To choose or not to choose
Colin Burrow
Tragedy. Groan groan. It’s a bummer, isn’t it? It’s all just so... inevitable. You read, weeping, as Anna Karenina goes for the train, as Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms. No choice: just turn the pages, sit back and grieve. And it’s the same old story every time. The train is never late. Cordelia never pops up and says: ‘Hi dad, I could murder a pizza.’ It’s all so unmodern, so uncool, just so friggin’ Greek. We moderns have moved on. We’re all free agents. We make choices. Choices are what make us. So give me tragedy with choice and give it to me now. Instead of just blubbing and crying out ‘NOoooo’ while what you don’t want to happen happens, why not just turn to page 394 and get a new ending? Cool. Indeed, totally friggin’ awesome.
So a comic book writer called Ryan North, the man behind the totally awesome Adventure Time series, has decided to bring the world of choice to Hamlet. You can pick which character you want to be. You can choose the outcome. You can fight with pirates. It will all be way WAY cooler than anything you’ve ever seen before, and WAY WAY WAY cooler than that Shakespeare guy. North will smile at you winsomely from his video and even show you a picture of his dog (who is awfully cute) called Noam Chompsky while he explains how totally, totally AWESOME it will be and how it will give choice choice choice and fun fun fun, with added adventures and loads of cool stuff:
unlike Shakespeare I didn’t skip over the pirate scene in Hamlet. You get to fight PIRATES. With SWORDS. And yes OF COURSE you can choose which body part you cut off. Why would you write a book where you can’t do that is my question.
The choosing isn’t free, though: in order to be able to choose choose choose these totally totally AWESOME adventures and enjoy DEATH SCENES by the BEST ARTISTS ALIVE TODAY (North likes capitals as much as he likes raising his eyebrows cutely) you have to give give GIVE. You can do it online. You can give as little as a dollar. Twenty dollars gets you a paperback. Five people have given $1000 each; you can do that too and be declared a ‘PATRON OF THE FRIGGIN’ ARTS’. Or you could give five grand. Go on. Make him happy. Make Noam Chompsky happy too. It’s all going swimmingly so far, since North has raised $164,576. But before I commit I want to know if the reader-driven Hamlet will have an early option to ‘KILL ME NOW’ (in caps). That would be totally friggin’ awesome.
Comments
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29 November 2012
at
3:36pm
swalsh
says:
I would definitely rather read an enthused tribute to and formal game with Hamlet from the author of Dinosaur Comics than autopilot donnish harrumphing routine from Early Modern scholar of note.
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30 November 2012
at
12:02pm
outofdate
says:
@
swalsh
I'm sorry I have no idea what you just said.
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1 December 2012
at
10:29am
Ubique
says:
@
outofdate
"+1", as I read somewhere once.
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29 November 2012
at
10:45pm
tony lynch
says:
"I would definitely rather read an enthused tribute to and formal game with Hamlet from the author of Dinosaur Comics than autopilot donnish harrumphing routine from Early Modern scholar of note"
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3 December 2012
at
10:57pm
onsos
says:
@
tony lynch
"The issue is would you rather read Hamlet as the play it is, or read the comic in which you impress yourself with your masterly plotting?"
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30 November 2012
at
2:26pm
conflated
says:
Goodness, if this project gets you in this much of a huff, don't do anything as daring as play Robin Johnson's Hamlet, the Text Adventure.
Read moreI can see the pitch is eager-eager, and it's got a ominous whiff of lol-pirates manchild redditor about it, but North's v smart and funny (people don't love Dinosaur Comics for the art) and I'd say he's thought about choice and tragedy; you can see from the page you're trying to mock, if you know how to read ultralate modern English.
And I'm not really sure why you'd count writing a good kids' comic (adapted from the best kids' cartoon of the moment) against him.(*)
I really think you should be slower to judge, you know? This just looks like graceless mockery of something you don't understand.
(*)Cartoon/comic assessments supplied by a trusted 10-year-old.
- That's not the issue!
The issue is would you rather read Hamlet as the play it is, or read the comic in which you impress yourself with your masterly plotting?
The one thing you got right but entirely the wrong way around is this: "I really think you should be slower to judge, you know? This just looks like graceless mockery of something you don’t understand."
I'd rather read both, personally, although my personal experience is that there's only so much masterly plotting you can can do in a Pick-a-Path.
Having really enjoyed Hamlet a number of times, read the comic, seen the films, and watched the play a few times, watched "Rosencrantz and Guilenstern Are Dead" on stage and screen, doing it as a Pick-a-Path really appeals. Hopefully it will be replete with PIRATES and GHOSTS (the capitals are what Fighting Fantasy used to identify NPCs).
You might injure yourself.