Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Apr 8, 2021 8:52:23 GMT -5
I tried to find the text I wrote on the subject here ... But I didn't find it. What is strange.
But I found it on my tumblr, and I will copy some important parts. I would like to know your opinion.
I also deduced that most likely R's letter must have been written by R, due to the intimate details that only a private friend would know about Lemony. (Of course, there is the possibility that another close friend / enemy of Lemony's wrote the letter pretending to be R, but this is unlikely.) But still, I allow myself to think about the possibility that an enemy of Lemony is trying to deceive him. But I came to an impasse: if it was an enemy of Lemony trying to trick him into writing this letter, naturally the letter would contain some sort of strategy to harm Lemony in some way, maybe even scheduling a date with Lemony, or asking him to go to a certain place or act in some dangerous way. However, the letter contains only a request from R: "Study these photographs, my friend". This isn't dangerous at all, and I can't think of how an enemy of Lemony could possibly harm Lemony by asking Lemony to study some photographs.
Lemony, in his personal notes, gave two possibilities for the meaning of the letter and the errors he noted in the letter. Either the author of the letter was not R (which I discarded for the reasons already explained) or R was trying to say something. (He still mentions the possibility that R is talking about another car, but I didn't find any logical sense in this hypothesis raised by Lemony.) So I deduce that R was trying to say something. However, she needed to be very subtle. Apparently there were arsonists disguised nearby as she wrote the letter. (We know this thanks to the insertion of the word "crickets" in the letter. According to Uncle Monty, crickets are trained to pass on information about the proximity of enemies that are likely to be disguised. (LSTUA chapter 10 page 167) Most likely R feared that the letter might fall into the wrong hands, or perhaps she was under the watch of an enemy who allowed her to write to Lemony, as long as she did not reveal any important information. In this case, when R purposely missed the car color, R would be inserting a Duress code.
But now we have reached the point of drastic change in my point of view. Thanks to the chronology and content of the letter, I had defended the idea that Beatrice survived the fire in her house, and in the Masked Ball in which Lemony was captured (which happened a few years after the main events recorded in ASOUE) Beatrice was indeed over there.
However, this conclusion did not please Hermes (a member of the staff of Dark Avennue 667 - Answering the wrong questions) for a simple and very logical reason. If Beatrice had survived, she would have looked for and found her own children, because Beatrice loved her children. I tried to deny Beatrice's love for her children, but the more I looked for sources the more I became convinced that Beatrice really loved her children. So, everything leads us to believe that Beatrice did indeed die on the day of her house fire. To try to reconcile this with that, many readers try to find ways to change the chronology, putting that ball to happen in the past, before the main events narrated in ASOUE, or during the main events recorded in ASOUE. This does not please me at all, because that is not what the evidence indicates. Others resort to the idea of Lemony published the books several times in his universe, although the only canonical republication in the ASOUE universe was TBB: The Rare Edition. And book after book has evidences that Lemony published ASOUE years after the main events recorded in it, despite having started writing at the time of the events is true. As I have already written, until the publication of LSTUA all the evidence pointed to this...
But what do I really think at the moment about what happened at the Masked Ball?
At the moment, the most likely thing for me is that Lemony was deceived by some enemy. After the publication of TWW, this enemy made Lemony believe that Beatrice was alive. This enemy made Lemony believe that it would be a good idea to try to get to the Masked Ball, even though Lemony knew it would be dangerous. And this enemy's plan worked. Lemony was actually captured at that Ball, because he exposed himself unnecessarily.
Strangely, I have evidence of this.
Let's go to the description of the Ball in TAA chapter 11:
"I was disguised as a bullfighter and slipped into the party while being pursued by the palace guards, who were disguised as
scorpions. "
Note that the palace guards were already waiting for Lemony, and having disguised himself as a bullfighter did not help him pass invisibly through the guards, even though it was a ball in which everyone was disguised. In other words, even though Lemony had informed him that he was going to attend the Ball using a Sebald code as shown in LSTUA chapter 9, the information that he would be at the ball was leaked. Or they already expected that it would appear, because they put a very appetizing cheese in the mousetrap. Someone pretending to be Beatrice.
Let's continue:
"Because I felt like a different person, I dared to approach a woman I had been forbidden to approach for the rest of my life. She was alone on the veranda ... and costumed as a dragonfly, with a glittering green mask and enormous silvery wings. "
Note that this supposed Beatrice was wearing a mask. The obvious question is "could Lemony be sure that this woman was really Beatrice"?
"As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I'd been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years." Beatrice, "I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, "Count Olaf is--".
Note that everything indicates that the time that the supposed Beatrice and Lemony spent together at that party were few moments. Lemony probably didn't even hear her voice.
Note an important detail: Lemony believed that Beatrice would want to know something about Count Olaf. By this time, Olaf was already dead. But he died on a desert island with few witnesses. I don't know if Lemony already had that information. But he certainly knew that Count Olaf was away from the children at that moment. This information (or something like that, which would indicate that the children were free from the threat of death caused by Count Olaf), would be important for a mother who loves her missing children. It would also justify why Beatrice was supposed to have gone into hiding instead of looking for the children. If she knew that Olaf was the legal guardian of the children, she would also know of her interest in the inherited fortune. However, if Beatrice showed that she was alive, the inheritance would not belong to the children, but Beatrice herself. So Olaf would no longer have a reason to keep the children alive.
This excuse could easily justify to Lemony why Beatrice supposedly survived and didn't go looking for the children, and it would make Lemony desperately try to pass the information on to the supposed Beatrice.
Would he believe that her death was not real? Certainly ... In addition to wanting this more than anything in life, he also knows that in his universe false deaths are common. He himself had been there himself, he would be there again, Aunt Josephine had been there once, Quigley had been there once. And Lemony spoke about news about false deaths in chapter 14 of TE. And as LSTUA indicates, Lemony did not find the places where the bodies of the Baudelaire parents were buried. He found only where the bodies were not buried. And as the letter that the illustrator, Mr H, sent to him in LSTUA indicates, Lemony thought it possible that there was a survivor of the Baudelaire mansion fire.
Now let's get back the letter from R to Lemony.
Note some things that R tries to say to Lemony in a subtle way (LSTUA chapter 2):
"Beatrice, OF COURSE, is far past complaining about lost possessions."
About the children, R wrote: "Are they gone, TOO?" It gets mixed up in the middle of things that were also gone. But, with care, you could deduce that she was saying that Beatrice was indeed dead.
Now, note R's request for Lemony to study the photos. She described the photos in a subtle way.
1- "The portrait of your sister and me".
2 - "The portrait we told everyone that it was your sister and me but it really wasn't".
Why did R want Lemony to study these photos? I believe she wanted Lemony to get the following message: "Don't always believe in the identity that someone claims to have, since we ourselves have lied about our own identity several times already."
3 - The portrait of the Second Annual Codebreaking Picnic.
What could that mean? This is simple: "You, Lemony, will have to figure out what information I'm trying to give you in a similar way to how we did it in these annual picnics, because I can't use any known VFD code, because our enemies know the same codes that us. "
4 and 5 - "Two images of our meeting room, the first empty, and the second with a solitary figure, waiting patiently for the seassion to begin in that enormous room of green wood. How content this young woman looks, isn't it? How content and so flammable. "
Note that R does not say the name of this young woman. But evidently Lemony could recognize the person in the photo. R claims that the young woman is flammable. I believe that this is evidence that the young woman is really Beatrice. R is saying to Lemony: "Beatrice died in the fire at her house". But R needs to say it in a subtle way, so that enemies who are trying to trick Lemony can still use the trap of trying to attract Lemony through Beatrice's false survival story again.
This part of the photo for me is the most significant. Very evidently, by avoiding saying the name of the person in the photo, R wanted Lemony to identify the person through the prior knowledge he had. And then she used a little-used adjective to describe people: "flammable". The message is clear: "This little girl died in a fire. I can't write her name here, but I know that you will recognize her". So why would it be so important to pass this information on to Lemony? For me it is because he had been deceived about the survival of that woman. R had to write in a subtle way, because she knew that the letter could fall into the hands of the wrong people, and those people could not have known that she was trying to warn Lemony that that girl had died in a fire. Why wouldn't these enemies like to know that R was trying to pass on that specific information? Why were they trying to trick Lemony by luring him into traps using a fake Beatrice. And a place where everyone is in disguise, it is the ideal place to make a woman pretend to be Beatrice in order to deceive Lemony.
It is significant that the security guards at R's own party, who were disguised as scorpions, were already prepared for Lemony's arrival. They were not from the police. They were enemies of Lemony who knew he would come to the party. These security guards were protecting the mansion that belonged to R. This shows that R, unfortunately, was under the dominion of Lemony's enemies. As she said, the arsonists were nearby, possibly disguised.
Evidently these enemies allowed R to send letters to Lemony, as it was through these letters that Lemony could be deceived again.
But I found it on my tumblr, and I will copy some important parts. I would like to know your opinion.
I also deduced that most likely R's letter must have been written by R, due to the intimate details that only a private friend would know about Lemony. (Of course, there is the possibility that another close friend / enemy of Lemony's wrote the letter pretending to be R, but this is unlikely.) But still, I allow myself to think about the possibility that an enemy of Lemony is trying to deceive him. But I came to an impasse: if it was an enemy of Lemony trying to trick him into writing this letter, naturally the letter would contain some sort of strategy to harm Lemony in some way, maybe even scheduling a date with Lemony, or asking him to go to a certain place or act in some dangerous way. However, the letter contains only a request from R: "Study these photographs, my friend". This isn't dangerous at all, and I can't think of how an enemy of Lemony could possibly harm Lemony by asking Lemony to study some photographs.
Lemony, in his personal notes, gave two possibilities for the meaning of the letter and the errors he noted in the letter. Either the author of the letter was not R (which I discarded for the reasons already explained) or R was trying to say something. (He still mentions the possibility that R is talking about another car, but I didn't find any logical sense in this hypothesis raised by Lemony.) So I deduce that R was trying to say something. However, she needed to be very subtle. Apparently there were arsonists disguised nearby as she wrote the letter. (We know this thanks to the insertion of the word "crickets" in the letter. According to Uncle Monty, crickets are trained to pass on information about the proximity of enemies that are likely to be disguised. (LSTUA chapter 10 page 167) Most likely R feared that the letter might fall into the wrong hands, or perhaps she was under the watch of an enemy who allowed her to write to Lemony, as long as she did not reveal any important information. In this case, when R purposely missed the car color, R would be inserting a Duress code.
But now we have reached the point of drastic change in my point of view. Thanks to the chronology and content of the letter, I had defended the idea that Beatrice survived the fire in her house, and in the Masked Ball in which Lemony was captured (which happened a few years after the main events recorded in ASOUE) Beatrice was indeed over there.
However, this conclusion did not please Hermes (a member of the staff of Dark Avennue 667 - Answering the wrong questions) for a simple and very logical reason. If Beatrice had survived, she would have looked for and found her own children, because Beatrice loved her children. I tried to deny Beatrice's love for her children, but the more I looked for sources the more I became convinced that Beatrice really loved her children. So, everything leads us to believe that Beatrice did indeed die on the day of her house fire. To try to reconcile this with that, many readers try to find ways to change the chronology, putting that ball to happen in the past, before the main events narrated in ASOUE, or during the main events recorded in ASOUE. This does not please me at all, because that is not what the evidence indicates. Others resort to the idea of Lemony published the books several times in his universe, although the only canonical republication in the ASOUE universe was TBB: The Rare Edition. And book after book has evidences that Lemony published ASOUE years after the main events recorded in it, despite having started writing at the time of the events is true. As I have already written, until the publication of LSTUA all the evidence pointed to this...
But what do I really think at the moment about what happened at the Masked Ball?
At the moment, the most likely thing for me is that Lemony was deceived by some enemy. After the publication of TWW, this enemy made Lemony believe that Beatrice was alive. This enemy made Lemony believe that it would be a good idea to try to get to the Masked Ball, even though Lemony knew it would be dangerous. And this enemy's plan worked. Lemony was actually captured at that Ball, because he exposed himself unnecessarily.
Strangely, I have evidence of this.
Let's go to the description of the Ball in TAA chapter 11:
"I was disguised as a bullfighter and slipped into the party while being pursued by the palace guards, who were disguised as
scorpions. "
Note that the palace guards were already waiting for Lemony, and having disguised himself as a bullfighter did not help him pass invisibly through the guards, even though it was a ball in which everyone was disguised. In other words, even though Lemony had informed him that he was going to attend the Ball using a Sebald code as shown in LSTUA chapter 9, the information that he would be at the ball was leaked. Or they already expected that it would appear, because they put a very appetizing cheese in the mousetrap. Someone pretending to be Beatrice.
Let's continue:
"Because I felt like a different person, I dared to approach a woman I had been forbidden to approach for the rest of my life. She was alone on the veranda ... and costumed as a dragonfly, with a glittering green mask and enormous silvery wings. "
Note that this supposed Beatrice was wearing a mask. The obvious question is "could Lemony be sure that this woman was really Beatrice"?
"As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I'd been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years." Beatrice, "I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, "Count Olaf is--".
Note that everything indicates that the time that the supposed Beatrice and Lemony spent together at that party were few moments. Lemony probably didn't even hear her voice.
Note an important detail: Lemony believed that Beatrice would want to know something about Count Olaf. By this time, Olaf was already dead. But he died on a desert island with few witnesses. I don't know if Lemony already had that information. But he certainly knew that Count Olaf was away from the children at that moment. This information (or something like that, which would indicate that the children were free from the threat of death caused by Count Olaf), would be important for a mother who loves her missing children. It would also justify why Beatrice was supposed to have gone into hiding instead of looking for the children. If she knew that Olaf was the legal guardian of the children, she would also know of her interest in the inherited fortune. However, if Beatrice showed that she was alive, the inheritance would not belong to the children, but Beatrice herself. So Olaf would no longer have a reason to keep the children alive.
This excuse could easily justify to Lemony why Beatrice supposedly survived and didn't go looking for the children, and it would make Lemony desperately try to pass the information on to the supposed Beatrice.
Would he believe that her death was not real? Certainly ... In addition to wanting this more than anything in life, he also knows that in his universe false deaths are common. He himself had been there himself, he would be there again, Aunt Josephine had been there once, Quigley had been there once. And Lemony spoke about news about false deaths in chapter 14 of TE. And as LSTUA indicates, Lemony did not find the places where the bodies of the Baudelaire parents were buried. He found only where the bodies were not buried. And as the letter that the illustrator, Mr H, sent to him in LSTUA indicates, Lemony thought it possible that there was a survivor of the Baudelaire mansion fire.
Now let's get back the letter from R to Lemony.
Note some things that R tries to say to Lemony in a subtle way (LSTUA chapter 2):
"Beatrice, OF COURSE, is far past complaining about lost possessions."
About the children, R wrote: "Are they gone, TOO?" It gets mixed up in the middle of things that were also gone. But, with care, you could deduce that she was saying that Beatrice was indeed dead.
Now, note R's request for Lemony to study the photos. She described the photos in a subtle way.
1- "The portrait of your sister and me".
2 - "The portrait we told everyone that it was your sister and me but it really wasn't".
Why did R want Lemony to study these photos? I believe she wanted Lemony to get the following message: "Don't always believe in the identity that someone claims to have, since we ourselves have lied about our own identity several times already."
3 - The portrait of the Second Annual Codebreaking Picnic.
What could that mean? This is simple: "You, Lemony, will have to figure out what information I'm trying to give you in a similar way to how we did it in these annual picnics, because I can't use any known VFD code, because our enemies know the same codes that us. "
4 and 5 - "Two images of our meeting room, the first empty, and the second with a solitary figure, waiting patiently for the seassion to begin in that enormous room of green wood. How content this young woman looks, isn't it? How content and so flammable. "
Note that R does not say the name of this young woman. But evidently Lemony could recognize the person in the photo. R claims that the young woman is flammable. I believe that this is evidence that the young woman is really Beatrice. R is saying to Lemony: "Beatrice died in the fire at her house". But R needs to say it in a subtle way, so that enemies who are trying to trick Lemony can still use the trap of trying to attract Lemony through Beatrice's false survival story again.
This part of the photo for me is the most significant. Very evidently, by avoiding saying the name of the person in the photo, R wanted Lemony to identify the person through the prior knowledge he had. And then she used a little-used adjective to describe people: "flammable". The message is clear: "This little girl died in a fire. I can't write her name here, but I know that you will recognize her". So why would it be so important to pass this information on to Lemony? For me it is because he had been deceived about the survival of that woman. R had to write in a subtle way, because she knew that the letter could fall into the hands of the wrong people, and those people could not have known that she was trying to warn Lemony that that girl had died in a fire. Why wouldn't these enemies like to know that R was trying to pass on that specific information? Why were they trying to trick Lemony by luring him into traps using a fake Beatrice. And a place where everyone is in disguise, it is the ideal place to make a woman pretend to be Beatrice in order to deceive Lemony.
It is significant that the security guards at R's own party, who were disguised as scorpions, were already prepared for Lemony's arrival. They were not from the police. They were enemies of Lemony who knew he would come to the party. These security guards were protecting the mansion that belonged to R. This shows that R, unfortunately, was under the dominion of Lemony's enemies. As she said, the arsonists were nearby, possibly disguised.
Evidently these enemies allowed R to send letters to Lemony, as it was through these letters that Lemony could be deceived again.