It might seem churlish, in a world where people are plagued by poverty, disease, addiction and any amount of other problems, that the greatest pain in my life is being caused by a man who died at least 1,500 years ago. And didn't even exist. But there you go. I suppose if I was the victim of any real hardship I'd probably spend my time, I don't know, dealing with it, rather than making poor jokes on my own on the web. So it is that my one sliver of misery is inflicted by a Swedish brick shit-house named Beowulf.
He's the subject of a poem written in old english; information that will immediatly start to piss you off, since 'poem' suggests something short, and 'english' suggests something written in English. Then you buy a copy and realise its a 3,500 line monster written in gobble-de-gook. You're having fun already.
When you actually get to reading the thing (having of course gone back to the bookshop and swapped your copy for a translation) you realise it's not really like reading a poem at all but more like playing a videogame. You play as Beowulf, whose special power is just generally being a massive lad. There are three levels, each with its own final boss. There's the beginners' level set in the mead hall Heorot, where you fight the monster Grendel. Next comes the obligitory boring underwater level where you defeat Grendel's mother. After a 50 year-odd pause whilst you go and take a piss, you reach the final level and face a dragon. He's a bit too hardcore for you, but luckily your second-player companion Wiglaf - here played by your annoying younger brother who can't press the 'b' button quick enough and tilts the controller like a racing wheel - is on hand to help you out, and you eventually triumph. Unfortunatly your brother's attempts to show you the treasure power-up fail, and you get Game Over anyway. All this is interspersed by boring cut-scenes where you find out about characters you never meet and couldn't care less about, but which you aren't allowed to skip. At the end you take the cartridge out and throw it into the garage, wondering why your parents couldn't have gotten you Super Mario Bros. 2 for Christmas instead.
I suspect that, outside the trappings of my horrid degree course, I might quite like Beowulf. Like a work collegue on a team building exercise, you think the two of you might have gotten on if you weren't stuck on an orienteering course with him and he's given you the map, by which I mean, is forcing you to work. Beowulf is a fun character. No whiny claptrap about past trauma and daddy issues for THIS hero - he kicks ass because he was BORN to kick ass. He rips arms off with his bare hands and can breathe underwater. He doesn't learn anything through his exploits. There's no love interest or comic sidekick. Just an appealingly homoerotic subtext (Beowulf keeps finding that his 'sword' is useless against his foes and has to use his 'fists' instead) and a fuck-off dragon. Beautiful.
As it is, he's really starting to get on my tits. I've begun picturing him as one of those Saturday morning cartoon hero's who hand out parentethical advice - Superman Says Say No To Drugs, Spiderman Says Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires, etc - except he's only got one piece of advice, and it's 'read more Beowulf'. Which gets really grating after a while. Luckily I found the perfect way to solve this problem, which was bitching about the guy in a blog post instead of doing what he says. How strong do you feel now, huh, Beowulf? You may be able to slay dragons, but you can't even get an 18 year old student to do his essay and translation? You baby.
And if you were wondering, I did do that picture. What a valuable way to spend my time.
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