Pittsburgh Lambic posted:

FredMSloniker posted:

I find it amusing that 'once upon a time a king died and chose not to be a spooky ghost the end' is considered 'better than Shakespeare'. Then again, even Shakespeare wrote some... not so great stuff.

(We need to get some serious Shakespeare buff in here to nerd out about Hamlet.)

Captain Oblivious posted:

Time is like a river.

A river made of Ghost Dads

quote:

You get to spend all your time slamming doors, rattling chains, and telling on the person who killed you!

But here’s the thing: I, the author, told you, the reader, that your brother poured poison in your ear while you napped. But you, as Hamlet Sr., have no idea how you died! You slept through the whole thing.

So you need to figure out who killed you if you’re going to revenge yourself on your murderer, assuming you even WERE murdered. Because remember that for all you know, you could’ve died of a heart attack!

This is an example of dramatic irony, only since we’re in the second person, it’s an amazing example of an entirely new species of dramatic irony: something I’m going to call Second Person Pronoun-Paradoxical Auto-Dramatic Irony.

You are now aware of information that you’re not aware of. This should be fun!

dreezy posted:

Our ears are practically aching for some sweet gossip and we wouldn't want to hit another dead end (get it because we are dead), so let's drop some eaves.

Pittsburgh Lambic posted:

Ghostly Hamlet Dad is off to a rough start, and Yorick's still nowhere to be seen.

Qylvaran posted:

Does the iOS app include the 'prequel', Alas, Poor Yorick?

quote:

You only speak Danish, so understanding Norwegian is a little difficult. It all sounds like Swedish to you! Which actually makes a lot of sense, since Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are all related North Germanic languages descended from early linguistic differentiation between regular Germanic speakers and North Germanic speakers around 200 AD.

You nod your head, agreeing that all of this is both accurate and extremely interesting.

While these three languages are GENERALLY supposed to be mutually intelligible, you find you can understand Norwegian speakers only if you're concentrating -- which you are -- and only if they're speaking slowly and clearly -- which they're not, as everyone is running around upset about war and all these kings getting killed.

Ironically, Norwegian speakers can understand Danish easier than Danish speakers understand Norwegian, but that doesn't help you much! That would only be useful if you were playing as the Norwegian king whose ghost has stowed away on YOUR army's boat headed back to Denmark, but I haven't given you that option even though it would be extremely awesome. If you're wondering what happens to this Vengeful Ghost King, I can tell you only this: THE ANSWER EXISTS IN YOUR IMAGINATION??

But here's the good news, it turns out WRITTEN Danish and WRITTEN Norwegian are actually pretty similar! So you spend the next several nights haunting people, quietly reading their diaries while they sleep peacefully in their beds. And you don't know this, but ghosts do this all the time. Ghosts just love sneaking a peek at the secrets of the living!

It takes a while, but you finally find the diary of someone who wrote on the day you died that she was wandering by a garden, minding her own business when she saw some Danish guy pour something in some other Danish guy's ear!

Hey! That sounds like what could've happened to you (but remember you don't know that's exactly what happened to you because of that new irony we invented)!

quote:

You gently shake the woman awake while holding the piece of paper up in front of her. She's freaked out initially (she was just woken up by a g-g-g-g-ghostly apparition from beyond the grave) but once she reads your note, she looks at you and suspiciously and says, "For real?"

You flip over the paper and write, "YEAH I'M THE GUY THAT GOT KILLED MAYBE, AND I GUESS I WANT TO REVENGE MY DEATH OR WHATEVER? BUT PLEASE SPEAK SLOWLY AS NORWEGIAN IS NOT MY NATIVE LANGUAGE; I'M FROM DENMARK."

"Oh," the woman says in Danish, "I speak Danish too."

"Kick rear end," you reply.

She tells you what she saw and gives you a physical description of the guy. Unfortunately, the man answering to her description could only be one person: your brother, Claudius!!



You're feeling pretty chuffed about this whole situation!

Okay! Let's revenge your death! Your murderer is getting away with it in Denmark.