#hangfire

Lemony: A police station! Thank god, I never thought I’d be happy to see one of those things. Hey, put the donuts down! Drop the Krispy Kreme, Serpico! We need your help!

S. Theodora Markson: I’m sure I’ll live a long miserable life of heartbreak and alcoholism.

Ellington: Go get me my coffee, be my bitch.

Kellar: Principals always look like lesbians. *sees a picture of Sharon* MOM?! 

Hangfire: Well, we probably shouldn’t discuss it over the phone. Hey I’ve got an idea; Why don’t you come to the scary isolated payphone on the bad side of town? Alone?

Lemony: Obeying horror movie rules, I’m going to go out alone. You stay here while I go out looking for help. Moxie: Okay... God bless him. Leaving me here alone and defenseless in a cemetery. What a guy!

Jake: What in the fizzityuck is that?!

S. Theodora Markson: God you are four of the ugliest fucking kids I’ve ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on.

A Very Furtive Detail that super uber-fans (like yours truly) of the Netflix series would have picked up on is that Vice Principal Nero actually has a surname - Feint.

Where, you ask, is this in the show? Pause at exactly the right moment in Part 2 of The Austere Academy - where Nero compliments Sunny on her secretarial work ("She edited my résumé...") - and you'll find that the surname on his résumé is, in fact, Feint.

We know, as Snicketeers, that Feint is also the surname of Ellington, the character Lemony depicts as the 'femme fatale' of ATWQ...

...but how does this tie in? What links are we missing?

Let's try to plug the gaps; using what we know, we can try and piece [a version of] the story together.

What do we know already?

1. Lemony knows Ellington Feint, and her father, Armstrong.

2. Both Ellington and Armstrong Feint liked music.

3. Lemony also knows Nero's surname to be Feint, likely from the Baudelaires' entry in 'An Incomplete History'.

4. Nero is very proud of his family history ("a generous grant from our founder, Sir Barrymore Feint").

5. Nero is hyper-focused on his "career as a violinist", and regards very very little else as important.

Given the above to be true, my theory is as follows:

During the events of ATWQ, Ellington had a brother that she never spoke of around Lemony - Nero. Why? Likely because he was still a small child (≈ 5) when Lemony was in Stain'd-by-the-Sea and Ellington was going on missions with him and such. She didn't want any harm to come to him, so she figured out that she had to keep his existence secret. This meant Ellington had to (secretly) risk her brother's life to help Lemony with his various tasks in SBTS and this is where it all went to pieces:

Lemony murdered their father, Armstrong Feint, aka Hangfire.

I think it then played out like this:

1. Ellington realised that she'd have to tell her little brother that their father was dead. She knew that Nero would blame her and grow to hate her for this, so she lashed out at Lemony.

2. Ellington was then jailed for her crimes, leaving Nero alone at home, an orphan. Because Stain'd-by-the-Sea is such a deserted town, no-one came for Nero. He was home alone until Ellington returned from "serving her jail sentence" (escaping with Kit's skeleton key).

3. Whilst waiting for Ellington to come back, Nero was isolated and effectively drove himself mad, with his hatred for his sister combined with his grief over the loss of his father.

4. Over the period of Ellington's "jail sentence" (i.e. the time taken to hatch a plan to escape with the skeleton key), Nero stumbled upon the family history of music, before trying to console/distract himself with the power of music, trying to play the violin, trying to live up to his well-respected ancestors - but no-one has ever been around to correct his... many, many, many, many mistakes.

This explains why he hates any and all orphans, shoving them all in a tin shack, and why he can't play the violin to save his life.

Argument: ATWQ is a book series; how can you include it as part of a Netflix Canon Theory? Counterargument: ATWQ is featured in the series (TCC: "These files contain a report of the tragic events which occurred during my apprenticeship at Stain'd-by-the-Sea, which had to wait until now to be told, due to respect for surviving parties and copyright law").

Dark, even for the Snicketverse,

~ Th3r3534rch1ngr4ph, Unfortunate Theorist/Snicketologist

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