Wildest Speculation Contest

[Christmas Chief]

This contest is designed to encourage your creativity and afford you an opportunity to express your wildest thoughts on what might happen in Lemony Snicket’s upcoming series All The Wrong Questions. Two chapters have already been released and posted on 667, and you can find those here in the Wretchedly Wrong Questions board. That said, some recommendations for submitting entries:

Guidelines
Drawing from evidence provided by Snicketmail, interviews, articles, and chapter releases, concoct a theory which at first glance appears logical, but is in actuality ridiculous. Alternatively, concoct a theory which at first glance appears illogical, but is in actuality quite sensible.

Entries should be formatted thusly:

Theory:
Evidence:

All entries are due via PM to Sherry Ann (sherryann) by 11:59 pm EST (GMT -5) June 22. All entries will be posted here Sunday June 24, and a winner will be declared the same day.

[Dante]

I've submitted a theory. I hope the rest of you will, too! I really want to see what you can come up with.

[Christmas Chief]

Remember, everyone, three days left to submit a theory! There is still time to put your ideas in writing and look back upon them later as works of genius, comedy, or the might-have-been.

[Christmas Chief]

There was a single entrant for this contest, so I don't think anyone will be surprised to see that the winner is ...




Dante!

Congratulations! Read his winning theory below.

~~~

Theory: Stain’d-by-the-Sea will become the island from The End.
Evidence:
If there’s one thing Lemony Snicket has taught us, it’s to expect the unexpected. Who would have thought that Fiona’s long-lost brother could be Count Olaf’s hook-handed associate? Who would have thought that the sinister duo would turn out to be the other judges of the High Court? And who would have thought the Baudelaire parents once governed an island of castaways? I propose that, in All The Wrong Questions, Lemony Snicket is preparing us for another great reversal: That the fading town we’ve been introduced to as Stain’d-by-the-Sea will become the legendary island of castaways that The End is set in. My evidence for this falls into two categories: Why, and how. Why should we think this, and how would it be achieved?

To begin with how, well, we’ve already been given sufficient geographical information to correlate Stain’d and the island. The island is no more than two days’ sailing from the city; we know this from the beginning of The End, in which Chapter One explicitly takes place the day after burning the Hotel Denouement (which is on the city outskirts), and by the morning after that, the Baudelaires have arrived on the coastal shelf. This doesn’t take account of how poorly three children with large spatulas can row, their ability to navigate, or how strongly the currents moved them around, so it’s entirely feasible for the travel time to be a lot less. If we consider Chapter Two of Who Could That Be At This Hour?, we also find Lemony and S. Theodora Markson travelling from the city to reach Stain’d, and it is described in terms clearly showing that the journey is a long one: Lemony “watched the day grow later,” and describes the distance travelled as “so vast that even the longest-tongued bat in the world could not lick the life I was leaving behind.” So the travel time from the city to the island is also around a day, but this is in a far more efficient vehicle, and taking a far more direct route to its location. So we can see that it’s entirely possible for Stain’d and the island to geographically overlap.

Then we get to the land vs. sea issue – which isn’t an issue. As indicated by its name, Stain’d-by-the-Sea was once a seaside town, and in fact an “island,” which it is described as. The only reason it isn’t surrounded by sea is because the sea in that area was drained. Logically, since it was once sea, the valley around the town reaches to oceanic depths, as Lemony and S. Theodora Markson have to wear masks to guard against the depth pressure. If the sea were to be restored, it would be just as legitimately oceanic as it once was. There is a strong hint that this will happen in the course of ATWQ, as implied in this line: “I wondered where all the water had gone when they’d drained this part of the sea, and I should have wondered.” The question of where the water has gone is significant – because it will one day return, and flood the area again, stranding Stain’d. More than stranding it – S. Theodora Markson says the sea was drained “to save the town,” suggesting that the water levels were rising and were going to claim significant parts of the town. If the sea returned, it would be at new heights which would flood much of the town, devastating its society and washing away many of its buildings, leaving it much cleaner. The lower-lying parts of the island would then become the coastal shelf that is a crucial part of the island in The End. All other remnants of civilisation would be removed when Ishmael takes over, which we know was shortly before Violet was born; Ishmael’s anti-technology stance would lead him to want to clear the island of anything unnatural or complex, leaving only the wilderness we are familiar with in The End. Note also that we do not know that there is no wilderness in Stain’d – or that there were no buildings on the island before Ishmael’s time. So in fact, there is no contradiction between the appearance and development of Stain’d, and that of the island.

This leads us to why we should believe in this conclusion, now that we’ve determined that it’s possible. Snicket gives us the first and biggest clue in our first look at Stain’d: “an island that was now just a mountain of stones”. Note the word “island.” Throughout ASoUE, Snicket proved himself the master of the subtle connection, dropping in words, phrases, and situations that connected to major and incredibly minor ones elsewhere in the story. He certainly won’t have abandoned this habit in ATWQ, and we can see it already in the earliest few chapters. When he says “island,” he doesn’t throw that word out carelessly. He’s using it precisely because he wants us to remember the major island of ASoUE: The setting of The End.

Now let’s think about the concept of a prequel. As we know, ATWQ is a prequel to ASoUE; chronologically, ASoUE stems from ATWQ and the events that occur in it. The two are inextricable parts of a single continuity. But what is true on an abstract level regarding the two series can be mirrored, on an internal level, by the plot of the new series. What more fitting way to show that ASoUE stems from ATWQ, by having the setting of ATWQ, Stain’d-by-the-sea, be literally responsible for A Series of Unfortunate Events, the volume of castaway lore hosted on the island in The End? This would be a brilliant way of drawing a logical chronological connection between the two series, and linking the two in relevance. It would also create a doubling effect in Snicket’s life in itself, showing two ways in which he is responsible for A Series of Unfortunate Events – both by writing the thirteen-book series, and by creating the circumstances that caused the island to become a lost island, and spawn the castaway commonplace book.

We were ready for Mr. Snicket’s new series to be quite distinct from ASoUE – but the first two chapters have shown us that they’re more closely-connected than we thought. Now we have to be ready for the only way those connections can conclude – by seeing the end of ASoUE in the beginning of ATWQ.

~~~

[Dante]

The most prestigious and respectable contest for a man in my position to win. ...No other entrants? Come on, guys, half the stuff you post as real theories would've qualified.

[Christmas Chief]

I think this discouraged them:

Jun 18, 2012 13:48:14 GMT -5 Dante said:

I've submitted a theory.

[Sophie Baudelaire]

Congratulations, Dante! Your theory is very interesting; I'd never thought of that before.

[Hermes]

Congratulations Dante! That theory actually looks quite plausible. I actually had a parallel idea - that Stain'd by the Sea, (or the valley around it) becomes Lake Lachrymose. (Both have lighthouses!) But I was too preoccupied with the trivia contest and fanfic to get round to submitting it.

One additional thing that might support your theory is the reference in TE to a time when the remote island had a name, and was not thought of as particularly remote.

[B.]

Congratulations Dante. Was your theory coming under the "at first glance looks impossible but after reading seems quite plausible" category?

[Dante]

Jun 24, 2012 10:49:18 GMT -5 B. said:

Congratulations Dante. Was your theory coming under the "at first glance looks impossible but after reading seems quite plausible" category?

The idea was to come up with an outlandish theory and then try my hardest to justify it with textual evidence. The reader should be swayed despite themself.

Edit: And Hermes, I meant to mention that point, but it slipped my mind.