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Post by Dante on Oct 17, 2009 2:56:50 GMT -5
I'm glad you like it, Emma. Explaining why Josephine is who she is is one of the key parts of this fic, even though I started writing it to fill out TGG's backstory. I wanted to know what a Josephine who was heroic and useful would've been like. It makes her cowardice in TWW far more tragic.
As for "Jonah Widdershins," there was some complicated reasoning behind his name, but I now can't remember it... it may have been connected to J.S., though. Or possibly it's that I wanted to give him a first name in this story, but didn't want to repeat another fine suggestion for his name that appeared in a story by an old ally of mine.
I try hard with my villains; in fact, thinking about it, in RITC, the villains tend to be original characters, while the heroes are all inherited from canon. I wonder what that suggests?
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Post by Hermes on Oct 18, 2009 16:06:12 GMT -5
Memories of a Castaway.
I think this is my favourite so far. The way everything is tied together, the little allusions, use of minor names from the series....
Thursday and Miranda - nice portrait of Thursday as, like Ernest, a reluctant villain. I had not expected him to be so villainous; he had clearly been reconciled with the good side by the time of ASOUE, as Kit had just had Turkish coffee with him. The poison darts incident is presumably the 'time of great struggle' when he and Kit stood together.
I see that in this story Gustav the assistant is the same person as Gustav Sebald. Am I right in thinking that a later episode seeks to overcome the problems that might cause?
And the reptile room was originally a greenhouse. Presumably the Montgomerys gave up gardening because of the plethora of poisonous plants.
Olaf and Monday - not much to say here; this is more or less how I imagined it happening. Clearly O knows more about the old man than he's letting on.
Alsonso and Gonzalo - I especially liked the Gina-Sue reference here. She was socialist, which suggests some kind of political involvement; and she is fond of the proverb about stable doors, which suggests she has been involved in some scandal or crisis.
Olaf and the captain - nice way of combining birdwatching with raids on sealing boats. I'm taking it this captain is not the Captain Widdershins we know (whose name is Jonah); I suppose captaining is a common profession in the family.
(I think Jonah is a very suitable name, by the way, for anyone concerned with submarines, because of the story of Jonah and the whale; and perhaps specially suitable for the captain because of his swallowing by the Great Unknown after being cast into the sea.)
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Post by Dante on Oct 19, 2009 8:10:13 GMT -5
I think this is my favourite so far. The way everything is tied together, the little allusions, use of minor names from the series.... I know that nearly all of my fics are just a giant heap of allusion after parallel after copycat, but there's such a wealth of material, unused material, that it seems such a shame not to use it. It's so obvious in retrospect that this is the perfect way of explaining that mess. It even irons out the snowman problem - it was just bait all along. Shame that Omeros and his siblings have such wildly incompatible names, but Ben deserved a place in a fanfic. Again, this was more of a play on a... a perfectly plausible possibility that had never been thought of. Because the Reptile Room is a lot like a greenhouse, and makes more sense to have been built as one. I think that'd be a convincing backstory. That section just became a parody of the whole piece, with mistaken identities strewn all over the place, applied to boats and fish, anything. I really like the survivor of an incident being a boat called Bela Bass. It combines so many references at once. Of course, I was calling him Jonah years before The End, so it's especially satisfying to see how that worked out so perfectly. But I'm not the only one to anticipate The End - the name my old associate came up with for Widdershins? Ishmael.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 19, 2009 14:01:10 GMT -5
the name my old associate came up with for Widdershins? Ishmael. Oh dear. I guess, if he wanted to, he could retcon this by saying that the captain was called after the Ishmael of TE, who was believed at the time to be dead. That's the sort of thing that tends to happen in ASOUE. One other thing I should have mentioned in connection the captain's episode was that he seems also to have been the original owner of the Carmelita. The Chthulu, eh? I take it at that time the uniforms had H.P. Lovecraft on them. I'll comment more on Ben, Geniveve and Omeros when I reach them.
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Post by Dante on Oct 19, 2009 15:50:22 GMT -5
Oh dear. I guess, if he wanted to, he could retcon this by saying that the captain was called after the Ishmael of TE, who was believed at the time to be dead. That's the sort of thing that tends to happen in ASOUE. If done right, it'd do exactly what a large portion of the later aSoUE is meant to do, and that's to overwhelm the reader's understanding with confusion. He could handle it. Or just ignore it. Hard-pressed to think of other fictional famous octopi(-like creatures)... still, the emblem of Lovecraft would be a fine one to wear if you were investigating, say, the Great Unknown - now there's a fic which never even got to the planning stages.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 20, 2009 6:45:27 GMT -5
Weyden and Humphrey - Oo! Female Finnish Pirates! (I wonder what their mysterious symbol is.) Three very short men! The wart-faced man! (Is the bit about his company going bankrupt an allusion to anything in particular?)
Kornbluth, I take it, is not C.M., just a relative.
As for the big-bellied androgyne - perhaps the mother (or father, on the sea-horse principle) of Olaf's associate?
Olaf and the Captain again - the parallels here wih Beatrice are very striking - especially the bit about 'schools and restaurants'.
I'm glad it turned out that the manatee wasn't reallly a manatee - manatees are very gentle creatures, I believe, and both the manatee incidents in ASOUE turn out to be inventions. Am I right in thinking that the trout is from The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily?
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Post by Dante on Oct 20, 2009 9:18:48 GMT -5
Weyden and Humphrey - Oo! Female Finnish Pirates! (I wonder what their mysterious symbol is.) Some arrangement of signs vaguely resembling the letters F, F and P which, combined, resembles something significant. A ship, for instance. Just an explanation of how he might have ended up in Olaf's troupe - oh, and why he's so "important-looking." Quite so. In this sort of fic, there's not really much sense mentioning a character unless they're going to be part of the history. Or even the same individual. Wasn't Woolf's Orlando immortal? (I mention the character because Sunny once quoted the name while referring to the henchperson in question.) From Snicket's notes on same, yes, and indeed I understand that manatees are quite gentle creatures, which is one reason why the events in which they are implicated are so suspicious - why they need a little redemption.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 20, 2009 15:26:46 GMT -5
Omeros, Geniveve and Ben (ha!).
Once again I have to disclaim intentions of plagiarism - I, too, had planned to use Ben in a rather similar way - inspired by your suggestion that Ben be used more in fanfic, but before I saw this story.
This one takes a bit of working out. We are on the set of Zombies in the Snow. I'm guessing that Omeros, Geniveve and Ben are the three children whose photograph appears in Dr Sebald's files for that film, and that Omeros is the person refered to by Sally as 'Omar'.
'Dr Sebald' is not Dr Sebald, but a villain - I'm taking it not Olaf, since he is at Dr Montgomery's house at the time.
I wondered at first if the baby was the survivor of the fire. But I now think the answer is that there is no survivor of the fire - this is a false message meant to lure Monty and the children to the film-set. But then why does it go on 'Beware; your new assistant is not one of us?'
So who is the baby? And what happened after this? Clearly they weren't all killed, since Omeros turned up on the island. I'm supposing that Ben and Geniveve went to Prufrock Prep, there to be recruited by Kit. Or had they been to Prufrock Prep before this? The bit about the horrid girl at school might refer to Carmelita. As for the baby, I fear he was killed - though it would be nice if he went to Prufrock Prep as well, perhaps replacing Sunny as an administrative assistant.
Clearly 'Bertrand' is the name both of their father and of the Baudelaires' father - both called after the same figure from the past, perhaps.
This is the second time you have drowned someone's parents in a pond - is there a canon reference here that I am missing?
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Post by Dante on Oct 21, 2009 4:27:42 GMT -5
Once again I have to disclaim intentions of plagiarism - I, too, had planned to use Ben in a rather similar way - inspired by your suggestion that Ben be used more in fanfic, but before I saw this story. I quite understand. The character needs to see more use. It doesn't matter if the methods are similar, so long as he gets a bit more exposure - more exposure than the single sentence he gets in the canon, which has a great deal of potential. I remember now that I think somebody else had suggested, in a thread, that Omeros might be a suitable candidate for "Omar" - the right age, the right sort of name. Thus it becomes a parallel rather than a plot hole of some kind (not that I think Handler intended the connection). I've forgotten much of what I was getting at with this story, but I'll try and answer your questions. It seems evident that the three youngsters must be the three children in Sally's files, yes; that ties up another loose end. Quite so. Olaf is unavailable; it's another villain, and I think I was picturing them as a more independent figure, as opposed to, say, one of Olaf's henchmen. I think that this is indeed the case, but as for the legitimate warning that the film provides, I'm afraid I don't know, or don't remember - possibly the villainous Sebald impostor is a rival of Olaf's, for the villains, while all villainous, are not necessarily all BFFs. There's only so many fortunes to go around, after all. But I think the essential point of the story was that the many problems created by Zombies in the Snow be by-and-large erased; the details weren't important so long as it all worked. Or possibly the details were important, but I forgot one of them. I don't know what happened to the baby (or even who it is), but indeed, it isn't looking good, is it? But the child may not have been killed, but may instead have been raised in villainy, say. I'm not entirely sure about the back-and-forth with Prufrock Prep. and bully girls; I think I'll have to leave that one up to the reader (thus defeating the entire point of the story, amazing). Actually, one could really write a fair bit of fanfiction about this fragment - the future of the siblings, their scattered pathways... evidently Omeros was cast away at sea at some point, and isn't it possible that Geniveve and Ben ended up rowing the Carmelita? The only problem is why the Baudelaires didn't recognise Ben or vice-versa, either there or at Prufrock Prep. I think the second instance is probably a reference to the first, since I never actually managed to write the first story (although what I did write did indeed drown the parents in a pond, I think).
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Post by Hermes on Oct 21, 2009 7:32:38 GMT -5
possibly the villainous Sebald impostor is a rival of Olaf's, for the villains, while all villainous, are not necessarily all BFFs. There's only so many fortunes to go around, after all. True. The sinister duo seem to exercise some kind of leadership, but I guess that only comes into play on special occasions. Well, I think your original theory (which I find attractive, though I'm not sure Handler intended it) is that the two children 'sent to Prufrock Prep' are the two orphans later recruited by Kit - and their time at Prufrock Prep must be quite a bit later than this. So I guess the bully girl isn't Carmelita. There's more than one bully girl in the world, after all. If they are the two recruited by Kit, they arrived at Prufrock Prep after the Baudelaires had left - and I think it's unlikely they were on the Carmelita, though you never can tell.
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Post by Dante on Oct 21, 2009 8:38:13 GMT -5
True. The sinister duo seem to exercise some kind of leadership, but I guess that only comes into play on special occasions. Respect and fear. They have powerful positions, and it's worth most villains' while to stay on their good side. But just as it didn't stop Olaf trying to destroy them in TPP, so there is no unity among the villains. As I see it, anyway. They occupy a far broader spectrum than the "good guys." My fanfics have tended, it seems, to make villains a bit more sympathetic - Ernest, particularly. But on the other hand Kit tells us that there are others just as bad as the sinister duo. If the villains didn't have V.F.D. to fight they'd certainly be fighting each other. A fic looking only at the villainous world would be something I'd be interested in, although I don't really write this sort of thing any more. Yes, that makes sense. Sometimes I write about certain situations and I remember a lot of details and parallels to make but then some really obvious contradiction eludes me, be it timeline or something else... I wonder if this is what it's like to be Daniel Handler. Edit: That's my bid for most self-aggrandising comparison since Berlusconi compared himself to Christ... Oh, yeah, obviously. My short-term memory is atrocious. Overlook that remark about the Carmelita - there are stories to be written about those kids, and about Geniveve and Ben, but they aren't the same story.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 21, 2009 14:40:39 GMT -5
Olaf and the banker - So, the adoption papers were not (necessarily) hidden in the banker's hat at the time of the adoption, but much later when Olaf was looking for them. That makes a lot of sense. Olaf presumably wants to destroy the record of the adoption, so that he can be, or at least plausibly pretend to be, heir to the fortune.
Is there a reference to a Widdershins fortune somewhere in canon? It feels familiar, but with all those fortunes it's hard to keep track. (And indeed, we're about to hear of another.)
I'm taking it that this banker is Monsieur Elwyn, who is sacked because of Olaf's slanderous remarks about him, and that he is also Senor Blattberg; hence O's remark about his other job. But then why does O say 'Yes' when Sadie asks if he means Mr Poe?
Jonah, Sadie and Mr Poe - this must be happening very soon before The End - Mr Poe is already VPICOOA, and I'm guessing he is referring to the Baudelaires when he mentions some young charges of his who got involved in adult affairs. So I guess J and S were new arrivals on the island when the Baudelaires arrived - perhaps even newer than Omeros. (I'm now imagining a scene where Jonah and Sadie leave a message signed 'J, S', causing much confusion to volunteers.)
I wonder what channel Captain Lachrymose's ferry crosses? (A descendant of Ivan, I suppose - if Ivan really existed he must have lived quite a while ago.) But that, of course, is a question we aren't allowed to ask.
Olaf and Senor Blattberg - this is fun! Nice solution to the puzzle of a banker - who clearly is a banker at the time of the events - being better known by his stage name.
The man in the face-concealing hat is presumably Lemony; but who is the woman in the tracksuit?
I also wonder if Monsieur Elwyn/Senor Blattberg is the man in TUA who claims to have received certain papers about Mr SNICKET from his aunt, whose name he is pretending is Julie Blattberg.
Anyhow, an excellent story - the way the parts mesh together and interact with canon is really clever.
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Post by Dante on Oct 22, 2009 7:29:10 GMT -5
Olaf and the banker - So, the adoption papers were not (necessarily) hidden in the banker's hat at the time of the adoption, but much later when Olaf was looking for them. That makes a lot of sense. Olaf presumably wants to destroy the record of the adoption, so that he can be, or at least plausibly pretend to be, heir to the fortune. Is there a reference to a Widdershins fortune somewhere in canon? It feels familiar, but with all those fortunes it's hard to keep track. (And indeed, we're about to hear of another.) I don't think I have this scenario drawn out very precisely, because the whole point of the Widdershins segment is to be even more confusing than usual and to an extent parody some of the more mysterious elements of the later books. I don't think there is a canon Widdershins fortune, but it would be consistent, and I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for it to exist. Especially if one takes up the idea that all members of V.F.D. have fortunes, or are at least very wealthy. I only mentioned Widdershins, I think, to link it in to the Widdershins segments, for which such issues are clearly a concern. I'll take this in steps. I don't entirely remember if Monsier Elwyn is the character dealt with in the prior segment, who Olaf defames; he was intended to be a kind of parallel Poe, or rather that it should be difficult upon a first reading to tell that he is not "our" Mr. Poe. While Monsieur Elwyn was clearly in that kind of role, for some reason I recalled him as being more in the manner of a previous guardian. But the fact is that "Elwyn" is being used here not as a surname, but as a forename, and so if the two characters are the same, as I am now sure I intended them to be, then he would be a Mr. Elwyn Poe, perhaps the father of the present one. So it is correct to say that he is Mr. Poe, because that is his name, even if Olaf and the Bellamys aren't referring to the same Mr. Poe. And how would they know they weren't? Oh, I like the "J, S" idea! That deserves to be used. Now that you've suggested it, I half wonder if Handler intended it. Probably not... But indeed, I was trying to set up Jonah and Sadie as another set of parallel Baudelaires here (just look at the surnames), because I was interested in thinking about what life would be like for the Baudelaires if they were much closer to being of age. I think the Bellamys have probably been in the system for as long as the Baudelaires have. So that's it, they're sort of the Baudelaires reaching the end of their tether, coming to the end of their time in the system. And then, of course, it's all snatched away from them. But indeed, it seems like this scene must take place between TVV and The End - but in-story that period of about a fortnight seems to have been somewhat extended, as we've discussed, so I'm not worried about it being too short a time. I wanted to leave open the possibility that the ferry in question is the same ferry the Baudelaires take in TWW - or rather, have disembarked from at some point shortly before the story begins, if I recall correctly. I also like the idea that the Bellamys and the Baudelaires might have just missed one another. But it could've been somewhere entirely different. And who better to have something secret hidden in their hat than a magician? The intent here is to form a parallel to Madame Lulu; for some reason "Blattberg" struck me as sounding foreign in much the same way that "Lulu" might, for the purposes of stage names for magicians or fortune-tellers. Another long-forgotten character - Miss Tench, murdered before the opening of TAA. She was the former gym coach, or some similar role - hence tracksuit, running shoes, stopwatch... I feel duty-bound to revive these characters - give them more time in the limelight. Same reason why a character named Firstein is mentioned earlier in the story - a nod to Foreman Firstein, murdered before the opening of TMM. Nobody remembers these characters, but they, too, lived. ...I take this too seriously sometimes. No idea, but that's a good call; he could well be. Heh. It could be true in fanfiction, put it that way. Glad you liked it. I want to expand the canon to the very limits of its existence, and trace every thread - get a bigger picture. Reason for Editing: Changed "debarked" to "disembarked." TMM...!
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Post by Hermes on Oct 22, 2009 9:43:34 GMT -5
he was intended to be a kind of parallel Poe, or rather that it should be difficult upon a first reading to tell that he is not "our" Mr. Poe. Yes, I certainly found that hard to tell - but when the undoubted Mr Poe in the next episode refers to his predecessor leaving in supsicious circumstnces, I concluded this must be him. Ah, good, that makes sense. So Arthur Poe replaces Elwyn Poe. I'd always thought that Olaf's Mr Poe might be our Mr Poe's father, but I think I didn't grasp that here because I had imagined him belonging to the quite distant past. Oh, certainly a lot can happen in two weeks in Snicketland. I'm a bit worried that there must have been an unusually high rate of arrivals on the island recently - but perhaps we can put this down to global warming. Was this not a ferry over the lake, though? - while this one seems to be on the sea, from the way Mr Poe describes it, and also because, when it was wrecked, the Bellamys ended up on the island.
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Post by Dante on Oct 22, 2009 11:17:35 GMT -5
Oh, certainly a lot can happen in two weeks in Snicketland. I'm a bit worried that there must have been an unusually high rate of arrivals on the island recently - but perhaps we can put this down to global warming. What's more worrying is how many of the recent arrivals are just children, according to my own fanfic. Omeros and the Bellamies must've arrived within weeks of one another! I think that I was trying to be somewhat ambiguous by saying "cross-channel," particularly given that we've hypothesised in the past that Lake Lachrymose probably has a connection to the sea, since the Queequeg used to patrol there. I don't want people to immediately say, "Oh, it's obviously the Lake Lachrymose ferry," but I want people to be able to say that.
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