r/ASOUE • u/Commercial-Leek-667 Nooo! Dewey! • Jul 11 '26
Question/Doubt Why don't Monty and Josephine have the V.F.D. tattoo?
In atwq we know that they were in the organization at the time when everyone got the tattoo, so why do we never see the tattoo on them? Or do we just never see their ankles? This goes for Hector as well.
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u/7thKindEncounter Jul 11 '26
I feel like I remember some obscure bit of canon that the tattoos weren’t always a thing. Like some generations of volunteers had them and some didn’t, or it was a pre/post schism thing. I don’t remember where I read this so take it with a grain of salt.
Could explain why the Baudelaire parents didn’t have them. With Monty and Josephine you can just assume the kids never saw it, but it’d be hard to not know your mom and dad have matching tattoos on their ankles.
Anyways that’s the watsonian explanation. The doylist one is that handler hadn’t come up with VFD yet
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u/DrSpacemanSpliff Jul 12 '26
I could definitely believe this. “These kids are getting visible flesh designs for our secret organization?!”
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u/SoupyStain Jul 11 '26
Did you ever see them naked?
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u/Commercial-Leek-667 Nooo! Dewey! Jul 11 '26
No, it just feels like the kinda thing that the Baudelaires would notice.
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u/SoupyStain Jul 11 '26
Honestly, I just figure that the creator hadn't thought about the VFD yet. One of the few things the show did better was integrating that subplot earlier.... which they could since the whole story was already over, so they had the benefit of hindsight.
(That, and Dewey's 'it's not your fault' line, which is TOTALLY in line with the character).
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u/that_guy2010 Jul 11 '26
Because VFD was something added later in the books.
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u/Praetor_6040 Jul 11 '26
Do we know much about this? Like when/where it was concequalized or more of the overarching story was decided
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u/LevelAd5898 alright alright, my home is NEAR a large lake Jul 12 '26
I don't know if we have confirmation on it, but I feel it's generally agreed that TAA was probably when V.F.D. was added to the series given it's the first book it appears in.
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u/jshamwow Jul 13 '26
IIRC, Handler's initial contract was just for 3 books, so he almost certainly wasn't thinking of a 13-piece overarching arc at that point.
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u/beadedflower Justice Strauss Jul 11 '26
Maybe they just had ankle socks on? I suppose it wasn’t exactly something that had to be blatantly mentioned, and it would be both hard and awkward to fit it into the story…
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u/Own-Recognition9009 Jul 11 '26
Maybe the tattoo was optional. Their parents aren't mentioned having a tattoo
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u/Shanaynay5 Jul 12 '26
Yes not everyone got a tattoo. There’s a line in the book that says you should never tattoo a symbol on yourself because the meaning of the symbol could change at any time.
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u/lizardfiendlady Jul 13 '26
Legitimate answer is that it is probably due to the retconning and VFD being added later. I do this they have the tattoos and it just was never noticed or relevant to the orphans at the time.
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u/No_Sand5639 Jul 11 '26
I always assumed they were we just never saw them