InteriorDecoratingGod!Snape II

[dolorous_ett]

Further to a very interesting discussion with lareinenoire and hannahmarder in a previous thread about InteriorDecoratingGod!Snape, I found a little jem in rowen_r 's journal that I just had to pass on. It's only tangentially relevant, but it's so clever and funny that it deserves all the exposure it can get - and it is by way of another demonstration of the importance of Snape's mystic connection with home furnishings.

For those of you who think you aren't familiar with InteriorDecoratingGod!Snape, if you've read more than a couple of Snape/Hermione romances you will certainly have encountered him. There's a common set-piece when the love-interest enters Snape's private quarters for the first time and is favourably impressed by what she finds (it is usually she - though I daresay slash authors do just the same thing). The writer than takes a good few hundred years to lech his accommodation and its decor, swooning at the ancient oak panneling with that special patina that only comes with years of hard polishing; the strategically placed easy chairs that are surprisingly comfortable; the roaring open fire that makes the room delightfully cosy and throws delightfully sinister flickering shadows into dark corners; the fascinating selection of artfully chosen books that throw the most flattering insights into his character; the tasteful collection of ornaments that are sparse and somehow masculine; the exquisitely textured hangings, curtains, bed-curtains (if it's going to be that sort of fic) and rugs, which are sometimes not even green....
Well, you get the picture. Curb your excitement. It's usually a dead giveaway to the author's age as well - teenagers don't generally feel the urge to slobber over home furnishings or real estate...

Anyway, we don't get to squeee over the contents of Snape's digs in this play, but without his connection to articles of furniture, the whole thing would fall apart.

Click here to read a drama about Voldemort's fall - in iambic pentameters

Comments

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Most Lamentable Tragedie is brilliant. (Particularly if, like me, you've read more Jacobean revenge tragedies than anybody should in one lifetime.) I am in awe.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it. When I stumbled on it by accident, I felt sure that it was too good to keep to myself.

(Particularly if, like me, you've read more Jacobean revenge tragedies than anybody should in one lifetime.)

How many is too many? I'd hate to think I'd exceeded the Recommended Daily Intake by mistake.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Well, I took a graduate seminar on revenge tragedy once. Once you get around to the really obscure ones, like Hoffman and Antonio's Revenge* and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois** and The Atheist's Tragedy***, they all start to blend together.

* The sequel to "Antonio and Mellida," which is a romantic comedy. Sort of like if somebody decided to make a movie called "Six Funerals and No Weddings," which featured Andie McDowell getting brutally murdered at the beginning and Hugh Grant going on a killing spree. (Come to think of it, I would pay good money to see that.)

** Also a sequel. Bussy is dead before it starts. His name is pronounced, of course, BUS-ee Damn-BOYS. Gotta love Elizabethan French.

*** Arguably not a real revenge tragedy, since the moral of this play is that if you have an evil relative, you should bear it patiently and wait for God to make him drop an axe on his own head. But close enough.

Actually, maybe they don't blend together so much, since I still remember all this stuff. That was a good seminar.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

The sequel to "Antonio and Mellida," which is a romantic comedy. Sort of like if somebody decided to make a movie called "Six Funerals and No Weddings," which featured Andie McDowell getting brutally murdered at the beginning and Hugh Grant going on a killing spree. (Come to think of it, I would pay good money to see that.)

Oh, so would I. And I'd pay a lot more money if Hugh Grant was on the other end of the killing spree. Stupid, floppy haired, English-for-export git.

The only thing I've read recently that comes close to the glories you describe is Rainstorm by Cao Yu, who wrote in the 1920s and 30s, and was basically the first Chinese author to attempt to write spoken drama (up to then it had all been sung opera or cross-talk acts).

Anyway, Cao Yu picked up a lot of good tips from Shakespeare - not all of them good things. In Rainstorm, it is a stormy summer day, and the secrets of a rich family are all coming out of the closets at the same time, culminating in the revelation that the young master, all unknowing, has fallen in love with and impregnated his own half-sister. Distraught, the girl runs out of the room, followed by her lover's younger brother (who is also in love with her, and ironically could have married her as there's no blood connection), there is a terrible fizzing noise and they both get electrocuted on a dangling electric cable. I think someone else gets fried too. If nothing else, this play is an Awful Warning not to leave until tomorrow what you can do today, as there are hints artfully inserted throughout the piece that someone really ought to see to that loose wire...

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Well, at least there's foreshadowing. I guess that's better than having an Electric Cable Ex Machina suddenly attack.

Just realized that I'd left out my very favorite Obscure Revenge Tragedy, Rollo, Duke of Normandy; or, The Bloody Brother. In which, among other things, some servants get caught up in a plot to poison their master and are sentenced to death. As they are being led out to the hangman, they randomly decide to sing a ballad called "Three Merry Men Be We."

The best part? There are four of them.

If I'm remembering things correctly, I actually wrote a paper about how this was in fact a scene of Serious Social Commentary, in which the playwright satirizes the dispensable-comic-servant convention by taking it to the point of absurdity. In retrospect, probably not.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Delicious. No way I can top that. Don't even intend to try.

The "Three Merry Men Be We" song strikes me as a prime example of Editorial Control - "Look, mate, plays last an hour and a half, right, and now we've cut the burning-by-lightnning-from-a-loose-rope scene there's no way we're going to be able to make up the lost time... No? Plot been tampered with enough? Well, I suppose we could always have a Musical Interlude in the second half... I know the opening night's tomorrow - don't you have anything ready-made you can bung in?... Artistic integrity? Don't make me laugh - they're all here to ogle LeatherTights!Rollo anyway... Well, just do your best. And make it snappy, can't you?"