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Post by dragoneyes618 on Sept 30, 2021 16:44:03 GMT -5
Was the sugar bowl the item Kit stole from the Museum of Items? (Odd title. All museums contain items.)
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Post by carmelita0cheryl on Oct 1, 2021 0:35:16 GMT -5
It's possible that the time Snickets were young, Anwhistle Aquatic started cultivating Medusoid Mycelium. Because VFD is clever and there were more schisms in the past, they knew the MM could fall into wrong hands, so they had Kit steal the Sugar Bowl (propably bad deed for a noble reason??) and when Esmé saw it, she insisted on having it.... Just a theory though, but no idea what else she could've been after in the museum
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 1, 2021 0:57:59 GMT -5
Yes.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 1, 2021 11:18:15 GMT -5
Some principles for my answer: 1 - Inside the SB there is a physical object and it is not something symbolic or metaphorical.
2 - ATWQ and ASOUE take place in the same universe.
3 - LSTUA information is not to be trusted, so it will not be used or referenced here. (I disagree with this, but in this answer I will take this as a principle).
According to the secret letter in TSS, most likely inside the SB there is a device containing information. The idea of using a SB to protect these small and important items in case of a dark day came from Kit Snicket. The information contained within the SB could, from Lemony's point of view, exonerate him from charges.
Also, according to Esmé, in TSS, people died because of the content of the SB.
According to Lemony, the object that would be stolen from the museum had been in the museum's possession for about 84 years.
So, I believe they are different things. While the object that would be stolen in ATWQ is important in itself, the content of the SB is important because of the information it contains. According to Captain W's words, inside the SB there are secrets (plural). These secrets could wreak havoc almost as big as the deadly MM fungus, according to Kit and Dewey in TSS. According to Esmé, the SB was a compartment that ensured the security of the content, and this fits Lemony's description in TSS's secret letter concerning the use of the SB in the event of a dark day.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 3, 2021 6:35:51 GMT -5
I do not think the actual bowl can be the stolen object, because it would be hard to explain how, after that, it could have come to belong to Esme. (And it did belong to Esme; if she had just wrongly come into possession of it, Lemony would have no reason to feel guilty about recovering it.)
If you take the line that it was only the bowl, not the contents, that belonged to Esme, then it's possible that the contents were the Item stolen - or recovered - from the museum. While I don't think this theory gets any support from the books, as opposed to the show, it does resolve some problems that arise from the account in the books, and it had been proposed at 667 before the show appeared.
I don't think the TPP passage is definitive, because it is very hard to make it consistent with anything else that is said about sugar bowls, before or after. I still think the best reading is not that a sugar bowl is a good place to conceal evidence, but that a tea set is a good place to conceal evidence, when that evidence is a sugar bowl. (I don't think that's what DH intended - I don't think he had a consistent intention at that point - but it's a theory that can be used to make things consistent.)
And JL: I don't think that the captain says the sugar bowl contains secrets, plural; he says there are things in the world too dangerous for young people to know, with the implication that the contents of the SB are one of them. Also, what Esme says is that people died in the search for the contents of the SB, which can perfectly well have happened more than eighty-four yearss ago.
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Post by counto on Oct 5, 2021 2:57:24 GMT -5
Well I do have a theory. The Sugar Bowl could have been in Esme's family (probably a family heirloom passed down from each generation). Since Esme was once a volunteer, it's also likely her family were long time VFD members before the Schism. The Sugar Bowl is a symbol to VFD. Symbols can be very powerful things for people to use. Like the Swastika for example: traditional it was used as symbol of divinity and spiritually in such religions as Buddhism. However it later became infatuated with the Nazi party.
Now the Sugar Bowl would have that same symbolism that both sides would fight over. I don't think whatever's inside it's important, but how the actual Sugar Bowl is represented as. Knowing that people with bad intentions would use it (Man with Beard and Woman with Hair) for their own gain, it would have to be hidden. Perhaps even given away. My theory is that the SB was indeed the museum item that was secretly hidden in plain sight.
However during the events of ATWQ, the location of SB was compromised and it was likely that someone from the Fire-Starting side would take it. Kit knowing this would happen was sent to retrieve it but was caught "stealing". Luckily SB was passed off to another person before Kit was captured. This other person I believe to be Esme. But one question remains: Why did Beatrice steal it from her years later?
We know that Esme was infatuated with Count Olaf before ASOUE, it's possible this drew red flags at her possibly switches sides of VFD. So Beatrice stole it from preventing the SB from falling into the wrong hands. Ironically this is what I think turn to the Fire-Starting side after being "betray" by Beatrice.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 8, 2021 14:28:54 GMT -5
I do not think the actual bowl can be the stolen object, because it would be hard to explain how, after that, it could have come to belong to Esme. (And it did belong to Esme; if she had just wrongly come into possession of it, Lemony would have no reason to feel guilty about recovering it.)
If you take the line that it was only the bowl, not the contents, that belonged to Esme, then it's possible that the contents were the Item stolen - or recovered - from the museum. While I don't think this theory gets any support from the books, as opposed to the show, it does resolve some problems that arise from the account in the books, and it had been proposed at 667 before the show appeared.
I don't think the TPP passage is definitive, because it is very hard to make it consistent with anything else that is said about sugar bowls, before or after. I still think the best reading is not that a sugar bowl is a good place to conceal evidence, but that a tea set is a good place to conceal evidence, when that evidence is a sugar bowl. (I don't think that's what DH intended - I don't think he had a consistent intention at that point - but it's a theory that can be used to make things consistent.)
And JL: I don't think that the captain says the sugar bowl contains secrets, plural; he says there are things in the world too dangerous for young people to know, with the implication that the contents of the SB are one of them. Also, what Esme says is that people died in the search for the contents of the SB, which can perfectly well have happened more than eighty-four yearss ago. Well... this time you wore not only the hat, but Dante 's boots as well.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 8, 2021 14:38:04 GMT -5
I agree. But perhaps something is missing?
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 8, 2021 14:45:43 GMT -5
I agree. But perhaps something is missing? It would really be possible for this to be true. But in this case we would have to reach strange conclusions. For example, a tea set would be a good place to hide an SB. But that's independent of a Dark Day. That's why I think the SB is a good place to hide SB content. After all, Kit had this idea, and hiding an SB in a tea set doesn't seem like such a hard thing to think about. Anyone would naturally think of it. Second, implicitly the content of the SB contains something to know what's in it, it's already something dangerous. And information is like that. In fact, nothing is like that but information. Secret information that if it falls into the wrong hands puts us in danger, or if we have it we are already in danger. From every angle I look at it, I can only see that the SB content can only contain information. Of course, this information could have been generated 84 years ago or more.
However, I think the secret letter in TSS implies that Lemony seeks the SB's content during asoue's publication to prove his innocence of the arsonist charges. This seems to be recent information, don't you think?
I mean... Inside the SB it seems to contain too many things: 1 - information to free Lemony; 2 - One dangerous secret or dangerous secrets; 3 - Something that if it falls into the hands of our enemies could leave us in a situation almost as bad (or perhaps as bad) if our enemies had the deadly fungus capable of causing a pandemic. 4 - Something whose search led to the death of several people.
Not that I think Daniel Handler really thought about it, but I think the only possible solution is something that could hold a lot of information, and that needed to be protected inside a container that could protect it. This would be able to store old and new information. Something that contains information that could make young minds susceptible to betraying the way they were raised. There's information there that, if Count Olaf knew you had it, he might try to force it out of you instead of concentrating on fetching it from an item that almost no one knows where it is. I may be wrong, since the ASOUE universe is anachronistic. But I do not think (even in Asoue's universe,) there was 84 years ago a device capable of saving a lot of information in such a small space. And if it had existed, I do not think there was 84 years ago a museum had an interest to expose this as a displayed item.
I think in ATWQ, the object that Kit and Lemony are looking for is an ancient artifact whose value lies not in its intrinsic properties, but rather in what it represents, because generally items displayed in museums are like that.
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