#bug prison

[beatricebidelaire]

are you willing to swallow butterflies to protect them from bug prison

yes

no

Voting ended onNov 10, 2025

[beatricebidelaire]

if you were a bug in the snicketverse, do you think you would’ve ever been in the bug prison

yes

no

Voting ended onFeb 2, 2025

[beatricebidelaire]

At this point in the dreadful story I am writing, I must interrupt for a moment and describe something that happened to a good friend of mine named Mr. Sirin. Mr. Sirin was a lepidopterist, a word which usually means “a person who studies butterflies.”

In this case, however, the word “lepidopterist” means “a man who was being pursued by angry government officials,” and on the night I am telling you about they were right on his heels. Mr. Sirin looked back to see how close they were—four officers in their bright-pink uniforms, with small flashlights in their left hands and large nets in their right—and realized that in a moment they would catch up, and arrest him and his six favorite butterflies, which were frantically flapping alongside him. Mr. Sirin did not care much if he was captured—he had been in prison four and a half times over the course of his long and complicated life—but he cared very much about the butterflies. He realized that these six delicate insects would undoubtedly perish in bug prison, where poisonous spiders, stinging bees, and other criminals would rip them to shreds. So, as the secret police closed in, Mr. Sirin opened his mouth as wide as he could and swallowed all six butterflies whole, quickly placing them in the dark but safe confines of his empty stomach. It was not a pleasant feeling to have these six insects living inside him, but Mr. Sirin kept them there for three years, eating only the lightest foods served in prison so as not to crush the insects with a clump of broccoli or a baked potato. When his prison sentence was over, Mr. Sirin burped up the grateful butterflies and resumed his lepidoptery work in a community that was much more friendly to scientists and their specimens.

I am telling you this story not just to reveal the courage and imagination of one of my dearest friends, but to help you imagine how Klaus and Sunny felt as they watched Esmé Squalor, disguised as an associate of Dr. Flacutono, walk down the hallway of Heimlich Hospital carrying the long, rusty knife disguised as a surgical tool to be used on Violet. The two youngsters realized that their only chance of finding the Surgical Ward and rescuing their sister was to try and fool this greedy and stiletto-heeled villain, but as they approached her, like Mr. Sirin during his fifth and final prison sentence, the two Baudelaires felt the unpleasant fluttering of butterflies in their stomachs.

-- the hostile hospital

[infinite-magical-recipes]

our goodwill visit to bug prison

so a couple years ago todd and i hit up the new orleans invertebrate correctional facility, aka bug prison, to raise morale. it was good to catch up with my old friends on the inside. here are some pictures of the conditions inside.

this is my old friend louise. maybe. probably. could also be a leaf.

this is phyllis. judging from her tattoos i would guess she’s in a prison plague. kinda worried about her tbh

prison makes you hard. unless you were already hard, like these guys, in which case, as you were.

it’s depressing to see my own people in here sometimes. especially millicent here. millicent is innocent, for the record. that guy bit his own head off

i don’t know if there’s any hope for skip here. he may be pure weevil.

maury, zach, and bobby playing some ball in the yard

terry and tom’s escape attempt

bailey here is kind of a living prison shiv so i’m not sure why the warden lets him in the yard

i’m not really sure what the purpose of this display is. is it some kind of creepy warning. like having heads on stakes on your wall. or is it just supposed to make me hungry.

they take turns singing to the prisoners in solitary.

these are assassin bugs

they’re imprisoned, of course

for car theft

i guess this part of the prison is, like. minimum security.

todd still wouldn’t let me eat anyone tho, which is bullshit

prison yard fight over here, but the guards didn’t bother breaking it up, so i don’t know why todd thinks they would have cared

apparently there’s a juvie ward too

srsly tho someone went and started this one but didn’t finish eating, i couldn’t just have had a bite todd.

was the guard gonna come get me. this guy. i’m not even sure he has a head

but some people do get free.