My Theories

[Stony E. Lemnick]

Theory 1:

TPP Picture Theories

The Octopuse On The Divers Helmet Represents Olafs Submarine, Stolen By Fiona & The Man With Hooks For Hands.

Theory 2:

Beatrice Theories

Beatrice Is Olafs Mother, Killed With Poison Darts,
She Was Part Of V.F.D.

The Octopus Theory Is One Of My Better Theories, The Beatrice Theory Is Just To Sketchy, To Many Variables.

Sorry About Every Word Starting In Capital Letters, It's My O.C.D.

With All Due Respect,
Stony E. Lemnick

[Dante]

Moving to Gloom Looms - really, I should direct you to a couple of different threads and lock this, but then I'd be a hypocrite. Discuss, all.

[lauren]

Well they certainly are original theories... I never made the connection with the octopus on the diving helmet and Olaf's octopus-shaped sub. Your Beatrice theory is very interesting...that would make Lemony, ex-boyfriend to Olaf's mother....however I was always under the impression that Olaf is older the Lemony...

[Antenora]

The theory of Beatrice being Olaf's mother is interesting, but wouldn't that make her quite a lot older than Lemony? Olaf does seem fairly old, most likely older than the Snicket siblings.

[champ103]

I don't really understand how the first is a theory..I think it was just a place to put the Medusoid Mycelium without people getting suspicious.

[Grace]

Olaf has gotta be in his 60's, Daniel's in his 30's, maybe Lemony's in his 40's. I think that a stretch, though.

[RockSunner]

I picture the reason for the octopus on the helmet as follows:

1) They wanted to hide the Medusoid Mycelium helmet in plain sight, like the Purloined Letter.

2) They got hold of a ship with a diver figurehead, and cut off the wooden head.

3) They needed something to attach the helmet to the body. The octopus is glued or otherwise fastened to the helmet and the body, holding both together.

4) They may have been inspired to use an octopus rather that some other creature because of their submarine. (It needed to be a tentacled creature to hold things together, anyway.)

On the relative ages of various characters, we don't have a lot of concrete clues. Here are a couple I noticed:

1) Kit is older than Lemony and she is pregnant. That puts an upper bound on both their ages. Kit could be as old as her late forties, but she is more likely in her thirties.

2) Do we know for sure that Olaf is very old, or have we been fooled by how he is illustrated? The fact that the Baudelaire's mother told him "you will fail" before he was seven and that she helped make him an orphan suggests he is younger than the Baudelaire parents. His hair may be prematurely gray. (Note: there's a lot more about Olaf's age in the "Is Count Olaf an ORPHAN?" thread).

[lauren]

*splash* That is true RockSunner, Olaf's age has never been mentioned in the books..and here we are accusing him of being in his 50s and 60s... anywhos is Kit older than Lemony? I never knew oops... do you have the quote with you?

[RockSunner]

The best quotes I have on hand are in the "Little Snicket Lad" section of LSUA. Lemony's age at the time of his taking is obscure because two different pictures are supplied, one where he looks about two or three (p. 16), and the other where he is just crawling (p. 21). But in either case he seems too young for tea, and that is what his siblings were drinking (pp. 17-18). The song lyrics say so, and so does Lemony "My brother insists he was allowed to finish his tea before departure..."

[Dante]

I didn't actually imagine the carved octopus attached to the top of the diving helmet when the figurehead was described - I imagined it more wrapped around the middle, which would conceal the noble portrait on the suit (although there probably isn't one on the figurehead anyway). Helquist's illustration, though, contradicted my mental image. Ah well. Olaf and Esmé probably were inspired to use an octopus because of their submarine, stolen though it may be, rather than, say, a squid, or a jellyfish.

And I don't think that Beatrice was Olaf's mother, although it would be interesting if she was in some way related to him. I think Olaf's quite a bit older than the Snickets, anyway. He'd have to be a lot younger than the Snickets for Beatrice to be his mother.

And I'm pretty sure that Jacques and Kit are older than Lemony, although I think it might just have been implied / we might have inferred it. The 2004 calendar, and the shape of a particular branching on the family tree, implies that Jacques and Kit are twins (which sorts out any possible debate about which of them is the oldest) but I don't think this has been directly stated either.

[Deleted]

If olaf is 60 then how did the baudelairs' parents kill his parents and leave him an orphan?

[Antenora]

It's possible that the Baudelaire parents had children at a fairly old age, although that wouldn't work if the poison darts incident took place recently. It really depends on if "orphan" must be defined as someone who lost their parents as a child, or simply someone with no parents. I think we can use the latter definition, as it avoids the temporal contradictions.

Since Jacques and Kit were described as "children" in the Little Snicket Lad, and apparently drinking tea, I'd say they're a few years older than Lemony. And it's stated/implied someplace that Kit is the same age as the Denouement triplets, but I can't remember where.

[Dante]

Kit says that she was four when the schism began. Later, Dewey says the same thing.

Snicket refers to Dewey as an orphan in the narrative, so I think it's safe to say that the term can apply to older people as well; I said before somewhere that I think the term "orphan" is used only to emphasise the similarities between Olaf and the Baudelaires (and earlier, Dewey and the Baudelaires). However, this is turning into something we already have a thread for - Count Olaf is an orphan? So that sort of discussion would belong there.

[RockSunner]

ffwf said:

Kit says that she was four when the schism began. Later, Dewey says the same thing.

That leads to another relative-age clue about Lemony and Kit. He says (TPP, p. 103) "...these pairs of waiters are engaged in an argument that began many years ago, when you were so young that it was not safe to feed even the softest of gnocci."

If we take the "argument" that affected so many pairs of waiters as the schism, and "you" to mean Lemony, then the schism began when he was an infant too young for solid food, probably less than six months old. That means Kit is about four years older than Lemony.

[lemony2012]

i think violet is pregnant. remember when her and quigley were in the mountain in the 10th book and snicket wouldnt tell us what they were doing