[Dragaera] Tiassa -- Chapter the Sixth vs Epilogue -- spoiler (fwd)

[Philip Hart]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2011, Scott Schultz wrote:

>
> On Wed, 20 Apr 2011, Scott Schultz wrote:
>
>>>> s
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>> You've inconveniently snipped what I was responding to - which was the
> claim
>> that Paarfi is considered a master.  As far as I can tell the academy and
> critics
>> think he's more Danielle Steele than Stephen King, not to mention say
> David McCullough.
>
> Actually, Stephen King is who I had in mind to compare Paarfi to. King is a
> popular writer, whom many "serious" literary critics condemn as being
> unworthy of the popular acclaim he has. They consider him populist, as
> opposed to masterful, and look down on his willingness to, as he puts it,
> "go for the gross out" when nothing else works. Despite this, his book "On
> Writing", is often recommended in writing circles as a must read for any
> aspiring writer.

King actually has a fair amount of cred among critics as far as I 
understand.  He regularly gets respectful reviews in the NYT Sunday 
Book Review, for example.


>>> Consulting a magic oracle
>
>> Straw.
>
> Okay. I don't see it but... *shrug*

This is maybe the root of the argument though.  I'm not saying the 
tiassa has any property you don't believe in except memory of those 
it has interacted with.  (I'm not actually even saying this, I'm just 
arguing against the conclusion it doesn't.)  And maybe some deistic time 
whateverness.


>
>> There are questions throughout all of Paarfi's works about sourcing.
>> In this Text alone there are plenty of conversations involving Khaavren
> that are hard to explain Paarfi knowing about.  >He knows (and publishes)
> what one would expect to be state secrets, so either he makes a lot of stuff
> up (which >makes it hard for us to understand his world) or he's a genius at
> reportage or he has an in like Sethra or something.
>
> It's clear that one of Steve's goals for _Tiassa_ was that it explain some
> things about the Vladiverse that were semi-mysterious. I'm sure that this is
> one of the reasons that he goes out of his way to acknowledge the fan work
> behind the Timeline and Cracks and Shards, since they gave him the material
> he needed to both choose what to write about and to give the appropriate
> information about them.

Interesting ideas.  I've thought about it more as SKZB enjoying squashing 
some of the wilder speculation out there...


> place in the Halls of Judgement. Then again, we see from Chapter the Sixth
> that Paarfi isn't above changing certain facts for literary effect and/or
> because he simply doesn't know all of the facts surrounding an event.

I've argued that there was no evidence of Paarfi doing this, but as you 
note this is one (I'd add to this the possibility that he omits Savn for 
privacy or other reasons).


> You can't prove a negative. There is no evidence that can be used to say
> "The silver tiassa is NOT an oracle." We only know how it DOES affect its
> owners, and it seems that you, Phil,  are claiming that those sources are
> unreliable. Given that, I can't see that it's worth continuing to speculate
> about.

One just needs to have someone authoritative, like Sethra, and e.g. not 
Vlad, unless he has some good evidence, to say, this is what it does.  Or 
one needs to point to other ways of sourcing.  I just made an idle 
suggestion.


>> I can think of half a dozen reasonable ways it could be
>> wrong without working up a sweat - have you even tried?
>
> THIS I have to take issue with. Devera clearly documents her travels through
> time with the Tiassa. She even makes a point of saying that she is unable to
> return to a particular time once she leaves it. The only way I can make this
> doubt of yours work out is that somebody else takes the tiassa from Paarfi,
> gives it to Vlad or plants it on him, then takes it back again and then
> Devera takes it and gives to Vlad again, this time with his knowledge...
>
> If you have some way of showing  how the Tiassa could possibly go to Vlad
> before going to Paarfi without Devera being an outright liar, well, you
> perceive that you interest me greatly.

Devera tells Vlad something with a bunch of numbers in it probably using 
verb tenses that she made up.  She does so with a god who wants her eye 
and hand back breathing down her neck.  Then Vlad reports this info to 
Sethra, who reports it to the translator, or to the N to report it, or 
Vlad does so directly, and then we read the resulting Text.  There's many 
a place to slip.  And I'm not clear that we even know, taking the 
account on face value or nearly, when what happens.


>> We suspect Paarfi's Texts (those we've read, since his monographs
>> and _Three Broken Strings_ haven't come to us) are published after Vlad's
> lifetime,
>> because they say they postdate Zerika's reign.  Per the intro to _TPG_,
>> Paarfi had been working on pre-Interregnum history beforehand,
>> and at the time of its publishing hasn't traced Khaavren & Cie's influence
> as far as _FHYA_.
>
> I'm failing to see how the above statement relates to the travels of the
> Tiassa through time or to Paarfi's possession of it before Vlad's possession
> of it (relative to the tiassa's own timeline).

My belief (not having checked the Timeline) is that Paarfi's Texts appear 
after Vlad's expected lifetime, and that much of the research involved 
occurs after as well.  If the idea is that Paarfi gets the tiassa and 
turns from a plodder into a rock star, it seems simpler to have that 
happen after the events of _Tiassa_.  (Note that in the archives I 
did think about the Piroiad not being written under the influence.)


>> And of course since we don't know when ST was written or
>> if the tiassa is moving strictly forward in time with Devera
>> we don't even have to worry about this if we don't want to.
>
> You're suggesting that in between Devera's fetching and carrying of the
> tiassa that some other time traveler she doesn't know about  is also
> fetching and carrying it and then bringing it back to Paarfi, or that it is
> popping around in time of its own accord? Because that's what it sounds like
> you're suggesting.
>
> I feel a bit like we're having a disagreement about whether the glass of
> water I put on my desk is still there when I turn my back on it. I turn
> around and see it and say "Yep, it's there," whereas you say "But you don't
> know where it went while you weren't looking at it."

The glass has been, or is going to have been, hopping around in time. 
And it's got a god's eye in it.  Maybe it's sitting there, not going 
anywhere, thinking about what happened a hundred years in the future 
and whispering the news into your subconscious.