mari

my husband by the way

come join vfd. we kidnap your kids to induct them into our secret organisation and also you have a high chance of burning to death. what do you mean you want out

to be fair to count olaf’s ridiculous cover names, he does come from a universe where ‘lemony snicket’ is just something you can name a baby

the snicketverse really said “here’s a bunch of stuff that MIGHT’VE happened idk it was all written by an unreliable brainwashed cult member swimming in his depression so he probably got a lot wrong. Yeah that conversation is just completely made up he had no idea what they said. Yeah he’s gonna keep waxing poetic about his dead ex girlfriend forever sorry. He’s gonna go on very long tangents about literally anything but we gotta give this to him it’s like nutrition. Ok do what you want with all this stuff that maybe happened” and it worked

As the ASoUE fandom, we need to acknowledge the drastic differences between the books and show more often. I love them both though I do prefer book canon on this particular subject. The schism. The timeline can be confusing. And it's so important to recognize that while in the show, Beatrice accidentally killing Olaf's father incited the schism and Olaf's villainy, in the book, Kit tells us the schism happened when she was four. If we are assuming all our main generation of V.F.D. members are probably within a few years of each other in age, this happened when they were all young children. This changes a lot, but most importantly it means that the death of Olaf's parents and the great schism, were two different events. And also, this means they all grew up in schism V.F.D. essentially this environment of warring factions. They didn't get to experience a maybe healthier version of V.F.D. They grew up in an atmosphere where their lives would much more often have been at stake. Well I've been thinking about that night at the opera, since the schism had already happened, it could have played a part in the events. The show says it was an accident, but the books never clarify. To be honest, the books make things sound much more like an assassination...not saying it was but I won't say it wasn't. We see the Baudelaires themselves come to the conclusion their parents weren't who they thought they were. Why would they have poison darts if they didn't intend to use them? Kit says she snuck them past Esme to the Baudelaires. (Which is another thing. Seriously, if this was an assassination, Kit participated in the murder of her fiancée's parents...Olaf didn't seem to blame her like he did the others, did he not know, or did she not know what they would be used for so he didn't consider her complicit?) And for the record, the death of one person with a dart like in the show, could be an accident. Both of Olaf's parents died in the book and that's a lot harder to answer for. So why would the Baudelaire parents assassinate Olaf's parents? Would "noble" V.F.D. really condone something like that? I mean, I guess they were messing around with the medusoid mycellium...planning to use it against their enemies. Could the Baudelaires actions that night relate to their reluctance to tell the kids about their organization? As for why they would do that, is it possible Olaf's parents might have been villains on the other side of the schism? Were they planning something horrible? We are basically told that night is why Olaf switched sides, could he really have been on the noble side at a time when his parents weren't? What did Olaf see that night, how did he know who to blame? Did he watch his parents die? Could his parents have been planning to strike first? Could they have meant to kill his friends, an event which would also drive Olaf insane, just in the other direction, against his parents? Is there any way his parents could have been innocent? I have a really hard time believing that if the Baudelaires did what they did, though it was still not okay. This is all wild speculation I know, but the book canon just opens up worlds of theories, unlike the show which seems to sacrifice the plot a bit, in order to keep our important characters hands clean. But if Daniel Handler taught us anything, its that no one really keeps their hands clean, everyone participates in treachery at some point, and you never know how horrible someone's treachery was, you can't necessarily trust someone just because you care about them. Can I just say how absolutely gutsy it was for Daniel Handler to deliver a thirteen book series, the plot of which is driven by the great split of this secret organization, only for him to never tell us what happened? He never explains the schism? I know he loves to leave unanswered questions but. But this. Then again, it's written from the Baudleaires perspective and for many reasons, they don't get to know. It is fitting that neither do we.