[Dragaera] it's late and i'm a little punchy

[Jon Lincicum via Dragaera]

On 11/24/2014 4:34 PM, Scott Schultz via Dragaera wrote:
>> It's more fun, in my opinion, to only resort to the excuse of the
> unreliable
>> narrator as a last resort. As such, I tend to subscribe to the school of
> "what is
>> in the text is dead-on correct...except when it isn't." But when it isn't
> should
>> be limited only to cases where it directly contradicts something else with
> no
>> room for compromise or integration. I do not see that here. There are
> still
>> options left open to us without needing to play the "Vlad was wrong" or
>> "Paarfi was wrong" card.
>>
>> Majikjon
>>
> Well, it seems to me (and as mentioned, I may be giving this too much
> weight) that Aliera's comments about Adron seem to be good enough reason for
> playing the "Paarfi is being less than accurate" card. The real question is
> whether he is doing it on purpose or because he believes that he is
> accurately reporting what he has been told.

We are basing the accuracy of Aliera's statements in /Jhereg/ based on 
Vlad's account of what he claims (from memory, likely while a little 
drunk) that Aliera told /him/, based on what she heard from Sethra after 
the fact (since she didn't actually witness most of these events 
personally; she was busy with other things at the time), and then 
filtered in her mind according to her biases (including unconditional 
devotion to her father).

In short; neither she, nor Sethra, nor Vlad are terribly unbiased on 
this subject, and are therefore not necessarily more reliable than 
Paarfi, especially seeing as it's been filtered through so many 
/different/ sets of opinions on the way to the reader. Paarfi's biases, 
at least, are solely his own, and he claims he's making an effort to be 
impartial.

Also note that many of the facts Aliera recounts in this part of 
/Jhereg/ are directly contradicted by Sethra later in /Issola/. That's 
actually one of the main examples in the series I can think of where 
there really isn't any other recourse but to resort to the unreliable 
narrator explanation.

Majikjon