#asoue easter eggs

[ven10]

One of the Quagmire triplets canonically plays the violin! If it was Isadora or Duncan then Nero’s “concerts” would have been so much worse for them….😀

ALSO!!! Quigley plays the ACCORDION!!! 🪗 I’m saying it’s Quigley who plays it bc in TSS he mentions reading a book by L.Snicket on how to play the accordion!

(Also there’s some pretty cool foreshadowing of ‘The Carnivorous Carnival’ with there being a miniature circus tent under the table in their bedroom!!! 🎪)

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

never have I played any nights at Freddy fazbears

pls explain the whole plot and all lore to me as if I were small and slightly stupid

oh great timing i literally JUST explained this to my asoue discord

this is a VERY simple summary, but things to keep in mind while reading:

very very VERY little of this is directly spelled out for us. the creator, scott cawthon, LOVES to confuse people on purpose and the vast majority of the lore is gleaned from hidden minigames, secret cutscenes, and easter eggs. this makes things very confusing and controversial within the fanbase, so im gonna try to explain where there are differing opinions

really, there's two main stories: the first main story was completed with FNAF6 and Ultimate Custom Night, the story going on rn is the second and it is still ongoing. as such, a lot of the lore is still a mystery to all of us.

For clarity's sake, I will divide this between: THE AFTON STORY, the one the movie's gonna tell a part of, and THE GLITCH STORY, which the games are going through

dont worry i will make it fun to go through so it doesnt feel like school

ok lets go

THE AFTON STORY

First, let's get a visual chart in here. don't worry it's just for show

These are the important families we will be talking about; the Emily family, with father Henry and daughter Charlie, and the Afton Family, with father William, two sons (Michael and a boy who is still unnamed, he might get named on friday? We call him Crying Child "CC") and a daughter, Elizabeth. Don't worry about the mothers they're not important

Okay so here's the thing: of these four children, all but Michael die VERY early on in the timeline

The problem is we do NOT know THE ORDER each of them died. There's a lot of arguments on all sides but I personally think the order is sad boi->charlie->baby so imma present it in that order. But keep in mind that we don't actually know because of the confusing way the lore is dropped.

okay so for starters.

Backstory/FNAF4

purple guy is william afton and he and this guy vcalled henry start opening a restaurant chain starring freddy fazbear

in the original location they've got two animatronic suits, fredbear and spring bonnie. the other location has freddy, bonnie, foxy, chica

the og location suits are ~special~ tho, bc henry and william are crazy inventor dudes. these suits are called "springlock suits". they function as full animatronics but you can wind all the wires and gears and endoskeleton and shit back and step into the costume yourself. only problem is the safety is jackshit and if you like. cry or sweat or breathe wrong the springlocks will fail and the metal will come crashing back and crush u to death. u should have enough time to get to the back room so u dont bleed out in front of the customers tho. springlock suits are important remember those

michael is in his early teens and has just learned how to be a shit to his siblings and is trying out this hot new bullying thing. he's picking a lot on CC because CC is terrified of the freddy animatronics. it is said that he "saw something" that scared him, it could be anything as benign as "saw someone go into the suit and got freaked out" to something as serious as "saw one of those aforementioned springlock failures and person bleeding out." could also be charlie or elizabeth's death if those happen earlier in the timeline. again we dont know bc cawthon likes to confuse us

CC is not scared of the freddy characters tho, he has all the plushies and calls them his friends. he's just scared of the animtronics. unfortunately his dad works there so he has to be there like 90% of the time so he's having a wonderful time. hence the moniker "crying child". bc he cries all the time

anyway at his birthday party, michael decides it would be really funny to shove CC up into the animatronic's mouth for kicks. this goes about as well as you'd expect cause the mouth closes and fuckin. crushes his head

kid goes into a coma for a while but eventually flatlines. while he's in the coma we hear michael tearfully apologizing, and his fredbear plush talks to him (presumed to be william) saying he will "put him back together"

anyway that was fun. so next up charlie emily gets FUCKING MURDERED

Backstory/FNAF1-2

for some reason charlie gets locked outside the pizzeria. william's driving by and decides to stab her bc why not

honestly most of us believe that this occured after CC just bc it gives william motivation to be pissy at his business partner and kill his kid abt it, but also a book that released a month ago implies that william might have been nightmare gassing his kids for shits and giggles so. who knows. dont worry about that btw its not relevant rn

anyway the thing is willie and henry had an animatronic designed to protect the children called the puppet. the puppet sees charlie outside and goes out to help her but it's raining so it fries up the puppet's circuits and it crashes on top of her dead body. cheery!

except this is where it gets wild bc charlie proceeds to like. possess the puppet

possession is really complicated in this universe but basically there's no real way to communicate openly with people and the possesser might not even be aware of who or where they are or anything really but. yeah the lil girl def possesses the puppet

its after this that william starts killing kids for funsies. a lot of us presume that he saw the puppet getting possessed and was like "holy shit a way to bring crying kid back" but again he might've just decided this was fun

anyway he lures five kids into the Secret Freddy's Backroom That Is Not On The Maps by wearing the spring bonnie costume. after killing them he shoves them into the other animatronic suits (freddy, bonnie, chica, foxy, fredbear "golden freddy") and yeah they start gettin possessed

the fifth missing kid was stuffed in fredbear and here's where it gets veeery theoretical cause we dont have straight confirmation of this but just some theories. it's VERY likely that crying child was also haunting fredbear at this point, and shoving another kid in there got two kids haunting the same bitch and it causes fredbear (golden freddy) to be really fucking weird and glitchy and eldritch or w/e. anyway you dont have to worry about that rn cause golden freddy doesnt show up much they're too busy ascending or smth

now this is where the lore gets confusing-- the first game claims that after the last two were lured, someone was caught on camera, arrested and charged. however we know for a fact willie-boi wasnt caught so either 1) this got retconned when cawthon decided to actually make lore, 2) he wasnt convicted and somehow still kept a hold on the fazbear empire during this, or 3) a lot of us theorize that henry was framed for the crimes and thats why he disappears from the timeline until the sixth game. cause yeah he disappears from the timeline until the sixth game. personally i believe the third it makes a lot of sense but yeah willie-boi stops killing at about five kids

anyway will is going full scientist with all these animatronics and he's like. ripping parts off them and putting them on other animatronics to see what happens. we THINK. again this is really vague but this is just kinda the most logical explanation here.

anyway this is what happens in fnaf2 and what it does is like. split the souls and shit. and he's like "oh this is sick" except this makes all the suits act erratic as hell and very angry towards adults (theyre cool with kids tho) and eventually one of them causes the infamous Bite of 87. we're not entirely sure what it was but one of the animatronics bit off the frontal lobe of someone in 1987. this caused this location to get shut down and willie boi just puts the pieces back on the og animatronics and is like "well shit what do we do now boys"

FNAF5: Sister Location

anyway so this is where we think elizabeth dies in the timeline. william makes these things called the "funtime animatronics"-- we know they are made after a fnaf location shuts down, though it's not specified which. these animatronics are built SPECIFICALLY to kidnap children. ballora is built as a distraction for parents, the other two are built to only move when not seen, and then Circus Baby™ has an arm that can grab kids and drag thtem into her until willie lets em out. she is programmed to only do this when a child is alone in the room so william tells elizabeth "do not go see baby when you are alone in the room"

so elizabeth is like 6 and she goes to see baby when she is alone in the room and baby grabs her but the arm is fucked up and the kid dies p badly

funtime's location is then immediately closed due to "gas leaks" and william rents out the funtimes for parties. at the same time he starts shoving some haunted parts into the funtime animatronics to see what happens. we THINK.

important location here btw is the "scooping room." it's actually very good horror but basically it's a bitch that is supposed to rip the endoskeletons out of the suit whenever theyre malfunctioning. super smart idea that will cause no nightmares going forwards.

anyway the animatronics all kinda know that william killed them so after a while (a few years??? who knows) they start trying to kill him and he's like "hmm. i cannot go into this bunker anymore. let me send michael, my last surviving kid who i hate." this is where michael, now an adult, re-enters the timeline.

mikey boy is told by his dad that he can bring his baby sis back to life if he goes down into this bunker and does some shit. michael is like "oh sweet" bc honestly he probably still feels guilty about literally killing his bro and so he goes down to the bunker.

the animatronics eventually tell him "go into the scooping room it'll be totes mcgotes" and when he gets there he finds out that the animatronics have killed all the other employees, scooped themselves, and fused their endoskeletons into one conglomerate called ennard

ennard is like "yeah we cant escape here cause they just bring us back so we're gonna use you as a skinsuit k thnx" and they scoop him and use him as a skinsuit

it's really good horror i promise

BUT this turned out to be a bad plan because Humans Decay so after like a week ennard gets puked up by the MikeSuit and escapes into the sewers.

here, meanwhile, is where mike pulls a reverse uno card and possesses his own decaying corpse

LIKE A FUCKING BADASS

he then calls up his dad and is like "hey dad :) elizabeth's fine now :) BUT :) they fucking killed me :) because they thought i was you :) you sure sent me down here to die huh :) anyway :) im gonna come find you :) you have a ten minute head start start running :)"

actor really fucking sold that monologue too ngl

so he's like. PISSSSSSED and rightfully so he is walking around in his own corpse. so he goes to find his dad

Backstory/FNAF3

this is about when peepaw willie goes back to the original fnaf location (we THINK) and is like "ok im just gonna take apart all the animatronics and do something with these"

only when he destroys the suits the missing kids' ghosts show up and spook him. so this guy who's been studying ghosts is like "oh fuckshit there's ghosts here" and tries to hide in the spring bonnie suit. only he laughs and this causes the springlocks to malfunction and FUCKING VIOLENTLY KILL HIM. get springlocked idiot

except then HE possesses the spring bonnie suit and this is springtrap. but also he's in a super secret back room while this happens so he is trapped there for a while

FNAF6

so ennard, michael and william are fuckin around for a couple years. at some point ennard decides that elizabeth is kinda a freak actually and kicks her out of the hivemind so she just rebuilds herself a circus baby suit and keeps wanderin around so now we got four bitches doing who knows what

eventually it's been 30 years since the last freddy's closed and someone opens up a haunted house parody of it. mike goes to work there as a security guard* and guess what they found springtrap and bring him to the attraction thinking he's just an animatronic. after five nights of fucking with him mike sets the place on fire to try and finally kill his dad fr. it does not work

*note that this isnt confirmed to be michael but we kinda. all know it's probably him. it really seems to be him

anyway then michael finds out that an actual fazbear's is opening and needs an owner so he goes and becomes owner of the restaraunt. while some guy on a cassette tape is giving him tutorial instructions he sets up the place and also collects several animatronics. these are:

scraptrap (peepaw post-fire and really pissed)

scrapbaby (elizabeth now thinking that maybe if she kills things her dad will pay attention to her)

molten freddy (remains of ennard still not entirely sure what's going on)

lefty (a bear solely built to capture the puppet, who was still fuckin around the fnaf2 location i guess. anyway now the puppet is here thats important)

so after our five nights scrapbaby comes on the speaker system and is like "omg dad if we kill people will you love me. we're gonna kill soooo many people it's my passion actually" and that's when the cassette tutorial guy interrupts her

and he just goes "yeah. you're not doing that"

anyway he's like "hi guys. you remember me??? henry??? from 30 years ago?? i owned half this business? you killed my daughter and stuffed her soul in a puppet? lmao yeah i literally lured you all here and you came like the fucking idiots you are. im setting the place on fire, we're all gonna die and go to heaven. except for YOU, WILL. you are not going there. lmao bye" and he sets the place on fire and they all burn. it's more epic when he says it tbh

now henry mentions that he had an escape route ready for the building owner but he figured out the owner was michael and was like "i feel like you wanna stay and burn with us" and michael's like "fuck yeah"

you might think that wraps up the story nicely but OH NO THERE'S MORE

Ultimate Custom Night

see, the next game is ultimate custom night where you can choose which animatronics hunt you and their level of difficulty. it is through hidden messages and shit that we find out that ucn is, canonically, william being tortured in hell. which is sick af

anyway the tormentor is a spirit labelled "the vengeful spirit" in the files, and "the one you should not have killed" by the animatronics. we sometimes hear either a light voice behind the other animatronic lines (could be either a woman with a light voice, a little girl, or a little boy), and the pic that sometimes shows up as a hallucination is a distorted photo of scott cawthon's son. we know for a FACT this spirit is someone from the fnaf6 fire cause they reference the fire more than once while poking willie with a stick. it's probably not elizabeth cause she was just tryin to get her dad's attention. it's not charlie/puppet bc one of her lines is like "ffs just stay out of my way for ONCE." we also know for a fact it's not henry cause they were like "henry sure tried to release us huh. not happening im not letting you go that easily bitch haha" so that narrows it down to michael and the missing kids

now here's the thing.

the vaaaaast majority of the fandom is convinced that the vengeful spirit is cassidy, the missing child that was stuffed inside golden freddy with cc. this is because golden freddy is in a looot of ultimate custom night and if you beat the hardest mode you just get a quick cutscene of him glitching and then everything fades to black

however. i have seen legiterally no convincing evidence that this is the case. all we know about cassidy is she is the golden freddy missing kid and was talking to cc through the logbook. and we BARELY know this. in the alternate universe book she first showed up in (the silver eyes) she wasn't even the golden freddy kid. people point out a similar situation to her and cc in fazbear frights where one of the kids was tormenting william (stitchwraith) but that's literally a whole separate universe and completely separate characters with separate backstories and personalities

there's a sprite in security breach who fights glitchtrap (explained below) who was named in the files as "cassidy" so ppl point to that but 1) they changed that name after people made a deal out of it, 2) that could mean literally anything, 3) the protag of the next game was named "cassie" and her story kinda paralleled the sprite's first game so uuhhhh anyway

honestly i think it's WAY more likely the vengeful spirit is mr michael "i'm going to come find you and set you on fire twice" afton, using his childhood likeness to fuck with his dad. this is strengthened by one of the easter egg cutscenes in ucn, where the vengeful spirit talks to a benevolent spirit who tells them to "leave the demon to his demons. there is nothing for you here." the audio in the background is someone distortedly screaming "HENRY" and "MICHAEL"

one of the animatronic lines also says "is this a prison for you or for me? perhaps both" implying that the vengeful spirit feels like they belong in hell, which would fit with mike's "i killed my brother" self-loathing. the golden freddy glitch could very easily be his mental anguish as well as william's, with the optional cutscene telling us that while michael is self-harming by torturing his dad in hell, he has the ability to move on and find peace if he can forgive himself. honestly i really like that open ending there

another point towards "vengeful mike" theory is that we play as him for most of the games (definitely 5 and 6, most likely 1 and 3, some theorize 4) and so him being the vengeful spirit is way more emotionally impactful than "random kid #5"

however every time i bring this up to the fnaf fandom they get really really pissy at me because y'all love ur angry lil girl cassidy headcanons and honestly that is completely fair i also love angry lil girls. im just saying this bc we're going over whats canon rn and i firmly believe in vengeful mike (thank @birdsareblooming for that) but yknow. cassidy is also fun as hell

i wrote a whole essay on this btw these are just the cliffnotes. do you guys wanna see the essay

anyway that's where the afton story ends but OHHH NO MR CAWTHON CANNOT STOP

if you just want a quick catchup before the movie you can stop here but anyway. let's talk mimicry

THE GLITCH STORY

the games coming out recently are kinda a sequel-story and bc theyre still coming out we are still very confused about what the fuck is canon and what is not so this one will be a lot more guessing. i digress let's talk about

Help Wanted

so back on earth, it's the 2020s-2030s. turns out the fazbear company is still functional and they're like "well shit guys what the FUCK do we do about all of That"

so they decide they need a brand cleansing and what they do is they secretly hire an "indie game developer" to make the fnaf games in-universe, to make light of the tragedies and make people take them less seriously. they pretend to have beef with this indie dev but eventually put all of his games into a VR game as a show of "good faith." somehow this actually does work in revitalizing the brand image

also sidenote but the books imply that the indie dev was kidnapped and gaslit into making the games but thats not important

now see there's a glitch in the game and the beta-tester jeremy mentions it and then gets increasingly withdrawn and obsessive. because it turns out there is a Bitch in here

now. the identity of the Bitch is uh. controversial in the fandom rn. i will say for clarity that i am in Party Two and will probably be biased towards that but here's the thing. the Bitch is either:

a digital upload of william afton's soul (somehow escaping hell)

THE MIMIC

Help Wanted Interlude: The Mimic

see, the other books (silver eyes, fazbear frights) are set in a parallel universe-ish to the books, similar rules and worldbuilding but cawthon can fuck around all he wants with no consequences. there were charliebots and springtrap mpreg at one point it was nuts. but the thing is right now they're kinda trying to tell us that the current series, tales from the pizzaplex, is game-canon. god only knows if they'll stick to that so some people think the books are in the game's universe, others think they're parallels to the games and not 1-1 exact much like the others

but anyway they give us crucial lore on The Mimic so here we go

some guy named edwin (some think he's a parallel to henry or william, but rn we're just gonna assume he's canon) is a single dad to a toddler. however he's working for fazbear making all these animatronics and he's sooo busy and needs something to distract the toddler so he creates a fucked up nightmare animatronic called The Mimic, whose programming is extremely basic: "copy whatever you see being done"

the toddler actually loves the fucked up nightmare animatronic and teaches him to play patty-cake and carry around stuffed animals or w/e. anyway then the toddler runs out into the street and gets hit by a car

edwin is still grieving and the mimic comes up carrying the toddler's stuffed animal and still copying him and when the mimic that edwin programmed to copy things is still copying things edwin snaps and just beats the fuck out of it bc he needs a grief outlet. he then abandons the thing but however the mimic has just learned Violence

some employees come by to see where edwin's animatronics are and the mimic just starts killing all of them bc. well. it's supposed to copy things. it will copy things

there's a BIG GAP here in what happens to it next but it disappears for the next 30 years. however it is heavily, HEAVILY implied that it witnessed at least one of the missing children incidents

fazbear actually has a Lot of mimic endoskeletons but bc they start copying violent shit they shut them all down. however they all run on the same program, "mimic1" and fazbear keeps that tech around cause you know it could be helpful

Back to Help Wanted

now here is where the "we only THINK this is canon we dont knkow yet" comes in

back to the vr game, they are just shoving random old pieces of code in there to speefd up the process of making the game cause capitalism doesnt like long development times. this puts the mimic1 program into the program and it immediately sees All Of Afton's Crimes In 4K. it decides "oh yeah i can mimic this but i should probably get a physical body in order to do that"

so beta tester jeremy sees the mimic program, which takes the form of Spring Bonnie Suit. this is Glitchtrap

now keep in mind that some people do still believe that all this aint happenin and the spring bonnie glitch is just william. again i personally believe the mimic cause it makes more sense than "william escaped hell somehow" but w/e

anyway, glitchtrap is fuckin around. it tries to possess beta tester jeremy and in order to stop it, jeremy does the sensible thing and cuts his own face off

so glitchtrap is like "hmm. that didn't work out" and decides to go for the more subtle approach. the next beta tester, currently unnamed, starts recording tapes inside the game to send to the next beta tester so they dont fuck with glitchtrap. glitchtrap however seals itself inside the tapes so that when the beta testers try to delete it, it'll instead be inside the tapes and cant be removed lmao. it then "mimics" tape girl's voice and adds a last tape saying "let him possess you its ok i promise"

it also mimics her intro of "hello can you hear me" in the one time it speaks so. mimic

anyway the next beta tester is this gal named vanessa and she gets possessed like suuuper quickly and glitchtrap is like "oh fucking FINALLY"

Security Breach Therapy Tapes

vanessa's acting weird at work so company requires her to go to therapy, however she has the same therapist as Another Patient. this patient will be named later however right now we're calling them Patient 46. they do not talk but have the same therapist as Vanessa and is creepy about it. anyway whenever a therapist prods too much into either Vanessa or P46's life, or discovers them fucking with fazbear tech, the therapist mysteriously goes missing and shows up later dead and mangled by machinery

they go through like five of these bitches at least, but it's clear P46 is another bitch possessed by glitchtrap but they're like more possessed than vanessa is so glitchtrap likes them better

BUT THAT'S ALL BORING, WE'VE GOT A PIZZAPLEX NOW!!!

Security Breach

fazbear opens a giant 80s-style mall with a ton of attractions like disneyland or w/e and call it the Mega Pizzaplex. There's state-of-the-art animatronics in here that are basically sentient ai. they might be possessed but we're not actually sure rn they might just be advanced robots

they start with "glamrock" freddy, bonnie and chica, along with roxy wolf instead of foxy. we're not sure why rn. anyway at some point something suspicious happens and bonnie is found mangled and he's replaced with montgomery gator, a c-list animatronic they had to run the golf course. he doesnt seem to take the spotlight well and has started breaking things but its probably fine

anyway they eventually realize they can automate the staff and stop paying human beings and they jump on that cause they love cutting costs. they've got staffbots everywhere except for ONE person- vanessa, who is hired as the security guard. we find a note saying that her interviewer found her too inexperienced for the position, but someone "very" high up in the company pushed her into the role. this is implied to be glitchtrap taking over the systems

so vanessa and P46 are shoving glitchtrap into the systems because, well, guess what? the pizzaplex is built on top of the fnaf6 location. the one where henry set them all on fire, and they're trying to do some sort of shit with the burnt remains of springtrap. if you believe in william!glitchtrap he's trying to get his body back; if you believe in mimic!glitchtrap he's trying to fuse himself to afton's corpse in order to gain a corporeal form. it also helps that there is The OG Mimic Endoskeleton in this area (its explained in the books im not going into it) but it's pretty fuckin damaged so they gotta spend some time fixing it before fusing it with peepaw's corpse

but the night they're supposed to do that, something goes wrong: a child is loose in the pizzaplex

glamrock freddy had a malfunction onstage, and when he wakes up in his room, there is a child hiding in his stomach compartment (used for oversized piñatas and cakes). this child is named gregory and he looks suspiciously like the crying child and we dont have an explanation for that but no, matpat, he's not a robot, it's probably just symbolism

anyway gregory actually has like very little memory of what's going on and barely remembers his own name but he says that vanessa the security guard is trying to fuckin kill him so he needs to get tf out of the pizzaplex. freddy's like "well you're shit out of luck cause the doors close and seal until 6am but that's fine we can make it til then" and gregory's like "fucking JOY"

long story short gregory has to run around the pizzaplex while every animatronic but freddy is trying to kill him. freddy is not trying to kill him bc his malfunction caused him to enter Safe Mode and it turns out that Safe Mode is safe from the glitchtrap virus. everyone else, however, gets glitchtrapped and is trying to kill this kid

you dont find out why until like laaaate in the game and even THEN you're confused until one of the goosebumps-knockoff short stories confirms a thing, and that thing is:

gregory is patient 46

oh shit

turns out gregory was possessed by glitchtrap for FUCK knows how long and was used as its body for like the entire time. and when he eventually wakes up un-possessed (no idea how that happened) he has no memory of whats going on at ALL and is understandably fucking terrified. doesnt remember being possessed or killing ppl or anything he just wakes up and runs. glam freddy likely malfunctioned cause glitchtrap was like "oh my god go GET that stupid kid" and glam freddy was like "but???? protecc????" and entered safe mode

so gregory eventually fuckin DEMOLISHES all the other animatronics and uses their parts to upgrade freddy. freddy is like "hey where'd you get these parts" and gregory's like "uhhhhhhhhh dont worry about it" "hey where are my friends" "DONT WORRY ABOUT IT"

while this is happening, a possessed vanessa is in a bunny suit calling herself vanny and also trying to kill him. this is just as confusing to us as it is to you

anyway there are six endings to security breach. according to the most recent game, there is a chance that two of them are canon. WE DO NOT KNOW which of the two is canon. these are the endings:

Princess Quest Ending: greg and freddy try to confront vanny and she gets freddy ripped apart by staffbots. gregory then finds an arcade game in her room and plays and beats it which sets her soul free (presumably he knew how to do this cause he's remembering bits and pieces of being possessed??? idk). anyway once the game is beat she is unpossessed and takes gregory and freddy's decapitated head out of the pizzaplex

Burntrap Ending: gregory and freddy avoid vanny and go to the fnaf6 basement where freddy starts acting all fucked up and then thtey find the Springtrap corpse, now Burntrap (fused with the mimic? glitchtrap? yknow). it tries to kill them so you have to Boss Fight everything and then set him on fire again. THEN a tangled mess of animatronic wires with a funtime freddy head (remains of ennard???) shows up and drags him off. again, just as confusing for us as it is for you. freddy and gregory escape. no idea where vanessa is

ONE of these is canon. we do not know which. this is making the fanbase super chill and normal /lying

Evidence for Princess Quest: in ruin, we see a headless glamrock freddy in the exact same area he is in pq. we also have no sign of vanny trying to help glitchtrap. you can collect gregory's fanart of his own game and pq is the only one he didn't draw. princess quest arcade game has sword sticking out of it

Evidence against Princess Quest: aforementioned headless freddy is labelled a prototype on his foot and we know for a fact that our freddy does not have that stamp. he also has a gift inside his stomach when freddy gave his stomach gift to gregory already (and it was a diff color). the pq arcade game has sword sticking out of it BUT that could symbolize the princess being skewered, and surrounding the game is art of the escaped glitchbunny

Evidence for Burntrap: labelled as "true ending" in the files, only ending to be FULLY animated instead of switching to comic form and also only one with boss fight, the tangled animatronic mess is definitely canon (we see it, gregory draws it so he saw it too which means he went in the basement where it was), while vanny isn't seen her grafitti is everywhere and appears to be recent

Evidence against Burntrap: the "true ending" label, like cassidy, could mean literally fucking anything. also if vanessa is still under his control why the fuck doesnt she help him where is she

so yeah we're having fun figuring THAT out

Ruin (the end so far thank god)

the most recent game we got, then, was the dlc for the above game, this dlc is called ruin. a few months after this, a lil girl named cassie wanders into the ruins of the pizzaplex cause her best friend gregory told her to meet him there. when she gets there she finds a walkie-talkie and he's like "girl im trapped under the pizzaplex you need to shut down the security and come get me" and she's like "sounds great"

she finds vanny's mask and puts it on and enters an AR world where a glitched bunny is trying to kill her (this one isnt glitchtrap actually) and a friendly little AR bear is telling her to keep going she's doing a great job (this one IS glitchtrap probably)

anyway it turns out her backstory is her dad worked for the pizzaplex and she had a birthday party there with her Favorite Character Roxy and literally none of her friends showed up. she was sad about it until gregory showed up and became her friend. then gregory went missing and she was sad

anyway the last security node is favorite character Roxy and roxy recognizes her and is nice to her and its very sad

cassie eventually goes down to the fnaf6 basement and is like "ok gregory i opened the door are you okay" and PSYCH, IT'S NOT GREGORY

IT'S

THE

MIMIC

the mimic immediately tries to kill her bc it likes violence but roxy shows up to save her. the real gregory calls her on the walkie-talkie and is like "bITCH GET OUT OF THERE" and she's like "IM TRYING" and gregory's "friend" (whose pronouns are very specifically blurred out, so it could be either freddy or vanessa) uses the building maps to help her to an elevator. however when she gets in the elevator gregory's like "yeahhhhh sorry we cant let you be followed :(" and drops the elevator, trapping her there

it's like a 99% chance this last bit was not gregory but it was the mimic, seeing as gregory is not even in the pizzaplex and the mimic lost cassie right next to the elevator fuse box that it could easily rip out. so you know

anyway we end with either roxy finding cassie or the mimic using roxy's voice finding her so this kid's fucked lmao

also other questions about if mimic is burntrap is that we see the mimic p naked in this game and not in a fun corpse skinsuit so where did bunny go??? however i will also mention that there is a secret ending that shows us that the FUCKING SCOOPER is here so. personally i think that answers that question. get scooped idiot

oh also if you noticed "hey 'cassie' sounds a lot like 'cassidy,' the golden freddy kid who was sharing a body with the crying child, who has a similar design to gregory," congrats! we've noticed that too! we have no fucking idea what it means! :D

and thaaaaat's five nights at freddy's

that didnt take too long did it

[olivia-calidamn]

going through my bedside table as i prep to move up to Nan and Grandad’s house and i’ve found:

tarot deck and guidebook

bowl, zip-lock bag, container of my (deceased) puppy’s fur that i pulled off my belongings and out of my Cruze instead of chopping some off him

80 bucks cash just chillin that i must’ve gotten for Christmas 2021

heap of Easter eggs from 2022 (??)

last driver’s licence that expired in August 2022

kitchen knife

notes and cover concepts for my very first ASOUE longfic (Olivia and Jacquelyn running from stuff) that would be from 2019

exactly twenty-one of the same notebook that i found and liked during the time i hand wrote passages down for my 80’s au, which i bought in 2020 and which i’d like to use next year so that i’m transcribing fic both from tapes and books to shake things up

[emmagottlieb52]

ASOUE Inventions(used and unused)That Have Me Inspired

Original Book Series

-Grappling hook made of torn ugly clothing,a bent and broken curtain rod,and wire

-New kind of pencil sharpener

-Lockpick made from two plug prongs,a thumbtack,and soap as a lubricant

-Scratch-made telephone

-Automatic harmonica player

-Signaling device made with cloth,a fishing pole,a metal bucket,and a hairnet

-Retriever made out of chewed gum and a debarker

-Noisy shoes with metal on the heels and toes

-Staple-making device made with creamed spinach,metal rods,a toe-shaped potato,a small crab,and a fork

-A rope made of curtains,extension cords,and neckties

-Welding torches made of oven-heated fire tongs(when the heat died down,said tongs were later used as crowbars)

-New kinds of flashlights made from broom handles,rubber bands,and tin foil

-Water pitcher as a mortar-dissolver

-Wooden bench as a battering ram

-Assisted self-sustaining mobile home

-A new kind of telegram

-Strange mixing device for food

-Automatic rolling pin made of a window shade and six pairs of skates

-Intercom system with an empty soup can with a hole in it

-Rubberband trail escape device

-Escape cart made with ivy vines,roller coaster parts,and a fan belt

-Drag chute using hammocks and a multitude of stick condiments

-Wooden table used as a brake

-Climbing equipment made with fork-assisted shoes,fake fingernails,ukulele strings,and a candelabra as an ice tester

-Dirty laundry sheet drag chute

-Saltwater filtering device

-Flashlights made of tin foil,a broom handle,and rubberbands

-Cold,hard teething device made from a silver pie server and the ear from a snowman ice sculpture

Movie(used and unused)

(Used)

-A ball machine mixed with a mail slot that activates a bell

-Firefly trapper

-Headgear that can show pictures slides

-Switching device made with a coil,a car seat strap…and a Littlest Elf bobblehead

-Grappling hook made with an umbrella frame and rope

-Bed-making device that can be activated with the pull of its rope,gears,and clothespegs

(Unused…though I kinda wish they were used…)

-Stone Fetcher(four or so variants)

-Easter Egg Painter

-Wind-Driven Watering Device

-Firefly-Trapping Device

-Story-Teller Device

-Telescopic Hummingbird Observation Stabilizer

-Type-o-matic Shoe-Tying Device

-Harmonica Player(four or so variation),though

Videogame(all variations)

(GBA)

-Apple-Chucker made with a soup can,ice cream scoops,and hand-cranking technology

-Water Pump made with bellows,a gasket,an empty jam jar,and a shower head

-Parasol Glider made with yarn,parasol,and a weathervane

(PC)

-Smasher made with a fork,a jack-in-the-box,and a boot

-Lobber made with bicycle parts,an ice cream scoop,and a toy sailboat

-Bug Sprayer made with a bicycle pump,sickly perfume,and a gramophone cone

-Lockpick made with a pencil sharpener,wire hangers,and a record

-Lever Yanker made with a gavel,a bell pull rope,a clock spring,and a scale

-Reptile Retriever made with a large hoop,burlap,a long pole+handle,and a basket

-Stilts made with snowshoes,a rope,and two oars

-Grappling hook made with a parasol frame,shower curtain rings,and a spiral carpet

(Console)

-Brilliant Bopper made with a spring,a broom,an empty coffee can,and a boxing glove

-Fruit Flinger made with a funnel,a pool floatie,an electric fan*

*can be turned into a Reptile Retriever with the addition of a lawnmower bag,a screwdriver,and a garden hose

-Baby Booster made with a fire extinguisher,a bookstrap,and a pull cord

-A Goldberg device made with a bowling ball,firewood,rope,and some assistance

-Steady Stilts made with tripod legs,a piano wire,one’s own shoes,and snowshoe straps

-Levitating Loafers made with one’s shoes(ones with laces work the best),propellers,and batteries

-Lucky Lockpick made with a spool,a paintbrush,and a pair of tweezers

-Peppermint Popper made with a fishing pole,an eggbeater,and a ladle

-Horrifying Hook made with a bicycle pump,spring coil,and a gardening hook

Netflix TV

-Grandfather clock toaster

-A stone-fetching device in a box

-Grappling hook made with curtains,a pasta maker,whisks,gears,a power tool activator with a button,and a metal garden hook piece

-Gum to fix an electrical current

-Parachute made with an enormous basket,VERY long rubberbands,and Spain’s largest handkerchief

-Pickaxe machine

-Battering ram made with a noose,a wooden bench,and a hard bread loaf

-Repairs the roller coaster with a tagliatelle grande

Fanfics

-Fixed an ancestral cuckoo clock and replaced the broken pendulum with a metal rod and a gemstone in place of a weight

-Makeshift bell alarm using a metal bucket,a cord,a rope,and a wooden spoon

-Wooden shadow makers

-A rock retriever made with a milkcrate,a perambulator wheel,and typewriter remains

-Stops a conveyor belt with broken plate bits and a thrown metal pipe

Concepts

-A Kitchen Winch made of a collander,a candle chandelier,with the hearth tucked between the legs to center the user’s weight,and sometimes a small clock and an apron for additional back support,and additional wringer and collander for pasta

-A suitcase invention with a spring-loaded tripod on the bottom,a scissoring device activated to open it,inside being grandfather clock mechanism,sewing kit parts like spools and thread,tape measure,sewing machine parts,wheels,a belt drive,a jack-in-the-box spring,a fishing reel,and a crank key

My OC inventions

-A small bear trap made with broken silverware,broken glass cup pieces,and leftover metal rods tied up with a very long string

-A hooked rope out of a twisted-off hook-shape umbrella handle,a twistable bendy wire,and an old rope

-A liquid dispenser device made of syringes,an empty frosting can,hot glue,grandfather clock mechanism,a Chinese lantern cover,a horseshoe magnet with two discs attached as the handle,and plastic tubing

-A new kind of humidifier

-A multi-horned airhorn made with multiple plastic funnels,empty cans of hairspray,and an oxygen tank

-A hair-cutting made of a doorknob,cookie cutters bitten with assistance,mattress springs,hair scissors,rubberbands,egg beater blades,violin bows,and grandfather clock mechanism

-An outdoor baking stove made with parts of a refrigerator,parts of a stove,and lit fires

-A one-man band set made from:Snare drum rigs made from jewelry hooks/bands,ribbons,and old silk bands,bike horns hot-glued onto turned-over glass sundae bowls on the shoulders,a hi-hat rig made with old arcade game mechanism,a toy robot arm,the strap part of a seatbelt,and an orthopedic shoe,a harp rack for the harmonica made from bare pipe cleaners and a broken music player,a xylophone-player of metal wire and small mallets,and a bass drum rig made with bent wire

[soficierva17]

[asouekids]

The last edition of the Daily Punctilio contains easter eggs from all episodes and informs us that Eleanora Poe is in prison (but the last part is probably false because, you know, the Daily Punctilio)

NICE

[lovelyamneris]

don’t @ me but I thought Lemony Snicket was a real person until like an hour ago

[capn-fuzzy]

I’m on episode 3 of the new season of ASoUE and I’m like 99% sure the suckers on Esme’s octopus suit are rolled up condoms.

[thelonghairedone]

I loved this bit

While they read the page on the right out loud in the last episode of ASOUE season 3, I had to pause the episode to read the entry on the left. And I was glad I did.

I don’t believe this was in the book (it HAS admitably been a while since i have read the books) so I don’t know who is responsible for this tidbit, but kudos to whoever wrote this.

It could easily fit in with absurd shit that people do in the series and I love the image of Ishmael having his cult...er people dress up as clowns and then be like This Was A Terrible Mistake

[sherdocwarts]

Wait a second….

[houseofangelus]

I always wonder what happened to the actual principal

[badlydrawndrawnings]

atwq book four thoughts

guess who somehow got a lot of free time yesterday and made the bold decision to finish reading the last atwq book? me!

guees who feels like they jinxed qwerty’s fate from the previous book of being arrested, but alive, even though i bet daniel handler planned it from the start? still me!

guess who is rather upset netflix accidentally gave a clue/spoiler on the identity of hangfire?

also me.

okay, so first off, to get something out of the way. i love this book. i really do. it had me on suspense every chapter.

theodora figured out qwerty was in vfd (...when did she figure out? not long after sharon reveal herself as a fake vfd member? or during the period she and lemony weren’t speaking to each other?), and god she really was willing to take the blame on being qwerty’s killer. did she think maybe she once again screw up, but this time there was no going back because the screw up got someone killed? after all she seem to selfishly went to break qwerty out for a good evaluation. maybe she thought if things went different, he would still be alive. and given the schism happened, vfd while not divided yet, this is like a sign on how another librarian’s death in the long, long future, will be blame on an innocent party and things go to hell again in the pursuit of justice and truth.

also, ghede and gifford also knew of the coup as well? or at least knew the sbg was doing something and they’re like let them do this shit and we can watch it’s gonna benefit us in the long run’. also, holy shit olaf name drop take two with beatrice herself! i didn’t think while knowing each other young mean they actually hanged out with one another to think they’re possibility friends. this puts the opera night even worse. beatrice must have knew olaf’s parents. with my headcanon of olaf parents being caring parents to olaf and used their connections to get their son back earlier than others, this is just awful.

getting back on track from the mess that is vfd there’s a murder on a train (agatha christie ahoy!). i admit several weeks ago i made the decision to watch snowpiercer and train to busan so i couldn’t really take the murder on the orient express shout out clearly and kept on thinking of the wild willy wonka and the chocolate factory/snow piercer theory. and zombies in south korea. 

all the damn sbts kids just thought it great to share the one brain cell to be on the same train (pip and squeak just follow in their taxi; cleo and jake had to travel through time in the dilemma to catch up with them). ornette got her time to shine with her artistic/sculpting skills and there’s some light on the subject of the lost family (of course it’s a fire that took ornette’s mom life. fires seems to be a way to kill a lot of parents). i was right to call her gung-ho working with lemony, she just agreed to make fake bb statues for moxie and kellar and was like ‘oh shit the two are sharing a brain cell. hangfire could figure something is up what have i done’ and had to make something else to give to lemony. i uh..wonder if seth has a reason to draw her baseball cap all...fuzzy. just a weird question.

kellar’s sister lizzie shows up. i’m going to be honest. she has the bad luck of appearing last and under two disguises that went over my head (she sure fooled me!). i do have some thoughts that surround her and the haines family, but that needs me to re-read the last two books to make sure i’m not imagining something . will say lizzie is much younger and shorter than i thought given her first illustration. i hope maybe a re-read will make me get some new insight on her. also, hi sally murphy. i’m glad lizzie got out with maybe your help (i mean, why else would she want to high tail it out of there).

the identity of qwerty’s killer was something i should have seen coming due to how the mitchum parents are more subdue. i want to slap stew’s parents. they spend all their time bickering they only got their shit together to see how their ‘precious’ son is really a bully and killer and working with the villian under their damn noses. i almost feel sorry for them because shit stew more or less blackmail his parents into covering the crime but at the same time...this call could have been avoid if you pay attention to how your son isn’t the angel you think he is..and you two are still fighting with one another please get your priorities straight i beg you. i admit i almost want to slap stew but i don’t slap kids, and i think if i exist in the snicket world i would get murder first by him.

qwerty’s death and the fact he’s a vfd member just hurt me so bad and i’m still kind of grieving over him. for one, i felt like i should have seen qwerty being part of vfd coming. he’s a sub-librarian. while not a sub-sub-librarian, the fact is qwerty is such so damn helpful to lemony i should have seen he was just doing his best to help lemony because theodora wasn’t honestly...wasn’t doing a good job at a chaperone. but he couldn’t blow away his cover because he wasn’t supposed to interfere in the apprenticeship and honestly he was just happy to be a sub-librarian helping children find what they would love reading.

but qwerty isn’t the only death in this book. i got to copy-paste something from an old atwq post in feburary 8, something i made as a joke, because oh boy, this part is the one negative i have honestly.

he tried to pretend to be her father! i know his voice mimicry is basically akin to juni cortez’s mimicry, but this is just cruel had ellington been there.

about a week later, i made the decision to rewatch netflix asoue. now, the first time i watch season two [edit lmao i actually don’t remember if it was season two i think i hated season two so much i could have blur two and three together i got to rewatch the show again definitely. edit two: okay, i’m certain it was season two i’m 98% certain it was was a pause and read easter egg that’s why i couldn’t remember what season exactly damn easter eggs] i honestly was like ‘so they gave nero a last name. coolio. feint isn’t a surname i was expecting but this is the netflix show this probably isn’t canon to the books’.

on the rewatch, after the austere academy part two ended, i realized something is...off, with nero now. he’s mocking people. and his voice, while not mimicking them, is like...it’s like nero could have inherit mimicry from someone but it never went through. or maybe he did got it but it’s not at its full potential without the proper teaching of someone with the skill...like a father, perhaps?

so the kronk meme is playing in my mind, but it’s the edit of him saying ‘oh no, it’s all coming together’. and given patrick warburton also voice kronk, it felt more like lemony snicket decided to materialize right behind me, be an asshole, and thought it funny to do a commentary on my possible realization hangfire, in the netflix show at least, couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and bore a bastard son in an adulterous affair and ellington has a half brother in the world she doesn’t know about and i hope she never learns about.

(given barrymore feint is just a cameo of barry sonnenfeld, i guess the bullshit gene i talked about in another post regarding a theory who netflix!h is should be renamed the feint gene.)

so reading the third book, and especially this book, i kept a close eye on any mentions to ellington’s dad and hangfire’s behavior. i kept on saying in my mind ‘please don’t be who i think you are’. and bam. armstrong feint is hangfire. i feel like if netflix didn’t have the need to make an atwq reference in nero’s surname, and if i was smart enough to have the book clues smack me in the face (i feel there are clues somewhere, and hangfire dropped all pretenses and just being ‘himself’ in book two was one), i wouldn’t be so angry and upset by this reveal. i more or less got spoil and put the pieces together due to an adaptation, and i should have known better than to do a re-watch while reading atwq. i should have consider the possibility of easter eggs to atwq.

anyway, lemony snicket thought it great to kill hangfire by feeding him to a copy bombinating beast (the tadpoles!!). with ellington right freaking there. with most of his sbts friends there to witness. moxie can’t even look lemony in the eye anymore (no more best friends anymore). everything happened just like that and after finishing the book and taking a walk around the living room, i have to say hangfire is a good villain. he achieved his goal of getting the bombinating beast, even if it’s a copy. he’s a very competent villain who succeed in almost every book in some way or form. he played everyone like a puppet and was a threat that is more akin to tmwabbnh and twwhbnb’s level of villainy. kudos to you hangfire i’m impressed. 

hangfire totally got it coming too. however, i do feel...hurt in his death, if only for ellington’s sake. during the walk because i realize ellington reminded me of a character from a different fandom i’m in. there’s some differences that i won’t get into (it’s...complicated for the other fandom), but they’re cut from almost the same cloth: teenage girls with shitty fathers who are using them for their own selfish goals. thoughts for ellington and her future formed faster for me than for the other atwq kids as a result:

post-canon!ellington (a few days later when she finally gets her stuff figure out), has a simple list. 1: avoiding anyone with a vfd tattoo or give shady lemon vibes -ellington split asap after she and kit broke out and have 100% certainly no one is after them, but not before stealing some things from kit, one being notes of vfd volunteers (she thinks). 2: find a new place to live. 3: figure out a new name that isn’t an anagram, because the inhumane society once they heard the news, is probably going to try to get her if they get wind she is hangfire’s daughter and possible ‘successor’. ellington wants nothing to do with the bombinating beast. she never wants to see the statue or anything similar, or hear the words again.

adult!ellington (under a fake name of course), while accepting all that happened, hasn’t forgive lemony snicket. yes, her dad was a villain. yes, she finally understand her dad isn’t the kind naturalist and man, and used her for the biggest ‘what’ event of her life that is also a very selfish goal. many times in the past though, ellington wonders if she missed any signs of her dad’s descend to who he eventually became, or if he hid it very well to where he was wearing two masks all this time, one hiding his true nature. ellington even wonders at one point, dad was going convince her to willingly work with him without the fake kidnapping and had to change his plans to something crueler.

ellington will never know for sure. this is why ellington can’t forgive lemony and will say it to face if they ever meet again. what ellington hates the most out of her father’s death is that she can never tell dad all of her feelings about his wrong doings. she can ask all the questions burning at the back of her mind, or yell her frustrations how terrible a father he is for faking his kidnapping and getting her to do his dirty work, getting her to use her loyalty of family to do things she would never do under normal circumstances. she ask questions and yells at the only photo left of armstrong feint...

and in the end, she knows he’ll never answer, and it hurts to deal with the unknown. adult!ellington doesn’t do the yelling and questioning to the photo as much. partly because she did ‘settle’ on what might be an possible answer, but mostly because the photo is pretty faded to where it’s less ‘armstrong feint’ and more ‘hangfire’. once in awhile though, she slips up like old times.

adult!ellington with her new life (she travels a lot, pays in cash most of the time, and has no set resident; she still love coffee) tends to think of the past, especially when it came to what she had with lemony snicket. did lemony like her? was she just a question in need of solving? ellington admits to possibly liking him, but it was so long ago maybe she just thinks she liked him to have a ‘positive’ memory of the boy she haven’t seen in years that she kind of wants to see again, if only to yell at him for robbing her of something important. his name lands on her radar a lot, twice from the daily punctilio. the first one was learning of lemony snicket’s crimes, and it was an accident.

the second time, she learn of his death, though she read the daily punctilio on purpose in hopes of a name drop. adult!ellington ended up finding some children’s book, and made the mistake of going to the back of it and find a photo of lemony snicket. not really though. lemony is hiding his face (ellington hates it) and she buys it to know what it’s about. it spiral to where she bought the next two books because she wants to know if the baudelaires orphans are real (and because lemony doesn’t seem the same anymore from his writings). ellington settles on real when she pulls out kit snicket’s notes she stolen and cross references names, and even travels to the locations to them to make sure. after the third book publication, the series goes on ‘hiatus’ due to the daily punctilio and their announcement. ellington doubts he’s dead, but couldn’t help attend the funeral. ellington is certain lemony snicket is alive, because she convinced she saw him at his own funeral.

[virtualfindingsdocumented]

Some favorite things in asoue fics

BBL. There are the cute ones, the sad ones, and those that fit it in the canon events. I love all of them.

The cameos and easter eggs! The authors are so clever finding places for them.

Those authors who are very dedicated to a particular concept, character or ship, and fill the tag for it on their own.

Those authors who barely finished a fic and post a new one.

Those relationships between two characters who have no scenes together in canon but we all know how it would go if they did.

AU-ish fics that are in the same “no time, no place” setting as canon, and AU-ish fics that have VFD in some way there

Beatrice Snicket fics

Gustav/Jacquelyn fics. I know this is very 2017 but I miss them.

That Zombies in the Snow fic and those The Pony Party! fics

Sebald code

Epistolary fics

Adults!Lemony&Moxie

Any mention of the Stain’d gang or the city that shows that they are happy and prosperous

Fics that include the Editor (in whichever identity) and also fics about Lemony writing asoue

D, the volunteer

Those fics that are about how VFD ruined a particular character or relationship and that usually cover a lot of the canon timeline

Fix-its. Sometimes you just need some domestic fluff. Also I like those that focus on how the fix-it happened, people are so smart

Short fics that show characters in a VFD mission and the focus is really the characters but you get to see some of the mission and it’s absurd

Snicket siblings fics

Lemony is the taxi driver fics

Fics that go wild in answering some questions

Old fics written before something that disproved it was released, I just love to see how people thought

[eggogorgon]

I was rewatching the last episode of ASOUE and I just realized that Isadora is reading a book of poems, just like how she’s obsessed with poems in the books

[lemonysnidget]

I liked the attention to details from ATWQ and The Beatrice Letters that would only really interest the die-hard fans. I don't think it took anything away from understanding the main story but it made me happy. All the Easter Eggs in season 3 especially.

Good Easter Eggs don’t distract from the flow of the story. (Where’s that post about Sir Justin in Shrek 2? It’s a great discussion of this, though it’s focusing on pop culture references, a similar concept.) ASOUE did a fantastic job.

The only awkward one was Justice Strauss’s line in TPP part 1. I thought it was a little clunky. That’s the only one that stood out to me, though.

[clonerightsagenda]

Here are my collected thoughts, so far, about the ASOUE television series as a whole. I'll preface this by saying that I really enjoyed it and it was one of the best book to screen adaptations I've seen. It was fun, visually appealing, pretty darn faithful to the original material, full of Easter eggs for fans, and skillful at adopting supplemental material to flesh out the story. Some more organized thoughts below:

Unreality

Every time I started a new season of the show, I had to get re-accustomed to the rapid fire, almost stilted way the characters deliver their lines. However, I think that's intentional, along with the way that the outfits look more like costumes and the settings look more like sets than the real world. It gives the whole show the feel of a historical reenactment on TV, like we're watching a simulation of what Lemony could uncover with his research. Once I got used to it, I liked it, along with the overall surreal atmosphere.

Olaf

At first I found it odd that both the movie and TV series make Olaf far more of a humorous character than he is in the books, but book!Olaf is legitimately scary. Watching a sinister grown man terrorize three children for 25 episodes might become too distressing to function well as entertainment. Allowing us to laugh at him occasionally breaks the tension, even if it does fundamentally change his characterization.

The desperate for approval angle in the third season was also new (as far as I can remember, I haven't read the books for a year or so) but I can see where you could extrapolate it from his general theatrical behavior. As I mentioned in my commentary about previous seasons, the TV show is more of an ensemble cast rather than focusing solely on the Bauedelaires' story, so it makes sense to give Olaf some sort of arc as well if we're going to keep cutting back to him. It further undercuts his menace, but they'd already done that. It allows the show to push harder on the parallel between him and the Baudelaires as he complains that every parental figure in his life died or let him down. We may or may not pity him, but we can begin to understand and respect the children even more for not turning out like him. That also helps set up the strange, unfamiliar situation where all his confidence and power is stripped away in The End, since the tv version slimmed that down.

VFD

This is probably the change I found most frustrating, but to be fair, it wasn't a change at all from the books. ASOUE!Lemony is pretty nostalgic about VFD. Most of the more straightforward clues that neither the firefighters or firelighters were really great are present in the unauthorized autobiography. It might have been tricky to work the whole 'We stole children and brainwashed them into donating their fortunes to finance our organization for years until half of us decided burning down their houses and stealing the money right then was way more satisfying' without distracting from the Baudelaires' story. I get that. I'm not entirely sure how I would've done it. (I will probably let you know once I think of an idea.) Anyway, we still get the chef's salad speech and hints about moral grayness (the fire fighters created the mycelium, Olaf's accusations, grooming children to be secret agents and dragging kids into dangerous missions with no preparation, etc.) but framing the opera incident as an accident stole the series' best example that allegedly noble people can do wicked things just as wicked people can do noble things. It dropped a lot of the inner conflict from the last book as the children tried to grapple with their parents’ legacy. Their parents’ past research ends up saving their lives, but their past actions were part of what triggered this long series of unfortunate events. That ends up robbing the series of a lot of its complexity, especially since it spins the schism as a much simpler issue.

The Ending

I wasn't sure how they would pull off giving the show a more uplifting ending after having the narrator announce multiple times that it was going to be unhappy, but honestly I think having Lemony not know how things turned out past TPP until the last minute was a brilliant way to handle that. It gave us some much needed closure not only for the Baudelaires (we don't know much, but we know they're alright) but for minor characters (ymmv but I enjoyed the more sympathetic henchpeople and am glad they're ok) and for our long-suffering narrator himself. I loved the meta gag of seeing Lemony writing the first book and then quoting it with Beatrice; I'm always a sucker for that kind of thing.  As a kid, it was valuable for me to read a series that suggested adults aren't always right, things aren't always simple, and happy endings don't always happen, but right now, I want to think that they can. (Plus, some stuff in the Beatrice Letters and a few throwaway lines in ASOUE imply the Baudealaires survived anyway, so it's not a total divergence from canon.)

The Randomness and Unfairness of the World

Snicket warns readers the ending will not be happy or satisfying, and the books certainly fulfill that promise. You don't really know what happens, and there's a possibility some of the main characters drown or were eaten by a sea monster. The show obviously does not do this. I already mentioned that I preferred this based on our rather distressing modern times, which could also be described as an incomplete history of injustice, but what about theme? A big theme in the books is uncertainty and randomness. The Baudelaires are dropped in the middle of something they don't understand and are shunted from place to place, victims of adults' complicated machinations or genuine incompetence. There's a lot they don't know and will never find out, and the reader is left in their shoes - stuck only knowing what the children learned or Lemony was able to uncover. We're shown over and over again that the world is not fair. It does not always makes sense. It is not interested in tying up loose ends for you. I think that's a valuable message for kids to see, dark as it is. It's realistic, and we're supposed to share the Baudelaires' distress and confusion.

The show does not stick with this theme. Consistently, it reveals things that were only hinted at in the books. Viewers get to stay a step ahead of the Baudelaires. As I mentioned in commentary on previous seasons, I think that ends up working because the TV show spends a lot of time expanding the universe, although it does rob the impact of scenes like the children realizing the underground passage from 667 Dark Avenue goes to their house. We're no longer as lost in the world as they are.

I think both have their place, honestly. The books allow us to relate very closely to the protagonists, while the show creates a more satisfying holistic experience. Since many of the viewers have read the books, it's almost like we're gifted with the benefit of hindsight.

Does giving us answers ruin the theme of the book entirely? YMMV, I think. It does mean we lose something, I think. However, Handler didn't leave all the gaps in his narrative to torture us. He doesn't hand us the answers, but he provides plenty of clues in the series and its supplementary material. By piecing together that apocrypha, you may not be able to answer every question, but you can take a good stab at it. So I don't think Handler wants you to be a frustrated reader as much as a critical and active one. That's hard to do in a television show, so they had to lay more out there. They're different: different formats, different themes, different reader/viewer experiences. Imo, both are effective at what they try to do.