Also: snicketsleuth on Tumblr [DO NOT GO THERE UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE THOROUGHLY SPOILED] is everything I wanted from and didn't find on the wiki, in terms of incredibly in-depth study and theorizing about the plot going on in the background of the books, even if some of their theories are kind of reaching. But they've convinced me that Spoiler: HUGE SPOILERS The timeline just doesn't work unless Beatrice Baudelaire (Sr.) survived the first fire and was alive at least up to the end of the Reptile Room, then met Lemony at the Duchess of Winnipeg's masked ball and died in THAT fire. Holy Shit Y'all.
Whoops, edited for a correction: it's just "snicketsleuth," not "thesnicketsleuth." and @2dawn Spoiler: Spoilerz I was just reading the post about it and now I can't find it, dammit. But, basically, 1) In.. uh, one of the books? Maybe the Carnivorous Carnival or The Slippery Slope? Lemony talks about attending a masked ball thrown by the Duchess of Winnipeg, where he sees Beatrice and tries to warn her of something. 2) In The Unauthorized Autobiography, Lemony gets an invitation to the Duchess of Winnipeg's masked ball. In his coded reply, he says his enemies are hunting him as much as they are hunting the survivors of Monty's reptile collection. (record scratch) So the ball happened after the events of Reptile Room??? We also know from various sources that Lemony was apprehended at that ball, and from The Unauthorized Autobiography that the Duchess' home burned down that night, and we do know that Beatrice ended up dead eventually. :P There are also apparently hints in the author's notes in the "rare edition" of The Bad Beginning* that one of the Baudelaire parents *did* survive the fire and was hidden in a fountain (??), suggesting that the Snicket file's reference to a possible survivor WAS about a Baudelaire parent and not Quigley as the Baudelaire orphans determine. *I didn't know about this until tonight, but the notes are apparently reproduced here?? Have not read them yet.
Spoiler: spoilery spoiling Holy shit that's like...... almost worse ;A; Unless the Duchess had multiple balls, and Beatrice was at an earlier one? And the last ball was the one where Lemony was apprehended?
Dammit, you're gonna make me go looking for the passages in question and I really don't have the time to reread these books!! :P
Ok, here's the relevant passage from (it turns out) The Austere Academy: Spoiler If you've ever dressed up for Halloween or attended a masquerade, you know that there is a certain thrill to wearing a disguise-a thrill that is half excitement and half danger. I once attended one of the famed masked balls hosted by the duchess of Winnipeg, and it was one of the most exciting and dangerous evenings of my life. I was disguised as a bullfighter and slipped into the party while being pursued by the palace guards, who were disguised as scorpions. The moment I entered the Grand Ballroom, I felt as if Lemony Snicket had disappeared. I was wearing clothes I had never worn before-a scarlet cape made of silk and a vest embroidered with gold thread and a skinny black mask-and it made me feel as if I were a different person. And because I felt like a different person, I dared to approach a woman I had been forbidden to approach for the rest of my life. She was alone on the veranda-the word "veranda" is a fancy term for a porch made of polished gray marble-and costumed as a dragonfly, with a glittering green mask and enormous silvery wings. As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I'd been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years. "Beatrice," I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, "Count Olaf is--" I cannot go on. It makes me weep to think of that evening, and of the dark and desperate times that followed, and in the meantime I'm sure you are curious what happened to the Baudelaire orphans and the Quagmire triplets, after dinner that evening at Prufrock Prep.
at this rate i'm going to spend my break going full fucking conspiracy board with pins and yarn. send help.
ooohhhh my god i love the tragic treasure and everything about it (especially because it introduced me to my second favourite bands) i have more onions but i'm not wordsing good right now because sleep deprivation but [sets up a tiny campsite]
Hyperspecific fandom opinion: Beatrice is a void player Spoiler: Comprehensive spoilers She's integral to Lemony's motivations and to the plot, but she's almost completely absent from the main books by virtue of being dead; even when we get the Baudelaires' memories of their mother, her identity as Beatrice is obfuscated until literally the last word of the last page of the last chapter of the last book. "The Beatrice Letters" is... letters TO Beatrice from Lemony, and to Lemony from Beatrice 2.0, with only the very last poem being her words. For Christ's sake, "identity of Beatrice" in The Unauthorized Autobiography index points to the last page, where there's a burnt-through photograph. I MEAN. Yeah.
Headcanon accepted. ...Damn it, now I want to figure out the classpects for everyone else. I feel like Sunny is the breath player cause she just does whatever she wants.
In an appropriately convoluted way to find information, I was going through my email and discovered that I emailed that passage to myself when I was talking to my friend about the book, and that it also included this other passage from soon after: Spoiler: from AA (LATER) But it wasn’t really these small physical details that made the disguise so unconvincing. It was the simple fact that the Baudelaires and the Quagmires were different people, and a hair ribbon, a pair of glasses, and some shoes couldn’t turn them into one another any more than a woman disguised as a dragonfly can actually take wing and escape the disaster awaiting her. Which.. Spoiler: Spoilery theorizing When I read it I assumed the last sentence was just roundaboutly about the Baudelaire mansion fire, but what if it's much more direct? What if it's a reference to dragonfly-costume!Beatrice's inability to escape the masked ball fire?? 0:
i'm seriously considering ordering book 7 (also 9 and 11) off amazon because sweet fuck i've had a hold on an ebook copy from the library for like two weeks and still nothing. and i'm an impatient fuck. this would also have the benefit of completing my collection.
I was on hold for the Unauthorized Autobiography for like two weeks before I gave up and went in search of a local library card. I theoretically understand why library e-book services have to have a limited number of copies of things, but.. WEH. I'm also seriously considering buying copies of ATWQ even though my library has lots of e-books (and audiobooks!*) of them and I can theoretically take them out whenever. I just... I love them... .. mostly unrelatedly, the URL "theoriesofunfortunateevents" is free and i'm Very Tempted to make a side blog. *Oh god now I want to listen to the audiobooks, I bet they would make me even SADDER. BLUE YOU DONT HAVE TIME FOR THIS
yesssss i didn't get around to buying the vile village or anything else, but my library finally came through and i can read the vile village right now! :D i went ahead and placed a hold on the other two books i'm missing, since the first one took so long :P
... ....... my hobby is being extra cruel to fictional characters i like. drawing under the cut Spoiler: past!lemony's no good very bad day that's not actually how i picture esme but drawing is hard. anyway she stole his hat, and his tie, and my dude doesn't like getting his picture taken at the best of times, let alone while handcuffed to things,
read the vile village (which i remembered basically nothing of, so i'm finally entering new territory!) Spoiler: the vile village spoilers - no srsly, there are spoilers baudelaires are on their own now :U also, lemony said something like "this day was a terrible day on the Snicket calendar" (would give actual quote but i already returned the ebook so that i wouldn't forget about it) and i was like welp, guess jacques doesn't survive then, rip. sure enough... at least hector and the quagmires made it out! congrats on not being completely useless, hector.
my stupid ass just finished reading the hostile hospital even though it'll probably be another 2 weeks before i get my ebook of the carnivorous carnival from the library. good job me Spoiler: the hostile hospital 1. the plot thickens 2. it is hilarious that the kid's paper-thin disguises work exactly as well as olaf's paper-thin disguises if not more so 3. getting this far is making me very excited for.... season two of the netflix show.... except... that'll probably show up next year................. pls
library came through for me with the carnivorous carnival quicker than expected! hooray! my thoughts: Spoiler: the carnivorous carnivore spoilers -ahhhh we finally hear about the schism in VFD, which i vaguely remembered beforehand -god dammit olivia couldn't you have grown a spine -....oh boy, if season two really does end up covering books five through nine, that'll be a hell of a cliffhanger for the season finale
i've been idly considering the idea of an ASOUE au where all the extremely secret VFD knowledge is actually ~eldritch secrets~ that fuck up your brain and that's why lemony won't tell the reader any of it. the VFD tattoos are binding sigils because all the legacy VFD families all have weird-ass bloodlines (and that's why they all breed creepy quiet too-smart kids and die young in fires) ... i mean, a few of the bombinating beast scenes in ATWQ are already Lovecraft As Hell.
