Thread for old people, also known as "Remember when...?"

[ryantrimble457]

Remember back in the waiting-on-the-book days, we were CONVINCED book 12 was going to be called "The Tumbling Towers"?

What other memories do you have of long ago, when we were waiting for the whole series to appear?

[B.]

If you want to feel really old, I was 8 years old when The End was published, and as of next year I'll have been on 667 for 10 years.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

It is a pity that my experiences were very different from yours. I can only say that when I finished reading the 13 asoue, I went searching the internet and found out that TBL had been released. But there was no translation into Portuguese. And there was never an officer. As I didn't have internet at home, I kept going to the Lan house (usually for schoolwork) and took advantage of opportunities to research the subject. Until I discovered a group that started translating (fan work) TBL. I was following the blog, but they stopped for a long time. And then I had to make several theories, until I found a translation done by LSTUA fans. My head exploded.

[Dante]

The official Book the Twelfth promotional website, TheNamelessNovel.com, did its level best to lead us up the garden path on TPP. So much emphasis on elevators and safety mechanisms, and none of it relevant. On similar lines, the discussion over exactly what "The Grim G" would be completed as - The Grim Graveyard, The Grim Gameroom? Some of this speculation was directly referenced in the book itself.

Looking back also on the days when people argued furiously against the idea that Beatrice was the Baudelaire mother or that V.F.D. stood for Volunteer Fire Department. It was too obvious for them; they had to insist on something they felt equalled their cleverness.

[Hermes]

I'm not sure where I fit into this thread, since although I am notorious for being Old, I am not quite Old enough to have been around when the books were appearing. But I'm interested to hear about The Tumbling Towers. That quotation, if I remember rightly, is used in TPP, but how was it known about in advance?

[Dante]

People used to circulate a lot of "rumoured" titles for future books, by which was meant that someone had dreamt them up and they then got repeated often enough that people believed they possessed some form of credibility. That TPP ended up vaguely nodding towards "The Tumbling Towers" through, I think, a Richard Wright quote is more of a coincidence; as opposed to the various G.G. expansions from TGG, which were very much playing with audience speculation. See also: The Final Fight, The Final Fires, The Vicious Victory, The Zucchini Zone et al.

[R.]

I wasn’t around at the time, but by browsing the site I have discovered that a long time ago a bunch of nutters tried to establish VFD in the real world.

[Marlowe]

"The Tumbling Towers", really? Yikes. That does, quite morbidly, remind me of an essay on TPP I found reposted on this site in which the writer makes a case for the book being pro-Bin Laden apologia.