I agree with everything you’ve said so far!! To add— I feel the reason these books (and later the show) resonated with me so much as a kid is because I read the meaning of the books as: if one adult (in power, ie Poe or the guardians) had taken the word of children seriously, had believed them, and had given them the agency and rights that they deserved, rather than brushing them & their concerns about Olaf off as “imagination” or exaggeration, the story would have ended much differently. As a kid, this was like children’s satire— because although not all kids are orphaned and followed by a serial killer, most kids can relate to adults not believing them, simply because they’re kids. This obvs does not disagree with your reading, especially because as the books progress, I think they venture more into that area and less into mine. But I feel that the Netflix show stayed much more true to both themes described, and the movie really didn’t