which is your fave henchperson
the hook-handed man
the bald man with the long nose
the henchperson of indeterminate gender
the white-faced women
the wart-faced man
hugo
colette
kevin
d e v o n

No title available
Keni

Kiana Khansmith

oozey mess
occasionally subtle

tannertan36

#extradirty
No title available

No title available
Xuebing Du

JBB: An Artblog!

titsay
Show & Tell
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
Stranger Things
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

blake kathryn
Sade Olutola

seen from Germany

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from China
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from TĂŒrkiye

seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from TĂŒrkiye

seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Canada

seen from TĂŒrkiye
seen from United States
@bewilderedblogger
which is your fave henchperson
the hook-handed man
the bald man with the long nose
the henchperson of indeterminate gender
the white-faced women
the wart-faced man
hugo
colette
kevin
Which Quagmire triplet is the eldest?
Isadora đ
Duncan đ°
Quigley đș
A Series of Unfortunate Events is anarchist propaganda because all of the problems are caused by both capitalist bureaucracy and a weird insistence from everybody with power that âthe rules,â no matter how silly, must be followed.
I mean, partially, yes; for sure. But Daniel Handler has also stated that the series is a direct allegory for antisemitism:Â
âMy fatherâs family fled Germany in 1938 and 1939 and some of them made it and some of them didnât. And so, I grew up with a close-knit group of actually fairly distant relatives who were all survivors of â I mean they werenât all survivors of camps by any means â but they were all survivors of getting out of Germany just in time. And I was fed by stories of how good behavior is not necessarily reward and bad behavior is not necessarily punished, so I think that shaped my world view.â
âI think there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery.â
Something just occurred to me: Count Olaf has been described as an antisemitic caricature, a take on the Smiling Merchant. If ASoUE is a story about kids escaping antisemitic violence, then Olaf is literally Handler saying âantisemitic caricatures keep following us and harassing us and no one listens when we point at him and say heâs a threat to us and those we love.â Recontextualizes a lot of the story tbth
A Series of Unfortunate Events is anarchist propaganda because all of the problems are caused by both capitalist bureaucracy and a weird insistence from everybody with power that âthe rules,â no matter how silly, must be followed.
I mean, partially, yes; for sure. But Daniel Handler has also stated that the series is a direct allegory for antisemitism:Â
âMy fatherâs family fled Germany in 1938 and 1939 and some of them made it and some of them didnât. And so, I grew up with a close-knit group of actually fairly distant relatives who were all survivors of â I mean they werenât all survivors of camps by any means â but they were all survivors of getting out of Germany just in time. And I was fed by stories of how good behavior is not necessarily reward and bad behavior is not necessarily punished, so I think that shaped my world view.â
âI think there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery.â
damn this explains a lot
count olaf? why, thereâs only one of him
The fuck is up with this person trying to make an actual project to represent the characters from series of unfortunate events as Jewish? Iâve read over 5 of books from the series and Iâm pretty fucking sure there is no character that is actually a Jew within the entire fucking story. How delusional do you have to be to slap a specific group of people to a story that isnât even yours or about them for the sake of satisfying your representational needs? If you want a story with Jews so bad go make a fucking story about them and stop trying to push your delusional agenda to other people
You apparently need to work on your critical reading skills. There are mentions of Bânai Mitzvas and Rabbi and Jewish themes throughout the series. And if thatâs not enough, the Baudelaires are a Jewish family as stated by Snicket himself. Most of his characters are Jewish which is not surprising considering the man himself is Jewish.Â
You should instead ask yourself how delusional you have to be to slap a specific group of people to a story that isnât even yours or about you? Why is it that you feel so threatened by having a Jewish story by a Jewish man continue to remain Jewish in itâs television interpretations?Â
And to cut you off at the pass, hereâs an interview where Snicket talks about how the Baudelaires are Jewish and how the entire story plays from Jewish themes.Â
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Jewish-Secrets-of-Lemony-Snicket?offset=1&max=1themes. http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Jewish-Secrets-of-Lemony-Snicket?offset=1&max=1
âf you want a story with Jews so bad go make a fucking story about them and stop trying to push your delusional agenda to other peopleâ
We literally just did and youâre complaining about it
Didnât Daniel Handler literally say the Baudelaires were Jewish, but that some people (i.e. gentiles) might not pick up on it because they donât get the references? Like Iâm pretty sure he said that and that OP is just proving the point.
Halloween Headcanons!
Itâs that time of year!
Carmelita always feels insecure about the amount of candy she gets, and will secretly buy some just for herself.
Klaus refuses to call it Halloween and will only say All Hallowsâ Eve or the Welsh name which he knows of course.
Violetâs costumes are badass. Moving parts, lights, effects, itâs a project she spends all of October working on.
Feel free to add more!
Sunny spends the day after halloween melting down different candies and mixing them into really good tasting goop
I just read your theory about Beatrice surviving the Baudelaire fire. It put a lot of pieces together from the source material that I thought were a little strange but hadn't quite untangled yet. Really exciting to read! My question is, given what is presented in the show, especially the video from the masked ball, and especially that the video includes Uncle Monty, does that conflict with the timeline you presented in your theory at all? Is there a way to reconcile this new material?
Hello, @indiraliveshere! Thank you for your compliments, itâs always appreciated. :-)
The Netflix series has completely reworked the chronology/timeline of the events as they are depicted in the books. Itâs great, but itâs also very different. So as a rule I make it a point NOT to let the show influence my theories on the books, because itâs not applicable.
Yes, Daniel Handler is on board with the show⊠but heâs only ONE of several writers and as recent news have uncovered he has not been invited to write the third and final season. Therefore if he wants to include something in the Netflix show but the other writers donât agree, thereâs not much he can do. The show has very ofteen veered away from the source material when the writers thought it made for a âbetterâ, more streamlined story, with varying degrees of success in execution.
And yeah, the theory about Beatrice surviving the Baudelaire fire would not work in Netflix!verse. It kind of relies entirely on a throwaway line about the Masked Ball of the Duchess of Winnipegg which indicates that the Ball happened AFTER the Baudelaire fire. But in Netflix!verse the Ball happened many years before the Baudelaire orphans were even born.
I expect that in the show, the âsurvivor of the fireâ will turn out to be either:
Quigley, who survived the Quagmire fire
Kit or Lemony, if they were inside the Baudelaire mansion when the fire occurred.
Olaf himself, who ordered someone else to set the fire from afar while he looked for something/someone inside the mansion.
In the books itâs never truly confirmed to whom the Snicket file was referring. The Baudelaire orphans forget this mystery entirely because they probably believe itâs Quigley, but thereâs no evidence that the Snicket file said that. The Snicket file was filed under the âBaudelaireâ section, thereâs zero reason to believe it referred to the Quagmire case. Jacques came across Quigley only by accident, and even if he had update the file with this information, he would not have spoken of his survival in such uncertain, speculative terms.
GUYS GUYS GUYS NEW THEORY
You know how the ASOUE Netflix Series is sometimes kinda different from the books?
Well, do you remember (spoilers) THIS part of The Beatrice Letters?
What if the show is ASOUE but after Beatrice caught up with Lemony to tell him about the parts he missed?
[this is probably really dumb but Iâm also super tired so]
okay real talk what kinda benders (like. air, water, earth, fire) would the whole cast of characters be
(olaf would definitely be fire but what about the others???)
I actually think Olaf would be a nonbender from southern water tribe whos bender parents were imprisoned. He leaves and finds Lulu who uses her bending (probably water) to make people think shes psychic by using it to operate panels for a light show like she does in the books. âSees the futureâ in a basin of water not a crystal ball.
Violet I could see being an airbender bc of her flexible thinking but would also fit right in with that earth nation inventor. But probably air bender. Whereas Klaus is more straightforward and I think would be an earthbender. Sunny is stubborn so I could see her being earth as well but I could also see fire.
I could see Duncan and Isadora being really skilled nonbenders like Tai Lee/Sokka/Mai. But Quigley maybe air bender bc hes more of a nomad.
Carmelita would be a blood bender which is why Esme (Earth or Fire nation upperclass) and Olaf would adopt her.
my mom was talking about how she didnât like a series of unfortunate events that much because it falls into the âadults are stupidâ trope which she doesnât think is realistic and i⊠really just donât know how to explain to her that the point isnât that adults are stupid, itâs that children donât get listened to. some of the adults in the series are actually very smart, their problem is that even the good and decent adults in the series seem to staunchly refuse to believe the baudelaire children are just as smart as they are, or that they may know what theyâre talking about, out of the sheer fact that the baudelaire children are children. it isnât always a story of âadults are stupid, kids are smart, kids rule, adults suck,â itâs a story of âchildren are often mistreated or taken advantage of or at the very least condescended to, and donât get their voices heard because adults donât trust them enough to validate a child saying they are in an unfair or even abusive situationâ
Le Masque: Why Count Olaf Isnât What You Think He Is
Firstly, let me say that I understand why a lot of people are reading Count Olaf as a Jewish-coded villainâI really do. It makes sense that a greedy bad guy with a prominent, pointy noise is going to raise some red flags in our community, and in any other instance, I would probably agree with the accusation. However, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a special case, in that itâs drawing on a very specific, yet slightly more obscure, trope with which most people arenât likely to be intimately familiar. I only picked up on it myself because I took four intensive semesters of both the History of Theatre and Theatrical Text and Theory in college from a pair of professors who happened to also be the Head of Dramaturgy and the Theatre Literary Director of the American Repertory Theatre, and they drilled these concepts into my teenage brain at the exact time that I discovered the works of Lemony Snicket.Â
Okay, so letâs start out by stating the obvious:Â
A Series of Unfortunate Events is absolutely packed with literary and cultural references. Nearly everything in the series is an homage or allusion to something else, whether itâs a snake named after Virginia Woolf or the true crime saga of Claus and Sunny Von BĂŒlow (Inverse has a pretty solid list of all the references from the first four books, if youâre interested).Â
Of course, the Baudelaire children get their surname from French poet Charles Baudelaire, whereas Count Olaf gets his name from a character in a story by Baudelaireâs contemporary, ThĂ©ophile Gautier.Â
Now, itâs important to note that Baudelaire and Gautier also wrote criticism in addition to penning their own works. Beyond poetry, Baudelaire was a renowned art critic, and Gautier wrote both artistic and theatrical criticism. So it should come as no surprise that both authors were also massive fanboys of other artists, most importantly, a guy called Antoine Watteau, who was an early-18th Century French painter. Watteau was famous for his paintings of stock characters from Commedia dellâarte (a 16th Century form of theatre from Italy characterized by masked types, some of which, like the harlequin, still hold meaning today):
Itâs possible you have seen these images before; or perhaps not, but regardless, Baudelaire and Gautier could not get enough of this stuff. As noted in the Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time by Mary D. Sheriff:
A group of romantic writers including Arsene Houssaye, ThĂ©ophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval, and ThĂ©odore de Banville used Watteau and other rococo artistsâ paintings as the source of inspiration for poems and prose created only for their beauty. Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt continued this tradition of art for artâs sake through the 1860s. Within this tradition Watteau occupied a cultlike status, and a whole iconography grew around the artistâs life, the subjects he painted, and the lost world of aristocratic refinement his works evoked. Watteau was not only revived, but also mythologized as a melancholy genius.Â
In other words, Baudelaire and Gautier were dropping Watteau and Commedia dellâarte references all over the place as an homage to fucking aesthetic. In Baudelaireâs poem Les Phares, Watteau gets the following nod:
Watteau, carnival where the loves of many famous hearts Flutter capriciously like butterflies with gaudy wings; Cool, airy settings where the candelabrasâ light Touches with madness the couples whirling in the dance
His piece A Heroic Death is a subversion of the stock fool character in Commedia dellâarte. As Ainslie Armstrong McLees writes in Baudelaireâs Argot Plastique: Poetic Caricature and Modernism:Â
Baudelaire, embracing a popular art formâcaricatureâas a model for poetry, drew upon the traditions from which it arose, modifying them and molding them for his use.Â
Meanwhile, you have Gautier decrying the lack of respect for Commedia dellâarte in his theatrical criticism. To quote Helen Elizabeth Patchâs book The Dramatic Criticism of ThĂ©ophile Gautier:
When thoroughly disgusted by the plays offered in the literary theaters of Paris, Gautier turns his backupon them and seeks refuge in the scorned pantomimes. Because of its illusion, pantomime is in Gautierâs eyes a serious art-form, too much neglected by his serious and prosaic contemporaries. He has already recognized as art the Italian comedy-masks as they appeared in the Commedia dell'arteâŠ.The old mask-characters, says Gautier, form just the medium necessary to pass from reality to the realm of illusion. They lend the perspective essential to the portrayal of serious themes without the evocation of daily problems and cares.
Then he goes off and writes a novel called Captain Fracasse about a destitute Baron who joins a travelling Commedia theatre troupe, because hey, why not.Â
Okay, so now that we have established the connection between Baudelaire, Gautier, and Commmedia dellâarte, lets examine a little bit more about the latter.
As mentioned, itâs a form of theatre based on stock characters and recognizable tropesâsomething which is actually really prevalent in A Series of Unfortunate Events. In Kendra Magnussonâs article Lemony Snicketâs A Series of Unfortunate Events: Daniel Handler and Marketing the Author, itâs noted thatÂ
As one adult/scholar argued [about A Series of Unfortunate Events], even âthe critical reader is hardly able to distinguish one book from another.â Reviewing the promotional material and the books themselves, Bruce Butt deduces that the series âveers precariously close to the exploitation of a young readerâs willingness to hear the same gag again and again (and again).â Further, he âdoubt[s] that this is a device that we should applaud,â as it is âan easy way to satisfy undemanding readersâ. This characterization of young readers as unchallenging, exploitable consumers probably overestimates their vulnerability, while underestimating SoUEâs cross-over appeal. Countless readers, young and old, experience pleasure in the repetition of a familiar gag, and have done so for centuries. For example, the narrative conventions of commedia dellâarteâa theatrical genre dating back to sixteenth-century Italyâbuild entirely upon the repetition of familiar gags by the same stock characters. Not only did the genre sustain its popularity for centuries, but it is also now generally considered a high art form. Potentially tedious repetition, even when directed at a young audience, can also serve important narrativistic functions.
Basically, A Series of Unfortunate Events knowingly (and often mockingly)Â employs the the Commedia dellâarte model as a narrative.Â
Now, when it comes to characters in Commedia dellâarte, there are three main branches: The Iinnamorati (lovers), the Zanni (clowns/servants), and the Vecchi (the villains). The primary Vecchi are Pantalone (a powerful and wealthy man who is also incredibly greedy), Il Dottore (a pompous windbag who thinks heâs more intelligent than he is and is jealous of Pantalone), and Il Capitano (a bombastic braggert who intimidates everyone and wears overly elaborate clothes).Â
If you take the greed, the pompousness, the jealousy, the bragging, and the elaborate costuming and roll them into one, you essentially get Count Olaf, and this translates into his looks as well as his characterization. Â
This is what Pantalone looks looks like:Â
It seems very evident to me that Count Olaf is actually fashioned to look like Pantalone and not a Jewish stereotype.Â
Now, I know what youâre thinking: âWell, if Pantalone is a miserly character with a hooked nose, whoâs to say heâs not an antisemitic caricature himself?âÂ
Good question! Well, we know Pantalone isnât meant to be a Jew because in Commedia dellâarte, itâs not the Italians, but the Levantini who are the Jewish caricatures (can also sometimes be Arabs or Armenians). The Levantini are always foreign outsiders, whereas Pantalone is an old money Venetian. Also, if you read Robert Melziâs work, youâll find that Jews are very clearly labelled (and oft mocked) in Italian dramas of the period, and that their Jewishness or foreignness is always a point to be mentioned, meaning that subtle coding wasnât needed or used at the time. In other words, itâs basically the âI canât have committed the crime because I was out committing another crimeâ defense.Â
So, there we have it. My argument for why Count Olaf is does not have anything to do with Jewishness apart from the fact that he was created by a Jewish author. Instead, heâs a reference to Baudelair and Gautierâs references to Watteauâs references to Commedia dellâarte. A reference to a reference to a reference to a reference. Because thatâs Lemony Snicket for you.
I am not Jewish and have not read or seen the series, but ultimately if a reference is so utterly obscure that the only one most people get instead is an offensive one, does it really matter?
(Hint: it doesnât)
And tbh I had to roll my eyes at how detailed this got into literary theory bc come on, how is the average watcher going to know this? Itâs almost blaming the fact people are offended on not knowing enough about theatre and literature. Meanwhile the image still relies on something many people for good reason associate with antisemitism. And tbh a reference that doesnât look entirely non-antisemitic anyway. Honestly, really with all this?
I mean, when you have other posts accusing a very proudly, openly Jewish author of internalized anti-Semitism over a misunderstanding, then yes, REALLY.Â
ASOUE is chock full of obscure references people donât get, so why should this one be any different? Did people get that Aunt Josephine was a reference to a short story by Franz Kafka? Did people get that the aliases Violet and Klaus use in the Carnivorous Carnival were a reference a David Cronenberg movie? Did people get that the name of the hospital where Sunny is born is named after the creator of the contraceptive pill? Â
I am Jewish. My blog is 90% devoted to calling out anti-Semitism. But Iâm not going to sit here and let people accuse Daniel Handler (who literally cannot shut up about how Jewish both he and his stories are) of effectively being a self-hating Jew because they didnât understand his intentions.Â
Like, there is so much anti-Semitism in fiction that we need to tackle, and focusing on Handler and Count Olaf is such a waste of time. Itâs detrimental to our struggle of conquering anti-Jewish representations, l I wrote this post because as a member of the Tumblr Jewish community, I felt strongly that our attentions and efforts were best placed elsewhere.Â
So again, YES REALLY.
The adults of Unfortunate Events are NOT stupid.
Iâve seen several people complain that the adults of A Series of Unfortunate Events are âtoo stupidâ and that it damages the story. Please allow me to clarify something:
No adults in ASOUE is stupid. 100% of them are willfully ignorant, and itâs an important distinction.
Justice Strauss is too timid and needy to critically think about the red flags around her.
Mr. Poe cares more about his job than the people it affects.
Uncle Monty is so self-involved that he assumes that Stephano is after him.
Aunt Josephine is simply too afraid to consider the idea that terrible things may be nearby.
This is not a story of âAdults are dumbâ. It is a story about how people can contribute to evil and cruelty simply by being passive or refusing to confront it.
âThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.â - Edmund Burke
That is what the series is about. Itâs an important distinction. The Baudelaires do not suffer from random fools that happen to be near them. The Baudelaire Orphans are receiving the sum total of the failings of society crashing upon them.
With my second read of ASOUE Iâve been trying to determine how many days/months the series covers. I pieced together this timeline based on how much time the Baudelaires spend with each guardian (with approximately 5-7 days between each to account for the time Mr. Poe spends locating a new guardian), and how much time they spend on the run after Book 7.
The number of days beneath the title of each book indicates how many days that book covers. Numbers in italics are approximations, numbers in bold are precise calculations based on the events of the books.
Book 1: 10 days (approximately)
âYouâve only been there a few days.â Mr. Poe
âFriday, the day of the performance, was only a few days off.â
Book 2: 10 days
âIn ten days we leave for Peru.â Uncle Monty
Book 3: 7 days
âHurricane Herman is expected to arrive in town in a week.â Cabdriver
Book 4: 16 days (approximately)
âAfter a few days of tearing the bark of the trees, the debarkers were put back in their corner.â
âAfter a few day of sawing, Foreman Flacutono ordered Phil to start up the machine.â
The Baudelaires are at Lucky Smells for three stages of the logging process, each about 5 days.
Book 5: 21 days (approximately)
âSo they were quite distressed on Friday when the Quagmires informed them that Prufrock prep did not have weekends.â
âThe Baudelaires could never remember exactly what day it was, so repetitive was their schedule.â
âThis made a grand total of nine S.O.R.E. sessions.â
Itâs hard to pin down how long the Baudelaires were at Prufrock Prep. My guess is between two to three weeks.
Book 6: 7 days (approximately)
âAnd, for the Baudelaire orphans, their first few days with the Squalors were one of the most mixed bags they had yet encountered.â
In addition to the first few days they spend with the Squalors, the Baudelaires spend one day searching for Count Olaf in the apartment and then one day at the In Auction.
Book 7: 4 days
âI found [Isadoraâs first couplet] today.â Hector (first day)
âAre you forgetting how many chores we have ahead of us today?â Hector (second day)
âWe will burn Count Olaf at the stake right after breakfast.â (third day)
âWe canât simply burn people at the stake whenever we want ⊠How about tomorrow afternoon?â (fourth day)
Book 8: 3 days
âIt was night, and after working all day in the Library of Records, the Baudelaire orphans had made themselves as comfortable as they could.â (first day)
âIn the morning ⊠they walked to the completed half of Heimlich Hospital.â (second day)
âToday is a very important day in the history of the hospital. In precisely one hour, a doctor here will perform the worldâs first cranioectomy on a fourteen-year-old girl.â Mattathias (third day)
Book 9: 2 days
âAt last the sun rose ⊠The three children watched the caravan slowly fill with light.â (first day)
âFirst thing tomorrow morning, Madame Lulu will consult her crystal ball again, and tell me where the Baudelaires are.â Olaf (second day)
Book 10: 2 days
âIn the very early hours of the morning ⊠the youngest Baudelaire found herself struggling.â (first day)
âThe two white-faced women were standing just outside their tent and stretching in the morning sun.â (second day)
Book 11: 2 days
âTonight, the only dessert we have is gum.â Phil (first day)
âWe have to get back to the Hotel Denouement before Thursday, and itâs Monday already!â Esme (second day)
Book 12: 2 days
âI wish we had more time to talk, but itâs already Tuesday.â Kit (first day)
âBy sunset the hotel and all the other buildings in the city were a distant, far-away blur.â (day two)
Book 13: 7 days (approximately)
âThe following morning, the only things the Baudelaires had seen were the quiet, still surface of the sea and the gray gloom in the sky.â
âAt the top of the slope was an outrigger ⊠which looked nearly finished, as if Decision Day were arriving soon.â
âThe days passed, and the Island remained a safe if bland place for the siblings.â
Chapter 14: 1 year
âBecause no castaways had arrived in the year, they had little news of the world.â
I saw a post on 667 that offhandedly mentioned how some of Olafâs disguises use peopleâs social standards against them in order to work and now that Iâm thinking about it, itâs so true. Like we know that Captain Sham is Olaf, we know that Genghis is Olaf, we know that Gunther is Olaf, because weâre seeing the events from the kidsâ viewpoint, but imagine youâre the oblivious but well-meaning adult in this situation. Imagine you donât know itâs Olaf, you just see a disabled sea captain, a gym teacher from a religious minority, or a foreign immigrant who canât speak English. Your adopted kids start acting rude towards this person and insisting you get rid of them. Your immediate reaction isnât going to be âyes I agreeâ. Itâs going to be âwow these are some shitty kidsâ. AND THATâS ALWAYS HOW IT WORKS IN THE BOOKS. Like Jerome gives them all a talking to about not being xenophobic and Josephine canât believe theyâd argue with a man who only has one eye and Mr Poe seems genuinely shocked that the kids would be prejudiced towards Coach Genghis.
Therein lies the genius. Olafâs not just a jerk, heâs a jerk who exploits other peopleâs desire to not be jerks. And in doing so, he discredits the Baudelaires by making them look like jerks.
Iâm not even trying to make a political point here, Iâm just amazed by the fact that Iâm always discovering new layers to Olafâs shittiness and itâs absolutely mystifying.
Did Mr. Poe forge the Baudelaire parentsâ last will and testament?
Stranger things have happened. In fact, Lemony Snicket seems to imply the very thing.
On the day Mr. Poe came to tell the Baudelaire orphans of their parentsâ death, the banker was suspected of hiding something in his top hat, and Violetâs suspicion that he was a dangerous figure in their lives is heavily analyzed in the text:
p.5 She felt the slender, smooth stone in her left hand, which she had been about to try to skip as far as she could. She had a sudden thought to throw it at the figure, because it seemed to frightening. Please see my note on page 7. [The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition, Notes]
p.7 Violet, with some embarrassment, felt the stone in her left hand and was glad she  had not thrown it at Mr. Poe. Please see my note to pages 9-10. [The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition, Notes]
pp.9-10 âŠViolet had to drop the stone she was holding. Dropping a stone you had been thinking about throwing at someone might mean that you believe violence to be an immoral and ineffective way of solving problems, which instead increases the amount of strife, turmoil, and bruises in the world, which in turn only encourages other people to pick up stones. Tomorrow afternoon I am interviewing a semi-retired amateur geologist to see if this dropped stone is the same as the one Violet picks up at her second visit to Briny Beach. [The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition, Notes]
But what would Mr. Poe have hidden in his top hat? Well, letâs ask the guy who directly benefited from the Baudelaire parentsâ death and the subsequent handling of their estate:
âNo,â Olaf said with another frown. âThere was some argument about his name, actually, as a baby adopted by his orphaned children also bore the same name.â âBertrand,â Omeros said. âNo,â Olaf said, and frowned yet another time. âThe adoption papers were hidden in the hat of a banker who had been promoted to Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs.â âMr. Poe?â asked Sadie. âYes, â Olaf said with a scowl, âalthough at the time he was better known under his stage name. But Iâm not here to discuss the past. [The End, Chapter Eleven]
Was Mr. Poe hiding the original will from the Baudelaire orphans? Did he forge a new one so they would end up in the claws of their parentsâ mortal enemy?
No. That would be crazy, right? But there is a story there. Find out more after the cut.
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