Has it occurred to anyone else that the device in Hangman, the Hanged Man, is kind of a fucked up idea? I mean, think about it. It’s basically drawing a picture of a guy being murdered. Or, sorry, maybe not murdered. Is “lynched” the appropriate term? Are we still feeling that’s different from murder?
Imagine it. Someone is about to hang you by a rope tied around your neck, but before you go the ruffians decide to play a game with you where they try and guess a word. So I guess the most murderous of the group picks a tough word, and the ones who aren’t as into murder try to guess. And this is how your fate is determined.
You don’t see other games like this. There’s no game that involves guessing a word, and with each wrong guess a different part of the lethal injection process is depicted. “Sorry, no A’s. You have been convicted in Texas. Sorry, no Q’s, your appeal process was unsuccessful. Sorry, no O’s, they’re drawing back the syringe’s plunger.”
You know what else? When I was a kid, if I wanted to keep the game rolling I would draw more parts on the guy. Like shoes, figuring that gave one more guess. But that doesn’t do shit. Now he’s just a hanging guy with fucking shoes on. Shouldn’t you have to draw the entire guy, then the gallows, and then last the noose? Is that how other people are playing this game? Did I just grow up in a morbid, fatalistic household that decided the guy was fucking doomed from the start?
If someone knows about a friendly version of Hangman, feel free to drop a line.