#atwq spoilers

[mmmthornton]

The three Baudelaire orphans after twelve books of being lied to, cheated, and harmed: Thank goodness we still have each other and our personal values / abilities to rely on through these awful experiences

One 13 year old Lemony Snicket after four books of frustrating dead ends and insufferable adults hurting his friends: Thats It, I'm Going to Take a Human Life

[fifireadingcorner]

I don’t really know how to describe rereading “why is this night different from all other nights”. The foreshadowing of what Lemony is going to do, the tragedy of Qwerty’s death hanging over the atmosphere of the story while knowing that his murderer won’t ever be served justice, the little glimpses of Lemony’s training in VFD, knowing this is the last time Lemony would be on good terms with well, anyone in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, the inevitable reveal of Hangfire, Ellington Feint being denied of what she worked and gave everything for and and- 

[flanneryculp]

i think hangfire would have probably killed ellington, had she given him the statue.

they discussed this in book 4, but hangfire is very pragmatic. he takes what he needs from people, then discards them. the only thing shes really useful for in his eyes is getting the statue/sidetracking the associates (which would be pointless after hangfire got the statue)

in book two, when we see him for the first time, hes much like ellington describes him -- sitting by the fire, drinking whisky and listening to jazz music. he even mistakenly refers to lemony with ellington's name. but by book four, thats all gone. he destroys the music box, and refers to ellington as "little girl" and "that", never by her name. hes distanced himself from who he used to be, and hes distanced himself from ellington.

and the last line hangfire ever says is "give me the statue and you'll be side by side with your father before you know it." after the reveal, ellington calls out for her father but he doesnt acknowledge it, because thats not who he is anymore. "armstrong feint" was dead before lemony killed him, and hangfire is giving ellington the chance to join him.

[buglover77]

Do you ever think about how Lemony and Bea II are essentially the sole survivors of the entirety of the series. Do you ever think about how Lemony is ultimately the one who haunts the narrative, not Beatrice. Beatrice was dead from the beginning…but so was everyone else. It’s Lemony who is stuck on the other side. It’s Lemony who is a ghost in this world…and other than Bea…completely alone.

[beatricebidelaire]

There’s a strange vertigo when you realize you’re wrong about something. You float in space for a moment, the landscape seesawing or vanishing into the distance. It’s the same feeling when you’re completely immersed in a good book and then, at the conclusion of a chapter or the intrusion of a noise, blink your way back to real life. You were wrong about the world, wrong about where you were. You weren’t in the world of the book. You were here. It’s a powerful feeling and I think an important one, being wrong. People talk about epiphanies, often forgetting that a moment where something clicks into place—where you think you’ve figured something out—is also a moment where you realized you were wrong about something before. Very wrong, perhaps, or even blissfully wrong. This all has a negative connotation to it—due in part, I think, to the tolling sound the word makes, wrong wrong wrong—but there’s a certain kind of pleasure that comes with this vertigo. The discord that arises from leaning, incorrectly, on some idea that collapses under you carries with it a small thrill, if not of progress, then at least of travel. A quartet of books I wrote for children, titled collectively All the Wrong Questions, plays with the idea that the journey of a noir detective is akin to the journey of childhood, because of this regular tolling of being wrong. Young Lemony Snicket attempts to solve a twisty mystery that grows more and more enormous and out of his grasp. Everything he thinks he can rely on—friends, responsible adults, the law, the library—are things about which he turns out to be wrong. “I had been wrong over and over and over again,” he says, at the conclusion of the first volume, “wrong every time about every clue to the dark and inky mystery hanging over me and everybody else. It rang like a bell in my head—wrong, wrong, wrong. I was wrong, I thought, but maybe if I stayed in this town long enough, I could make everything right.” To me, it is the essence of mystery, being wrong—the essence of storytelling, even, as all stories, as they reveal details in the order most enticing to the reader, are mysteries. And life’s a mystery, of course, which is why all of us, like Lemony Snicket, are so wrong all the time.

And Then? And Then? What Else?

[moldygreenblue]

Oddly Specific Worst Dad Poll Battle!

Masayoshi Shido: A corrupt politician who left his lover and his unborn child to avoid ruining his reputation. Roughly fifteen years later, Shido meets a teenager name Goro, who Shido recognizes as his kid. Goro claims to have supernatural powers, which Shido believes, for he has knowledge of some government research that supports the claims. So, Shido allows Goro to work for him (which involves killing at times), knowing Goro's powers can help Shido achieve his goal of being Prime Minister of Japan, and easily manipulate Goro via manipulation through praises. Once Shido reaches that goal, Shido will kill Goro, for Shido knows the only reason Goro approached him is to get revenge/justice for himself and his mother.

Armstrong Feint/Hangfire: A naturalist who helps animals in need and keeps wildflowers in his home, Armstrong raised his daughter Ellington by himself (mom isn't in picture). One day, he leaves and disappears, to enact a plan that's been in the making for some time now. Armstrong makes himself disappear in order for Hangfire, his persona, to come onto the scene. And Hangfire manipulates Ellington to help him in his plan. Hangfire tells Ellington to see her their father again, she must help him get a statue important to his goal. And Ellington does that, doing anything and everything to save her father, all without knowing he's safe from harm. And Hangfire does this without any thought of Ellington's feelings.

[eyesteeth]

Time for another ATWQ theory. This theory contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the entirety of the fourth volume, so tread with caution. Content warnings for semi-graphic discussions of violence. Long post. I cannot stress how long this post is.

I think Ellington killed Qwerty.

Qwerty’s death is perplexing. His neck wound has thrown me off for years. It’s deep and it’s prominent enough to produce a “terrible stain“. And yet, we’re told the weapon that did him in was a poison dart, shot by Stew Mitchum. I don’t believe this. I believe Qwerty was as good as dead before Stew even had the chance to shoot.

The order of events

Let's break the scene down.

More murmuring, more rattling. “… a good evaluation,” Theodora finished, in the same voice she’d used to make me go to bed early. “You haven’t earned a good evaluation,” Qwerty said sharply. “I’ll tell you what I’ve earned,” Theodora said, and then she said something else I couldn’t hear, in the quiet tone. Qwerty heard it, though. The librarian now sounded less steady and precise and more frightened and anxious, or perhaps I was hearing my own fright and anxiety. “What are you doing?” he cried, and then there was a loud, shattering noise that sounded so close I thought the bottle had broken against my ear. Qwerty screamed, a wild, loud sound he never would have allowed in his library, and then I don’t know exactly what happened next because I dropped the bottle. “What is it?” Moxie asked me. “What’s going on?” “Let’s find out,” I said, moving to the door. “I can’t,” Moxie said. “I need to lie low, remember?” I remembered and said so, then hurried out of the compartment and found myself in a narrow corridor, clattering with the noise of the train and full of nobody but me. (ATWQ4, Chapter 4)

So, in order:

Qwerty exclaims "What are you doing?"

The window breaks

Qwerty screams

Lemony drops the bottle

Lemony enters the room several seconds later

This is very interesting to me, especially because Qwerty asks his question before the window breaks. I'd imagine that the window would break first, then he'd ask the question, and then he'd scream.

Qwerty's exclamation

“What are you doing” is an odd thing to say when a child comes in through your window. To me, it would make far more sense to say something like “What is he doing here” or simply “What the hell”. “What are you doing” is a phrase that seems directed at someone in the room, someone who Qwerty could see and could hear him. Taking context into account, this sounds directed at Theodora - she tells him something in a low voice, he reacts with fear, he is found dead. But I believe this to be a red herring. Because, as we find out later, there was someone else in the room - Ellington.

That's not how poison darts work

“I saw S. Theodora Markson shoot Dashiell Qwerty with a poison dart.” “You did no such thing,” I said. (ATWQ Chapter 6)

“Hangfire lurks in the background,” I reminded her, “imitating people’s voices and making mysterious phone calls. He doesn’t do anything himself.” Ellington poured the coffee. “Well, this time he did,” she said. “He shot Qwerty with a poison dart and threw the weapon out the window. Then he slipped into a nearby compartment and frightened the librarians into serving as false witnesses.” (ATWQ Chapter 8)

“I’m sure it was heartbreaking,” I said, “for the law to do something so lawless. But they were protecting someone important to them—their darling little boy. It was Stew Mitchum who clung to the railings of The Thistle of the Valley, shot Dashiell Qwerty with a poison dart, and then escaped into a compartment full of librarians scared into hiding the truth.” (ATWQ Chapter 11)

Over and over, when it comes to the murder, everyone agrees that it was a poison dart.

We all love our poison darts. A major reveal in TPP, and now they’ve come back again, like history rhyming. But a poison dart should not leave a neck wound like that. In the Netflix adaptation of TPP, there’s a small prick, and then Olaf’s father falls over. There is no blood involved.

Poison darts also have a very small tip. Even if Stew had missed his shot and the dart had run across Qwerty’s throat instead of hitting the side, I don’t think the wound would have been deep enough to kill. It would have bled if the angle was right, but what Qwerty’s death is described as sounds much more like a throat slash than a dart shot. 

Imagine a throwing dart. Imagine throwing that dart to a dartboard. Now imagine how precisely someone would have to stand between you and the dartboard in order to have it run the length of their throat but not get stuck in the side. Now imagine trying to do that in a moving train car, with you on the outside of the train. Not only is it a highly improbable (if not outwardly impossible) shot, even a poison dart shot from a dart gun would not be able to go that deep.

Your honor, that was not the murder weapon.

Even if it was I don't think Stew couldve made that shot anyway

I read for quite some time before I was distracted by a noise that sounded like a rock being thrown against the wall, just above my head. I looked up in time to see a small object fall to the table. It was a rock, which had been thrown against the wall, just above my head. It would be nice to think of something clever to say when something like that happens, but I always ended up saying the same thing. “Hey,” I said. “Hey,” repeated a mocking voice, and a boy about my age stuck his head out from behind a shelf. He looked like the child of a man and a log, with a big, thick neck and hair that looked like a bowl turned upside down. He had a slingshot tucked into his pocket and a nasty look tucked into his eyes. “You almost hit me,” I said. “I’m trying to get better,” he said, stepping closer. He wanted to tower over me, but he wasn’t tall enough. “I can’t be expected to hit my target every time.” (ATWQ1, Chapter 4)

While Stew may be morally capable of shooting a man (we see him go from firing rocks at birds to physically beating Lemony in the span of a few months), he may not be physically capable. Standing still, Stew Mitchum failed to shoot Lemony with a slingshot. And given that Stew was supposedly climbing on the outside of a moving train before swinging in through a window and taking the shot, I call bullshit. This would require an insane amount of coordination and skill, which Stew does not have.

Putting it all together

So, if it wasn't Stew, then it was either Ellington or S. I already believe S didn't do it. She wanted something from Qwerty, and killing him was only going to make her evaluation worse. She wasn't above threatening him, but I believe she was above killing him.

“Ellington Feint and Dashiell Qwerty shared Cell One,” Moxie said, typing it as she realized it, and then she stopped and looked at me. “She must have killed him.” I thought of Ellington dangling out the window of the train, and shook my head. “I know how you feel about Feint,” Cleo said to me. “We all do, Snicket. But if Theodora is not the murderer, then Ellington Feint must be. There was no one else in the compartment.” (ATWQ4 Chapter 11)

So it comes back to this. If it wasn't Stew from outdoors, and it wasn't Theodora from inside, it has to have been Ellington. And I believe I have the motive.

I sat up in bed and quickly turned the light on. I knelt beside the old-fashioned phonograph and looked carefully at it. It could be anybody’s, I told myself. It looks like Ellington Feint’s, but that doesn’t mean it is. I picked it up and turned it over and then saw a word, just one word stamped into the machine, right where the arm with the needle lay waiting to make the music play. It was the wrong word. It made me take three steps back. (ATWQ3, Chapter 5)

“I believe Hangfire would kill Ellington Feint if he could,” I said with a shiver, “and Ellington knows it.” (ATWQ4, Chapter 11)

Ellington likely knows Hangfire is her father, she just doesn't want to admit it to herself. She uses the phonograph far more than Lemony does, and if he knows, so does she. And if she also knows that he could kill her without much hesitation, then that gives her reason to get into his good graces.

And then there’s the one, I thought, who has stolen more sleep from you than all the rest. Ellington Feint, like me, was somewhat new in town, having come to rescue her father from Hangfire’s clutches. She’d told me that she would do “anything and everything” to rescue him, and “anything and everything” turned out to be a phrase which meant “a number of terrible crimes.” (ATWQ4, Chapter 1)

Who's to say she didn't work her way up to murder?

A hypothetical scene

So, Ellington and Qwerty are in the same cell. Kit is in the other cell. S is talking to Qwerty. The Mitchums are present. Here's what I think could have happened.

While Qwerty and S are talking, Ellington comes at him. He yells "What are you doing?", a statement directed at the person sitting next to him, and not someone coming through the window. Stew comes in, ready to attack, but this serves more as distraction than anything. Ellington, with a weapon actually meant to cut a throat, gets at Qwerty and he screams. Outside, Lemony drops the bottle, avoiding the sound of Qwerty's death gurgles.

Then, Ellington's deal with the Mitchums becomes silence about Stew's involvement as opposed to Stew murdering someone. She leaves, and likely discards the weapon out the window like everyone assumed Stew did with the darts. Stew does his threatening and Ellington slinks off, leaving Theodora, the Mitchums, and Kit in the room. Theodora is too stunned to speak, possibly rethinking her choices up to this point, the Mitchums are kept silent by their son, and Kit does not have anything to say.

Events on the train carry out as they do, the second conspiracy unfolds, Hangfire is revealed and then subsequently killed, and then eventually Kit and Ellington wind up in the same cell, shaking hands, two orphans who have been taught to kill.

How it works thematically

ASOUE and ATWQ both convey unreliable narration in different ways. ASOUE is a man reconstructing events he was not present for, and ATWQ is a man looking back on one of the most traumatic events of his childhood. He’s bound to get things wrong in both, and I believe that he is wrong about this scene because he’s falling into the biases he had when he was young.

It would be easy for him to assume that Stew killed Qwerty. It's easy for the audience to assume it, too. We know Stew's history of violence and his hatred towards Qwerty. It makes sense if you don't look too deep into it. The whole event was incredibly stressful, and Lemony was still so very young. Even if he had come to a different conclusion, he may not have wanted to consider it. It’s possible that these inconsistencies are the result of him wanting to tell the facts of what happened while also not wanting to acknowledge that Ellington killed Qwerty.

Or maybe I’m just overthinking things :]

[crows-junk-pile]

I'm sorry but I will never get over the 'Get scared later' thing from ATWQ and how could you aspect me to

Also this official thing that is adding my brainrot

"Overheard Saying: 'Get scared later.'

Recently Seen: Getting scared"

Spoilers below

Also the one scene in Why is this Night Diffrent form all Other Nights, where after Lemony tells the Association about Qwerty's murder and after telling Moxie "Theres nothing wrong with mourning the death of a librarian" and she asks him why is isn't crying and his responce is "I planned on doing it later" and then they all cry. THAT SCENE HURTS ME SO MUCH OW

[cake-sniffers]

Well, I finally started ATWQ

(Spoilers ahead)

TL;DR I didn’t like it :(

I finished Book 1 and the entire time I was reading it, I really felt like the story was dragging and could’ve easily been cut in half, but then I read the last chapter, and… the book really could’ve just been the last chapter. It was 99% exposition, 95% of which was summarizing what I just read.

There were *some* interesting scenes, but even those usually ended up dragging with something like an unnecessary conversation between the Mitchums that dissolved any excitement/tension I had started to feel. The most interesting part was the last couple of pages (Hector’s warnings/advice & the Kit reveal) and even that was barely doing it for me.

Y’all know I would kill and die for Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket but UGH. The book felt like if I asked an AI to write an ASOUE book.

And it’s not just the fact that this is a kids book. ASOUE were kids books and there was substance, depth, tension, stuff to keep me interested even when I reread them as an adult. Fourth grade me would never have touched The Bad Beginning if I had started with the prequel series (because if it had been out in 2004, I would’ve wanted to start with the prequel- like I did with chronicles of narnia lol)

Tell me it gets better. Tell me the rest of the prequel series is good 😭

I will say, though, Hector’s line about the town being sketchy because there isn’t a decent Mexican restaurant is 500% me coded 😂

[croquel]

For the art request, could you draw Moxie and Snicket?

local giant brained 13 year old decides jumping onto the side of a moving train is a good idea

[probablyok1]

Me through books 1-3 of ATWQ: Lol I think I might kin Lemony

Me after finishing book 4:

[flanneryculp]

Kitlington is really the ship of all time. these two girls, both working completely independently, have to learn to work together to escape. both of them are experiencing a new beginning through the another, right after they believed they lost all hope (Kit with being sentenced to prison, Ellington with her father's death). They have so much in common yet offer such a unique perspective to one another and imo their personalities, with ellington's quiet back and forth exchanges and kit's tendency to to on tangents would go together v well. They'd bring out the best and the worst in each other. would there be disagreements? arguments? absolutely. but the fact that kit shows up again is proof that after everything, they made it.

[margueritegracq]

Stained by the sea, was Snicket, morally

[beatricebidelaire]

there’s a wonderful video essay by thomas flight about how wes anderson, particularly in the grand budapest hotel, cleverly steals from the great filmmakers before him in homage. in fact, the theft is not unlike lemony snicket’s atwq — which would make sense as to why the two are so often compared, but i suppose that is an entirely separate essay, ha! spoilers for hitchcock’s torn curtain : ( https:// ) youtu.be/3GK_3KgZios?si=MTiY-Ma8HAFI8rNt

ohhh!!! 👀👀 thank you lainey i will watch it when i get home today! very interested.

(this is actually the first wes anderson film i watched, i’ve heard about it for a long time but never got around to it and then i finally watched it this week.)

[moldygreenblue]

Regarding the WIP names you posted, "Can I Have ONE Normal Idea" sounds very intriguing to me ;)

@gellavonhamster, you picked the most wild of all wips from the list:

“Nice work, lad.” The way ‘lad’ was drawn out made Duke uncomfortable. There’s a radio crackle, and then a long sigh of relief.

“But it’s time to end this little masquerade,” continued the voice. No longer it sounds like the friendly, concern, baritone man from before. It sounds like nothing, as well a bit tired. It’s like the man on the radio had forgotten how his real voice sounded like. “And masquerade is a word which Lemony Snicket —the real Lemony Snicket that is— would probably define as, ‘A lie someone can fall for with either little or no amount of force.’”

“I say using a code phrase is contradictory to that.”

The man ‘tsks’ several times. “Was that phrase ever spoken when you volunteer your assistance for justice regarding the death of a sweet young child?”

Duke didn’t answer. All he does was grip the radio tighter in his hands. The entire room began to shake violently.

“A human being, even one that is genetically modified in a laboratory, is like any other animal,” continued the man. “If it wants something enough, it will do anything at all. You, young man, wanted to do good in this watery-hellhole. You volunteered yourself in a task of self-righteous justice. All I did was gave you a push in the right direction.”

Another violent shake. Duke stood firm where he stands.

“Considering everything, I owe you a little honesty. The name is Hangfire.”

so. context: this wip is from an asoue/atwq and bioshock fusion-crossover fic i was working on awhile back. in it, most of the snicket-verse characters take the place of bioshock characters; only two bioshock characters are in the au.

bioshock is a first person shooter with horror/sci-fi survival elements video game series. in the first two installments, it's about an underwater city known as rapture that gets torn due to a civil war that started on new years. by the time of the games, rapture is well on its way to being ruined and dead for good.

in the first game, you play as jack, a young man whose plane crash into the ocean and ends up entering rapture, where he must survive the horrors with the help of the man name atlas, the leader of one side of the civil war mention before, over the radio. atlas has a wife and child and he asks jack to help save them, but they get kill, and long story short atlas gets jack to go kill one andrew ryan, the ruler of rapture, and the leader of the other side.

at a very pivotal moment, which this fragment wip is inspired by, jack learns a few things. the most important things related to the snippet:

a. atlas isn't real. atlas is instead the disguise of frank fontaine, a rival to andrew ryan who faked his death in order to take control of rapture.

b. jack is a hidden agent for frank fontaine, with the phrase 'would you kindly' getting jack to do as told without question.

the fusion-crossover snippet here has:

armstrong feint/hangfire in the role of frank fontaine/the fake lemony snicket. the real lemony snicket is alive and around in rapture in his own story that is loosely inspired by the second game.

duke, an original character, is in the role of jack. duke is a bit more talkative (a hell lot more actually; jack is your typical silent protag), and well, let's say duke has beef with hangfire after this.

i'm sorry for the delay respond; i had trouble trying to figure out WHICH part of the wip to select because only fragments of the fic is actually written; most of it is just summaries of events and lore/world building to blend the snicket-verse elements with the world of bioshock. so i put it off and did other stuff (re: the widdershins and olivia friendship post on my side blog). picked this because while major spoilers, it's the best of the snippets i do have written.

[eyesteeth]

PLS DO MORE POSTS ON ATWQ

the fandom is so dead but i live for it

howdy there, anon!! i always forget about what i have and haven't talked about on here vis a vis my atwq thoughts.

i guess i'll talk about why i prefer atwq to asoue. atwq is loaded with recontextualization, and that's absolutely due to the foundations that asoue lays down, but there's so much Rich Soup there it makes me a lil feral. spoilers and rambles below

asoue is a slow creep of "you can't trust appearances". we only begin to consider that vfd might not be as good as we think in The Grim Grotto, when we learn about fernald. then, The Penultimate Peril shows us a pair of "good" and "evil" twins that not even their oldest allies can tell apart. by the time The End rolls around, we are primed to ask a question: if the creator of such a "good" organization is so horrible, is the man we've seen as the pinnacle of evil this whole time truly so bad? what if he was, in fact, the product of such horrible circumstances? what happened to him that made him like this?

and then The Unauthorized Autobiography is the next step. we see how young some of the children doing this are. kidnappings and indoctrinations. it picks away at the mask. vfd was a cult the whole time. olaf was a byproduct of his raising - but so was everyone else. those people with their fears and neuroses, each hiding in their own little corners of the world, or those dedicated to keeping a war going because they had nothing else to live for, they were all children who got too mature too fast, running around playing cops and robbers.

but there's a distance. it's clinical, matter-of-fact. this is just how things are.

and then atwq, the crowning jewel, puts you in that mindset, tinted by three decades of hindsight. lemony's narration is filled with his self-loathing. he knows he did something horrible, but he can't go back and change it. he should've listened here, asked a different question there, he was wrong about all of it.

and, most vitally, he's twelve. he's nowhere close to being a legal adult. he's not even had his bar mitzvah yet. he is a child in every sense of the word. and despite this he's already tattooed, already disillusioned, telling himself not to panic when truly horrific things are happening. his future self doesn't even give him any grace. god forbid a twelve year old take time to mourn.

and yet, somehow, he's seen as a rebel. even when he goes as far as to kill a man for the mission, his first murder at twelve, he's being berated for fucking things up earlier in the plan. the murder isn't even a problem. it's an inconvenience at most.

and so, one might wonder, what does that say about the straight-laced ones?

s adores bertrand, her former apprentice, and we know s was ignorant and ruthless, caring primarily about her good evaluation. so was bertrand, the noble baudelaire father, as noble as we thought? or was he just an obedient little soldier boy who followed orders? how old was he when he committed his first murder? how old were the other snickets? the denouements? esme? olaf? beatrice?

it just opens the door wide for questioning. what happens when a bunch of children are told that their inherent worth is based around their ability to follow orders and their academic standing, and then given a match? what happens when you grow up knowing that someday, someone you love will be on the other end of a blade, or gun, or dart, and you'll be expected to take the shot? what happens when someone who was told "get scared later" at nine turns fourty-four? where does the fear go? when are they allowed to be scared?

it's a lot. and it is very, very fun to play with.