OFFICIAL BOOK TWELVE DICUSSION THREAD.

[Antenora]

I thought she'd use an inflateable raft; she said she'd pick one up at "a coral formation of dubious quality"--The Mediocre Barrier Reef.

[PJ]

tocuna said:

I thought she'd use an inflateable raft; she said she'd pick one up at "a coral formation of dubious quality"--The Mediocre Barrier Reef.

Hmmm.
"You must go to the Hotel Denouement, and Quigley must go to the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, and I must go to the coral formaton of dubious quality where an inflatable raft should be waiting. But if Quigley manages to construct a net big enough to capture all those eagles, and I manage to contact Captain Widdershins and have him meet me at a certain clump of seaweed, we'll be here on Thursday."

"...or if it would have been better for my sister had she decided to join the children at the Hotel Denouement instead of waterskiing toward Captain Widdershins, and, later, waterskiing away from him, or..."

Perhaps she's waterskiing to the raft? Or the raft is taking her to a motor boat on which she will waterski?

[Flaneur]

I stayed up until three AM reading this book. Every volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events proclaims itself to be the most horrifyingly distressing and distressingly horrifying installment, but I think that this time, it really is.

I thought that the man might be Lemony too, but I had this nagging in my mind - where have I seen him before? Tall, skinny man with a skinny cigarette... So this morning, I leafed through the books, and found him: The Wide Window cabdriver. Page 206:
"The town doesn't seem very crowded," Klaus remarked. I was hoping we might make some new friends here."
"It's the off-season," the cabdriver said. He was a skinny man with a skinny cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and as he talked to the children he looked at them through the rearview mirror."

There you have it. For added proof, the children, in tPP, think perhaps his voice is familiar, although it might just have been his unfathomable tone.

It is as dark as a crow flying through a pitch black night.

It is our duty to stand around in our pajamas in the name of justice!

I have too much more to say, but it's lost in the current upheavel of my mind. May come back later.

[PJ]

randompasserby said:

I stayed up until three AM reading this book. Every volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events proclaims itself to be the most horrifyingly distressing and distressingly horrifying installment, but I think that this time, it really is.

I thought that the man might be Lemony too, but I had this nagging in my mind - where have I seen him before? Tall, skinny man with a skinny cigarette... So this morning, I leafed through the books, and found him: The Wide Window cabdriver. Page 206:
"The town doesn't seem very crowded," Klaus remarked. I was hoping we might make some new friends here."
"It's the off-season," the cabdriver said. He was a skinny man with a skinny cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and as he talked to the children he looked at them through the rearview mirror."

There you have it. For added proof, the children, in tPP, think perhaps his voice is familiar, although it might just have been his unfathomable tone.

I think you might be on to something....
It would certainly explain a lot.
Tall, dark and smoking a cigarette isn't really Lemony's kind of thing, and he never mentioned being a taxi driver.
But this guy...he fits.
He's cool, I hope we meet him again.

[Flaneur]

Thanks. I knew there had to be another explanation - Lemony, skinny and smoking? No, it must have been someone else.
I doubt we'll see him again, but I doubted a bunch of things would occur and now a good deal of them have. The Hotel burning, for instance. Jerome Squalor being J.S.

Anyone want to try to project a timeline, given that Kit and Dewey were four years old when the schism occured? Note that Lemony was taken when he was approximately four, is younger than Kit and Jacques. Also, Mrs. Baudelaire knew Olaf when before seven, and she and her husband (probably) killed his parents during the Baudelaire children's lifetimes.

[PJ]

randompasserby said:

Anyone want to try to project a timeline, given that Kit and Dewey were four years old when the schism occured? Note that Lemony was taken when he was approximately four, is younger than Kit and Jacques. Also, Mrs. Baudelaire knew Olaf when before seven, and she and her husband (probably) killed his parents during the Baudelaire children's lifetimes.

I actually sent a theory to Tragedy about that.
Kit being 4 years old PROVES that Olaf didn't start the schism in the VFD Building Meeting Transcript.
It also shows that he was on the good side of VFD for quite some time.

Yeah, and I was thinking that perhaps Mrs. Baudelaire and Olaf are related somehow. Perhaps they are siblings, or perhaps they are cousins.

[Flaneur]

Maybe they are (related to Olaf). I don't know. I'm fairly certain now that the variously haired villainous people aren't his siblings now, though.

I thought about Olaf and the schism, too. "With each generation the schism got worse..." His parents were on the "bad" side of V.F.D. too. It seems like he might have been buffetted about by everything as much as the Baudelaires have been.
I put bad in quotation marks because I'm feeling rather ill-disposed toward all factions of the organization at the moment. I had drawn an eye on my ankle yesterday for the book, but I washed it off to avoid affiliation with such a dubious society.
I'm pretty mad that the Baudelaires kept getting considered volunteers in the first place. They did not know anything. I think it was wrong of Widdershins to put them to work, and wrong of Kit to send them on such a mission. I wondered for a while if what some have speculated is true, that this all - the whole series - really was some kind of messed up training thing. "Smoke and mirrors"...a force more mysterious, dangerous, and unfortunate than destiny... And Jerome and Justice Strauss to be considered volunteers, too. There's something very wrong about the whole thing.

Also, Quigley = volunteer. We KNEW he was lying. But the Bauds didn't even bat an eye when Kit suggested that he was, nor when it was implied that Isadora and Duncan were.

[Antenora]

I think of the Baudelaires as "honorary" volunteers, myself, but you're right--they really don't know anything.

"Smoke and mirrors" is sort of the theme of Book 12--all the imagery of reflections and backwards text, as well as the smoke of the fire and obscuring Sir's head.

I hope we learn more of Olaf's backstory in Book 13, or in some add-on book. I was under the impression that he started the schism himself, but apparently it went on several generations before that, and he merely got caught up in villainy. It seems that during the schism, both sides were doing criminal deeds, whether setting fires or killing each other with poison darts.

[PJ]

Indeed, my opinion of VFD was lowered quite a bit in this book.
I mean, how could their master plan rest on a COURT, of ALL things?
And it was all to chaotic, too disorganized.
I mean, why didn't they get rid of Ernest? Or why didn't Ernest get rid of Frank? Their presences just made things a whole lot more complicated.
And the poison darts...that rattled me quite a bit.
So did Quigley stealing a helicopter to go off and try and save his siblings.
VFD was supposed to be the one thing was all good and smart, but Kit...Kit was too weird and paranoid for me. I didn't really like her, unfortunately, though the fact that she was pregnant was cool.
And I HATED how we still didn't get much information AT ALL.
I mean, we got SOME information, but none of the answers we have been looking for since TGG. B13 better have SOME answers, or I'll go insane. And good night.

[Flaneur]

I think it's too late for me. I've gone insane.

I can't think of anything more to say at the moment, so I'll be off.

[chexfan2000]

I'm depressed. That book seriously depressed me.

Though, somehow, I loved the mention of the four children on the beach about to receive bad news. Like, just as the Baudelaire's adventures reach their conclusion, a new set of siblings is about to start on a series of events. Hopefully, theirs will be more fortunate.

[darciek]

Page 251 & 252:
"...any more than I know if it would have been better for me had I decided to continue my life's work rather than researching the Baudelaires' story..."

What life's work? Surely not the Snicket file....

I thought he might be hinting that he (Lemony) had been Dewey's "comrade" as mentioned on pg. 182:

"'For years,' [Dewey] said, 'while noble people wandered the world observing treachery, my comrade and I have been right here gathering all the information together...'"

Then, on pg.183-184, Dewey says, "It's been my life's work."

[Flaneur]

chexfan2000 said:

I'm depressed. That book seriously depressed me.

Me too.

I like the idea of Lemony being the comrade, except that I'm pretty sure that somewhere when Dewey was speaking of him/her he said "she." I think it may be Kit Snicket.
Do you think Kit and Dewey are married? On the one hand, this is a children's book. On the other hand, this is a Snicket book. Kit's last name isn't Denouement (as far as we know; she could just introduce herself as Kit Snicket because that's what she's better known as), but people can get married and not change their last names. I don't think it matters; it was probably left ambiguous on purpose. I doubt it'll be gone into.
I'd imagine it'd be difficult to find time to get married in these trying times, what with enemies looking to burn you at the wedding, and high judges being of dubious moral integrity.

I had a thought. Does anyone remember the pieces if the original Handler-written movie screenplay draft that was posted here and at a few LiveJournal communities? I can find a link to it if you don't; it's definitely worth reading. In this screenplay, there are three V.F.D. agents going around investigating the places the Baudelaires had been - the ruins of the mansion, Josephine's house, et cetera. One of the agents is a pregnant woman, and the others were a young boy and a young girl. What if this woman was Kit? I would think Daniel Handler would want to hold on to a good idea. The young people could be the children, the triplets, that she took from Prufrock Prep.

[darciek]

I like the idea of Lemony being the comrade, except that I'm pretty sure that somewhere when Dewey was speaking of him/her he said "she."

Oops, you're right. I missed that. Ah, well.

[Antenora]

I've heard of that original screenplay, but I didn't remember it involving a pregnant woman. Sounds quite interesting.

TPP was pretty depressing, particularly the way we find out that even the "noble" VFDers have resorted to killing. It's sort of disillusioning--as if we now know that the world is nearly empty of noble people.