The Overexamined Life of A.V. Phibes

Why ladies love Severus Snape: A detailed primer. (chock full of spoilers, in case you care)

 All images used were culled from our friend, the internet.

So I was sitting around playing Marry/Fuck/Kill with the Potterverse and was like “I’d totally fuck Snape, obviously.” Then it occurred to me that, among the smorgasbord of cute young boys, why would the “obvious” sexual choice be a gnarly old goth who’s a dick to everyone?

Initially, it doesn’t seem to make much sense, since, in the novels, even though he’s a fairly complex character, there’s not really a drop of sex on him and he’s mostly described as being mean and ugly. In spite of this, HP fandom is bursting at the seams with ladies who are hot and bothered for Snape. Some fervently embrace it, others feel strangely confused about it, but it is nonetheless true that ladies love cool Snape, and-- fear not-- I’m going to tell you why in a convenient 5 point format:

1. Alan Rickman’s Voice
A huge portion of Snape lust can be simply attributed to the casting of Alan Rickman in the movies. While Alan Rickman is an average-looking dude and kinda over-the-hill, it is an anecdotally observed phenomenon that the timbre and tempo of Alan Rickman’s voice triggers some sort of primal mating instinct in females. Reviewers—female ones, that is-- have used all sorts of metaphors for Alan Rickman’s voice: Velvet, silk, chocolate, red wine…basically, stuff that ladies love. Have you ever listened to audio of Alan Rickman reading stories? Well I have, and I cannot tell you a single plot point of any of those stories because all I could think about is having hot sex with Alan Rickman who is old enough to be my father and not at all my type.

Guys don’t get it (which I hypothesize is why he tends to be cast as a villain in guy movies and a romantic object in chick movies). It would seem you have to have a vagina in order to experience the aphrodisiac qualities of Alan Rickman’s voice. It’s almost a rite of passage into womanhood: You get your period, you have your first kiss, and you have the first time you go see a movie with Alan Rickman in it and leave feeling all funny, thinking “wow, that guy is such a… um… good actor.” because Alan Rickman’s voice just totally made sweet dirty love to your ear holes.

So now, thanks to the Harry Potter movie franchise, there is a whole new generation of adolescent girls who hear things like this and then feel all strange and confused about their inappropriate longing to make out with a guy practically old enough to be their grandfather. Fear not, young ladies: You can’t help it. It’s just science.

2. He’s dark and Mysterious
This one is so obvious as to almost be cliché. It the same reason chicks dig vampires. Ladies often respond to strong emotions and fear and confusion can be strong emotions. If you combine this with an initial attraction, a young lady who doesn’t know any better can easily presume that maybe she’s madly in love with a guy just because he’s a little scary and confusing (See also: Twilight).

So let’s look at Snape: Is he dark? Yes. Along with the severe black outfit, he’s got a titillating air of menace and danger. Mysterious? Definitely. Is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? Where do his loyalties lie? Does anyone really know what he’s up to? So many questions! How desperately we ladies want to uncover his secrets! The “scary and confusing” factor, aside from being exciting, can also totally disrupt a ladies sense of control over a situation, which can also be stimulating if attraction is involved (which it obviously is because, duh, Alan Rickman’s voice). Leading us to…


3. The whole S&M vibe
It is not a mere coincidence that the interwebs contain about ten million smutty fanfics about what transpires when Snape keeps students after class for detention. Consult a list of the top ten female sex fantasies and you will see “being dominated” and “teacher/student” sitting right next to each other. The character of Severus Snape is a teacher… A very strict teacher. When he tells you to do something, you do it. These kind of power/control fantasies are pretty common (and hot). Add “dark and mysterious” and the wanton suggestiveness of Alan Rickman’s voice into the mix and you’ve just created a perfect storm of female masturbation material. Under these circumstances, having Snape say lines like “I shall attempt to penetrate your mind and you shall attempt to resist me” is almost too much to deal with.

4. He’s a jerk
We’ve all heard the old saw “Women don’t like nice guys… they like jerks” usually being muttered by some jerk who thinks he’s a nice guy. The truth is that women DO like nice guys, BUT, they also like jerks sometimes. As someone who’s dated my fair share of sociopaths, I’ll try to shed some light on this for you.

One thing to establish is that most women don’t like jerks because they want to be treated badly. Rather, they want the guy who’s a jerk to everyone but them. They’re hoping for the victory of biting through his hard candy shell and getting to his sweet tootsie roll center. Jerks possess the alluring qualities of power and confidence… although usually taken to a dysfunctional level. Since most of us have to be nice most of the time, the jerk can also provide a vicarious, liberating thrill as he brazenly breaks all the rules of social propriety.

So when Snape goes around being an asshole and not taking anyone’s shit, it’s actually kind of a turn-on. (Some women also labor under delusions that they can “reform” the jerk, although this is usually a recipe for disaster. )

If I may, however, give some advice to the youth of America, it’s this: Don’t have relationships with jerks. I’m not saying you can’t have hot flings with the occasional jerk in your experimental youth, because, truthfully, they ARE pretty exciting in the short term, but any guy who’s a jerk to everyone else will eventually be a jerk to you. Trust me. To put it in HP terms: fuck all the Slytherins you want, but if you want to get serious, find a nice Hufflepuff.

5. He’s all tortured and misunderstood and crying on the inside and shit.
Okay, so maybe after a long day of antagonizing Harry Potter, insulting his students and generally sneering and being curt, Snape goes down to his room in the dungeon, turns on The Cure’s “Disintegration,” and cries while hugging his pillow, because deep down inside he’s all wounded and sensitive.

Remember what I said in the last bit about the tootsie roll center? Well Snape’s is a doozy. He came from an abusive, neglectful home, got bullied in school and then watched as his BFF/love of his life kicked him to the curb and married the guy who bullied him. Now she’s dead and he feels responsible, so he’s sworn to save her son’s ass from Voldemort even though he partly hates him because he looks like the dude who pantsed him in high school. Meanwhile, everyone just thinks he’s a dick because of the cold, stoic façade he’s constructed to hide his inner turmoil. But he’s secretly doing good…GOOD, DAMN IT! So much heartache! So much angst! So much wounded inner child desperately needing the right woman to hug his pain away!

 

Chicks often dig romantic fantasies of being the special, insightful one to understand the misunderstood guy, thus breaking through his misanthropic exterior and being rewarded with all of his ardent, pent-up passion. Combined with the Jerk factor, this would seem to present a situation where you could have your hot, rough, pinned-against-the-wall sex and your sweet butterfly kisses, too. In real life, this typically doesn’t result in anything but a dysfunctional relationship, but it seems pretty sexy on paper.
 

 

In Summary:

Okay, so we’ve got a dark and mysterious guy with an air of danger and a dominating personality who’s in a position of authority. He’s a total jerk and doesn’t take anyone’s shit, but it’s only because he’s all emo on the inside. Top that off with a voice that makes EVERY DAMN THING sound erotic and BAM: Ladies love Snape.

And so I hope that this sheds some light on why I would obviously fuck him… although I’m totally marrying Hagrid…and killing Peter Pettigrew. That guy is worthless.

A.V. Phibes' top ten albums of the decade (plus ten more)

So, if anyone is qualified to give a "top ten albums of the decade," it is probably not me.  I have no pretense of knowing jack about music, but I DO listen to a lot of it!  Now, I'm not saying that these are the BEST albums of the decade, but they're the ones I probably listened to the most (the WHOLE album... not just the two best singles or whatever. Singles are a whole other story.)  

Now, while I wouldn't assume that anyone would give a rats ass what albums I listened to the most, back when I was making mix CDs, some crazy kids were actually into them, so maybe... just maybe... you suckers want to know. If you don't, well, at least I can use this for my own future reference.

Now I can't really rank these into "favorites" because favorite-ness tends to wax and wane and appear and disappear on the waves of time and mood, so I'm just gonna organize them chronologically...

I'm getting back into life, but more importantly: Andrew W.K. is a creative force to be reckoned with.

 

What happens when someone, for no reason and without warning, just FREEZES and doesn't respond for 20 minutes?  That's when the fun begins.  That's when entertainment becomes an unpredictable, interactive, and memorable experience.  I'll get to that in a minute...

So it started earlier in the month when I decided that I was going to spend an entire week celebrating my birthday. I scheduled a week of things to do and events to attend: Talk! Rock! Comedy! Parties! Foods! Drinks! BFFs!  

It seemed apropos, then, that Andrew W.K. the guru saint of the philosophy of partying, should somehow be paid tribute to.  Turns out he was going to be part of a panel discussion at the Pomp & Circumstance Post-Apocalyptic survival party with Author Tony O'Neill and comedian Matt McCarthy. That sounded pretty interesting, so I made plans with a friend to go.

The day of the event, however, my friend had to work late, so I was basically confronted with the choice:  Go alone or not go at all.  The thing is, I pretty much never go to events alone.  It makes me anxious and uncomfortable.  Since seeing his CMJ lecture, however, I'd been inspired to approach life with a more WWAWKD? attitude and what that meant in this situation is that I had to not be a fucking wimp.  The very fact that the situation made me anxious and uncomfortable meant that I ought to do it.

So I went to the event alone and I was feeling kind of awkward, so then I thought "maybe I should just go start talking to people."  Again, this is something that makes me anxious and uncomfortable, so I made myself do it and talked to a bunch of people, even, yes, I talked to Andrew W.K... in for a penny, in for a pound, right?  As with many anxieties, I found that it was not really scary at all. It actually doesn't even make much sense since I'm pretty much the hostess with the mostess when I'm in my own home or general comfort zone.  

So the panel discussion starts and I'm in a good mood because I wasn't a fucking wimp and I was being a boisterous audience member because there's nothing worse for a person onstage than to have a reticent and unresponsive audience, and hip, artsy Brooklyn crowds can often be too much on the "I'm too cool to show enthusiasm for anything" side.  It turned out that Matt McCarthy couldn't make it to be on the panel [and, as an aside, see Matt McCarthy if you have a chance, he's a hoot.  Also, yes, I know he kinda looks like my boyfriend.]  So there was an empty chair and about halfway through the panel, since I had just been shamelessly begging the emcee, Lianne Stokes, for a can of Miller Lite, I was invited to take the empty chair and join the panel.

 Now what's kind of ridiculous at this point is that I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to be on the panel since it's not like I've never been on a panel or otherwise in front of a microphone speaking to the youth of america, but since nobody knows who the fuck I am, I'm basically just some drunk chick from the audience. Whatever...I'll be the best drunk chick from the audience I can be!

Okay, now I'll finally circle back around to the thing I was talking about in the first paragraph:  So at a certain point in the discussion, Andrew W.K. just freezes. He's sitting stock still and staring and not responding to anyone. This, here, is why I tell people that if you only know Andrew W.K. as the "party hard" guy, you're missing out on a cornucopia of treats.  He's actually morphed into a delightfully provocative and compelling figure. He's basically become this bundle of paradoxes who is constantly subverting expectation and even his own public image. Asking a random sample of Andrew W.K. fans to describe him is like the Blind Men describing the Elephant.  Some people have even conceived crackpot theories that he's not a real person.  He can seem, at different times, like a rock star, a philosopher, a clown, the big brother you wish you had, a geek, a virtuoso, a madman... In short, you are never 100% sure what you're going to get from him, so it's always interesting and fun to see where things are going to go and how, as a spectator, you are going to be engaged or made to feel and react. In a sense, his all-white "costume" has become a metaphorical blank screen on which people are invited to project.

And, really, this is why I like conceptual art in general: because the art becomes this unpredictable synergy between the artist and the audience, with both sides coming together to create the whole...but back to the panel and the frozen Andrew W.K: So the first reaction is confusion. We don't get it at first. Nobody knows what's going on. Do we try to snap him out of it? Do we play along? Do we ignore it?  The situation is amusingly disorienting.  When the panel finished and broke up, he continued to sit there frozen. He's still there? How long is he going to do this?

At a certain point, with the few people remaining there by the stage, things went in another interesting direction: If he's going to behave like an inanimate object, we can treat him like an inanimate object. We all posed for pictures with him.  One person pretended to drink from his glass. Another commented "he smells nice."  

 

 

 

Eventually I wandered off to get another drink and talk to more people.  At a certain point I glanced back and he wasn't there anymore.  Still, I really enjoyed the whole thing, as did my friends when I told them about it later. I think that what Andrew W.K. started back in the early 00's with his music has now become a more multi-faceted approach to provoking emotions and creating experiences... and this is why I urge people to take note of Andrew W.K. and go see him in whatever capacity you can if you have a chance!

Also, I would encourage people to not be a fucking wimp, because if you aren't, you just might have an awesome night and meet lots of interesting people.

Andrew W.K.'s japan covers may be the greatest thing ever.

This is from an AMAZING album of japanese covers by Andrew W.K. I think the fact that I've been listening to this on repeat for three days proves that my inner 15 year old boy is alive and well.