Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jun 21, 2015 14:39:03 GMT -5
Enjoy
Origional idea by Akbar Le Grey
Editor – Mister M
Co-Editor – Anka Anwhistle M
Designer – Lemona Snicket
Art Editor – Terry Craig
Gawky Editor – Charlie Snicket
Anniversary Editor – Linda Rhaldeen
Thanks this issue to : Sherry Ann, Anka Anwhistle M, Bandit. Bee, Terry Craig, Dante, Akbar Le Grey, Hermes, Pandora, Linda Rhaldeen, Bsam, Sixteen, Charlie Snicket, Lemona Snicket, Sophie, Tragedy, Tryina
So, let's start this thang.
13 Essays, from 13 different people, for 13 years of 667. But,I hear you cry, who are the people? They walk among us normal 667ers, but only a special few have deemed special enough to take part. Or those who I could find that wanted to. After politely asking. Or begging.
But finally, 13 have accepted! But I thought I would make this a bit fun – before each essay is shown, I thought i'd take you temporarliy back in time, and show you that member's very first post. So let's go back to...
This is possibly this members first post. Possibly. It's very difficult to know as this person has has several accounts over the years (no, it isn't Kyle), so maybe this isn't his first post, but it's an early post at the very least.
asoue.proboards.com/post/182669
IT'S SAM!! (or Aang. Or whatever. Also somehow I can't quote really old post's, which is just annoying. Get used to it)
- - / / - -
I've been a member of 667 for probably too long now, I haven't reread the books in a long time, I bought a couple from the new series but haven't really read them yet, I rarely venture into the more Snickety discussion zones, but I keep coming back here.
The real reason for that? I love you guys. I don't know all of you, but those of you that I have got to know, I know are good people.
From just getting to know each other over various forum threads, then taking it to PMs when things get too off topic, to the AIM chatroom we'd hang out in every day.
From Skype group calls playing bass guitar with Tragedy, to Google Hangouts playing board and card games with Pandora and Bandit.
From catching up with Trish at a US music festival and escaping before I accidentally heard some of Amanda Palmer's music, to catching up with more local 667ers in my own country, playing N64 with PJ the day before my father's wedding, having Shelly over to watch Buffy and Cabin in the Woods for the nth time, A buying me a hot chocolate in Perth because I'd run out of holiday funds, eating subway with Charlie and Lemona last Christmas, etc, etc.
From multi page stream of consciousness letters and greeting cards which I deliberatly chose the wrong occasion for, to the international phones calls made when I was feeling particularly low at certain times in my life, when it didn't feel like there was anyone close to me in the real world, and the best part was that you people enjoyed talking to me, some even loved me, as opposed to the expected response of "ickle off and stop being so weird".
I'm not naming names because I'll never finish, but I am using this moment to thank and apologise to everyone who has tolerated me in any way over the last 12 years, I love you all, you've helped me get through some bad times, and some of you are even now helping me through my current bad times, I thank you once again.
It's been so long I don't recall my first post, I believe I've made a few 'greetings' threads but not as myself. However my earliest memory of this place is PennyRoyal complimenting me on my avatar at the time, possibly my first avatar, it was the picture on the album cover of Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, so now you know that even back then I had amazing taste in music.
Also I said I wasn't going to name names, but a special mention has to be made for a small number of people, MambaduMal, Trish, Rellim & Pandora. Plus Tragedy, I've called him 'the worst' on many occasions, mostly warrented, but he made this place and that's gotta count for something.
BSam out.
The End was, quite self-consciously, a misleading title. It never ends. Lemony Snicket’s work never ended, it merely took a break… quite a long break, as it happens, and as a result, there are quite a few people out there who would love to read something more by Lemony Snicket and yet have never even heard of this:
Not to mention the books following it! For the visitor too rare, too busy, or too disinterested to have previously learned about Lemony Snicket’s new series, All the Wrong Questions, here is my Beginner’s Guide to all the stuff I mentioned up there in the title, in which I ask the wrong questions so you don’t have to.
What is All the Wrong Questions about?
Where A Series of Unfortunate Events was based on gothic fiction, All the Wrong Questions is based on noir; mystery, in other words, and specifically those mysteries dark as black coffee. You might have recognised shades of it in ASoUE, but now we’re well and truly in the shade, with a masked gangster, a femme fatale, and a hero caught between their claws.
There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a theft. Shortly after that, there was a town, and there was a statue, and there was a person who had been kidnapped. Not so long afterwards, there was a town, and there was a librarian, and there was a fire. And it won’t be long before there’ll be a town, and there’ll be a train, and there’ll be a murder.
It’s probably worth noting that the town is the same each time, but the crimes, people, and inanimate objects are different, though they all have a lot to do with each other. The person they soon do have a lot to do with is Lemony Snicket himself, for this series is set in his own younger years, when he is almost thirteen and less almost a good detective. He and his unfriendly chaperone in the secret organisation he happens to be a member of are dispatched to investigate a crime in a tiny, distant town called Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and that crime turns out to be merely the tip of a frosty iceberg of corruption and wickedness centred in a formerly popular seaside and industrial town which is now no longer popular, industrial, or even by the sea. And eating its way through the rotten apple of the town is something called the Bombinating Beast – a statue, or something more. Everyone wants it, but most of them don’t even know what it’s for; even so, the horrible shadow of the supposedly mythical creature it’s based on lurks beneath everyone’s feet.
Unlike A Series of Unfortunate Events, the four books of All the Wrong Questions are set in the same place and with the same cast, each returning and developing over the course of the series. Stain’d-by-the-Sea is the home of characters like Moxie Mallahan, budding reporter and indeed only reporter in town now that her parents’ newspaper has shuttered; Dashiell Qwerty, supremely cool and ever so slightly mysterious librarian; the Officers Mitchum, married and incompetent police officers who couldn’t solve a crime even if Snicket solved it for them; and numerous other characters who crawl one by one out of the woodwork.
It’s also the new home of an unbelievably dastardly villain: The shadowy Hangfire, more monster than man, who nobody knows anything about except that he’s willing to do all kinds of terrible things to achieve his unfathomable ends. And as if that wasn’t enough, at the swirling centre of the vortex is Ellington Feint, a mystery who Lemony Snicket can’t even begin to solve, much though he may keep on trying, sometimes against his own better judgement. Is she an innocent girl whose father has been kidnapped, or is her agenda far more dangerous for Snicket? Even I don’t know, but it doesn’t help that the last book isn’t out yet…
As you may have deduced from the cover art, illustrating duties have been handed to a Canadian cartoonist personally chosen by Daniel Handler himself, Seth. His style on the covers is a little different to his more expansive and generous interior style, which hands us a good twenty or so illustrations per book, now in two-tone with a different colour used in each book. Seth specialises in gloomy, atmospheric scenes of strange and alienated towns, so he’s not short of a job.
Mr. Handler is continuing to work with his long-time editor Sue Rich, but they’re now with publishers Little, Brown & Co., rather than HarperCollins. Publishing in the U.K. and Australia is handled by Egmont and subsidiaries Hardie Grant Egmont, whilst HarperCollins Canada speaks for itself.
Trivial Teaser: The cover designer for ATWQ also worked on the Twilight series and the works of Pseudonymous Bosch.
How many books are there in All the Wrong Questions?
There are four books in All the Wrong Questions. Or rather, there will be. Or rather, there are five. Or rather, there are six. It all depends upon how you count them.
The main series, the core, is composed of four books, in the same way that the main series of ASoUE was composed of thirteen books. However, it’s also true that the main series is composed in that manner only in the same way ASoUE was in September 2006: The final volume has yet to be released, but two supplementary volumes also exist, to fill in a few gaps and to pass the time.
The four wrong questions that lend themselves to the titles of the four main books are “Who Could That Be At This Hour?”, “When Did You See Her Last?”, “Shouldn’t You Be in School?”, and the upcoming “Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights?” These are the essentials that every beginner should know about, especially the first one, after reading which you’re not strictly speaking a beginner any more. For more information, see the previous wrong question.
Then we have File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents. As if four wrong questions weren’t enough to deal with, Lemony Snicket is here confronted with thirteen miniature cases of strange goings-on in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, with the answers to his problems (and other people’s) concealed at the back of the book. Pictures falling off the wall for no reason, a mysterious doppelganger that stalks by night, a gang of serial window-breakers and fog are merely four of the thirteen mysteries Lemony Snicket must investigate and solve.
And last of all we have 29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy, a quiet and subtle supplementary volume so secretive about its relation to ATWQ that it wasn’t even discovered to be a supplementary volume until some months after it had already been published. It’s a short piece, almost a poem, about two children’s stories of a pharmacy which may or may not be exactly as sinister as they believe.
Trivial Teaser: 29M wasn’t revealed to even take place in the ATWQ universe until its eponymous chemist’s was mentioned in File Under.
Are the big questions in All the Wrong Questions actually going to be answered?
Still smarting from The End, I take it? It wasn’t as bad as you think, and ATWQ certainly won’t be. There are multiple reasons why it won’t be, in fact. One of them, perhaps the most convincing one, is that Daniel Handler has personally stated that the mysteries of Ellington Feint and the Bombinating Beast will be solved, and those are the big mysteries. Because ATWQ is itself a mystery series, Mr. Handler has spoken of plotting it that much more carefully, and that the series is less than a third the length of ASoUE makes that much easier to do. There are clues in each book that don’t come to fruition until the next or the next, and as a reader, it’s increasingly convincing that all the answers to all the questions have been written throughout the series like a vein of gold in a dark mine. 2015 isn’t 2006. A lot has changed.
Trivial Teaser: Daniel Handler was genuinely surprised and concerned upon once being told that people felt “burned” by the ending to ASoUE.
Does this have anything to do with A Series of Unfortunate Events?
Yes and no. Conceivably, maybe. The truth is, nobody knows exactly how much All the Wrong Questions has to do with A Series of Unfortunate Events, and won’t until it’s over. If only you’d asked next year…
But there are certainly hints. It’s not so simple as the series being filled with familiar faces, not least as the series takes place a good few decades before ASoUE, but some of them occasionally turn up for a visit. Although ATWQ is set before ASoUE, it’s admittedly not quite right to call it a prequel, but there are numerous indications that a true prequel might be happening just off-screen. Differences and disagreements are beginning to emerge within V.F.D., with the Snicket siblings revealed to be at the heart of the matter – the Snicket siblings, and a mysterious item they and their long-time allies are desperate to get their hands on… I can’t tell you how seriously to take these hints, but they’re going somewhere, even if that somewhere is a long train ride away from where the series takes place, related by old friends and newspaper articles pasted to the undersides of desks. But the very least it can do is shed new light on how some familiar names came to be the way they are now, and if the temptation that it might do more is enough to catch your interest, that’s probably exactly what it was intended to do.
Trivial Teaser: At least one ASoUE cameo was cut, presumably for being too insubstantial; a preview chapter from File Under featured a character named Colette, but her name was changed in the final publication.
So, having read this W.A.Q., have all you non-readers of ATWQ been convinced to read it yet? No? Then what about now? How about… now? Now? Now! Well, the truth is, if you’ve read this far through the article, you must be at least a little curious, or else intent on wasting your time. I’m not paid to advertise this series, hard though this may be to believe, so I can’t force you. But I think if you’ve ever enjoyed any of Lemony Snicket’s works, you are missing out by not giving All the Wrong Questions a try. Writers are a little bit like a monkey with a typewriter – almost literally, in fact. The longer you leave them locked up in a room together, the more likely they are to produce a complete work of art, rather than something that starts off well and ends up qwiopfbqwfaaz pxcjwbfhsopad faslkdfawsah
And now...
Now, yet again. I'm not sure if this is this person's first post. But it's the earliest I could find
asoue.proboards.com/post/19471
it's pandora!
When I first joined 667, I have no idea how old I was or what was happening in my life except that I joined while looking for another forum since the Days of Our Lives shipper forum I was an active part of was dying since our home girl Chloe left the show. I was watching a lot of Passions back then and was into Harry Potter and somehow 667 happened too.
I miss all the lovely people and that we could chat about nothing for hours and hours in MM and there were million page threads where most people didn't care if there was something off topic or if something had been done before. What I like most about 667 now is sophie, bee and linda since I don't really have a lot of contact with them outside the forum and I love them all.
Some of my fave moments have been AIM/MSN chats, google hangouts and revealing the names of people whose names we did not previously know.
Rant: A rubbish thing people do.
I bloody hate it when people use their shared past experiences to be mean to other people. Of course, it’s hard to avoid past experiences coming up in conversation (though it might be an interesting exercise to try to only speak about present and future stuff), but sheesh. I’m talking about a particular way to exclude people, and for some reason this way always gets on my nerves a lot, whether it’s happening to me or to someone else. Like, if I’m having a conversation with a few people, I can notice if I’m clearly talking about something that one of the other few people has no clue about. That doesn’t mean I have to stop talking about it instantly or anything, but it is salsaty to just keep yapping on with no acknowledgement of the clue-free person. Why does this particular thing annoy me so much? I don’t know. I just get really irritated about it, probably too much. This was a hort rant. It’s just that I’m so articulate and stuff that I don’t need a long one to express my point.
This time i'm pretty sure it is this person's first post
asoue.proboards.com/thread/4822/theories-galore
It is exceedingly strange to think that one has been a member of 667 Dark Avenue for ten years, and slightly more strange than that to think that one has been a member for eleven years. 2004 was the year I joined – in retrospect, still very early days, and yet at the time 667 had already been around for years, and felt it, felt like a strong community with a long history already. Remembering a time when I was an outsider to the community and its history, just an average new member without a face or a place, makes me realise just how much has changed.
2004 was a between-times period for the Snicket fandom; not yet at its most intense nor at its most modern, but neither at its most primitive and archaic. The publication schedule for A Series of Unfortunate Events had finally diminished to just one volume a year, but hadn’t yet hit that deadly and unimaginable six-year gap; the title of the next volume, The Grim Grotto, had for the first time only been half-revealed instead of divulged in full alongside numerous plot details; schedules were catching up, that volume still wouldn’t be out in the U.K. until a month after the U.S.; and we still imagined we would find out what was in the sugar bowl. With a mere three books left until the series concluded – not many, considering that ten had come before – speculation and theorising were far more prominent in significance, the order of the day, in a way which looks sadly naïve now. But it was that aspect of theorycrafting that was why I joined 667, so I can’t be bitter. I was brimming with thoughts about the series, and wanted to know what other people brimming with thoughts believed; though it was later in 2004 that I joined, I had been lurking for months, feeding on other people’s ideas to nurture my own, before finally plucking up the courage to set out my own ideas. Much else has changed, but that aspect of myself hasn’t; rather, the community has been the biggest change.
Looking around 667 today, there are few familiar faces from all those years ago. At the time the forum had its own titans, people with thousands of posts – an incredible figure, then – who seemed like permanent fixtures, and had been for a long time, and who it was quite inconceivable wouldn’t be around forever. But at that point, who dared imagine that 667 Dark Avenue would last for thirteen years? Many people were only just thirteen themselves, or scarcely older. A 667 that old, like a self over a decade older, was something else that couldn’t be imagined, inevitable though it was. And yet, here we are, so many years later – but for many people, few years later at all – and in some ways, it’s still the same; some old hands, some total newbies, and quite a lot who are somewhere in-between.
Of course, my perspective is both biased and limited, but I still think that that year, 2004, was when it began – the great years of 667, the flowering of culture, the lofty heights of theories, art, fiction, community. We were younger, or had more free time, or both; a month was an enormity, every minute of every hour an opportunity. Is that something I miss about 667, or about the past more generally, or about myself? But to speak of those things ending, as all things must, is irrelevant; 2004 was still the beginning. We still had so much to do. And it’s that same thing which I miss most that is also what I like the most about 667 today: We have done so much.
A Series of Unfortuante Eevents is a well-known sieres fo chidlren books wirttne by Daniel Handler, under the pen name of Lemony Snicket. Some of you may have forgotten this.
All The Wrong Quentions is a slightly less well-known prequel to the aforementioned series, also written by Daniel Handler under the same pen name. Some of you may also have forgotten this.
But... have you? How much do you remember? Or not? And if you do remember, what did you like about it in the first place? These, and other questions, I wanted answered.
This is what happened when I forced three 667ers agaisnt their will to awnser these questions.
Book the First : The Bad Beginning
Anka : I remember that there are the Baudelaire orphans and their parents die and there is Mister Poe and first they stay with him and then he puts them to Count Olaf who is evil and has only one eyebrow and an eye on his ankle and wants to get their fortune. He has weird theatre people and he is not nice to them and he tries to kill them sometimes and then he tries to marry Violet in a play and puts Sunny in a cage, but then they are clever and make that not happen. I remember more actually, but if I write down every single thing this will be too long.
Oh there is also Justice Strauss, she is a neighbour of Count Olaf and she is nice, and she is supposed to be doing the marrying thing in the play.
I don't know what I liked. I think I mostly found it funny. I mean the way everything is written.
When I read the book, I was 12 and I had just changed to a different class at school because of bullying in my old class. I almost found some friends in my new class, and from one of them I borrowed the book.
Terry : I read books #1 through #3 after I read #4 through #9 (yeah, I know), so it was kind of like reading a prequel to what I'd read so far. I was on the lookout for VFD stuff but was kind of surprised when there wasn't much in the first three books. It's really Snicket's narration that makes these books hold up so well in time and why I also enjoyed these early books (together with the absurd humour). It's also what immediately drew me in to the series, after the illustrations when seeing the covers in the store for the first time.
Pandora : I realize that typos happen all the time and I am in no way judging anyone for them, but I was totally asked to see what I could remember about the "The Bad Begging", which is nothing. But hey! I remember that the title of the first ASOUE book was not in fact the bad begging, so points for me.
You all know nine million more things about the books than I do so I'm not going to be very in-depth about introducing everyone bc there are like 75 characters throughout this whole thing. Anyway it starts when those three kids' parents die and they go to live with Count Olaf and then there's the lady judge and a play and underage incest and a technicality that I've always wondered if it's real or not but I'm guessing you can't get out of things just by signing something with the wrong hand and then Olaf gets away and I don't even remember how. But, I remember a lot from this one like the cooking and the basic plot. The only henchmen I can think of are the two ladies, the hook handed dude and i think there's the ambiguous one, so maybe that's all there is in this book?
And yes, I know the lady judge is Justice Strauss. I also know the one kid read while the other bites and the last one invents stuff when her hair is pulled back.
I definitely read this book before highschool bc I saw my smartest friend reading it and the cover looked cool. I can't tell you anything else about my life at the time.
Book The Second : The Reptile Room
Anka : Mister Poe brings the Baudelaires to uncle Monty who is cool and has reptiles. They want to go to some other country where there are even more reptiles, but then Count Olaf is there disguised as a reptile helper person. The Baudelaires tell uncle Monty about that, but he doesn't believe them and in the end Count Olaf kills him with poison and tries to make people think it was the Incredibly Deadly Viper, but then the Baudelaires are clever and Sunny cuddles with the snake so everyone can see it's nice.
I guess I liked the reptiles, but I'm not sure.
My life when I read this was the same as when I read the first book. I borrowed both books at the same time.
Terry : I remember being excited about the mention of Peru in this one, since I've got extended family over there. Furthermore my father often told people that his first and last name're the same (in a dry manner, so that many strangers would actually believe it), like a pretend Montgomery Montgomery.
Pandora : This one has Uncle Monty and he has a bunch of snakes. I think Olaf is like the snake helper after the previous snake helper died of mysterious circumstances, and no one ever believes the three kids bc adults don't always take kids seriously or something even though it's really for the sake of the plot and bc I think everyone and their mother literally not even figuratively has eye tattoos.
There's the one mama du maul snake and it's not actually poisonous or something? So, someone probably gets poisoned and the snake takes the rap and they maybe get the snake acquitted? There's a joke in there somewhere about how it's easier to make people believe deadly snakes are innocent than black people. Uncle Monty maybe gets poisoned bc he obvi dies, and the kids liked him so they're sad. Since this isnt Harry Potter, Sunny probably doesn't speak parseltounge like I wanna say she does but maybe she befriends a snake?
So, I remember like nothing about this one or what was going on when I read it. I don't think it was my fave cause I maybe only read it once.
Ohhh, I remember that one of the very first puzzes Mulan did had Uncle Monty's whole name as the answer to get into the board and I couldn't potatoing figure it out so I bugged him for everrrr until someone else solved it but I eventually became a puzz fiend anyway.
Book the Third : The Wide Window
Anka : The Baudelaires go to live with aunt Josephine who likes grammar and is scared of everything and lives in a house which is kind of hanging over the water. She used to have a husband but he died. Count Olaf turns up disguised as a Captain and Aunt Josephine kind of likes him, so she doesn't believe he is Count Olaf. He somehow wants to get the fortune with a trick and they go and eat in that clown place, and then the Baudelaires get allergic on purpose. Some stuff happens, and in aunt Josephine's house they find a letter with lots of spelling mistakes, saying that they will go to the Captain who is actually Count Olaf. After some time they realise that it's a secret message, and it says where they have to go to find aunt Josephine. They steal a boat and go there and on the way back there is somehow count Olaf and weird leeches and aunt Josephine falls into the water and dies.
Aunt Josephine is super awesome. She's basically me, but even worse.
I never read the book until the re-read in 2013 or whatever that was. During that time I worked in a place where I wasn't really happy.
Mister M : I'm not really doing this, but I literally only this second realised that captain sham is, like, captain fake. How did I not see this before?
Terry : Hm, I think this one felt a bit like 'more of the same' to me... of course by then I've already read #4 etc as well
Pandora : Aunt Joesphine is all crazy bc she likes grammar and probably other things lonely old women stereotypically enjoy like butterscotch candies or cats. They don't really love her, but they're sad that she gets killed by leeches bc she ate a banana. Seriously. That's the dumbest way to die. She has a million grammar books and that's how Klaus figures out her letter is a code, which may or may not be the first of many codes in ASOUE. I remember thing the grammar letter thing either really neat or really lame, don't remember which. No idea who Olaf was, maybe he was like hitting on Aunt Joesphine? Even they run away to a cave and Aunt Joesphine dies and the kids are saved somehow. Mr. Poe probably makes an unhelpful appearance as usual.
Book the Fourfth : The Miserable Mill
Anka :The Baudelaires go to a place where they have to work, and I actually have no idea what the place is called in English. They have to cut wood there, and there are machines for cutting wood everywhere. There are also other people who work there but no children. They all get no money but only things and I don't know what they are called in English. They also get no food but only chewing gum. There are Sir and Charles, Sir is a guy who lives in a cloud of smoke and Charles is some random other guy and they own the place. Is there also Phil? Somehow in my mind Charles and Phil are kind of the same person. There is also a library with no books. There is also Doctor Orwell who is an eye doctor and Shirley who works there and is actually Count Olaf. Klaus' glasses break and then he has to go there and they hypnotise him, and they make him do evil things with the wood cutting machines and he gets hypnotised and unhypnotised when someone says the word luck. The Baudelaires are clever, so the whole thing fails and they go somewhere else again but Count Olaf is gone again.
I actually found it a bit boring, and a bit too dark and hopeless.
It was a while after I had read the first two books, and I found the audio book in the library. I borrowed that there and listened to it while doing a puzzle in my room. I was about 13 and a bit bored. About a year later I also suggested to listen to that in the car with my family while we were on holiday in the summer, so we did that.
Terry : This one has one my favorite covers. It made me kind of expect the story to be more in a Southern Gothic style, but considering there's actually a death by sawmill at the end I was not disappointed. Also, when imagining a film version of this book, I thought the Coen brothers would do a great job, considering The Hudsucker Proxy and Arizona Rising.
Pandora : This one displays many unacceptable child labor practices and labor practices in general, like babies can't work and you can't pay people in gum or coupons or whatever. This one had the Great Gatsby references and the lady eye doctor who hooked up with Olaf and hypnotized Klaus. She got into a sword fight with Sunny's teeth and I think got killed by a saw, and the sword vs. teeth fight is very dumb, but I thought it was cool. So there's a nice employee named Phil, and Sir who smokes a lot and the guy who's like his underling and people think they're gay but I'm not sure why. Like, I see a Mr. Burns/Smithers dynamic and I don't know if that's why or just bc they're like together a lot and ~confirmed bachelors~ or something else. Olaf is maybe Shirley in this one? They almost saw Violet in half I think. I remember liking the lady eye doctor and it's a shame she dies bc I know a fair number of ppl die in these but ladies with attachments to Olaf's die a lot. And that sucks bc like it's not even realistic that anyone would date him since he smells bad or whatever and isn't rich and goes through a lot of jobs. Plus, he's kind of obsessed with three underage kids. Several red flags right there.
Book The Fifth : The Austere Academy
Anka : The Baudelaires go to a boarding school but they need permission from their parents to live in a room there, so they have to live in a shack with crabs and another disgusting thing, but I don't know what it is called in English. They make loud shoes because the crabs are scared of that. Violet and Klaus go to school and Sunny is a secretary. There is a vice principal called Nero and he is bad at playing the violin but does it anyway, and he makes the people listen to that. There are also the Quagmires, who are triplets but only two because they think the third one died in a fire with their parents. There is a boy called Duncan who is a journalist and a girl called Isadora who writes poems. They become friends with the Baudelaires. There is also that girl called Carmelita who is a bully and calls people cakesniffers if she doesn't like them. Violet is in the same class as Duncan, and they have to take notes about stories that the teacher tells while eating bananas, and remember useless details. Claus and Isadora have a teacher who makes them measure random things. Then there is Count Olaf, like always. He is disguised as a sport teacher with a thing on his head. He makes the Baudelaires run in the nights, so they are too tired to be good at school/work. So they have to do a test, and they learn in the nights while the Quagmires pretend they are the Baudelaires and run, and then they get kidnapped and say VFD.
I liked it but I don't know why exactly. I found Isadora's poems a bit annoying though, because they are the kind of poems I used to write when I was like 5.
I also listened to the audio book of that from the library. Even though they hadn't liked TMM much I insisted on listening to the next book in the next year on holiday, and then they really liked that and understood why I like the books. It started to be kind of a tradition to listen to them in the summer holidays, and we always made inside jokes connected to the books the whole time we were on holiday.
Terry : I enjoyed reading a Snicket take on school life.
Pandora : this has Nero the violin principal who likes candy and remora and bass who measures things and tell bad stories and i can't say for sure which one of them was the male and female and which did which. There were crabs in the orphan shack and they made glue out of food and shoe clackers out of staples, and had other orphan friends who wrote couplets and the boy did something. isadora and duncan and i really cant remember what duncan's special power was. I remember I liked him more than quigley and it was dumb that violet liked quigley instead. what kind of name is quigley anyway? Anyway, Olaf is the gym coach and he's apparently the only somewhat intelligent adult bc he isn't fooled by a bag of flour pretending to be a baby so he captures Duncan and Isadora. oh theres carmeltia spats and the motto of the school is remember you will die or something. I thought they didnt get expelled but maybe they did bc they go somewhere else at the end but thats mainly bc plot too.
Book The Sixth : The Ersatz Elevator
Anka : The Baudelaires go to a couple called Esme and Jerome Squalor who live in a dark house because it's in. The house is called 667 Dark Avenue. They do all sorts of silly things because it's in. They also have to go up many stairs because the lift isn't working and the other lift is actually no lift, and at some point there are the Quagmires in there in a cage and the Baudelaires visit them using Sunny's teeth. From the bottom of the thing there is a secred way to the Baudelaire's house. This time Count Olaf is disguised as a person who sells in things to whoever wants to pay most, and he talks with an accent. One of the things which is supposed to be sold is called VFD, so the Baudelaires try to buy that, but then it was a wrong thing and Esme turns out to be Olaf's girlfriend and the Quagmires are taken away in a fish statue or something.
I liked all the in and out stuff, that was funny.
Same story as book 4 and 5 with the audio books. Also in my mind the books are really connected to the place we always went on holiday. Also it was the summer just before I started going to a boarding school, so that was maybe funny.
Terry : Those two black pages, man... classic.
Pandora : this is where 667 comes from. aqueous martinis seem like a cool thing when you don't drink alcohol but then seem stupid when you do. So, there was a hotel with 667 floors which is not excessive at all, oh i guess it was actually an apartment complex and the elevator didn't work bc there were two thirds of triplets stuck in it. and there was Esme and Jermone and ok, I remember like nothing from this one. Esmie likes what's in and there's pinstripes and she goes on to a life of crime with Olaf and Jerome eventually dies.
Book the Seventh : The Vile Village
Anka : The Baudelaires go to a village with weird rules and lots of crows and live with a guy called Hector who breaks the rules and wants to escape in a balloon thing he made. There is Jacques Snicket who has only one eyebrow, so people think he's Count Olaf, and then he is killed and everyone thinks it was the Baudelaires, but of course it was the real Count Olaf, who is now disguised as a detective. The Baudelaires have to go to prison, and the crows bring them poem messages from the Quagmires who are hidden in a crow statue fountain. They escape and go there, and they want to fly away in Hector's balloon thing. The Quagmires get in there but the Baudelaires don't, and then they have to run away because everyone thinks they are murderers.
I don't know what I liked about the book.
The book and audio book of that weren't in the library, but in the next holiday we wanted to listen to the next book, so we just bought that. It was cool because this time I didn't know the story before. Also that isn't even long ago, I think it was in 2010.
Terry : My first ASoUE book. The cover was the most intriguing one to me when I picked it... I kind of thought the series to be much more episodic, although until this book it actually kind of is. I remember starting to read it in the car when riding back from the store and asking my mom how to pronounce 'Baudelaire' and 'Poe', and learning that those are the names of famous writers. This book is still one of my favorites from the series... maybe for sentimental reasons, maybe for the reason that it's pretty crazy and the plot twist moment of the series.
Pandora : So they're trapped in jail and the tall girl orphan breaks them out using bread, which is pretty neat. That one guy dies. All I know is that the village of fowl devotees adopted them because it takes a village and all that, and the village likes crows. There's a nice dude named Hector and he takes kids that were stuck in the statue with him in his hot air balloon thing.
Book The Eigth : The Hostile Hospital
Anka : At the beginning the Baudelaires eat something in a shop, then they keep trying to get away from the police and end up in a half finished hospital. They walk in the archive with an old man called Hal, and they try to find a file about the fire of their house. They find only one page and take it with them. Count Olaf pretends to be the boss of the hospital and he calls himself Mattatthias. Esme finds the Baudelaires in the archive and then shelves fall over, and Klaus and Sunny can escape but Violet is put in a hospital room and she is supposed to get her head taken away. Klaus and Sunny find that out by solving anagrams, and they pretend to be a doctor and a nurse and then they run away with Violet.
I liked the name Mattatthias because my dad's name is Matthias. Also I just realised that now (when spellchecking the 667er), there were those volunteers with the song and the way they sang song on the audio book was so awesome.
In the same year we listened to the 7th book, my mum found the 8th and 9th book somewhere and bought that. As soon as we had finished listening to TVV, I started reading THH. So that was on holiday again. I never really know what my life was like, because in the summer holidays life kind of stops. But I think it was after my first year at boarding school. 2 years later we also listened to that in the car and then we kept calling my dad Mattatthias.
Terry : I almost picked this one for my first ASoUE book (instead it's the second I read), as the cover looked like that of a hospital horror story (that creepy heart balloon made it so sinister). This one's also one of my faves of the series. I love the beginning at Last Chance and I like the kind of desperate situation the Bauds find themselves in when sleeping in the part of the hospital that's under construction. Oh and the ending had me on the edge of my seat
Pandora : This is the one that my girl Linda got her name from! So, there's people fighting diseases with singing and love and stuff and I think the boy is like that's not medically sound, but having a positive attitude is like mega important with sicknesses and life in general, so suck it nerd. Olaf is the voice on the intercom and there's like a big filing cabinet room that Esme sets on fire while wearing hella high stilettos, and the orphans live in the unfinished part of the hospital. So they want to remove the oldest girl's brain from her head but they don't and i think the other two dress up as a fake doctor and save the day and then somehow they leave the hospital.
To Be continued....
Here's another essay!
asoue.proboards.com/post/177752
2005 – by Linda
I stayed up late one night during spring break and surfed the web for Lemony Snicket stuff. That night, April 22nd and into the early morning of April 23rd, 2005, was the night I found 667 Dark Avenue. I scoured Burdensome Books (yes even in 2005 it was called that), read lots of theories, posted something, and promptly was corrected by Dante. (sound familiar?)
I didn’t discover Menacing Miscellaneous right away but figured out it was the place to meet people fairly quickly. Some of the first threads I remember are 667’s first meetup (J., M., Derik, and Akbar), and a Star Wars thread (Episode III had just come out) where Celinra and Pandora tried to lure 667ers to the Dark Side with free cookies.
The summer of 2005 saw a 667 Big Brother, Pandora’s fake pregnancy (I think she actually had 2 or 3 of those), and me reaching 667 posts. Things like the MSN chats (like google hangouts, but text only) and the weekly 667er would begin later in the year. 2006 is really the timeframe I would consider 667’s golden age, but 2005 was a good year.
Dear Anka,
What's a good question to ask an advice columnist?
Sincerely,
Puzzled
Dear Puzzled,
almost every question is a good question to ask an advice columnist, but of course the best ones are those that you want to have an answer to.
Anka
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How do you become a Disney princess?
Deep inside her heart, every girl is already a Disney princess. And even some boys are.
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Dear Madame
I'm struggling with writer's block. It's in fact it's so bad i don't even know how to fully explain my problem to you
Help
Dear writer,
I think the only thing you can do is wait until it stops and the ideas are there again. Forcing yourself probably doesn't help. Maybe there is some other work you can do for your writing in the meantime, for example organising some ideas that you have already had, and thinking about how they fit together.
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Goddamnit what am I going to do about my problems?
Maybe it would help to actually say what the problems are. Otherwise I can just say some general things, which maybe work with some problems but not with all, and might even cause more problems:
- Ignore them
- Make bigger problems
- Wait until someone else solves them
- Leave them somewhere
- Make something good out of them
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A message board I belong to is celebrating its thirteenth anniversary. I have agreed to do a number of things for this anniversary, including an article about my experiences and a chapter for a long-running collaborative fiction, but unfortunately I have also agreed to plan a quiz. I now cannot think of any ideas for what to include in the quiz. Have you any suggestions?
I don't know what you could include in the quiz. It would probably be a good idea to ask some questions that you can't just answer by searching one thing in google, but that's maybe difficult to find, because google can answer almost every question. It would also be fun to have different categories of questions, maybe some that have nothing to do with the topic of the forum, so people can learn some new things they wouldn't be interested otherwise.
asoue.proboards.com/post/794509
I know, I'm not the right person for this year. I'm just sort of an ersatz person, so this is only an ersatz essay. I can't tell you anything about what 667 was like in 2006, so I have to write other random stuff about me and 667. I'm not talking about anything that happened in any year, because I don't want to steal the stuff that other people will say about the years when I was there, so it's all a bit random and probably too focused on myself. Sorry.
When I was a child and in a kind of pre-school thing, we always sang some songs when it was someone's birthday. In one of the songs there was a line which means something like “We are happy that you are born, because otherwise we would have missed you very much”. I always found that silly, because if someone has never existed, nobody knows anything about them, and then nobody can miss them. But now that it is 667's birthday, I ask myself “What if 667 had never been born?”, or even just “What if I had never joined 667?”.
There are probably some people here who would say that their life would be about the same, and others who would say that it would be a little different, and some who would say it would be completely different. Mine would be so different that I don't even know what it would be like.
One reason for that is probably the time I joined 667. I joined 667 after I had just finished school and didn't really have any idea what to do. I had been at a boarding school, so most people I knew didn't live anywhere near me. Meeting anyone would have involved long journeys, expensive train tickets and staying somewhere for at least one night. So it was cool to have people here on 667, people that I didn't have to meet to talk to and have fun with.
In the next few months I had a difficult time, and 667 helped me a lot. I know, people always say that online stuff can't replace “real” friends and “real” hobbies, but at that time, this was exactly what I needed. In my volunteer job that I had for a year, I had people around me all the time and it was really stressful for me, so I really needed all this time alone in my room, but at the same time I still needed people to just talk to about random stuff and my life. I think I learnt a lot about myself in those months, and 667 made me see it all in a much more positive way than I would have otherwise. I want to say thank you to everyone who was there for me then, even if we aren't talking much anymore now.
My first year of 667 was a time where I had to make a lot of decisions, and I would probably have made different decisions if I hadn't been here. I would probably not even study the same thing at university that I'm doing now. 667 had a really big influence on my life in that time, and of course I can't be completely sure about what would have happened otherwise, but I am happy about the decisions I made now, and that is what counts.
And of course there is also you, Brandon, or Mister M, I'm never sure what to call you on 667. I never thought I could feel anything like what I feel for you now. I wasn't even sure if love exists, and now I know it does and it's an amazing thing. You are the reason why I don't even want to think about what my life would be like if I had never found 667. All I know is that I would never have found you, and I would never want a life like that.
Quack.
Umm, so charlie hasn't sent this in yet. I will add it when he does. It's supposed to be really good. Apparently.
It has been ten years since I joined 667 Dark Avenue as of today. I started, as many of us do, in the book section making threads about codes and secrets, and I pretty much stayed there until ASOUE ended late in 2006.
It was only in 2007 that I began getting properly involved in the wider 667 community. That year started, of course, with Tragedy power surging back to the forum and dismantling the reign of All Due Respect. This gave the forum the chance for a fresh start, spearheaded by The Otiose Objectives.
I thought the initiative was ambitious, but not unachievable. With some digging, and more than one email chain, I managed to contact a close associate of Lemony Snicket's legal representative. He was impressed by the 5th Anniversary celebrations that were going on at the time, and for the first time 667 was successful in communicating directly with Daniel Handler.
2007 was the year that I got e-married, if only for a brief moment due to confusing polygamy laws and a Voldemort impersonator. That summer was also the beginning of the Vernacularly Fastened Door competition that took up hours and weeks of my life.
667 was a different place when I started, it was a different place in 2007, and five years from now it may be unrecognisable. It doesn't matter, though, because even after ten years it still feels like home.
History of 667
A column by Linda Rhaldeen
Welcome back to History of 667. Today's topic of interest: Anniversaries at 667! 667 was created on June 22nd, 2002. The exact way of celebration has varied due to circumstances like forum activity levels and the importance (or lack thereof) of each anniversary, but over its thirteen-year history that date has been acknowledged almost every year.
The very first anniversary was acknowledged as a celebratory thread; pretty low key, but at that point in our history we had never done anything much requiring organizing like we would in the years to come. I doubt any of the members realized 667 would still be around today, or that we would still be celebrating anniversaries.
The second anniversary was celebrated with a carnival-themed role play thread. Dupin, one of the first big organizers of 667, seems to have taken the initiative in planning it.
The third anniversary seems to have been forgotten about - until July 15th, that is, when Tragedy arrived back from vacation to berate the forum for their neglect.
It was the fourth anniversary when things really started to get interesting. An elaborate “In” Auction was held, with all members being given $100,000 in fake money to spend, and dozens of auction items being bid on for set periods of time over the space of several days (check out the archives from about page 30 to 35 to see the auction items). Some of the auction items contained hidden special prizes, others were red herrings, and yet others were just fun (I remember bidding on a picture of a jack-o-lantern with Stephen Colbert’s face). There was also a food menu.
For the fifth anniversary, we did several things in the days leading up to June 22nd. Numerous contests began on June 18, with prizes such as 1,000 posts, administrator for a day, and signed copies of The Grim Grotto being given away to the winners. A carnival was held on June 21st, and on June 22nd another auction was held, this time for only one day.
The sixth anniversary saw several contests held.
The seventh anniversary appears to have been acknowledged, though not particularly celebrated, as the day of a change of staff.
The eighth anniversary promised a party, which turned out to be woefully underwhelming.
The ninth anniversary seems to have been completely ignored; I found no mention of it, not even in passing.
The tenth anniversary was another big one. Seven contests, a temporary revival of The 667er, a ten-year timeline, a “where are they now?” gallery, and a ball were held.
For the eleventh anniversary, we missed the actual date, but celebrated with a very belated Harry Potter Day in honor of 667 turning 11.
No mention of the twelfth anniversary (I actually remember wanting to make a thread about it and then being busy/out of town, and by the time I had a chance to do something it was June 24th and I figured it was too late).
And now we are approaching our thirteenth anniversary, special for the Snicket-y significance of the number 13. I hope everyone in years to come will look fondly over the next few days.
Interested in seeing a specific topic covered? Send me a PM and I will do my best to cover it in a future issue.
667: The Middle Years
by Hermes.
I joined 667 in the autumn of 2008, which makes me one of the middle generation of 667ers: those who arrived after the end of ASOUE, but before the beginning of ATWQ. I am now, I think, the longest-serving member of that generation, still regularly posting; others, who arrived a little after me, are Sherry Ann, LSWannabe, Michelle Denouement (then Violet Marie), Tiago Squalor and Lemona, with Pen, Bee and Sophie bringing up the rear, and representing the challenge of youth. I know that the older generation, the ASOUE veterans, make more precise distinctions between those who arrived in different phases of the board’s history, but to me the separation between that generation and the later one is the important distinction, and so, to the puzzlement of newer members, I still tend to think of myself as a relatively new arrival.
When I arrived there was something of a divide at 667 between older and newer members. Those who had been here during the series had grown to know each other very well, had developed friendships – and some enmities – and also were often in contact off-site through instant messaging (we didn’t have no Google hangouts in them days). There were a lot of in-jokes (I still haven’t worked out the significance of Sixteen/sheep). As a result, it was often hard for newer members to know quite what was going on, and to break into the older members’ circle, though over the years the barriers began to break down.
The interests of the older and newer generations were often different as well. Lemona, introducing the anniversary playlist, mentioned the division between the Burdensome Books people and those who are here mainly for social reasons; that division existed in those days as well, but with a twist. Most of those who had been here through the series, though originally drawn here by an interest in Lemony Snicket, had exhausted what they had to say about him, and were now staying here because of their friendships. The newer members, on the other hand – and though I’m now the longest-serving of that group, I was by no means the first to arrive – were largely drawn in by a continuing interest in Snicket. But what made that era different from today was the presence of many people who were Snicket people, but not Snicketologists; rather, their major interest was in fanfic and art. Hence, there a substantial community for whom the centre of the site was neither Burdensome Books nor Menacing Miscellaneous, but rather Frustrating Fanwork; there was much more fanfic on the board that there is now (what, Hermes, are you complaining about the lack of fanfic?), and even more so, art, which was a major thing in a way it isn’t any more.
The leading figure in that community was of course the wonderful Emma Squalor; others who deserve mention are, in fiction, Jenny and May, and a bit later LSWannabe and Tiago (whose great project is still in progress); in art, Elle, tk and (for only too short a time) Very Frustrating Doorknobs. Also significant was Quagmire44, later known as Very Funky Disco, who had a special interest in the working out of complex fictional universes, in which she was later joined by Freebird; this gave rise to two major elements in the site, interview threads, and ‘Rejected ASOUE lines’, which – shifting a little from its original purpose – became a way for people to develop their worlds without having to write complete stories about every event.
Still, Snicketology was not absent (though the word had not yet been coined). Indeed, according to Tragedy at the 2009 Darkies, my arrival helped to revive Burdensome Books, which had been rather quiet after the end of the series, and the dying down of the debates that caused. I had been a lurker here for some time, reading mainly the Snicket pages, in the hope that this would illuminate some of the mysteries, and had already begun to appreciate Dante’s wisdom; I had not felt able to take part in discussion earlier because I had not read TUA, but once I arrived I began to contribute to the theorising, my first substantive post being about Ruth Dercroump. Many of the Snicket people of the earlier generation had retired by then, leaving Dante to hold the fort, but gradually a community of Snicketologists began to build up again. A key moment was the Great Reread, which began in February 2009; this, oddly enough, was first proposed by the notorious Master Violet, but was actually led, in the beginning, by Sora, and later taken over by Dante. While many members signed up for this, in the end there were just three regular and active participants, Dante, cwm and myself (manifesting the great British tradition of Snicketology begun by Ennui, and carried on today by Mister M and Gliquey, among others). But near the end, we were joined by a young American – Sherry something, if I remember rightly – who was to make a major contribution to the Snicket part of the site in the coming years.
Obviously, Snicketological discussion is more active when there is a current series, but the Reread showed there is always room for new theories, an experience we repeated with the new Reread, led by Mister M, in 2012-13; Pen’s readthrough when he joined us in 2011 also gave us the opportunity to see the series through a new pair of eyes. These events obviously shouldn’t happen too often, but I think they have been very valuable in keeping 667 active as a Snicket site; it’s important to keep the Snicket part of the site active, either with book discussion or fanfic and art, because it is Snicket who draws new members in. (I am still hoping to start a Daniel Handler adult books reread, one day when I have the time.)
There were many other things going on here, of course. There were controversies, one of which I have referred to obliquely. There was 667fic; one really important work, 667 Dark Apocalypse, was in progress when I arrived. This had a major impact at 667, helping to build up the community, because the principal authors, Tragedy and Sixteen, made an effort to include everyone; so while some of the characters had already left before I arrived, I found my way into it to, as did others who came after me (including the people involved in the aforementioned controversy). It ended at the same time as the Reread; I said at the time ‘What will we do now?’, and I think things did become rather quieter after that. But we continued to find things to do, both Snicket things and social things, and still do – there’s been a major revival of organised activities in the last few years, with Big Brother, the Advent Calendar and so on, something we haven’t really seen since before I came. It’s not surprising that we’re smaller than we once were, with the major inspiration for our existence fading into the past (since, sadly, ATWQ has not caught the public consciousness in the way ASOUE did). Nevertheless, 667 continues to flourish.
PART TWO!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Unathorized Autobiography
Anka : There are different things connected to the different books and Lemony Snicket's life. There is a song about how he was taken by VFD, a VFD meeting script, lots of pictures, something with a ship, something with a school, something with weddings, and some other stuff.
Most of it was fun. I was hoping to find out more stuff than we did though, most things turned out to be a bit pointless. I think that's probably because I didn't read it until after all of ASOUE. I bought the book and it arrived on a Saturday, and I had to do some biology stuff for school at the same weekend, and I preferred reading the book. After that I was sad that there were no more books and still so many questions, and I actually made my first 667 account then. I deleted that account again though, because I didn't really say anything.
Later I also tried to translate TUA, but I failed.
Terry : I didn't understand much of it at first, but I still loved the humour and it deepened the mystery and made the ASoUE universe so much more real to my little innocent self.
Pandora : Hahahaha. I know that I've read it more than once, and I found it really funny but there is so not a coherent enough plot that I can remember. There's stuff about the disguise kit and sugar bowl and a photo of like people and a giant snowman. That's all I know
Book The Ninth : The Carnivorus Carnival
Anka : The Baudelaires are hiding in the trunk of Count Olaf's car. The car goes to a carnival, and the Baudelaires disguised themselves as a person with two heads and a wolf child. They have to be part of a show where people laugh at them then, and they try to find out stuff about if there is still one of their parents somewhere. They live in a thing with a guy who has a weird back, a woman who can put her body in weird positions and an ambidextrous guy. There is a woman who pretends to just know stuff but actually just has it under her table. Count Olaf wants to throw the Baudelaires in a thing where they get eaten by lions, but stuff happens and other people fall in. The other people from the freak thing decide to become evil people with Cont Olaf, and the Baudelaires pretend they are coming with them, and they go to the mountains.
I didn't read that in the same holiday as the 8th book, but back home. Only at weekends though, because I didn't want to take it to boarding school with me. I never took any books or anything else there because I didn't want everyone to see what I'm doing.
Terry : At first I remember not getting the déja vu joke and being convinced that I had a misprint copy when I saw the two chapter openings.
Pandora : So this is the one where the definition of freaks is pretty loose and there's Chabo the wolf baby! Do the other two pretend to be conjoined twins? Holy salsa, I just remembered that if that's true, way to go memory! So one of the freaks is ambidextrous and there's two dude freaks and one lady freak and that's all I know about that. There's Madame Luna or Olivia Caliban which I only know bc I think I had to look it up for BB and bc Tempest reference. There's like man eating lions and they eat Luna bc she's a woman who makes the poor decision of sleeping with Olaf so that means she needs to be punished. This may or not be the one Phil is in again.
Book the Tenth :The Slippery Slope
Anka : They are going up the mountains, and then Count Olaf says he knows who they are and makes the thing where Violet and Klaus are go away from the car. Sunny is in the car. Violet and Klaus make the thing stop, and then they try to get up the mountain where Sunny is and also to the VF place. They meet snow scouts and Quigley Quagmire who isn't dead. Quigley and Violet go up the mountain and Sunny has to cook for Count Olaf and the other people there and live in a thing and I don't know what the thing even is. They go to the VFD place and there is a message in the fridge, and then they go down the mountain in the water and lose Quigley.
This book is my favourite but I have absolutely no idea why.
I bought the book after I finished the 9th one, and then I read it, I think in the one week break that we always had at school in the end of october.
Terry : Little known fact (okay, actually more of an assumption of mine): The cover was likely inspired by the poster for the 1929 movie "Way Down East," which has a number of plot parallels to the story in this book. ("Way Down East" has been also referenced before in Handler's Basic Eight.)
Pandora : Pretty sure this is the one where they travel in Olaf's car to the... slippery slope. So there's snow in this one and I've honestly got no potatoing idea? Like pretty sure this one has Carmelita again and the snow scouts and they're motto with xylophones. Also, the woman and man with blah blah but no blah blah.
Book the Eleventh : The Grim Grotto
Anka : The Baudelaires find an under water thing. There is a Captain and his stepdaugher Fiona and Phil from the 4th book who cooks food there. Sunny helps him cooking food, Violet helps something with the thing and Klaus does research stuff with Fiona. Then they go and try to find the sugar bowl in a place under the water. There is some fungus stuff which kills people, and Sunny get some in her helmet. When they come back, the adults are gone. Then there is Count Olaf because he wants the sugar bowl too and some weird stuff happens that I forgot. The man with hooks instead of hands turns out to be Fiona's brother, so Fiona decides to go with him, and the Baudelaires get a message in a poem and go away from the water and wait for a taxi.
I really don't know. It's weird how I remember the earlier books more than the later ones, even though they are much longer ago.
I bought the book together with the 10th and then read it at the weekends in November 2010. That's not even that long ago. My life was really normal then.
Terry : I'm not sure why, but this one always felt the most fantastical of the series. Here meaning fantasy-like, outlandish, because of its setting. The submarines just gave it this '10,000 Leagues Under the Sea' sci-fi feeling. Luckily it's not distracting, but it still feels a bit like a dream sequence, if only in retrospect.
Pandora : So like, I'm writing this days later than when mr m asked me to have them handed in by but these later ones aren't shorter just bc Im writing them later, I guess I just don't potatoing remember any of it even though I read these more recently. Maybe the slippery slope leads down to a grotto somehow and how the ickle would they get from like a mountain to a submarine? Like those are underwater, they can't hold their breaths that long. Uh, I think this one takes place on a submarine. There's Captain Widdershins and Leslie and Leslie abandons her dad and the orphans and justice bc the hooked hand man Fernald is her brother. Captain Widdershins is their dad right? Does he die? Is Quigley in this one? Maybe! He does something really stupid that's all I remember, like he's boring. There's some sort of code he helps figure out though? Maybe? This is the one where Sunny gets poisoned by mushrooms but she's become a cook somehow even though babies shouldn't use stoves and she tells them to use the wasabi bc the same as horseradish like how cilantro and coriander are the same thing.
Book the Twelfth : The Penultimate Peril
Anka : There is a taxi and Kit Snicket is driving it and she is also pregnant. They go to a hotel which uses the Dewey deciman systems. THe Baudelaires work there and also try to find out stuff. There are two twins who own the hotel, one of them is evil and one isn't, and in the end it turns out they are actually 3 triplets. There is Count Olaf who has a plan, and they try to make it not work, and then Count Olaf somehow makes the Baudelaires shoot the third triplet. Then there is a trial and a fire and the Baudelaires and Count Olaf escape with a boat.
I liked the Dewey Decimal System. I didn't know that such a thing existed before.
I got the book for my birthday after reading the one before, and I think I actually didn't read it until we had christmas break at school. It was winter then of course.
Terry : Ah, I remember having a bet with my cousin on whether it'd be called this or The Horrendous Hotel. I won! She thought "penultimate" was too weird of a word for a title.
Pandora : This one has a hotel and the dewey decimal system and dewey denouement and it probably really confused me bc having one nice brother and one evil one and not knowing which one is which sounds too wacky and annoying for me. I also looked this up for BB bc i remember reading the part about the brothers, which is maybe something I completely missed the first time? I only remember Dewey and maybe I just thought he was weird and not that there were two of them. The orphans pretend to be like bellhops and there's some sort of meeting taking place between good and evil and the man and woman who blah blah blah burn the building down? Some people die! But I don't think we know for sure whether many of them really die? God, this is around when I started disliking the books bc there was just a lot of mysterious salsa happening without anything being resolved. And I don't potatoing care what people say about the beauty of stories like this, if there's a potatoing four toed statue for no reason, I want to know who it is! Why should I care? Mystery for the sake of mystery is not good storytelling!
The Beatrice Letters
Anka : There are letters from Lemony to Beatrice and letters from the other Beatrice to Lemony, but we don't know yet that there are two people called Beatrice, so it's maybe confusing. There are also letters with each letter which are an anagram. We find out that Beatrice trains bats and is also an actress and Lemony is in love with her but she doesn't want to marry him. The other Beatrice trains bats too and tries to find Lemony because she wants to find the Baudelaires.
I really liked this. I liked the part where there were answers to questions that aren't in the book and you can try to guess some.
I got that for Christmas after reading the 12th book, and then I read it in the rest of the Christmas holidays. Like with TUA I tried to translate it, but with some parts it's kind of impossible, with all the anagrams and things.
Terry : I was pretty confused as to what to do with those cut-out letters and never really figured it out. And the narrative underneath the correspondence also sunk in a little later. But that love letter to Beatrice, while at first it looked a bit tedious, really turned out to be fantastic.
Pandora : Pretty sure I got this for Christmas one year and the book was ~gorgeous~ . I never read it.
To Be continued...
On the Nobility of a Singular Aristocracy
By Sherry Ann
If one were born when this forum was created, then one would be, as of today, old enough to join it. In other words, some of us will soon have been posting on 667 longer than our new members will have been alive. I know it may seem silly to talk about thirteen years this way - as though it’s eons or epochs - but for the internet, thirteen years can contain entire histories. And indeed, when it comes to history, 667 is handsomely wealthy, and 667ers are eager to cash in. We’re a nostalgic people; we live for the archives. We sift through ancient threads like they’re vintage photo albums. We’re mesmerized by older members’ lore from the days gone by. Why are we so fascinated by the past? And in light our former conflicts, follies, and misfortunes, can we ever truly call ourselves “noble enough”? I suspect each of us will provide a unique answer to this question, but this is mine.
Abandoned profiles, old alliances, lost forum controversies: there’s something incredibly satisfying about immersing myself in these pictures. The sensation isn’t quite a longing for the past. “Longing” isn’t the right word. Rather, it’s the feeling one gets when one is warm indoors during a thunderstorm, or in conversation with well-read people, or revisiting a half-remembered childhood movie. Totally submerged in the past, I am, for a few ephemeral moments, Sometime Else. In these moments, I’m connected to a something I can’t quite name – a time, a place, an encounter I will only ever experience second-hand. I see the shadows but can only ever sort of imagine the people casting them. I’m surveilling the party through the outside window, stuck on a hill as the war rages below, forever reminded of my twilight arrival and perpetually imprisoned by it.
Somehow, the past is always paradoxically as bigger, busier, and brighter as it is enchantingly hollow, mysterious, and strange. Wisps of joy, remnants of sorrow, and shades of every fossilized emotion get caught in the storms of time and eventually wind up, battered and broken and beautiful, on the shores of the present. They’re castaways. The celebratory PM. The bright pink banner. That one time with BSam. The cats.
Some profiles boast registration years dating back to 2002. But I was, like most of us were, thrust into this epic narrative somewhere along the way, entering the story long after another generation had deserted it, only realizing later how many phantoms predated me, only realizing later how soon I was to become a phantom myself. Posts, though fleeting, are also permanent and cumulative – over time, they leave a single footprint, a single legacy. We add a step to a journey that began long before we started to walk.
Maybe this is what I’m looking for, or what we’re looking for, then – how best we might leave our own impressions on these shifting sands, what sort of impact our words will have in the long term. If anything we say matters, or if everything will be forgotten by all but the few who were foolish or wise enough to go looking. Then again, maybe not. Maybe we’re attracted to spontaneity, the impulsive, joking personas we occasionally adopt on whims, the most accessible of the human voices echoing from behind unspoken words, the voices chanting now, now, now. We immortalize a now every time we post a story or a comment or continue a discussion: a now that will become a then, a then that will, with any luck, crystallize into a wow or a ha or an oh! or a hmm.
In the meantime, we have a great deal to learn from one another, and it’s easy to overlook that in our veneration of the Days Gone By. For instance, Dante teaches us how to compose and inspire constructive literary criticism; Hermes, how to balance such thoughtful analysis with wisdom and compassion. Poe's Coats Host Toast teaches us how to be artists in every sense of the word, and Emma “Emmz” Squalor reminds us that being an artist is really hard. Kit's tits kick ticks exemplifies the merits of compromise and structure while soufflé and Charles Vane establish the virtues of spontaneity. B. validates the importance of the contrarian, and Songbird that of the traditionalist. Isadora Is a Door inspires generativity by showcasing the fruits of dedication. Wiliis (Willis???) reminds us that we should value inclusivity, and Cafe SalMONAlla, creativity. Charlie makes me wonder if relentless optimism might not be such a bad idea after all. Linda Rhaldeen teaches us about passion; gliquey, ingenuity; penne, honesty; A comet crashing into Earth, generosity; Liam R. Findlay, resourcefulness; Agathological, exploration; Tryina Denouement, persistence; Hermedy, nmu; BSam, who.
I could list 667ers ad nauseam. But you know who they are. You remember who enthusiastically answered your PM, who offered feedback on your work, who wished you luck on your investigation, who answered your detailed and convoluted question, who challenged you to think about politics differently, who changed your mind about literature, who inspired you to be a writer, thinker, or historian, who reawakened your imagination, who recommended a book, song, or movie that entered your life at just the right moment. They’re tattooed in your memory; they are your invisible insignias symbolizing membership in a secret organization unlike any other. An organization of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. An organization that represents the one permanent victory of our race over cruelty and chaos. An organization, as our authorial leader gloriously paraphrased from the late E.M. Forster, whose true home is the imagination, and whose kingdom is the wide-open world.
Why, then, do we care about what happened five or thirteen years ago on a children’s book forum obscured to all but a singular aristocracy? We care, I think, because we continue to hope for the best - because the world is not quiet, and because on this harum-scarum planet this is one of the last safe places. But above all, I think, we care because we volunteered. To do good for no reason in particular, to embrace the Great Unknown, to metaphorically refuse sugar in our tea: these are questions disguised as sentence fragments. And I believe, my fellow associates – my fellow readers, writers, scientists, philosophers, archivists, and detectives – I believe our collective answer makes us noble enough indeed.
13 Years
We're all so unlucky
To belong to this forum
Created by a Disney princess
Bloopity bloop
Ploop
13 years is longer than most of my whole damn life
I love you all
It would be a TRAGEDY (lololol) if we weren't friends
And scholars and colleagues and whatnot
Baguette
Croissant
Eiffel Tower
I'm outie
667 Big Brother is back! After two successful runs over the last two years, we're back for a third time!
Only this time, it's a bit different.
First of all, Linda isn't a big brother. After two years of being the undisputbale queen of BB, it's time she finally has the pleasure of being a housemate.
Secondly, Lemona is a big brother for the first time. Whereas I was a big brother in 2013, lemona is brand new to this experience.
Thirdly, there have been some changes to the rules. But more on that when the house opens on 1st July.
Fourthly, however, Big Brother has changed. This year there will be more twists and turns and unpexted happenings than ever before. And I'd like to take this opportitntiy to state that whilst in the past the big brothers have been slgihtly leniant with the rules, this time it will certianly not be the case.
Another thing that won't be the case this year is any sense of predicatability. In past years, most weeks, it's been pretty easy to kno how each week will go. Nominations and a new task on Monday, voting starts on Wednesday, the task ends and someobdy is evicted on Friday, and then a wekeend task.
My hope is that this year, housemates won't be able to predict anything about the coming week.
And there will be some twists. Some of the twists will be nice. Some will be relentlessy cruel. But I hope you don't get to upset by that. There will be times where things will seem unfair, or mean, or evil.... but it's just a game. And most of these things will be based on luck, so I hope you aren't personally offended.
But don't worry! It's not all doom and gloom. There will be plenty of fun to be had by all. And I hope you enjoy yourselves a lot.
But mostly, I want to try and turn the way the game works upside down. And I hope I can.
So, here's a start. For the first time in 667 Big Brother history – the details of the first task are now going to be revealed.
On Wednesday 1st July, the link to the BB forum will be made public. Housemates can make an account, sign up, and begin participating in the game. So far, business as usual.
However.
The First task will have already begun.
The task is quite simple – There will be a series of special password protected 'twist rooms'. The passwords will be intricatly hidden throughout the forum. All you have to do is find a password and enter the room. The first person to do so will post in the room, and they will win a special twist.
But what is that twist? Well, that would be telling. Twists can be good or bad, positive or negative. But they will hugely affect the rest of your time in the Big Brother house. Or outside of it.
Each housemate is only allowed to claim one twist, and the details of each twist won't be revealed until all the twists have been claimed.
Don't worry if you aren't able to get one of the first twists – there will be more released at later points in the task. But first come first served.
So there. That's the first task. Or at least the first part of it....
That's it for now. See you in July.
There are still spaces left in the house! If you are interested in becoming a housemate please PM me or Lemona, or post in the Big Brother thread
Hey my peeps.
So fun fact, I actually joined 667 in 2009 and stalked old violet and quigley fan fiction and bumped threads. And then I got over it and forgot about it and basically all I remembered was shelly's 1236907426 song fics and Dante's creepy avatar.
BUT THEN in like 2011 and I was still into fan fiction salsa so I was writing something and I think like Emma, LSWannabe and Hermes were the people who read it lol. THEN AT SOME POINT I MARRIED THE DISNEY PRINCESS THAT CREATED THIS FORUM HAHAHA. AND THEN MOD GAMES AND HANGOUTS AND WF ARF TFAM T.
In a nutshell, you guys are like a weird dysfunctional 3rd (I would say second but I already have several of those) family to me. Only a couple of my friends actually know I'm part of a nerdy lemony snicket forum. But that's cool. This whacked out strange community is a source of unique entertainment and cross country holiday cards so I thank you all for that. (And thanks Trag for starting this salsa of course).
We have everything here--artists, writers, philosophers, drunks, and any other archetype you can think of. I'm proud to hd the title of 3rd most beloved but you're all 1st in my heart. Lol that was lame and cheesy but who doesn't love some good dairy??! Funny because i used to be vegan. Okay bye now, happy 13th 667 you freak show.
‘667 Dark Avenue?’
‘Yeah, it’s just a stupid online thing for a dumb series of kids’ books.’
This is the idea that I- Bee, Brunch, Miriam, whatever you’ve been calling me for years now- want to reinforce to you today. After all, there is no better time to remind you all of this simple fact than today, the 13th anniversary of the community you have all come to frequent so much.
This forum, is more or less meaningless.
Who cares that it has allowed you to gain lifelong friends? Who cares that it has given countless opportunities or intellectual debate and opinion-sharing? Who cares that it has become a cornerstone of so many of our lives? It is centred around children's books for god’s sake- most of us are adults now, were adults then, or have adulthood looming just around the corner. Shouldn’t we all grow up and find something better to do?
This isn’t just my trademark callous and blunt style I’ve become known for talking- it’s the truth. It doesn’t matter that 667 is probably the sole place that I’ve had the chance to develop this style, to learn things about myself and from others. It doesn’t matter that 667 provided solace to me in some of my darkest hours. It doesn’t matter that the people I’ve gotten to know here over the years are, and remain to be, some of the best individuals I know.
So you see I don’t care about 667, not really- and neither should you. You shouldn’t care about this anniversary, nor the witty, brilliant author this brief essay (almost) blatantly plagiarises. What you should do, is quit. Just leave, go out, meet ‘real’ people- whatever that means. I plan to delete my account myself some time in the next 50 years.
And just in case you didn’t get the point of this essay, I’ll spell it out for you:
Happy 13th anniversary, 667!
Bonus poem! Here is a poem sophie wrote for last issue (the darkie's special) but was late
Dark Ease
Oooooooh
It's mister steal yo girl
Ooooh
Woahhhh
D d d d d d d
Darkies!!
Dark awards darkies dark ease dark
Would Napoleon if I told him would
Darcie's carnies darkies
Autocorrect I don't autocorrect like I don't.
D d d d d drop the bass
But don't drop your award as you saunter off the stage
Do I dare eat a peach?
I hope y'all win some fine ass prizes
Much love
Good vibes
Keep singing or nah
Dark. E's. Dark ease. Darkies.
wheeeeeeeee
So some may say that this doesn't strictly speaking ~fit the bill~ of an essay on the year 2012, because I have researched nothing, and seem to understand literally nothing about forum history beyond what I am recalling off the top of my head, but whatever, you suck.
Also this will mostly be about me, because evidently I was a part of all the important events of 2012.
2012, what a year to be alive! The year that the world ended, the year that I joined 667, the year that Lemony Snicket's ATWQ came to fruition, and wowed us all! Seriously, I would say ATWQ revived this forum, bringing it back from the darkest edge of nothingness. Or maybe it was me. It's really hard to tell, seeing as we happened at around the same time.
Also heaps of really important people arrived in 2012, including, but not limited to, and maybe not including either, bc I can't remember if this is true: Anka, Mister M, Me, Sophie, Lucas. WOW!
In 2012, or maybe it was 2013, lots of people were also getting e-married. Like Bee married me, even tho she was kinda not really at all up for it at all. And Sophie married Tragedy, and became everyone's fave Trophie wife (are they still married idek). Oh and Pen and Terry were a thing, the coolest part of which was that their names are kinda like Ben and Jerry. The more I write this, the more I think that this was definitely 2013 ah well.
2012 also saw the 10th anniversary of 667! Which is super exciting because there were all sorts of fun activities going on, and all sorts of half-fossiled members springing up out of the woodwork. Hooray! There was no VFDoor even tho Sophie swears there was, but there was a Ball! And oh what a ball I presume it was!
2012 was also the last palindromic date for a while, whatever cool woo.
Clearly the most important part of 2012 tho was the rise of kpop in the west! Steadily rising since late 2011, the release of f(x)'s Electric Shock shone a beacon on the kpop world. Almost immediately following that, Psy's Gangnam Style (whilst not even being that good) propelled kpop into the international stage. I myself am sick to death enough of gangnam style that I don't even wanna search it in yt, so if you really wanna watch it, go ahead and look for it yourself. I mean, compared to some other pieces of absolute literal gold like all these videos right here, gangnam style was kinda lame. The only good part of it was that it brought beautiful Hyuna out of the kpop nothing void, and into stardom.
Lastly of all, 2012 was an important year because if we didn't have it, then we would have gone straight from 2011 to 2013 which would have been totally weird and disconcerting.
I love you all you guys, have fun, and hopefully we can work together to make 2015 even more memorable than that great year 2012!
Woo!
***
The Power Rankings as a 667 list presented to you with limited commercial interruption. This is in the book order, not in the order of my faves.
The End- Okay, well backwards book order. It would be weird if The End came at the beginning. This is for my gurl Rellim, bff forever, ride or die, etc etc
The Penultimate Peril- This would be a good place for Penny but I already have a spot for him, so Charlie goes here instead. iflu boo.
The Grim Grotto - No one is grimmer than @fwff. Cheer up buddy! Pretty sure I said you'd never be on this list again but here you are a month later you punk ass book jockey!
The Slippery Slope- This works somehow bc that thing about once you sign in here you can never leave hotel california blah blah. So starting to post at 667 is a slippery slope or something, just ask BSam who has been here for 90 years.
The Carnivorous Carnival - When I first started talking to 667 The Next Generation I had a conversation with bee and Kit's tits kick ticks, who was very adamant about not being a vegetarian.
The Hostile Hospital Christmas Chief is the closest thing to a doctor this forum has even if it turns out that grandpa has a doctorate or something.
The Vile Village -When I heard vile, I thought of the good times when we all hated Isadora Is a Door and he was the worst.
The Ersatz Elevator - She is more stylish and fabulous than Esme and she arranged the anniversary stuff, so Linda Rhaldeen bc she is innest. ps, hey girl hey #lindora4ever #dontneednoawards #OTP
The Austere Academy - Aside from all the pairings with me in them, the true best pairing, and yes I can define pairing as more than 2 ppl bc i do what i want, is the school gang. B., soufflé, Charloe, Penny
The Miserable Mill Invisible is always miserable about something. Hang in there baby!
The Wide Window I feel like there could be a fat joke here but that would be mean.
The Reptile Room - To Mulan, our least favorite cold hearted snake!
The Bad Beginning - After our inauspicious beginning, who would have thought we'd come so far? Started from the bottom, now we're here <3 penne
..
So...
this is..... awkward...
Bandit hasn't sent me this yet. naughty bandit. Hopefully he will sometime then i can add it in
Boook the Thirteenth – The End
Anka : The Baudelaires and Count Olaf are in a boat and there is a storm. They end up on an island where people live who wear only white stuff and eat the same things all the time and don't use the things that get washed up there. The Baudelaires stay there but Olaf goes away. There is also the snake from the second book. Kit Snicket also turns up and then Count Olaf pretends to be Kit Snicket too and wants to poison the island with the fungus helmet. There is also a big apple tree and the Baudelaires find out that there is horseradish in the apples, so they are good against the fungus. They also find out that under the tree there is a book written by their parents. The island people somehow go away, and then Count Olaf dies and Kit Snicket dies too because pregnant people can't have horseradish apples. Her child doesn't die though and the Baudelaires keep it and name it after their mother. Then there is chapter 14, and the Baudelaires leave the island a year later after having read the stuff their parents had written. In the end we find out that the baby is called Beatrice, so the mother must have been called Beatrice too.
It was cool, but again I would have liked to find out more stuff.
I got that book for the same Christmas as TBL and read it after that.
Terry : I remember spending a lot of daydreaming on how the series would end. I had many scenarios and premises in my head, but I've forgotten them by now. Mostly because I was actually quite happy with how it all wrapped up. I'm not that nitpicky as to unresolved plot points like other people are, I guess.
Pandora : I really thought I might read this one day but I guess I was outtie 500 after the penultimate peril, which is good bc from what I remember this one has just about nothing that has to do with anything. There's like an island with people and a leader and it's about their drama and Kit and Olaf and the kids happen to be there. Oh, so they take Kit's cab at one point, and somehow then end up on the island? Whatever. I think Esme is the only one to sleep with Olaf and live but Kit certainly doesn't even though she slept with Olaf way before she saw him again when she knocked up on the island. She was engaged to like J somebody and I think she ate posioned mushrooms or something or had a sword fight? I have no idea but her and Olaf went out Romeo and Juliet style kinda and he redeemed himself a little or something? It was really stupid and I liked Kit Snicket even though she barely appeared in any of the books I read and Olaf and her was actually kinda interesting until they both died. And now the kids are raising her daughter beatrice on their own bc the moral of the story is that is possible to be a happy orphan or something.
Question the First : Who Could That Be At This Hour?
Anka : Lemony Snicket is almost 13 and he gets a bad chaperone called S. Theodora Markson. They go to a town where there used to be a sea but now isn't, and they are supposed to bring a stolen statue back which hasn't even been stolen. There is a lighthouse and a girl called Moxie lives there and she becomes Lemony's friend and is a journalist with a typewriter. There is also another girl called Ellington Feint and she is mysterious and likes music and coffee. Her father has been kidnapped by an evil person called Hangfire and she wants to bring him the statue to get her father back. Hangfire is also the person who pretended the statue had been stolen because he wants it. I'm not even sure who has the statue in the end.
I have no idea what I liked about the book itself, but I really liked the Snicketmails.
I had joined 667 because I had just finished school and had about 3 months with nothing really to do and wanted to find more Lemony Snicket stuff somewhere online. So I was there and everyone was talking about a new series which was going to start soon. I was just on the right website at the right time. So I went to a different website where I could order the book, and another one where I could subscribe to the Snicketmail thing. By the time the book was released I was working at a school as a volunteer and I kind of wasn't happy with my life.
Terry : At this hour it could only be Mister M asking me to fill out a questionnaire for the 667er.
Pandora : No clue about the later books and no desire to read them bc is there any ickleing point? I'm sure they're entertaining and whatever but its just too much and does anyone ever even find out what VFD really means? I'm still waiting for the basic eight 2, electric boogaloo
Question the Second : When Did you see her Last?
Anka : There is a girl who is a chemist and she is gone, and Theodora and Lemony have to find her. She was trying to make invisible ink to save the town or something. Hangfire was trying to kidnap her and make her do some evil chemistry stuff, but instead he kidnapped Ellington Feint who had dyed her hair to look like her. There is also the girl's boyfriend who can cook. The girl also has a car and it is somewhere where it can't really be or something. I don't know where the actual girl even was all the time. I remember a tadpole though.
I found it a bit confusing. But maybe that was because I took so long to read it.
Well that's not long ago. The book was released just before I started university. I didn't read it until months later though, and I also took several months to read it. For some time I sometimes had some anxiety problems for no reason in the evening sometimes, and then I decided to read in the book every time I noticed I was getting nervous, and it kind of helped a bit.
Terry : In a portacabin a long time ago.
File Under : 13 Suspicious Incidents
Anka : There are 13 stories and you have to guess what happened, and then there are solutions in the back of the book. There is a story with golden nails, a story with twins and a wig, a story with a lizard, a story with a spoon with a letter, and other stories with other stuff. There is also some extra stuff between the solutions.
My favourite was the story with the twins and the wig. I almost guessed the solution there, but I thought they had used the dog as a wig, so I thought that that was probably not completely right.
I gave the book to Mister M for his birthday and then we read it together. We read one story every week in a video chat, with him reading the story out loud to me, but me also reading along, and we tried to guess the solution together. The last two stories or something (including the twin wig one) was when we were meeting last summer, so that was cool.
Terry : File Under: No time to fill out.
Quetion The Third : Shouldn't You Be In School?
Anka : A school burns down and people are put in another school. Lemony goes there to find out what Hangfire is doing, and there are people who help him and people who maybe do or maybe don't. Weird stuff happens and I don't know how it ended and yes I know this is the book I remember least even though I only finished reading it a few months ago.
I don't know
Well it was in late 2014/early 2015 so I guess most things were the same as now.
Terry : No, I graduated with slighty flying colours
What do you think will happen in 'Why Is This Night Different from All Other nights?
Anka : I have absolutely no idea. Isn't there supposed to be a murder?
Terry : Wrong question. It depends on who's asking what I think will happen in 'Why Is This Night Different from All Other nights?'. Also I'm hoping there will be drama, suspense, and surprising revelations, but I trust Handler to know what he's doing.
BONUS ROUND – Lemona, who talked about books 1 – 3 and then got bored
TBB
The narration says "an expression which here means" on page 34. One of very few times when Snicket doesn't use word or phrase.
I like the overly long shopping sequence. The readers didn't actually need to know every detail of the Baudelaires' purchasing ingredients for pasta putanesca, but because of Mr Handler's love of talking about food in his books, they heard it.
I dislike how unrealistic the idea of Fernald holding the grappling hook is. I mean, really? A human couldn't have supported the whole thing by one hook while Violet climbed. I'm fussy, so the menacing moment when Violet reaches the end of the rope was spoiled by me going "uh huh, sure".
I'll try to recall my first experience for all of these, but I have no particular memory of encountering TBB for the first time. So I'll take the other extreme and tell you about my most recent life experience reading it. A couple weeks ago, after a busy few days, my lovely parentals surprised me with TBBRE as an unexpected gift. (Aww.) I hadn't read the Authors Notes for some time, and never in person, so to speak, and the print on the cover is nice and gothic.
TRR
This book is the first time we realise this villain is srs bsns. Funny how atwq has spent three books leading up to murder.
Like: Snicket being late for Madame diLustro's dinner party, the walking-upstairs simile in chapter 7, and the following quote: "Waiting is one of life’s hardships. It is hard enough to wait for chocolate cream pie while burnt roast beef is still on your plate. It is plenty difficult to wait for Halloween when the tedious month of September is still ahead of you. But to wait for one’s adopted uncle to come home while a greedy and violent man is upstairs was one of the worst waits the Baudelaires had ever experienced". I also am amused that Olaf opted to go from one distinctive eyebrow look (having one) to another (having none) when a bit of precision shaving might have made two fairly convincing separate eyebrows. Still, better than relying on a monocle.
Dislike: this line from Violet: "Count Olaf found us once, and I’m sure he’d find us again, no matter how far we went." Really? A very definite statement. Yes, this turns out to be true later on, but this is book THE SECOND. After Count Olaf has found the Baudelaires several times over, it would be fair for Violet to make the assumption that he is always able to. But finding the children once, in a house “a short drive” from the city (pg 18), does not necessarily mean that, “no matter how far we went,” he would track them down.
Again, no idea of the first time I read it, and here I don't even have any heartwarming tales about the most recent time. Sorry. For some of the later books I'll bring interesting stories, I promise.
TWW
The structure of TWW is similar to the structure of TRR in a few ways. The orphans are sent to live with a relation who is not, but asks to be called, an uncle or aunt respectively. Each relation has some kind of passion that they try to engage the children in; Aunt Josephine was less successful than Uncle Monty. (Though this is almost certainly not deliberate, the rooms that each of the guardians’ passions is carried out in feature a lot of glass.) There is an unspecified period of time spent before misfortune appears, and when it does, each guardian eventually dies, in a way, to something they love. Though it was Olaf and not a snake that put venom into Monty, and Olaf and not a storm that threw Josephine into Lake Lachrymose, the connection was still strong.[/b][/quote][/p]
Like: the fact that LS brings up the United States Postal Service out of nowhere simply to tell the reader that the Fickle Ferry operates differently. Dislike: meh, I can't really think of any particular thing. This is isn't my favourite book in the series, but I have no problems with it, boringly.
The only book I am postive I didn’t encounter for the first time on audiobook. I remember borrowing the physical book from my local library. I started reading it one night, and I was surprised at how engaged I was, as I used to find that reading words didn't hold my attention as well as hearing them did. My grandparents came over the next day, and the whole time I was hanging out with them, I was anxious to get back to reading. I finished it that night a.k.a. the next morning.
BONUS ROUND OVER
Sorry to be a dissapointment. Yes, I know, I didn't join in 2014, I actually joined in 2012. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess that doesn't matter. At least I was around in 2014.
But that's not the only thing to be disappointed about. I have a tremendous amount of responsibility on my shoulders. This essay is the last part of this mammoth anniversary edition of the 667er. Many articles have come before it (25, or so it should be at the time of writing, making this the 26th - 13 essays, 13 articles. Not something I had intended), and those articles have been pretty darn good, coming from those much more knoweldgable, enjoyable, interesting, and elequent than I could ever be, And now not only is it my responsibility to follow them, I have to try my best to match them. Nobody likes a bad ending.
But I shouldn't be too downheartened. I've been completely blown away by the quality of the 13 essays. I love the variety in style and length, and of the people who wrote them. So I guess I'm something a bit different, so you shouldn't notice too much if it isn't any good. And anyway, 13 is an unlucky number.
So where to begin? Do I begin by talking about how I came to join 667? I suppose I could, but the story isn't that interesting. I could tell you about 667 when I first joined, but that has already been covered to some extent by charlie in his 2012 essay, and – after all – this is an essay about 2014. Or it's supposed to be.
But shortly after I joined 667 something happened. Something that is, I suppose, perfectly fitting for this essay – There was an anniversary. 667's tenth anniversary. The forum was full of celebrations, theme days, timelines, trivia quizzes.... and so it is today. And there was also a special anniversary edition of the 667er. Funny how these things turn out.
But in all the mayhem and chaos I became a bit lost – not really sure what was going on or who was doing it, and by the time I'd figured it out something else came along to confuse me. And no, I'm not just talking about the anniversaries here. 667 was very much an enigma wrapped in a mystery tied up with a cliché. Everybody knew who everybody was, and there were lots of in-jokes and rivalries and groups.. and so, for a while, not wanting to get lost in everything, I held back. I posted mostly only in BBooks, and there I began to come to know and befriend a small group of 667ers – Charlie, Bee, Anka, and Pen. And then slowly I began to seep into the rest of the forum. One of my first truly substantial posts was a small rant about feeling excluded. I said then that I wanted to try and make 667 more inclusive. Although in retorspect I feel I was a bit chidlsih about the whole thing, I felt I had to do something a bit different. So I did.
I started sending welcome PMs to new members, explaining who people are, where good threads are etc. I did this for a while, with almost every new member, until one of them told me that they didn't need telling where to find things out, and that they could do it for themselves. So I stopped.
I don't actually think i've told anybody this before. So why am I telling you this now? Well, because in all my time at 667, I've always had a certain... habit, for doing things on my won. Without asking.
I sent out welcome PMs to new members, I restarted penthouse days, I start a reread (with a schedule!) without Dante's permission, and I spent a long while planning the 667er's comeback before even asking Charlie's permission. But what gives me the right to do these things?
Nothing I suppose. I don't have the right to do a lot of the things I've done. Although most of them have been good things, there has sometimes been the occasional bad thing (That penthouse incident, that quote incident, that time I said I don't like Sam). But I think I've learnt from my mistakes well enough. Everybody makes mistakes. And everybody has the right to make them.
Mistakes are a thing I make a lot (not just spelling mistakes, those would be to numerous to mention) But I always try and fix my mistakes. That's the main reason I want to do Big Brother again. I dont think I was particularly good last time, and I want to recity that by making this the best Big Brother ever (Sign up! Shameless plug over). And maybe it was a mistake to attempt to write this essay. But I try not to worry about it.
Maybe it was mistake to send so many PMs to people over the years. Actually, no, I know that that wasn't a mistake, because if I hadn't done that, the whole Anka thing wouldn't have happened. But maybe I shouldn't have PMed other people so much. What gives me the right to do that? To PM people and ask them questions or to do something for the 667er? That I do worry about. I hope I don't upset to many people with that. IF I do, I would send you a PM to apologize, but I don't think that would help.
But I do want to help. And I suppose that's why I do a lot of the things I do. I wanted to help people not be so confused by sending out PMs to new members. I wanted to help people have a place to hang out and talk in the penthouse. And I wanted to help people have a creative outlet in the 667er. And I think that's something I have the right to do.
But this is a mistake. I'm foccusing to much on the past, when the future, endless and uncertain, is only a second away from me. 667 has been here for 13 years, and although it may seem naïve of me to say it, I think it still will be in 13 more. 667 is not as big as it was 10 years ago. Or 5, or even 3. But it's still here. And I think people are doing the wrong thing. It's a mistake to act as if nothing is happening, when things are. New members are still joining. New threads and posts are being made, new theories, new questions. Yes, there is less activity than there was before, but even if the flame is a little dimmer than before, even the smallest moth will find it's way to it. But I think, perhaps, only if we help them.
It's an unfortunate question to have to ask, but I will ask it anyway – Will I still be here in 13 years? I think the answer is yes. If my life goes the way I want it to, I won't have the time to do as much as before. I certainly won't be editing the 667er anymore, but I hope someone else will be. Perhaps Linda. Or sophie, or maybe even Hermes. Or somebody that I couldn't even imagine. Either because I wouldn't expect them to or because I don't even know them yet. Perhaps I will help them, but perhaps it's for the best if I didn't. I wouldn't want to outstay my welcome. Either as editor fot he 667er, or on the forum as a whole.
Or in this essay, actually. I have rambled on for far too long, which is definitely a mistake. But at least it's somehting I had the right to do. Or at least I hope I do.
I hope you enjoyed the essay, at any rate. And the same for the whole 667er, in fact. I could say that I hope it has done the last 13 years justice, but that would be wrong. The only thing that could the last 13 years justice is those last 13 years themselves. But at the very least I hope this gave you a hefty slice of the celebratory cake. They say to many bakers spoil the.. umm.. cake. With 667 Dark Avenue that is certainly not the case. There are over 7,000 of us, and counting. And anybody in the world has the right to join. Everybody has the right to learn about Daniel Handler's wonderful books, to socialise with other members, to play ridculous games, to help others, to make song threads and 667 fics and kpop articles, to give Darkies, make advent calenders, sing songs, hangout, shout, chat, PM, and post. And everybody has the right to have fun.
I spent a good five or six months unsure wether or not I wanted to join 667. In the end, I decided I might as well. Looking back on the last three years, at least that's something I know I got right.
Happy Birthday 667