A Series Of Unfortunate Events - Netflix adaptation of novel series

By "morals," I meant "themes." I don't have enough time to elaborate on what I mean because even thinking about it agitates me too much to talk. You'll have to wait for my essay for a full explanation, which will take me months.

So, you're refusing to give even a short summary of your complaints to debate, and instead, you're going to leave us hanging for months to then post a giant wall of text complaining about what you don't like?

I'm gonna be real, I'm not going to read that, both out of spite for how you brought it up and because I don't enjoy reading long negative essays on things I like. Engage with the conversation that you brought up.

This is striking me more and more as you didn't get it, ye

It deliberately goes against a lot of the standard morals in children's books. You can't trust all adults to know what's going on or what to do, a lot of adults are willfully blind to the worst people among us if they do the bare minimum to look respectable, even the worst people probably have some positive features to them and even the best people have some darkness. But even a positive feature doesn't mean you need to forgive the awful people. It's just not black and white. You need to stand up for yourself and ask questions, never stop learning and don't let anyone convince you that knowledge is a bad thing. Oh, and even then, you can't find all the answers and letting some questions go is probably a good idea.

Oh, and even if you have to sacrifice for it, you should always at least try and stand up for what's right, even if the entire rest of the world is trying to beat you down for it. No one in the series is rewarded for doing the right thing. But that didn't stop them because it's still the right thing to do.

These are not happy themes, but they also aren't exactly...wrong.

I think a lot of people dislike it because it directly goes against the stuff we're taught about "trust adults, they know what they're doing, the world makes sense, good people are rewarded and bad people are punished, and everything has an easy, neat and clean answer."

Edited by Zendervai on Apr 18th 2022 at 11:35:52 AM

Oh, I don't dislike those themes at heart. Adults Are Useless? Okay, Tropes Are Tools. You need to stand up for yourself and ask questions? I 100% agree. What You Are in the Dark and No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? Both powerful and true in many circumstances. It's just that a lot of the execution involving Gray-and-Grey Morality feels extremely prone to Unfortunate Implications. When the Baudelaires learn how everyone has some shade of white and black within them, I praised the text. When they and the story take that to mean "there are no noble people in the world" and that they're eerily similar to the villains, this lack of common sense of distinguishing between imperfection and evil made me want to set fire to my computer. Every time I've tried to bring up this topic, people have brushed it off as me not getting the novels. Don't get me wrong, ASOUE ranks among my favorite novels of all time. You can still criticize what you love.

Edited by Idiosyncratic on Apr 18th 2022 at 10:38:40 AM

I mean. Negligence and incompetence when protecting children goes a little beyond "imperfection". A crack on a mirror is an imperfection. A mirror with its flat sides shattered off and covered in cutting edges is basically ruined.

Adults Are Useless doesn't have anything to do with my point. Incompetence doesn't equal maliciousness, and the story also treats the Baudelaires like their painfully necessary actions somehow make them comparable to the actively malicious villains. I Did What I Had to Do isn't Gray-and-Grey Morality.

Edited by Idiosyncratic on Apr 18th 2022 at 11:04:49 AM

The TV show is more nuanced than the books. The show, I think, adds in the salad metaphor and settles on "everyone is...human, even with the flaws." There are no pure heroes, there are no pure villains...but that's not really that bad or big a deal. People are just people.

The books are a lot more stark about it.

...the show handles a lot of the book themes much better. We still have a lot of questions, but the questions that can reasonably be answered are, and it doesn't have any of the "well, I can tell you, but I won't for no reason" moments that filled the last few books. Learning the fate of the Quagmires or the Henchpeople doesn't change the stuff that happened to the Baudelaires.

The show also makes it pretty clear that while Klaus thinks setting a fire makes him just as bad as Olaf, that's not actually true, and Fernald spells it out in a way that didn't really happen in the books.

Edited by Zendervai on Apr 18th 2022 at 2:08:31 PM

The morals are good, but they're extremely prone to Unfortunate Implications. When taken out of context, "people are salads" is a quirky Koan. When used in the context Fernald said it in, it's some of the most lamentably deplorable manipulation I've ever heard. When you say "There are no pure heroes, there are no pure villains...but that's not really that bad or big a deal. People are just people," I don't know where you got that from. I didn't read anything in the episodes that would make me think they made it clear Klaus's mulling wasn't true.

This is... really the only interpretation of that quote, I think.

Fernald explicitly equates himself to Klaus in that scene: both of them set a bad fire for a good reason, but to Fernald, that doesn't make him an evil person. It just makes both of them guys getting by.

The Baudelaires abandon VFD by the end (ironically by setting a fire) because for the supposed 'heroes' their morals and standards are wackadoo and decide to live free from all that.

Well, I'll consider it. I'll be back after a while.

The VFD are also like...terrible heroes, generally. The most effective member is Jacqueline and she never manages anything major and gets pulled out of the game before it ends. Larry Your Waiter helps out but fails and Kit is the most personally helpful but is also unable to fix anything. VFD also developed the Medusoid Mycellium, apparently before the schism.

They get set up as noble flawless heroes...and then the members we meet are clueless Uncle Monty and nervous wreck Aunt Josephine. Jacqueline is actually a noble member, but her tactics are awful. Why the hell did she spend multiple days standing in a hedge maze when she could have actually intervened at any point?

And over the series, the henchpeople reveal more of an inner life and identities of their own, with the exception of Esme Squalor. And even she is capable of caring about someone.

The salad metaphor is an encapsulation of the theme of the series. People can be good and people can be horrible...but that's not everything that they are. Everyone has a story and an identity that you might not know about. It doesn't excuse the bad or bury the good, but things are complicated and tricky and you need to pay attention to what people actually do or say in order to judge or understand them. And you can't rely on a good person to swoop in and save you, you need to put in the work to save yourself.

Perhaps you're right. I'll definitely consider it.

Okay, it's a minor point, but the salad metaphor was in the books.

My hot take has always been that the books quietly think Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are being too hard on themselves and refuses to judge them or paint them as evil. They continue to be sympathetic protagonists even as they become more like the baddies.