#jacob snicket's longtime bridge partner

[beatricebidelaire]

some headcanons about jacob snicket and his longtime bridge partner for @asouefanworkevent’s woevember event, day 4, unseen characters

jacob’s longtime bridge partner is not a vfd volunteer, but he is on the outskirts of vfd and knows of its existence - similar to charles’s relation to vfd, where he sometimes worked together with some vfd members

he met e snicket earlier than he met jacob, as he had worked with her on some projects before

even though he’s technically not a vfd volunteer, he also goes by his initial most of the time, and both jacob and e called him c

c was the only person to call jacob as jake, it’s a long running inside joke between them, which started after c and another person named jake registered for a bridge tournament (it was a swiss pairs tournament), but jake was suddenly unavailable and jacob substituted for him that day, playing with c. they didn’t change the name on the registration, and this ended up becoming an inside joke of theirs.

c and jacob played natural 2/1 system, using the standard carding in the early days but later switched to udca

jacob’s bidding is more solid, where c can lean a bit on the lighter side, and very occasionally he would make psyche bids, but he has a fairly good judgement of it and about 80% of the time it pays off

they’ve played together for a long time and have a pretty good understanding of each other’s styles when bidding, and when defending they always cooperated really nicely that made people think they’re minds are in sync, though it’s really just longtime partnership and experience and a well established carding system and having discussed various scenarios between them

kit and jacques had met c when they were little, when c came around to visit jacob and e. sometimes c would bring a few friends around and when they have 4 people they’d play a couple of boards together. young kit was very interested and would often sit on jacob’s lap, watching them play and trying to understand what’s going on

jacob taught kit about the concept of finessing, a declarer technique he thought that’s the easy enough to understand for a beginner. he pointed to the ace and queen of hearts in the dummy’s hand laid out on the table and as he played the 7 of hearts from his hand, explaining to kit that if the king of hearts was with the LHO (left hand side opponent) who has to play before the dummy does, then the queen can win the trick, but if it’s with the RHO (right hand side opponent) who plays after the dummy, then the queen will not gain a trick. by finessing, the queen has a chance to become an additional trick. young kit was very excited at the concept.

sometimes kit would sit by c’s side and watch him play too, and jacob would say “if she grows up to have a wild bidding style then i know where she learned that from”. after she grew up, sometimes she would remember this fondly.

jacob has many bridge books in the house, and kit managed to take two with her after she and her siblings got recruited and took away from their home. one is a book on probability calculation and another is on defense. she treasured both of the books as she didn’t really have many things from her parents that she still carries with her into adulthood. frank borrowed the probability calculation one from her once and took many notes in his notebook during reading.

jacob and c shared some tournament stories with her that she still remembers when she’s older, and she also shared what she remembers with her own bridge friends who regularly meet up to play bridge at hotel denouement (bertrand, r, the denouements). frank and ernest play a lot more than dewey does but dewey likes watching them play.

[beatricebidelaire]

alright so i know ever since reading in the letter to prof. patton lemony wrote “To say my father was ‘known as Jake’ is not quite true, he was known as Jacob to everyone but his bridge partner” i’ve been repeatedly going on about the headcanon jacob teaching kit to play bridge when she was younger, and maybe he hadn’t had the chance to teach her much beyond the basics given how young she’d been when they’d been taken, but he had written down some interesting boards he’d played and she still reread those from time to time,

but then i reread that line again today and i thought of some other things (especially after reading becca’s post about lemony using past tense when talking about jacques and kit)

generally Lemony wrote this letter in present tense, but he’d switched to past tense when saying “he was known as Jacob” rather than “he is known” and just. yeah .... i have feelings

but also like sure the little snicket lad lyrics writer could’ve been someone who wasn’t that close to their situation and referred to jacob as “Jake” in that line in Little Snicket Lad “And her husband, known as Jake.” or could’ve purely done it for, rhyming purposes and decided that’s more important than how Jacob Snicket was known as to most. but then I started thinking what if Jacob Snicket’s bridge partner who’d called him Jake, was the one who wrote Little Snicket Lad. Maybe Jacob’s non-vfd longtime bridge partner was someone who was familiar with vfd on some levels despite not being in it and was more acutely aware of vfd’s faults than Jacob, who was probably a volunteer himself, was. Anyway I’m picturing Jacob telling them about how his kids got sent to “training” and he was displeased that vfd took the kids much earlier than they should have but he still try to rationalize this with himself but he was also angry and worried at the same time, and as he told the story some of the details might’ve been misremembered by his longtime bridge partner, who was angry on Jacob’s behalf at vfd taking Jacob’s kids. And then they said fuck VFD wrote this to expose the kind of organization VFD was.

[beatricebidelaire]

professor reed, who painted triptych what happened to beatrice

gina sue, socialist who rode horses

jacob snicket’s longtime bridge partner

snake charmer living in egypt

tatiana, sculptor who created twisted, cracked, and hopelessly broken

madame dilustro, a good friend, an excellent detective, flew into a rage if you arrive even 5 minutes later than her invitation states.

bela, who owned a yacht

dr. lorenz, who explained the the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light to lemony snicket

organist of cathedral of the alleged virgin

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professor charley patton from scriabin institute for accuracy in music

c. m. kornbluth, mechanical instructor working at valley of four drafts

cheesemakers who maintained close associates with entire snicket family

william congreve, playwright who wrote the mourning bride