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Post by counto on Aug 26, 2020 19:41:38 GMT -5
The Sugar Bowl, just what is special about? What's in it? Why is VFD so hellbent on obtaining it?
But the real questions you should be asking is this:
Was the Sugar Bowl in All The Wrong Questions?
In ATWQ (a prequel mini-series to A Series of Unfortunate Events), Lemony and Kit Snicket were suppose to pull off a heist involving an unknown item from the Museum of Items in the City. However Lemony was unable to make it and Kit was caught and arrested by the police. Luckily she had hidden the item and was only charged with breaking and entering.
Now, no one knows what this item is and is never explained. I have a theory that the item that was stolen was the Sugar Bowl itself.
The item is described to be an exhibit unlike any that the museum has had for eighty four years.
On why they wanted to steal it in the first place, perhaps they wanted to keep from falling into the wrong hands.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 26, 2020 21:41:05 GMT -5
I've already found myself thinking like that, especially after my whistle theory was downgraded to trash. Dante already told me about it, or something like that. But I don't like that hypothesis. First of all, because it doesn't answer anything. Secondly, because it doesn't fit with what we know about the SB content. Esmé was the one who managed to find a beautiful and safe container for the mysterious content. And Esmé must be under 84 years old. So I don't think it's the SB that is in the museum. But is it the content of the SB that is in the museum? I don't think so either. The content of SB is somewhat deadly, which can wreak havoc similar to the deadly fungus MM. Several people died in order to collect the mysterious content. Kit faced danger of being arrested and not danger of being killed. All these descriptions seem to me to indicate that the content of the SB is something that presents a danger in itself. The question is how something so dangerous is able to be contained in a small container. I liked my idea of being a whistle capable of invoking the TGU, but still the idea of many team members dying to colect a whistle is just as strange. (Although a whistle could stay in a museum). But I still find it more likely that the content is a radioactive stone or the powder of that stone. So the contents needed to be kept in a closed container. I think it's the same thing that Esmé and Olaf used to threaten the construction committee members. At that time that content was in a box, (someone even asked Olaf to return the content to the box, because inside the box they were protected from the effect of the content). I think that at the time of the construction committee, Esmé had not yet found a beautiful and safe container for that. But she must have realized that her SB was perfect, even though other VFD Sugar Bowls were used for some other purpose.
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Post by Dante on Aug 27, 2020 2:48:33 GMT -5
I'll just make an early recommendation that this thread focusses to the extent possible on the item, rather than becoming yet another discussion on what is in the sugar bowl. If people think the item is not what was in the sugar bowl, they should try to explain their interpretation of the item subplot, not the sugar bowl subplot. With that said, some degree of crossover is inevitable.
As Jean Lucio indicates, this theory makes more sense if we consider the item as being the contents of the sugar bowl, rather than the sugar bowl itself, which is just a container. And while I sympathise with Jean Lucio's concerns, I do think that the only way the item subplot makes any sense is if we consider the item as subsequently becoming the contents of the sugar bowl. The item is of such importance to the Kit cutaways in the first half of ATWQ, Snicket himself voices the importance of discovering what happened to it - but then it just drops out of the plot, forgotten. It's not sufficient to say that it was just a plot device to get Kit arrested in time for the end of the series; the item is a significant loose end. I can't say a reason to introduce it, particularly under the terms used, unless it was intended to subsequently become the contents of the sugar bowl.
It's a massive retcon, of course (and an implicit acknowledgement that the sugar bowl mystery in ASoUE became unsolveable), which is why Esmé's remarks in TPP aren't an easy fit - but frankly they aren't an easy fit for anything within ASoUE's frame of reference. I would suggest that it's neither difficult nor unreasonable to posit that the item was something violently sought after, perhaps recovered from an especially dangerous or remote location, at a point before it passed into the museum's ownership; or was subsequently sought with great ferocity after Kit lost it in the aftermath of the theft. (Or both.)
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 27, 2020 4:01:23 GMT -5
I can't say a reason to introduce it, particularly under the terms used, unless it was intended to subsequently become the contents of the sugar bowl. Yes, it can be ... But we got to the point where all of this is headcanon, don't you agree? There may be no contradictions to this interpretation, and it seems to be a good solution. But there is no positive evidence for this. Items can be independent of each other, and be valuable for different reasons. See the main ATWQ plot itself: the search for an ancient object with powers to summon a mythical monster. The same reasons led me (wrongly) to think that the content of the SB was an object of similar properties. But there is no positive evidence for this.
Furthermore, I can imagine a combination of all this. The radioactive stone can be something like the eye of a statuette or a component of any other item of historical value. This item of historical value has not been exposed for 84 years to avoid public exposure to radiation. But after 84 years, everyone who knew about the danger died, and the new museum curators decided to expose the dangerous item containing a radioactive stone to the public again. (Since we're imagining, let's imagine with strength)
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Post by Dante on Aug 27, 2020 7:36:28 GMT -5
Yes, it can be ... But we got to the point where all of this is headcanon, don't you agree? There may be no contradictions to this interpretation, and it seems to be a good solution. But there is no positive evidence for this. This is true and fair, and if the item is what subsequently ends up being in the sugar bowl, then that fact of itself is not particularly enlightening. But there is another factor you are overlooking: A minimising of loose ends. We have this item; we have this sugar bowl; both mysterious and unexplained, but if we, as is permitted, put them both together, then the number of loose ends decreases, and the effect is satisfying. We can think of ourselves as having "solved a mystery", for a change. It isn't true headcanon as it doesn't require us to add any details not in canon; it is simply the drawing of a connection. You could even call it an example of Occam's Razor.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 27, 2020 8:09:43 GMT -5
Yes, the simplest explanation is generally true.
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