#vera.list

The French expression “cul-de-sac” describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word “de,” for instance, is a very common French word, so even if I didn’t know a word of French, I would be certain that “de” means “of.” The word “sac” is less common, but I am fairly certain that it means something like “mysterious circumstances.” And the word “cul” is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean “At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment,” so that the expression “cul-de-sac” here means “At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances.” -- tee

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If you have ever experienced something that feels strangely familiar, as if the exact same thing has happened to you before, then you are experiencing what the French call “déjà vu.” Like most French expressions—“ennui,” which is a fancy term for severe boredom, or “la petite mort,” which describes a feeling that part of you has died—“déjà vu” refers to something that is usually not very pleasant, and it was not pleasant for the Baudelaire orphans to stand outside the freaks’ caravan listening to Count Olaf and experiencing the queasy feeling of déjà vu. -- tcc

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The word “denouement” is not only the name of a hotel or the family who manages it, particularly nowadays, when the hotel and all its secrets have almost been forgotten, and the surviving members of the family have changed their names and are working in smaller, less glamorous inns. “Denouement” comes from the French, who use the word to describe the act of untying a knot, and it refers to the unraveling of a confusing or mysterious story, such as the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, or anyone else you know whose life is filled with unanswered questions. The denouement is the moment when all of the knots of a story are untied, and all the threads are unraveled, and everything is laid out clearly for the world to see. -- tpp

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I forced myself to calm down. If someone disappears around a corner, it means they’ve gone into one of the buildings or a giant bird has carried them away. The skies were clear, so I checked doorways. There was an abandoned restaurant, with round tables that were too small to eat at comfortably. I peered through the cracked window and read some words on a chalkboard—LES GOMMES, which was French for who knew what—but the door was nailed shut, tight as a coffin. Before long all doors in town would be that way, with the Knights abandoning their ink business and moving to the city.

Across the street was another closed business. The broken sign read UARIU, which didn’t look like French. -- wdyshl

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My associate was right. The word “Mayday” does have a French origin. It comes from the term “M’aider,” which in French means “help me.” You could probably see it in my eyes as I stared out at the seaweed that lived when the sea was drained away, for no reason anyone could explain, and that moved in ways so mysterious no one could imagine them. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. -- sybis

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“It’s at the confluence of two large rivers that turn gray and still at night,” I said. “Winnipeg has been greatly influenced by French culture, so it will be no chore at all to find a good French press. We will drink coffee and watch the river from the balcony of the house of an associate of mine. We will attend masked balls at her castle, and you can get scared then.”

“Castle?” she said.

All the News in Fits of Print [geraldine & moxie]

In which Moxie reads an article she finds suspicious, learns unexpected and upsetting things about Geraldine Julienne, and dines-and-dashes at a very In restaurant.

every cloud [jacques & lemony]

the snicket brothers (supposedly) at work.

puppeteer [esme/geraldine] (rating: M)

geraldine isn't really the kind of woman who would lock her editor in the basement. or, at least, not without some convincing.

Foolish Girl [geraldine/eleanora] (rating: M)

After a night meeting with Geraldine Julienne and some bottles of wine, Eleanora Poe finds herself in an unfamiliar place.

Off the Record [esme/geraldine] (rating: E)

"Cheap champagne," muses Esmé as Geraldine babbles. "She's like cheap champagne with a fancy-looking label, and it’s much too sweet and much too bubbly, but it gets you just drunk enough to forget how much you’re going to hate yourself in the morning."

bonus:

fics:

Someone Is Waiting a score of zero

playlists:

my life upon a sonnet we were sparkling Dark / Light / Dark / Light

art:

group photo Kate Flannery and Natasha Flannery Natasha

edits:

x x x x x x x x

analyses:

x x x x

bonus:

that post about asoue being cautionary tale of letting grown up theater kids do things unchecked

count olaf and beatrice baudelaire go way back + photo of the quote of “one day when i was 7 years old”

that vintage photo w/ caption of being 82.9% this is lemony and moxie

roses are red not sure if you can trust this + that jerome quote from tpp

the art of moxie and lemony convo “why do you always say that” “i’ll probably outgrow it”

the art of lemony and bea ii drinking root beer floats

the art of esme in her where the fuck is my sugar bowl underwear

the post with long additional tags of the baudelaire parents never mentioned lemony

beatrice and olaf and “nobody knows who you are and no one cares”

beatrice and olaf and how was the opera such a normal time

beatrice and bertrand and why is ur back all scratched up i’m having an affair

my favorite snicketverse parody of my immortal that ended with hangfire stared at me i fed him to the bombinating beast

dewey and kit and what runs in your family? lemony

darling dearest dramatic hoe

6 by 6 alignment chart (there are six type of adults and six type of children)

the analysis on asoue and atwq books on gender identities and also women who love fashion and how sure esme is v girlboss but she’s also a villain so atwq and the introduction of cleo is v nice improvement

daniel handler answering question about lgbt characters in his book and “more than you think, as in real life”

daniel handler on asoue timeline “it begins in the morning”

Stickers on the locker  [jacques/olaf] (rating: E)

The unsolved mystery of that night in the jail and the rest goes down in history.

In the inland deserts, nights are cold and it doesn’t particularly help, whether is just nightfall or midnight and being inside the house doesn’t hold much significance either. It’s the water in the ground that stores the heat when the sun doesn’t shine and the chilling truth about deserts is that in an extremely dry land, there is nothing to keep the heat overnight. And the VFD village was in the middle of nowhere and incredibly moistureless.

It's a very classic story. It's about foolish men and dying.

close encounters of the sibling kind  [jacques & kit]

Written for the following prompt in asoue-network's 2020 Sugar Bowl Tournament: 5 times Jacques and Kit narrowly avoided each other in the city streets, and the one time they ran into each other.

The Unpleasant Arrival of Dramatic Irony  [jacques/jerome]

On his way out of town, Jacques drops in on an old friend.

Edge  [frank/jacques] (rating: E)

Frank needs to loosen up, Jacques needs telling what to do.

every cloud  [jacques & lemony]

the snicket brothers (supposedly) at work.

(untitled)  [jacques/esme]

in thirteen short parts, the story of a relationship that never changed anything.

(untitled)  [jacques & esme]

Overdrive (kit/esme, driving across hinterlands in the taxi)

Off the Record (esme/geraldine, what happens at penthouse of 667 dark ave stays at penthouse of 667 dark ave)

call me from the road (gen, friendship between jkbbdef over the years)

Beatrice (beatrice/lemony, noir, murder investigation)

hector turned 12 when lemony is “almost 13”, at the end of ?1, so if we accept lemony’s words about his own age, they’re the same age, hector slightly younger

ellington is “a little taller or a little older” than lemony, possibly both, based on lemony’s guess/observations. it’s possible that the older part might not be true, maybe she’s just taller, but i do tend to place her ….. perhaps a year or two older than L

snicket twins and the denouement triplets are of the same age, based on both D and K have said about the schism happening when they were 4. (D also said that the triplets were taken right about their 5th birthday, which means it’s shortly after the schism began.)

bertrand’s apprenticeship is earlier than lemony’s, which while it isn’t necessarily conclusively definitely means that he must be older, it’s quite likely. (e.g. maybe he got involved in vfd earlier hence starting apprenticeship earlier, etc.) we don’t really know much about bertrand’s childhood and vfd involvement to say.

however, what we do know is that bertrand’s childhood is in some way parallel to bea jr’s. obviously this doesn’t mean they joined the same way or had very similar childhoods, but it’s interesting they’re parallels and it’s mentioned in the narrative. bea jr found her way to vfd at an age where she can already search for people on her own, and while we can’t know if bertrand also joined vfd similarly or around similar age, it’s a possibility that makes sense (unless his guardians were already involved in vfd, then it makes sense for him to join at very young age.) as for lemony, he said the implications from the little snicket lad implying he’s taken while in diapers are wrong and that he was “far past crawling”, but even so for the photo attached (either him or some other photo he found of someone more or less the same age), the kid in the photo looked quite young too. so considering these two points about when they got into vfd, chances do in fact leans towards B being older

is he older than the snicket twins and denouement triplets though, it’s really hard to say. there’s really nothing indicating either way. in fact, we don’t know how much older J and K are than L either. i usually place them at the same age but i’m biased and promoting b&k friendship propaganda all the time

i don’t think L and beatrice are proven to be the same age, even though i mostly think about it this way in my head. we know their first meeting (tbl letter 1) and lemony iirc mentioned his age in the card he passed along. but beatrice’s age isn’t known. however, we do know beatrice and olaf and r and lemony were in classes at the same time, so it’s likely they are the same age, so i usually place those 4 as the same age.

monty has been studying snakes for 40 years by the point of TRR, so i tend to place him slightly older than the rest. i’d like to think of him and georgina as fellow stem field volunteers around the same age but there’s probably no proof of this. (well, at most we got them standing together like friends in the netflix photo, which i always find interesting.)

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: An Actress and an Adventurer

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Behind the Dedications

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Behind the Myth

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Mother Behind the Myth

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Myth Behind the Woman

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Legend Behind the Myth

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Myth Behind the Legend

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Legend Behind the Myth Behind the Legend

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Legend Behind the Myth Behind the Legend Behind the Woman Behind the Dedications

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman On the Stage

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Behind the Stage

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Who Was a Murderer

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Who Fired the Poison Darts

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Woman Who Fired the Poison Darts, But Only During One Evening

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Writer of a 200 Paged Break-Up Letter

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, a Man, and Another Man

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, a Man, and Another Woman

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, Another Woman, and a Box of Poison Darts

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, a Man, Another Woman, Another Man, and a Box of Poison Darts

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, Another Woman, and a Sugar Bowl

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of Two Theater Kids Who Grew Up Together

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of Two Apprentices, Both of Whom Studied Under the Same Chaperone

BEATRICE BAUDELAIRE: The Story of a Woman, Her Husband, and Their Kids

IS THAT A POISON DART? The Story of Beatrice Baudelaire