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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 5 years ago

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Triple the Losers AU - Concept Notes

i wanted there to be 27 but if i added patties and audras that made 27 but then i’d have to add kay bc i love her which would make 28 so 21 it is

so the basic concept for this is “hey guys remember how i doubled the baudelaires and made the best au with movie! and netflix!bauds well we’re doing that with book, miniseries and film losers club”

So, yeah, in this au, the book, miniseries and film Losers are all in the same universe, related, and ready to kill a clown. There is no Chapter Two because these kids bully that clown to death asap.

A friend group of 21 is pretty wild but definitely makes for a pretty great army.

Full list of Losers:

The Denbrough Boys

Isaac Denbrough - film!Bill

An adopted sibling, though he’s never known any family but the Denbroughs and is never considered anything other than the oldest Denbrough boy

Artist who wants to illustrate for his brothers’ books bc he loves them

Gay but in denial. Giant crush on Daniel Hanlon.

Anselm Denbrough - miniseries!Bill

Likes to write fantasy novels as an escape from reality

Fights with Bill about whether fantasy or horror is better which is lowkey a metaphor for them arguing about how to deal with their trauma

William “Bill” Denbrough - book!Bill

Writes horror stories cause he loves psychological analyzation

He prefers to face his fears rather than “escape” from them, causing tension between he and Anselm with how they deal with Georgie’s death

Georgie Denbrough - there is only one Georgie as he literally only exists for like one chapter

Loves his brothers

Dead as fuck, sorry

Stuttering seems to be a family trait during childhood in the Denbrough family that Anselm and Bill are afflicted with, though Bill much more than his older bother. (Isaac also starts stuttering young, which is suspected to be more psychological.) This trait skipped a generation, and thus the Denbrough parents don’t really know enough about how to deal with their sons’ disability.

They’re a very creative family, usually in terms of creative writing, though they’re also pretty skilled in the art department. Sharon Denbrough is a skilled pianist and taught Isaac until recently. The family was never very close, and Bill always had a rocky relationship with his parents, but the family fell apart after the death of Georgie. Isaac and Bill found themselves practically ignored, while Anselm was pretty much yelled at for trying to fix everything. The brothers only managed to maintain their relationship by trying to avenge Georgie by killing this fucking clown.

The Hanscom Boys

Desmond “Des” Hanscom - film!Ben

Would like to go into Investigative Journalism, though he’s also really into Local Histories

Tends to be afraid of the concept of death more than anything else

Has a lot of social anxiety

Auster Hanscom - miniseries!Ben

Super into all forms of writing but mostly poetry, which he loves and kinda obsesses over

Was most affected by not having a father figure around, as Des and Ben didn’t seem to mind

Assumed he was straight for a while but is probably demi

Benjamin “Ben” Hanscom - book!Ben

The Architect, and his love of blueprints and planning has made him the main strategist of the Losers Club

He really doesn’t have many psychological demons so his worst fear is just the mummy he saw in a movie too late at night

Pure baby

The Hanscoms’ father left the family when Arlene was still pregnant with Ben; while the boys never understood why, they sometimes speculate about secret missions, one or both of their parents cheating, government conspiracies, etc. Des and Ben never really minded, as Des was quite the introvert and Ben was close with their mom, but Auster really wished they could have a paternal figure, especially since the boys tend to be shunned for their genetic overweight appearance and he really wished for some kind of acceptance.

The move to Derry was recent, as Arlene managed to find a higher-paying job that could help her support her boys. Ben managed to get himself in trouble with the Bowers Gang, meaning that his brothers, defensive of him, also became targets. But they manage to find friends in the Losers Club, and with the whole gang together, nobody’s going to be able to hurt them... right?

The Marsh Girls

Karen “Karrie” Marsh - film!Bev

Hates her name, thinks it sounds like a middle-aged mom. Goes by Karrie which she thinks sounds cooler (and serves as another Stephen King reference)

Wants to do movie stunts as an adult, is the most daring and bold of the Losers Club, and also probably the physically strongest

Intensely protective of her sisters, especially due to their home situation

Brooke Marsh - miniseries!Bev

The sweetest little angel you will ever meet. Has never done anything wrong in her life

Wants to be a painter and is very artistic. Karrie has shoplifted her paint supplies before

The only one of her sisters to not smoke, as they refuse to let her near cigarettes

Beverly “Bev” Marsh - book!Bev

Technically the half-sister (stepsister?) of her older sisters, and can tell that her Mom doesn’t seem to care for her sisters much. She loves them, though, and won’t stand for people insulting them

Quite the fashion designer, and even though the family is poor, she’s been making sure they don’t look like shit since she could choose her own clothes

Probably the most manipulative of the Losers, though this has its advantages, such as when they need to get out of trouble.

Giant Lesbian, definitely marries Kay McCall

Karrie and Brooke have lived under the hate of their father for a while, due to the fact that he blames them for their mother’s death; Karrie brought home a virus from daycare that infected their mother, weakening her enough that labor with Brooke killed her. Karrie tends to get the most shit for this, mainly because Brooke gets along more with their stepmother, Elfrida. Elfrida married their father only a few months following their mother’s death, mainly due to the fact that Al got her pregnant. The family is quite poor, and the parents work quite a lot, meaning the sisters have gotten pretty good at fending for themselves.

Recently, the girls have started to get more fears about their father than just physical abuse- he’s been acting weird around Karrie and Bev, and while Brooke seems to avoid his eye for the time being, she has been quite hurt by his violent outbursts. Karrie’s secretly been saving up to take her sisters away before he can do anything to them, though she’s not sure how to tell Brooke and Bev, as they don’t even understand what they’re supposed to be afraid of. But while they’re in Derry, they end up finding themselves among the Losers Club, on a mission to save the children of the town by killing a monster that lives in the sewers. That won’t be much of a problem; they have much worse monsters at home.

The Kaspbrak Boys

Chase Kaspbrak - film!Eddie

Somehow simultaneously the most paranoid and most reckless boy in the world

He’s really into analysis and predicting events

Can and Will fight you, but he will be bitching about it the entire time

Otto Kaspbrak - miniserires!Eddie

11, Eddie’s older twin

Incredibly stubborn and snarky, but also the most loyal Loser and the most sincere

Has an interest in mechanics and repair, and when his mom’s not looking he’ll take things apart to find out how they work

Edward “Eddie” Kaspbrak - book!Eddie

11, Otto’s younger twin

Very adaptable and adventurous, though he has a lot of anxiety at times

Special Interest in cars, wants to be a driver as an adult

Able to find direction no matter where they are, and his gift of coordination has helped the Losers numerous times

There will absolutely be a car chase scene where he has to drive

Chase is the only Kaspbrak who really remembers their father, being seven when he died instead of his brothers’ five. He seems to recall them not being so sick back then, though his Mother claims otherwise, and their father being a good, playful man. But he’s not here now, and their mother, Sonia, is paranoid about everything. Her boys are very weak and sick and can’t do much, and she hates that they have such rough, rude friends that must be corrupting them somehow.

The boys, however, are much more adventurous and capable than Sonia believes- especially Chase, who has actually won more than one fight, mostly on behalf of his brothers. As the eldest, Chase believes he has to protect Otto and Eddie, whether it be from a bunch of school bullies, a killer clown in the sewers, or their own mother. Also, Chase and Eddie are gay as hell and Otto is demi-gay as fuck.

The Hanlon Boys

Daniel “Danny” Hanlon - film!Mike

14, the oldest of the Losers

He’s actually the cousin of Orel and Mike; he recently moved in with his aunt and uncle after the death of his parents in a house fire. He’s pretty traumatized from the incident

Wants more than anything to travel and explore the world, meet new people and see everything there is to see, and being stuck in boring, bigoted Derry is pretty much hell for him

He is very protective of his cousins and friends, though, and is the one who believes the most in their ability to triumph over Pennywise

Orel Hanlon - miniseries!Mike

Incredibly excitable and very optimistic, as well as incredibly bookish. As such, he tends to infodump whether people want to hear him or not

Super into cartography, and collects old, antique maps as well as making his own pretty much wherever they go

Really into gruesome horror stuff and doesn’t understand why it scares and/or grosses out other people.

Michael “Mike” Hanlon - book!Mike

Incredibly watchful and steadfast, and the Loser with perhaps the most emotional stability

He’s a lil Historian whose greatest desire is to work for the library and get to read as many books as he wants

Just. really fucking loves his dog

Orel and Mike don’t go into town much, mainly staying on their farm with their loving parents and spending their time with the farm animals; Mike is closest to their watchdog, but Orel loves being among the sheep. In the last few months, their cousin Danny moved in with them, and their relationship is... a bit awkward. Orel is too blunt and Mike is too curious, and they don’t know how to carefully approach the subject of his parents burning to death in front of him without making him feel worse.

It doesn’t help that Danny hates Derry; it’s bigoted, it’s tiny, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and people are dying left and right. However, once his cousins convince him to come hang out with their friends, he ends up bonding with the other Losers of the town, even though they’re all a bunch of weird white kids. And though the Hanlons don’t deal much with town business, they’re ready to join in the fight to stop Pennywise from killing anyone else.

The Tozier Triplets

Reynard “Reynie” Tozier - film!Richie

12, the firstborn of the triplets

Loudmouthed, rude, impulsive and very crass, mainly to hide his crippling self-doubt and fears of being ostracized

Super good at video games and says he wants to be a professional gamer, though honestly he’s just really interested in stand-up comedy

Gay as all fuck

Roderick “Rod” Tozier - minseries!Richie

12, the middle of the triplets

While he’s just as hyperactive as his triplets, he’s a bit more controlled and actually the least raunchy, meaning Reynie and Richie joke that he’s not using his name correctly

Wants to be a voice actor for cartoons like Looney Tunes, and is actually getting decent at impersonating the RoadRunner.

Richard “Richie” Tozier - book!Richie

12, the youngest of the triplets

Pretty wild and uncontrollable, energized as all hell, and makes off-color jokes to piss people off and get attention, though he does have a true heart for his friends

Wants to have his own radio show in the future. Was the first to befriend the Marsh girls, because he and Bev would share cigarettes during recess

Bi as all fuck

The Tozier triplets are a trio of ADHD disasters and nobody in Derry can or will ever forget it. Reynie and Rod tend to “big brother” Richie, meaning they tend to end up slapping him upside the head for saying something insensitive, though sometimes Reynie says something a bit too impulsively as well. They used to do different voices to entertain each other, meaning it’s a bit of an interest for all of them. While Reynie tends to lean more towards comedy, though, Rod wants to be a voice actor for cartoons like Looney Tunes, and Richie hopes to be some kind of radio personality.

Their parents mean well but are often at work, and even at home they don’t quite understand their boys, so the triplets are pretty used to relying on each other. Reynie kinda has the least parental affection, as Rod and Richie tend to get into even more shit than he does, so he kinda falls to the wayside. His isolation tends to manifest in fears of abandonment and loneliness- and a public outing resulting in such, starting when he started to realize that he maybe didn’t like girls as much as he said he did. Rod and Richie, meanwhile, also have vague fears of outing, though Pennywise represents their bisexuality as werewolfism- always transforming in painful and terrifying ways.

The Uris Boys

Mason Uris - film!Stan

Very cautious, but definitely not the Mom friend; he will inform you how shitty your idea is, but will not stop you, and in fact will grab popcorn to watch

Loves studying art history and different art forms, though he doesn’t want to create them himself, just catalogue them. He likes to entertain Isaac and Brooke by “critiquing” their “fabulous” artwork

The only one of his siblings who doesn’t get along with their parents

Peter Uris - miniseries!Stan

12, almost 13

Incredibly logical and has the most anxiety. Is the last one to believe in the clown just because it doesn’t fit into his worldview

While all the boys love birdwatching, he’s the one who’d like to go into it as a profession; he loves ornithology and wants to study birds for the rest of his life

Stanley “Stan” Uris - book!Stan

Loves to have things in order, and doesn’t really know how to interact with people socially, because people don’t act in predictable ways.

Super good at mathematics and hopes to be an engineer or accountant

Has the weirdest sense of humor, which means he is the best

The Urises are one of the few Jewish families in town, and in a bigoted town like Derry, that means they were pretty much outcasted from the getgo. They are all relatively close with each other, in that they’ll argue nonstop but also would die for each other without question. Peter and Stan probably get along the best, as they’ll sit and talk about birds until they pass out, while Mason likes to sit in his room and read his books on famous artists. Mason also has a bit more of a strained relationship with his parents, while his brothers get along with them much better.

The boys refused to believe in Pennywise for the longest time, as they’re all very logical and orderly and “magic alien clown eating kids by turning into their fears” doesn’t exactly fit into their normal worldview. But they’re going to stick by their friends and do their best to protect themselves and the town... and, well, if the way to kill the clown is by bullying him to death, they have a shitton of insults they’ve been saving for a special occasion.

#it #it 2017 #it 2019 #it chapter one #it chapter two #it book #it 1990 #triple the losers au #mine #losers club au #it au

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gellavonhamster · 5 years ago

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beneath the music from a farther room

gen || R the Duchess of Winnipeg, Beatrice Baudelaire, Lemony Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire Jr. || R/Beatrice, mentions of R/Sally Sebald || pre-canon, missing scene, post-canon

ao3 link || originally posted in Russian

(title taken from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that balls were part of her life as long as she could remember.

At first, of course, she didn’t take part in them. At first, she treaded carefully down the corridors barefoot on the shining cold parquet and soft carpet runners, trying not to make a sound, ready to flee at once to some corner as soon as any adult heaved into sight. Moving in quick, quick dashes down the stairs to the mezzanine, where the walls were lined with paintings and antique weapons and the flowerpots were crowding the space by the balustrade. She used to find a hideaway among the plants – a four-year old, she felt like a knight wandering in a fairy-tale forest among those rubber figs and palm-trees – and breathlessly observed the grownups in the hall below. One day, she would think, I won’t be sitting here anymore. I’ll go down to the hall too, in a long dress gleaming with all the colours of the rainbow and in elbow-length gloves. My face will be covered with a mask of feathers and lace but everyone will know it’s me because I’ll be the lady of the house, because they all will have come to present their compliments to me (she didn’t know such expressions back then, naturally, but she was already aware that one day she would become very, very important, and that awareness filled her with happiness and dread at the same time). Everyone will joke and have fun, and the waiters in white suit jackets will serve out champagne, and I will drink champagne too, and no one will forbid me to. And the music will be playing, and everyone will be dancing. For what’s the use dressing up and coming together if nobody’s dancing?

She could have sat like that the whole night, staring at the dancing couples, but every time her disappearance was discovered quickly – far too quickly. The nanny would come – Nelly or Ellie, or perhaps Millie, some simple and sweet name. At one point, when Ramona was already grown-up, it occurred to her that the nanny could have quite possibly had some different name, but she, being a little kid, was allowed to call her by whatever name she could pronounce. Ramona did not remember Nelly’s, or Ellie’s, face, only the way her hands used to smell of jasmine because earlier she bathed Ramona and washed her with jasmine soap. The nanny used to take an already half-asleep Ramona out of her hiding-place, also trying to move as quietly as possible so as not to draw the attention of the people who had gathered below, and carry her back to the nursery, repeating that it was not allowed, miss, you’ve already been told the previous time, your mother won’t be happy.

Ramona would put her head on the nanny’s shoulder, close her eyes, and see men in black tailcoats and women in sparkling veils, and behind her eyelids they would dance and dance and dance.

II.

Ramona was fifteen when she discovered that balls weren’t as much fun as they used to seem from the mezzanine.

She hadn’t been home for about four years and knew that she shouldn’t complain about that: she saw her family much more often than most of the other apprentices anyway. Every time she came home, she felt like the mansion had become smaller, as if after every time she left it was washed and shrunk. First and foremost, that must have been because she was growing (even at the time she was just a little shorter than her mother), but it also might have had something to do with the fact that since one evening in the garden a strange man grabbed her by her ankles and dragged her away from home, she had visited and seen a great many places. And even though hardly anywhere she encountered the same grandeur as at home, Ramona already knew that there were many old mansions in the world, many ballrooms with high ceilings and huge chandeliers, many winter gardens that looked like isles of jungle under a big crystal bowl. The air of magic that once enveloped her home had dissipated. It turned out that the lighting on the first floor was too bright, while on the second floor it was too dim, and that she didn’t even like half of the paintings hanging on the walls.

It also turned out that balls were something completely mundane, and most people did not even really have fun there, just pretended they did. Ramona wove her way between the small groups of guests, nodding cordially to some of them, curtsying a little to the other, and pondered over how all these rich people had arrived here in all their finery not because they wanted to dance or converse, but because they had to discuss one deal or another, find a good match for their children, or suck up to her mother so that she would put in a word for them here and there or agree to finance some project. They made a show of laughing at each other’s jokes but there was no laughter in their eyes. They discussed the opening nights at the theatre, croquet, and politics, but mostly did it to form an opinion of their interlocutors and see if it appeared possible to use them somehow later. The women bore themselves ramrod straight and spoke in unnaturally high-pitched voices. The men uttered each phrase as if they were the only ones in the entire hall who possessed any critical thinking skills, and cast sticky glances at the women. Occasionally Ramona noticed some of them looking at her, which made her feel disgusted and, for some reason, ashamed.

Even champagne was nasty! It was so sour, and made her stomach ache. Truth be told, the beer that she and Lemony and Beatrice sometimes bought using fake documents and drank straight from the bottle passing it around was more to her taste.

Suddenly, someone touched her arm.

“Hey,” a conspiratorial voice whispered right into her ear. “Are you all right?”

Speaking of Beatrice.

Ramona felt herself blush. Beatrice had always had a penchant for invading her friends’ personal space as long as they didn’t object, and the older they got, the more discomfort it posed to Ramona. Fair enough, the word ‘discomfort’ didn’t represent her feelings quite precisely. Part of her revelled in each embrace, each kiss on the cheek, each tangling of fingers. Part of her screamed that it was unbearable because if it kept on happening, Ramona would either fall victim to heart attack or do something that would ruin her friendship with Beatrice once and for all. Or her friendship with Lemony, who was so devotedly, stupidly, and awkwardly in love with Beatrice that it was hardly possible to surpass it.

Just about as stupidly and awkwardly as Ramona was in love with her, too.

“I’m fine,” Ramona assured her. Beatrice frowned. Her long tight dress was sequined, making fabric look like scales, and her loose dark hair was interwoven with green and silver threads. That evening, she was a mermaid. “Not the kind of mermaid to give up her voice for a prince,” she declared to Ramona while Olaf’s parents were taking off their coats and Olaf himself looked over the entrance hall, his face bored and his hands in his pockets. “I’m a proper mermaid that drives the sailors mad with her singing and drags them underwater. Like that!” At this, she leaped at Olaf from the back. He yelled, “You piece of shit!” and tried to shake her off, and his father shouted at the both of them to calm down. Ramona laughed loudly then. Now she looked at how closely the mermaid dress fit Beatrice, her figure already much more feminine than Ramona’s, realized that many of those pompous old pigs must have been ogling her too, and felt an even more helpless kind of rage than when she caught them looking at herself.

“Are you? You’ve got a long face. Are you having a headache?”

“No, it’s just that…” Ramona winced in frustration. She knew that if she tried to explain what was wrong, it would come out as some non-issue rubbish. “It’s so boring! Everyone’s pretending they’re enjoying themselves, but they actually aren’t. As a child, I used to come up there,” she gestured at the mezzanine with a nod, “every time my parents hosted a reception, used to sit there and dream of taking part in all this one day, but in practice…”

“Nothing turned out to be the way you expected it,” Beatrice finished for her.

“Well, yeah.”

The orchestra started playing The Blue Danube. A smile lit up Beatrice’s face.

“You know what,” she spoke slowly. “If they don’t know how to have fun, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Do you want to dance?”

“With you?” Ramona asked, confused. She was not sure if it was appropriate for two ladies to dance together when there were potential male partners galore. Not that even a single one of those partners appealed to her.

“With me! I mean…” Beatrice looked a little shy, which was unusual for her, and suddenly Ramona wondered if Beatrice ever noticed the way Ramona blushes and freezes at her touch, if Beatrice assumed that Ramona must have started to feel burdened by her friendship for some reason. “If you want to, of course.”

Ramona looked around. A number of couples went dancing, but there still were more of the guests who continued standing and discussing dull topics. A single look at them was enough to make her want to hang herself.

And here, against all that, was Beatrice. Bright and fearless Beatrice, who watched her questioningly, and the question seemed to be not only and not so much about the dance.

Ramona thought about Lemony, but the first thing to cross her mind was the following: he wasn’t there.

“I do,” she said resolutely, and held out her hand to Beatrice. “Let’s show them how it’s done.”

They began to waltz, and for a short while, the magic that once had filled that hall came back.

III.

It was curious how it went with scandals, both at the balls and in general. Scandals were not tolerated, yet at the same time they were desired. No one wanted to be caught in the middle of a scandal, but everyone enjoyed watching a scandal involving others. At the balls, scandals were a much more entertaining treat than the performances of the specially invited opera singers or the fireworks in the garden, but no one would dare to admit it out loud.

That evening, the highlight of the ball organized by the Duchess of Winnipeg became her nineteen-year-old daughter, who had a quarrel with her mother in front of everybody – not a very heated quarrel, unfortunately, but still something – and who left the ballroom almost running to disappear on the second floor.

Ramona knew her mother wouldn’t go looking for her anytime soon. She wouldn’t leave the guests for fear of losing her face to an even greater extent; at least one lady of the house ought to stay with them. Officially, Ramona was not the lady of that house yet, not at all, and she was not sure she’d be able to feel like one when the time came. Over the last few years, the ducal mansion had more than shrunk for her – it ceased to be her home. When she heard someone say ‘home’, she thought of a studio apartment she was renting in the City; it was small, but it was her own. And she barely ever thought of herself as of Ramona, the future Duchess of Winnipeg – only as of R, volunteer firefighter, part-time employee of the City Meteorological Centre, and journalist of Daily Punctilio.

The quarrel started exactly with her mother reminding R who she was. At least that was the way it could have seemed to onlookers. In truth, the tension between them emerged already two days before, when R came home – or, rather, to her mother’s residence – for back then R was sincerely happy to finally see her, and allowed herself the kind of candour that was proven to be undue.

“Father would have understood,” she thought wistfully, and pressed the handle of a heavy mahogany door. Clearly, she could not be sure about that. Father died of apoplexy when she was sixteen. Ramona had spent most of her life far from home and, frankly speaking, she knew neither of her parents well. Yet her father had always been gentler than her mother, listened more attentively, let her feel like just a girl (as far as any VFD member was able to feel like just someone) more often than her mother did, and less often – like a heiress of an old family. Moreover, Father himself was an outlier of sorts in the high society: his family was new money, which was openly disdained by many aristocrats, and the only reason they concealed their disdain for his skin colour must have been the fact that racism and xenophobia had come to be considered bad form. Ramona was certain that many of them were hoping that would not last.

With Father, it was… cosy. Calm. Ramona always used to miss him more than Mother, and she cried her eyes out when he passed away, hating herself for not being close to him at that moment. It was his study that Ramona came to when she happened to feel heavy-hearted during her rare visits to Winnipeg. Mother, in most respects practical, forbade changing anything in the study after Father’s death. Every day the help cleaned the dust off the books he would never reread, and off the paperweight and notebooks he would never use again. The telephone on the desk was not disconnected either. Ramona sat down in the armchair with her legs tucked under her, and spent some time sitting at the desk motionlessly, her face hidden in her palms. Then she moved the telephone closer to her, and dialled the number from memory.

After the third dial tone, the answer followed.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Snicket,” Ramona said. She didn’t hope it was not clear from her voice that she had been crying. To be honest, she was not planning to hide that. At least there was something she didn’t have to hide, and someone she didn’t have to hide it from. “Got a minute?”

“Even more than one,” Lemony replied. “How are you?”

“Everything sucks. How are you?”

“Better than could have been, I believe. What’s the matter? If you want to talk about it, of course.”

“L, why would I call you if I didn’t want to talk about it?”

“Sometimes having other people share silence with you is enough. Though this is obviously not an option for a phone call.”

“Obviously,” Ramona agreed. At the other end of the line, her best friend was waiting for her to tell what was plaguing her. She closed her eyes. “It’s no big deal, really. I had a row with maman. Too bad it happened right at the ball, though. We surely use our best efforts to entertain our dear guests, but not to such an extent.”

“She talked to you about marriage again, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Ramona gave a pull at the phone wire, wrapped it around her finger, and released it again. It was weird talking about all that, as it was always weird talking about her problems. She was rich, young – heck, she was good-looking, too, she had a lot of friends, and her childhood had been a tiniest bit more trouble-free than that of most of her volunteer peers. Complaining about her life meant admitting her weakness, just as running away from the ball nearly in tears did. “I know I am actually lucky. Take that boy, for instance, the one Kit is keeping in touch with, what’s his name…”

“Charles?”

“Right. She loves me, L, I know she does. She loves me as much as she can. She told me: I don’t care who you’re having affairs with, that’s just your business, but be so kind as to marry and to bear an heir because that’s the business of the entire duchy. But I don’t want to, you see?” She felt a lump in her throat again. She swallowed hard. “She never cared if I want this title, if I want to become her successor, if I want to join the VFD… I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to…” She stopped short, having caught herself thinking of a crazy thing yet again: what if the phones were being wiretapped? By their side of the Schism, or by the other one? “Can I do the thing I want to once in a lifetime? And could she not start this conversation in the midst of the ball? This time I wasn’t even bored! This time some of the guests even bothered to prepare full-scale fancy-dresses instead of throwing on the first mask they found and a regular evening dress!”

“When you’re back in the City, we’ll host a ball on our own,” Lemony promised. “Everyone shall be wearing fancy-dresses. There will be live music featuring all instruments we find lying around. Ernest will mix some cocktails. Someone will puke from the balcony…”

Ramona giggled.

“I would prefer to avoid the latter.”

“So would I, yet the experience shows that it is sadly impossible to guarantee the absence of this circumstance. By the way, I am totally serious. When are you coming back?”

“On Friday,” Ramona sighed. Two more days in the company of her mother awaited her.

“Excellent. Then we’ll organize a soiree on Saturday. Beatrice and I shall take care of everything.”

“Poor, poor Mr. Snicket,” Ramona said and smiled. “Forced to socialize, sing, and dance for my sake.”

“I have given no promises related to singing,” Lemony pointed out.

“But you’ll have to,” she grinned. She still wanted to cry, but she also wanted to smile. At that moment, in the study still smelling faintly of her father’s cologne, with her friend’s voice on the phone, she felt invincible. “Now tell me what’s new at the office.”

IV.

They must have really thrown a party upon her arrival then. As the years went by, all parties with other volunteers blended in her memory, making up a single endless one. Not the Groundhog Day – more like the Groundhog Night. It was not often that they could gather everyone they wanted to meet in the same place, so when such an opportunity presented itself, they went wild. They used to drink a lot back then, because every single one of them must have already had something they wanted to forget entirely. Ramona suspected that some of them didn’t stop at drinking – it would have been naïve to expect that, taking into account that some departments of their organization experimented with cultivation and use of hallucinogenic mushrooms – but she was not interested in such amusements. Alcohol was enough for her – that, and Father’s old pipe, the only thing she smoked. Besides, in a good company it seemed that even air itself was intoxicating, making one laugh and speak too loudly and do stupid yet harmless things.

And they did have a good company. God, how she loved all of them – not everyone the same, naturally, but each of them at least a bit. The ducal mansion with its jungles of rubber figs and its bad lighting receded into the past, surrendered the title of her home, and passed it not so much to her apartment in the City as to the people she used to spend time with. The balls in the hall with high ceilings paled in comparison to the parties in rented apartments, occasionally at the headquarters, at times – in some shady abandoned buildings. Oh, they were a damn good company indeed, with their shared memories and shared secrets, their diverse talents and confusing relationships. The Bloomsbury Group with daggers under their coats. The Bright Young Things with tattoos on their ankles.

There was a moment that stuck in her mind clearly: it was a very warm May, the smell of bird cherry was hanging in the air, and it was about half past two in the morning. She and Lemony were smoking on the balcony of Monty and Bertrand’s apartment. More precisely, she was smoking Father’s pipe (no matter how many years passed, she always kept thinking of it as of her father’s pipe not her own) while Lemony was standing by and looking at the few stars that were visible in the City. Back then, he didn’t smoke yet – back then, not enough had already happened to make him start smoking, although at times, when someone would mention a town called Stain’d-by-the-Sea, his face would look like he had already seen everything he could in this life, and much more than he ever wished to. The music was already muffled, replaced by conversations. R was feeling dreadfully tired and at the same time full of energy. She wanted to sleep, but she also wanted to dance some more.

“Do you realize that right now, by the way, we’re living the best years of our lives?” she asked Lemony, and he turned around to glance into the room where their friends were. One of the Denouement brothers, Gustav, and Sally were discussing something on the couch, pouring wine from the last remaining bottle into the glasses. Ike and Josephine, who was basically hanging on his neck, were talking about something with Jacques in the doorway. A group consisting of the second Denouement, Monty, and Widdershins were having some lively discussion in the other corner of the room. Olivia was doing a Tarot reading for a drowsily blinking Hector. Bertrand and Beatrice were the only ones still dancing – at the very centre of the room, very slowly, not so much actually dancing as swaying in each other’s arms. Kit, Olaf, Haruki, and Gregor were not in sight; some of them must have been in the kitchen and some in the bathroom. It has been a long time since they’d gathered in such large numbers, and suddenly R thought “And we won’t anymore”, and felt a shiver running down her spine.

“Yes,” Lemony replied pensively. Then the same thought that scared her must have crossed his mind too, because he added, “What shall we do when they’re over?”

She didn’t know the answer to that question then, and later, when those best years were left behind and their company got scattered across the country and on the opposite sides of the barricades, she didn’t know it all the more.

Some things did not change as time went by. The sun kept shining, water was wet, and there were balls being held regularly at the mansion of the Dukes of Winnipeg – the balls that all the neighbourhood elite assembled at and even guests from abroad arrived to, and if one Duchess was replaced by another, that did not mean a discontinuation of the tradition at all. The balls continued to be organized, remaining, as before, a pretty screen to cover the making of deals, hunting for future spouses, striking up an acquaintance with the right people, and, since the title of the Duchess was passed on to Ramona, some other business that half of the guests had no clue about. The other half, which made use of the cluelessness of that one, was the members of the same secret society as the hostess of the party.

The last ball organized by Ramona was marked by an arrest.

Barons and bankers, philanthropists and politicians were staring indignantly, though also with an ill-concealed curiosity, at a man dressed as a bullfighter and at the two policemen holding him down. Two more policemen were standing by. One of them was wearing large sunglasses, which looked absurd even among the people dressed in the most fanciful costumes possible. That was taken much more seriously now than during the times of the previous Duchess, when it used to be enough just to add a half-mask to a regular suit or dress. The current Duchess appreciated creativity, art, and showmanship.

The current Duchess was standing in front of the policemen, a folded fan clasped in her hands.

“Your Grace,” said the inspector, pulling the mask off the person under arrest. “Do you recognize this man?”

She wanted to say yes I do, how could I not recognize him if we first met when we were four years old and have been best friends ever since? What are you doing, let him go immediately, all the accusations against him are fabricated and we can prove it, does it matter who ‘we’ are, soon you’ll know. The real criminal might still be here in the building, he tried to kill the man you’ve captured, he tried to kill the woman this man came to see, he killed her husband, he tried to marry her underage daughter, you got the wrong guy! Let him go immediately and go catch the real one while he hadn’t disappeared into the night!

Lemony Snicket – tired, pale, with a black eye, and a dark drop of blood dried on his lip – met her gaze and shook his head subtly.

“No,” said Ramona, the Duchess of Winnipeg. She did not wince, it was only that her fingers clutched the fan more tightly – it even seemed to her that it cracked. “It’s the first time I see this man.”

“It follows that he arrived to your party without an invitation.”

“It follows that he did.”

“So you deny that this person is Lemony Snicket?”

“Lemony Snicket is dead. I went to his funeral. With all due respect, Inspector,” she let herself smile – benevolently, yet condescendingly, “I’m afraid you are on the wrong track.”

“A further investigation shall indicate whether the track was wrong or not, Your Grace,” Inspector replied. He also let himself smile – respectfully, yet without bothering to hide that he thought her in the wrong. “James, Prescott, search the building. Madison,” he told the officer in sunglasses, “take the suspect away.”

“Yes, Sir,” the officer replied. He handcuffed Lemony and escorted him to the exit. Having walked a considerable distance, the policeman suddenly turned around. He took off his glasses, and Ramona grew cold: she recognized him as one of the volunteers whose photos she was shown a while ago by poor Gustav. It was one of those who had recently defected to the fire-starting side.

Everything, all and everything was going down the tubes.

She saw Mother in her mind’s eye – impeccably looking, regal, calm and icy as ever. It was not that R had never loved her; she just couldn’t find anything in common with her. R didn’t mourn her the way she had mourned her father; she just could not sleep for many nights in a row after her death. R would have given anything for her mother to be there at that moment.

Compose yourself, Mother said in her head. You are facing a problem, so solve it. And make sure everything is proper, I beg you.

Ramona, the Duchess of Winnipeg, took a deep breath and smiled.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “Due to obvious circumstances I am bound to proclaim this evening’s party to be over…”

VI.

“And who’s that?” the girl asked, tapping with a tip of her finger on a cheery young face in a black-and-white picture. The girl’s name was Beatrice Baudelaire, and Ramona kept telling herself that one day she would get used to it. Used to the name of a dead woman that meant so much to her becoming someone else’s. No, it did not rub her the wrong way at all, there was no feeling that this Beatrice was a pretender. It is only in the days of one’s childhood and youth that the whole world seems to be your story only, yours and that of the people surrounding you. As a forty-something you see that you are just one of the multitude of equally background characters, and that there are hundreds and thousands of people sharing your name, your habits, your wounds, and your pain.

She took a closer look at the face that Beatrice was pointing at.

“Oh, that’s Monty. Dr. Montgomery. He was in some of the previous pictures, remember?”

“That’s him? I didn’t recognize him without the moustache.”

“He must be about seventeen here. He didn’t have a moustache then yet,” Ramona smiled nostalgically, looking at the photograph, and through the years young Monty returned her a smile frozen for eternity. She still missed him. There were a lot of people she still missed. “He stopped shaving it… at nineteen, probably. By the time he was twenty, he already had his legendary snake moustache. We keep meaning to put the photos in the right order but we just can’t get around to it.”

Technically, all photos in the album belonged to Sally. The only surviving pictures from R’s personal photo archive were the ones that Olaf enclosed with the letter he made her write as he was pressing her own grandfather’s hunting knife to her throat. “Snicket escaped from the cop shop,” he told her then. Beatrice – that other Beatrice, Beatrice-in-italics – died that night, really died that time, and there seemed to be tears in his eyes though he would have definitely killed Ramona if she so much as mentioned that. “So we’ll lure him over here.” His plan fell through: he underestimated both her inventiveness in terms of experimenting with VFD codes and her hand-to-hand combat skills. Still, the letter reached Lemony together with the photographs, which he gave to his niece, Beatrice the Second, years later. Ramona had already decided to give her a couple more photos that Beatrice would find the most interesting – for example, those of her mother as a child, or of her uncle Jacques, but first they had to wait for Sally to ask which photos it was all right to give away, and Sally was to be back only the day after.

“I take photographs, too,” Beatrice told her, a little shy. “Would you allow me to make a portrait of you, Your Grace?”

“Sure. And please call me Ramona. Or Aunt Ramona, if you wish,” R winked at her.

Beatrice beamed with joy.

“Okay, Aunt Ramona. I was thinking I could take a picture of you in the yard, among the trees.”

“Do not forget that the landscape in the photo must not be easily recognizable, Beatrice,” Lemony commented. He was sitting in an armchair facing them, with a heap of newspapers in his lap. In each paper, R had underlined the headlines and even individual sentences in some articles that she thought to be possible clues in the search for the Baudelaires. “Otherwise, if the pictures get into the wrong hands…”

“Snicket, I am begging you,” Ramona waved him aside. “This kind of trees grows all over the country.”

“No, Mr. Snicket’s right,” Beatrice joined in. “If we take the photo in the yard, then walls or windows or something might get into the frame. We could find some place nearby with no buildings.”

“We will,” Ramona promised, and gripped the girl’s shoulder briefly and lightly. ‘Listen, you stay here for a while, and your uncle and I shall go fetch something, all right? If you have any questions about any other photos, just bookmark the page, and I’ll explain everything when I’m back.”

“Okay,” the girl nodded.

“Great. Snicket, let’s go.”

“Please don’t hit me,” Lemony asked nonchalantly, putting the papers aside. Beatrice giggled, and Lemony smiled a little – faintly, with the very corner of his lips.

“Does she still call you ‘Mr. Snicket’?” Ramona asked him quietly as soon as they went out into the hallway. Lemony shrugged.

“We met relatively recently,” he remarked. “I am not going to hurry her, especially since it has no crucial significance for me how she calls me.”

Liar, Ramona thought. It was literally yesterday that Beatrice met her, and she had no difficulty switching to calling her ‘Aunt’. On the other hand, there was a difference between simply addressing a person in a less official manner and completely accepting a relative who had been evading contact purposefully and for a long time. Lemony was right not to hurry her. The important thing was that they were together.

“If you say so,” Ramona opened the door leading to her and Sally’s bedroom. Their house had nothing on the mansion of the Dukes of Winnipeg that was destroyed by the fire; it was humble, not too spacious, and they got it in such condition that they were already thinking of doing some renovation even though they had only lived in it for a little more than a month. Ramona adored it. “Come in, I have a gift for you.”

“A gift?” Lemony asked. The gift was in plain view – on a stool by the bed, so Lemony noticed it as soon as he peered into the room, and rolled his eyes as if in disapproval, yet clearly only pretending to be dissatisfied. “R, you shouldn’t have…”

“I should,” she interrupted him. “I do not have that many friends left, you know, and you had just mentioned that your favourite accordion had drowned in a swamp. By the way, how did it happen?”

“It’s a long story. I can tell you over dinner, if you’d like,” Lemony ran his fingers over the keys. When he touched musical instruments, his face always became distant and dreamy, as if he was already hearing the music that could be extracted from them. “Really, R, I am grateful to you, but I won’t be able to carry it with me all the time, and we don’t stay anywhere for long these days…”

“Then let it stay here, and you’ll play it when you visit us,” Ramona shrugged. “I am so used to having a whole room full of your stuff close at hand that I feel a little lonely without it.”

“A room for me and a room for Beatrice,” Lemony said, smiling into nowhere. “How long ago that was.”

“So long ago,” she agreed. “We have become museum pieces, Mr. Snicket.”

“Not you, Your Grace. You are alive.”

“So are you,” she reminded him. “Don’t forget it, would you? At least for me. And for her,” she nodded in the direction of the door, of the hallway leading to the room where a living Beatrice Baudelaire was looking at the photos of the people who were long gone.

He kissed her on the forehead – a chaste, brotherly kiss.

“I’ll try to,” he said softly.

They brought the accordion to the living room, and Beatrice put the album aside and ran her hand over the shining lacquered side of the instrument, enraptured.

“Once I used to have a great big house, almost a castle,” Ramona told her, “and I used to give balls there for my acquaintances and associates like my mother before me, and before her my grandmother, and so all the way down to our ancestors who moved here from France.”

Beatrice nodded.

“Mr. Snicket told me about this.”

“What do you think of giving a ball, Beatrice? A really small one, for our own circle. Tomorrow, my wife will be back,” she smiled, feeling the usual mad happiness at the possibility to say this word, ‘wife’. “It will be a surprise for her.”

The girl’s eyes lit up.

“But how do we prepare?”

“I believe we have everything we might need. There are some bottles of wine and lemonade in the cellar, and an ice cream cake in the fridge. As to the music, we have your uncle with his new accordion, and there’s also Sally’s and my record collection. Do you know how to dance, Beatrice?”

“I am not so good at it, to be honest.”

“I shall teach you,” Ramona promised, and took the girl’s hand. “Mr. Snicket, would you play something for us?”

The stately columns and the crystal chandeliers, the palm-tree pots and the carpet runners – all of that belonged to the past now. The present was hard-won, fragile, but despite that, or maybe for that very reason, it was lovely.

The future was unpredictable – save for one thing, perhaps: there would certainly be dancing.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #duchess of winnipeg #beatrice baudelaire #lemony snicket #beatrice snicket #gella talks snicketverse #talk talk talk #my fic #kinda insecure about this one but... anyway

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whoslaurapalmer · 6 years ago

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SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!!! SLIPPERY SLOPE

fair warning, i’m reasonably salty

-i can’t believe i’m watching it. i can’t believe it’s real and it’s here and i’m fucking watching it holy hell -aww......s1 lemony intro callback -hey every time they say ‘klaus and violet’ instead of ‘violet and klaus’ i lose a year off my life, you wanna kill me danhan -just doing the drag chute was i guess more productive than the absolute mess of the sticky substances and while i’m upset to not see it i’m also glad to not see it cause the mental image was disgusting, of course -hey. does this mean no internal struggle with the bread knife. DOES THIS MEAN. NO BREAD KNIFE. -violet’s struggle with the bread knife was one of the stellar moments in slippery slope but what do i know i guess -trymf. -trymf. - “everyone regrets their tattoos” “WE REGRET OURS” i am LIVING for white faced women backstory. give it to me. i wholeheartedly agree with that. -there’s......................kit..................................... -oh. man and woman. right off the bat. there they are. nothing creepy about it. that’s how you wanna play this. that’s. the route you wanted to take here. there they are. -i’m sorry but seeing the dragonfly wings in an actual scene in the episode made me realize how absolutely absurd and stupid it is and i’m. i’m not having it. - “IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE WELL-RESTED BEFORE COMMITTING ARSON” -more! group chanting!! -violet and klaus at the fork was. very interesting. i hope i have more words about that later because. hmmmmmmm. not a bad thing though. just. hmmmmmm. -BABY JAIL -hey you know what??? the snow is beautiful. i’m a sucker for snow scenery. -weren’t all the snow scouts in masks though?????? it’s been a while since i’ve read slippery slope. but quigley was very creepy in that mask here and i really liked it -LEMONY IN SHORTS. LEMONY IN SHORTS -once again that scene with fernald and sunny is distressingly sweet - “we know! we carpooled!” oh..........you guys -i’m????? i guess glad that the carnival gang gets. some sort of distance from the troupe but uh. it’s still implied that they died................ -so what was the point, then -okay kit lighting the fire. was good. i’m here for that. -MRS BASS. MRS BASS -mr poe enjoying being kidnapped oh my god -that actually gives a lot of credibility to the ‘baudelaire fortune was stolen’ theory -i don’t know about fernald helping sunny out here because she is supposed to be doing it on her own because she IS on her own and an adult actually helping is Weird but because it’s fernald it’s.......weirder territory -LEMONY AND THE WEASEL OH MY GOD -he just has a picture of them. -just. my man and a weasel. -he was the marmoset brother though. -I WAS GONNA SAY THEY BETTER BE FIGURATIVE PARENTS LIKE AAAAAAAAAAAA I WAS GOING TO KILL A MAN FOR THAT SECOND THERE. -the reveal of the headquarters being burned. was pretty good. -but the reveal with quigley......i don’t know i mean i had no. excitement about it. it just???? it felt weird, to me. the dialogue in the book was good and it was changed just that little bit in the show to make me. not have the same reaction at all.

-so no sad vfd adult for quigley, huh. -r’s mother died way before the series started but i guess you know what you’re doing, danhan. i guess you know your fucking canon, danhan. do you, danhan? you better. -do you, danhan????? -DID MR POE CALL THEM ICE BEES -i can’t tell if they’re stretching these eps out too much now and adding in too much humor in a section of the series that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to it all that much or if it’s just showing olaf’s increasing mania, like i literally cannot tell -YOUR PARENTS WERE NOT TRAINING YOU FOR VFD BUT WHATEVER -lemony’s. book on maps. lemony’s. book on the accordion. -i had to pause there. i had to take a moment. what are you doing to me. i don’t know if i liked that or not. -you replaced kornbluth and another beatrice mention with this shit about training the kids -”IF THIS WORKS PISTACHIOS FOR EVERYONE” -PISTACHIOS -FOR EVERYONE -even with lemony saying that the man and woman were from vfd point-blank and hearing all these references to the schism the flashback with olaf STILL made it seem like they were playing vfd and the firestarters as two completely separate entities and not THE EXACT SAME ORGANIZATION -THANK. YOU. FOR. VOLUNTEERING. -OKAY I. I STARTED CRYING WHEN SUNNY PUT HER HAIR UP. THERE WERE REAL TEARS IN MY EYES AND I’M STILL NOT OVER THAT. I’M!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA -”she volunteered” okay tears are gone -but at this point they are still......relying on vfd so maybe i can excuse all this??? -but you know what??? no. cause they still had doubts!!! so fuck you! -this is unrelated but i FINALLY realized why richard grant’s voice was so familiar to me. the little vampire. -????? did they set the trap though?????? did they????????? -they uh........really pushed. the super-pro-vfd, will-do-ANYTHING quigley theory, huh. -it just wasn’t one of my favorite theories. for me personally. -yay!!!! the white faced women!!!! left!!!!!! yay!!!!!!! -SO HENCHPERSON JUST LEAVES?????? AND SO DOES THE BALD MAN?????? WHAT THE FUCK -THAT WAS. UH. i didn’t like it. the white faced women?? yes. bald man and henchperson just up and leaving too?????? all of a sudden????? just like that?????????? what the fuck. -hey why does klaus get all the action. why does the camera go to klaus first. why is klaus first on this sled. why are you killing me like this. -the eagles were good though. real good. -rosebud -YOU HAD QUIGLEY GET HELD BACK BY A LARGE BRANCH??????? THAT’S WHAT YOU DID????????????? that’s what you did -that’s how you wanted to play that too, huh. -huh. -i had a lot more rushing water in mind in that scene. -i’m not happy with mr poe and kit just. uh. hanging out. but!!! the fires and the man and woman overlooking them??????? that. was really good. that was good.

-as much as this was........somehow not my vision of slippery slope, i will say the aesthetic was good and there were some vibes in it that i generally liked or didn’t mind -but the changes (in the way of plot events/how things go down) they’re making as little as they are are starting to add up to.....implied bigger changes that........make me feel very uncomfortable and unsatisfied and i don’t know what i’m looking forward to, now

#asoue spoilers #lulu talks about the sad lemon man

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ivegotsomethingtosay · 8 years ago

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A Series of Unfortunate Events (opinion piece)

From Page to Screen to Screen... Again...

Normally, this would be the point in the week where I’d post a movie review, but seeing as nothing very interesting came out this weekend, I decided to try something new. Today, I’ll be looking at both the 2004 movie and recent Netflix TV adaptations of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and seeing how they each hold up against the books on which they’re based. Sure, there’s about a dozen other articles/video essays that I can think of off the top of my head that deal with the same question of “which is better,” but being that I’m such a big fan of the books, I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring, an expression which here means: “write a big long think piece for my blog that nobody reads because I’m bored at work.”

So anyway, there seemed to be a general sigh of relief when Netflix dropped their long-awaited adaptation of the classic 21st century children’s series, which was seen by many as a sort of apology for the crimes committed by the 2004 Jim Carey version. “UGH,” said the collective millennial public, “FINALLY we get a proper adaptation of these books I haven’t picked up in over a decade!” The whole thing felt eerily similar to the reaction against the Star Wars prequels when The Force Awakens came out almost two years ago (holy shit, it’s been almost two years hasn’t it?) The fact is, no matter which side of either debate you stand on, it’s impossible to deny that we’ve backed ourselves into something of a corner when it comes to judging movies/television on its own merits. Save for the occasional original gem, the vast majority of modern entertainment is comprised of re-workings and re-hashes of material that’s previously existed in some form or another, meaning it’s impossible to analyze said material without at least discussing its fidelity to the original source, and close to impossible to not let that influence how you think about it on its own. No, you CAN’T like Episode I because Jar-Jar isn’t nearly as funny a Chewbacca. No, you CAN’T say Game of Thrones is better than the books because Daario’s hair isn’t blue in the TV series (seriously, this is the shit people argue about now-a-days).

And now, it appears not even A Series of Unfortunate Events is safe, which is really *ahem* unfortunate, considering Dan Handler’s 13-part YA saga might be one of the best things to happen to children’s literature since… ever. No, seriously, go back an pick up one of those books. Dust it off and shower yourself with some of with wittiest, most (literally) devastatingly brilliant writing this side of Oscar Wilde. For those who grew up with the Baudelaire orphans, these books were a watershed. Not only did they accomplish the insurmountable task of actually getting us to read on our own when we were 9-years old, but they taught us all the hard lessons about life, death, and morality that the adults were too scared to mention even amongst themselves.

So yeah, of course we were going to get a movie with a $150 million budget once they were selling in the same leagues as Harry Potter. And yeah, of course we were going to get a Netflix series once streaming gave us the opportunity to do long-form storytelling on a large canvas without spending $150 million. Which one of them is better? Neither, if you ask me, but I’d argue that bashing them in relation to each-other and/or in relation to the books isn’t going to get us anywhere. A “Cinema Sins” video is going to take us nowhere on the journey to analyzing great art, or even appreciating it. And if there’s anything to come out of the zeitgeist in the last couple of decades that could clarify as great art, it’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

To start, I want to talk about what each of these adaptations do right. I’ll come right off the bat and say that I love both the show and the movie for many different reasons, and that even though the books will always hold the top spot in my mind, they hold that spot for reasons that go beyond some bullshit like whether Klaus wears glasses or not.

The show, for one, covers a lot of ground. I really despise judging an adaptation on how much they cut out of the source material (more on that later), but there’s something to admire about how closely Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events sticks to the books. Four novels in and it seems like everything on the page has ended up on screen and then some. Adapting for long form television has given the showrunners (one of whom is Handler himself) to actually expand on the story, something rarely seen even in our Game of Thrones age. The argument of whether or not the show “gets the books right” is rendered almost completely irrelevant because it IS the books, just with Neil Patrick Harris. We get to witness all the stuff we’ve been picturing in our mind for years, we get to see the Lucky Smells Lumber Mill come to life, we get to experience going to the movies with Uncle Monty. I think a lot of the reason fans responded so well to the show was because it reflected the books so slavishly, giving us exactly what we asked for by giving us everything we asked for, all at once. It reminded me a lot of the PBS Pride and Prejudice in that it was difficult not to be a fan of the book and not be a fan of the show for no other reason than the show treated the book as a Bible.

The film, on the other hand, is two hours long. Not only that, but it spends those two hours going through the first three novels in the series, something that takes close to six hours in Netflix land. Our automatic instinct is to see this as a fault, but when was the last time you actually watched the movie? Rather, when was the last time you read the first three books? They’re fantastic, sure, but they’re also fantastic books. What enjoys and pleases us sitting with a bulk of paper by a crackling fireplace might not bring us the same joy when sitting in a dark, stuffy room with dozens of other people. One of the big faux pas in all these “which one is better” conversations is a misunderstanding of what different mediums can do and what can be achieved in each. The 2004 film might compress the books, but it illustrates them beautifully. The detail isn’t in how well we get to know each member of Olaf’s troupe, it’s in the little, subtle ways in which they express themselves onscreen. Sure we don’t get to spend hours and hours with Uncle Monty like we would watching the show or reading the books, but with Billy Connolly’s exceptional performance, we feel like we’ve spent hours with him.

The fact is, taken on its own merits, the 2004 Series of Unfortunate Events is a great movie. The aesthetic, the visual storytelling, the writing, and the performances are all so universally fantastic that comparing it to the books feels oddly irrelevant. The word “adaptation” implies some level of interpretation. It implies a level of taking what’s on the page and filtering it through our own personal beliefs and opinions. For all the talk about which one of these versions is “better,” little has been said about the different contexts in which they were made. The general attitude towards the concept of “evil,” which is a big theme in the Series books, was vastly different in 2004 than it is (was?) in 2016. In 2004, the United States had just invaded Iraq. We were still reeling from the single most devastating terrorist attack in human history, and our enemies seemed, at least at the time, very concrete. In the film, there’s a lot more of an emphasis on the idea of “fire” as a weapon. The wreckage of the Baudelaire mansion is shot and treated with the sobriety of a lot of post-911 photography. Jim Carey’s Olaf is significantly more insidious than Neil Patrick Harris’. He gets what we wants through fear mongering and cunning, often fooling nice, reasonably intelligent adults through a series of carefully planned and lethal actions. Much like… you know… a terrorist.

In the Netflix series, however, the enemy isn’t so much “evil” as it is stupidity. Olaf in the show is treated like a complete idiot who just so happens to get his way because literally everyone else is too stupid to know what’s going on. One could argue that while Olaf is the source of the conflict, the real antagonist of the show is Mr. Poe, who, despite “seeming” to care about the kids, constantly places them in harmful, potentially life threatening situations because he thinks he knows better. There isn’t a set enemy here. The enemy, if you can call it that, is ourselves, our own blindness to the reality of our present situation. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s one of the many excuses we gave for electing a fucking James Bond villain into one of the most powerful positions in the world. Donald Trump is an idiot, sure, but he’s an idiot with access to nukes, and *apparently* that’s somehow our fault.

You see what I’m getting at here? Whether intentionally or not, art is always in some way reflecting the world in which its produced, and that’s especially true of Series. One could argue that, simply by consequence of the time it was born into, the Netflix show is closer in tone and aim to what Handler originally intended, but I’m not sure I’d agree with that. Sure, the show is significantly more ironic than the movie, much like the books. It contains much more references to pop culture, classic literature, and the world in which it was written, much like the books. But unlike the books, everything I just said comes off as funny, surreal, and at times even distancing. Watching the Netflix show is like watching an eight-hour long Wes Anderson film. It’s fun, colorful, and WAY more educated than you are, but for those very reasons, its harder to identify with what’s going on up on screen. The books, on the other hand, are deeply involving, deeply dark, and deeply funny. It’s a swirl of contradictions that can really only work properly when you’re reading it off a page. Postmodernism works differently on film than it does in literature. Translating directly from one to the other causes a kind of whiplash that the show suffered from on multiple occasions.

See, this is why I’ll always treasure the books. Specifically the Snicket books, because while I’ve gotten emotionally attached to characters in other stories and novels, Series was able to ignite the imagination in such a specific way, that literally taking it and putting it up on screen automatically lessens the effect. When I was ten, I had no idea what the Squalors’ endlessly large penthouse in Eratz Elevator actually looked like. I had no clue what it would be like to see Hector’s hot-air home in Vile Village. I have only the vivid, mysterious pictures that were painted in my mind, and nothing Netflix or Nickelodeon can conjure up will ever compare to that.

I envy all the kids who are going to grow up watching the Netflix series. I envy all of them who are going to go back and experience the movie as a result. What I do not envy is missing out on one of the better reading experiences of a lifetime in favor of either of those things, or vice versa. There’s an important lesson to be learned from all this: when we pit up art against itself, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to appreciate it on a deeper level. When we breathe a sigh of relief when we get the adaptation we always wanted, we miss out on the chance to challenge, and possibly refine our own points of view. Sometimes, we loose sight of what makes these things so lovable in the first place, and that’s unfortunate.

#a series of unfortunate events #opinion piece

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 5 years ago

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All Those Things They Couldn’t Say - A Runaway Baudelaires AU

{ao3} {tumblr} {masterlist}

Chapter Two - Beatrice and Bertrand make a Grave Error

The Baudelaire children usually didn’t go out on their own. It wasn’t that their parents didn’t trust them, but there had been several instances where they had to drop everything and immediately leave town, and Beatrice and Bertrand were absolutely terrified that one day their children would be too far away for them to pick up, and they’d end up separated, and then somehow the world would explode. But sometimes, if the kids were reasonably cautious, they could take a day to themselves.

Violet was sitting at the edge of the beach, tying back her hair. “Klaus, at what angle are the prevailing currents?”

Klaus pulled a book from the basket, reading aloud from the chart inside. Beside them, Sunny gnawed on a rock, gave it a glare, and then tossed it aside, reaching for one that wasn’t sandstone.

“Of course, we’ll need the right projectile.” Klaus said.

“That’s where Sunny comes in.” Violet said. “How you doing, sweetie?”

Sunny smiled and held up the stone, now perfectly flat. “Asill!” she called, meaning something akin to, “Ready!”

Violet pushed back the picnic basket, and stood, waving the rock in her hand.

“Excuse me, Violet,” Klaus said, “Why are you using your left hand?”

“I’m curious to see if I can throw as far with my left as I can with my right.”

“I thought this was to gather data, though.”

“My invention may need to differentiate between dominant and non-dominant hands.”

“I guess that’s true. Mark the rock.”

“Shit, I almost forgot.” Violet said. She knelt down, opening up the basket, and pulling out some chalk from underneath the canned food. “Here it is.” She drew a large X, and then stood up again and skipped. The three siblings watched as the rock tossed itself across the water and then, after Klaus called out nine skips, Violet handed him her ribbon and dove in.

Sunny cheered as the siblings were splashed. She loved getting wet and messy, though she knew it was a bad thing, as they only had a few clothes at a time. “Luto!” she cheered, meaning, “Get mud on us next!”

“Sunny, no.” Klaus sighed, pulling a dry shirt from the basket to wipe his glasses.

“Ye!” Sunny said, which meant something like, “Sunny, yes!”

Klaus replaced his glasses and looked back to the water, to see Violet emerging several feet away, her hair pressed against her face. She held up the rock, and called, “How far?”

“What?”

“How far?”

“What?”

Violet sighed and swam closer, eventually making her way back onto the sand, now dripping wet. “I said, ‘how far?’” She repeated, handing Klaus the rock.

“Oh.” Klaus considered, absent-mindedly pocketing the stone, and then told her his best guess.

“We’ll need exacts, of course,” Violet said, squeezing her hair, and then shaking like a dog. “We’ll need some kind of measuring device.” She took her ribbon from Klaus, tying her hair back again. “I need a measuring device. Portable and waterproof. Sunny-”

“Gack!” Sunny shouted, pointing ahead. “Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!”

The children looked up; the beach was, indeed, quite foggy, and up ahead, was some sort of figure moving towards them.

Violet immediately tensed up, and grabbed the basket, slamming it shut and flipping the lock. Klaus lifted Sunny, who leaned into his shoulder and squinted her small eyes.

“It only seems scary because of all the mist.” Klaus said.

Violet looked very carefully, and then instantly relaxed. She dropped the basket to the ground, and ran forwards.

“Mother! Father!”

Klaus’s face brightened, and he also ran with his big sister, lifting Sunny higher as she cheered. Out of the mist, Beatrice ran forwards, enveloping her daughter in a tight hug.

“Do we- Father!” Klaus squealed as Bertrand also hugged him, then decided to go the extra mile and spin him and Sunny around. Sunny laughed and threw up her arms as if they were on a ride, while Klaus just said, “Dad! Come on!”

“I assume this isn’t urgent, then?” Violet laughed, as Beatrice let her go and looked her over.

“No. Why are you all wet?”

“I jumped in the water to get a rock.”

“Well, okay. So long as your clothes dry-”

“These will be fine, they’re the right material.”

“Is it time to go already?” Klaus asked. “We only just stopped looking at fish and tide pools and just started skipping rocks.”

“Sorry, Klaus.” Bertrand said, putting him and Sunny down and straightening Sunny’s bonnet. “But the post office is closed for the weekend, which means we can get into the attic if we hurry before the custodians lock the doors.”

“Will Lemon Man send us a telegram?” Violet asked, in a sing-song voice; she’d come up with the half-rhyme when she was eight, to entertain Klaus.

“We hope so. His last message said he should be speaking soon.” Beatrice said, her face lighting up a little.

“And,” Bertrand smiled slightly, “When we get there, we have a surprise for you children.”

“Cake?” Sunny asked, excited.

“No, afraid not.” Bertrand laughed, and he took Klaus’s hand. “Come on, let’s hurry it up before we have to climb through the window.”

Beatrice creaked open the backdoor to the post office, peered inside, and then waved and went in. Violet followed cautiously, holding onto Sunny with one arm and Klaus’s hand with the other. Bertrand took up the rear, glancing behind them every now and again just to make sure they hadn’t been followed.

Violet remembered a few years ago- she’d had to have been ten or eleven- when they had been followed. Beatrice had quietly asked her if she recognized the man in the black hat behind them at the bookstore, and Violet realized he’d been a few tables away at the café, and Klaus muttered that he’d been at the same grocery store. Beatrice and Bertrand had taken them down several aisles of the shop they were in, zig-zagging best they could, before going out into the road, running wildly down several streets until they found a crowd, pushing through it, and then picking a well-populated spot to sleep- a homeless shelter, where thankfully nobody asked questions, and a nice lady taught Violet and Klaus how to play clapping games. But even then, Violet remembered a dread in the pit of her stomach, one that didn’t go away until they were three towns away, and the black-hat man made no further appearance, and Klaus had already forgotten the incident and almost ran away to chase a cat.

She hated that dread, and now she had two siblings to help her parents look after, one of whom had no sense of fear. But at least they weren’t completely helpless; Sunny was quite the biter, and though Klaus was a slower learner than her, he could hold his own in a fight at least long enough for backup to arrive. They could run, they could hide. And they were all on the lookout for followers, anyone they recognized too many times- or sometimes even specific people. Every now and again, Mother or Father would see something in the newspaper, and turn it around and point to someone and warn them that person was an enemy- either from VFD or against, it didn’t matter. They were an enemy to their parents, and therefore the children.

Beatrice directed them away from a room with some noise inside- probably a janitor, making sure everything was clean and locked up- and herded them towards a staircase. There, she signalled them several numbers with her hands- two, fifteen, twenty-seven. The stairs that creaked. Violet went up first, swiftly skipping the steps, while Klaus took a bit longer, watching to make sure Violet skipped the step before doing so himself. Even Sunny fell silent, which was very nice; it had taken them quite some time to convince her that, yes, she had to stop humming or crying or giggling when they needed to be quiet.

Beatrice finally pushed open the door to the attic, and peered in, lighting a candle that lay beside the door. The small room flickered with the dim light, and Violet’s eyes flickered, too, as she saw the old telegrams stored around them.

“These still work.” Beatrice nodded as Violet put Sunny down, reaching again for her ribbon. “Take one apart if you want, but leave at least one working, in case Lemony contacts us.”

“Loco?” Sunny asked, which meant something like, “He knows where we are?”

“He has a… general idea.” Bertrand explained, as Klaus put the basket by the wall and he closed the door. “We never tell anyone exactly where we are, Sunny.”

“But more importantly,” Beatrice knelt by the ground, and her children quickly sat around her, forming a circle with a space left for their father, “Our surprise. Are you ready?”

“Mother, of course we are.” Klaus tried to hide his smile.

“Enough with the theater kid reveal, just tell us.” Violet said.

Beatrice made a pouting face. “What? Too dramatic for you?”

“We’re not babies, Mom.”

“Dis,” Sunny said, which meant, “That’s offensive.”

“Shut up, Sunny, you wanna see, too.”

Bertrand sat inbetween his two youngest children, looking more excited than they were, and said, “Bea, dear, show them what we got.”

Beatrice smiled so, so brightly, and then she reached into her jacket pocket, and whipped out a deck of cards.

The Baudelaires immediately lost their minds.

“Holy shit!” Klaus shouted, forgetting that they should still be quiet and also that he probably shouldn’t swear in front of his parents.

“Oh my God!” Violet started bouncing up and down, a dazzling glee spread across her face. “Oh my God! You got some? We can have some? For a while?”

“Pok!” Sunny screamed, which meant something like, “You’ll teach me to play, right? You said you would!”

Beatrice also bounced slightly, dropping the pack onto the floor in front of Sunny, who immediately grabbed it and bit into the plastic wrap to open it. “Yes! There was some in the convenience store, and since it’s finally warm enough we could ditch one pack of matches, so we have room for these now!”

“I’ll deal!” Klaus took the cards from Sunny, while she continued to bite into the plastic. “What are we playing first?”

“Pesca!” Sunny said. “Go fish!”

“Or,” Beatrice took a card from Klaus, “I could show you some tricks!”

“Yes! Yes!” Violet cheered. She quickly turned to Sunny and said, “Mother’s card tricks are the best. She can make them disappear!”

Sunny gave her a look of disbelief. “Jan,” she said, which meant, “Yeah, right.”

“Well, Sunny,” Beatrice said, showing her the ace of hearts, “If you think so…” Then, with a swish of her hand, the card was gone.

Violet and Klaus clapped, while Bertrand laughed. Sunny, however, widened her eyes in shock, and then she let out a wail.

Beatrice’s face fell. “Oh, no, Sunny, look, I can bring it back!” She waved her hand, and the ace of hearts was in her hand again.

Sunny stopped crying, a look of amazement on her face. “Wow!” she clapped.

“Now,” Bertrand said, “I was thinking about Patience. Klaus, do you want to show Sunny how to play?”

Klaus nodded, spreading out the cards. “See, Sunny, here the symbols don’t matter, but the numbers and colors. You know what numbers to look for, right?”

“Dec!” Sunny said, which meant, “One through Ten!”

“Good. Then after Ten comes the Jack, the Queen, and the King. Now, can you remember them in descending order?”

“Toidi.” “Yes, Klaus, I’m not an idiot.”

Klaus spread out the cards, and they all spread out, calling out cards they thought they could play. This continued for quite some time, to the point where Beatrice had to light a second candle so they could keep playing, and Sunny had to make sure nobody saw her yawn and would make her go to bed.

“Who taught you how to play cards?” Violet asked, after a while.

“My foster mother.” Bertrand said. “Beatrice learned from…”

He trailed off, but Beatrice finished. “From my chaperone.”

They fell silent. Then, Klaus said, “Well, I bet they didn’t think that part of the game would be trying to keep an infant from eating the- Sunny, stop it!”

Sunny put down the queen of spades, huffing. That was enough to brighten the mood again, and Beatrice let out a loud laugh, almost doubling over. “S-Sunny, please- please, they’re not food.”

“Doo,” Sunny said, which meant, “Everything’s food if you eat it.”

“Sunny.” Bertrand laughed.

“God, you’re going to be a disaster when you get older.” Violet giggled, placing a card down.

“Xis,” Sunny huffed, which meant something like, “No, I’m going to be the Queen, so bow to me, peasants.”

“Now, Sunny,” Bertrand chided, “That’s no way to talk to your loyal subjects.”

“Loyal my ass,” Violet snorted. “We’re throwing her down the garbage chute first chance we get. Too much dead weight.”

“Bapa!” “I’ll show you who’s dead weight!”

Sunny launched herself at Violet, barely shaking her balance. Violet, though, flopped on the ground, crying, “Oh no! The Queen has gone mad with power!”

“The Queen is attacking the Royal Scientist!” Klaus shouted, before picking Sunny up and waving her in the air. “Off with her head!”

“Viva la Revolución!” Violet cheered from the floor.

“Now, now,” Beatrice laughed, “Does the Empress have to step in?”

“No, the Empress can go make out with the Emperor.” Klaus said, as he tossed Sunny into the air and caught her again.

“Well, if you insist-” Bertrand said.

“Dad, no! Not in front of the baby!”

“I’m baby!” Sunny cheered, as Klaus tossed her again.

But before they could say any more, they heard a telegram machine start up.

Beatrice immediately leapt to her feet, rushing to the machine that was printing out a small paper for them. Bertrand froze, eyes wide.

“Lemon Man has sent us a telegram!” Klaus said.

Violet didn’t join in his laughter, though, instead inspecting her parents’ faces. Whenever she was present for the receiving of a telegram, her parents always had the same look, a mixture that took her several experiences to decipher. First, in their jumble of instant emotions, was an excitement- whether positive or negative depended on how much of a jam they were in, though her parents made sure that they were never in too much danger to begin with. Second was relief, because it meant Snicket knew where they were and could send them news, though it was always in code. Third was a fear, fear that this would be horrible news, or someone else’s message, telling them that Snicket had been captured and someone was coming for them. Last, and hardest to figure out- in fact, Violet only placed it now, as Beatrice returned with the paper, showing it to Bertrand, who took out a pen to help decode- was a longing. She wondered what the longing was for- for the life they’d left behind, or just for their friend. They’d always seemed very fond of Lemony, whenever they discussed him; they must have been incredibly close.

“He hasn’t used this code in a while.” Beatrice snorted. “Finally remembered it existed.”

“Yeah, he’s gotta stop using Sebald. Too wordy.” Bertrand said.

“First of all, that’s just how Lemony is.” Beatrice said. “Second, bold words coming from ‘attempting a botanical hybrid through the tuberous canopy, which should bring safety to fruition despite its dangers to our associates in utero.’”

“Hell, Bea, you still have that memorized?”

“I’m an actress, dear, memorization is my job.”

“Get a room!” Klaus said, rolling his eyes and bouncing Sunny on his lap, where she had started to eat her bonnet.

“You need any help with that, Mother?” Violet asked, peering over at her parents circling letters and scribbling them at the paper’s edge.

“Thank you, Vi, but I think we’ve got it.” Beatrice said. She got to the last sentence, and said, “Alright, let’s see what our silence knot has for us today.”

Her and Bertrand’s eyes widened, however, as they read the message, and Violet could see a flash of fear. Shit. That wasn’t good news.

“Mother? What does it say?” Klaus asked, his face falling. Slowly, Violet started to pick up the playing cards.

Beatrice scanned the note, as if hoping that it would say something different. Then, quietly, she read.

HURRY. YOU ARE IN DANGER. I CAN KEEP YOU SAFE BUT YOU MUST RETURN TO THE CITY. MAY BE ABLE TO CLEAR YOUR NAMES. BRING ALL ASSOCIATES. O IS NEARBY. -YSK

Violet knew “YSK” was Lemony’s way of signing off- Your Silence Knot, some kind of inside joke they shared- and she knew that O was one of the people they were running from- what was his name again? Omar? But it didn’t matter what she knew; the message chilled her.

“The city?” Klaus’s voice grew quiet. “You said that’s where we were running from.”

“We shouldn’t be there.” Violet said.

Beatrice shut her eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Bertrand was the first one to respond. “Children, we trust Lemony more than anyone else on this planet- except you, of course. If he says…” he trailed off. “God, this is risky.”

“He wouldn’t ask us to do it if it wasn’t important.” Beatrice whimpered- the children had never known their mother to whimper.

“Are we sure it’s him?”

“Nobody else would sign off with YSK, or know our location.”

“How can Olaf be nearby?” Olaf, that was it!

“Which one is Olaf again?” Klaus asked.

Bertrand drew in a sharp breath. Beatrice shook slightly, and said, “He’s… he’s the one we wronged.”

Violet and Klaus went pale, while Sunny just looked up in confusion. “Whazzit?” she asked, but nobody responded.

“Are you… gonna tell us what happened?” Klaus prodded, and Violet elbowed him.

“We… we can discuss that when we’re safe.” Beatrice said. “We’ll have to move quickly. If we catch a train tonight, we should be there by morning.”

“Do you have money?”

“I have enough. We can put Sunny in the basket if someone wears an extra jacket, so we don’t have to pay for her ticket.”

“Sure.” Sunny nodded, excited to do some sneaking.

“Should we really bring the children?” Beatrice asked, glancing towards them.

“Lemony said to bring all associates. Who else could he mean? He must have some kind of plan, right?”

“Maybe he wants us to invite the designated safe people.”

“It would take a while for all your safehouse peeps to show up.” Violet mentioned. Their parents had them all memorize the addresses of places to go if they got separated, but she doubted Lemony would know which houses they were- or, indeed, if the people living there knew they were a safehouse.

Beatrice glanced back down at the telegram, running her hand over the message. Then, quietly, she said, “Do you think he could really clear our names?”

Bertrand met her gaze, and they were clearly asking the same question- do we want him to?

“So,” Violet interrupted, knowing her parents were thinking terrible things and not wanting that to continue for much longer, “Does this mean we get to meet our mysterious Lemony man?”

Beatrice and Bertrand each took a deep breath, and then Bertrand said, “Yes.”

Klaus smiled brightly, and he picked up Sunny. “What are we waiting for, then?”

Beatrice grabbed her husband’s hand, and as the children ran to get all their bags and make sure they had everything, she whispered, “We’re seeing him again.”

“We’re seeing him again.” Bertrand repeated, his voice just as full of hope as hers.

#asoue #asoue netflix #a series of unfortunate events #asoue au #runaway baudelaires au #asoue fanfiction #mine #my fanfic #the bad beginning #all those things they couldn't say

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 6 years ago

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Headcannon for the Quagmires??

idk if this is referring to a specific ask meme but if it’s for the most recent one that’s here and if it’s just a general headcanon question i have several let’s go

The Quagmires also named their children after deceased friends and family.

All the triplets are autistic, but Quigley’s the most obvious, in that he cannot stop infodumping, cannot socially interact with anyone outside his immediate family, and isn’t quite comfortable with physical contact.

The last one can sometimes be a bit of a problem because Duncan and Isadora both love to show physical affection, so sometimes Isadora will run up to Quigley and hug him before realizing that this isn’t Duncan. (On one occasion when they were younger she mistook Duncan for Quigley and just gave him a smile and nod instead of a hug and he spent three hours trying to figure out why she was mad at him.)

One time when they were about seven, Quigley read a driving manual and decided that he knew enough to drive himself, so he and Isadora stole their parents’ car and went into town to get milkshakes. Duncan likes to refer to this incident as “the sole reason I have anxiety.”

Duncan and Quigley used to dress up as each other all the time when they were younger to fool try and prank everybody (they could never quite fool their parents, and Isadora will only make that mistake if she’s in a hurry). However, once they got older, Duncan got tired of the joke, especially since Quigley would sometimes make an innocent mistake while pretending to be his brother that would mortify him.

Duncan and Isadora got their love of writing from their Father, while Quigley’s special interest began when their Mother brought him back a globe from one of her “work trips.” (Following this, he would somehow manage to track down every globe in the house and drag it into his room to try and find different countries. It did not matter where the globe was or how difficult it was to reach, he would somehow get his hands on it.)

Isadora’s goth phase was less “I’m going to dress in dark clothes and listen to death metal because life sucks” and more “holy shit I love this style! and also Lord Byron’s poetry is cool”

in book!canon she never left said goth phase, she just had to dress in Prufrock’s uniform and thus the Baudelaires didn’t know about this.

The Quagmires actually met the Baudelaires when they were toddlers. The reason they never met again, aside from the Baudelaire parents starting to wonder if they even wanted their children in VFD, was because they did not get along at all. Their parents left the room for a minute and when they returned all of them were crying and half the toys had been smashed.

The Quagmire Parents tried to get the kids their own separate rooms when they were about six. The triplets were very excited up until the second the doors closed on their first nights alone, and then they just cried until they were told they could go back to their original room.

They still had those rooms set up just in case they needed somewhere to cool off alone, but they almost always spent the night together up until the fire.

Duncan and Isadora almost died in the fire because when they woke up to smoke they tried to find Quigley, who’d wandered off to the library in the middle of the night, and got caught in the flames. Their Father managed to rescue them and get them out of the house before going back in for their Mother and Quigley.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #duncan quagmire #isadora quagmire #quigley quagmire #the quagmire triplets #asoue books #asoue netflix #mine #ask #vld-potter-pan

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gellavonhamster · 6 years ago

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thoughts on ASOUE Season 3

from someone who remembers the last four books (except for TGG) quite badly - I think I have to mention this at once. Overall I really enjoyed it, but to me, it was a season of bringing everything to the max - an expression which here means "some parts being absolutely perfect but some parts also being completely ruined". More detailed review under the cut.

Things I loved:

Acting. The main kids have developed into really good actors; their performances were outstanding. It is difficult for me to determine how much of Sunny is CGI and how much is actually Presley Smith, but she was as adorable as ever (I LOVED how sweet and pleased her face was when she suggested pushing Olaf overboard). Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes delivered a lot of emotional scenes and showed the inner conflicts faced by the Baudelaires perfectly (also, remember how we speculated about why the Baudelaire siblings never really cry on the show? Well, there was a lot of crying this season and I cried with them, too). The rest of the cast was also splendid. Kitana Turnbull is still nailing it as Carmelita, Lucy Punch is still an amazing Esme, Tony Hale is still a great Jerome. Neil Patrick Harris's performance this season included a number of heartfelt scenes I wouldn't even think the show version of Olaf capable of. Usman Ally's performance, together with additional character development, was more than I could ever wish for Fernald, one of my favourite characters. Really, everyone did great.

I agree with the review that said that in this season, children are finally not overshadowed by adults. The adult characters (Kit, Fernald, Lemony, Dewey) still get more to do than they did in the books, but they do not take up as much screentime as Jacques and Olivia or the Quagmire parents. It is truly the kids (the Baudelaires + Quigley + Fiona) who are in the focus. As it should be.

When I say that something in a book/film/show made me cry, it is often an exaggeration, but I literally wept when Sunny was persuading Violet to leave her in captivity as a spy. Especially when Sunny tied up her hair the way Violet does, and also when she showed that she learned to be brave from Violet. It is my favourite moment of the season.

Quigley. I can't say the Quagmires are my faves, but it's still a pity that the show made Duncan and Isadora (to my mind) pretty bland. Quigley feels like a much more fleshed-out, interesting character than both his siblings combined - brave, resourceful, but also a bit reckless. And he's the only Quagmire who has the right hairstyle (well, at least he looks very much like the Quagmire triplets in the illustrations for the translation I've read).

Fernald and Sunny shared the cutest moments of the season. Yet still - I thought that when Fernald threw the cage off the mountain, he knew it was empty, but even if he did not, it wouldn't be completely out of character for him to sacrifice something he cares about to win Olaf's respect. Loved the Cinderella parallel and how Fernald is a messed-up version of Sunny's fairy godmother. Also when he found out she was poisoned and took her in his arms T_T

The interaction between Fernald and Fiona was exactly what I hoped for, they're ride or die for each other since the very moment they're reunited

Jerome/Charles and Babs/Mrs Bass! I'm choosing to believe both Jerome and Babs survived the fire (I mean, Justice Strauss managed to escape, and she was on the freaking rooftop!) and reunited with their respective love interests. Here for the implication that Charles is now running the lumbermill on his own after Sir fled - maybe it will finally become a better place of employment.

I dreamed of Bea II and Lemony sharing root bear floats and I cannot believe I actually got to have this

Kit and Lemony having some scenes together!

The first shots of the Hotel Denouement... very pretty, very aesthetic

I liked how it is shown that the Denouement brothers still care about one another despite their ideological differences (the way Frank and Ernest are both clearly grieving during the trial!). Another thing I liked was how at first they made it seem like Kit is dating the wicked brother. If I haven't read the books, that would've been a big "holy shit" moment.

The Man with a Beard but No Hair and the Woman with Hair but No Beard were properly menacing, and making their beard and hair essentially the same but upside down was brilliant.

Some of the theories they chose to make true on the show are the ones that I believe to be true as well (e.g. Lemony being the taxi driver in TPP, The Man with a Beard and the Woman with Hair being Olaf's chaperones/guardians, Olaf and Esme having murdered Carmelita's parents).

Lemony carrying around photos of his siblings :(

When Violet closed Olaf's eyes, I cried again.

Things I hated:

I propose we all agree that Ish is lying about being the founder of VFD because he hasn't seen new faces in ages and finally there are some new castaways whom he can bullshit about being more important than he actually was and stroking his ego. It became clear a long time ago that the show doesn't give a damn about the canon timeline, but VFD being that recent does not make sense even in the Netflix-verse. What about so many VFD buildings, the underground repurposed as secret tunnels, the whole city being shaped like the VFD sign? It couldn't have happened that fast. What about Kit saying she hadn't learned to hang glide until she was seven? Does not sound like a regular thing to teach a child. Also it means that All the Wrong Questions cannot be adapted for the screen because then the Netflix-verse would contradict itself. The VFD was introduced as such a huge, omnipresent organization, and in the end it boiled down to, like, a group of too ambitious students letting their teacher fill their heads with nonsense The Secret History-style? Ridiculous.

The only things I liked about the opera flashback was how dashing everyone looked (I think this was Esme's best look in all three seasons) and how happy and careless and relaxed they were while Beatrice was singing. In all other respects it was a trainwreck. I am not upset that on the show it didn't happen when the characters were kids because I do not have a strong opinion on what age everyone was then, and because learning that your friends and your girlfriend killed your parents sounds like a traumatizing experience no matter the age. But that's the thing - on the show, it didn't go down like this. The horror of what happened was downplayed by reducing the number of victims to Olaf's father only, by not mentioning Kit's involvement at all and turning a premeditated murder into manslaughter. And where's Bertrand? Olaf blames both Baudelaires but we are shown that he saw Beatrice and Lemony with the darts. It isn't even implied that Bertrand made the darts himself for this purpose specifically because Esme has the same weapon. And how does it all tie with the masked ball scene in s2? Kit writes Lemony a note saying that "Olaf knows" - of course he does, he fucking saw them! Why did Esme have the sugar bowl with the antidote with her at the opera - was she just casually drinking tea with this rare and precious substance to overdose and gain superpowers? What about the sugar cubes left behind - was there also some regular sugar in the bowl to, idk, make it seem less suspicious? An absolute mess, in my opinion.

To continue the previous point: Bertrand seems like an absolutely unimportant figure, his role minimized to a minute or so on the island, and he deserves better :(

This is small in importance but I really disliked that Kit said that Violet ties up her hair just like her mother while in the books it was her father, no matter whether Kit meant Bertrand or Lemony =/

Also, like. Taking "or she!" from Fiona and giving it to Violet. Didn't like that. Neither did I like Fiona calling Phil Cookie.

IIRC they also gave "It's Herman Melville" to Kit instead of Klaus? Why

Larry was a recurring character who had a lot to do in s1 and 2, yet his death (and a horrible one, he was literally boiled alive) was presented in a quite an offhand way. I'm not saying he should've necessarily stayed alive - in fact, his death fits in very well with the motif of all decent adults eventually getting killed - but, in my view, it should've been given more weight.

As I've already mentioned, I don't remember The End that well, but everything about Ish and drugging the islanders seemed significantly less scary than in the books somehow

The shot of Duncan and Isadora was clearly copy-pasted from TVV... listen, if you're giving them a 100% happy ending, at least do not half-ass it

Things I have mixed feelings about:

I loved the Kitlaf stuff; probably showing that they were together in the opera flashback makes it less of a revelation than in the books, but I thought all their shared moments very moving. I also found it an interesting choice to make each of them recite bits from both poems, thus pointing out that Olaf once was not a stranger to love and romantic poetry and that Kit might share his ideas about "man hands on misery to man". However, I think it's a pity that Netflix eliminated all hints at Olaf possibly being Bea's father. Even if he was not, the possibility of it being true in the light of the Baudelaires still raising Bea with love and care is, to my mind, very important.

Jacquelyn being R... well, we saw that coming. Her mother's death being so recent is another "fuck you" to the canon timeline, but at least it explains why in the previous two seasons nobody called her the duchess - officially, she wasn't one yet. I don't perceive the show as an extension of book canon - to me, it is just one interpretation among many - so this reveal hasn't changed the fact that I imagine R being different from Jacquelyn. On the one hand, I am happy that one of my favourite characters made it into the adaptation (yes, one of my favourite characters is a sum total of comments made by other characters and a possibly fake letter, what of it), but I would've preferred if her portrayal included more of what we know about her from the books, such as her being close to both Lemony and Beatrice.

By the time s3 aired, I had already reconciled myself to the fact that the show version of Kit will be extremely toned down, so this disappointment was expected and therefore not that strong. I think there were some moments in which she actually was more of her book version (recruiting kids to fulfil dangerous tasks like it's nothing special, telling Lemony he should return to VFD), but of course this definitely noble, action-hero, composed Kit who looks forward to becoming a mother and leading a quiet life with Dewie on some island (wait, did they mean the Island?) is significantly less interesting than morally grey and depressed Kit who took part in many dubious or outright sinister plans (such as the Anwhistle Aquatics fire and the murder of Olaf's parents, in which both she was not even involved on the show) and did not seem to care about her baby that much. It is truly ironic that Mr Poe repeatedly accidentally calls her Jacquelyn because show!Kit feels very much like a Jacquelyn 2.0.

My first impression of Fiona was "oh no, they really gave her all the flaws her stepfather had in the books". I ended up liking her because she worked on her behavior and most of the times she was rude it felt like she's just trying too hard to convince everyone, herself included, that she's got this while constantly being unsure and confused on the inside. But her weird rivalry with Violet still rubbed me the wrong way. I'm glad they resolved their issues in the end.

The sugar bowl containing the antidote is an okay choice (timeline inconsistencies aside), but 1) I would've preferred it to stay a mystery, like in the books; 2) I still like the "this bitch empty" theory more.

There was more of VFD being not entirely noble in this season (e.g. the Medusoid Mycelium) but of course it is still a very watered-down version of what this organization was like.

Listen, I'd be lying if I said I hated the happy ending for the Quagmires and the Widdershins. Heck, my favourite post-The End headcanon is that they all (and Hector!) survived the Great Unknown and stuck together as one big family of choice. But what was the point of showing us the Bombinating Beast Great Unknown and, most importantly, having someone mention that it is a metaphor for death if it is not used as such? It is a metaphor, it does not necessarily mean that they literally died, it could just as well mean that the Baudelaires simply never learned what happened to all these people. A wasted opportunity.

I assume the Baudelaires never got separated from Bea in the adaptation (since she does not immediately ask Lemony about them but proceeds, on the contrary, to tell him what happened to them) and the reason she searched for Lemony was simply wishing to get to know her uncle. It's not bad, it fits well in the more optimistic narrative of the show, but the original story is still more interesting.

That's probably all - at least all that comes to my mind at the moment.

On the whole, I think Season 3 and the show in general were rather a good adaptation than a bad one. Most importantly, I think it succeeds in performing what I consider the main function of an adaptation - making the audience interested in the source material. I am sure more people will read ASOUE (and ATWQ, and other Snicketverse books) after watching the show. I am also sure those who will read after watching the show first have a big storm coming.

#asoue spoilers #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #snicketverse #asoue season 3 #talk talk talk #gella talks snicketverse

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