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Post by Reba on Oct 29, 2015 21:49:31 GMT -5
however ludacris it may seem to you you got it all wrong like women in tuxedooooos
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Post by Linda Rhaldeen on Oct 29, 2015 22:36:44 GMT -5
If women in tuxedos is wrong I don't want to be right.
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Post by meinhard1 on Oct 29, 2015 23:57:44 GMT -5
In my reading the pacing did seem a bit quick, in parts -- I agree there. The ending could maybe "breath" more?
Snicket summoning the BB probably has symbolic meaning ... I enjoyed mulling it over, but the appearance of a fantastical beast so suddenly was maybe bit of a "bump." ...and probably more for some than others, as a matter of taste.
The interaction with his friends at the end 'clicked' for me. It seemed believable and made me ache inside.
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Post by Dante on Oct 30, 2015 3:42:49 GMT -5
I rather disagree about the pacing decisions, personally. The pace is rapid because sometimes events happen rapidly. If you'd slowed the events of Chapter Twelve down then not only would the impact be different, it would require very different narrative decisions to make it happen. I will agree that there is a lack of clarity on why Snicket decided to use the statue himself; whether he knew what would happen and had already planned on destroying Hangfire with the real creature. He often doesn't give much away on what he's really thinking or planning despite being the narrator, but there's a good argument that he did pre-plan in this instance - which is chiefly because every element of the finale is pretty clearly established and foreshadowed long beforehand (often several books in advance). You could call nearly all of it.
The only thing that doesn't really make sense, and rarely does in Snicket's writing, is the spatiality of the location; how the Bombinating Beast reached the train from Offshore Island so quickly, why the derailing injured absolutely nobody, how it was that the Bombinating Beast was reaching a claw towards the passengers but a single push from a child sent Armstrong Feint as far as the creature's mouth, how Lemony was able to point at the Clusterous Forest when the form of the Beast was filling the window. But Snicket's been bad at space and distance before - TEE, TGG, ?3... it's not a problem unique to this book.
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Post by gliquey on Oct 30, 2015 4:09:26 GMT -5
But Snicket's been bad at space and distance before - TEE, TGG, ?3... While slightly off-topic, could you just expand on this? I remember that in ASOUE there was a joke about Snicket having always been bad at directions because (I think) the Mortmain Mountains were said over the course of a couple of books to be in three contradictory places. Where were his other issues with space and distance?
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Post by Dante on Oct 30, 2015 6:09:31 GMT -5
With TEE, you'd be looking at basically anything to do with how long it takes to fall or climb up or down the elevator shaft and how the sums of time add up, although my real problem is that the plot requires Jerome to walk out of the apartment at one point without noticing that a rope of his neckties has been fastened to the doorknob and fed down an open elevator shaft. With TGG, we're looking at the internal structure of the Carmelita, with particular reference to the orientation of the craft as regards the scenes where the Queequeg enters and leaves the submarine, and also the relationship of the rowing room to other rooms outside of it, people creeping around the edge of the room, etc. With ?3, it's an entire library fitting into one hayrick and subsequently one cupboard.
Not sure about the Mortmain Mountains reference, though; it's not a new one on me, but I don't have an easy means of looking it up. I'll try something... okay, got it; it's quite funny, actually. In TCC, page 8 implies that the Mortmain Mountains are in the west, while page 198 says that the mountains are in the north, and page 274 suggests that they're in the east.
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Post by gliquey on Oct 30, 2015 10:40:03 GMT -5
With TEE, you'd be looking at basically anything to do with how long it takes to fall or climb up or down the elevator shaft and how the sums of time add up, although my real problem is that the plot requires Jerome to walk out of the apartment at one point without noticing that a rope of his neckties has been fastened to the doorknob and fed down an open elevator shaft. Ah, okay. Yes, I remember we've talked about this before. I'll have to look out for that next time I read TGG properly. I have a fairly good map of the Carmelita in my head but it probably doesn't match what the book says. Of course. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of buildings and maps, but yes, that is an issue with space. Sorry for the very vague reference, but I couldn't even remember whether it was in TCC, TSS or a combination of both. "sun slowly sank behind the distant and frosty Mortmain Mountains" "to the north, [Violet] could see the Mortmain Mountains" "we should ride east until we find Stricken Stream" If there was something indicating the mountains were in the south, that would be a full set.
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Post by Dante on Oct 30, 2015 12:20:00 GMT -5
Strictly speaking, depending on the shape of the mountain range, position within the Hinterlands, and relative location of the Stricken Stream, all three references aren't incompatible, exactly... but they don't look exactly planned.
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Oct 30, 2015 16:37:56 GMT -5
If there were a south, I'd definitely believe it'd been planned. Are we completely sure there isn't?
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Post by Dante on Oct 30, 2015 17:17:32 GMT -5
It doesn't look like it, but I found another reference to the Mortmain Mountains being in the north, on page 188. I think perhaps the best explanation is that the mountains are in the northwest, and the Stricken Stream runs down from it in a southeasterly direction, and Caligari Carnival is between these two angles.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2015 20:03:07 GMT -5
Well, if you go back and reread WSYSHL, there are some sentences that actually imply that Hangfire is Armstrong. Like, on pg 148, Ellington says: "...I found a package addressed to my father, in care of an organization I have never heard of." And the package read "Armstrong Feint c/o The Inhumane Society." And then of course, when Snicket went to visit Colonel Colophon and was whistling Ellington's toon, Colonel Colophon (AKA Hangfire) called out "Ellington?"
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Post by Dante on Oct 31, 2015 3:34:53 GMT -5
Yes, that was observed at the time. More or less everything Ellington recalls about her father in Chapter Nine and what we see in Hangfire's tower room in Chapter Eleven match up exactly. That was where it became definite.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 31, 2015 11:47:11 GMT -5
It doesn't look like it, but I found another reference to the Mortmain Mountains being in the north, on page 188. I think perhaps the best explanation is that the mountains are in the northwest, and the Stricken Stream runs down from it in a southeasterly direction, and Caligari Carnival is between these two angles. Unfortunately, from what it says in TGG it looks as if they hit the stream in the mountains, not in the plain, so the mountains must indeed be in the east. We should remember that Beatrice said 'you have a lousy sense of direction'.
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Post by Charlie on Nov 2, 2015 8:08:41 GMT -5
Why should the GU not bombinate? It needs to be making sound to be picked up by sonar anyway, and given that when it is in the fire pit or whatever it doesn't make noise, we could assume I guess that it doesn't bombinate 24/7 anyway, right? Also, given that Stain'd must be in some regard proximal to some sort of ocean, it'd be pretty simple for it to get into open sea. Also, I love the idea that so many main series events could be related to the whole BB/GU thing, like Monty investigating snakes/amphibians, and possibly even Anwhistle aquatics (in some capacity).
ATWQ also introduces a new answer to the age old sugar bowl conundrum! It could totally contain the BB statue, or even, given that it may have been destroyed or whatever, a recording of the BB statue being played (possibly even along with ~incriminating evidence~ or whatever), which would be enough reason for most people to want it, ie to be able to control the BB for whatever purpose.
Also, how's this for a terrible theory, what if the BB tadpoles or whatever Hangfire raised were released into Lake Lachrymose (for whatever reason, who knows), and so then like they had to release the leeches to kill them all, and make the Lake semi-usable. Or what if they still inhabit the lake, and Ike was devoured by a BB rather than leeches.
Do we ever find out what was in Caviar etc.?
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Post by Dante on Nov 2, 2015 9:34:31 GMT -5
Well, the real answer why the Great Unknown can't be the Bombinating Beast is because the idea of shaping something like a question mark, calling it "the Great Unknown," repeatedly emphasising that we'll never find out what it is nor what happens to people who are taken by it, and then later going on to say "oh yeah it's a big ugly sea monster" would be the grossest perversion of the original concept and everything it represented. I'd also suggest that it would be a betrayal of Lemony's intentions at the end of ATWQ for the Bombinating Beast to have been once again freed to roam around and eat whoever it liked, equivalent to him just dropping the statue and shrugging his shoulders rather than banishing it to the Clusterous Forest and hiding the statue out there with it. Also the Great Unknown doesn't have arms - oh, but doubtless they were cut off, or shed, or some other convenient off-screen contrivance for which we have no evidence whatsoever.
The sugar bowl absolutely cannot contain the Bombinating Beast statue, and if you try to fit a milk bottle into a real sugar bowl, you will find out why - and again, it would betray Lemony's intentions at the end of ATWQ. I will agree, though, that the Bombinating Beast would actually fill some of the more outlandish criteria of the sugar bowl's mysterious contents, so it's almost a shame that the theory is impossible - but it seems more likely that the mysterious missing item Kit stole from the museum is what's actually in the sugar bowl, which is precisely why that item is both mysterious and missing. The real prequel is happening off-screen and has nothing to do with ATWQ.
Regarding your "terrible" theory, it's actually a good one; the Lachrymose Leeches bear some resemblance to the larval Bombinating Beasts, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they're a related species or simply the minibeasts at a slightly more mature form. It seems likely that they only rarely reach the kind of phenomenal stature of the true Bombinating Beast, as evidenced by the fact that Hangfire was having to raise the creatures on a special diet, so that accounts for why no Beasts of a more powerful kind have since appeared, in Lake Larchymose or anywhere else. I've wondered on a couple of occasions if Handler's original idea for the series involved Lake Lachrymose.
It seems likely that Caviar contained information about the Bombinating Beast species, probably as a caution to caviar aficionados that "these are not fish eggs, do not attempt to cultivate them."
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