MOOD WHIPLASH here is a choice snicket quote that is actually a snicket quote: i love.. this extremely sad and lonely man...
have just finished book six / the ersatz elevator in my quest to reread the series, and Spoiler i can confirm now that the books don't even mention VFD until the end of the fifth book, but it has definitely been an element of mystery throughout the sixth, and will no doubt continue to be henceforth. additionally, book six features Spoiler the Baudelaires discovering a secret passage that leads to a trapdoor under the (now burned down) Baudelaire mansion, which I recall is highlighted early on in the show. so that's interesting! also, turns out that in book five / the austere academy, Spoiler the Quagmire fire is said to have happened at least "three semesters" prior to the Baudelaires arriving at the academy, since that's how long the Quagmires said they were forced to live in the Orphans Shack. so the show is diverging there, it looks like?
Hello, friends, I've just finished my reread of the entire book series and....... holy fucking shit, guys, it's easy to laugh off the disclaimers when they're about The Reptile Room but The Penultimate Peril and The End ripped my fucking heart out and stomped on it. I'm dead now. Of sadness. (Read these books. They're very good.)
Spoiler: EXTREME SPOILER I'm very glad I accidentally rediscovered that Beatrice was Beatrice Baudelaire near the very beginning of my reread, though, bc it enabled me to make a lot more sense of a lot of the later stuff. I also waited for like six books for Lemony to come out and say that Beatrice was their mother but no, he just made it more and more obvious without actually saying it, until the LITERAL LAST WORD OF THE SERIES thanks, buddy. thanks
A collection of related facts: My style of fandom tends towards the slightly obsessive There's another series called All The Wrong Questions about shitty pre-teen Lemony Snicket?? Now I have all of them downloaded on my phone. Help. I just want to listen to my podcasts instead of reading children's books. But I love shitty pre-teen Lemony Snicket.
Hello, friends, want to hear an All the Wrong Questions quote that made me retroactively sadder about the entirety of ASOUE? From a young Lemony Snicket. Spoiler "If this man attacks me," I said, "with his club or cudgel or staff or wedge, you'll have time to escape." "There's no need to show off with words," the masked woman said. "It makes me feel better when I'm frightened," I said.
Do you like boy [detective/spy] novels? No? They're too insipid? Okay, do you like the noir protagonist archetype who is sarcastic and miserable and probably depressed and a little too morally ambiguous for his own peace of mind? Would you like to read about that guy, but he's twelve? Do you like CRUSHING DESPAIR? OH BOY, ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS IS THE SERIES FOR YOU. (They're good.)
oh OH one last thing. ok, so, i turned to All The Wrong Questions looking largely for more information about Lemony/Beatrice, which I did not find. But. There was something that made me laugh a lot. Spoiler Lemony's incompetent VFD mentor has been complaining about how sarcastic and disobedient he is for like 2.7/4 books, and has spent just as long comparing him unfavorably to her former apprentice. We FINALLY find out his name, and... HER PREVIOUS APPRENTICE WAS BERTRAND FUCKING BAUDELAIRE AND HIS MENTOR'S HARANGUE IS COMPLETELY ACCURATE TO HOW HIS LIFE GOES someone please, please give lemony snicket a break for like five seconds
i read the first 80 pages of all the wrong questions and loved it. i need to get the rest. lemony snicket is just the right mix of precocious child and terrible preteen and also super melancholy, which we see only intensifies with time given ASOUE. I don't suppose you can find the rest on the net? There's the long excerpt on the website, but i'm guessing i have to buy the rest
I love smol Lemony, he manages to be arrogant and intensely self-deprecating at the same time. Also, as a former snarky gifted child with undiagnosed anxiety I relate. :P I've been getting them from my library's e-book app, so, alas, I am no help here. I know there are PDFs of the main series on the internet, but haven't looked for ATWQ.
i'm currently waiting on my library to let me check out an ebook of the vile village - placed a hold on tuesday. i suppose in the meantime i can reread the first ATWQ book, which i also own - never picked up or read the others, so i suppose i'll have to see if my library has ebooks of them!
hello i am still on the ATWQ hype train Spoiler: vaguely spoilery babbling I figured out how to better state what I was trying to say above with the arrogant/self deprecating thing, which. is also true, but not what I wanted to say - The great thing is how bitty Lemony mixes the genius-boy-outsmarts-his-teachers trope (which bitty *Blue* would have eaten up, but not so much now) with moments of intense vulnerability. I mean, the dude cries, like, probably >5 times over the course of four books. He cries with his friends about people dying, and about things going badly, and cries by himself about not being able to help his sister, or about the fact that he decided to try to jump onto the outside of a train and now he thinks he's going to die. Lemony has some unusual skills and he's smarter than his mentor, but he's also just terrified and distraught about the state of the world and left completely without competent adult backup, and he makes mistakes, and he fucks stuff up, and. Yeah. I love him. ): Also, I came home and immediately sought out my old copy of The Beatrice Letters so now I'm emotions about that. Ashdfklg.
i GOT A LIBRARY CARD* to get this copy of The Unauthorized Autobiography and I read it and now I'm more confused rather than less. >:| Rude, Lemony *had one at home, but not in my college town
