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Post by counto on Mar 8, 2021 4:46:00 GMT -5
Which country does ASOUE take place?
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 8, 2021 4:51:53 GMT -5
The main events of asoue occur in north america. But there is no United States of America. It would be something like United Cities, States and Kingdoms of America.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Mar 8, 2021 5:43:49 GMT -5
The books and the show are very ambiguous about where they are set and could plausibly take place in nearly any country (real or fictional) except Peru. The 2004 movie on the other hand explicitly situates the city not just in America, but specifically as the real-world metropolis of Boston in the state of Massachusetts. Something of an odd choice given that neither Brad Silberling or Daniel Handler appear to have any connection to it.
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Post by R. on Mar 8, 2021 5:54:31 GMT -5
It’s post-apocalyptic San Francisco.
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Post by Dante on Mar 8, 2021 6:01:08 GMT -5
I've folded counto's poll into this classic thread, as I have a number of other threads on this subject in recent years. I think it is well-known at this point that I deny the premise of the question.
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Post by the panopticountolaf on Mar 8, 2021 7:54:30 GMT -5
The books and the show are very ambiguous about where they are set and could plausibly take place in nearly any country (real or fictional) except Peru. The 2004 movie on the other hand explicitly situates the city not just in America, but specifically as the real-world metropolis of Boston in the state of Massachusetts. Something of an odd choice given that neither Brad Silberling or Daniel Handler appear to have any connection to it. I would even take this screenshot with a grain of salt. Silberling stated that the film takes place in some sort of Edward Gorey-sequence version of New England, but I think that was more a design philosophy than a fact that they set out in stone during production. My guess is that the props department just took that statement too literally, and situated the Baudelaire mansion in Boston. It’s wherever the heck you want it to be. Now, that said, I personally always liked to think of ASOUE as taking place in a fictional country that almost sounds like it could be real. (Think Freedonia and Borduria from “Duck Soup ” or Syldavia from the “Tintin” stories.) Going back to the post-apocalyptic theory, it doesn’t seem too far out of the bounds of imagination that some kind of apocalypse could be linked to continental shifts. Maybe a section of North America has broken off and is now its own country, requiring people to sail to Peru? It’s been predicted by geologists that California will eventually become an island... that would most certainly fit, considering that Daniel lived/lives in San Francisco. (I’m just spitballing at this point. Forgive me.)
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Mar 8, 2021 16:20:31 GMT -5
The books and the show are very ambiguous about where they are set and could plausibly take place in nearly any country (real or fictional) except Peru. The 2004 movie on the other hand explicitly situates the city not just in America, but specifically as the real-world metropolis of Boston in the state of Massachusetts. Something of an odd choice given that neither Brad Silberling or Daniel Handler appear to have any connection to it. I would even take this screenshot with a grain of salt. Silberling stated that the film takes place in some sort of Edward Gorey-sequence version of New England, but I think that was more a design philosophy than a fact that they set out in stone during production. My guess is that the props department just took that statement too literally, and situated the Baudelaire mansion in Boston. It’s wherever the heck you want it to be. It wasn't just the props department, Silberling says in the DVD's audio commentary that the only filming the did for the movie outside of LA was when they flew to Boston to shoot background plates for the city so it was clearly a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers. I have no idea why, though.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 8, 2021 16:50:18 GMT -5
I've folded counto's poll into this classic thread, as I have a number of other threads on this subject in recent years. I think it is well-known at this point that I deny the premise of the question. Could you indicate where your explicit opinion on the matter is?
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Post by Dante on Mar 9, 2021 6:30:58 GMT -5
Very well, I shall do so.
The series is not set anywhere and it is not set anywhen. The series has no setting which can be mapped onto a particular geographical area or historical period. Rather, the author goes out of his way to leave the question open and the evidence contradictory. He scatters references to outside countries and continents without ever identifying them with the series's own location - most notably, Jerome appears to rule out Europe, Asia, and North America (TEE page 79) - and draws from a similarly wide pool in his literary and historical references - with the early pages of the very first book juxtaposing "horse-drawn carriages and motorcycles" on the same road (TBB p. 19), or having Snicket claim personal association with a playwright who died in 1729 (THH p. 37) whilst recommending in ATWQ books which were published in the 60s and 70s. The best summation I have heard of the nature of the setting is that it is set "everywhere and nowhere", a position in which diverse references to geography and culture are accessible without ever limiting the series to the constraints of a real, singular time and place. The absurd laws, fauna, and general fairy-tale logic of the ASoUE/ATWQ universe, or "Averse", make it readily apparent that we are dealing with a fantastic setting which has been painstakingly tailored to look and feel familiar - but never too familiar.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Mar 9, 2021 6:45:48 GMT -5
Very well, I shall do so. The series is not set anywhere and it is not set anywhen. The series has no setting which can be mapped onto a particular geographical area or historical period. Rather, the author goes out of his way to leave the question open and the evidence contradictory. He scatters references to outside countries and continents without ever identifying them with the series's own location - most notably, Jerome appears to rule out Europe, Asia, and North America (TEE page 79) - and draws from a similarly wide pool in his literary and historical references - with the early pages of the very first book juxtaposing "horse-drawn carriages and motorcycles" on the same road (TBB p. 19), or having Snicket claim personal association with a playwright who died in 1729 (THH p. 37) whilst recommending in ATWQ books which were published in the 60s and 70s. The best summation I have heard of the nature of the setting is that it is set "everywhere and nowhere", a position in which diverse references to geography and culture are accessible without ever limiting the series to the constraints of a real, singular time and place. The absurd laws, fauna, and general fairy-tale logic of the ASoUE/ATWQ universe, or "Averse", make it readily apparent that we are dealing with a fantastic setting which has been painstakingly tailored to look and feel familiar - but never too familiar. These are also my exact thoughts on the subject. I can't find it now, but there was a great interview with Daniel Handler where he repeatedly brought up how he wrote the descriptions very much how a child might picture them. How is old Count Olaf? He's however old, children think old people look. What's the time period? Whatever children think of when they visualize "the past". That kind of thing. That's what makes the film's decision to specifically situate it in one particular real-world city, slightly strange. Because it's not like any of the non-City locations in the movie are made to resemble the architecture or landscape of the Boston area.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 9, 2021 7:50:39 GMT -5
Very well, I shall do so. The series is not set anywhere and it is not set anywhen. The series has no setting which can be mapped onto a particular geographical area or historical period. Rather, the author goes out of his way to leave the question open and the evidence contradictory. He scatters references to outside countries and continents without ever identifying them with the series's own location - most notably, Jerome appears to rule out Europe, Asia, and North America (TEE page 79) - and draws from a similarly wide pool in his literary and historical references - with the early pages of the very first book juxtaposing "horse-drawn carriages and motorcycles" on the same road (TBB p. 19), or having Snicket claim personal association with a playwright who died in 1729 (THH p. 37) whilst recommending in ATWQ books which were published in the 60s and 70s. The best summation I have heard of the nature of the setting is that it is set "everywhere and nowhere", a position in which diverse references to geography and culture are accessible without ever limiting the series to the constraints of a real, singular time and place. The absurd laws, fauna, and general fairy-tale logic of the ASoUE/ATWQ universe, or "Averse", make it readily apparent that we are dealing with a fantastic setting which has been painstakingly tailored to look and feel familiar - but never too familiar. Yes. I am sure this is the case. As I said, I believe that Daniel Handler had in mind to create a story that would be a fairy tale without fairies, and the lack of geographical and historical precision is in general something very common in fairy tales. (I tried to emulate some of that in Matt Litory and the Multiple Intelligences when I started planning the stories. But then I felt compelled to give some real references because I really wanted a part of the story to take place in a real country. So I had to add the location of being close to Russia. Russia was chosen because it was really big. But basically Crasow is a country where the environments, the geography and the climate are simply suited to the scenes that are taking place there. The anachronism part I decided to avoid because time is a character in the story. I wanted readers to do a real-time timeline, something like what counto works so hard to do). However, I think that attempts to place a location and a date accurately should not be discouraged. It is part of the ASOUE effect that I spoke of: something that makes people very fascinated with geography and chronology find an interesting puzzle (in no solution) in which they can surrender themselves for eternity.
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Post by carmelita0cheryl on Mar 9, 2021 7:57:28 GMT -5
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA!!!!!! In the LSUA in the list of books the person who wrote "I lost something at the movies" was born in 1919 in San Fran, Cal. And JD Salinger who wrote "For Esme with love and Squalor, he was born in 1919 in Cali! And the peron who wrote "Green Mansions" is rreal and it was a real book but i couldnt fuind when he was born or where he was born. ' the person ' is Lena Pukalie on of my most fav. ASOUE characters ^^'
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