Hello ladies and gentlemen! I'm CB2001, and welcome to the commentary chapter for Live To Tell: A Ready Player One Fan Fiction Story. I figured that for those who read the story may want to find out a little bit of info about what went into creating this story. Before I begin, if there are any references you catch that you're unsure of and I didn't mention here, feel free to contact me and ask about them. I may include a list of references much later, and I already have a whole list of songs for Daedalus Tigerheart's Battle Playlist that I may post as a chapter, but am not sure on both. But as I've said, if you see something that is referenced in the story and unsure of it being a reference or don't know where it came from, contact me and I'll let you know if it is or not. So, without further lollygagging, we'll just jump right into it.

The first few paragraphs establishes the story of Daedalus Tigerheart and his character. This story wasn't only inspired by Ready Player One, but by the film The Great Escape. Before I began writing it, I was working PRN at a local hospital, mainly covering the night shift (I'm an radiological technologist. I'm the guy who takes X-Rays and CT scans). So, as a result, I would normally be up during the night and asleep during the day. Some nights when I wasn't scheduled to work, I would play video games like Rust and Grand Theft Auto Online. Sometimes, I would get bored with gaming and just watch movies instead. One night, I popped in The Great Escape, which I hadn't seen in quite some time. While watching it, I had this random thought that popped into my head. Now, I'm not sure if it's an actual fact or not, but the thought that popped into my head started the ball rolling. That thought was as followed: If it hadn't been for the real life Great Escape, the Americans landing in Normandy wouldn't have made it off the beach. I don't know if that's actually true, but I remember reading something about how by the real life event of soldiers escaping from the prison camp that it drew away necessary resources for a campaign due to the Nazis looking for them. But, it got me on the train of thought about multiple accounts of history, which lead me to think about the Attack of Pearl Harbor, and how there's been multiple films about it over the years. And then I realized something about the final battle featured in the book: a fight in a mech is drastically different from a ground fight. That's the difference between a fighter pilot telling a story and a foot soldier telling a story about the same fight. And after checking the book again, I realized we get bits and pieces of events from the ground, but not a full view of what it was like (of course, this was before the film came out, where they had the High Five fighting along with the others on the ground level until Sorrento breaks out the Mechagodzilla). The initial germ of the idea began to form and spread through my head, getting me to wonder what a story from someone on that ground fight would be like. Thus the story was born.

The story starts with Daedalus Tigerheart arriving home, just a few moments before he receives a message from Aech. Now, many during the initial reading thought Daed and Aech were friends, but I never really considered that option. I always imagined them as Daed described them as: like Iceman and Maverick from Top Gun. Basically, the idea is that they were potential rivals from FPS battles, and people wanted to see them get into a battle together. In the real world, Daed's existence was inspired by the character of Sol from Soylent Green, someone who remembers the world as it was and had to watch it slip away and powerless to do anything about it. Now many may see Daed as a Mary Sue, or a self-insert type of character. When I created him, I imagined not myself, but I imagined having a child and what it would be like raising him/her on some of the interests I had (let's face it, a lot of parents who have read RPO probably would show their kids a lot of the films they grew up with until they're old enough to introduce them to some other stuff. Geeks of a feather, and all that. My family and I have interests that overlap with one another, so it was that history that helped form some of Daed's real world persona). And when it comes to how Daed feels after losing his parents, I drew from my parent's real life history (my Dad didn't have a father growing up, but had a mother and two older siblings. My mom had lost both of her parents and had four other siblings to deal with. But they've told me the difficulties of what it was like to lose their parent(s), the feelings they had about it as they grew up).

Originally, I didn't want to have a description of Daed in RL or his avatar, so that the reader could picture themselves in their shoes until I went back and decided to make Daed a male in RL and in the OASIS. Daed's house is meant to be located at the Piney Z area of Tallahassee, which I imagined would become the Piney Estates subdivision and the Tallahassee Stacks would have build up around it, taking over Copper Creek, Chase Ridge, Timberland, Winwood Hills and such. Much like Daed, I did attend Florida State University when I was in my 20s, so, I am familiar with Tallahassee, though I haven't lived there in a while. Since the story of RPO had it where small towns no longer exist, it made sense to keep Daed in a big city. I had considered Orlando (where I attended film school), but I felt Orlando would be too far away for a decent OASIS connection, so Tallahassee made more sense. Daed's field of work was inspired by the Make community. For those unfamiliar, there was a magazine called Make:Zine, and what it did was cover DIY and Hobby craft, this included electronics, around the house hacks, and so on. Make:Zine however closed down a short time ago, so the magazine doesn't exist anymore. But, the community for it continues to thrive, existing at websites like Instructables. Much like how Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale felt that if anyone would develop time travel, that it'd be someone in their garage, I felt that if anyone was going to develop the advancements of VR tech we've seen in the book, it would be the DIYers and the hardware hackers. This was in part of my living through the first VR craze that occurred in the 1990s that didn't take off and a canceled Fox TV series called VR.5, where the series protagonist used a home-brewed VR rig (though the major out-there idea of using a VR rig to enter a person's subconscious is completely ridiculous, the first episode did show some homework done due to one character pointed out that the hardware of the time was limiting and showing a haptic glove rig using some sort of gel to simulate touch). And even now, there are those who are developing VR rigs like the Infinideck (as seen in the RPO film) that involves people starting off with home brewing them. And for Daed's day job, the company he works for, I imaginined they were the ones who developed some of the tech that Wade uses in the book (which they would prototype, patent and then sell the tech to multiple companies to make their own commercial versions). When it comes to Daed in the OASIS, I sort of figured he'd be the same in the OASIS as he was in real life, that there'd be overlap. He's a nice guy in both, but is more than capable of kicking your ass if the circumstances called for it. I imagined that Daed's fighting abilities in the OASIS would be pretty close to John Wick-level bad-assary, while his real world ability would be rather like a boxer (but fighting more dirty if the situation called for it). The stacks of plastic bins full of old hardware is purposefully meant to invoke the image of The Stacks (but probably more organized).

Now, the office area that was formerly Daed's childhood room was partially inspired by my Dad's man cave (formerly my room I used to live with my parents when I was younger) and my current man cave (a room I set up as my office/gaming area in my own house). The items that Daed lists off of him wondering if Halliday would like happen to be actual items I have in my collection (including a Playmates TNG Wesley Crusher figure signed by Wil Wheaton himself, who is pretty much canon due to the fact he did the audio book reading of RPO, and the Kenner Knight Rider KITT vehicle and Michael Knight action figure, which I dubbed my White Whale due to the years of searching for it at an affordable pricing since I was little and practically obsessing for it). I don't have an all-in-one PC (though I do wonder now with the fact that the hardware is now able to be better than it was in the 1980s, why we haven't gone back to that all-in-one design like the Commodore 64), but I do own a Windows Mixed Reality headset (I picked it up a couple of months ago at the time of this writing, and have been playing some free games with it, including the OASIS Beta). But the pivotal moment that Daed gets Aech's message helps establishes his motivation, as well as the insanity of what it was like for many people to get the message. At the moment that Daed gets the message at what is basically 9:02 pm EST, I imagined it's around 30 minutes prior to Wade meeting Helen for the first time in real life. Now, one of the things that learned from my Fiction Workshop classes at FSU during my time, apparently you need a personal reason behind a character's action. Nowadays, it seems like the reason has to be selfish instead of self-less. But, Daed joining in the fight makes sense that it's not just selfish (basically because if IOI get ahold of the OASIS, he may never be able to get access to the OASIS due to it becoming subscription based), but he certainly doesn't see how he's gonna be affected by it (looking at a self-less motivation, him thinking about everyone else and how the loss of the OASIS access would affect them over how it would affect him). It's that laser-guided Call To Adventure that Aech sends him that makes him decide to join in for selflessness, which isn't really common in fiction anymore (Daed himself makes a South Park reference before he finally weighs in on what he needs to do). I mean, when was the last time you saw a superhero become a superhero because it seems like it's the right thing to do? To help out other people without any reward, be it financial or personal gratification? Maybe it's just a stupid and outdated concept for me, like how I imagine knights of the old days, but I like the idea of a hero who doesn't think of himself when it comes to doing the right thing. Daed's log-in phrase is from the sci-fi comedy classic Red Dwarf (seriously, if you haven't seen the show, you should).

Now, I will confess, after reading the RPO novel, I actually got back into Second Life for a short time since it served as the inspiration for the OASIS. So, when it comes to Daed being someone who builds items in the OASIS, it was inspired by many users who have opened up their own shops, selling items they've made (including some items that mimic franchise items. You can buy stuff like Mad Max's Interceptor, various items from the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, among MANY other things). And owning an island in Second Life is also possible. The name of the planet that Daedalus' island home resides on, Xanadu, gets it's name from the classic film Citizen Kane (not the film Xanadu with Olivia Newton John). Honestly, I know Wade's asteroid base would be the kind of place I personally would have as a home in the OASIS, but let's face it: not everyone wants a floating rock for their home. Even for us Floridians, we'd probably prefer an island or somewhere with a beach at least (XD). When Daed logs in, we are introduced to Hobbes, Daed's companion tiger. Of course, this actually ties into Daed's real world name (which isn't featured in the story, but was at one point from a part of the story that was cut that detailed Daed and Dellielah's relationship, and Daed's downward spiral after it ended badly). It also establishes Daed's building and programming abilities, as he's loads up an arsenal of weapons that as he later puts "isn't OASIS battle certified." Basically, I figured that there are builders who try to circumvent most of the limitations of weapons and items that may exist. Though for the film, it states that Halliday hated making rules, there's not much of indication of such a thing in the book. So, someone building weapons that act like they have a bottomless magazine seems like the kind of thing GSS, or at least Halliday, would try to prevent from happening as money for ammo would seem a commodity. The same is true with certain items. Daed's duffle bag is a great example of him figuring out how to circumvent the limitations of the OASIS (as for if Halliday would be pissed off or impressed by Daed's creative modifications, it's hard to really know). So, after Daed loads up his arsenal and packs Hobbes in his pocket, he begins his mad dash to get off planet.

I had plans on naming the moon base in orbit of Xanadu Moonbase Alpha, but then I realized that Ernest Cline did that with his novel Armada, and I wanted to try to make it different. So, I went with a pretty good alternative by going with the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series' space station called Ragnar Anchorage (which is featured in the mini-series pilot for the show). I originally had considered having Daed's vehicle be an Eagle Transport from Space: 1999, but again avoided it because I wanted to use something that hadn't already been used (the Eagle Transport turns up in the Andy Weir fan fic Lacero, which Cline considered canon after reading it). I had originally considered having Daed flying the movie version of the Rapier from the Wing Commander film, but then changed my mind after I had featured a Kilrathi RPer who Daed tries to ask for a lift from. The vehicle I decided on was from the short lived Space: Above And Beyond, which honestly I haven't seen any of (I've got a long list of shows, movies and even books that I'm trying to catch up on) using the C.O.R.A. A.I. (featured in one episode of the TOS Battlestar Galactica, which served as the basis for KITT from Knight Rider, both shows being the brainchild of Glen A. Larson). Originally, I had Daed eventually catching a ride on the Marcus Garvey, the space tug from the William Gibson novel Neuromancer. I had read it after I read Ready Player One for the first time. But there was a problem: I realized that there'd be no way for anyone who took the Marcus Garvey to get down to the surface of Chthonia. But, at the time, I was doing a rewatch of a TV show with a friend from Canada, which we normally do online on Friday night (recently changed to Sunday night due to my work schedule). The show we were watching at that time was Season 3 of the SyFy TV series Dark Matter. And luckily enough, the show provided a rather useful vessel for Daed to hitch a ride on: the Raza. So, I chose to include the Raza and decided to make a commentary about how hit shows like Dark Matter, and before that Defiance, would normally be forgotten a short time after they went off the air to where they wouldn't be considered classics, as SyFy (formerly The Sci-Fi Channel) has been short-changing good shows to the point they cancel them when they no longer want to pay for them (and subsequently blames the lack of audience, which was a trend started with Farscape). Ironically, two weeks after I had typed out the Raza and Dark Matter being mostly forgotten, SyFy had announced they wouldn't be renewing the show for a forth season. Even more ironic, I chose to have Seed Hawke be a Russian before the whole issue of Russian hackers and the U.S. Politics turned up shortly after that. I was actually inspired to have Seed Hawke as a Russian from a story told by comedian Bert Kreischer. It's really funny, I recommend it. Daed puts on his virtual Microsoft Zune to listen to Gunship's "Tech Noir." It's an awesome song I had come across because I had been listening to a lot of Synthwave through Pandora on my iPad (I also own a Zune in real life, so for those who are wondering, no it's not a Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 reference). Even more ironic was Gunship did their RPO inspired song "Art3mis & Parzival," which is such an awesome song that I've added to my my real world Zune. I needed to give enough time for Daed to get his avatar from Xanadu to Chthonia, and to fill in the time during the trip. So, the best solution to do that while allowing Daed a chance to rest was to leave his avatar logged in. I think that by setting the avatar onto the bed and having the reading animation, it would trick the OASIS into thinking the user was still on. Now, the comic that the avatar pulls out is Evil Ernie vs. The Movie Monsters! From Chaos! Comics. The artist and creator, Brian Pulido, created the story to feature some iconic and parody-versions of iconic movie monsters. Of course, Pulido also created some iconic characters, such as Lady Death (not Mistress Death from the Marvel universe) and Purgatori, and created the first comic based on the Halloween franchise. It was the first Evil Ernie comic I purchased that I got from a flea market back in the early 90s. Now, many people may be wondering, "Why does Xanadu not have a teleporter for avatars to jump anywhere in the OASIS? Why is it strictly to the moon and back?" Well, the best answer I had come up with is that it's easier for the company to charge the cost of storage for space craft and docking in addition to the land fees than it is to set up a teleporter and not get any cash from it (we know the transporters cost cash that goes to GSS, but we don't know if the owner of the planet that the teleporter is set up on would get any revenue from it. And seeing that GSS owned Ludus as a non-profit, they'd probably wave the fee that they'd normally charge for people that own other OASIS planets). But, considering how well Daed's work is and his online store being successful, Daed probably doesn't have any issues affording the storage fee and the land rental (like many of the other users who "live" there).

We're now at the next day where Daed is awoken by the sound of thunder. The irony of him wanting to hum a song from 1962 comes from the classic Bob Seger song "Night Moves," which features the lyric: I woke up to the sound of thunder, How far off I sat and wondered. Started humming a song from 1962. Ain't it funny how the night moves. Now, Daed's clothing choice after he showers makes sense because of the fact that when there are those playing for long hours try to make sure they're comfortable (being a gamer myself, I can attest that I have also gamed in my PJs). Battle Royale reference in there because of the fact it's a good novel and just as much a good film (the only drawback is that it inspired the whole Battle Royale game play phase). Now, we're introduced to Daed's Battle Rig, a small box hacked together to control his avatar in co-ordination with gloves. Now, the reason why I had this type of controller come up because despite the descriptions of playing games in VR from the novel, I feel that the actual tactile sensation a game, be it a console, arcade or even a board game, would be lost to thegenerations in the time of the OASIS' existence. I grew up playing arcade games at movie theaters, restaurants and at arcades themselves, as well as playing the original NES and Sega Genesis. To me, holding a real controller is not like something the haptic gloves can convey. It's the same kind of fear that has come up with digital music replacing vinyl, 8-Tracks, cassette tapes and CDs. That fear also exists for digital movies replacing film, VHS, and DVD/Blu-Rays (I still prefer physical media because I prefer to own it completely). But, before that, the fear was of eBooks and eBook readers replacing actual books. The latter scares me the most, because I love going to used book stores, picking up an actual book, smelling the smell of old books (seriously, no digital format can replace that). But back into the topic of a physical controller, I feel that the OASIS, though great and simulating what it'd be like to play such games, wouldn't be 100 percent close. Also, the problem with wireless controllers is latency, which I feel that Daed would have avoided for FPS battles by using a physical rig attached to his computer, his headset and the haptic gloves (which he would still use for certain actions). I'm sure a lot of people would agree that there's a huge difference between physically playing a game and virtually playing an emulation of a game.

Daed puts his headset back on and begins to get used to controlling his avatar with the Battle Rig once more, using it to move around the Raza. When Daed puts his headset back on, his avatar is reading Earth 2 by Melissa Crandall, which is an adaptation of the pilot episode for a short lived TV series from Amblin Entertainment (Spielberg's production company). The idea of Daed using the Battle Rig and controlling his direction with his feet is literally the kind of experience a lot of gamers feel when coming back to a game they haven't played in a long time. Of course, Daed gets an update on the arrival time of Chthonia, which prompts him to get geared up before they land. I had a difficult time on deciding what kind of armor setup he would go with, so I had to look at pictures of actual video game armor. I tried to avoid the most obvious one piece sets (like Gordon Freeman's H-VAC suit from Half-Life and Half-Life 2). But seeing that Parzival can combine various vehicle aspects into one for his Ecto-88, it makes sense that someone like Daed would do the same for his armor, so I went with a combination of the 2016 Doom Praetor armor and the Nanosuit from Crysis, as the combination of the two would probably give Daed strength and speed in a fight that would be useful, especially when he hasn't done any in-game combat for a while. The helmet is from the game Defiance, and features FSU's latin logo on the visor. Vires signifies strength of all kinds (moral, physical, intellectual, which I do believe Daed embodies), Artes alludes to the beauty of intellectual pursuits in skill, craft or art (again, which I believe Daed embodies), and Mores, referring to character, custom or tradition (which I also believe Daed reflects). Since he is an FSU graduate, it'd make sense that he'd still embodies those qualities even after the doors of FSU got closed due to the OASIS and everything shifting to online.

I do realize that I didn't describe any of Seed Hawke's crew for the Raza, and that's primarily because they weren't as important (this is also noticeable with how I describe the outfits of the other hitchhikers on board with Daed). But, we get the first notation of any of Daed's Ragewar teammates with him getting a text message from H0xle. In the conversation, there's two references made to two different movies: Dark Star (1974) and Heavy Metal (1981). The "Soft Landing" is in reference to Heavy Metal's opening credits with the classic Chevy being dropped from a space shuttle and landing on the surface of a planet before taking off towards the house, all set to "Radar Rider" by Riggs. The "Sufering Doolittle" is in reference to the end of Dark Star, where Doolittle, the last survivor of the destruction of the Dark Star, decides to use a piece of the ship to surf into the atmosphere of a planet (it was alluded to that he was a surfer back on Earth, and how he missed surfing). Honestly, if I had stuck with the Marcus Garvey, I would have had Daed do the Soft Landing in his Mustang. However, the Raza in the Dark Matter is able to do inter-atmosphere landing in the show, but it is rarely used due to the situation calling for it. I originally was going to go with "Trigger Hippie" by Morcheeba for the song Daed listens to on his way down to the surface, but decided to change it to "Justified and Anicent" by The KLF feat. Tammy Wynette because I always felt it sounded like a song that would play over a travel montage for a movie.

The car that Daed uses is a Ford Mustang, but not just any Mustang. It's a 1971 converted to look like a 1973 Ford Mustang, school bus yellow. It's a direct reference to the original 1974 film Gone in 60 Seconds, in which Eleanor was the same model and make presented in the text (H.B. Halicki actually had two Eleanors for the film's production, which were both restyled 1971 Ford Mustang Sportroofs to how they appear in the film). The song that comes on the radio is the song "Hard As Nails" by Peter Wolf Crier, and is featured in the film Hardcore Henry, which is an first person action movie that invokes a lot of video game tropes. As he approaches Castle Anorak, it switches to the classic "Heroes" by David Bowie, which I feel reflects the characters in the upcoming battle. Daed finally catching up with his Ragewar teammates introduces us to them. Instead of the regular "five man band" approach to the group (like with the High Five in the original source novel), I tried to make them more diverse and yet still recognizable as character archetypes. We get not just different nationalities and races, we also get users we wouldn't think about, such as Isamu (who is a mute due to having his voice box smashed in real life) and Sinthiana (a transgendered woman, male to female conversion) in addition to the typical males and females. It helps in showing more diversity in the OASIS itself, and reintroducing the idea presented in the novel and the film that "you can be anyone" and it could be anyone behind the avatar they're presenting. Now, when it comes to Isamu for sure, I wanted to introduce someone who would be handicapped as a means of showing that even with their handicap, they can still function and interact with other uses without having speech be a limitation. When it comes to blind or deaf people, I don't know if there would be a solution to that (but I'm sure somewhere in the future, someone would find a solution). One of the aspects of the OASIS presented in the book and the film is that anyone can be anything. And I wanted to make sure that the characters were distinctive and unique from what we've seen in the book and the film. I hope Team Ragewar is unique enough without having to worry about overlap. BTW, the name of the team, Ragewar, is a reference to a B-grade sci-fi/fantasy film called The Dungeonmaster (1984). It also went by the name Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate and Digital Knights. We get some of Daed's "non-OASIS certified weaponry" (I kinda imagine that weapons created by users would have to be submitted to GSS to be certified for battles and for sale, which I went previously into detail about).

Now, for Ragewar, Daed was a pretty decent strategist before he retired. But, like most game players, if you don't play, you end up forgetting how to play or end up becoming rusty. Due to Daed's build mode view, he is able to see not just the opposition and what they're packing, but he also sees the Third Gate and is surprised by the level of coding the gate has. In the book, we see that Halliday got into some stuff while creating the contest, including developing a new style of game play with the Flicksyncs. What's not to say he didn't create some sort of advanced OASIS coding, or maybe even a new programming language, that was beyond the typical OASIS coding that most people would know but still functioned in system? Who knows what kind of things Halliday came up with or did while in his self-imposed exile? Only Ernest Cline. But I like the idea of hinting that maybe Halliday did more than we know and we don't know what will come up in the next book. In this scene, we are introduced to Daed's ex-girlfriend in the OASIS: Dellielah. As I mentioned before, I had a whole section that described Daed's relationship with Dellielah (or at least a summary of a year and a half worth of a relationship), but in order to cut down on page count, I had to remove it. If there's enough interest, I'll be more than happy to recover and post the missing section as an additional chapter to this story. But, the short-hand is that the relationship between Daed and Dellielah is really strained, which I hope that it comes off in the actual story. Now, Daed is rather blunt about telling Dellielah that she needs to leave, but the fact is he was right for the fact that there needed to be more people who can fight in the OASIS. And the perk of being someone who grew up with the OASIS at the same time as it's existed, as well as being someone who developed OASIS hardware, it affords Daed an advantage of being someone who could very well be one of the best fighters in the OASIS. And he would definitely be able to know who are capable or not in the upcoming battle. Of course, as mentioned before, due to him not being involved in multiplayer fighting, he's become rusty at being a the strategist. But he does convey one some fact to his team when they're huddle around the campfire, waiting for the clock to run out: for the fight that occurs on Chthonia, any previous styles of battle gameplay wouldn't count because there's no limits for the fight coming. Everyone and their mother, including IOI, aren't going to be abiding by any rules of combat. The rules of engagement? Gone out the window. The fight, as Daed points out, is all out war. And when it comes to what we see, it is true in the OASIS as much as it is in real life.

We do a time jump to where it's in the last half of the 11 o'clock hour. It goes to show the massive crowd that shows up that hinted by Wade Watts in his tale from ground level. Of course, the entire scene shows how Daed and his team function, much like how they did when they used to play together. We're even introduced to Daed's Battle Playlist (which I have recently composed a list composed of songs I think would have been on that playlist). We get to see the landing of Art3mis, Aech and Shoto before Parzival shows up, which from this point on is as close to playing to the book as featured (I didn't capture every single action, the reason being that much like how Wade didn't pay attention to the ground while fighting the IOI in their mechs, Daed loses track of the mechs in battle, showing the difference in points of view of the same fight). Now, someone suggested that I include a character on the IOI side, maybe some sort of spy for the Gunters. But, I refused to include the idea because I can't see from that side and point of view. I get the reasons why someone would join the IOI given the world and circumstances provided in the novel: poverty, the need of financial stability for some reason, or to pay off debts (as we learn from Wade in his story, he purposefully selected options that lead him away from the Oology department, which means that those that have some information may have been taken into Sorrento's department). And since there's no hints of any kind of resistance in the OASIS against the Sixers, I can't see myself writing a character that is involved with them (not to mentioned, it was a smart move, as technically, the film had this with Art3mis taking down the shield over Castle Anorak from the inside). No one would ever want to be a part of the bad guys, and I like to think that a lot of people would want to join the fight against the Sixers instead of joining them. Plus, doing the "Gunter spy" idea also doesn't work for me because I find it hard to picture what'd that be like. Of course, when Sorrento and company break out the Mechagodzilla, it establishes the fact that these are still human beings that have things to fear, and to reaffirm Daed has his flaws. Daed himself is not without fear and doubt, even with any reassurances. The only one who seems to have anything together is Isamu, who plays a clip from Rambo (2008), which I think would be the kind of line that would call anyone out. It's enough to make Daed cowboy up enough to remind the others of what they were there for. And, it was perfect timing because shortly after that, the shield comes down.

Another thing I did was I didn't have Daed be the person to fire the first shot after the shield came down. I assigned it to Isamu because I thought it was necessary to have someone who has a stronger attitude than Daed to do it. Plus, I don't think we've seen much of people with handicaps getting a chance to be shown as being strong enough, which is part of why I had him be the one to draw first blood: because it's the one whom many may consider weak due to his inability to speak who makes the first action that sets off the full-on battle. I can tell you, trying to figure out what those first few minutes were like in the fight was a headache, and I came up with the solution to make Daed not recall correctly because of it happening so quickly and all at once. Having Daed going into "zone black", which I sort of imagined where you get so far into the zone that you can't remember getting into it in the first place, it solved a lot of problems when it comes to the fight itself, such as saving up much of what the fight was like for after Daed snaps out of it (by not having it until when it's necessary, it saved from having to having something occur when I knew I was gonna need to use what I came up with at the castle doors). Of course, we end up losing two of the Ragewar teammates with Sinny and H0xle. I actually had difficulty on trying to figure out who should be taken out of the fight, so I chose the two who were on the opposite ends of the spectrum of their view of the fight. When the group who were trying to figure out if they wanted to "bag it or try for it" (which by the way, is a reference to the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead), I chose the person who originally wanted to run (Sinny) and the first person who was on board with staying (H0xle). I felt that by using those two, it shows exactly how indiscriminately war in the OASIS can be. But, I also again use H0xle being taken out of the fight to reflect Daed's own faults, him blaming himself for not moving fast enough to get to his teammate when he needed help right away. When Daed notices the invisible shield that is blocking users who do not have keys from entering the castle, it was inspired by something I encountered when playing the game Defiance. I was playing the main storyline and got stuck on one mission and it wouldn't allow me to continue forward to get past a giant mech that was sitting on Golden Gate Bridge (whenever you approached the bridge, the mech would instantly start attacking you until you were downed and had to respawn). Due to me not completing that mission, I wasn't able to proceed with the story missions, which the mech was a part of. The same is probably true with Halliday's Egg Hunt, and the reason why those users didn't get in was because they didn't have any keys. It's also safe to assume the same is true as to why users couldn't get the Jade key or Crystal Key first before getting the Copper Key. Halliday may have had it set where the gates and key challenges were locked until the user who came across the Copper Key (this would in turn allow access to the Copper Gate, which in turn would have then unlocked the Jade Key and then the Jade Gate and so on). But the bunching up at the gate is what sparks Daed's idea on keeping the Sixers from entering back in.

Of course, when it comes to protecting the gate, I did image the situation being similar to King Leonidas and the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, with one group desperately trying to keep the enemy from marching forward. The song used is "The Resistance" by Skillet. Originally, I was thinking of using "Feel Invincible" by the same band due to the lyrics, "Who can touch me 'cause I (I'm made of fire!), Who can stop me tonight? (I'm hard wired!)" which apply to Daed (who is basically on fire for the battle due to being hardwired to his OASIS console). However, I changed it to "The Resistance" because the song better applied to those who were holding the door, if not for everyone on that battlefield, because it was "our world, they (the IOI in this case) can never have it." Not to mention that every user in the OASIS is rising up against them in a resistance. Also, for those who may have not caught it, but I-r0k is one of the fighters in Daed's line, still rocking his over-sized plasma rifle. I pictured that I-r0k may have been informed of what had happened after ratting out Parzival and Aech, and he/she decided to join into the fight as a means of atoning for their actions. As to if I-r0k will turn up again in the next novel, hard to know. But, I do hope that if he/she does turn up, we find out he was there on the ground with everyone else, trying to earn his/her place in the OASIS. Daed ends up getting a major hit to his health, and just when we think he's about to be out of the game, the Ex saves him. The weapon she uses comes from the game Killing Floor, as does the health grenades she pops to increase the health of those who are fighting. In the game, those who have the Medic perk can purchase the gun from a Trader. It's an MP5 style gun that fires normal rounds and medical darts that can be fired at a distance to heal players with low health. By her doing that and joining the line, it shows that any bad blood between them is being put aside for the sake of the OASIS. At that moment, everyone is working as a team. That is until Daed spots a Sixer approaching, IOI-666666. I nicknamed that one "The Straight Sixer" as well as "Double Beast", though I never included it in the actual story itself. But, it would make sense that the one approaching and being more bad-ass than the others, which Sorrento is controlling after his demise in the Mechagodzilla, would be one that would be all sixes in numbers. Now, I knew I needed to make him a threat, so the best option I had was to give him a weapon that could be used to cut through the users at the front door, but I chose against using a lightsaber (because, come on, that'd be too easy to assign such a weapon like that). Then it got me thinking, For artifacts, they can be a wide variety of things. Art3mis' Converse gives speed and flight. So, what if there was an artifact that was made that was practically a one-hit item? In addition to the fact an artifact can't be destroyed, such a one-hit weapon would be unstoppable. So, I thought what kind of item would be a one-hit type of weapon and instantly I thought of Jason Voorhees' machete from Friday The 13th (which I had also been playing the game of around the same time). So naturally, The Voorhees was born for the story. So, to counteract it, I decided to put in a reference to the comedian Gallagher. For those who aren't young enough, Gallagher was a prop comedian. His most iconic of routines was the Sledge-0-Matic (I actually used the quote of one where he used the Sledge-O-Matic against an Intellivision system, which were common at the time of that particular show). Of course, for Daed's version, he wouldn't just make a simple regular wooden sledgehammer. I just felt it was a good idea to have Daed get one lick in on the novel's big baddie just for kicks (admit it, you'd want to hit Sorrento with a sledgehammer too). Of course, we never really know what happens outside of the castle after Parzival, Aech and Art3mis enters the castle and unlocks the gate. I like to think that maybe the Sixers were losing the fight outside, and since their leader just got his ass handed to him, it'd make sense that he'd order the Cataclyst due to the fact that they couldn't get past the users at the castle door and can't group up to rush the door due to losing the fight (and pulling a dick move by using the Cataclyst). Now, Wade described what happened when the Cataclyst went off from his view, but I thought about the fact he, Aech and Art3mis were facing the gate, which would probably be in the opposite direction of where the blast came from. And I wondered what kind of reaction to having your avatar facing towards it, with me imagining it'd probably be like looking right into a nuclear blast. Of course, we then follow the already logical conclusion of the rest of the story from Daed's point of view, him sitting and watching Wade in the mad dash against IOI and his eventual win. Daed deciding to go back and get some sleep is probably the best reaction to the whole thing, as he knows there's no point in trying to log back into the OASIS at that moment due to everyone in the sector being wiped out by the Catacylst. And after an extensive fight like that, I'd imagine a lot of users were probably tired out from it.

We jump to a few days later where Daed finds out his account has be restored, along with everyone in the sector with the exception of the IOI accounts. I leave it open to the possibility that IOI is still in the OASIS and haven't been completely remove, yet. I do imagine that a lot of their Sixer accounts have probably been perma-banned with Wade eventually perma-banning IOI from OASIS access after setting up an alternative means for users who use IOI as an OSP before completely blocking them. They may have thrown Sorrento under the bus for his actions, but it doesn't mean that Wade's gonna take their sacrifice as payment for blood owed. I figured that when the regular user accounts were restored, when the logged back in, it would be the last place they logged in from (which in the case of Daed, it was his home on Xanadu. He had been logged in the whole time during the Raza's trip to Chthonia and never logged out to change the log-in spot). Of course, Daed sees the achievements for participating in the battle and the one specifically for him and the other users at the castle doors for holding the line there. Of course, Daed is very modest and he did see the call to arms as a civic duty for the betterment of all lives and that no award was really needed for him. Again, it's reaffirming that ideology of being self-less that was established at the start of the story. Aech, of course, tells him to just accept the achievements because he, as well as everyone else that day at the Battle of the Third Gate, earned them. The reactions that Hobbes has after being rezzed up is meant to hint that maybe Hobbes is becoming more than just a standard AI driven house pet, but I don't think it comes off as well as I was hoping.

The final scene with Daed going out to his digital garage to work on something does provide a very good question about the book. You see, I felt that part of the reason why we got so much of the 1980s references throughout the story was because it pertained to Halliday's Easter Egg. Everyone was studying 1980s related, and the 1980s came back, because of Halliday's Egg Hunt. There are some references from outside of the 1980s, such as Wade's Firefly-class ship The Vonnegut. So, there is a hint there's more pop culture outside of the 1980s in the OASIS. And the question that is asked is a simple one: now that the Egg Hunt is over, will the 1980s trends continue or will it fade like all trends? I'm hoping that particular question has gotten many readers wondering the same question. But, I guess we'll find out when Mr. Cline released the next book. And, as Daedalus says, he'll just have to roll with the punches for if things continue or change, like how he always has. When it comes to the final line, it's not just about "holding the line" for fighting someone. It's about holding the line against any adversaries you may face in life. No matter what it may be. Lost a loved one? Living paycheck to paycheck? Struggling with your personal demons? Whatever it is that is giving you trouble, don't give up. No matter what life throws at you, don't ever give up. That's what "hold the line" for that last part means: keep on fighting even when the odds are against you and hope is slim.

Now, you're probably wondering, what happens to Daedalus Tigerheart after that. Well, I will confess, I have attempted a couple of followups to Daed's story. One of them never really went anywhere because all it felt like was just more conversations about pop culture without any real substance outside of that. The story was called From The Peanut Gallery, and it was meant to be the replies section to Daed's story. It would have featured comments and replies by the remaining High Five, as well as some members of Team Ragewar and even one comment by I-r0k. After I got through writing out I-r0k's comments and replies by Daed, Parzival and Aech, it just sort of petered out.

After that one, I did a Christmas-based followup called A Dream of Snow. The story would followed Daed on another Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone, with the exception of Aech joining him on Christmas Eve. Daed would have introduced Aech to several arcade games outside of the 1980s in a recreation of an arcade his Daed made back before he passed away, and Daed expressing his wish to see snow in Florida like his father had when he was younger (yes, it has snowed down here in the Northern Florida area on March 13, 1993). It would have been mostly a character piece with Daed and Aech bonding. But after I completed it, I chose not to release it due to the fact that when it comes down to it, I had difficulty writing it because I couldn't see Daed and Aech as friends and it seemed like I was trying to force this small friendship between the two of them instead of just keeping the mutual respect as players of virtual combat. I don't know if I'll ever post it, but I still have it on my hard drive.

The final story I've come up with, which actually is an idea. It's laid out below:

As much as I'd like to, I can't do it because it plays too close to either RPO the book or the film (honestly, I've thought about having it where Daedalus complains about one of the film adaptations borrowing most of his story for the main plot, with the actual RPO film being the one he complains about just as a tongue-in-cheek funny moment), also I would be worried about the story conflicting with the canon of the official releases of the next two stories (I like to keep things in canon when it comes to any fan fiction I write, the first story is a good example of this), as well conflicting what we know about Halliday, Og and Karen from the book. The basic premise of the story is that after the Egg Hunt is over, there is the discovery of a couple of sidequests that were tied to the Egg Hunt, with the Pac-Man Challenge that Wade participated in to get the Extra Life Quarter as one of them, that sparks off a new and dangerous underground. As a result of the discovery, Gunter clans clash over these challenges as they discover hundreds of sidequests that are open to anyone now that the main Egg Hunt is complete, which all pack rather impressive prizes of unique items or rather substantially good OASIS coin payout for whomever gets to them first.

Daedalus Tigerheart, long after the events of Live To Tell, has recently moved from his island home on Xanadu to what is basically a trailer park with player owned spacecraft (him relocated because he suspected someone had started stalking him due to hearing music off shore during what was "night time" for the planet, and him relocating just to be safe). In the real world, he and everyone who live in the area of the Tallahassee Stacks, are struggling to deal with a land developer who wants to purchase the land and tear down all the houses and stacks in the area, including Daed's home. While looking for building materials in the OASIS, he inadvertantly gets entangled in one of these sidequests when defending himself from being mugged in the Sprawl (a planet recreating the works of William Gibson). His avatar is knocked back onto a Commodore 64 that was just sitting in an alleyway in a trash pile, where the computer system/keyboard attaches to his back. After many failed attempts to remove it himself (and when Wade Watts himself fails to be able to remove it even with his superuser account), Daedalus discovers that it is a part of a sidequest that is rumored to not only have a massive payout, but an additional mega prize (not owning the OASIS, but something just as important). As a result, Daedalus discovers he and anyone else who happens to find these C64 computers, have to find all three floppy diskettes for an lost and unreleased Gregarious Games computer game called "In Absentia." But in order to figure out where they are, as well as what the "major prize" is, the answers are locked in Ogden and Karen Morrow's interests from the time Halliday knew them (which even Og himself has forgotten over time, as Og and Karen's interests changed a lot over the years, even more so after they left GSS and Halliday).

Daedalus just wants to complete the quest to get the C64 off of him and go back to his normal OASIS life, all the while everyone and their mother are targeting him in hopes of getting into the quest (and even more so when the big bad places a bounty on him). Daedalus is one user against The Ovi-Raptors, one of the largest Gunter clans who are determined to win every sidequest possible, lead by a rich brat. Daed, however, manages to figure some of the clues out for the challenges of the diskettes, as the pop culture that Og and Karen were interested in when Halliday knew them are in his wheelhouse: having long since been forgotten, have achieve a niche cult status or are outside of the area of the general, popular 1980s knowledge. These happen to be areas which Daedalus was raised up on by his parents. Along the way, Daed discovers the reason behind why Halliday created this particular sidequest to focus on Og and Karen: because they were the only two people he truly loved and when they left him, he became so lost without them that he dedicated himself to make the OASIS the best version of itself and not make any new games for it. Essentially, they were his "compass" and he became lost without them. It's revealed that "In Absentia" is a game that both Og and Karen developed and programmed that they pitched to James to release through their company, but Halliday shot it down because he sensed that her and Og were getting close to one another in the way that he had wanted to be with Karen.

Of course, there'd be some returning characters from the novel and the previous fanfic (not just the remaining of the High Five, but Seed Hawke and his crew aboard the Raza and Team Ragewar). A couple of locations would be revised from the book (such as the Middletown recreation, with the movie theater there leading into one of the challenges for the diskettes ala "The Shining Challenge" from the film), while several new, and familiar, locations would be visited. The final face-off between Daedalus and the Ovi-Raptors would start in orbit over the iconic Metroplis and leading to a one-on-one fight with the leader of the Ovi-Raptors on the top level of the Tower of Babel and the final challenge: finding the right arcade game from the entire Midway Collection to play and completing it. When Daed wins, he discovers what the "mega prize" is: it is looking out for the winner of the Egg Hunt to make sure he/she doesn't go down the same path as him (essentially, Daed discovers this sidequest was meant to be found before the Egg Hunt was completed, and that Halliday had worried about the winner "becoming lost" like he had after Og and Karen left, or worse than that. The winner of the sidequest would have exclusive access to a pocket simulation of Morrow's basement that overrides any perma-ban or subscription based access to the OASIS, with it's own big button, "in case the Egg Hunt winner goes off the straight and narrow"). In addition to that, the winner of the sidequest (in this case, Daed) gets $600 million dollars in shares of GSS, which Daed uses to purchase the land where the Tallahassee Stacks and his home resides. Daed opens up a community center in honor of his late parents, where everyone in the Stacks can socialize and hang out when not in VR, with Daed being influenced by his late mother's words: "Happiness is shared with others." He also splits his shares with Seed Hawke and his crew, as well with the Ragewar members for their troubles. He finally notes that he discovered that when he completed the challenge, "In Absentia" was released into the OASIS for everyone to play (Halliday kept the copy that Og and Karen had given him to review, and had finished working on it's OASIS adaptation before he began working on the Egg Hunt and it's sidequests). The revenue for the game ended up going to Og and Karen's non-profit company, Halycedonia Interactive, to continue to fund it for three more decades to keep up producing kid-friendly, educational adventure games.

Yeah, I know, not exactly great. But like I said, I'm not planning on doing this due to the fact that if it's not playing too close to the book, then it'd be playing too close to the film (I even had the idea of Daed getting an artifact similar to the Extra Life coin, it being a cassette tape with the words "Tape Backup" written on the back side that can't be seen in the menu, and when Daed is killed, he's logged back in at the spot he died, but back with full health, full armor and all items in his inventory that he had the moment he picked it up), it more than likely conflicting with what we know in the book about Halliday, Og and Karen, and the fact that I'd be worry about it conflicting with the next two novels. Looking at it now, it's kinda stupid and doesn't really bring much new to the RPO story.

Well, that's it from the behind the scenes portion of the story. I hope you guys enjoyed the commentary, as well as the story of Live To Tell. I'd like to thank everyone who was kind enough to leave reviews. I like knowing that people found the story enjoyable, even if it was dragging in some parts. I hope you continue to have a good day/night wherever you are. And remember what the Monty Python boys say: No one expects a Spanish Inquisition!