i don’t mean to be a huge dick and slather my personal experiences all over everything, but ‘a series of unfortunate events’ truly will validate so many abused kids out there
the baudelaire children confide in mr. poe that they’re being hurt by count olaf, and mr. poe goes and tells count olaf they said so, and olaf then punishes the children for daring to speak out. that’s real. olaf hits klaus so hard he falls over. that’s real. violet tells mr. poe about the literal abuse olaf subjects them to, and mr. poe dismisses her as a girl griping about chores. that’s real. in this book, children are trod on, disbelieved, laughed at, scorned, punished. that’s real.
i don’t consider myself an abused child, but i was hit growing up. not often and not hard enough to bruise, but enough that i still, as a nineteen year old college student, flinch and cringe and cry and can’t stand up for myself against anyone; even to this day, i can’t, because i’m still convinced that if i contradict i’ll be screamed at or physically hurt. this stuff lingers. one day i was pushed so hard i fell against my bedframe and got a bloody nose! eventually i got too large to slap, but one day my mom pushed my sister. and then i did something i’d never done before: i decided to tell “a trusted adult.”
this adult essentially told me “if you’re not getting hit so hard you’re being bruised, you’re fine.” and guess what? i never told another adult until one day years later it burst out of me and i absolutely broke down sobbing in the car to my aunt and grandmother. for 20 minutes i couldn’t even stand up.
this is what adults do. ‘a series of unfortunate events’ knows this. it chronicles this. and it is completely fucking unique in the fact that it is on the kids’ side. that, to me, is fucking revolutionary. it takes the harm adults dole out to children daily and says This Is Undeserved and This Is Wrong and This Is Evil. revisiting it as an adult, i see myself echoed in it, and that is so piercing it almost hurts.
