#stew mitchum

[volunteerfelinedetectives]

Why does the song Family Line by Conan Gray fit every single ATWQ kid? Never mind, I know. It’s the overarching narrative theme of young people being left behind to fix their parents’ mistakes.

[lionmythflower]

Um so yall know that audio that's like "yea, u ever just watch something and think, 'omg everyone in this is gay' that's how I felt watching this movie" that was me reading all the wrong questions.

Lemony is definitely pansexual

Same w Ellingtondef a pansexual

And moxie gives such nonbianary vibes its not even funny

kellar is gay 100%

The Mitchums were the exception

Jake is definitely bisexual

And cleo feels omniromantic n asexual

Pip and squeak..... gay-

Sharon Haines n Theodora Markson , lesbians

[dragoneyes618]

Where and how did the Inhumane Society keep Lizzie captive?

The organization had four willing members and three unwilling members. The willing ones were Hangfire, Stew Mitchum, Nurse Dander, and Dr. Flammarion (it was never explained why the latter two allied with him). The unwilling ones were Sharon Haines, Sally Murphy, and Ellington Feint (and technically Kellar too, for a while).

But after WDYSHL, there were only two willing members - Hangfire and Stew. Nurse Dander, and Dr. Flammarion got arrested and sent to the city to stand trial (or so we're told. I don't suppose it was confirmed if they actually got there?). That leaves only Hangfire and STew, the latter of whom is a boy who can't be much older than thirteen, to imprison Lizzie.

Sharon and Sally obviously weren't helping to keep Lizzie captive, because the only reason they were helping Hangfire in the first place was because he was blackmailing them with Lizzie's safety.

And Hangfire and Stew were busy with Hangfire's plans throughout the series. They both make multiple appearances in SYBIS; clearly, they were not actively guarding Lizzie or whatever.

In WITNDFAON, Sally somehow rescues Lizzie, disguises her, and sneaks her onto the train. She believes that she'll never be free of Hangfire, that he'll likely kill her like he tried to, but she's determined to at least get Lizzie out safely. (Lizzie's acting skills were a lot better than hers, but I think that can be explained away to extreme nervousness and stress.)

But if Sharon knew where Lizzie was, why didn't she try to rescue her before, instead of being blackmailed by Hangfire?

She may only have found out recently, being somewhat affiliated with the Inhumane Society. Okay then. So she managed to rescue her - Hangfire was unaware that his hostage was gone.

But who was supposed to be holding her hostage? Every member of the Inhumane Society was on the train. Lizzie was not supposed to be on it.

Lizzie wasn't in Wade Academy, obviously, since Sharon and Kellar were there. She couldn't have been in the Colophon Clinic, at least not after it was all but destroyed.

Stain'd-By-The-Sea has any number of abandoned buildings, Lizzie could have been in one of those. But who was watching her to make sure she didn't escape? After all, Nurse Dander was with Ellington disguised as Cleo to make sure she didn't escape.

Did Hangfire just keep her drugged with laudanum and locked in a room somewhere without bothering to guard her? Under the influence of laudanum, she wouldn't be able to escape by herself; and, indeed, she didn't, until Sally found her.

[library-child]

The extent of Stew's hate is quite chilling. We need to remember that the Mitchums' constant fighting does come across a comic relief, but to their child, it's not funny. It's pure HELL. Their bickering invariably grows more venomous and aggressive. If Lemony wouldn't keep interrupting them, they'd probably go on for a very long time. They seem to loathe each other, their blind adoration for Stew being the only thing they agree on.

Growing up with your parents always at each other's throats scars you for life. Your home is not a safe place. All you can do is hide and wait for your world to collapse.

[panic-at-the-general-vicinity]

Me @ each and every one of the children in ASOUE/ATWQ: These poor kids. Sure they’ve messed up, but they’re children! With no stable parental/guardian figures! We can’t hold these actions against their character because they’re CHILDREN!

Me @ Stuart “Stew” Mitchum and everything he stands for: Horrible. Disgusting. Terrible man. Perish in a fire.

[fifireadingcorner]

Eventually the creatures would get old enough to feed on the children themselves??

[somewhat-bored]

Hangfire:  Do not elaborate on anything.  The more things people know, the more dangerous they are to you.  The best strategy is to know all the rules of the game whilst your opponent is still grasping at the concept.

Stew:  Hungry!

Hangfire:  ...What.

Stew:  You said not to elaborate.

Hangfire:  I said not to elaborate, not to have the grammar of a two year old.

Stew:  Same thing.

Hangfire:  Why the fuck did I make you my sidekick.

[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 :]

[asouefanworkevent]

woevember is coming!

what is it?

woevember is an asoue fanwork event week, that will take place from november 13th through november 19th, 2022. each day of that week is dedicated to a different group of characters from a series of unfortunate events and all the wrong questions.

what do i do?

the character groups will be revealed now, so everyone has time to make something. between now and the week of november 13th, you’ll create fanworks about the characters, and then post it on the corresponding day during november 13th - 19th!

don’t forget to tag this tumblr (asouefanworkevent) in the post so i can find it and reblog it, and tag the post with #woevember !

what do you mean by fanwork?

everything! fanfic and fanart are of course allowed, but also edits, gifs, analysis posts, even just headcanons!! super short fics!! your sketchiest drawings!! i want people to be encouraged to and be able to create even something small that didn’t exist before for the snicketverse, and share it with other people!

are there any rules?

to keep the event open and comfortable for everyone, no explicit content. also, this should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t, sibling romance and age gaps are not allowed and will not be tolerated.

do i have to make something for every day?

only if you want to! feel free to just make something for one day if you want :) the point of having a different character group for each day is so everyone’s favorite character (or a character you like or find interesting) will hopefully come up at some point, so everyone’s covered, and you can at least make something for one of the days.

what are the prompts?

i tried to get a good mix of characters we already love a lot, and characters who you might not have thought about before!

november 13th – sugar bowl gen siblings

the best siblings. the worst siblings. they’re going through a lot, at all times. "the schism has turned many brothers into enemies."

character options include: snickets, denouements, anwhistles, calibans, sebalds

november 14th – firestarters

what makes a “firestarter”? (besides needing to find seven broad categories in which to fit many, many characters.)

character options include: olaf, esme, the bald man, fernald, the henchperson, the white-faced women, the man with a beard but no hair, the woman with hair but no beard (also related characters, like ernest, georgina, olivia)

november 15th – the city

there is so much in The City! and so much with a deep vfd history, that every aspect of the city must’ve crossed paths with vfd or the baudelaire’s story at some point, in some way.

character options include: jerome, eleanora, geraldine, esme squalor’s fanclub, honestly anyone you would like to stick in a specifically City location

location options include: the punctilio, the banking district, the herpetological society, the hemlock tearoom and stationery shop, the taxi, the opera, the fountain of victorious finance, 667 dark avenue, veblen hall, orion observatory

november 16th – unseen characters

there’s plenty of characters we hear about in the series, but never actually really see. give us your takes on them!

character options include: lemony's editor, the snicket parents, olaf's parents, haruki, the baudelaire's uncle elwyn, madame dilustro, gina sue, whoever beatrice and bertrand invited to their dinner parties besides mr. poe, moxie's mother, ellington's mother, violet's friend ben, lemony's friend playing the sonata on the pipe organ in the cathedral of the alleged virgin

november 17th – stain’d-by-the-sea

what becomes of stain’d-by-the-sea and all the people still living there, after lemony leaves? what happens to wade academy? what happens to ellington?

character options include: moxie, pip, squeak, jake, cleo, kellar, ornette, lizzie, ellington, prosper lost, stew, the mitchums, the talkie brothers, any character from 13SI (theodora can also be included here)

november 18th – the unfortunate generation

what are they up to, post-canon? or what were they up to, pre-canon?

character options include: violet, klaus, sunny, duncan, isadora, quigley, fiona, carmelita, friday, the second beatrice

november 19th – free space!

is there a character you want to make something for that didn’t necessarily fit in these categories? (and my deepest apologies for who didn’t. the duchess? miranda? ishmael? the islanders? widdershins? hector? the village of fowl devotees? jacquelyn? larry? phil? beatrice and bertrand, technically????) is there a character you wanted to do but you didn’t like the group they were in? (you’d rather talk about esme outside of her relation to the firestarters?) do you want to do something centered on a ship? (lemony/beatrice/bertrand? dewey/bertrand? kit/beatrice? violet/isadora? jacques/jerome? olivia/jacques? beatrice/bertrand? monty/gustav? sally/r?) put it here!

can i do ships for other days?

you absolutely can! i’m just giving options in the free space.

can i include other characters that aren’t a part of the group set for each day?

yes, as long as the major focus of the work is still on the designated group! for example, for sugar bowl gen siblings, you could definitely make something about, say, beatrice interacting with the snicket siblings, as long as the focus of the work is still on the snicket siblings. or, for stain’d-by-the-sea, you could definitely write about those characters interacting with vfd characters, or the unfortunate gen, or even mr. poe, as long as the focus of the work is still on the stain’d-by-the-sea characters.

if you have any questions about anything, feel free to drop me an ask or a message!

happy creating and i hope to see lots of you november 13th - 19th!!

[flanneryculp]

Stew Mitchum watches alpha male podcasts

[gellavonhamster]

in the bleak midwinter*: an asoue/atwq peaky blinders au concept

...also known as the idea that’s been living in my brain for what must be a couple of years now; I have reconciled myself with the fact that I will never write this fic because I simply do not have enough patience to think it out and write it down in the way that would give it justice, so here’s a plot bunny or something.

This is basically the Sugar Bowl Generation of VFD (still young, before kids and all) meets All The Wrong Questions (some of the events + some of the kid characters of ATWQ as adults) meets season one of Peaky Blinders, but I guess it could be read and understood without the knowledge of the latter simply as an organized crime AU.

It’s the beginning of the interwar period, and VFD is a gang. Which, yes, would require a certain amount of OOC of the characters, though I imagine their intimidation tactics would still avoid too much bloodshed. They deal with bookmaking, contraband, and sometimes art forgery because even this version of VFD has to have something sophisticated about it. There’s a number of places, such as bars and clubs, that pay them for protection, and there’s also a number of places they own, such as the Hotel Denouement with the Denouement brothers in charge and the nightclub ran by Ramona Browning**, alias the Duchess (her father was some kind of aristocracy, see, too aristocratic to ever truly acknowledge her). They use their influence to become the informal rulers of their part of the City. They claim to strive for power to make the City a better place, and these are not just words - they do donate money to schools and libraries, for example - but it’s not like they don’t enjoy being in power, and their rule is still based on crime, those who threaten it being eliminated swiftly. 

The Snickets are the Shelby family of this AU, of course. Lemony is Tommy - the mastermind, already a legend of sorts despite being the youngest, plagued by the horrors of war - but still hoping for the best, strange as it seems, because he’s still Lemony. Jacques is Arthur, the fighter suffering from PTSD. Kit is Ada, but she’s also Aunt Polly - she’s the one who ran the business while the boys were in the army. 

Now, season one introduced Grace Burgess as an undercover police informant spying on the Peaky Blinders.

Enter Ellington Feint.

Ellington’s father, the only family she has left, has been kidnapped by a gang called the Inhumane Society, and she’d do anything and everything to save him. So she agrees to infiltrate VFD, their rival gang, to find out the whereabouts of a shipment of weapons that was meant for the Society but was accidentally stolen by VFD. Apart from machine guns and shells, the shipment includes some “statue of a sea beast”, and no one cares to provide more explanations to Ellington about it, but apparently it is the most important part of that cargo. So Ellington takes on the position of a barmaid in The Black Cat Bar, one of the places that pay VFD for protection and the one frequented by its key members, and starts listening and watching.

Ellington needs to get close to the Snickets, because if anyone knows where the weapons are, it’s them. Steward Mitchum, the corrupt cop on the Society’s payroll whom she is to meet from time to time at the Natural History Museum (which she used to attend with her father) to pass on the information, suggests she should seduce one of the Snicket brothers. The problem is, Ellington has a chance to learn very soon that Jacques doesn’t know much about the stolen cargo, and Lemony is too taken with his girlfriend, the music hall singer Beatrice Baudelaire, to even look at any other woman. There’s no getting between them, even though it seems Beatrice also has something going on with VFD’s bookkeeper Bertrand Markson, and Lemony seems aware of it. 

So Ellington decides to approach Kit instead. Kit, who seems so lonely - Ellington doesn’t know the details, but there was some serious falling-out between her and her ex-boyfriend, who has since left the City (and won’t appear in this story. Olaf is the problem for the hypothetical season two of this imaginary show). Ellington doesn’t plan on anything other than a very close friendship - yet, the closer they become, the more she understands that she is attracted to Kit.

(There certainly is a variant of the “I warn you, I’ll break your heart” - “Already broken” scene in which Ellington sings to Kit)

Anyway. Things progress, and they fall in love. Well, Kit seems to have fallen in love, and Ellington keeps trying to persuade herself that she hasn’t, because Kit has to remain nothing but a task for her.

The location of the stolen weapons, however, still remains a mystery, even though Ellington once hears Kit and Lemony discuss it. Whatever the statue is, Lemony seems to believe it has great powers, and Kit seems to believe it’s nothing but folklore. Lemony tells her of the stories of a mysterious sea animal (or spirit, or whatever it may be) he heard from other soldiers during the war, about what Widdershins heard during his time in the navy. Kit tells him that everyone is a believer in a foxhole, and that she loves W like her own kin but he’s a bragging idiot. There was nothing on the sea other than enemy ships.

Elllington’s mission is complicated by Lemony clearly not trusting her. He tells her it’s because his sister has been hurt before, but she suspects it’s more than that. He even admits that he had his people make enquiries in Paltryville, the town she claims to have come from, and found out that no Ellington Feint ever lived there. When he suggests her secrecy is due to a child born out of marriage, she is eager to confirm that. (Cue him asking her if she’s read Les Misérables - yeah, even this version of VFD would be literature nerds, how can it be otherwise - because this whole situation reminds him of Fantine, and her lying that she hasn’t and thinking that she’s more of a Javert at the barricade, really).

Then there’s a masquerade party at the Duchess’s club, and Kit takes Ellington there as her date. (Which is okay, because if there’s any place in the City where a woman dancing with another woman or a man dancing with another man would not be looked at askance, it’s the Duchess’s club. If I was actually writing a fic, there would definitely be a scene in which Ellington observes Beatrice asking Bertrand to dance with her and Bertrand trying to decline by telling her that, since he didn’t have time to procure a mask, he shouldn’t be on the dancefloor at all, and then Lemony approaches him with a spare mask in hand and encourages him to dance with Beatrice and puts the mask on Bertrand himself and it somehow looks so intimate as if he’s undressing him and Ellington’s like “Oh, so it’s like that with them. This is probably of no use to me but still, good to know”). 

When Kit disappears at some point, Ellington follows her quietly and eavesdrops on her conversation with one of the Denouements. He tells her that his brother is all right and sends his regards. Later at the party, however, Ellington sees two Denouements. Why would one of them send the other’s regards to Kit if they’re all in the same room? A couple of drinks with the already tipsy Olivia (officially a fortune-teller, but who knows what purposes VFD really uses her salon for?), and Ellington learns that there used to be three Denouements, actually. But the third brother, Dewey, had a conflict with one of rival gangs which nearly resulted in a war, had not Lemony agreed to dispose of Dewey. To stop that gang from going against VFD, he killed Dewey with his own hands.

Except he didn’t, Ellington thinks. Lemony must have staged Dewey’s execution, and now he’s out there very much alive. Perhaps this knowledge will come in handy.

Meanwhile, the Inhumane Society, who have other beef with VFD apart from the stolen weapons, are getting impatient. There’s a gun-fight which results in Ike Anwhistle dying and his grieving widow, Josephine, telling Lemony it is all his fault and leaving the city. (I know I said this is based on s1 only, but they’re the John and Esme Shelby of this story). And Bertrand is severely wounded. VFD needs another bookkeeper while he’s recovering, and Kit, who knows from The Black Cat’s owner Dashiell Qwerty that Ellington has also been keeping the books of the bar lately and doing it well, offers this position to her. This gives Ellington an opportunity to learn more about the asserts and resources of VFD - and a chance to discover some interesting notes scribbled next to the name of Dewey Denouement. Dewey Denouement, who is only officially dead, but still has a grave at the cemetery.

Ellington tells Stew she has an idea where the weapons and/or the statue might be hidden.

When she meets some of the members of the Inhumane Society to take them to the tomb, she is surprised to see Hangfire himself among them. She’s only seen him in passing before, this mysterious man with his face covered in bandages. They say he’s been horribly disfigured during the war. They also say he came back mad. When they’ve done some digging and unearthed, instead of a coffin, several crates of guns - and opened one of them to find a small statue of what seems like a very scary seahorse - Mitchum and Flammarion are suddenly shot down, and Lemony Snicket steps from behind a gravestone. 

He’s been following them.

Of course he didn’t believe that all Miss Feint is hiding is an illegitimate child, Lemony tells them as he’s holding Hangfire at gunpoint. He’s been doing research. In fact, the man whose grave they’ve unearthed is presently in a unique position allowing him to make research away from the City. He’s found out that Ellington Feint is the daughter of a renowned naturalist Armstrong Feint, who’s recently gone missing. And then they managed to discover something more. 

This is when Hangfire grabs a gun and points it at Lemony, and Lemony aims at Ellington instead, which for some reason stops Hangfire from shooting. 

This is also when it turns out that Lemony has also been followed, and Kit Snicket steps from behind another gravestone, pointing a gun at her brother. He keeps aiming at Ellington, wearily telling Kit she isn’t really going to shoot him. 

Kit tells him that unless he drops the gun, he’ll find out.

(When Ellington tries to speak to Kit, she just tells her to shut up. And it hurts, because Kit has stopped being just a mission a long time ago. And now she knows that Ellington’s been lying to her from the start. And she may not want Ellington to die, but she would also hardly ever forgive her. And that would be fair).

And then Hangfire tries to shoot Kit, and Ellington screams, and Kit manages to spring back, and Lemony fires at the man who tried to kill his sister, and suddenly Hangfire is bleeding out on the ground and calling out to Ellington in her father’s voice. 

That is what they’ve also found out about Hangfire, Lemony tells her as she’s kneeling beside the body, unable to bring herself to uncover his face. He sounds genuinely surprised; he thought she knew.

Kit makes him let Ellington go and tells her she doesn’t want to see her ever again. And Ellington leaves. She takes a train to some seaside town she’s never heard of before and leaves. Her job is ended. Her father is dead. Her love affair that never should have happened is in the past. She still doesn’t know why her father lied to her when he could have just asked and she would’ve done anything, why he kept up this double life, what was the significance of the statue and what it might become in the hands of someone like Lemony Snicket. She is too tired and sick of it all to try to find out.

She manages to build a life in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. She works in a coffee shop and sings there in the evenings. She never sings the song she sang to Kit again. She marries a man she doesn’t have any truly strong feelings for.

Then, a year or so later, there’s a phone call, and the voice of the woman she loved and betrayed tells her she still can’t stop thinking of her.

*This phrase used by the Peaky Blinders upon the death of one of them is replaced by “The world is quiet here”. Obviously.

**My Last Duchess, referenced in ASOUE in connection with R, is written by Robert Browning.

[volunteerfelinedetectives]

My favourite moments in ATWQ are the ones where Stew Mitchum is passive-aggressively attacked by one of the Association kids.

[inksplit]

[unfortunate-stranger-losers]

it’s interesting how similar carmelita and stew are to each other, with both of them being spoiled children manipulated by sociopathic men, with connections to an elite private school and even with deliberate attention drawn to them having a specialty with ranged weapons and a tendency to kill birds, and yet in regards to fan reaction there’s much more sympathy towards carmelita than stew, despite them being so similar in canon. like there are of course people who (validly) dislike carmelita and i’m sure there’s someone out there who likes stew mitchum but everyone seems much more inclined to give carmelita a better future/happy ending/even just pure sympathy, while we all just hate the shit outta stew 

the reason for this is in regards to stew having a support system of people who actually care about him and a town that, while empty, seems to have adults that care about the kids around them, such as qwerty, hungry and prosper, while carmelita, if you pay attention, clearly has neglectful parents, and the adults who do pay attention to her (nero and bruce) are not only assholes but have lowkey creepy dynamics with her and thus carmelita being manipulated by olaf and esme is more-or-less inevitable as she has literally nobody to go to and craves attention due to not being given it at home, unlike stew who is given nonstop attention and still turns to crime and murder, and in this essay i will

[library-child]

Stew Mitchum is the textbook example of how to mess up your kid. On the one hand, his parents have been providing him with an unstable, unhealthy home, on the other hand, they have spoiled him into thinking he is so special he can't do anything wrong.

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

No one:

Stew Mitchum: