same time we get a defined first person protagonist, and other defined characters in his world. The use of slang I found to be amazing, and easily relatable and understandable, while still being a unique and different language than that of our current slang. The slang was a huge part of the story, so obviously this was important, and Larson sticks a 10.0 landing on it to me, standing in stark contrast to the clunky, seemingly not-that-thought-out future slang in RPO.
The story itself, other than just the extremely competent SciFi writing, I guess you could call sort of a slice-of-life piece. It was fun, easy to listen to (as long as you don't mind swearing and find the slang easily decipherable like I did) and carried with it both a valid social commentary, and a very nice ending, leaving you with an affirming feeling that technology will never actually kill the human spirit, and things like sympathy, empathy and friendship. It's really refreshing to hear this kind of Science Fiction short story, because it is surrounded by dark, dystopian worlds and visions of the future where technology erases, or changes the definition of, what it means to be human.
I found so many reasons to like this story, and a big thank you to Mr. Larson since one of those things allowed me to finally get a little weight off my shoulders. Looking forward to reading and listening to more of your stuff, Rich Larson. Maybe consider getting in touch with Ernest Cline at let him read your story, and tell him "See, this is how we do."