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Post by Dante on May 28, 2009 11:40:51 GMT -5
'Codes' is multiply ambiguous - there's a link to it from 'Code of VFD' and also from 'Post Offices'. Also, more puzzlingly, from 'Old Macdonald'. Maybe "Codes" is the closest approximation they could get to Lemony's description of things related to Old Macdonald in Chapter One. Or perhaps it's an ironic suggestion that Old Macdonald is in some way coded after all, just not in the ways Dr. Patton suggested. At a stretch, you could say the papers found within the fountain's waters were hidden there. Both related to codes and secrets as well, I suppose. Ah, now. I think the suggestion was that neither "Gustav" nor "Stephano" sound like English names, therefore Monty was showing kindness to foreigners by employing them. Alternatively, it might relate to Montgomery's propensity for travel to other countries like Peru, or his great affinity for creatures of an entirely different species. All the links can be explained except possibly 155; it might be a reference to how the alternative rhyme to the version on the board above the old couple features the pledge (the index doesn't link to the ticket pledge). You didn't Google hard enough. "The science of joining and fastening." I think Handler and his friends invented a Lemony Snicket c ocktail at one point. All I remember is that it supposedly included a whole lot of lemons. R. doesn't seem to be linked to any pages at all, and that I would be inclined to put down as a mistake. Once one's decided that for R., saying the same for H. is easy. It doesn't fit with any H. we know of, unless you can think of a significant word rather than a name which begins with H.
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Post by Hermes on May 28, 2009 16:21:52 GMT -5
At a stretch, you could say the papers found within the fountain's waters were hidden there. But in TBBRE, if I remember rightly, the FVF is mentioned as a posible hiding place for people - I wonder if he was already planning this. Yes, I think the implication is that 'Our latch-string is hanging out' etc. is a coded representation of 'the world is quiet here'. If you are right that the postcard has been altered, perhaps we are meant to imagine that in the original the board actually said 'The world is quiet here'. Ah, OK - and Violet is an expert on knots. The sites I found seemed all to be about particular businesses with that name. Well, honestly, what's the point of writing an index with secrets cunningly concealed in it, if you're then going to make mistakes? Yes, I think that is the most likely explanation - though it's a bit odd that the entry 'R' appears at all, if he just forgot to specify any pages for it. Oh, and one I missed earlier: 'Library of Records - see headquarters'. Very interesting. I wonder if Handler originally intended Heimlich Hospital to have more to do with VFD than it turned out to have in the end. If so I think the change was a good one - I'll say more about this when we reach TPP. But it might explain some things. (So perhaps Hal was Ike's brother at one time, though he later ceased to be. As it were.)
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Post by Dante on May 28, 2009 16:32:19 GMT -5
At a stretch, you could say the papers found within the fountain's waters were hidden there. But in TBBRE, if I remember rightly, the FVF is mentioned as a posible hiding place for people - I wonder if he was already planning this. I assumed you were hoping for an answer that made sense entirely in the context of the U.A. Not that we can think of anything in particular being hidden in the FVF in relation to the main series - in the BBRE it was just a link through to other candidates, like for example I always assumed that the Fickle Fountain was a more likely candidate for hiding-places. I think if it's been altered, it's out-of-universe, though - the new poem grafted onto the stock photograph to work in the U.A., not as a work of fraud within the U.A. itself. It's still a possibility, though, and there's clearly an indication that the two are parallels. And I may be wrong, of course, about it having been modified at all. It just looks wrong to me. For reference, I Googled "zygology definition." It's the first result, although the others seem less useful. Well, replace "index" with "series of cryptic children's novels"... It might just've been overlooked; the U.A. index is very complicated already. As I pointed out before, many of the fake publishing houses in the index are one or two pages off, suggesting the chapter was rearranged without the index being fixed. Which reminds me that I've been meaning now and then to put it "in order," as it were, and see what the results are - although as I understand it the entire U.A. was shuffled this way and that in pre-production, and you can see that parts of it don't necessarily need to be placed where they are. Now that is a good point. Maybe the Library of Records was considered a safe neutral location for information deposits... even back in THH it's hard to see how Heimlich Hospital could really work in a more important way, but Hal as a volunteer might have been workable at the time. I don't have time to think about it right now, though.
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Post by Hermes on May 28, 2009 16:58:06 GMT -5
But in TBBRE, if I remember rightly, the FVF is mentioned as a posible hiding place for people - I wonder if he was already planning this. I assumed you were hoping for an answer that made sense entirely in the context of the U.A. Not that we can think of anything in particular being hidden in the FVF in relation to the main series - in the BBRE it was just a link through to other candidates, like for example I always assumed that the Fickle Fountain was a more likely candidate for hiding-places. Not particularly; there are some things in the index which clearly can only be understood in relation to the main series - e.g. entries for names like 'Gunther' , which I don't think appear in the autobiography. (And 'overboard', of course.) Well, yes. But the series of cryptic children's novels was written over a period of years, during which the author's ideas developed; the index was presumably compiled all at once.
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2009 17:05:54 GMT -5
Remember how it had Ramona stuff and her sister was Beatrice? That was CRAZY.
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Post by Sora on May 30, 2009 21:30:53 GMT -5
Hey, sorry I've been totally absent for over a week - I've tried posting thrice over the past few days, but my computer keeps kicking me off. I'm going to try one last time, and excuse the rapid catch up and quoting way way back.
This has always had me wondering, and I never really got a chance to discuss this with anyone. Why weren't the Baudelaire parents given a funeral? Did they not have any friends, V.F.D. associated or otherwise, that cared about them or their children? The children themselves said they had friends, so undoubtedly there had to be at least a few people in the nearby community (even like, Jerome) who wished to bid their ashes goodbye. Ultimately unimportant agreed, but still very strange.
Well this again calls into question how soon after the death of Beatrice did Lemony start writing his books. As we know from TEE, the ruins of the Baudelaire mansion were never cleared, so presumably Helquist could have drawn his image of the mansion at any time after the fire, for chronological preservation purposes, right after the Quagmire fire.
It's probably a bit late now, unless of course Snicket does ever produce any more material regarding ASOUE - but I always thought that would be fun. We could have a chapter called "Snicket may or may not be lying about everything."
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Post by cwm on Jun 1, 2009 14:26:18 GMT -5
Might we start TCC soon?
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Post by Dante on Jun 1, 2009 15:08:06 GMT -5
We've made good progress on the U.A., it's true. We've probably spent more time on it than one of the main series books, but of course, that's because it's the U.A. We must all have known that, even though it's very short, this'd be the one that'd cause the most discussion.
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Post by Sora on Jun 2, 2009 0:53:43 GMT -5
Agreed, and I feel that this thread should remain open for extra discussion for a little while longer- there still is a bit that could be debated, but perhaps tomorrow we should open the TCC thread.
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Post by cwm on Jun 2, 2009 15:12:51 GMT -5
On a purely selfish note, perhaps we could start it on Friday, 'cause that's my day off? ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/253263/images/JRTsZzZbophHygLEg0lM.gif)
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Post by andrewistheman on Jun 4, 2009 17:35:14 GMT -5
It stinks that all of this never happened....Why doesn't anyone ask Handler this stuff anyways. i mean he is Lemony Snicket. ALL OF THIS IS MADE Up....there doesn't have to be an explanation to everything you guys, but it would be nice.
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Post by andrewistheman on Jun 15, 2009 18:02:25 GMT -5
can anyone post what all the initials stood for at the VFD meeting when they discuss moving their base....
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Post by cwm on Jun 16, 2009 1:29:27 GMT -5
That'd be difficult, because we don't know. Some we're pretty certain on, but we can't actually tell anything for sure and likely never will.
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berg8793
Reptile Researcher
![*](//storage.proboards.com/253263/images/vRVhpjGRlVGRHWCUOotK.png)
The world may be quiet here...but is it quiet somewhere else?
Posts: 36
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Post by berg8793 on Jul 15, 2009 9:30:02 GMT -5
I'm not sure, but I think I know who was there at that meeting.
*Runs up two flights of stairs, quickly gets his copy of UA and rushes back down to continue typing*
Here is my logic:
1. At the very beginning, one of the attendees is shown as I, which the writer says is not an initial, but a pronoun. No regular person would use grammar like that in a transcript. That fact, and the extra J in the roll call makes the writer Josephine Anwhistle.
2. In the roll call, D is asked if he is representing L, or if he is working as an independent agent. Obviously this means that Daniel Handler and Lemony were at the meeting.
3. Since Lemony is the youngest of the Snickets, Jacques and Kit would most likely be at the meeting.
4. One of the R's is the Duchess of Winnipeg (the one with the long speeches) - it just makes sense.
5. The other R states that he/she is nine years old. This fact and the "forbidden" book list in Chapter Eight can assume that the person is Ramona Quimby.
6. Since Aunt Josephine was at the meeting, and would be one of the Baudelaires' guardians, I can only assume that Uncle Monty would be there.
7. The other L doesn't seem to say much during the meeting, but I think L is Laura Ingalls Wilder because she is mentioned several times in UA.
8. The other M has no information to work with. However, a look at the book list suggests that the other M is Matilda.
To summarize:
J - Jacques Snicket L - Lemony Snicket M - Montgomery Montgomery R - ? (Duchess of Winnipeg) R - Ramona Quimby M - Matilda (unknown last name) L - Laura Ingalls Wilder K - Kit Snicket D - Daniel Handler S - ? I - aka J - Josephine Anwhistle
The only person I have no idea about is S. The person says nothing in the entire meeting except "Yes" and "the world is quiet here." The person also wrote a report on Prufrock Preparatory School about sleep affecting schoolwork or something like that, but it doesn't really help. Any ideas for S would be helpful.
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Post by Hermes on Jul 15, 2009 9:55:11 GMT -5
Well worked-out - I agree with most of these. 1. At the very beginning, one of the attendees is shown as I, which the writer says is not an initial, but a pronoun. No regular person would use grammar like that in a transcript. That fact, and the extra J in the roll call makes the writer Josephine Anwhistle. Are you sure? I get the sense members of VFD talk like that quite a lot. And my feeling is that if Josephine were there she would correct people's grammar in the course of the meeting. Still, I think you're right to say the person writing the transcript doesn't have to be Jacques, as most people assume. Indeed, it would make sense for it to be an older person, since it seems the same person was involved in recruiting Daniel. The problem is that from the way Monty behaves in TRR, one would get the impression he wasn't very deeply involved in VFD (and actually that's a problem with Josephine as well). Indeed we know he didn't know Sebald code, which is a bit odd if he is here announcing a trip to see Dr Sebald's coded film. Her last name is Wormwood. (O ho - 'tea should be as bitter as wormwood' - only just spotted that.) Possibly the Prufrock Prep librarian (though that doesn't help with his name).
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