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Post by Hermes on Jul 1, 2013 11:28:33 GMT -5
The whole part about the ringing bells just screams "Sebald code." The fact that Frank/Ernest's long paragraph of dialogue both begins and ends with the word "ring", and that he seemed disappointed when Klaus didn't respond appropriately-- when you count by tens all the way through the message it even ends perfectly on the last word. Alas, it only translates to "We can bell example assistance associates processing make guests important", unless I'm doing something wrong. It just seems like the perfect place for it. Yes, it's Sebald code. And yes, you're doing something wrong . In Sebald code, the word after the ring is the first word of the code. I think you are starting by counting ten words, and taking the word after that as the first word of the code. I've noticed a lot of people thinking SC goes like that, when they compose their own messages in it. But in the actual examples in TUA, that's not how it works.
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Post by bandit on Jul 1, 2013 11:51:12 GMT -5
Ah. But still, Frank/Ernest says "ring" twice at the beginning. With the correct decoding, wouldn't it still be "signal instant number bell of the industry products out please important"?
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 1, 2013 13:20:53 GMT -5
The "attack in midair" sounds pretty awful to me; I don't think it's other people attacking them, and that's the only thing that could make it slow or repetitive. I imagine it's either the crows from TVV following them (unlikely) or the Sinister Duo's eagles (more likely). Well, that seemed to be thier plan at the end of TSS, yes. Well, of course. But then there would be little plot... Oops, I've no idea. Let me try and find out. ...Okay. Bookblast came after TPP and contained answers to a series of ten unseen questions which appeared to give out a bit more information about TPP but which HarperCollins probably just made up themselves. Bookblast came out before TPP and took the form of an interview with Handler in which he prevaricated at length in revealing any information about the book (the big gimmick of the promotional campaign of which was that absolutely nothing was revealed about it) but then let slip a lot at the end. Foolish of us not to have archived this material more efficiently (although you'd have thought being on LemonySnicket.com would've given it some longevity), but we're a bit more on the ball now. If you Google the Bookblast2 URL you can find some responses to it on 667 and elsewhere; if you Google the Bookblast URL you can find a copy of its contents here. Oh, wow. thanks And yes. I personally keep and save and date every single thing and interview i can --Chapter Three-- "I can't tell if you are in or enemies please respond" For Reference - asoue.proboards.com/thread/25192/dewey-decimals-sixteenThe marks on the bench reference BB:RE. I’m interested why the bench is marked 128. I assume some kind of symbolism, but I’m not clever enough to work it out. I think we begin with frank, then Ernest, and then frank comes back and delivers the sebald code. --Chapter Four-- I remember reading this book for the first time in the kitchen, and at this point being unable to decide what order to read the chapters. I think I read Sunny, then Violet, and then Klaus. I’m interested in what other people have done… Geraldine Julienne is named for the first time in the series. “special hors d’oeuvres” - What are these? How does Esme know about how the sugar bowl will be delivered? More on this later JS - I assume the JS Geraldine is talking about if Jerome. Im interested in why Esme thinks Geraldine would know about the REAL JS 'the occasion may require you to shout "Please turn around! I think they've driven through those hedges!" - If ive got my facts straight…..this could be JS in lemony’s taxi from the first chapter. --Chapter Five-- Sir is wearing a green suit…did he wear that in TMM? I don’t remember. However this echoes VFD… Sir and Charles only have one bed. This has been pointed out before, but . However I think Sir is the sort of person who would make Charles sleep on the floor. And now another JS….I’m unsure how this fits in. I think this must be a good JS.. Maybe justice Strauss? How did Charles know that they could be coming by submarine? Was it Olaf, shortly after their escape? That could fit. That would also make sense if Olaf was the villous JS how checked in earlier. You told me you never heard from that organization again - so unless LSL built the hotel last, they didn’t build all of the VFD family mansions. Shame. “I didn’t… until now. You’re not the only one who gets notes from this fellow J.S. I’m invited to a party he’s hosting on Thursday night - Okay, so Olaf being this JS fits. This chapter shows, to me, that Charles and kit would get on well. And now we have Ernest, but a question, Why is he only placing the bird paper now? I wonder If on first reading anyone found the chemist suspicious? And is the chemist costume an amalgamation of the Forman costume in TMM? --Chapter Six-- was a man who had fired me from a job playing accordion in his orchestra after only two and a half performances of a certain opera.” - Ah, I had not noticed this before, but I assume this means lemony was playing in the orchestra at the performance. The fact there Nero does not recognise sunny is…slightly unbelievable. “As a teacher, I don’t earn enough money to purchase any valuables, so I had to resort to a life of crime.” - Of course a complete retcon, but so brilliantly pulled off I don’t care. Okay, I’ve decided I don’t like hal. I find him a bit annoying. “With a sigh, [Nero] moved his water glass off his placemat and onto the wooden table, where it was sure to leave a ring” - A nice touch Im looking forward to dissecting the start of chapter seven J Which I will do now lol --Chapter Seven-- The opening of this chapter is very incredible. J “On the ninth story, a woman was suddenly recognised by a chemist, and the two of them had a fit of giggles.” - The chemist is Collette, and the woman could be….Esme? I think it wold be cooler if ti was Carmelita, but then I wouldn’t call her a woman, as she’s to young. Well actually I would call her a brat regardless of her age. Its been suggested it could be the figurine-seller. That would be awesome. In the basement, a strange sight was reported by an ambidextrous man who spoke into a walkie-talkie.” - I assume Kevin (we know olafs troupe uses walkie-talkies), and seeing Sunny and the VFDoor would be the strange sight. “On the sixth story, one of the housekeepers removed a disguise, and drilled a hole behind an ornamental vase in order to examine the cables that held one of the elevators in place, while listening to the faint sound of a very annoying song coming from a room just above her.” - Ah, I thought the ornamental vases would later have some consequence.. I had forgotten them when I read the last fre chapters. So this is, of course the incident seen in the not-a-chapter illustrations. However, it state she examined the cable, not that she cut it. Why would she simply wish to examine it? I assume she could later cut it, however I think she was seeing if they had ALREADY been cut or not. Also I’ve heard the theory the annoying music id the VFDisease. This seems pretty darn cool. “And in the coffee shop” - So whoever this is does not have a VFD Tattoo. I thought this was JS. Hm. I don’t know… The banker in room 174 - Mr Poe, of course, and to find none is on lie….this recalls TCC / TUA and the telephone wires incident… The doily for which they had been searching for more thn nine years - A VFDoily? Surely that much time hasn’t passed in the series “Just outside the hotel, a taxi driver gazed down at the funnel spouting steam into the sky, and wondered if a certain man with an unusually shaped back would ever return and claim the suitcases that still lay in the trunk” - Hugo, of course, must have been the passenger. However, was he the only passenger? That’s what this sentence seems to hint at. Why would the trio of freaks be split up? “…and on the other side of the hotel, a woman in a diving helmet and a shiny suit shone a flashlight through the water and tried to see to the murky bottom of the sea.” - Te swimming woman from TGG, now looking to see if the sugar bowl is in the bottom of the pond. 'a long, black automobile took a woman away from a man she loved' - This make me think of olaf. Did anything like this happen with Lemony / Beatrice. We don’t know if Beatrice was the person lemony said goodbye to in ?1, but god if she has been taken away in a long black automobile…. Ah well, we can only dream! The four children break the pattern of triplets….but also hints towards a fourth Baudelaire child. Which reminds me of something I meant to say in chapter two, I don’t think the exact wording fits, but on the ;’fourth unworn sailing’ part, it could be argued that kits unborn daughter was watching? “If the crows drop a heavy object like that… it will fall straight down into the pond.”- of course, Klaus is correct. The plan is pretty terrific. I can see no way it could have gone wrong (and of course it didn’t) Dewey lives in the clock, I assume? Very like the movie Snicket…. Random Fact : After seeing the film, my nan thought Klaus was lemony Snicket. the rope-climbing trainer - Is he living in the mortmain mounting headquarters? Interesting…
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Post by Dante on Jul 1, 2013 14:46:08 GMT -5
Chapter three: I think Frank appears first, and then Ernest. I'm not going to reread the sequence, but my recollection is that I think it's Ernest-Frank-Ernest. I think this was based on some little clues, and also on which was the most polite and helpful. "I can't tell if you are in or enemies please respond" Funnily enough, if you shifted one word, it would be "associates or enemies" - and if you shifted another word, it would be "in or out"... that's my recollection, anyway. I'd have presumed numerical order; that's the order I went in. But I'd definitely be interested in the experiences of non-numerical readers; reading Sunny's chapter first must be particularly illuminating or confusing. Handler seems to forget here that her name has never actually been spoken in the main series, save at the very end of TGG. In other words, the Baudelaires shouldn't know that this woman is Geraldine Julienne. Somebody once proposed that a secondary purpose of the attack on the crows was so that, at the party, the volunteers could be asked to literally eat crow... I imagine you'd have to refer to the list of elements in the V.F.D. Disguise Kit in the U.A. Ditto. TPP engages in some great misdirection on this front. I'm not sure it actually occurred to suggest that Dewey actually lived in the clock, but it's a good idea. And various people ending up becoming Lemony Snicket, including Klaus, Olaf, and Quigley, had been theories at points in time...
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Post by Hermes on Jul 1, 2013 15:37:02 GMT -5
Mister M and Dante: Mr Poe mentions Geraldine Julienne at the end of TGG.
Bandit: so the first ring is the signal, and the second is the start of the message? Well, I have to accept that that's a possible way of reading it. Perhaps a secret second message? But bear in mind that in the original Sebald code used in the films, the starting signal is not the word 'ring' but the actual ringing of a bell. So here 'Ring!. Ring!' can stand in for the ringing of the bell.
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Post by bandit on Jul 1, 2013 16:57:44 GMT -5
I'm not going to reread the sequence, but my recollection is that I think it's Ernest-Frank-Ernest. I think this was based on some little clues, and also on which was the most polite and helpful. The last person to appear, I think, has to be Frank, since he would be the only one who knows Sebald code. The second person to arrive also says the sinister things, like asking about whether they thought the hotel was safe, and reading the "Baudelaires on the run" article from The Daily Punctilio. so the first ring is the signal, and the second is the start of the message? Well, I have to accept that that's a possible way of reading it. Perhaps a secret second message? But bear in mind that in the original Sebald code used in the films, the starting signal is not the word 'ring' but the actual ringing of a bell. So here 'Ring!. Ring!' can stand in for the ringing of the bell. Of course, it would be wrong in reading it like the first ring was the start of the message. I was saying that, by saying "ring" twice at the beginning, it makes it a bit confusing.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 2, 2013 9:52:08 GMT -5
I'd have presumed numerical order; that's the order I went in. But I'd definitely be interested in the experiences of non-numerical readers; reading Sunny's chapter first must be particularly illuminating or confusing. I sadly don’t recall to well the experience of my personal reading order, but I think sunny is definitely the most interesting of the three chapters. However,….maybe the Baudelaires saw a picture of her attached to one of her articles at some point? I could go with that working. Urm….either this needs more explaining or that’s just plain weird. Oh, I just assumed he lived there. I hope so anyway. And yes, I think any male character at some point has been theorized as lemony Snicket.
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Post by bandit on Jul 2, 2013 22:00:11 GMT -5
Not a chapter: As a little kid reading this in 2005, I didn't understand why anyone would want to read the Baudelaires' experience in any order other than the order they are printed in. Now I see that mixing them up is actually very helpful in regards to perspectival reading. The illustration for the not-a-chapter is also very interesting. I assume that the man on the right is actually the woman on the left in disguise, because of the hat and mustache lying next to her. The center picture is then the woman looking into the hole she drilled and seeing the torn elevator ropes. I don't know if they ever comes into play in the rest of the book, though. --- Chapter four: I think it is Frank who meets with Violet in this chapter. A villain would have no concern about keeping a weapon safe. Submitted without comment: --- Chapter five: Sir and Charles are adorable. Klaus probably is meeting with Ernest. VillainousFD members seem to be the only people concerned about intercepting the sugar bowl bird; using fly paper to do so also seems like a not very well thought out idea. --- Chapter six: I love it when LS focuses on Sunny doing things by herself. For a baby, I still think she is one of the most dynamic characters in the second half of ASoUE, which is part of the reason why TSS is so good. I'd like to see an orchestra that included an accordion section. The person Sunny meets with is, of course, Dewey.
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Post by Charlie on Jul 5, 2013 9:04:30 GMT -5
Am I the only one who, on reading TPP didn't immediately go "oh, look, Sir and Charles... GAY COUPLE". It seems as if it was pretty common knowledge...
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Post by Hermes on Jul 5, 2013 9:44:10 GMT -5
Am I the only one who, on reading TPP didn't immediately go "oh, look, Sir and Charles... GAY COUPLE". It seems as if it was pretty common knowledge... I think it's TBL which definitely gives it away - the clues in TPP are still ambiguous. Yes, their behaviour is pretty weird if they aren't a couple, but then, many people's behaviour is weird in Snicketland.
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Post by Charlie on Jul 5, 2013 21:10:24 GMT -5
Okay. I have yet to read TBL, so that would explain it.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 6, 2013 2:21:16 GMT -5
OMG BURN HIM NOW FOR HIS CRIMES!
No, seriusly, you should join in TBL re-read then. I wont be able to make many notes, so i would appreciate the help.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 6, 2013 15:56:19 GMT -5
--Chapter Eight--
“and the surviving members of the family” - I take this to mean at least one of frank and Ernest have survived, given loafs later comment THAT the has wiped out the rest of the family. Of course, this could just be me misreading lemony meaning here.
“Even the efforts of a volunteer fire department cannot save most of the wildlife from certain death” - I don’t think lemony literally means that that fire happened, but I would love it is that was so.,
“As the Baudelaire orphans followed the mysterious man out of the hotel and through the cloud of steam to the edge of the reflective pond, the denouement of their story was fast approaching, but the end of their story still waited for them, like a secret covered in fog, or a distant island in the midst of a troubled sea, whose waves raged against the shores of a city and the walls of a perplexing hotel.” - The only real bit of foreshadowing to the next book.
“Frank and Ernest get all the attention… They get to walk around the hotel managing everything, while I just hide in the shadows” - Dewey seems pretty resentful about his life. Surely he could simply reveal himself?
“That’s what I don’t like about V.F.D… All the smoke and mirrors.” - Kind of ironic, as Dewey is most certainly a smoke mad mirrors guy due to the fact his very existence is unknown,.
“I was four years old when the schism began… But one night, just as our parents were hanging balloons for our fifth birthday party, my brothers and I were taken.” - That whole idea of children being taken still gives me the creeps. Just saying
020 - Library and Information Sciences
“The woman who took me said that one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. And she took me to a place high in the mountains, where she said such things would be encouraged.” - Edith Wharton
“They perished that very night… in a terrible fire.” - Of course, this puts the Baudelaires and dewy very much close together. I feel, particularly by the end of this chapter, that Dewey would have been the best guardian had he not been harpooned.
“Why weren’t we taken, like you?” “You were taken into the custody of Count Olaf.” - Well, no, not really. Well, I suppose they were, but not in the way violet is asking. Buy violet asks a good question - why weren’t her and her siblings taken?
“why didn’t anyone tell us what was going on?“ 'That's the wicked way of the world' - hm, that is not really a proper answer dewy, come on!!! But yet gain, Klaus raises a good question. Why did nobody just come and tell the Baudelaires about VFD and what was happening?
'Volunteers and villains alike know that the last safe place is the Hotel Denouement.' - Which of course makes it unsafe.
“but no one has ever questioned why the sign is written backward.” - not ever? Wow. These volunteers / villains must really take things as they come is the world of UE
“Tears fell from the eyes of the orphans - all four of them” - another use of orphan referring to an adult.
“…I am crying as I type this,” TPP was, for a very long time, my least favurite book. Im unsure why this is, but I found quite a lot of it, especially towards the end, rather confusing. And so, except for the two rot here times I read it when I first got it (and I would have been…8, at that time?, I don’t think I had ever read it again until last year. So many pieces and elements of the plot were forgotten to me, mainly the taxi driver sequence, and this passage here. I think because of this, I like those two sequences more than any other in the whole series. But when I read this book last year, I was reading it aloud. For some reason, last year, I began reading the entire series to my Nan, and it was great fun. But…I had trouble reading this particular moment. I don’t know if imp particularly over-emotive or anything, but I had to stop reading because i started to cry when I read this, because i found it so very touching. So lemon is crying as he types, and I am crying as I read. Very well done.
“and it is not because of the onions that someone is slicing in the next room, or because of the wretched curry he is planning on making with them.” - Hal?
“We can ask for a new watercolour set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one” - I think its bit’s likd that that make me love this so much. Because its so true.
“You are noble enough.” - this is something I wish wish wish wish wish was brought up again at a certain point of the end…
“Olaf wont dare unleash the Medusiod Myceulium unless her gets his hands on the sugar bowl” - which suggest the sugar bowl is some kind of anti-medusoid mycelium.
--Chapter Nine, Part One--
Thank GOD Olaf no longer has that laugh
“You can’t just grab children as if they were pieces of fruit in a bowl” - Ironic, as that is something VFD DOES do
“a box of poison darts. Why don’t you ask him, orphans? Why don’t you ask this legendary librarian about that fateful evening at the opera?” - I feel Dewey was somehow involved, rather than just having learnt about it. I do wonder why Olaf would assume the Dewey (a person he is unsure even existed up until a few pages ago) would know about this.
“Food and drink are the most important aspect of every social occasion, and our in recipes—” Ctow?
“Hidden somewhere in this hotel is one of the most deadly fungi in the entire world. When Thursday comes, the fungus will come out of hiding and destroy everyone it touches! At least I’ll be free to steal the Baudelaire fortune and perform any other act of treachery that springs to mind!” - Ah, because by killing all the noble people of VFD, there will be no ofifcal police to arrest him or anything? I think after a mass murder like that, olaf would be much more….hunted. Although I suppose he could just kill them as well.
“You won’t dare unleash the Medusoid Mycelium… Not while I have the sugar bowl.” - As I said before, this suggest the contents of the sugar bowl is an anti-medusoid Mycelium
“I could never be a noble person… I have a hump on my back.” “And I’m a contortionist… Someone who can bend their body into unusual shapes could never be a volunteer.” “V.F.D. would never accept an ambidextrous person… It’s my destiny to be a treacherous person.” - This is the sort of thing that makes the freaks, and all of olafs troupe, so interesting to read.
“Then you know all about the sugar bowl… and what’s inside. You know how important that thing was, and how many lives were lost in the quest to find it. You know how difficult it was to find a container that could hold it safely, securely, and attractively. You know what it means to the Baudelaires and what it means to the Snickets… And you know… that it is mine.” “Beatrice stole it from me!” I have my own theory as to what is inside the sugar bowl, despite what I may have said in this thread previously, and I don’t wish to unveil that theory now, at least to its full extent, as the entirety of my AnotherSOUE is about explaining the contents fo the sugar bowl (despite the fact my fic may seem more about the great unknown… it isn’t, it’s a fic about the sugar bowl), so if I reveal my theory to much here, it will ruin the fic J However…going with my theory, that what is contained inside the sugar bowl is not a physical object as such, but a secret, contained in a way that cannot be written down, but is still something physical. The secret was lost for many years, and the secret explains how to save many lives, but when the secret was discovered, it was put inside the sugar bowl. The Bowl itself belonged to esme until it was stolen by Beatrice, but at that point the secret was contained within it. However, now the most important thing is the bowl itself, and not what it contains, as (in my fic), the sugar bowl has been empty for some time. However the bowl is still important for other reasons. Basically, what im saying is, this seems to fit well with my idea of what I think the sugar bowl is, and what I have based most of my story around.
Oh, and before anyone says, its not just a secret written on a bit of paper. That would be boring
Goodness this has taken a long time (2 ½ hours !) so I will conclude this chapter tomorrow. I hope to try and finish this book by next Friday, before moving on to TBL.
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Post by Dante on Jul 6, 2013 16:09:52 GMT -5
“and the surviving members of the family” - I take this to mean at least one of frank and Ernest have survived, given loafs later comment THAT the has wiped out the rest of the family. Of course, this could just be me misreading lemony meaning here. Of course, it is worth noting that Olaf is demonstrably wrong in this very scene about having wiped out all of the Denouement family save Frank and Ernest: Dewey is standing right in front of him. Could any other survivors have hidden themselves? It would probably be inadvisable and jeopardise the security of the catalog. Dewey doesn't have to like all aspects of his job to respect the necessity of it. That's always been a bit of an odd statement, but I guess you could take it this way: If Olaf hadn't come along and taken guardianship of the Baudelaires, they'd have ended up in the custody of a better volunteer, like Monty or Josephine, and things would have been very different. It's possible that their connection to Olaf meant other volunteers couldn't be sure they could trust the Baudelaires. The Quagmires tried; Jacques tried. For others, maybe they were just biding their time. Josephine probably wanted nothing more to do with the organisation, but Monty might have felt a bit more free to speak once in remote Peru. And yet V.F.D. has a whole factory devoted to producing horseradish, and there's no implication that either it or wasabi are anything but commonplace. Perhaps it's more that Olaf will never risk any chance of losing the sugar bowl as its contents are so much more important to him than the power to kill everyone. I think there's a suggestion that the only people organised and intelligent enough to oppose Olaf are V.F.D.; the ordinary authorities simply can't keep up with him. Interesting and funny, of course. Agreed. The contents are clearly meaningful in themselves.
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Post by Charlie on Jul 8, 2013 21:43:29 GMT -5
“I was four years old when the schism began… But one night, just as our parents were hanging balloons for our fifth birthday party, my brothers and I were taken.” - That whole idea of children being taken still gives me the creeps. Just saying I just had a thought. What if hanging balloons is a VFD tradition-ey thing (see: Violet's Fifteenth Date). Like, maybe Something Starting with V, For Dewey, or something. IDK. Just a thought. “Hidden somewhere in this hotel is one of the most deadly fungi in the entire world. When Thursday comes, the fungus will come out of hiding and destroy everyone it touches! At least I’ll be free to steal the Baudelaire fortune and perform any other act of treachery that springs to mind!” - Ah, because by killing all the noble people of VFD, there will be no ofifcal police to arrest him or anything? I think after a mass murder like that, olaf would be much more….hunted. Although I suppose he could just kill them as well. Olaf could totally be talking about Thursday Caliban here. Like he's waiting for Thursday Caliban to arrive, for whatever reason. I see no reason to think otherwise Also. What if the reason everyone wants the sugar bowl is not for what it contains, but for the fact that it has the ability to contain one thing "safely, securely and attractively". For example, the MM: Maybe the Mycelium is difficult to contain, and in nearly every container would get out and kill everyone, so they developed a sugar bowl to keep the MM in. And so maybe the reason both sides of VFD want the sugar is so that they can store something volatile (eg. VirtuousFD want to lock the MM inside of the sugar bowl once and for all, and VillainousFD want to lock away some incriminating evidence once and for all. IDK, just a thought.
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