laty
Bewildered Beginner
Life is a conundrum of esoterica.
Posts: 7
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Post by laty on Jul 15, 2024 20:19:28 GMT -5
Did the Baudelaires die? Did the Quagmires die?
Im curious about both perspectives from the books and the show. There seems to be confusion on what happened to the Quagmires so i'll state what i know and we'll see if it is deemed accurate.
(BOOKS) Baudelaires: Died after leaving the island that Ishmael was in charge of. (BOOKS) Quagmires: Died in the queequeg, apparently The Great Unknown caused some sort of crash? I remember Kit Snicket talking about it. How one of the Quagmires yelled Violets name (I presume it's Quigley) and how they probably didn't survive.
(SHOW) Baudelaires: Survived with Beatrice II. (SHOW) Quagmires: Duncan and Isadora Reunited with Quigley and live in a hot air mobile home designed by Hector. In the show you can see the air mobile home floating in the sky in one of the scenes where Lemony is talking to the audience (guessing from memory it might be The Reptile Room)
I've heard people say that the Baudelaires and Qaugmires reunited at Briny Beach, mentioned in The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations. I don't have a copy of that book yet, but please do share your opinions and what you think occurred!
- The world is quiet here.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Jul 16, 2024 5:37:14 GMT -5
The Baudelaires almost certainly survived in both continuities. In a book called The Beatrice Letters, Beatrice II writes about what the Baudelaires are doing in the present day, like Sunny hosting a cooking show on the radio.
The Quagmires are more complicated. Yes, as you said, they survive the show because it doesn't know what the word unfortunate means. In the book, the Self Sustaining Hot Air Mobile Home is knocked out of the sky by evil eagles, and crashes into the Queequeg which is sailing beneath it. All the passengers of both see the Great Unknown* in the water below them and decide to take their chances with it, with only Kit trying to leave and ending up on the island.
*So are they dead or not? That depends on the nature of the Great Unknown. The show just makes it a big sea monster, but the books leave it very ambiguous. There's a series of prequel books called All The Wrong Questions which feature a sea monster called the Bombinating Beast, which some people theorize is the Great Unknown. So the short answer is that no one knows what happened to the Quagmires, but they probably won't be seeing the Baudelaires again, since if people could leave the Great Unknown it wouldn't be very unknown.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 16, 2024 16:00:08 GMT -5
I have to say that I subtly disagree, and I have already explained the reasons on the subject in my TE Review. In short, Lemony Snicket demonstrates specific knowledge about where the Quagmires were as the events involving the Baudelaires on the island unfolded. Accepting as an obvious fact that Lemony Snicket wrote asoue many years after the main events described in asoue, it is to be expected that he had enough time to carry out his field research and interviews in order to conform facts, as indicated in TBBRE. Also, Captain W apparently knows what the TGU is. And yet, he made the conscious decision to go to TGU instead of running away. The fact that one of the Quagmires calls Violet's name is also significant. The only thing that would make someone call out her name right now was if they had seen something inside the TGU that appeared to be Violet. A woman, obviously.
So, Captain W believed that the TGU was a means of water transport (either an animal transporting people, or a submarine transporting people) and the fact that someone saw a person inside and mistook that person for Violet only confirms the belief from Captain W. And the fact that years later Lemony managed to time exactly when the events involving the Quagmires occurred while the Baudelaires were walking on the island, indicates that the Quagmires or others who entered the TGU were able to get out and pass the information to someone (perhaps at the same time).
Lemony himself or someone Lemony was able to interview). Furthermore, in TSS, Lemony talks about a great cartographer who was still alive at the time Lemony was publishing asoue. This is a clear reference to the adult Quigley, who survived for many years after the main events, and continued to be useful to VFD through cartography.
And regarding the name The Great Unknown, this is a reference to the fact that the entity's identity is a secret and not lethality.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Jul 16, 2024 19:42:29 GMT -5
Yeah, but it wouldn't be a secret if people could leave and tell others what it's like inside. The Great Unknown can't remain that way if anyone can discuss it. It's not necessarily lethal, but entering the Great Unknown has the same effect to the outside world as if you'd died.
The great cartographer is a thematic parallel (you claimed an entire movie was a thematic parallel once, so don't act like this is unheard of), and the only "specific knowledge" Lemony has about the Quagmires in TE is that they're in "dark and damp" circumstances, which conveniently can describe the innards of either a submarine or a stomach.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 16, 2024 22:10:18 GMT -5
Yeah, but it wouldn't be a secret if people could leave and tell others what it's like inside. The Great Unknown can't remain that way if anyone can discuss it. It's not necessarily lethal, but entering the Great Unknown has the same effect to the outside world as if you'd died. The great cartographer is a thematic parallel (you claimed an entire movie was a thematic parallel once, so don't act like this is unheard of), and the only "specific knowledge" Lemony has about the Quagmires in TE is that they're in "dark and damp" circumstances, which conveniently can describe the innards of either a submarine or a stomach. The question is how Lemony could know exactly when the Quagmires entered these humid conditions. I didn't say that Lemony revealed what the conditions were, just that Lemony knew exactly the timing. Furthermore, the fact that few VFD members know what happens to those who join and eventually end up leaving the TGU does not take away from the enigmatic nature of the entity. After all, those who use the TGU (voluntarily or not) simply don't reveal what's inside. The act of not disclosing may just be a personal choice, not an impossibility. Lemony evidently knows what TGU is and voluntarily decided never to reveal it.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 17, 2024 1:53:59 GMT -5
Well, first of all I agree that the reference to Lemony knowing a great cartogropher is definitley intended to be a reference to an adult, grown up Quigley. It is not just a parallel, i feel. However, the authorial intent between TSS and TE may well have changed since that point, so one could easily retcon this to be a parallel if that is the reading that one so wished, but ultimately I would agree with Jean about this.
I would not agree, however, that the survival of Quigley, the quagmires, or any of those involved in entering the great unkown is the means by which Lemony is aware of when such an event happened - quite the contrary. The SSHAMH was destroyed, an event that Lemony could well have been aware of by any other number of means, not least the fact that his sister was a part of the whole cataclysm. And as for knowing that someone shouted Violets name? Well, either the information was passed on via the Bauds, or simple extrapolation as so much of Lemonys work must and can be. So no, I don't buy that.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 17, 2024 14:41:51 GMT -5
The fact that someone shouted Violet's name came to Lemony through what the Baudelaires wrote in the island's book. They got this information from Kit. But the precision of when the house collapsed is too specific.
However, it is technically possible that while Kit was in labor she gave some actional information that allowed the Baudelaires to know the exact time of events and allowed them to write about it. However, I don't see why Kit would talk about this. (Maybe getting a little delirious before dying?)
And of course... The fact that those Quagmire entered the entity is a deduction on Kit Snicket's part, due to the fact that she didn't see exactly what happened at the exact moment they all disappeared from the surface of the ocean. It is possible that they just submerged due to some unknown factor and then managed to come back for air a few feet away from Kit's sight. Quigley and the others may have been rescued later (in some damp condition, like a boat or submarine) and then becoming an adult. The fact is that Lemony knows what happened to them and knows when it happened. This seems to me to indicate that he obtained specific information, which Kit had no reason to say in such a precise way.
This is the kind of exaggeratedly accurate information that the character Lemony Snicket appreciates so much. I imagine him interviewing one of the survivors: "Can you confirm that the moon was in exactly that position?" or "Was your watch working when you passed that place?"
Subtly changing the subject, the name Violet mentioned out of context is something that really intrigues me. The idea that Quigley shouted Violet's name because she saw someone inside TGU is amusing, but admittedly lacking in evidence. Still, it's intriguing. This is the second time that Quigley mentions Violet's name completely out of context or without an easily identifiable valid purpose. In the letter he sent to the Q submarine, he didn't know that Violet, Klaus and Sunny would read the message. Yet he mentioned Violet's name out of context. And the same goes for the scene where the TGU appears. This is intriguing because it seems like it's something the author put in there on purpose and emphasized. What does that mean? There must be some connection.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Jul 17, 2024 18:43:36 GMT -5
I also have to agree with Jean on this one. The great cartographer is definitely a reference to Quigley. Lemony knowing about the destruction of the SSHAMH isn't necessarily a clue to another since he could've found out in any number of ways.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 17, 2024 21:02:36 GMT -5
I also have to agree with Jean on this one. The great cartographer is definitely a reference to Quigley. Lemony knowing about the destruction of the SSHAMH isn't necessarily a clue to another since he could've found out in any number of ways. So this is it. And honestly, in TBL there is a reference to other orphans besides the Baudelaires. The simplest and most coherent reading is that it's just Baudelaires like the Quagmires who survived. Dante argued that Daniel Handler wanted to leave the question open. But nothing more fair than him revealing in TBL (a more limited book) that the Baudelaires and Quagmires were alive. I believe Daniel's intention is to publish TBL after TE.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Jul 18, 2024 13:30:53 GMT -5
I think you(and Dante)hit the nail right on the head. DH probably wanted it to be ambiguous but TBL was a good place for a (heavily implied) reveal since it was both published later and is a little harder to get a hold of.
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