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Post by Smurfette Principle on Sept 10, 2011 16:13:54 GMT -5
Orson Scott Card, of Ender's Game fame, has written a novella called Hamlet's Father.In this adaptation, Hamlet was never close to his father. The prince is unfazed and emotionally indifferent to the old king's death, feels no sense of betrayal when his mother speedily remarries, and thinks that Claudius will make a perfectly good monarch. Hamlet is also secure in his religious faith, with absolute and unshakable beliefs about the nature of death and the afterlife. He isn't particularly hung up on Ophelia, either. Throughout the novella, Prince Hamlet displays the emotional depth of a blank sheet of paper. It gets worse. Neither does Card’s prose retain the flavor of Elizabethan English—or any other kind of flavor. These words taste like saltines without salt:
Horatio brought him his sword. "Laertes is looking for you," he said.
"I don't have time for Laertes. He must know I didn't mean to kill his father," Hamlet said.
"It's not his father," said Horatio. "It's his sister."
"Ophelia? I didn't touch her."
"She killed herself. Walked out into the sea, dressed in her heaviest gown. A funeral gown. Two soldiers went in after her, and a boat was launched, but when they brought her body back, she was dead."
"And for that he wants to kill me?"
In case you missed it, this is the moment when Hamlet first learns about Ophelia's death, and this is the extent of his emotional shock. Card's prince won't be jumping in Ophelia's open grave or daring Laertes to trump his grief. So it's horridly written in addition to screwing the plot. But wait, it gets worse.Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people. The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy—along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay. We learn that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now "as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple. I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house." ...yeah. A parody is here, more links and some commentary here. |
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Post by A Reasonable Rat on Sept 10, 2011 16:24:29 GMT -5
Wow. This is a shame, because I never read his Ender books, and I had heard they were really good. Now this crap will colour my experience if I ever do read them.
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Post by HarleyThomas1002 on Sept 10, 2011 18:27:07 GMT -5
As someone who enjoyed Hamlet that's quite disgusting.
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Sept 10, 2011 18:44:57 GMT -5
Hell, at least My Immortal was intentionally bad (no way it wasn't a trollfic) -- this is just... wow.
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Post by ltfred on Sept 10, 2011 18:51:59 GMT -5
Wow. This is a shame, because I never read his Ender books, and I had heard they were really good. Now this crap will colour my experience if I ever do read them. Ender's is not good. 1984 is good. Ender's is mediocre*. * It's poorly-written, unbelievable^, unnecessarily long, contains silly plot that doesn't need to be there and the characters are shallow. But it has a nice sucker-punch at the end of the reasonably acceptable central plot. ^ Two kids take over the world using only the interwebz! Everyone is 11, but still act like adults! |
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Sept 10, 2011 18:52:19 GMT -5
D:
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Post by discoberry on Sept 10, 2011 20:15:33 GMT -5
This has Andy Schlafly's hand in it somewhere...right?
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Post by erictheblue on Sept 10, 2011 20:16:57 GMT -5
Two kids take over the world using only the interwebz! Everyone is 11, but still act like adults! The two kids were bred to be geniuses. (That is why Ender was allowed to be born. Val and Peter were smart enough, but not of the right level of aggression.) |
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Post by stormwarden on Sept 10, 2011 21:36:10 GMT -5
In other words, he took Hamlet, one of the most famous of Shakespeare's plays, and made it into a book that would be better off made as toilet paper.
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Post by DarkfireTaimatsu on Sept 10, 2011 22:33:20 GMT -5
Every fanfic is the worst fanfic ever.
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Post by Shane for Wax on Sept 10, 2011 22:44:01 GMT -5
I played Hamlet once.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Sept 11, 2011 2:08:30 GMT -5
Two kids take over the world using only the interwebz! Everyone is 11, but still act like adults! was published in 1985. Back then, the internet was fairly new to the populace at large, and its implications were still ill-defined at best. In the mind of a man living in 1985, something as vast in scope as the internet could've been used to take the world. Also, you've not met many 11 year-olds, then. Many of my friends were more adult than the adults in school. Also, when you're basically being bred to become a soldier and genius tactician, you've got to grow up pretty fucking fast. PROTIP, fred: Reading Cilff's Notes != reading the actual book. [ETA] As far as the fanfic is concerned, it is irritating. Card does have a bit of a penchant for claw-hammering his ideals into his works, re Shadow of the Hegemon and his "babies are the true path to happiness" idea. He's also an outspoken opponent of homosexual marriage, so none of this comes as surprising. |
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Post by HarleyThomas1002 on Sept 11, 2011 2:19:28 GMT -5
Every fanfic is the worst fanfic ever. Hasn't read the fanfics I read. |
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Post by Meshakhad on Sept 11, 2011 2:44:29 GMT -5
Every fanfic is the worst fanfic ever. Hasn't read the fanfics I read. Indeed. I've read fanfics that were superior to the source material. |
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Post by HarleyThomas1002 on Sept 11, 2011 7:33:55 GMT -5
Depending on the series that's not hard to accomplish.
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