The Problem with Hamlet and Canonity of Stick Tales[SSaDT, DStP, and W&XP SPOILERS]

[Ghost Nappa]

I originally posting this in the Companion reading guide, and then the "Things you never noticed" thread, but a comment by Gift Jiraff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16429074&postcount=1036) made me find a THIRD mention to Hamlet. So now I want to put this forward as a more focused question.

In Wars and XPs, on the first page of the re-cap in panel 4 (the one next to a drawing of Eugene as a Ghost), Vaarsuvius mentions Hamlet by name.



:vaarsuvius: (The ghost of his father frequently appears to Sir Greenhilt during his explorations, in what I can only surmise to be a clumsy homage to "Hamlet".)

In Comic #665b (a bonus comic in Don't Split the Party), Belkar mentions the story of Hamlet by name.



http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a311/estelindis/hinjo.gif The good good news is that I know just the man you drag you kicking and screaming back here. The bad news is that he won't be able to take the job until after he finishes avenging his father's restless ghost.
:belkar: ...You're going to hire Hamlet?
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a311/estelindis/hinjo.gif No, I'm going to hire ROY.


In Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tails Elan, Haley, Belkar and Roy tell stories upon the boat ride that occurs between #672 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0672.html) and #673 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0673.html) in the final section of the book. Roy's story is a re-telling of Hamlet. No one in the party seems to recognize the story, and Belkar accuses Roy of ripping the story almost straight from his own life.



:roy: The End. So what do you think? Pretty good for a first timer, right?
:elan: Well, Roy, it was...uh...very...
:haley: Realistic!
:elan: Yeah! Realistic!
:roy: ...What does that mean?
:belkar: It means you obviously ripped the whole thing off from your own life!


So my question for you all is, within the Anyworld of The Order of the Stick, does the story of Hamlet exist? Or perhaps more precisely, are the Stick tales canon?

If the Stick Tales are NOT Canon, then the problem I am describing vanishes. But if it is, then not only is there a sort of OoC allusion to it floating around, there's a comic strip with it that is harder to hand-wave away.

[NerdyKris]

The Giant said, somewhere, that it was easier to just ignore the discrepancy, since it changes absolutely nothing.

[Porthos]

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
- Some dude. Probably who had issues with goblinoids. :smallwink:

I say that to remind that The Order of the Stick doesn't particularly care about 100% iron clad consistency, if it is minor enough and if it makes a good joke/addition to the story.

For instance, the times that each and every member of the Order of the Stick has broken the Fourth Wall is nigh-on impossible to count. Or at least, it's an awful lot. :smallwink: Yet Roy acted confused when the Oracle turned to the audience when he made his "in-comic year, not real-time year" observation (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0572.html). Logically, Roy shouldn't have been confused over it, since he is well aware of Fourth Wall jokes. But for the sake of the scene, he was.

There are other ones sprinkled throughout the comic.

Now note the original quote said "a foolish consistency". In other words, when talking about OotS, if it is small stuff, don't sweat it. :smallwink:

[Kish]

"Out of character" (read: fourth wall breaking) allusions? In this comic? Well I never!

[ChristianSt]

I don't see any problem here.

Even if Belkar knows about Hamlet in SSaDT, why can't he accuse Roy for ripping the story off from his life?

Ok, Belkar would never lie to insult or inconvenience Roy
... Oh wait, in fact he would exactly do that.

That leaves Elan, Haley, Dukon and Vaarsuvius.

We have no prof that Elan, Haley or Durkon have heard about Hamlet, so it is certainly possible that there are not familiar with Hamlet (I think there are enough people that don't know Hamlet IRL, that this is an easy assumption).

Vaarsuvius only says that he/she finds the names of the places distracting (:vaarsuvius: "Denmark? England? France??"). He/she didn't said that he/she isn't familiar with the plot of Roy's story.

And certainly the OotS-version of Hamlet features more realistic names for places like Tyrinaria, Nowhere or Azure City.

Roy just wanted to be credited for an awesome story, so he simple re-branded "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Somewhere" to "The Tragedy of Greenhilt, Prince of Denmark", replaced the places with random strings and called it his own story - which didn't worked that well judging by the reactions of the others.

[Ghost Nappa]

For instance, the times that each and every member of the Order of the Stick has broken the Fourth Wall is nigh-on impossible to count. Or at least, it's an awful lot. :smallwink: Yet Roy acted confused when the Oracle turned to the audience when he made his "in-comic year, not real-time year" observation (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0572.html). Logically, Roy shouldn't have been confused over it, since he is well aware of Fourth Wall jokes. But for the sake of the scene, he was.

But the Oracle is consistent with his 4th wall knowledge and exploitation, as are other characters like Elan. There are certain characters whom regularly acknowledge the fourth-wall, those that do it when its convenient, and some that don't do it at all.

This is the same person suggesting in two different places that he is both aware and unaware of a piece of literature. If it was Elan (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0793.html), it would be easier to play off to willing ignorance. The best canonical explanation I can think of is that it's like the Giants (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0139.html): Belkar just forgot. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0179.html) I just think it's flimsy though. Vaarsuvius' thing can be handwaved easy enough (I included it more because - "HEY! Another Hamlet allusion!") since it's a re-cap and not part of the story, but as far as I can tell, the two quotes from Belkar are more important as 1) They actually occur within the story 2) They're from the same person on the same subject
3) They give differing accounts on the speaker's knowledge of the subject (implicitly)



I don't see any problem here.

Even if Belkar knows about Hamlet in SSaDT, why can't he accuse Roy for ripping the story off from his life?

Ok, Belkar would never lie to insult or inconvenience Roy
... Oh wait, in fact he would exactly do that.

That leaves Elan, Haley, Dukon and Vaarsuvius.

We have no proof that Elan, Haley or Durkon have heard about Hamlet, so it is certainly possible that there are not familiar with Hamlet (I think there are enough people that don't know Hamlet IRL, that this is an easy assumption).


Don't get me wrong, I'm not even considering whether or not Haley, Durkon, or Vaarsuvius know of the story to be relevant: there isn't any contradicting information, so there's no need to go down that rabbit hole. Elan is slightly more worrisome by virtue of being a Bard, but it's Elan.

The problem with Belkar "lying" about it in SSaDT is that...what is he lying about? The quotes in the OP are literally all that's relevant on the subject. The contradiction comes from implied information. If Belkar was doing it insult Roy, it would have been easier to insult him for plagiarizing a major historical play than his own life. The larger problem for me is having knowledge of the play to name it from abstract facts of a person's life, but not enough to note any similarities between a long story told to him, and that same play.


I suppose it's entirely possible Belkar is only familiar with Hamlet by Pop Culture Osmosis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PopCulturalOsmosis) and knows of the ghost bit, but not the rest...
Dammit. Now my original bafflement seems entirely unreasonable. :smallmad:

[ChristianSt]

The problem with Belkar "lying" about it in SSaDT is that...what is he lying about? The quotes in the OP are literally all that's relevant on the subject. The contradiction comes from implied information. If Belkar was doing it insult Roy, it would have been easier to insult him for plagiarizing a major historical play than his own life. The larger problem for me is having knowledge of the play to name it from abstract facts of a person's life, but not enough to note any similarities between a long story told to him, and that same play.


I suppose it's entirely possible Belkar is only familiar with Hamlet by Pop Culture Osmosis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PopCulturalOsmosis) and knows of the ghost bit, but not the rest...
Dammit. Now my original bafflement seems entirely unreasonable. :smallmad:

Other than you supporting another explanation, Belkar isn't the smartest member of the Order. It is certainly possible that he thought that "ripping the story off from his life" would work better than "plagiarism".