A Series of Unfortunate Events and Other Books

or Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's VFD intense training
by Vaya

For those who are not familiar with this, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a 13-book series about the adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, as they find out things about the evil in the world and also about their own family. The narrator is Lemony Snicket, which is the nickname Daniel Handler uses to publish the books.
There are three things I love the most about this series and the rest of the books concerning VFD and Lemony Snicket as a character (All The Wrong Questions, 13 Words, The Beatrice Letters...). 
The first one is that the characters are not superheroes who save the world. The concept that "good always wins over evil" is not valid in this series. Sure, the good nature of the volunteers is mentioned a lot, however the "good guys" hardly ever prevail over the vilains. Best case scenario, they come out of the situation alive and contact their allies. They are in a constant war with evil, which they do not seem to win. Why? Because they are good and sensible and sensitive. The vilains will do anything to win, thinking only about themselves. The volunteers will even sacrifice themeselves for a good cause, but in those books, their sacrifice doesn't bring victory. It gives more time to the rest of the volunteers of the world to gather a Thursday in a safe place and talk.
The second thing is that any of the characters isn't born too smart, too beautiful, too evil, too skilled, too anything. They gained that knowledge and skill. They trained since they were young, and read books and books and books and books. (VFD is basically an organisation of really nice nerds, come to think of it). I mean, sure, Sunny is a toddler and knows how to cook and bites too hard, but she had to do something but stand in a corner and still, isn't a perfect cook, she just knows how to use wasabi is and some other stuff. However, Claus has read a lot of books from their library and Lemony Snicket himself has been trained until he was thirteen years old and still not as skilled as he was when he was older. The conclusion is that every great skill is acquiered after practice and practice and practice. There isn't any Harry who's a wizard, or a Percy who's a halfblood, or a Carrie who's a witch or a Stefan who's a vampire. All those heroes are born with it. Lemony Snicket was trained. The Baudelaires had their sort of training, in the really bad way, but they learned from experience. The rest I mentioned weren't trained to fly with a broomstick or control water. They just thought of it and ta-daa, there it is. (I'm not saying that those characters aren't good role models or that they didn't get better with practice. However, even at the beginning, they had something more than sharp teeth). I don't know how Violet became so skilled with machines, but I guess she wasn't born with gears in her brain (metaphorically speaking of course.)

The third and last thing I like is that we will never know the whole truth. Unless Daniel Handler wakes up one morning and writes a full explanation of everything and the answer to every question, from "What happened to the Baudelaires and Beatrice II after The End?" to "Who are/were Fiona's parents?" to "What does the S stand for in S. Theodora Markson?" to "Are the Quagmire triplets alive?" to "What does the sugar bowl have inside?" to "Why is the statue of the Bombinating Beast so important?" to "What is the Great Unknown?" to "Why is the Snicket File so important?" to...you get the point.(What if all those are all the wrong questions? 0_0) Actually it is really obvious that the information known to us are less than the information we do not about VFD. You can say "Sure, but the Harry Potter fans do now know the whole history of Hogwarts!". True, but the whole history of Hogwarts is not needed. In ASOUE, we need to know ten things, and we know the three.

So, that was it. That's why I love A Series of Unfortunate Events so much.

The World Is Quiet Here,
Vaya
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