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Post by Dante on Feb 20, 2017 8:01:42 GMT -5
So what we've had so far is merely the prelude? I'll watch out for the first true chapter in a week, then.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Feb 20, 2017 22:36:02 GMT -5
I'd like to hear a few predictions.
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Post by Dante on Feb 21, 2017 3:24:04 GMT -5
I wonder if we'll be starting with this trip to Olaf's decaying house, or with the party at the Hotel Preludio. I'm quite looking forward to the latter, as I assume the event will go horribly wrnog.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Feb 21, 2017 19:31:25 GMT -5
The party will indeed go wrong.
The story does kind of reference the Netflix show and the movie, so Olaf's house does have things like the doorbell that plays that little tune and the giant magnifying glass.
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Post by Dante on Feb 22, 2017 14:24:58 GMT -5
It's perfectly reasonable for a fanfic to adopt a few flourishes from other interpretations. While I was never fond of the movie directly implying that Olaf was responsible for the Baudelaire fire, I thought the fire-starting lens itself was rather a cool device.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Mar 5, 2017 0:28:04 GMT -5
Chapter ONE
There are many things that can give a person a feeling of sadness. A movie where everyone dies, a letter with containing bad news, and slicing onions are only some examples. But probably the worst way to cause sadness is by reading this terrible, terrible story chronicling about 3 different groups of volunteers and villains in the time before the Baudelaire orphans and the daughter of Kit Snicket arrived on the city. In fact, the only things more terrible than this story are the thirteen volumes that a volunteer wrote about an investigation into the lives of the three orphans, a cringeworthy book—the word “cringeworthy” here means “terribly written and poorly executed”—about some blank girl falling in love with (or rather, lusting after) a 100-year-old vampire who isn’t really a vampire, and a terrible movie about robotic aliens fighting in a civil war, and then invading the Earth looking for a magic space cube and spitting in the face of the source material.
But those atrocities aside, this story has a sad beginning, quite a handful of happy things in the middle, and no happy ending. Our sad story begins in Doldrum Drive, a largely empty part of the city. The nearby theater had about 3 movies showing, one of which was one so sad that I cannot explain all the details. A skinny man was walking down the street while eating an onion at that very moment. This man had a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle, and wore a jacket and a hat, like some kind of detective. He was walking down Doldrum Drive on the way to a currently abandoned house at the edge of the street next door to the home of a judge from the High Court. Before he walked past a farmers’ market selling tomatoes for about 78 cents, he heard quick footsteps, almost like someone was chasing him. Before he could turn, he saw the woman who was running toward him.
“Connor!” she yelled.
“The world is quiet here”, replied Connor. He recognized the voice as his apprentice, a young woman named Wendelina Whitman. She was almost 20, and was a brilliant young woman. Wendelina (or Wendy as she preferred to be called) lived in a house located near the coast, far from the city. She hated shoes, which Connor could tell because she was running barefoot while holding her shoes in mid-air. She also had the tattoo on her ankle.
“I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion”, said Wendy.
“What brings you here?” Connor asked.
“I heard you were going to Olaf Manor.”
“You REALLY want to go there?” Olaf Manor was an old house in Doldrum Drive that belonged to Count Olaf, an evil man who was once an enemy of the secret organization Connor and Wendelina were part of: V.F.D.
Olaf was once a member of V.F.D, but left at one point to join the fire-starting side. Connor never knew or saw Count Olaf with his own eyes, but did remember what he looked like through a photograph he saw. Olaf was a tall, skinny, and filthy man who always seemed to be wearing a pinstripe suit. He had silver hair and an unshaven face with a unibrow, a word which here means “had one very long eyebrow instead of two small eyebrows”. From what Connor understood, Olaf was constantly trying to get ahold of the fortune belonging to Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire by attempting to kidnap their three children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. His plans went from just plain evil (like killing Violet in front of an audience at Heimlich Hospital, which burned down shortly afterwards) to completely insane (like marrying Violet in a play). Wendy---for some reason---seemed to be fascinated with the enemies V.F.D. was dealing with. From what I was able to uncover, there was no exact reason, she just found them interesting.
“I really don’t like this city,” Wendy sighed. “It just feels so dull and boring.”
“V.F.D. isn’t a fun thing, kid,” Connor replied. “Your recklessness would be more suited for a different job.”
“You think I shouldn’t be an oceanographer? You think I should just stay in some idiot’s kitchen cooking his food and cleaning the house?”
“I’m not saying you should be doing all that misogynist crap. I’m just saying that here in the V.F.D., we keep the world quiet. We stop fires. We don’t have time for reckless young adults who go skinny dipping whenever the Briny Beach is empty.”
“HEY!”
“What? It’s true,” Connor said.
The two continued walking until they reached a large house sandwiched between a fancy-looking house and a rather average house—the word “sandwiched” here means “right in the middle”—at the end of Doldrum Drive before a cross-section. The house was filthy and worn out, as if its owner was just as unpleasant. The windows had images of eyes, the front door had the image of an eye, and there was a tower about 27 feet tall that had an ocular—a word which here means “related to eyes”—decoration on the side. Anyone who saw the house might have said the house was just a haunted house or an abandoned optometrist office, but this was no ordinary house, for the owner was an evil man who had only one goal: to gain as much money and other valuables as possible and destroy anyone who gets in his way. It was the home of Count Olaf.
“Well, here we are,” Connor said sarcastically.
Wendy kept staring at the tower. The large eye seemed to be staring back at her, but that wasn’t why she was staring at it.
“It looks like a magnifying glass,” she said.
“Audrey knows a lot of this stuff, and I think she mentioned a magnifying glass device used to burn enemy safe places with light refraction,” Connor replied.
Audrina (or Audrey as she preferred to be called) was an actress and a friend of Connor’s who seemed to know as much about the fire-starting side as if she was a member of them herself. Connor didn’t know much about her, other than the fact that she seemed to love flirting with another volunteer named Harold Schmidt and that she had very eerie green eyes that only made him feel disturbed whenever he was around her. He didn’t know why, all he knew was that there was something about those eyes that made him feel uneasy, more than worms and crows combined into one.
As Connor and Wendy entered the old house, they both became rather sickened by the sight of the old room where there was a staircase right above the hallway, where they kept imagining the sight of a thin, unshaven man with shiny eyes and a single eyebrow saying in a raspy voice, “Hello, hello, hello. I am Count Olaf…and I welcome you to my home…”
As Wendy entered the bathroom, she was very sickened by the sight of the ceiling, where fungus was growing and making the walls look even more disgusting. She looked at the bathtub, which was rusty and dirty.
“As much as I love a nice bath,” she said, “I wouldn’t bathe in here.”
She looked down at the floor and began to imagine a beautiful young woman cleaning the floor with a look of disgust in her face, and then turning toward the broken window and cringing, a word which here means “what Violet Baudelaire would have done when she would be forced to clean this room.”
As Connor walked into a bedroom, he was very disgusted by the sight of the old bed, where the mattress was being eaten away by moth larvae. He looked at a box full of rotten apple cores and rocks labeled “TOYS”, which was surrounded by flies and maggots.
“As much as I like rocks,” he said, “I wouldn’t take these and add them to my collection.
He looked at the side of the room and began to imagine a young boy with round glasses looking at one of the rocks and wincing, a word which here means “what Klaus Baudelaire would have done if he was locked in the room.”
As Wendy walked barefoot in the backyard, she saw a large tree with no leaves and very emaciated bark. As she looked at the dead leaves on the ground, she picked up a fallen branch and looked at it closely. It was covered in ants, and had marks of being sliced by a sharp, metal object. Wendy looked up and stared at Olaf’s tower.
From a window opposite to the eye-shaped magnifying glass was what looked like a plank of wood, but it was a device designed to hold cages. The cage was missing, but Wendy couldn’t help but imagine a small baby inside a cage hanging from the tower with her mouth taped shut, and then look down to see a bunch of torn bedsheets tied together with a piece of metal at the end resembling a large, metal spider.
“A grappling hook”, Wendy said to herself. She picked it up and carried it inside as she decided to go look at the tower.
She didn’t even bother putting her shoes back on when she walked back inside the house to find a gas mask and a pump on the dusty table. As she examined, she found a piece of paper that read:
PUTTANESCA
• Tomatoes • Olives • Anchovies • Capers • Garlic
To make this pasta sauce, mince the olives and garlic and throw into a pot. Mash the tomatoes and anchovies, and then throw them into the pot, and heat up for 5 minutes. Let sit for a while, and then serve with pasta
Wendy picked up the paper and put it inside her pocket. She knew the recipe could be useful for later, and I’m sad to say that pasta puttanesca only brings me depression from eating it at the same time that I received the rather unfortunate news that the woman I loved would be breaking up with me to date someone else.
Connor continued exploring Olaf Manor, and he headed to the mysterious tower room, when he heard footsteps from the nearby hallway. As he looked toward the dark hallway, he saw what looked like the silhouette of an attractive woman. He thought of going up the stairs that led to the tower, but the figure kept ending up in his mind. Could it be Wendelina? No, that’s impossible. She’s still downstairs. Could it be someone else from the V.F.D.? No, he knew he was supposed to go alone (how the hell Wendelina knew he’d be at Olaf Manor in the first place?) and no one would want to go to Olaf Manor, especially seeing how broken the place was.
As he walked down the hallway, Connor heard something coming from a nearby room. He slowly moved toward the door of the room and was only about to grab the knob when he heard what sounded like a person lying down on a worn-out bed. He jerked back, looked down, and noticed what looked like footprints on the dusty floor. Opening the door, the first thing Connor noticed was the giant window shaped like an eye, which was right over a fallen painting of what looked like Count Olaf himself. The other thing Connor noticed was that there was a woman sitting on a bed in the corner. She had long dirty blonde hair, and wore a blue night dress and a green feather boa. She had no shoes, and her bare feet were covered in dust, but the only thing Connor seemed to be looking at was her piercing green eyes. The eyes seemed to be staring into Connor’s soul, a phrase which here means “looked at him like she was purposefully trying to disturb him.” There are quite a few people who can make you uncomfortable by just staring at you, such as Count Olaf, the other members of what was once his acting troupe, and my dad, but Connor only knew one person with green eyes that made him feel disturbed.
“Audrey,” he said as the woman proceeded to smile like if she had just discovered that someone she really liked wrote a letter to her that said “I love you.”
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Post by Dante on Mar 5, 2017 3:56:15 GMT -5
An interesting beginning. The dynamic between Connor and Wendelina is pretty fun, and you trace the characters as very distinct individuals. I get a strong sense of atmosphere from the exploration of Olaf's abandoned house, too. I'm pretty curious to see where the next chapter will take things after the surprising end to this one.
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Post by Teleram on Mar 5, 2017 19:29:35 GMT -5
Yo, where's those three scenes of nudity you promised us? That's the only reason I read the chapter in the first place.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Mar 5, 2017 20:15:06 GMT -5
Later in the story.
One's in chapter three.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Mar 7, 2017 22:47:02 GMT -5
An interesting beginning. The dynamic between Connor and Wendelina is pretty fun, and you trace the characters as very distinct individuals. I get a strong sense of atmosphere from the exploration of Olaf's abandoned house, too. I'm pretty curious to see where the next chapter will take things after the surprising end to this one. I honestly thought it would be a bit predictable that Audrey would turn out to be in Olaf's house. As for Wendelina and Connor, wow. Seems I made them very different from each other without even knowing it.
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Post by thathoboravioli on Apr 2, 2017 22:34:44 GMT -5
I haven't really worked on this project in a while, and I intend to get chapter 2 out by the end of April.
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Post by Dante on Apr 3, 2017 13:00:37 GMT -5
Thanks for the progress report.
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Post by thathoboravioli on May 2, 2017 3:32:13 GMT -5
Well crap...
I haven't updated in a while...*goes back to working on it*
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Post by Dante on May 2, 2017 9:12:24 GMT -5
Lack of motivation is the bugbear of all fanfiction. Good luck.
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Post by thathoboravioli on May 2, 2017 17:33:39 GMT -5
And maybe I should include little illustrations for the chapters.
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