OFFICIAL BOOK TWELVE DICUSSION THREAD.

[RockSunner]

"Burn down hotel," Sunny said, and all three Baudelaire orphans felt as if they were falling.

Brrr. Signal or no signal, warning or no warning, setting fire to a hotel full of blindfolded people is a wicked thing to do. I fear the Baudelaires have plunged into villainy.

In the matter of the mystery taxi driver in chapter 10, I agree that this is Lemony. Here are more references to his taxi work earlier in the story:

1) Just outside the hotel, a taxi driver gazed down at a 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. (p. 153).

2) There's a mention earlier of Lemony driving a taxi and being told to turn around to follow another car that crashed through a hedge.

This makes me think the taxi following Kit was driven by Lemony and his customer was Hugo (and probably Colette and Kevin as well). Why would he drive for them? "A taxi will pick up whoever signals for one."

This is a good, but dark turn for the series.

[Dear Dairy]

Perhaps Olaf interprets an accident caused by the Baud parents as "murder," in the same way that some people blamed V, K and S for Dewey's death. Here's an idea: Maybe the Bauds, Kit, and Olaf's parents were all at the opera. After Kit passed the poisoned darts to the Baud parent, that person tripped going down the Grand Staircase, the darts flew through the air, and landed on (in?) Olaf's parents. Far-fetched, I know, but I still prefer to think of the Baud parents as noble-ish, and hope the deaths were by misfortune rather than murder.

Here's another far-fetched idea about Kit's baby. After Kit's baby is born, the Bauds burn down Kit's mansion with her inside, take the baby, and raise him or her (or them) as a volunteer!

I did a little research on multiple births. Research indicates that a tendency to fraternal twins may run in families, but identical twins do not. It would be extremely rare (perhaps impossible?) that identical triplets would run in families. Of course, ASoUE is fiction, so Handler has his own set of natural laws. I'm pulling for Kit to have twins or triplets. However, she definitely shouldn't be water skiing and putting her child/children at that much risk!.

[negativenine]

Hi everyone.

It's been a long while, but I'm feeling rather withdrawn from the fandom and I just finished the new book, so I'm looking for some tupe of discussion.

I haven't read every single post on this thread, but I think I mostly got the gist.

I don't think being skinny and/or a smoker rules out Lemony in any way at all. Note the first illustration. The bowler-hatted man (Lemony Snicket, according to previous illustrations, usually wears a bowler) is smoking and holding a package... possibly a manuscript? Just a thought.

Is that too obvious?

Anyway, I also think the person's mother may have more importance than we give it. After all, issues of old family ties relating back to the good ol' days of VFD seem to come back rather often...

"Signaling" for a taxi may also have the smoke-signal meaning, of course. And isn't dropping something into the pond also a signal? Kit mentions it at the beginning. And mysterious taxi-man shows up right after Dewey falls in. Am I reading too much into this?

Also, anyone out there still for the Beatrice=Baudelaire's mother? It would be a nice alliteration...

EDIT: And most importantly, is swans still around?

[PJ]

"When your parents died," Kit said, "you were just a young girl, Violet." - Kit, Page 43.

Let's hope that Kit is either mistaken, or a liar.

[Volenteer Fictional Discusener]

I think she means that she was a young girl in terms of what she has had to deal with in her life rather then her actual age. especially what she said about her eyes. same goes for klaus and sonny (of sorts)

[Juan Roberto Montoya De Toledo]

volenteer said:

same goes for klaus and sonny (of sorts)

Was sunny's friend called Cher, by any chance?

[Celinra]

I think with the poison darts, I'm going to not judge on that just yet. Perhaps it was an accident, as someone mentioned earlier. But perhaps the events are completely unrelated, as well. This is Snicket, so it's never good to assume too much.

[Antenora]

It could have been an accident, but I don't disregard the possibility that the poison darts thing was planned, that the Baudelaire parents intentionally killed Olaf's parents. They may have decided to "fight fire with fire", and if they actually became villainous, it seems the Baudelaires are following in their footsteps.

anakin said:

Will we actually see Kit's baby though? If we assume (something we shouldn't actually do when dealing with the words "Lemony" and "Snicket") that we pick up a few days or months later in Book Thirteen, will Kit and the late Dewey's baby even be born? Was there any mention of how pregnant Kit was? Sorry for all these questions - it's my first post and if I've done anything wrong, please tell me and I'll edit it. Thank you.

Those are good questions; I was also wondering how long Kit had been pregnant, and therefore when her baby would be born. In the Chapter 2 picture, she looks quite pregnant indeed. And I think the Denouements are relatives of other VFD families, possibly related to the Quagmires because of the thing about triplets running in the family.

[hobo2312]

Kit seemed very opposed to "fighting fire with fire" in Book 11. I don't think that she would help in a scheme like this. Unless of course she was in the dark, or perhaps the fallout from this event changed her mind.

Notice that VFD members are particularly fond of gathering evidence. Perhaps the darts the parents were given were evidence of some sort, and the Olaf's parents were murdered was a "coincidence" of some kind (like what happened to the orphans in the village of VFD).

[PJ]

volenteer said:

I think she means that she was a young girl in terms of what she has had to deal with in her life rather then her actual age. especially what she said about her eyes. same goes for klaus and sonny (of sorts)

*heddesk*
No, I meant that Kit says that the Baudelaire's parents are DEAD. No survivors.

celinra said:

I think with the poison darts, I'm going to not judge on that just yet. Perhaps it was an accident, as someone mentioned earlier. But perhaps the events are completely unrelated, as well. This is Snicket, so it's never good to assume too much.

Perhaps they used the darts in self-defence, like, Olaf's parents attacked them, and they had to use the darts to save themselves, or others.

[Dante]

I'm still not sure if Lemony was the taxi-driver.
Evidence for is that his appearance fits, he has a musical instrument which needs to be carefully laid-out (Snicket has an accordian, which fits such a description), he has a sandwich (which could be the coded sandwich Lemony mentions in TSS), he wears the same sort of clothes and his features are hidden, and he's been following the Baudelaires.
Evidence against is that Lemony doesn't seem the sort to smoke, he's never mentioned being a taxi-driver, and something else I've forgotten.

I thought that the taxi following Kit had Justice Strauss as a passenger, as she says near the end that she'd been following the Baudelaires from the moment Mr. Poe drove them away from the theatre to the moment Kit Snicket drove them through the shrubbery. She might not have meant it literally, though (although she shows a fondness for taking things in such a way).

I found the quote about the Quagmires battling eagles and a villain with hooks for hands. Page 190-1:

But the Baudelaire orphans, of course, had no living parents, and their closest friends were high in the sky, in a self-sustaining hot air mobile home, battling eagles and a terrible henchman who had hooks instead of hands...

Edit: It's possible that Kit Snicket smuggled the poison darts to the Baudelaire parents after they'd been used, as evidence, and Olaf got his timing wrong. I prefer to think, though, that the Baudelaire parents murdered Olaf's parents. Either way, it's almost certainly the wicked thing that Fernald says the Baudelaire parents did.

[Flaneur]

I personally don't think Lemony was the cabdriver, but I think it is valid for other people to think it. He is obviously the man from tWW, whomever else he is - there isn't much reason he shouldn't Lemony in addition to being that man.
When I first read the appearance of driver in Chapter 10 I wondered if it was him, dismissed the possibility, changed my mind when the sandwich was mentioned, and then decided I believed otherwise. Then I looked through the other books to find if he was mentioned before.

What someone said about Kit's pregnancy being twins could very well be true, as fraternal twins DO run in the family: Kit is one herself.

I think the most disturbing thing is not necessarily that the Baudelaire parents may have murdered Olaf's parents, but that having done whatever they did with the poison darts Mrs. Baudelaire said it was the most interesting time she'd ever had at an opera and didn't want to forget it.

EDIT: Also, look at the Chapter Eleven picture on page 265. Does anyone else find the little boy with the bow tie and corsage being bumped into by the top-hatted man's hand familiar? Also possibly the girl with the bow behind him. They look rather like caricatures of the Baudelaire orphans, although I just looked and they're not the Lotsalucks.

[Gigi]

I just finished TPP last night. Wow! What a roller coaster ride! And then this morning I had to read through this whole thread to get caught up on all the theories. Forgive me if I repeat anything that's been mentioned, but I don't think anyone has brought up my two theories.

1. I discovered two of what I think are either mistakes, or possibly clues. On page 93, it says

"But she knew that she could not not hope for a calm and peaceful hush in the chaos of Hotel Denouement.."

While sometimes people do use a double negative to be emphatic, I don't think this sentence should have the second NOT. She simply can't hope for calm and peace. So we have an extra NOT.

Then on page 229, it says,

"Please" Sunny said, joining her sisters."

Obviously, Sunny doesn't have sisters. This is just to obvious to be a mistake. The appropriate word in this sentence should be SIBLINGS.

Now, if you put these two "mistakes" together, you get "NOT SIBLINGS". So, who isn't siblings? The Baudelaires, Quagmires, Snickets, Denouements??? What do you think?

2. My second theory deals with sibling names. Whenever we have sets of three siblings, one name always seems to not fit with the other two.

Sunny-Klaus-Violet (Violet doesn't fit)
Isadora-Duncan-Quigley (Quigley doesn't fit)
Frank-Ernest-Dewey (Dewey doesn't fit)

Not too sure about this one:
Kit-Lemony-Jacques (Jacques doesn't fit?)

I don't know if this is intentional, but I really seemed to notice it in this book. Anyone else think this might mean something, or are there any siblings I missed?

[Dante]

You've just reminded me of some extremely vague trivia I came up with relating to the Nameless Novel pictures. This may seem confusing, on account of it is.

In the first Not A Chapter, the Nameless Novel pictures are in order - drill, eye, disguise. Then we have chapters four, five, and six. Ernest and Frank met Violet and Klaus in four and five, but we don't know which. Dewey was the one in Chapter Six.

In the second Not A Chapter, then the pictures are in this order: Disguise, drill, eye. The last one has been placed first. Now, let's say that each picture refers to a chapter. From their original order, drill refers to C4, eye to C5, and disguise to C6. In their later order, they go like this: C6, C4, C5. Dewey was the Denouement sibling in C6, so what if the other two siblings appeared in alphabetical order? This would put Ernest in C4, giving Violet the harpoon gun so the crow would be shot down, and Frank in C5, giving Klaus the birdpaper so that the crow would be caught and its vital item would fall into the laundry room.

So, basically, my point is: Dewey was the sibling in Chapter Six, Ernest in Chapter Four, and Frank in Chapter Five, doing, in turn, a noble, a wicked, and a noble act.

Anyway, that's just some extremely complicated and weird trivia that I thought up - but it might explain why the Nameless Novel pictures weren't in the same order both times - they each refer to a sibling, and the first time they were in chapter order of appearance, and the second time alphabetical order of appearance.

Embedded Edit: I just re-read the book, and the Baudelaires realised that it was Frank who entrusted the harpoon gun to Violet, and Ernest who asked Klaus to hang the birdpaper out of the window... Which sort-of makes sense. I'm still slightly confused as to what their plan was. Anyway, I guess it looks like the pictures were out of order the first time round solely to illustrate that those chapters didn't have to be read in order. Meh. I guess my theory was needlessly complicated.

---

The boy with the bow tie looked familiar to me, too. I thought he might have been from the crowd in TCC, but I checked the pictures using MikeT's marvellous album, and he doesn't seem to be in them. (I expect some of the crowd from TCC were at the hotel, though.)

Once again, I've forgotten something I meant to add.

[champ103]

Finished it last night, but it was then too late to post here. Here's my theories and whatnot, assorted into chapters.

CHAPTER ONE
-I don't think the man in the first picture means anything, but it's just a little thing to add to the picture-I wonder what files he has for JS.

-I loved the Hotel Preludio mention. Do you think that it's also name after a volunteer family, like Hotel Denouement. Perhaps they could be rival hotels, and maybe it's where the 'bad' side of the organization can meet and report.

-Kit Snicket, as I predicted, was a pretty much useless character. I suspected before the book was released that she would be of no help, and I was right.

-I liked the fact she was pregnant-the next chapter confirms that it won't be long until she gives birth, but whether she ever will in the seires is not clear, and probably not important.

-The return of Justice Struass or Jerome Squalor was already confirmed by their mentions in the chapter, although I wasn't expecting both of them.

-'In the few minutes we've known Kit Snicket,' Violet said,' she's driven a taxicab into a shrubbery.' One of the many humorous lines in the book.

-The foreshadowing to chapter nine was exciting, and the whole 'La Forza Del Destino' scenario was also interesting. I didn't take the fact Kit slipped the Baudelaire Parents poison darts to mean anything at the time.


CHAPTER TWO
-Kit Snicket continued to be utterly useless, but we can now see that she's very pregnant indeed.

-The person who built the Hotel is a genius, I loved how it was built.

-I know PJ discussed the whole Quigley-steals-a-helicopter thing, but I disagree with it being surprising. We've already been given an insight into volunteers being wicked, and it's hardly a random evil act, but a bid to save his siblings, who it's been his work since to fire to find.

-Another unsurprising Quigley Quagmire note.

-‘a previous unknown sibling who was watching them at that time’ we now know that it was Dewey Denouement who was being discussed, but it excited and perplexed me at the time.

-The reflection thing was cool, but slightly annoying, since it kept making me lose my place in the book.

-“By the time you’re eating you second pastry, I hope your questions will be answered.” Heh, nice one Kit.

-I didn’t have a theory on the time of the schism, but I always suspected Olaf was the ringleader of it, and he was the one who caused it. We of course don’t know that the fact Kit was four years old when it happened dashed that out-not for now anyway-but if she’s about thirty years old, and Olaf is about fifty, then it works. Later mentions of the Baudelaire parents being older then Olaf makes me think that he is younger, or that the Baudelaire parents are very old.

-‘I felt so terrible that I vowed I would never leave my bed.’
-‘What happened?’ Klaus asked. Kit smiled.
-‘ I got hungry,’ she said. (This is the funny line of the chapter, for me)

-Some friends of mine assumed that Charles was the father of Kit’s baby, although I didn’t understand why. Maybe they didn’t read it properly, but in any case, this seems to suggest that Charles is in VFD, not on holiday, as he told Concierge Klaus.

-I found the Frank/Ernest thing funny at this point. It was like “Okay, this guys going to help you, but by coincidence, he has an identical twin who’s evil.”

-Kit certainly seems pessimistic about it all. Does she know something? Or is that just her manner, the way Phil is optimistic. I think that she’s probably had a brutal past, one I’m hoping to learn about in the final volume of the series.

-I wasn’t expecting Kit to leave for the rest of the story-I thought she’d stay and help, but apparently she’s too useless for that too. I didn’t find her a likeable character, as I did when she appeared at the end of The Grim Grotto. Does she know where Captain Widdershins was? Was she the mysterious woman in the Gorgonian Grotto? Whilst she’s not answered any questions, she’s raised a few.

CHAPTER THREE
-I was NOT expecting the Hotel Denouement to be a normal hotel at all. I was expecting like some mysterious, dark, quiet place with shady figures and volunteers lurking, but instead we got some rambunctious children playing hide and seek along the potted plants.

-When I read that the reception desk had 101 one it, I figures that it may have something to do with George Orwell and ‘Nineteen-Eighty Four’. Even though we soon realize that it’s to do with the Dewey Decimal System, do you think there’s a hidden meaning about Room 101, where you face your worst fears? I suspected that maybe something dramatic would happen at the desk. The events of chapter nine take place in the lobby, but not at the desk. And it’s labelled for the theory of philosophy, which dampened my hopes.

-Okay, my theories on Frank/Ernest, which I loved in this chapter. I suspect we’ll never know the truth about who they were talking to, but I think that they were talking to Frank first, then Ernest, then Frank again, who left them the Sebald Code, which I noticed and decoded straight away, agreeing about the ‘in’.

-‘a somewhat cranky Rabbi’. Later chapters show that this somewhat cranky rabbi doesn’t know Hebrew, or even the direction it’s read in. In The Carnivorous Carnival, Violet finds a robe in Olaf’s trunk, which she says would make her look like a rabbi. I think we can easily say that the somewhat cranky rabbi is a volunteer in disguise. Maybe something minor was happening in that section of the hotel that they were investigating.

-‘What’s the worst that could happen in a library?’ This reminds me of when Lemony Snicket declared that getting a few paper cuts in the same day was a really bad thing.

-I can’t find a particularly funny line in this chapter, although I think Sunny should have said ‘Frankfurter’ to mean something.

CHAPTER FOUR
-That robe sure does conceal Hugo’s hump-I first suspected that it was Kevin when I saw the picture, so I guess his disguise is either really good, or we’re seeing his back from an unhelpful angle. I’m glad we’ve seen a picture of the freaks, even of one of them in disguise.

-The ‘Not A Chapter’ was funny, but it made me angry about that triptych that we’d pondered over for ages, and we’d fitted into the main plot of the book. Turns out, all they’d given us was a really useless illustration. I would have like to have been given a couple of the real chapter pictures that really helped, like the one for Chatper Eleven, or Chapter Twelve.

-I liked the appearance of Geraldine Julienne again, even though she was-and I say this word for hopefully the last time-useless. She had some funny lines though, which was good.

-Carmelita is cool as a ball-playing cowboy superhero soldier pirate. I like the pirate bit especially. Funny that Esme seems touchy about Carmelita being called her daughter when she treats her like she’s the world.

-However did they get that boat up there?

-The sunoculars are very interesting, and apparently the truth should be kept from Geraldine Julienne. Or was it supposed to be kept from Concierge Violet, who I thought Esme had no idea was listening into the conversation.

-What happened to Esme’s harpoon gun from The Vile Village? I’m not sure how they work, but can you reload them with harpoons? The one from the Vile Village ran out, so that may explain it.

-The whole scene with Frank/Ernest/Dewey in chapters four, five, and sixz, gets a little bit tiring, though it’s very cool and effective. Does the clock actually chime ‘wrong!’? If so, that’s one cool clock.

More chapters coming as soon as I reread and write.