Never got into these books as a kid, but I was friends with people who were into them. The common thread was that the kids who liked them a lot were bright kids who knew they were bright and would stop at nothing to ensure that everybody knew how bright they were. While they didn't necessarily always end up in the top of the class, they did better than most with relatively little perceived effort. Indeed, they tended to exude apathy for any subject they weren't very much interested in but made sure to do well enough to maintain the perception that they were simply more clever than their peers. In their minds, they had already surpassed the adults in their lives intellectually, and these books played right into that fantasy. Eventually, as they got older, the curtain of life was slowly peeled back a bit to reveal that life is more difficult and complex than they thought. They realized that maybe either they aren't as smart or everybody else isn't as dumb as they believed, and the fantasy ASoUE played into so well was shattered.
I did watch the Netflix series. It was entertaining, but anything more than the three seasons they did would be tedious.
slappythechunk t1_j929zj1 wrote
Reply to My thoughts on “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” by AggravatingStudy2084
Never got into these books as a kid, but I was friends with people who were into them. The common thread was that the kids who liked them a lot were bright kids who knew they were bright and would stop at nothing to ensure that everybody knew how bright they were. While they didn't necessarily always end up in the top of the class, they did better than most with relatively little perceived effort. Indeed, they tended to exude apathy for any subject they weren't very much interested in but made sure to do well enough to maintain the perception that they were simply more clever than their peers. In their minds, they had already surpassed the adults in their lives intellectually, and these books played right into that fantasy. Eventually, as they got older, the curtain of life was slowly peeled back a bit to reveal that life is more difficult and complex than they thought. They realized that maybe either they aren't as smart or everybody else isn't as dumb as they believed, and the fantasy ASoUE played into so well was shattered.
I did watch the Netflix series. It was entertaining, but anything more than the three seasons they did would be tedious.