Tag: lemony snicket

volunteer-fire-fighter:

If
you ever want to know what it feels like to have your heart torn from your
chest and crushed in front of you, simply take a moment to view the progression
of Lemony Snicket’s ‘I miss you…’ at the close
of his letters to Beatrice. For additional pain, remember that after the final
one Beatrice marries another man and Lemony is cut almost completely out of her
life.

volunteer-fire-fighter:

These pictures show the progression of the way Lemony addresses Beatrice as their story goes
on. The letter LS to BB #1 isn’t pictured because Lemony doesn’t open that note
by addressing Beatrice, but the others are here in chronological order.

Dear Beatrice: the standard beginning for a letter. It’s rather
formal but all the sweeter for it. They’re just kids, just little friends shyly
trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do if you’re hopelessly in love
with your best friend, and it makes sense that Lemony would follow traditional format for a letter.

Dearest Beatrice: the dear becomes dearest now that they’re adults and in
a long-standing, committed relationship. Still a bit formal, but it brings to
mind the Romantic notions that this couple is founded upon.

My darling Beatrice: which is hopelessly romantic.
Note the possessiveness that accompanies most serious relationships and the
fact that you honestly can’t say such a phrase without smiling. My darling…There’s a familiarity, almost a domesticity, that there wasn’t before.

My dearest darling: for The Love Letter to End All
Love Letters. Beatrice’s name isn’t even needed for the intended recipient of
the letter to be clear because she’s the only person who could possibly by
addressed with such emotion and love by this man. It’s a combination of the
previous terms because by this point she’s not just Lemony’s dearest, not just his darling,
but his dearest darling. (These
phrases remind us of one of the most well-known Beatrice dedications—darling, dearest, dead.)

Then,
in the telegram that’s known as LS to BB #6, Lemony’s darling dearest has
become the formal Dear Mrs. Baudelaire: wife of someone else. The first-name intimacy is gone and the dear from the letters of their childhood has
returned because things are formal and professional again, with unstable
footing and delicate rules that must be obeyed.

Truthfully, you could pretty much get the whole story of Lemony Snicket and Beatrice Baudelaire just by looking at these dedications. 

I always thought that the reason lemony and Beatrice didn’t work out was because Beatrice didn’t love lemony, not because she thought he was dead

:

Different anon: My idea as to why Beatrice broke it off with Lemony is that after his
review of Olaf’s play was published Beatrice knew that Lemony was in VFD
too deep and there was no hope of a happy, VFD free ending with him
& Beatrice really wanted out of VFD.

I hope you don’t mind that I put these two dispatches together, but they seemed quite connected and I felt that I could best answer them at the same time, since some of the same information applies to both.

We don’t know for sure what went down between Lemony and Beatrice, and I doubt we’ll ever know. However, it seems likely that the newspaper article that Captain Widdershins convinced Beatrice was true was the accusatory obituary that The Daily Punctilio published for Lemony Snicket. It might not have been that article, but it seems likely. I also think it’s a little incorrect for the second anon to say that Beatrice wanted out of VFD–if anything, it seems like Lemony wanted out of VFD but remained in it for sake of nobility, because he was hopeless trapped in it, and for Beatrice.

The second anon is on the right track with Beatrice refusing Lemony because she wanted a happy and stable life, but she didn’t appear to be attempting to leave VFD to gain that. Bertrand was simply the better choice for her and her future family. (She may have been pregnant with Violet at the time of the Love Letter to End All Love Letters–the period of time between that letter and the telegram in The Beatrice Letters is uncertain.) It also appears that Beatrice forbade Lemony from having any contact with her family after her marriage to Bertrand, presumably because of how unstable the situation would become or because of something she saw in his character that she wanted far from her family. (Which makes the final ‘I miss you’ in The Beatrice Letters even sadder–the final one reads; “I miss you. Who knows when I will see you?” and that’s the last ‘I miss you’ that Lemony signs off with. And this is the same boy who’s desperation at the idea of having to wait a few hours to see Bea again is enough to break your heart!)

For the first anon: I don’t think it’s that Beatrice didn’t love Lemony. I think what she and Lemony had was capital-L Love. Once-in-a-lifetime burning passion, Romantic style Love. What she found with Bertrand was a more domestic form of love, the type that forms between two compatible people with the same goals and values. She chose stability over passion.

I mean, the woman sent Lemony a 200 page novel. And it appears that the novel wasn’t an attempt to tell him she didn’t love him anymore, but that she can’t live with him. She sent him a 200 page novel to break up with him. You don’t do that unless you hate someone or love someone, and based on what Lemony reveals of the contents of that novel I don’t think she hated him.

200 pages. She fucking loved him.

kitmarcelo:

Yesterday we passed our book cover assignment for Illustration class.

I chose to do one for A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator because it’s one of my most favorite books in the series. It’s near the point where shit goes down and the Baudelaire’s are accused of murder. Plus, I just love the part where Lemony Snicket just put two pages of just black when the Baudelaire’s fell in the elevator.