OK, Does VFD ever actually STOP a fire?

[TheAsh]

We see the fire-starting side always starting fires. Do we ever see the "fire-stopping" side stop a fire? I don't think they ever do.

[Hermes]

Well, strictly speaking they prevent the burning of the library in SYBIS, though the actual outcome is just as disastrous (for the books, at least).

More generally: it's rather hard to tell when someone has prevented a fire, since if there was no fire you can never be sure it would have happened in the first place. But certainly there is a surprisingly large number of fires in ASOUE, given that there is a firefighting organisation in the neighbourood. Presumably they were more effective at stopping fires before the schism, or perhaps even in Lemony's youth when the organisation, though divided and hidden, was still relatively well organised.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

This is a great irony. Lemony recognizes this in ATWQ when he says that there are not enough volunteers and that they were an exercise that often lost battles. But the question is: have we ever seen anyone on the fire-fighting side at least trying to fight fires? The answer is yes, in ATWQ. In ATWQ we had time to see VFD's VFD ideologies working inside Lemony's mind, but we still saw it working according to Lemony's interpretation of what he learned, what he agrees with and what he disagrees with.ATWQ is incredible. I really love it. It's magnificent. That's awesome. It's very good. It's beautiful.

[Dante]

By the time of ASoUE, it appears that all of V.F.D.'s resources are occupied in combating the schism, and as such any direct fire-fighting is likely to be organisationally impractical. It is additionally worth remembering that their province is as much metaphorical fires as literal ones, and it must be said that they do better on this note; consider the existence of the Snicket file and the Hotel Denouement catalogue, comprehensive collections of knowledge which can be used to defeat villainy (and are never obviously destroyed, though it must be admitted it doesn't look good for the Snicket file).

[Hermes]

Of course, even if VFD is precoccupied by the schism, one might think they should still be stopping literal fires when these are caused by the villainous side of the schism (and while we don't know for certain that the Baudelaire and Quagmire fires were, the fires in the hospital and carnival certainly were).

The underwater catalogue certainly survived (TPP p. 266: 'if you were to find the hidden passageway which leads to the underwater catalogue has remained secret and safe for all these years' - which, by the way - but I digress). What follows shows that material was still being added to the catalogue after the events of the book. I continue to believe that Hal took over the running of the catalogue, and was Lemony's informant for much of the book, though I have never convinced anyone to agree with me.

As for the Snicket File, I agree that in its physical form it probably perished, but I suspect we have much of the information contained in it; it seems to have been, or to have become, a file on the misdeeds of Count Olaf compiled by the Snicket family, and that is effectively what we have in ASOUE.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Feb 13, 2020 12:51:40 GMT -5 Hermes said:

Of course, even if VFD is precoccupied by the schism, one might think they should still be stopping literal fires when these are caused by the villainous side of the schism (and while we don't know for certain that the Baudelaire and Quagmire fires were, the fires in the hospital and carnival certainly were).

The underwater catalogue certainly survived (TPP p. 266: 'if you were to find the hidden passageway which leads to the underwater catalogue has remained secret and safe for all these years' - which, by the way - but I digress). What follows shows that material was still being added to the catalogue after the events of the book. I continue to believe that Hal took over the running of the catalogue, and was Lemony's informant for much of the book, though I have never convinced anyone to agree with me.

As for the Snicket File, I agree that in its physical form it probably perished, but I suspect we have much of the information contained in it; it seems to have been, or to have become, a file on the misdeeds of Count Olaf compiled by the Snicket family, and that is effectively what we have in ASOUE.

Well, you now have a person who agrees with you. It makes a lot of sense. The Catalog has survived the lobgo of the years, and to hide it, it is very likely that the hotel needed to be rebuilt. Unfortunately, when TPP was published (either in its final form according to the beliefs of the majority, or in its only form according to my beliefs) the hotel had been destroyed again. It is interesting that at the beginning of TPP Lemony describes himself as throwing stones at the pond to call someone. This should indicate that when he started writing TPP the reconstructed building was still standing. So Lemony was able to send several and several letters to the editor using the paper found at the reception of the reconstructed hotel.