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Post by lsandthebooks on Aug 28, 2019 14:03:09 GMT -5
I'm talking about this note that Lemony wrote:
Who could he be talking about? I think this other note is really interesting too:
So there should actually be some kind of footage evidence, if the survivor is from the Baudelaire mansion fire. Since I'm pretty sure footage of a survivor is never mentioned in the series, then what could all of this mean? The Bad Beginning says this about the fountain:
So, to me that reads like the survivor, might actually be the survivor of the Royal Gardens fire. But...does Lemony ever mention the Royal Gardens again? I know there was a small quote from Justice Strauss about it, but she never gave any real details. She only said a poisonous plant and a credit card were involved. She never gave any names...people say that Olaf must be the suspect, but if that were true, then why would Justice Strauss have been so eager to be part of his play...? She's not one of the evil judges, so she would've been totally against helping Olaf in any way if she thought he was a criminal.
Some people think that the Royal Gardens Fire is just a random plot point that Lemony never explored again...
But mentioning a survivor in the Fountain isn't a random thing, especially since Lemony mentions the 7th book. And I can't find anything that says that the fountain has a passageway underneath it. Does anyone have any extra information?
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Post by Foxy on Aug 29, 2019 6:53:43 GMT -5
I think it would be really fitting if the survivor of the fire were Beatrice. Her family played in the fountain on a hot day, and she returned to it after almost dying.
The Royal Gardens is talked about in TGG (Jacques Snicket was investigating the fire), and also there are allusions to it in TBL.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Aug 29, 2019 7:26:38 GMT -5
I think it would be really fitting if the survivor of the fire were Beatrice. Her family played in the fountain on a hot day, and she returned to it after almost dying. The Royal Gardens is talked about in TGG (Jacques Snicket was investigating the fire), and also there are allusions to it in TBL. Or could Bertrand be an option? After all, Lemony puts a dedication to Beatrice in every book, and in the 7th book, he says "For Beatrice – When we were together I felt breathless. Now, you are." So I don't see why he'd be talking about her...
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Post by Foxy on Aug 29, 2019 7:42:21 GMT -5
That's a fair point... unless he didn't know she was alive?
I love the idea of Bertrand being the surviving parent, if only because we hardly ever hear anything about him, and he is even more shrouded in mystery than Beatrice.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Aug 29, 2019 15:06:01 GMT -5
That's a fair point... unless he didn't know she was alive? I love the idea of Bertrand being the surviving parent, if only because we hardly ever hear anything about him, and he is even more shrouded in mystery than Beatrice. Or...the survivor can even be Lemony. In the Snicket file, it says the survivor's whereabouts are unknown. So if they were trapped in the fountain until they were rescued, then their location would have to be known. Lemony is the only character (at least I think so) who's been on the run for years.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 29, 2019 21:02:27 GMT -5
Again ... I will summarize ... What makes me believe that Beatrice survived for many years after the fire: 1 - Lemony is an unreliable narrator. He may lie or deceive himself about Beatrice's death. Most likely both depending on the moment.
2 - Lemony states that Beatrice was in the Masked Ball in which he was captured, which happened after some of Uncle Monty's reptiles DIED, and not just disappeared.
3 - Lemony published TRR after 2 YEARS or MORE, after the events recorded in book 2 itself. Still, a villain sought information about surviving reptiles in book 2 already published. The Masked Ball Lemony was captured in took place after this event. And Beatrice was at this event, completely alive.
4 - The TAA book was published many years after the closing of Prufrock Prep. However, by the time the Masked Ball Lemony was captured in happened, Prufrock Prep was still in operation. It was at this time that the villain sought information in the TRR that had already been published. This indicates that Prufrock Prep stopped working sometime between the publication of TRR and TAA. And between these two publications, many years have passed.
5 - In a letter that "R" sent to Lemony, "R" states that Lemony after his capture at Masked Ball spent many years presumably dead, ie without publishing new books. Lemony had already started publishing when this letter was written, as "R" states that Lemony had already begun researching the Baudelaires' lives. "R" also states that Beatrice really was in that Masked Ball. "R" also claims to have seen what appears to be the arrival of the original of Book 4 at the Orion Observatory, along with the bubblegum papers. This description is identical to what Lemony states in the letter to the editor printed at the end of TWW. This confirms that Lemony sent the letter to R along with TMM's original after his long stay abroad, presumably dead.
6. Lemony said something to Beatrice at the Masked Ball, something he wanted to have said for 15 long years. Not something that was happening right now, but something he wanted to tell about 15 years ago. Something about Count Olaf. Olaf died 1 year or less after the fire at Baudelaire Mansion. The Ball was at least 2 years after the Baudelaire Mansion fire. The only thing that makes sense to tell about Count Olaf after Olaf's death occurred is to warn Beatrice that "Count Olaf is Dead!" That was the phrase Lemony said to Beatrice that night. If Lemony spoke the truth about 15 years, and there is no indication that he would lie about it and then hide information, that would put Masked Ball as happening 15 years after Count Olaf's death.
7 - "R" maybe thought Beatrice died in the fire of her house, and Lemony maybe believed it for a while. But at the very least, when Lemony wrote TVV, TSS, and TGG, he knew Beatrice was alive. The secret messages on TVV and TSS were probably for Beatrice, because Kit was dead. Especially the TSS message shows that the letter recipient knew how to make Beatrice's salad and that he would never forget Beatrice's birthday. As shown in THH, Lemony can call other people brother and sister.
8 - Hotel D, quoted in the letter in TSS, is a hotel rebuilt after the fire, because by the time the letter was written it had been many, many years since the original fire. In TBB the Rare Edition, it is shown that the trolley used by the Baudelaires had later been used in founding a hotel. That's because Hotel D was rebuilt.
9 - Lemony knew that Kit had been dead since she started writing TBB, because his source of information was evidently the book on the island, where Kit's death was recorded.
10 - In TGG, Lemony states that he can save Kit through some food. He is actually protecting another person's identity. Probably Beatrice herself, who after many years pretended to be Kit. That's because Kit died on a desert island with few witnesses, which made Kit and Olaf's death a secret for many years. Beatrice certainly took advantage of it. Remember that like Olaf, Beatrice has theater training, and can pretend to be other people.
11. In TBL, there is evidence that two Beatrices are writing for Lemony, not just Kit's daughter. For example, the anagram My Silence Knot is used by one of the Beatrices, while the other Beatrice does not use the same anagram. This anagram was created by Lemony in a code class, and Beatrice Baudelaire began using it as a recognition code. Understanding the chronology I just used, you will find that not even Beatrice Jr was only 10 after the TPP was published. When the Masquerade Ball took place, Beatrice Jr should be at least 14 years old. By the time she went to get information about her uncle, some of Lemony's books had already been published. For Beatrice Jr claims to have some constructive criticism of Lemony's work.
12 - Beatrice probably died before Lemony published TE. After Beatrice's death, it was no longer important to preserve the idea that Kit was alive.
13 - The Prufrock Prep photo of the woman, who is not Miss K in LSTUA. Probably is Betrice. Lemony wrote something very sentimental on the photo. In addition, Beatrice at TBL states that she was at Prufrock Prep as a student as an adult.
Note: Pay no attention to what Lemony wrote about the survivor at the source. He talks about it hypothetically, and simply to divert attention from the really important points. Someone was seen coming out of her tunnel, and the neighbors thought it was a ghost, according to TEE. The simplest explanation is the most logical. Beatrice's survival was very similar to Quigley's survival. Snicket File does not talk about Quigley's survival, as Olaf, who read the entire Snicket File, was surprised to find that Quigley was alive. The photo on page 13 shows the roof of the building on Dark Avenue 667. So it is clear that survival is from one of the Baudelaires' parents. So Beatrice simply took shelter of the tunnel fire. When the fire stopped, she waited a while and exited the tunnel. That simple.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Aug 30, 2019 8:34:30 GMT -5
Again ... I will summarize ... What makes me believe that Beatrice survived for many years after the fire: 1 - Lemony is an unreliable narrator. He may lie or deceive himself about Beatrice's death. Most likely both depending on the moment. 2 - Lemony states that Beatrice was in the Masked Ball in which he was captured, which happened after some of Uncle Monty's reptiles DIED, and not just disappeared. 3 - Lemony published TRR after 2 YEARS or MORE, after the events recorded in book 2 itself. Still, a villain sought information about surviving reptiles in book 2 already published. The Masked Ball Lemony was captured in took place after this event. And Beatrice was at this event, completely alive. 4 - The TAA book was published many years after the closing of Prufrock Prep. However, by the time the Masked Ball Lemony was captured in happened, Prufrock Prep was still in operation. It was at this time that the villain sought information in the TRR that had already been published. This indicates that Prufrock Prep stopped working sometime between the publication of TRR and TAA. And between these two publications, many years have passed. 5 - In a letter that "R" sent to Lemony, "R" states that Lemony after his capture at Masked Ball spent many years presumably dead, ie without publishing new books. Lemony had already started publishing when this letter was written, as "R" states that Lemony had already begun researching the Baudelaires' lives. "R" also states that Beatrice really was in that Masked Ball. "R" also claims to have seen what appears to be the arrival of the original of Book 4 at the Orion Observatory, along with the bubblegum papers. This description is identical to what Lemony states in the letter to the editor printed at the end of TWW. This confirms that Lemony sent the letter to R along with TMM's original after his long stay abroad, presumably dead. 6. Lemony said something to Beatrice at the Masked Ball, something he wanted to have said for 15 long years. Not something that was happening right now, but something he wanted to tell about 15 years ago. Something about Count Olaf. Olaf died 1 year or less after the fire at Baudelaire Mansion. The Ball was at least 2 years after the Baudelaire Mansion fire. The only thing that makes sense to tell about Count Olaf after Olaf's death occurred is to warn Beatrice that "Count Olaf is Dead!" That was the phrase Lemony said to Beatrice that night. If Lemony spoke the truth about 15 years, and there is no indication that he would lie about it and then hide information, that would put Masked Ball as happening 15 years after Count Olaf's death. 7 - "R" maybe thought Beatrice died in the fire of her house, and Lemony maybe believed it for a while. But at the very least, when Lemony wrote TVV, TSS, and TGG, he knew Beatrice was alive. The secret messages on TVV and TSS were probably for Beatrice, because Kit was dead. Especially the TSS message shows that the letter recipient knew how to make Beatrice's salad and that he would never forget Beatrice's birthday. As shown in THH, Lemony can call other people brother and sister. 8 - Hotel D, quoted in the letter in TSS, is a hotel rebuilt after the fire, because by the time the letter was written it had been many, many years since the original fire. In TBB the Rare Edition, it is shown that the trolley used by the Baudelaires had later been used in founding a hotel. That's because Hotel D was rebuilt. 9 - Lemony knew that Kit had been dead since she started writing TBB, because his source of information was evidently the book on the island, where Kit's death was recorded. 10 - In TGG, Lemony states that he can save Kit through some food. He is actually protecting another person's identity. Probably Beatrice herself, who after many years pretended to be Kit. That's because Kit died on a desert island with few witnesses, which made Kit and Olaf's death a secret for many years. Beatrice certainly took advantage of it. Remember that like Olaf, Beatrice has theater training, and can pretend to be other people. 11. In TBL, there is evidence that two Beatrices are writing for Lemony, not just Kit's daughter. For example, the anagram My Silence Knot is used by one of the Beatrices, while the other Beatrice does not use the same anagram. This anagram was created by Lemony in a code class, and Beatrice Baudelaire began using it as a recognition code. Understanding the chronology I just used, you will find that not even Beatrice Jr was only 10 after the TPP was published. When the Masquerade Ball took place, Beatrice Jr should be at least 14 years old. By the time she went to get information about her uncle, some of Lemony's books had already been published. For Beatrice Jr claims to have some constructive criticism of Lemony's work. 12 - Beatrice probably died before Lemony published TE. After Beatrice's death, it was no longer important to preserve the idea that Kit was alive. 13 - The Prufrock Prep photo of the woman, who is not Miss K in LSTUA. Probably is Betrice. Lemony wrote something very sentimental on the photo. In addition, Beatrice at TBL states that she was at Prufrock Prep as a student as an adult. Note: Pay no attention to what Lemony wrote about the survivor at the source. He talks about it hypothetically, and simply to divert attention from the really important points. Someone was seen coming out of her tunnel, and the neighbors thought it was a ghost, according to TEE. The simplest explanation is the most logical. Beatrice's survival was very similar to Quigley's survival. Snicket File does not talk about Quigley's survival, as Olaf, who read the entire Snicket File, was surprised to find that Quigley was alive. The photo on page 13 shows the roof of the building on Dark Avenue 667. So it is clear that survival is from one of the Baudelaires' parents. So Beatrice simply took shelter of the tunnel fire. When the fire stopped, she waited a while and exited the tunnel. That simple. I don't believe that Beatrice (or Bertrand) would abandon her children to Olaf. What kind of parent would go into hiding while a serial killer was after their children? Especially in Sunny's case, she's completely helpless to Olaf. And if it's true that the Baudelaire parents helped kill Olaf's parents, then that's even more of a reason to rescue the kids as fast as possible, before Olaf can get his revenge. Like you mention the Snicket file...what if Lemony was the survivor? He's the only volunteer who's whereabouts would be unknown. Anyone else would be on VFD missions, and either of the Baudelaire parents would be desperately trying to rescue their children. I've also seen people say that Beatrice could have been inside Dr.Sebald's snowman (in the Zombie play script, from the Unauthorized Autobiography), because Monty was supposed to bring the three kids to meet the survivor. But since Monty was taking the kids to Peru, wouldn't it make sense that he and the kids were supposed to meet Lemony? He could've been in the Baudelaire mansion during the fire, and he could have told the kids everything about their parents. He also would need to go on the run again, and so Peru would be a perfect place for him to escape.
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Post by Foxy on Aug 30, 2019 8:34:36 GMT -5
That's a fair point... unless he didn't know she was alive? I love the idea of Bertrand being the surviving parent, if only because we hardly ever hear anything about him, and he is even more shrouded in mystery than Beatrice. Or...the survivor can even be Lemony. In the Snicket file, it says the survivor's whereabouts are unknown. So if they were trapped in the fountain until they were rescued, then their location would have to be known. Lemony is the only character (at least I think so) who's been on the run for years. They were unknown to Jacques Snicket, I think, who made the note at the end of the file, but not unknown to Lemony.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Aug 30, 2019 8:59:14 GMT -5
Or...the survivor can even be Lemony. In the Snicket file, it says the survivor's whereabouts are unknown. So if they were trapped in the fountain until they were rescued, then their location would have to be known. Lemony is the only character (at least I think so) who's been on the run for years. They were unknown to Jacques Snicket, I think, who made the note at the end of the file, but not unknown to Lemony. I don't see why either of the Baudelaire parents would be willing to abandon their children to Count Olaf. What kind of parent would ever go into hiding, while a crazy and obsessed killer was after their totally helpless children...? I mean, Sunny Baudelaire was literally an infant. And if Beatrice and Bertrand helped to kill Olaf's parents, then that's even more of a reason to go after their kids ASAP, before Olaf can really harm them in the name of revenge. And Lemony is the only volunteer who's whereabouts would be unknown. Anyone else would be on VFD missions. And Beatrice or Bertrand would be trying to rescue their children... I've seen the theory, where Beatrice is the survivor that's inside Gustav Sebald's snowman (from the Sebald coded Zombie play script, in the Unauthorized Autobiography), because Dr. Montgomery was supposed to bring the three kids to meet the survivor. But what if Lemony was the one who was in the snowman? Since Dr.Montgomery was taking the kids to Peru, that would've been the perfect place for Lemony to escape to (since he'd still be on the run). And Lemony could have been in the Baudelaire mansion during the fire, and so he'd have a huge incentive to speak with the Baudelaire kids anyway.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 30, 2019 9:14:09 GMT -5
: I don't believe that Beatrice (or Bertrand) would abandon her children to Olaf. What kind of parent would go into hiding while a serial killer was after their children? Especially in Sunny's case, she's completely helpless to Olaf. And if it's true that the Baudelaire parents helped kill Olaf's parents, then that's even more of a reason to rescue the kids as fast as possible, before Olaf can get his revenge. Like you mention the Snicket file...what if Lemony was the survivor? He's the only volunteer who's whereabouts would be unknown. Anyone else would be on VFD missions, and either of the Baudelaire parents would be desperately trying to rescue their children. I've also seen people say that Beatrice could have been inside Dr.Sebald's snowman (in the Zombie play script, from the Unauthorized Autobiography), because Monty was supposed to bring the three kids to meet the survivor. But since Monty was taking the kids to Peru, wouldn't it make sense that he and the kids were supposed to meet Lemony? He could've been in the Baudelaire mansion during the fire, and he could have told the kids everything about their parents. He also would need to go on the run again, and so Peru would be a perfect place for him to escape. I know this may seem like a huge hole in my theory, but quite the opposite. Like I said, Beatrice stayed inside the hidden tunnel for many weeks. The will indicated that the children should be with their closest relative, probably their uncle. Because Beatrice trusted that, she could stay inside the tunnel for several weeks. Unfortunately, one banker believed that the "closest" relative should be some geographically close relative. When Beatrice came out of the tunnel she could find out where the children were, and they no longer seemed to be in danger with Uncle Monty or Aunt Josefine. The children were no longer with Olaf after all. With respect to the movie zombies in the snow, it's also just a way of confusing the reader. The film was created when Gustav was still a child (considering that LSTUA contains no cheats). Gustav was an adult at the time of Lemony's marriage cancellation, since the play at that time portrayed Gustav as a child. Also, according to File Under 13, Mimi watched the movie Zombies in the Snow when Lemony was 12 or 13 years old. Thus, the survivor reported in the movie had nothing to do with events at the time of the Baudelaire siblings. Oh, and thanks for finally reanswering my answers. I was getting anxious and sad at the same time, which is a bad combination in months of 31 days.
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Post by Dante on Sept 1, 2019 5:33:54 GMT -5
The BBRE is a lot of groundwork which never really goes anywhere, unfortunately; I suspect that TPP might have been originally planned to pick up some of these threads, but in the end, they're all just dangling plot hooks. For myself, I've always liked to think that the survivor is the one person who nobody ever remembers would also have been in the house at the time of the fire: The arsonist. (Though I suppose that's also Jean Lucio's theory; and we just have different candidates.)
Edit: I also feel obliged to point out, in Mr. Poe's defence, that he says, "Your parents' will [...] instructs that you be raised in the most convenient way possible. Here in the city, you'll be used to your surroundings, and this Count Olaf is the only relative who lives within the urban limits." (TBB p. 15) Mr. Poe's decisions were made partly out of consideration for the Baudelaire children; canonically, he never mixed up the idea of a close relative with a geographically close relative.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 1, 2019 11:54:26 GMT -5
I'm worried that this idea of a Baudelaire parent surviving damages the thematic arc of the series. The idea of a survivor is introduced in THH, a book which begins with the thought that 'picturing something doesn't make it so'. In the course of the book we discover the Snicket File, which provides evidence of a survivor of a a fire. The Baudelaires hope this will be one of their parents, and L hopes it will be Beatrice ('it takes only a photograph and a sentence to make an author cry himself to sleep even years after the photograph was taken'). But picturing something does not make it so. Later the B's meet a survivor of another fire, which, it seems, can account for the message: and in The End they reconcile themselves to the fact that their parents are dead.
Note that the file is first introduced as 'the file on the Snicket fires', so we know that although the Baudelaire fire is discussed in it, others must be as well.
How, I hear you cry, can L have misunderstood the file, if he wrote it? Well, the likely explanation is that in THH Handler hadn't yet decided that the Snickets wrote it - originally 'Snicket File' is short for 'file on the Snicket fires', i.e. a file about a Snicket. But in the light of what we discover later, we can say, as Foxy suggests, that Jacques wrote this bit - or perhaps that L wrote it on the basis of the evidence in Zombies in the Snow, and this is in fact what he misunderstood.
Note also - at the end of TSS, in connection with 'dead men rise up never', Lemony seems to say clearly that the Baudelaires' father is dead. (Swinburne, of course, when he wrote 'men' meant 'people', but Snicket is reading it as actually meaning 'men' in the contemporary sense.) - in BBRE itself, in commenting on the line which says Violet looked like a ghost, L gives a strong clue that her mother is dead - because of (among other things) the family resemblance 'she resembled a woman who is no longer alive.
And yes, there are problems regarding Quigley, but the discussion of them is too large to fit into this margin. I'll come back to them later.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 1, 2019 20:21:21 GMT -5
Edit: I also feel obliged to point out, in Mr. Poe's defence, that he says, "Your parents' will [...] instructs that you be raised in the most convenient way possible. Here in the city, you'll be used to your surroundings, and this Count Olaf is the only relative who lives within the urban limits." (TBB p. 15) Mr. Poe's decisions were made partly out of consideration for the Baudelaire children; canonically, he never mixed up the idea of a close relative with a geographically close relative. It is true!!! Thanks Dante, this was really new for me. Hermes ... Don't worry. Beatrice is dead. The question was always when she died.
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