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Post by theplague on Dec 28, 2016 21:59:04 GMT -5
I've been wondering where Prufrock was located for a while now. Usually we know the locations for the homes, like the City, the Hinterlands, or Tedia, bit I don't recall a single description of the area surrounding the school. I realise that this isn't very important, but settings tend to interest me. Does anyone have any theories? Did I miss anything?
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Post by Dante on Dec 29, 2016 4:06:12 GMT -5
I'm glad you've asked this. It's true that we're never given a location for Prufrock Preparatory School in a sense of where it is in relation to other major geographical landmarks. However, given that the emphasis of Count Olaf's plan in TEE was on smuggling the Quagmires out of the city, then I would suggest that Prufrock is itself in the city limits, or else Olaf's plan looks rather redundant given that he'd have to have been the one who pointlessly brought the Quagmires into the city in the first place. (This requires us to overlook the reference at the very end of TAA to him forcing the Quagmires into puppy costumes in order to get them onto an aeroplane - or perhaps he was detected and failed in this endeavour.)
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Post by theplague on Dec 29, 2016 16:59:20 GMT -5
Ah, for some reason I imagined it in the swamp mentioned in The Reptile Room, but that makes a lot more sense.
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Post by gliquey on Dec 29, 2016 17:20:21 GMT -5
I always imagined the boarding school as being quite far away from anything else in the series - I think all boarding schools should be like Wade Academy, isolated and in the middle of nowhere. I don't think it's actually said how the Baudelaires / Poe get there, but in my mind it's by train. I'm glad you've asked this. It's true that we're never given a location for Prufrock Preparatory School in a sense of where it is in relation to other major geographical landmarks. However, given that the emphasis of Count Olaf's plan in TEE was on smuggling the Quagmires out of the city, then I would suggest that Prufrock is itself in the city limits, or else Olaf's plan looks rather redundant given that he'd have to have been the one who pointlessly brought the Quagmires into the city in the first place. (This requires us to overlook the reference at the very end of TAA to him forcing the Quagmires into puppy costumes in order to get them onto an aeroplane - or perhaps he was detected and failed in this endeavour.) The bigger problem with Olaf's 'smuggle them out of the city' plan is that... that's not actually what he does. Olaf's plans about smuggling the Quagmires around make even less sense to me than his plans to get the Baudelaire fortune - in TEE he tells Duncan (and presumably Isadora) that he wants to smuggle them out of the city, hide them on an island and wait several years until one of them comes of age. Not a very adventurous plan in the first place. And instead, he manages to smuggle them out of the city, and ... into his house, and then into a fountain. I suppose he does smuggle them out of the city in a sort of roundabout way, but that's not what he does as soon as he is in possession of them from the red herring statue (and why he needs to put them in the statue is even less clear to me - he put them at the bottom of an elevator shaft, went to the trouble of moving them into a red herring statue, put them in the In Auction and paid to get them back and what was the point of all of that?). I would suggest that Olaf has a half-formed plan about the Quagmires in his mind similar to the Baudelaires and Peru - "I'll take the Quagmires abroad somewhere and work out to do when I get there", but then he realises he can't do this and follow the Baudelaires for their fortune, so he's sort of left not really knowing what to do with the Quagmires and just brings them with him wherever he goes. He's really in over his head by this point, but I don't think getting the Quagmires specifically outside the city limits was ever an important step in and of itself.
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Post by Dante on Dec 30, 2016 3:58:55 GMT -5
I'd agree that, broadly speaking, Olaf's plot and frankly TEE's plot make no sense, but that's part of the reason why I think we have to put Prufrock in the city to start getting some sense out of it. Clear out the off-screen stuff, like boarding an aeroplane or going from the auction to Olaf's house again (although you could rationalise that by saying that he'd clearly been detected by the end of TEE so he simply abandoned the idea of smuggling them away), and things start to look a lot clearer: He starts off in the city, he has to get them out of the city, he succeeds in doing so. (Not dissimilarly, TVV has fatal chronological problems relating to when the Baudelaires get there versus when the Quagmires are hidden there; rather than Olaf hiding the Quagmires in V.F.D. because he was following the Baudelaires there, it would be easier if he just hid them there in the first place and the Baudelaires' arrival was a half-expected coincidence.)
The real answer to what's going on in TEE is that apparently the book missed its deadline and was late for submission, so it probably didn't get all the redrafting it needed. Not that that's directly concerned with where Prufrock is located, of course, but I think that question informs TEE. Otherwise, I'd agree that Prufrock would probably be relatively isolated, though the only thing the book gives us about its location is that it has an old brick sidewalk with moss growing in the cracks - and also, implicitly, that its location isn't interesting enough to be described.
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Post by Dante on Jan 16, 2017 7:37:32 GMT -5
"Im not gonna give away too much", but here's a bunch of TV-exclusive plot details from episodes I know you haven't seen yet, and could you give your opinion on them?
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Post by Linda Rhaldeen on Jan 16, 2017 9:28:19 GMT -5
^Seriously. Dante has already stated his schedule of 2 episodes a day with a few hours break in between, and all the stuff you mentioned is in episodes 7 and 8 so it could be as many as 10 hours before he's seen them both. I myself wanted to point out that it does appear in the netflix universe, at least, that Prufrock is in the middle of nowhere but was going to wait a couple days. As for the rest of the questions, one has been answered already in the episodes 7&8 discussion thread and if you asked nicely I'm sure everyone there will be happy to offer their opinion rather than yell at you for spoiling them.
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Post by Wasabi on Jan 16, 2017 23:46:18 GMT -5
"Im not gonna give away too much", but here's a bunch of TV-exclusive plot details from episodes I know you haven't seen yet, and could you give your opinion on them? I'd like to apologise for my attitude in this thread, to you and Linda. I know it's too late but I've deleted the post so that no one else can read it. I'll come back here in about a month's time to read your opinions.
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Post by snowscouts on Mar 16, 2017 2:07:17 GMT -5
I always imagined the boarding school as being quite far away from anything else in the series - I think all boarding schools should be like Wade Academy, isolated and in the middle of nowhere. I don't think it's actually said how the Baudelaires / Poe get there, but in my mind it's by train. I'm glad you've asked this. It's true that we're never given a location for Prufrock Preparatory School in a sense of where it is in relation to other major geographical landmarks. However, given that the emphasis of Count Olaf's plan in TEE was on smuggling the Quagmires out of the city, then I would suggest that Prufrock is itself in the city limits, or else Olaf's plan looks rather redundant given that he'd have to have been the one who pointlessly brought the Quagmires into the city in the first place. (This requires us to overlook the reference at the very end of TAA to him forcing the Quagmires into puppy costumes in order to get them onto an aeroplane - or perhaps he was detected and failed in this endeavour.) The bigger problem with Olaf's 'smuggle them out of the city' plan is that... that's not actually what he does. Olaf's plans about smuggling the Quagmires around make even less sense to me than his plans to get the Baudelaire fortune - in TEE he tells Duncan (and presumably Isadora) that he wants to smuggle them out of the city, hide them on an island and wait several years until one of them comes of age. Not a very adventurous plan in the first place. And instead, he manages to smuggle them out of the city, and ... into his house, and then into a fountain. I suppose he does smuggle them out of the city in a sort of roundabout way, but that's not what he does as soon as he is in possession of them from the red herring statue (and why he needs to put them in the statue is even less clear to me - he put them at the bottom of an elevator shaft, went to the trouble of moving them into a red herring statue, put them in the In Auction and paid to get them back and what was the point of all of that?). I would suggest that Olaf has a half-formed plan about the Quagmires in his mind similar to the Baudelaires and Peru - "I'll take the Quagmires abroad somewhere and work out to do when I get there", but then he realises he can't do this and follow the Baudelaires for their fortune, so he's sort of left not really knowing what to do with the Quagmires and just brings them with him wherever he goes. He's really in over his head by this point, but I don't think getting the Quagmires specifically outside the city limits was ever an important step in and of itself. I think Olaf took them to 667 dark avenue so that he could keep them in sight while trying to get the Baulds? I think the point of putting them in the red herring statue, then buying the statue was to be able to smuggle them out of the city in broad daylight. Though it begs the question why he couldn't just sneak them out at night or why they needed to be hidden within something at all...hm
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Post by Dante on Mar 16, 2017 3:09:43 GMT -5
I think that would be a fair argument, given that that was probably what he was trying to do in TVV, but: Olaf doesn't do anything to get the Baudelaires into his care in TEE. At all. And in a sense, why would he? Because they're in Esmé's care, they're effectively already in his care! I imagine that, had he been able to successfully smuggle the Quagmires away without anyone noticing, he and Esmé might then have worked to bump off Jerome, at which point Esmé could have married "Gunther" and the pair of them would be set. In this light, perhaps there's an argument that - as has also been suggested for TVV - Olaf hid the Quagmires in the 667 Dark Avenue passageway and then by pure coincidence the Baudelaires ended up living there, so he decided he had to move them away in case the resourceful and inquisitive Baudelaire children were able to discover their captured friends.
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