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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Oct 12, 2012 14:30:52 GMT -5
I don't know if you've read one of my previous posts in this thread where I state that I agree with ASoUE not being meant anywhere/any time specific, especially since this is what Daniel Handler himself has stated (I've explained this in the other post). But the setting is not as out-of-this-world or as odd as a Dr.Seuss-book to completely ignore it and/or just write it off as some kind of Neverland. I'm just interested in the origins/influences of the ASoUE world. But finding a cohesive linear storyline in history for ASoUE is another thing, and I guess in that sense you're right in that it is even more unconsistent and pointless to pinpoint. I tried my best with the timeline I created (see last page) and I still like to think it *very roughly* makes sense. But, yeah, it's just my deduction of things which I wanted to express and explain, even though everyone should just imagine it the way they feel it to be.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 12, 2012 15:37:11 GMT -5
Of course trying to work out a timeline isn't genuine interpretation of the text, which is deliberately vague about such things: it's a game, a kind of fanfic. I find it fun, though.
Now: there is actually a piece of evidence, which I've been ignoring, which put the meeting between Lemony and young Beatrice some time in the past - the letter to the editor at the end of TBL refers to L having looked at the poem in a glass case a long time ago, as if many years have passed since the main events of the book. So that shifts the events some way back from the time of publication.
I still think they can't go that far back, partly because of Daniel's age - he was already acting as L's representative before the unfortunate events (for instance in Jacques' letter to Lemony at the time of his leaving the Daily Punctilio, he says 'do not attempt to contact D') - unless we redate Daniel's birth, as I know VFDisco has done - and partly because of the Larkin quote (and there may quite possibly be even later references I haven't spotted).
The 'long ago' line is interesting - in context, it rather suggests that the Baudelaire parents would be dead by now anyway even if they hadn't been killed in the fire, but that doesn't really make sense when you consider that they were close in age to Lemony himself. The books, of course, waver between suggesting that all this happened a very long time ago, and that it's happening even as Lemony writes.
I don't think the costumes are very helpful in dating, since it's clearly a world which has developed differently to ours - and in fact I find the costumes in ATWQ less old-fashioned than those in ASOUE - they are from the thirties, while those in ASOUE recall the Victorian era.
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Post by doetwin on Feb 20, 2016 14:56:44 GMT -5
In TRR, when Uncle Monty is discussing their upcoming trip to Peru, he describes the Prospero as "a fine ship that will take us across the sea to South America.". This eliminates the possibility of them living in South America, which was sort of obvious as the characters speak English. In TEE, when Jerome thinks the Baudelaires are afraid of Gunther because he's supposedly a foreigner rather than Count Olaf, he tells Violet that "Galileo came from a country in Europe", he tells Klaus that Junichuro Tanizaki "came from a country in Asia" and tells Sunny that "the sharp-toothed mountain lion can be found in a number of Countries in North America." Now, it was kind of obvious that the didn't live in Asia, but Europe and North America? The 2 most likely countries seemed to be the USA and Britain. In TVV, Klaus asks Mr. Poe, "Are you sending us to live in Africa?", which means that it doesn't take place in Africa, which again, was sort of obvious as the characters are caucasian. So I'm left with the conclusion that the story takes place in Australia, which is an English-speaking place, but the features that are described don't make it sound like they live in Australia at all. What do you think?
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Post by Hermes on Feb 20, 2016 16:12:57 GMT -5
If you want it to be a real place, Australia is the best bet. (Perhaps that is why there are so many Australians here. We should ask them if they have ever found any of the locations mentioned in the books.)
I prefer to believe that it is an unreal place; and though it looks as if can't be part of North America, it seems to have a lot in common with North America and to be near there (given the Duchess of Winnipeg and the King of Arizona). My headcanon is that it's an island off the coast of North America, more or less where California is in the real world. (A few million years ago, California was an island, and more recently the first European explorers thought it was an island.)
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Post by Tryina Denouement on Feb 21, 2016 13:19:16 GMT -5
I like to think that it's set in the US.
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Post by gliquey on Feb 23, 2016 13:47:13 GMT -5
was sort of obvious as the characters are caucasian. Are you assuming this because of the illustrations? The text of ASOUE itself never mentions race or nationality (the closest I can think of is that Hector likes Mexican cuisine); Handler once tweeted on this subject to confirm that. As far as I can remember, basically everyone in the 2004 film was white, and it looks like this is probably going to be the case with the Netflix adaptation too ( V+K; Olaf), but these are adaptations and not really within the canon of the universe. I don't really consider Helquist's illustrations canon either, as some other language editions have differentr illustrations (unless I'm misremembering, the Russian series in particular is one which had a different style of art by a different artist), and they make some assumptions about things not described in the text - the key one here being race. In my opinion, the series is intentionally not located anywhere; the occasional mentions of places in our world are quite varied, and very rare (your list is pretty thorough). Australia does seem like a viable candidate if you're choosing from places in the real world, but I prefer to think of the series as with no discernible location, and on a similar subject, with no discernible era.
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Post by Hermes on Feb 23, 2016 16:35:53 GMT -5
As far as I can remember, basically everyone in the 2004 film was white, and it looks like this is probably going to be the case with the Netflix adaptation too ( V+K; Olaf We'll have to see, but that's three characters, two of whom at least are related: I wouldn't assume everyone was white on that basis. (In the web movie of TMM, by the way, Phil is black.) You might well think, though, that the names, Baudelaire, Poe, Montgomery and so on, are likely to be those of white people, or perhaps African-Americans or African-Caribbeans, but not Africans in Africa or Asians in Asia.
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Post by gliquey on Feb 24, 2016 15:29:16 GMT -5
We'll have to see, but that's three characters, two of whom at least are related: I wouldn't assume everyone was white on that basis. Presumably Sunny must be white as well now, and the three siblings and Olaf are the four most important characters throughout the series. But I suppose my comment was a bit overly cynical. In theory, Monty and Josephine are supposed to be related to the Baudelaire family, although I don't think they're so closely related that they have to be Caucasian, so I guess there are no real restrictions on any of the other characters.
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Post by Dante on Feb 28, 2016 6:32:40 GMT -5
I've taken the liberty of folding the recent discussion into this thread.
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eceiler
Bewildered Beginner
Posts: 6
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Post by eceiler on Apr 14, 2016 9:49:43 GMT -5
I don't remember exactly where (I thought it was THH but I was looking and couldn't find it) but I'm almost certain they mention the U.S. Postal Service at some point, which would mean they are in the U.S.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 14, 2016 11:12:31 GMT -5
The narrator mentions the US Postal Service, in connection with their motto ('no something or other shall halt the delivery of the mails'), but that needn't mean that the characters are there.
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Post by gliquey on Apr 14, 2016 15:24:13 GMT -5
It's in The Wide Window, before Snicket explains that the ships at Damocles Dock didn't have the same motto, if memory serves me right. But I agree with Hermes that it doesn't mean the story is set there - it's merely a reflection that the books were written by an American for an American audience, as is the American English used throughout the series, for example.
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Post by montykensicle on Mar 4, 2017 18:14:34 GMT -5
I think Lemony deliberately has the characters mention each continent to deliberately throw us off. He probably just happened to forget Australia. Or I could be completely wrong.
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Post by Dante on Mar 5, 2017 3:49:14 GMT -5
That actually strikes me as highly plausible. Some of the continents that get mentioned are probably for purely factual reasons, but others I think are to tease readers by seemingly ruling out the sort of locations you might otherwise assume.
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Post by Seymour Glass on Dec 28, 2018 1:03:16 GMT -5
I would say it's set in Boston, Massachusetts like in the movie.
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