DS14 bits and pieces
Aug. 16th, 2006 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138These overlaps are much vaguer than most of the stuff in my long post about "Prince on a White Horse"; I probably would consider them to be valid Easter-eggish homages rather than plagiarism. They may've already been pointed out elsewhere, so I suppose my only real reason to list them is a sense of conceptual tidiness.
--
DS14: "'Well,' the chief of the werewolves (whose name had turned out to be Peter Whitstone, and who in his normal life was an accountant who currently lived in Ipswich and who had been bitten by a werewolf when he was sixteen) replied, munching a jellybean, 'there's us werewolves, and then there's about two hundred dementors, the veelas, maybe a hundred trolls, a few banshees, the Gentlemen, some Oggrings and some Skolks.'"
(In this context of monstrous beasties, "the Gentlemen" are probably borrowed from the Buffy episode "Hush".)
--
DS14: "It was an obvious effort for him to ask this, but Draco didn't say anything. He was thinking that it was all very well and bloody good to be a Magid, but not actually that much use in crisis times. All he could do was spells without a wand, and he couldn't think of any spells that would come in handy, even if he had had a wand. If only he'd learned how to Apparate. Experimentally, he held up a hand, casting his mind back to Charms class. 'Catedra,'he said.
"There was a bright flash of light, and a large overstuffed sofa appeared a short way away from them, resting against the battlements. It looked very comfortable, and had a matching paisley ottoman.
"Ron looked at him in disgust. 'Malfoy...'"
(The unexpected paisley furniture is reminiscent of the end of chapter 2 in Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything: "Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a large paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them" (p. 325 in The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide, Avenel NJ: Wings, 1994). In that case, instead of a botched spell, the summoning is caused by "[e]ddies in the space-time continuum".)
--
Though not as distinctive as the magical escape mural borrowed from one of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books or the "by his own hand" trick from Tanith Lee's short story "A Lynx With Lions", DS14 also has some plot parallels with "Prince on a White Horse". They're fairly general; I probably wouldn't even blink at them if it weren't for all the previously-cited word-for-word overlaps from the same story, and I still don't really know that they add up to anything.
After the nearly-shared introduction "Through the door came a troup of maidens, clad in filmy white, some carrying lanterns shining with a soft pale light, others playing little harps and pipes so a peculiar sweet music filled the hall" (DCWH p. 194), the maidens turn out to be monsters (veelas in DS14, shapechanged lizards in PoaWH). They're controlled by an imperious fair-haired girl (Fleur Delacour in DS14, Ysome the Saffron in PoaWH) who also has powers over a giant magically mechanical reptile (the metal serpent or brass dragon).
Later on, when running around a different location, some of the protagonists fall into a trap and find themselves in a dark pool of water with three beautiful pseudo-mermaids (in DS14, they're "merveela"; in DCWH p. 231, they're "Water Theels") who bring small glowing globes/orbs and show them the stairs leading back up to the main castle.
Toward the end, a Magic Round Thing unexpectedly crackles and explodes, shooting out eggshell shrapnel as well as a colorful, intangible aura that rises up, takes on a more specific form, and blasts straight into a main character's body. That main character yelps, then improves his posture, and makes with the happy face; subsequent passages demonstrate that the character has been turbocharged. Since the phrasing in this case is reasonably parallel, I might as well include it.
DS14: "A sharp, crackling noise broke, and the crystal sides of the Orb split and fissured and rained down like shattered bits of eggshell. A plume of greenish smoke rose from the shattered remains of the Orb, and floated into the air, where it hovered for a moment. Then, like a falling arrow, it plunged towards Slytherin and drove into his chest.
"Slytherin howled, as if he had been pierced through with a dagger, and arched his back as the green smoke arrowed into him. His whole body seemed to glow brightly for a moment with a luminous emerald halo. Then it vanished.
"He straightened up then, and began to smile."
DCWH p. 298: "[...A] bright crackling was coming from the Egg. Bits of shell burst out in all directions. A blue light glowed in the Prince's hands, took on for a moment the shape of a bird, and flew straight up at the Prince, and through his helm into his brain. The Prince gave a cry of pure joy. He leapt up and laughed."
--
(And speaking of "A Lynx With Lions", the story has been reprinted several times in its own right, but afaik its first appearance was as pp132-161 in the book Cyrion, NYC: Daw, 1982. For its first two-thirds or so, the book is a group of stories which can be read individually, but are linked together with a loose frame tale which is eventually continued and concluded in its own right. I'll have to re-check stuff, but so far there's at least one other close overlap:)
DS14, Slytherin bitch-slaps Hermione: "He hit her. His ringed fist hammered up into her jaw and her teeth met in her lip in a burst of agony. She gasped and through the haze of pain that darkened her vision, she saw Harry throw himself forward, the ropes that bound him to the pillar dragging themselves out to their fullest extension, but it still wasn't far enough for him to reach Slytherin."
Cyrion p. 158, right after Cyrion cuts off Ysemid's hand: "Before the scream could find its way through Ysemid's throat, a ringed fist hammered upward into his jaw. Ysemid's teeth met in his tongue like an agonizing vise. He slumped over into a roaring tawny darkness."
--
DS14: "'Well,' the chief of the werewolves (whose name had turned out to be Peter Whitstone, and who in his normal life was an accountant who currently lived in Ipswich and who had been bitten by a werewolf when he was sixteen) replied, munching a jellybean, 'there's us werewolves, and then there's about two hundred dementors, the veelas, maybe a hundred trolls, a few banshees, the Gentlemen, some Oggrings and some Skolks.'"
(In this context of monstrous beasties, "the Gentlemen" are probably borrowed from the Buffy episode "Hush".)
--
DS14: "It was an obvious effort for him to ask this, but Draco didn't say anything. He was thinking that it was all very well and bloody good to be a Magid, but not actually that much use in crisis times. All he could do was spells without a wand, and he couldn't think of any spells that would come in handy, even if he had had a wand. If only he'd learned how to Apparate. Experimentally, he held up a hand, casting his mind back to Charms class. 'Catedra,'he said.
"There was a bright flash of light, and a large overstuffed sofa appeared a short way away from them, resting against the battlements. It looked very comfortable, and had a matching paisley ottoman.
"Ron looked at him in disgust. 'Malfoy...'"
(The unexpected paisley furniture is reminiscent of the end of chapter 2 in Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything: "Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a large paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them" (p. 325 in The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide, Avenel NJ: Wings, 1994). In that case, instead of a botched spell, the summoning is caused by "[e]ddies in the space-time continuum".)
--
Though not as distinctive as the magical escape mural borrowed from one of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books or the "by his own hand" trick from Tanith Lee's short story "A Lynx With Lions", DS14 also has some plot parallels with "Prince on a White Horse". They're fairly general; I probably wouldn't even blink at them if it weren't for all the previously-cited word-for-word overlaps from the same story, and I still don't really know that they add up to anything.
After the nearly-shared introduction "Through the door came a troup of maidens, clad in filmy white, some carrying lanterns shining with a soft pale light, others playing little harps and pipes so a peculiar sweet music filled the hall" (DCWH p. 194), the maidens turn out to be monsters (veelas in DS14, shapechanged lizards in PoaWH). They're controlled by an imperious fair-haired girl (Fleur Delacour in DS14, Ysome the Saffron in PoaWH) who also has powers over a giant magically mechanical reptile (the metal serpent or brass dragon).
Later on, when running around a different location, some of the protagonists fall into a trap and find themselves in a dark pool of water with three beautiful pseudo-mermaids (in DS14, they're "merveela"; in DCWH p. 231, they're "Water Theels") who bring small glowing globes/orbs and show them the stairs leading back up to the main castle.
Toward the end, a Magic Round Thing unexpectedly crackles and explodes, shooting out eggshell shrapnel as well as a colorful, intangible aura that rises up, takes on a more specific form, and blasts straight into a main character's body. That main character yelps, then improves his posture, and makes with the happy face; subsequent passages demonstrate that the character has been turbocharged. Since the phrasing in this case is reasonably parallel, I might as well include it.
DS14: "A sharp, crackling noise broke, and the crystal sides of the Orb split and fissured and rained down like shattered bits of eggshell. A plume of greenish smoke rose from the shattered remains of the Orb, and floated into the air, where it hovered for a moment. Then, like a falling arrow, it plunged towards Slytherin and drove into his chest.
"Slytherin howled, as if he had been pierced through with a dagger, and arched his back as the green smoke arrowed into him. His whole body seemed to glow brightly for a moment with a luminous emerald halo. Then it vanished.
"He straightened up then, and began to smile."
DCWH p. 298: "[...A] bright crackling was coming from the Egg. Bits of shell burst out in all directions. A blue light glowed in the Prince's hands, took on for a moment the shape of a bird, and flew straight up at the Prince, and through his helm into his brain. The Prince gave a cry of pure joy. He leapt up and laughed."
--
(And speaking of "A Lynx With Lions", the story has been reprinted several times in its own right, but afaik its first appearance was as pp132-161 in the book Cyrion, NYC: Daw, 1982. For its first two-thirds or so, the book is a group of stories which can be read individually, but are linked together with a loose frame tale which is eventually continued and concluded in its own right. I'll have to re-check stuff, but so far there's at least one other close overlap:)
DS14, Slytherin bitch-slaps Hermione: "He hit her. His ringed fist hammered up into her jaw and her teeth met in her lip in a burst of agony. She gasped and through the haze of pain that darkened her vision, she saw Harry throw himself forward, the ropes that bound him to the pillar dragging themselves out to their fullest extension, but it still wasn't far enough for him to reach Slytherin."
Cyrion p. 158, right after Cyrion cuts off Ysemid's hand: "Before the scream could find its way through Ysemid's throat, a ringed fist hammered upward into his jaw. Ysemid's teeth met in his tongue like an agonizing vise. He slumped over into a roaring tawny darkness."