Talk:V.F.D.

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Contents

[edit] C. M. Kornbluth

Maintainer of this page may wish to note that Cyril M. Kornbluth (usually known as C. M. Kornbluth) is a well-known science fiction writer, and to create a disambiguation page as appropriate.

I've now changed C.M. Kornbluth into a disambiguation page (it was redirecting to Cyril M. Kornbluth), and changed every link to C.M. Kornbluth throughout Wikipedia into a link to Cyril M. Kornbluth. The reference in the V.F.D. article is no longer a link, but if anyone wants to write about Snicket's C.M Kornbluth, they could turn it back into a link and change the text of the disambiguation to read something like "This is an article about the Lemony Snicket character - for the science fiction author, see Cyril M. Kornbluth." TheMadBaron 00:08, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I think the two are meant to be the same person - indirectly, Snicket claims a lot of real people and other fictional characters as volunteers. (Unsigned post)
I think that was not the best move. When one of the two meanings is clearly the principal one, as it is here, the title ("C.M. Kornbluth") should refer to that meaning. The Lemony Snicket character does not even have an article. I have arranged that both C.M. Kornbluth and C. M. Kornbluth point directly to Cyril M. Kornbluth, which is the article about the award-winning SF writer. That article now begins with message pointing to the disambiguation page. -- Dominus (talk) 05:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup request

In the Unauthorized Autobiography, Gustav Sebald announced in "Zombies in the Snow" that one parent survived the fire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.85.168.149 (talk • contribs)

Sebald said there was one survivor of the fire. He did not specify which fire or the age of the survivor.-Bobguy7
The Baudelaire fire, of course. -V.F.D. K 20:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I just fixed minor punctuation and layout errors. The references still need to be fixed. As someone who has not read these books, I find the article lacks enough plot context to be clear. I have added the apppropriate tags to the article. The generic cleanup tag remains until the above comment is addressed. -- Beland 22:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Becoming a member

The thing for becoming a member is run by a person promoting a personal project which is against the Wikipedia rules. I've deleted the offending text and let the editor know... Taylor 11:51, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jacques Snicket

^ I fixed a minor spelling error. --V.F.D. K 20:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

In this article, it says that Jaques Snicket was burned at the stake in the place of Count Olaf. This is not true; he was murdered by Count Olaf. HyperHobbes 14:22, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

OBVIOUSLY!--Divya da animal lvr 20:43, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Insufficient context....

I've removed the "context" tag, which referred specifically to the introduction providing "insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter".... as one who is unfamiliar with the subject matter, I have not found this to be the case.

Various other parts of the article, on the other hand, do have insufficient context for those of us unfamiliar with the subject matter. I realise that it is sometimes difficult for experts to keep in mind exactly what it is that non-experts might need to know, and I provide this list in the hope that it will help those who have the required knowledge of the series to improve the article.

* "Next, in The Ersatz Elevator, the Baudelaires discover a tunnel from 667 Dark Avenue to the Baudelaire mansion." I have no idea what the significance of "667 Dark Avenue" is, or how this relates to V.F.D.

       That is a V.F.D. passageway. How do you think it relates to V.F.D.? 
       --V.F.D. K 20:56, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
How do you think anyone was supposed to understand that from what was written as of October 2005? TheMadBaron 04:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • "Kidnapped Eleanora and advised Mr. Poe to receive all telegrams he received"

I don't understand why someone would need to be advised to receive telegrams.... it would be like advising someone to receive their mail.... if someone sends you telegrams, surely you just receive them? Perhaps "receive" was written in error.... did this Eleanora imposter actually advise Mr. Poe to ignore the telegrams, or destroy them, or similar?

  • "Although Kit Snicket is said to have been at the meeting in the transcripts, that is incorrect. Jacques Snicket, when in the transcript, says that he met everyone except for L (Lemony) at a previous spot where headquarters were. This proves she could have not been at the meeting."

This makes very little sense to a non-expert, I'm afraid. It sounds as if a meeting occured in a place called "the transcripts", though I doubt that this is actually the case.... If this information is to stay, we need to be told; a) what meeting, b) what transcripts, and c) how does this claim of Jaques Snickets to have "met everyone except for L (Lemony) at a previous spot where headquarters were" prove that Kit Snicket could not have been at the meeting?

       He said "all of you", except for L, because L was his own brother,
       and he did not mention K, so that would be grouping his own sister in
       the people he met in the previous location. Since he did not mention
       K, then that proves she could not have been at the meeting
       --V.F.D. K 15:28, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
  • "Parents of the Baudelaire orphans, killed in mansion fire supposedly started by Count Olaf (although it is implied that one survives and that it's not the father)."

Is this intended to mean that it is implied that the mother survives? Why mince words?

  • "His telegram from the Baudelaires was blocked."

Ah, these telegrams again - I presume that this is the telegram mentioned earlier, in which the Baudelaires requested help.... but we shouldn't have to presume.... I get the impression that this is a significant factor in the plot, so if the article is intended to cover those elements of the plot which relate to the V.F.D. in a comprehensible fashion, we could really do with knowing how the telegram was blocked.... I'm at a bit of a loss....

HTH

TheMadBaron 22:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


If I explain these points, could you write them in: I'll just make it just as uncontextual...

  1. 667 Dark avenue is the setting of book the sixth: The Ersatz Elevator and the home of Jerome Squalor and Esmé Squalor. Esme is part of the fire-starting side and Jerome is believed to be part of the firefighting side. It is beklieved that this is how Olaf got into the Badeliare Mansion to burn it to the ground.
  2. I have no idea.
    1. Meeting: This is in the Unauthorized Autobiography. I haven't read it so have little idea of any more detail.
    2. Transcripts: These are what is recoreded of the meetings.
    3. No idea - I haven't read it.
  3. Well, it is said that one of three people in a photohgraph (2 of which are the parents) survives the fire. It is explicitly said that the father did not survive. Therefore it kind of implies that the mother survives, yes but not qwuite.
  4. At the start of book the eighth: The Hostile Hospital, the Baudelaires are runing away. They pop into the Last Chance general Store and try to send a telegram to Mr. Poe saying that an angry mob is chasing them (because one is- it believes that they killed Count Olaf). When they send the telegram,m they recieve no reply. It is presumed that it has been blocked.

Hope that goes some way to clearing some of the stuff up. Please ask more if you are unclear about more. --Celestianpower hablamé 08:22, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


Okay, thanks.

  • I've dealt with 667 Dark Avenue.
  • I could deal with the business of the mother, the father and a photograph, except that "a photograph" is a little vague. Can you tell us more? Do the Badeliare children find this photograph? Where? Who is it who says that one of three people in the photograph survives the fire? Is is Snickett himself, or one of the characters? Who is it who says that the survivor was not the father? And who is the third person in the photograph?
  • Any idea what the fake Eleanora's advice to Mr. Poe regarding the telegraphs was? TheMadBaron 17:08, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


It's from a report called "The Snicket File". Its a confidential, 13-page report detailing the findings from the investigation into the fire at the Baudleaire mansion and found in the Library of Records at The Hostile Hospital. The Baudelaires only got the thirteenth page which had a photograph on it of the two Baudelaire parents, Jacques Snicket, and a fourth figure who is turned from the camera. The photo comes with a caption, "Due to the evidence discussed on page 9, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown."
It's snicket in rhetoric in The Slippery Slope who says that the father did not survive.
No idea, sorry. --Celestianpower hablamé 17:29, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect information on the sugar bowl?

I've not tried updating articles or discussion in Wikipedia before, hope I'm not doing anything wrong....
"The sugar bowl was noted first in The Bad Beginning (containing fruit on Count Olaf's foyer tables),..." I used Amazon to search the text of the book for 'fruit' 'sugar' 'bowl' 'foyer' 'table' etc and find no references, other than to a bowl holding apple cores located in the bedroom the siblings are given.
"....again in The Hostile Hospital (on a table holding pomegranates and other fruits)" I cannot find any reference like this in the book. In the Hostile Hospital (book 8), the sugar bowl is mentioned by the author when he says he stole the sugar bowl from Esme Squalor (page 91). I believe this is the first mention of the sugar bowl in the series. Note: an Amazon text search indicates the word pomegranates does not appear in the book.
A sugar bowl is mentioned by the author on page 114 of The Carniverous Carnival (book 9). The sugar bowl really comes into the story in a big way in The Slippery Slope (book 10) and the following books (11 and 12 at this time). These books haven't been mentioned at all.
So do I just go in and edit the entry?

TJC.CA 03:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The A Series of Unfortunate Events are unfortunately riddled with speculation. Every single bowl which appears in the books is described as a possible Sugar Bowl. The article is also pretty new (yesterday) so it could do with more info. Edit, certainly. smurrayinchester(User), (Ho Ho Ho!) 10:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
It also seems like people see VFD members in every character. I would think that WP:NOR requires that anyone not explicitly mentioned as being a member or very closely affiliated to VFD shouldn't be listed, or at the very least have (suspected) next to their name, preferably with some evidence as to why they're a suspected member. I mean, I've considered the possibilities of most of those people being in VFD as well, but I don't have enough evidence to put it on Wikipedia. Confusing Manifestation 15:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ASUE Merge

I don't think that the merge is a good idea. This is a fairly big article on the most important group of characters in a fairly major book series, and as such, would overload the article. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 21:56, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Not remotely should it be merged! However, list of VFDs should be merged with this.
  • I think VFD should have its own page, as it is an important article on its own, and it is unecessary to merge it. User:Jahl 20:12, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Merging it would be a Very Foolish Deed. Hyenaste 23:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree, its way to large for a merge. --Hetar 02:02, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] You want it, you got it

I did some list cleanup on the possible members. Hope it helps! Random the Scrambled 00:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chart

The chart is really messed up. Could someone fix it? (Clamster5 21:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Still needs cleanup

One major issue I am finding in this article is the amount of unencyclopedic language. I fixed what I found. <font color="#33ff00" face="Courier New" style="background: <black;">Search4Lancer 01:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you to an extent, Search4Lancer of the past (July). For example, check out the following paragraph:
In a letter to Kit Snicket that was "hidden" in The Slippery Slope, Lemony Snicket stated that he possibly learned the whereabouts of the evidence that "exonerates" him (which here means, proves that it was Count Olaf, and not Mr. Snicket, that started so many fires), and that he was headed for the Valley of Four Drafts (notice V.F.D.) , to acquire the evidence. The evidence was probably the sugar bowl, and the letter explains its value to Lemony.
This paragraph seems to have been written prospectively, some point before the person/people who added this edit read the 11th and 12th book. After all, the sugar bowl moves from the mountains to another location, according to Klaus' probably-correct inferences. In addition, there is a bit of unencyclopedic tone when its author states "which here means." This device is frequently used in the Series themselves, i.e., defining things extremely specifically to the situation, but it has no place in an encyclopedia. After all, we're not marrying message and form together (see Le Ton Beau de Marot), but trying to be humanely pedantic. So I'm deleting this paragraph for reasons mentioned in this paragraph. -- Gracenotes T § 23:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean Up

I cleaned up the places with possible v.f.d. activity the best I could. Clamster5 18:15, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joining V.F.D. is Easy

Many people think V.F.D. is not real. It is, and people are sill joining it to this day, filling their notebooks with every scrap of info that they find doing codes to each other, reading the books, trying to learn more and more and showing the symbol on this, studying the Sebald Code and hoping that the very bad Olaf is not watching them to get the books. http://lifelifetolive101.mysite.com/

Dear Reader,

This is a disgrace. How could someone make so many grammar mistakes? And, about the organization I work for! How dare you.

With all due respect,

K


(To first comment) Your page doesn't work. I am a member- to some extent. The volunteer fire dept. of a neighboring town's chief was my sister's history teacher. Isn't that cool? Plus, Olaf's dead. Just so you know :)


Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.TheMadBaron 04:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

They were referring to the comment above -- look in the history and see that they fixed all the grammar in that comment. --Anaraug 17:10, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

If VFD is real, give me an easier way to join than having to ask "What was that noise" and saying "If there's nothing out there, then what was that noise?" Because I want to join... badly.65.223.58.226 (talk) 17:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Volunteer Fire Dept.

In The End, Snicket confirms that V.F.D. stands for Volunteer Fire Department. What Page?

He never really does, but he calls it the Volunteer Fire Department.204.147.20.204 (talk) 18:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vicarius Filii Dei

Pure speculation, but does anyone think VFD might be a reference to Vicarius Filii Dei? Has Handler ever discussed the origins of VFD? howcheng {chat} 07:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Like you said, its pure speculation. Please don't put it in the article unless theres a credible source, and i honestly don't think there is. Clamster5 12:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't planning to -- it was just something I noticed, and given Handler's habit of making references to literary and historical figures/happenings, I was just raising the possibility. howcheng {chat} 17:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox

I added a fictional organisation box. Maybe the information in the box could help streamline what belongs in the article and what doesn't. <3Clamster 03:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't seem right.

"In The End, it is revealed that the initials stand for Volunteer Fire Department, although it has since become a much more secretive society, perhaps with little or nothing to do with fighting fires at all. The name could possibly just be a cover for the organization's actual intentions or maybe just another unanswered riddle."

Isn't the whole "starting fires" thing in the books more of an analogy than anything? Like, VFD compares the villains to fire and it is their job to extinguish the fire?

The problem that bothers me is that it was established in the tenth book what VFD meant. Book 13 doesn't really reveal anything new about the name.
I think the group originally did start out as a fire department but changed over time. Perhaps the LS biography explains it a little more.--CyberGhostface 23:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. I have the book. It just gives you a bunch of things that vfd may stand for. Valorous farms dairy, vineyard of fragrant drapes, veritable french diner, venom feels delightful... ect.65.223.58.226 (talk) 17:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MacGuffin plot device

The section about V.F.D. being a MacGuffin plot device would have been written quite a long time ago, it is out of date. I have removed it entirely.

VERY VERY SAD! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.127.164.194 (talk) 04:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Logo

Is the logo used the official (if you can say that about a fictitious organisation) logo? It strikes me that, nice though it is if it isn't actually official it shouldn't be potrayed as if it is. I could be wrong, as I haven't read the books, only listened to the whole series on auido CD, but I didn't think that the logo was shown anywhere. Like I said, correct me if I'm wrong, but if there are no objections, I'll remove the logo in 24 hours (it can then always be replaced). TalkIslander 00:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)