|
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 10, 2020 17:18:14 GMT -5
I was unable to come up with any plausible (or implausible) theory to answer that question. Maybe I just don't understand. My mind went through the books with blank pages, but I didn't get past this point. Can someone help me please?
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Mar 11, 2020 9:27:41 GMT -5
It looks like Daniel Handler didn't know either, as in ?4 he retcons it to be that Hangfire was actually trying to frustrate Cleo's research:
-?4, p. 169
Just to remind ourselves of what the situation was in ?2:
-?2, pp. 245-246
Edit: For what it's worth, in The Stain'd Myth Murders I proposed that obtaining invisible ink was merely a ruse and that Hangfire was actually interested in Cleo's secret ingredient.
|
|
|
Post by Hermes on Mar 11, 2020 11:26:09 GMT -5
I think this can probably be made coherent, at an in-story level (which is not to imply that DH had thought it through). On the one hand he wants to put Cleo out of action, so that she does not use her research to save the town: on the other, it makes sense for her to continue her experiments as blue-skies research, since there are certainly ways in which workable invisible ink might be useful to villains.
|
|