unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
something chilling about the interior shown here, the environment a tory chooses to inhabit. crystal doorknob too high on the door. the door itself contains neoclassical pilars. a pillared fireplace made of chalk supports a crystal plinth for a milkwax candle, never burned. the candle is itself a neoclassical pillar. a crystal mirror reflects the edge of more chalk, more crystal. the walls are arsenic, coated in chalk.
here is a blender remake of "The Tory Room", aka the room in UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson's house in which he was interviewed via Skype in on BBC News.
here is an alternative version of "The Tory Room" featuring a hypothetical door arrangement that could account for that weird doorknob placement.
super low resolution quick render here but i simulated what it would look like for the door in the Tory Room to open and it seems to me like it's positioned very awkwardly. the effect is very distressing.
I'm going to try and reconstruct this in Blender
re: unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex I absolutely loved your description, but have you considered... what if the door is actually small and the handle is at the right height?
re: unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@astralwolfwitch oh hell, like a 5 foot high ceiling, and he just crawls around like a beast
re: unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex precisely but then immediately after writing this I thought about how the idea of a "right" height for a door knob is very ableist idea, and then concluded that the door knob is high as a defensive mechanism against wheelchair using folk.
@astralwolfwitch @alex Wouldn't the right height then be an accessible one?
@it_wasnt_arson @alex accessibility is neither binary nor universal
@astralwolfwitch @alex at the end of the day, the knob has to go somewhere
@it_wasnt_arson @alex how about 3 knobs? or a long rope handle? or an automated door? or no door at all (it's internal after all) etc etc. each of these possibilities could allow people with radically different accessibility requirements to use a room. accessibility is a lot more complicated than "let's do the exact same thing but with a height adjustment".
@alex do you think the door was installed upside down
@Aleums i have this theory that actually we can see the entirety of the door in that shot – it's like 4 feet high and has a little stepladder leading up to it.
@alex mmm... Compelling theory
@alex that candle looks like it's been lit though..
@maloki that's true, but it's due to a low rendering sample-rate on the wax material. i certainly wouldn't aim to portray a tory's house as looking "lived-in"
@alex
The height of that door hinge is giving me heebie jeebies.
If the libraries were open I'd be rushing into town right now to go through to old interior design books to try and work out what the fuck is it with this door.
@alex genuinely chilling fucking hell
@alex alex im fucking crying omg
@knownrobes you have to enter on your hands and knees like a traditional japanese tearoom
@alex nobody has ever seen gavin williamson use a door in public. hes either already inside or he's already left
@alex oh my GOD
@alex the positioning of the door is designed for someone to creep into the room like Nosferatu
i wonder if someone turned the door upside down at some point? not only would that explain the door handle positioning, it'd also account for why the door opens into the room instead of into the wall, which would be far more useful
@thamesynne @dreadpirateyarr countertheory: at some point someone turned the entire room except the door upside down.
@alex @thamesynne every night at the witching hour, the room creaks and groans and forms itself into a new, even more unsettling position
@thamesynne @dreadpirateyarr @alex Weirdly, I think it's standard for houses in the UK at least to have doors that open into the room like that. Something to do with privacy? We're gradually reversing all of the doors in our house to make them a bit more sensible.
@thamesynne @dreadpirateyarr @alex I appreciate this is a lot more boring than the rest of the thread. About standard for me I'm afraid.
@petrichor now that you mention it, all the doors in my flat do this. so i was on thin ice when i posted this!
@alex 😂 It does feel like a very prudish Victorian thing. Like what if you opened the door too quickly and saw a couple holding hands or something? Maybe if I had kids I'd want my bedroom door to open into the room though...
@alex @petrichor yeah, I looked up and realised that the doors in my flat open like this as well
@alex maybe the tory is sitting on the floor?
@alex oh wait, then there would have to be really low ceilings. possibly this is in a loft or something like this?
@jonbro hold on i've gotta mock this up
@jonbro so this is the tory room with the floor moved up and the ceiling brought down a bit.
@alex its weird.
@alex ok, alternate option, there is some weird force perspective shit going on with the door, it is actually normal height, but juts out into the room such that it appears to line up with the ceiling from the cameras perspective.
@jonbro could you do a diagram? just like a doodle so i can follow what you mean.
@jonbro ah ok, that's interesting. i'll try that.
@alex yeah, thats exactly right. I don't know why exactly he would be doing that much stagecraft to make it seem like his ceilings are low.
@alex too green
@alex this is horribly unsettling
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex It's all like the "live laugh love" aesthetic but at its final unlimited budget form
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex It's shabby chic but without the shabby 'cos tories 'aint no shabs
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex I bet it smells like literally nothing in there
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex
I'm desperate to ask a chippie what the deal is with that high door knob.
My theory is he deliberately wants children to dash their heads open.
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@floppyplopper @alex he wants everyone to feel small and insignificant in his glass crystal palace
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex ‘inhabit’ is right, because nobody could truly ‘live’ in that room
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
@alex the door looks like they built it specifically to be mean to the giant who was once trapped there.
unsettling screenshot of a tory being interviewed from inside his own house
on the chalked arsenic, an arsenic-framed picture. it's obscured by the tory himself. we can't know what is contained in the ring of arsenic. the tory himself is pale with chalk, pale with the fine powder that coats every edifice. a mausoleum is turned inside out, the pillars and plaques are brought indoors, the bodies everted onto the streets. there is no angle that isn't right. "Live", says the ticker, but he doesn't.