Thursday, 28 March 2024

Watership Down: as Abridged by Em

Em's famous abridgment now expanded to include Part Two.

WATERSHIP DOWN
(As abridged by Em: The Adventures of Hazel & Co.)

SPOILER WARNING!!!

Disclaimer
Watership Down Is an excellent book by Richard Addams! Go read! Now!
This abridgement is for people who have read the book, and so can appreciate it. It is written in the style of a script, as one would animate or draw in cartoon style, but is actually written to be read this way.

All of the wonderful characters are not duly represented in this work, especially Blackberry, Silver and Dandelion. All of the wonderful aspects of rabbit psychology are also not present, neither are Fiver’s weird visions, or any of the El-ahrairah stories, or the wonderful Lapine language. A lot of creative license has been taken with who said what, and other such small details.

PART 1: THE JOURNEY

Fiver: We’re all gonna die.

Hazel: Says who?

Fiver: Says me.

Thearah: Halloo?

Fiver: We’re all gonna die.

Thearah: That’s nice.

Fiver: No, I’m being serious. Bad things will happen to us.

Thearah: Maybe if I ignore them, they’ll go away.

Hazel: We’ll just have to leave by ourselves then.

Co.: Yay! We’re coming with you!

Captain Holly*: No you’re not! Badbadbad! No abandoning the warren for you!

Bigwig: Fightfightfight!

Hazel & Co.: Runrunrun!

Hazel & Co: Ohgoshlookit! River!

Hazel: Everybody swim!

Fiver & Pipkin: We are the weaklings. Fear us.

Hazel: Dang it, we can’t leave the weaklings behind, now can we?

Bigwig: Ohgoshlookit! Big scary dog! We’ll have to leave them!

Hazel: But we might need them later.

Blackberry: Being the smart bunny, I just came up with a clever plan.

Bigwig: I don’t understand it, therefore it won’t work.

Fiver: Being the psychic bunny, I do.

Bigwig: Ooooooh! It worked! You’re all so smart!

Hazel: Foreshadowing…

Hawbit, Speedwell & Acorn: We shall be jerks and rebel!

Bigwig: Badbadbad!

Hazel & Co.: Scary dark marshy place!

Fiver: Which of course means we shall have to cross it.

Co.: Darn.

Hazel: Do it anyway.

Hazel: Augh foggy…

Co.: Yeah, we made it! You are so smart, Hazel!

Fiver: Hello? Doesn’t anyone ever give me any credit?

Co.: Nice place, we shall stay here.

Fiver: No, we have to keep going.

Freakishly Weird Bunnies: We are freakishly weird and unnatural! Come be freakishly weird with us!

Hazel & Co.: Funfunfun!

Fiver: Argh! No! Runaway!

Hazel & Bigwig: No, you must come be weird with us.

Fiver: Darn.

Bigwig: Augh! Rabbit trap!

Freakishly Weird Bunnies: Oh yeah, and we forgot to mention that you might get killed unexpectedly at any moment. But it’s a small price to pay for our wonderful lifestyle.

Hazel & Co.: Runaway!

Fiver: Next time we listen to me.

Bigwig: Dead.

Hazel & Co.: No! Poor Bigwig!

Bigwig: Alive now.

Hazel & Co.: Yayness!

Hazel & Co.: Now we go.

Strawberry: I comes too.

End of Part One.

*The male rabbit captain of the Sandleford Owsla. Not the female elf captain of the LEP.

PAR TWO: ON WATERSHIP DOWN

Hazel: Well, we came all this way… I can’t read this, it’s all smudged…* blah blah… Okay, Now what do we do?

Fiver: We go up, of course.

Hazel: Up?

Fiver: Yes, up. It’s our destiny.

Hazel: But…

Fiver: JUST DO IT!!!!!

Hazel: Wowee. What a froody place!

Fiver: I told you so.

Hazel: Peoples! Dig a warren!

Co.: Digdigdig!

Co.: Chiz chiz! We shall live here forever and so will our prosperity and our young shall frolick and our does… Uh oh.

Fiver: Yup.

Co.: Alas! In our male stupidity we forgot the women!

Hazel: Ack! We so stoopid! Don’t worry, I have a plan!

Rabbit: Look Hazel, birdy!

Hazel: Quick, feed it!

Co.: Why?

Hazel: JUST DO IT!!!!!

Kehaar: (the bird) Me Kehaar, me helps you find mudders! *flies away*

Mysterious Voice: Zorn! Zorn! Zorn! All Zorn!

Bigwig: Scream, panic, and run helplessly around in circles!** It’s the Black Rabbit of Inle!

Bluebell: ‘Ello chaps!

Mysterious Voice: *reveals himself to be Capt Holly who we met in part 1* They all died!

Fiver: Big surprise.

Holly: It was!

Fiver: Well, I did try to warn you.

Kehaar: Big warren with lotsa mudders thataway, small farmhouse with hutch buns thataway.

Hazel: Righto, Holly, you take some bunnies and talk that other warren out of some does, ‘k?

Holly: You really think it will be that easy?

Hazel: Oh sure! I’m positive that all of these other pages detail our happy successful lives breeding and eating and frolicking etcetera.

Holly: Hokay. *leaves*

Hazel: And whilst they are gone, we will sit here and twiddle our thumbs… except that we don’t have thumbs! Aha!

Fiver: Oh no! I know what you’re thinking!

Hazel: You do?

Fiver: D’oh. I’n psychic.

Hazel: Oh yeah. Well anyways, I can’t look weak and lazy while the others are out saving our hides! We must go get those other bunnies!

Fiver: :???:

Hazel: Let us go see about these hutch bunnies.

Hazel: Erm…kitty…doggie…hutch bunnies! Hello bunnies!

Hutch Buns: Um..ok.

Hazel: Come with us!

Hutch Buns: ‘K.

Car: ROOOOAAARRR!

Dandelion: Run!

Dude(human): Oh dang it! How did the bunnies get out?

Other Dude: Look woild ones!

Dude; *shoots hazel*

Hazel: Ouch.

Other Bunnies: Where’s Hazel?

Dandelion:…

Dandelion: He fell behind.

Co.:…

Co.: We’ll keep to the code.

*all go back with ¾ hutch buns, but the 4th was a buck, so he so he doesn’t matter*

Co: Hazel-

Fiver: Je sais***.

Holly&Co.: *come back, looking worse for wear. Everyone is generally depressed*

Fiver: *has a really strange vision*

Fiver: He was just resting!

Blackberry: :???:

Meanwhile…

Holly; We went to the warren, they called themselves Efrafa, they were weird, they were probably a metaphor for some country or political ideal back in 1972, they didn’t like us, we barely escaped with our lives.

Blackberry: Hazel’s alive!

Co: W00T!!!

Fiver: And from now on, everyone shall listen to me when I say I have a bad feeling, capiche?

Hazel and Co: *meekly* Yes mother.

Hazel: 15 males and 2 females… yeah, this is gonna work real well. We need to go back to Efrafa.

Holly: Did you not just hear me?

Hazel: Don’t worry, you’re not coming. I have a plan. dunh dunh dunh…

Fiver: Hey, it’s mostly my plan!

Hazel: Shaddup, you’re ruining my dramatic moment.

End of Part Two

*Yesh, Em cannot read her notes
**©Ebethy
***Trans: ‘I know’

PART THREE: EFRAFA


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