#but NONE OF THEM were home the day of the fire. desperate shenanigans ensue.

[whoslaurapalmer]

asoue but one of the lemonberry ice (your choice) dies before the fire

Kam Why Would You Break My Heart Like This!!!!!

it's not that i intended to pick lemony but lemony was the one i immediately had a thought for and i don't know if i have the thoughts to re-puzzle canon together with the absence of bea or bertrand before the fire, SO

well, right off the bat, the books aren't written. barely anyone knows he's really truly dead because they think he's already been dead for some time. lemony is not alive to set the story straight, he's not alive to mourn and remember his friends, he's not alive to help clear his name, he's not alive to reveal secrets about vfd. he's not alive to help babybea reunite with the baudelaires post-canon.

i think canon is different. i have an idea of how it goes but i am concerned it is, assuming too much about certain points. but. i think, if lemony dies for real before the fire, the kids are taken by vfd.

-we know the kids have been photographed (the end pg 107-108, carnivorous carnival pg 141). we know vfd photographs children before they are taken (unauto). we don't know the intended recipient of the photograph, but we know a 'quick-thinking waitress' shenanigans the photograph from being served in the restaurant and into the alley, where lemony is waiting. i think we can say the kids are being watched by vfd (by some form, some faction, of vfd) and that lemony intercepts this particular photograph taken of them. -what we don't know is why the kids weren't taken anytime before the start of the series. -we all also have different ideas of how involved b+b were in vfd after their marriage, but that passage from the end also reveals that beatrice is still involved in vfd work in some way, so let's say b+b were, at the least, Minorly Involved In Fragmentary Plot Machinations, But Definitely At A Distance From The Rest Of VFD. -maybe b+b are the buffer between vfd and their children. -or maybe it was lemony. -maybe vfd has still been watching the kids this whole entire time, just waiting. -maybe lemony has been, when he can, protecting the children from vfd and intercepting a majority of vfd's surveillance of them. -in canon, dewey suggests that the children were taken, just by olaf instead of vfd (penultimate peril pg 178-184). -and if lemony isn't there to intercept vfd's surveillance, maybe here they are taken by vfd instead of olaf.

-do the baudelaires still go to the guardians? hmmmm. -you can make a case that they could still meet monty, re: the debate about if peru was vfd-related, if monty's herpetological society involvement itself connects to vfd -but while we know josephine is in vfd, i have a harder time making a case that she's still involved in vfd at this point in canon. ike's death has shattered her in a way that i think she's hiding not just from the world but from vfd. -but the idea that vfd is shuffling them between the guardians like chaperones...........i DO like that (-mr poe, in the background, constantly trying to find these kids and just narrowly missing them every single time as vfd moves them around: my goodness, this is a problem.) -i don't think this means the kids are immediately like pro-vfd either though, like i think especially going into it when they're older, with sunny, keeps their 'is this a good organization?' moral wondering, even if they might have access to a little more information. -but i also like the idea of kit being their chaperone. -and they would definitely meet jacques as well -- he wouldn't be searching for them. -olaf, though, is definitely still after the kids, and it might even be easier for him to get closer to them, bc he knows how vfd works and the kids are in vfd. maybe even more deaths, bc olaf has Had It with vfd's involvement -oh, some disguise shenanigans, though. they're all using THE SAME DAMN DISGUISE KIT.

-how does it end..................... -i think penultimate peril is even more of a climax. even more, uh, peril. i'm not sure how though.