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Post by Be actress Beatrice on Aug 6, 2020 16:43:17 GMT -5
I want to know if you believe this meeting happened when Lemony was a child, or if it happened when he was an adult.
And if possible, I would like to know if you believe this meeting took place before Beatrice and Lemony almost got married or after that. (In case you believe it happened when Lemony was an adult).
Is it possible that this meeting took place during the ASOUE events?
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Post by Dante on Aug 8, 2020 3:17:20 GMT -5
I would imagine it to be closer to Lemony's childhood than his adulthood. We can also reasonably state that it is probably before Olaf became quite so outrageous a known criminal as he is during the series; the volunteers' collective reaction to Olaf and Esmé's arrival on the scene is to explain that "neither of you are welcome at this meeting" and to say "Please leave at once", which is an extremely mild response to a criminal of their subsequent calibre; indeed, the natural reading of the lines is that, though not welcome at the Building Committee meeting specifically, they are perfectly entitled to be in the wider building, and as such are both still regarded as members of V.F.D. This makes sense when you consider how Olaf presents it as a startling revelation that "perhaps someone in this very room has betrayed you!" (i.e. himself). So these are events which took place a very long time ago, and absolutely before Lemony and Beatrice's abortive marriage (since the U.A. indicates that Olaf was plainly responsible for their split as well).
The initial reading of this transcript by the fandom, before TPP reimagined (as we see it) the timing of the schism, was that this transcript is documenting the schism itself, and that the demands subsequently issued by Olaf are what caused the organisation to split in half.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 8, 2020 16:04:08 GMT -5
I would imagine it to be closer to Lemony's childhood than his adulthood. We can also reasonably state that it is probably before Olaf became quite so outrageous a known criminal as he is during the series; the volunteers' collective reaction to Olaf and Esmé's arrival on the scene is to explain that "neither of you are welcome at this meeting" and to say "Please leave at once", which is an extremely mild response to a criminal of their subsequent calibre; indeed, the natural reading of the lines is that, though not welcome at the Building Committee meeting specifically, they are perfectly entitled to be in the wider building, and as such are both still regarded as members of V.F.D. This makes sense when you consider how Olaf presents it as a startling revelation that "perhaps someone in this very room has betrayed you!" (i.e. himself). So these are events which took place a very long time ago, and absolutely before Lemony and Beatrice's abortive marriage (since the U.A. indicates that Olaf was plainly responsible for their split as well). The initial reading of this transcript by the fandom, before TPP reimagined (as we see it) the timing of the schism, was that this transcript is documenting the schism itself, and that the demands subsequently issued by Olaf are what caused the organisation to split in half. So, this was one of the actions of Olaf's Schism. This then means that perhaps Olaf's demands included making his betrayal secret for some time. This allowed him and Esmé to come together to change the play One last warning for those who stand in my way. (Or something, I'm out of the book at the moment). This title is suggestive: Olaf had already revealed himself to be a villain for some who tried to fight him in a subtle way. Olaf saw this opposition (perhaps through the theft of the SB), and then did the play. Hence Lemony published the bad review, which in a way was not so subtle unmasked Olaf. Olaf stopped being a villain who acted in the shadows and became a villain who acted openly. So Olaf decided to kill Beatrice and Lemony on their wedding day. So Lemony ran away. But I think Lemony, when she ran away, was still engaged to Beatrice. He must have received the 200-page letter while he was abroad.
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Post by Hermes on Aug 13, 2020 9:57:13 GMT -5
Um. I have always supposed that this happened during L's adulthood. The reason for this is that we are told that Geraldine has revealed the whereabouts of the HQ in her column 'Secret Orgaisations You Should Know About', and we are told elsewhere that she started this after Lemony was fired from the Daily Punctilio, something that happened while he was engaged to Beatrice, and was very likely part of the series of events that led to their breakup.
This led me to make two further speculations: a. The meeting takes place in the penthouse at 667, and is part what led to the sale of the penthouse to Jerome. (This is supported by the reference to 'the lobby of the building three doors down from here'.) b. These events are what prompted L to send the telegram to Beatrice warning her that 'Count Olaf is...' - which we know happened while she was pregnant with Violet, so fifteen years before ASOUE.
My sense regarding O is that he is indeed an intruder in the VFD building, and they are just responding to him with polite severity, rather than in a more explictly hostile way, because that it their manner, as a historically peaceful organisation. 'Someone in this very room has betrayed you' plays on an ambiguity; the members of the meeting clearly mean one of their company, but O reinterprets it as someone in the room but in hiding. He may have been there in hiding on previous occasions as well.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 13, 2020 13:17:31 GMT -5
Um. I have always supposed that this happened during L's adulthood. The reason for this is that we are told that Geraldine has revealed the whereabouts of the HQ in her column 'Secret Orgaisations You Should Know About', and we are told elsewhere that she started this after Lemony was fired from the Daily Punctilio, something that happened while he was engaged to Beatrice, and was very likely part of the series of events that led to their breakup. This led me to make two further speculations: a. The meeting takes place in the penthouse at 667, and is part what led to the sale of the penthouse to Jerome. (This is supported by the reference to 'the lobby of the building three doors down from here'.) b. These events are what prompted L to send the telegram to Beatrice warning her that 'Count Olaf is...' - which we know happened while she was pregnant with Violet, so fifteen years before ASOUE. My sense regarding O is that he is indeed an intruder in the VFD building, and they are just responding to him with polite severity, rather than in a more explictly hostile way, because that it their manner, as a historically peaceful organisation. 'Someone in this very room has betrayed you' plays on an ambiguity; the members of the meeting clearly mean one of their company, but O reinterprets it as someone in the room but in hiding. He may have been there in hiding on previous occasions as well. Very well observed Hermes. This means that my previous deduction is wrong. (I'm getting used to it). If Geraldine was already publishing something, it means that this meeting took place after the play "one last warning to those who cross my path" (or something, I'm still without the book). This means that Lemony had already gone abroad and returned from there. It makes a lot of sense. At first it is evident that Lemony missed several meetings and that D (probably Daniel Handler) was his representative on those occasions when Lemony could not be in person. If I'm not mistaken ET described that they changed secret base several times over the course of several months. They even dug tunnels. I think the time for this meeting must have been around the time when the battle for salmon happened when the three snickets were together.
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Post by Dante on Aug 14, 2020 4:21:57 GMT -5
The penthouse (or the room above the penthouse, or even the Veritable French Diner) theory has both advantages and disadvantages. It tallies well with U.A. page 36, "Tonight at seven P.M. we will meet in the lobby of the building two doors down from this one", implying that the building is in a built-up urban or suburban area; conversely, page 37 indicates that the current location has both an examination hall and a sculpture garden, and while that isn't absolutely unbelievable for the locations mentioned, it strikes me as something very much in need of positive reinforcement rather than a "not contradicted" situation. It also doesn't tally with the claim on page 41 that "If our location is revealed in The Daily Punctilio, the building will likely be destroyed by the end of the week"; unless we are happy to propose that Olaf and Esmé's actions lead to the building being vacated and then not identified in the newspaper. I would also suggest that if Olaf and Esmé had successfully driven V.F.D. from the penthouse, resulting in it being put up for sale, Esmé would have immediately snapped it up herself; the fact that Jerome was able to purchase the penthouse suggests that at the time of its sale it was not an area of interest for Olaf and Esmé. The last-mentioned headquarters on pages 44-45 is the underground headquarters beneath the ""abandoned shack"" in the Finite Forest, but this cannot be the current one, as the volunteer discussing that headquarters mentions having had to flee from seven during their membership, and the Finite Forest location is the sixth listed. Insofar as the sculpture garden and the building two doors down are concerned, I personally had always imagined a sort of campus arrangement with the headquarters comprising multiple buildings on a single site, on the grounds that the students and their trainers are clearly moving and working in open sight (e.g. in a sculpture garden).
Regarding the timing versus Geraldine Julienne's actions. Admittedly, putting it as "closer to Lemony's childhood than his adulthood" was not tremendously well-spoken on my part; what I mean is a time when he was a lot younger than he is during the writing of the series, but not a child. Together, the two of you, Jean Lucio and Hermes, trace the logical chronology reasonably well: The transcript takes place after Lemony was fired from the Punctilio, and therefore after the performance of One Last Warning to Those Who Try to Stand in My Way. We have to remember that Lemony was fired because of his negative review of the latter play and not because he had become a fugitive from justice; and that because the play was framed as a warning, this indicates it precedes Olaf's most outrageous actions. So this narrative actually tallies very nicely; Olaf issues a warning in the play, Lemony is fired, Geraldine replaces him, Olaf moves from warning to decisive action at the conclusion of the transcript.
Importantly, in the transcript then Geraldine publishing the address of V.F.D.'s headquarters in her column is not presented as a recurring event, and it is reasonably evident that this is not the manner in which V.F.D.'s location was revealed before (p. 38, with p. 44 citing one previous abandonment stemming from noticing that they were being photographed); and so it's fair to posit that Geraldine has not necessarily been writing her column for very long, given that her work in this role and even her ascension to it was plainly manipulated by Olaf and Esmé. It may even be her very first column. Regardless, it's about this point that the transcript must fall. What follows is presumably the so-called Snicket fires, likely committed by Olaf and pinned on Lemony, and which forces his break-up with Beatrice and flight from the country. But we have to posit a pretty generous interval of time before Snicket's telegram to Mrs. Baudelaire, since that has to come after the Baudelaire parents' stretch of time on the island and all the shenanigans that entailed; indeed, the telegram itself (LS to BB #6) states that it has been years since Lemony last contacted Beatrice. (Regarding D.'s representation of L. at the meeting, I don't believe we have any canonical information on when they began this arrangement, so no information can be deduced from the fact that the arrangement is already in place. Furthermore, no timescale is given for the entire series of abandonments, though in exactly one instance a two-month interval is cited (p. 44))
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 14, 2020 15:10:35 GMT -5
But a detail. If I'm not mistaken, Lemony's first flight abroad was right after the publication of the bad review, isn't it? Since Jacques states in the letter he sent to Lemony that it was the bad criticism that motivated Olaf's violent actions. And I believe that the subplot involving Gregor A must have been at that time, as Jacques was apparently working on submarine Q at that time. And I believe it was when Lemony was abroad (at this point) that he must have received Beatrice's letter explaining why she needed to cancel the wedding. He received the letter via carrier pigeons. After that she learned that Lemony had died, and then after that she married Bertrand. After that she went to the island, after that she went back to the city still pregnant, and then she received the telegram. I believe that then Lemony returned from abroad and there was the meeting of the construction committee. Did I miss something?
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Post by Dante on Aug 14, 2020 16:24:23 GMT -5
That's true, actually; Jacques's letter does indicate that Lemony would have to flee the country not only after his bad review, but even before he's been fired. But the Building Committee transcript really doesn't fit well with taking place years after all the rest of the action has gone down; its documentation of V.F.D. activities effectively indicates business as usual and expresses astonishment at the idea of treachery within the ranks, both of which are laughable prospects by the kind of later time period you're indicating. I had a feeling that discussions in the past had touched upon one of the U.A.'s many temporal paradoxes involving the transcript, and I have a feeling this might be it.
Fortunately, on reflection, there's a simple solution: Lemony felt Jacques was jumping the gun and didn't take Jacques's advice. In fact, we know this to be true; for in the letter, Jacques is advising Lemony to immediately break off all contact and run as fast and as hard as he can, before he's been fired (p. 96) - but actually, Lemony hung around after he was fired (p. 81) to sabotage the newspaper's printing presses and attempt to smuggle an article of his own into the next edition!
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 14, 2020 20:54:48 GMT -5
That's true, actually; Jacques's letter does indicate that Lemony would have to flee the country not only after his bad review, but even before he's been fired. But the Building Committee transcript really doesn't fit well with taking place years after all the rest of the action has gone down; its documentation of V.F.D. activities effectively indicates business as usual and expresses astonishment at the idea of treachery within the ranks, both of which are laughable prospects by the kind of later time period you're indicating. I had a feeling that discussions in the past had touched upon one of the U.A.'s many temporal paradoxes involving the transcript, and I have a feeling this might be it. Fortunately, on reflection, there's a simple solution: Lemony felt Jacques was jumping the gun and didn't take Jacques's advice. In fact, we know this to be true; for in the letter, Jacques is advising Lemony to immediately break off all contact and run as fast and as hard as he can, before he's been fired (p. 96) - but actually, Lemony hung around after he was fired (p. 81) to sabotage the newspaper's printing presses and attempt to smuggle an article of his own into the next edition! This makes a lot of sense, since he also disobeyed the advice not to contact Beatrice. However, Jacques' instructions were precise as to how and when the shipment would need to be carried out. So, if Lemony did board, he must have followed Jacques's guidance. (At least that's what I remember. I'm still without the book.)
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Post by Be actress Beatrice on Aug 14, 2020 22:43:34 GMT -5
Was it possible that Jacques' letter arrived after Lemony was fired? Lemony's resignation seems to have been almost immediate, and Jacques seems to have not known it when he wrote.
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