|
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 8, 2020 22:32:04 GMT -5
This was one of the first theories that I made, and it was one that I never officially published. But it is on one of the bases of my house of cards, and the base has never been dropped. Well, let's go to the theory's premises. This is a theory completely based on LSTUA and affects only the understanding of LSTUA. So, whether you believe LSTUA is a set of documents from the main universe of ASOUE or you believe that LSTUA is a set of documents from a parallel universe, keep in mind that LSTUA is canonical. And as this theory does not affect the understanding of the events of ASOUE in any way, it is useless to try to discredit all LSTUA to try to overturn this theory because I simply will not accept it.
So, Lemony wrote a letter to Dr. Charley Patton, who is in chapter 1 of LSTUA starting on page 8. The theme of the letter is the differences that exist between the song The Little Snicket Lad and Lemony's memories. Evidently, Lemony believes that her memories are more reliable than the description that exists in the song. But my theory states that both Lemony's memories are right and the events described in the music are also right. The differences exist because Lemony remembers the events concerning his second kidnapping, while the music records events that happened during the first time he was kidnapped.
Let's see the evidence:
Consider the first part of the song:
On a charming little cattle farm
Near a pretty deadly lake,
Was a very pregnant woman,
And her husband, known as Jake.
Though they lived in a big mansion,
Down Robber Road a tad,
It was at the farm the lady
Bore the little Snicket lad.
Note that according to the lyrics, Lemony's biological parents lived in a mansion. More than that, the second part of the song indicates that they were rich.
The letter reads as follows:
He was lively, and intelligent,
And drank a lot of milk,
His crib was made of silver,
And his diapers sewn from silk.
The fact that the Snicket family actually owned a mansion and was rich is evidenced in the book The History of Luchy Smells Lumbermill. We found a ceiling of the book on page 170 of LSTUA. (moreover, I'm going to break my rule a little bit here ... Olivia confirmed in T.C.C. that there was a Snicket fortune)
Despite that, Lemony did not remember any fortunes when he wrote this letter. Lemony wrote: "My Parents would never be indulged in silver cribs and silk diapers."
The evidence doesn't stop there ... Lemony makes an interesting statement. He says that photos served as evidence for what actually happened in his life. This was emphasized in the letter, and using handwritten notes, someone wrote that one should "see a note at the end of the chapter". At the end of the chapter we find a photo of a baby crawling on a written note: "
"They took him from the kitchen, And dropped him on the way, He fell upon the darkened ground, And tried to crawl away." Well, by referring to "chapter" it is evident that the person who wrote this already had the version prior to the published version of LSTUA. Probably the one who wrote this was Lemony Snicket himself, as he wrote the note on the Contents page. Thus, Lemony many years after the letter's original writing, indicated that he had at some point realized that the baby's crawling photo was actually related to his life, and in fact what had been written in the alternate version of The Litlle Snicket Lad. In other words, he had even been kidnapped by VFD when he was a baby. But Lemony remembers being taken as a very young child, but no longer a baby. He wrote about it and on page 16 he even put a picture of a child who was about the age he remembered being taken by VFD. Realizing this makes us believe that the lyrics of the song are completely right. Lemony never returned to his birth parents. He doesn't even remember them. Lemony's biological father is probably actually named Jake Snicket. (Jacob is his adoptive father). Lemony's foster mother was on a mission and so she couldn't say goodbye, but she knew that Lemony would be taken on that specific day, and she authorized it. Lemony came home a few times from his adoptive parents and met his adoptive parents again. Jacques remembers details of when he was first taken, involving the tea he was drinking, so there are discrepancies between what Jacques remembers and what Lemony remembers. That's because Jacques was older than Lemony. Lemony, Jacques and Kit received the tattoo the first time they were kidnapped (which happened before the Great Schism). But Lemony, when he was a child, was also taken by the ankles to them, and this in fact hurt him, as indicated in the letter of R to him in chapter 2. This practice continued even after the publication of TBB, as indicated in the case of orphans taken by Miss K. The photo of Lemony, still a baby, was taken by her initial kidnappers.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Jun 9, 2020 5:54:20 GMT -5
It's definitely a classic Jean Lucio theory; instead of either accepting or resolving contradictions, duplicate events such that both interpretations can be correct. It's certainly an interesting approach, perhaps even elegant; that both the version of events documented in The Little Snicket Lad and Lemony's memories are correct because they refer to different events - but a request for clarification must be made: Are you also suggesting that Jacques and Kit were taken twice, simultaneously with Lemony? And, this being the case - why did Jacques and Kit never explain to Lemony that this recruitment ceremony had been performed on him twice, as on themselves?
As you yourself argue, Jacques and Kit were older and thus would remember better - though I should correct you on one point: Jacques does not disagree with Lemony on whether he was permitted to finish his tea, Snicket merely says "My brother insists that he was allowed to finish his tea before departure but this has been disputed over the years." (U.A. p. 18) In actual fact it seems the dispute may even have been with his (according to your theory, adoptive) mother, given the statement that she "returned home that fateful day and found waiting for her not three young children but one worried husband and two half-full cups of tea" (U.A., p. 15) (unless those were Lemony and Kit's cups, and Jacques not only finished his but washed and dried his cup?). Whatever the case, bearing in mind that the discrepancies between accounts have, therefore, been discussed, why can Jacques not cite the two kidnappings to resolve this dispute? Does he also not remember his original kidnapping? If this is the case, the factor of Snicket's siblings being older seems irrelevant because he would not remember the contradictory information either - unless it were brought up to him first by people who were present at the original kidnapping but don't know about the second! However, you suggest that the three siblings were tattooed after their first kidnapping; but if this were the case, surely Lemony, and particularly his elder siblings, would remember bearing the tattoo already and be able to subsequently deduce that he had already been placed in the power of the organisation even before the second (which he remembers as his first) kidnapping?
I will also suggest that to kidnap three children, tattoo them and place them with volunteer foster parents (for early training?), and then kidnap them again seems entirely redundant. Further, page 30 establishes the possibility that false photographs can be manufactured by an advanced computer, undermining the significance of the photograph. There is also disagreement about who is responsible for the annotations to the U.A., so the idea that the added details to this chapter were Lemony's own inclusion seems too tenuous to constitute evidence. Snicket's overt additions to the file are generally far less cryptic, and often typed or signed.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Jun 9, 2020 6:18:03 GMT -5
Well: in one way I am attracted to this theory, because I think duplicated events play an important part in ASOUE, as shown by the stories in The End. But on the whole I don't think it is needed:
- The underlying theme is the way events get distorted in the telling. This is something that certainly happens in folk music; there are many songs based on real events, but not reflecting them wholly accurately. For instance there is a ballad called 'The Queen's Maries' which purports to be be set at the court of Mary Queen of Scots: it's based on a real incident, but one which happened at the court of Peter the Great of Russia.
- 'Jake' is a standard shortening of 'Jacob', which could well be adopted for the sake of the rhyme; and L seems to imply that his father was known as Jake by his tennis partner. Though if I remember rightly there is another way of reading it. (There is a real mystery about L's father's name, in that the family tree implies it begins with E. I have a theory to solve that, as well, but in any case the idea of a double kidnaping doesn't help with it.)
- We've seem reason to believe that wealthy VFD families, except Duchesses, don't spend extravagantly, so the fact there was a fortune need not imply silver cradles and the like.
I have a theory which may explain one aspect of the discrepancy; perhaps Lemony, like Sunny in TSS, pretended to be younger than he actually was, crawling on the ground and saying 'goo ga ga'. This might easily lead to the event being mis-reported.
|
|
|
Post by Uncle Algernon on Jun 9, 2020 6:22:07 GMT -5
I will also suggest that to kidnap three children, tattoo them and place them with volunteer foster parents (for early training?), and then kidnap them again seems entirely redundant. Yet — tattoos aside — this is essentially the story of the Baudelaire children, is it not? The Baudelaires were swiped by Count Olaf for the fire-starting side, the fire-fighting side repeatedly tried to take them in instead, and Olaf repeatedly tried to kidnap them back. Granted, thanks to their resourcefulness, the Baudelaires kept escaping Olaf's clutches themselves, but the Netflix series if nothing else strongly suggests that agents of the fire-fighting side would have done their utmost to get them back anyway. Granted, this depends on one's interpretation of how bad the Schism had gotten at the time of the Snickets' childhood. But it doesn't seem impossible to posit a scenario where different factions within V.F.D. make their own attempts to be the ones to raise the promising Snicket trio.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Jun 9, 2020 6:50:02 GMT -5
I'd agree that double kidnappings by rival groups are possible. But that doesn't seem to fit the present case, because we are told that L's parents consented to his 'kidnapping', and he was sometimes allowed home to see them - which would presumably not happen if they and the second group of kidnappers were enemies.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Jun 9, 2020 7:12:48 GMT -5
I will also suggest that to kidnap three children, tattoo them and place them with volunteer foster parents (for early training?), and then kidnap them again seems entirely redundant. Yet — tattoos aside — this is essentially the story of the Baudelaire children, is it not? The Baudelaires were swiped by Count Olaf for the fire-starting side, the fire-fighting side repeatedly tried to take them in instead, and Olaf repeatedly tried to kidnap them back. Granted, thanks to their resourcefulness, the Baudelaires kept escaping Olaf's clutches themselves, but the Netflix series if nothing else strongly suggests that agents of the fire-fighting side would have done their utmost to get them back anyway. Despite Dewey's attempts to suggest otherwise, I would hardly dignify any of these exchanges as V.F.D. ritual "takings". They were legal adoptions with no intention of the Baudelaires undertaking any V.F.D. training whatsoever, let alone being taken to the organisation's hidden headquarters.
|
|
|
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 9, 2020 8:01:16 GMT -5
Jacques and Kit were too small to remember things properly. But they had residual memories of the first kidnapping stronger than Lemony (Lemony has no memory at all). At the time of Lemony's wedding, when the letter was written, this matter had not been discovered by Lemony. The photo of Lemony crawling agrees with his photo in the crib. Lemony received this photo when he was a small child, and one day when he returned to his adoptive mother's home, Lemony showed this photo to his adoptive mother. Her reaction was peculiar and was recorded in Lemony's memories. She said, surprised: "Who took this photo?" Her surprise is evidently due to the fact that Lemony in that crib portrayed a time before Lemony's arrival at her home.
L's crawling photo was added to Lemony's notes archive, along with his personal notes about his escape on the Prospero ship. This indicates that it was actually Lemony who put the photo there. The observation about the possibility that someone has tampered with photos in LSTUA exists, it is true. But this possible adulteration would be prior to receiving the photos. That is, the person who sent the photos to Lemony ("R") in chapter 2 could have tampered with the photo before sending it to Lemony. There is no canonical evidence that photos were tampered with after the file was assembled. (There is evidence of photos that have been destroyed, but not photos that have been digitally altered).
On the other hand, there is canonical evidence that Lemony Snicket made a final revision of the book after it was printed. I'm not saying that all things written by hand were written by Lemony at this stage. Anyone could have manually written something in the original documents and these hand marks would evidently be in the final version of LSTUA. However, these people, when making these marks, had no way of knowing that someday these documents would be part of a book containing chapters. On the other hand, Lemony Snicket canonically renamed "Chapters" from the book LSTUA. The only person who canonically made handwritten marks on LSTUA BOOK was Lemony Snicket himself. (BOOK! !may)You may think that other people made this too, but that would not have canonical support and would not pass the motivation test. In this case, the page where the baby's picture is crawling is called the End of the Chapter. The person who wrote that note believed at the time that the photo was real evidence. More than that. Lemony wrote that the best title for the chapter was "Who took this picture?" This indicates that Lemony was in fact investigating events related to the time when he was a baby. By the time of LSTUA's publication, Lemony was already suspicious that there were lies surrounding his life from cradle to grave. His childhood story had been incompletely told to him ... And of course, in music the reference to a crib and diaper made of noble materials is metaphorical ... it refers to the fact that Lemony was born into a very wealthy family.
Regarding the tattoo, Lemony, Jacques and Kit were kidnapped before the Great Schism and that's why they have tattoos. But Beatrice and Bertrand entered VFD after the Great Schism, so they don't have a tattoo. That is why the children did not recognize Count Olaf's tattoo. The kidnappings on the fire-extinguishing side after the great Schism were with parental consent, as indicated at the VFD construction committee meeting (unless the neophytes were orphans). At that time when they asked for their parents' consent, tattoos were no longer done as it was the post-Great Schism era. On the other hand, at the time in Lemony It was taken for the first time, there was no parental consent, because it was the pre-Great Schism era. That's why the tattoo. The song The Little Snicket Lad makes direct reference to tattooing when anonymous members of VFD claim they would leave a mark on Lemony's ankles. (That's why this part is in quotes, because whoever says those words is not the "lyrical self" who declaims the rest of the song.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Jun 9, 2020 14:59:26 GMT -5
Jacques and Kit were too small to remember things properly. But they had residual memories of the first kidnapping stronger than Lemony (Lemony has no memory at all). So do they have enough memories to distinguish between two separate kidnappings, or not? I discuss this point further below. This is fanfiction. We don't know exactly what Lemony's opening letter on his funeral was filed into, merely that it was filed; and he specifically states that he would file it "with my letter, written so many years ago, to Professor Patton" (p. 7). He does not mention any additional notes or clippings to the latter letter; merely a letter. So there is room to believe that at the time of writing he had made no further annotations to Professor Patton's letter. So there is no admission on Snicket's part that the annotations on the letter are his own. Furthermore, all of the documents in the Snicket package passed through other people's hands at some point, as indicated by the fact that, in the introduction, they are indeed being passed through multiple people's hands prior to publication; thus the possibility exists that further annotations and the photo could have been added by a person other than Lemony. With this being the case, it is possible that the photo was manufactured and then placed into the file at a point during which it was no longer under Snicket's control; and that this addition was accepted as a part of the final product, since, after all, it is a curious one. With that being said, the photograph would not even need to be manufactured; it is simply a photo of a baby crawling along the ground. There is no evidence that the photo depicts Lemony. So I repeat that this evidence is tenuous. This does not address my question. I'm not interested in the Baudelaires here; purely in the Snickets. If you're suggesting that Lemony, Jacques, and Kit were tattooed after their first kidnapping, then naturally they bore those tattooes at the time of and before their second kidnapping; thus, if they have memories of this period of time at all, they should have memories in which they have the tattoos whilst living at what they believe to be their home, before their (second) kidnapping; therefore, they should know, whether at the time or later, that they had already been taken into V.F.D.'s power before being placed in that second home; therefore they can deduce that their most clearly recalled kidnapping was their second, and that this was preceded by a first kidnapping. Simple logic.
|
|
|
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 9, 2020 15:20:47 GMT -5
Jacques and Kit were too small to remember things properly. But they had residual memories of the first kidnapping stronger than Lemony (Lemony has no memory at all). So do they have enough memories to distinguish between two separate kidnappings, or not? I discuss this point further below. This is fanfiction. This is not fanfiction. Lemony said the photo of a baby in the crib was delivered to him in the car that took him. He said his mother was not at home at the time of the kidnapping. He said his mother saw the photo at some point. So Lemony himself showed the photo, sometime after the kidnapping. Lemony heard what she said, so Lemony was there when she said these words. So it's a deduction ... I may be wrong, but it's not a fanfiction. Yes, and probably because they deduced this at some point the Snickets started researching their childhood. About handwritten notes ... The introduction shows how a package of documents was handed over in a narrative without much credibility. Still, let us consider that that narrative in fact proves that the documents that make up LSTUA passed in several hands. However, the same narrative shows that finally these documents ended up in the hands of the editors. These editors turned that package of documents into a book divided into chapters. The people who touched the documents before it was divided into chapters, did not know what the division of chapters or pages would be like. It was the editors who paginated and divided that set of documents into chapters. Thus, someone after editing in book format was responsible for creating that note that references the end of the chapter. And that person believed that the baby's crawling photo was indeed important, and this person believed that the photo was proof of something. Lemony Snicket saw the book paged and with the chapters as shown on the content page, and he made manual notes, as indicated on the same page. He himself emphasized Lemony's photo in a crib and he gave Chapter 1 a title for that photo, and he stated that that set of documents that was called by the editors of Chapter 1 should be called "Who took this photo?" Just add one more pne, Dante. You who like simple solutions ... What is more likely: that both of those babies are Lemony Snicket, or that a cheater with no purpose inserted a photo of any baby and made notes without any purpose? To be clearer: I may not know when the baby's crawling picture and the note on it were created. But I am sure that the handwritten note in the letter that refers to the end of the chapter was created after the book was edited, that is, after pagination and division into chapters.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Jun 9, 2020 16:26:16 GMT -5
One thing perhaps worth mentioning is that R says she and Lemony became friends when they woke up side by side in hospital while recovering from their tattoos. It seems, therefore, that the tattoo did not happen when L was a baby. (Even if R's letter is a forgery, most of what she says must be true in order to establish credibility.)
We are not told that the fire-fighting side of VFD abandoned tattooing immediately after the schism, only that they had abandoned it by the time of ASOUE, and that the schism was the cause of this.
I don't fully understand the ins and outs of the picture, and, not having the book to hand, would have diffculty working out how this part of the story fits together; but VFD may perfectly well have taken a picture of L as a baby, even if they did not kidnap him as a baby. They had presumably been checking on him for some time.
I agree that it's not in fact clear that the documents had all passed through many hands, since there is evidence to suggest that the doorman is Lemony; in that case the only hands they need to have passed through are those of Lemony, the editor and DH. On the other hand, there are some marginal notes which seem to have been made by a villain - e.g. in this very section, where L. says he will not name the cheesemakers, and the marginal commenter writes 'Drat!'.
|
|
|
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 9, 2020 16:43:17 GMT -5
Germes, R claims she was recovering from her ankle, not necessarily from the tattoo. As indicated in the account of Lemony's second abduction and the account of the abduction that Miss K promoted in Prufrock Prep, even at the time after the publication of TBB, the fire-extinguishing side continued to take neophytes by the ankles. This process naturally hurt the ankles. They were recovering in the medical sector from these injuries. Beatrice was taken at the same time as R, according to the same letter, and everything indicates that Bertrand also (according to TBL they were neophytes at the same time). Beatrice e Bertrand didn't have a tattoo.
|
|
|
Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Jun 9, 2020 17:16:49 GMT -5
I was kidnapped once
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Jun 10, 2020 8:00:52 GMT -5
So do they have enough memories to distinguish between two separate kidnappings, or not? I discuss this point further below. This is fanfiction. This is not fanfiction. Lemony said the photo of a baby in the crib was delivered to him in the car that took him. He said his mother was not at home at the time of the kidnapping. He said his mother saw the photo at some point. So Lemony himself showed the photo, sometime after the kidnapping. Lemony heard what she said, so Lemony was there when she said these words. So it's a deduction ... I may be wrong, but it's not a fanfiction. I see. I didn't understand exactly what you were referring to before, but now I understand that you are misinterpreting pages 14 and 15. His mother never saw the photograph; there is no statement that she saw the photograph or that he showed it to her. She didn't even ask the question when he was in the room; indeed, the question itself is a reflection of the fact that he was not in the room! Let me quote the relevant passages: You are conflating two different subjects, Jean Lucio. Your mistake comes from fabricating the circumstances in which Lemony's mother spoke. Lemony was asking about the photograph, in the car. On the same day, Lemony's mother was asking, in her house, about her missing children. She knew they were destined to leave, of course, but she didn't know exactly who would be taking them; so on returning and finding them gone, she asked, "Who took this?" It's a little ungrammatical, but it's obviously the intention; and it has to be that way because it's a pun on different meanings of "took" - took a photograph, took a child. Incidentally, that Lemony remembers being given the photo in the automobile, and has the photo as proof, strongly suggests that he accurately remembers the events of that night. Your own argument demonstrates that the editors were not the "final" people to possess the Snicket package. If Snicket himself, after the publishers' division into chapters, was obliged to scribble and type all over the manuscript in order to express his complaints about the format, then evidently the manuscript subsequently passed from the publishers and back into his hands. But the publishers themselves do not know how to find Mr. Snicket. This is the admitted fact, not only on page xi, but also in the very fact that Lemony has to concoct such absurd measures to deliver his manuscripts to his kind editor. So how did Lemony get his hands on the package again - and why? The publishers have no stated reason to surrender the manuscript, and there is no evidence that Snicket either knew they had the manuscript or made overtures to gain access to it. Conclusion: After the division of the manuscript into chapters, the Snicket package once again circulated through underground channels, where Snicket eventually got his hands on it. During this process any number of people might have laid hands on the documents therein. Do I think Daniel Handler actually thought about the situation in this degree of detail? Not at all. I simply think he wanted material to exist which questioned Snicket's narrative, as I discuss below. So far as the nature of the notes and photograph in question go, is it not far more probable that the person who inserted the photograph is also the person writing notes on and pointing to the photograph? I remain baffled why you seem to think that this would be the work of two different agents when it is palpable that the notes and photo exist for a single purpose: To question Snicket's own narrative. And it is not difficult to imagine why Snicket's enemies would wish readers to question Snicket's narrative. However, from an authorial perspective, you must consider a simpler explanation for the presence of this material: To add unreliability to the narrative and to develop the sense of Lemony's life as mysterious and perhaps untrustworthy, to support the idea of this as an "unauthorized" autobiography. I agree that it's not in fact clear that the documents had all passed through many hands, since there is evidence to suggest that the doorman is Lemony; in that case the only hands they need to have passed through are those of Lemony, the editor and DH. Could you point to this evidence? Germes, R claims she was recovering from her ankle, not necessarily from the tattoo. As indicated in the account of Lemony's second abduction and the account of the abduction that Miss K promoted in Prufrock Prep, even at the time after the publication of TBB, the fire-extinguishing side continued to take neophytes by the ankles. This process naturally hurt the ankles. They were recovering in the medical sector from these injuries. This is an extremely silly attempt to distort a very simple picture.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Jun 10, 2020 8:11:12 GMT -5
The primary evidence that the doorman is Lemony is that he writes to 'Dear Dairy'. This appears, from Chapter 1, to be something personal to Lemony rather than a regular VFD code. There is also an explicit reference to the possibility of a long chain of transmission being invented.
EDIT: And if the doorman is Lemony it follows that he did indeed know that the publishers had the papers. As for how he got hold of them again after the editing, it seems likely that DH knows where he is and was able to pass them to him. This, however, does not explain the villainous notes, which are, quite honestly, hard to explain on any hypothesis. I'm reminded of the published film script and some of the Netflix teasers, which imply that Olaf exists and is able to comment on things, at a point when as per the story he could not possibly have done so. It is also confusing that the villain's handwriting seems indistinguishable from Lemony's.
EDIT TO EDIT: But also from Sir's and Gustav Sebald's. Perhaps everyone in Snicketland has the same handwriting.
|
|
|
Post by FileneNGottlin on Jun 10, 2020 9:26:55 GMT -5
I'd agree that it's likely that the doorman is Lemony, though Kit also addresses a letter "Dear Dairy"(page 70, LSTUA), so it's possible that Jacques or any other volunteer connected with the dairy does it as well.
Or, alternatively, the doorman is also part of the imaginary chain of transmission.
|
|