Unreliable Narrators

Every source of information you get about this story is unreliable. This includes the things I say, to a degree; I don’t lie about the contents of the story, but there are plenty of things I omit, particularly spoilers about future story events or the hidden significance of some of the elements in the story and characters. I’m not likely to point things like that out in the comments, because the story is written from Kyoko’s perspective and I tend to limit some kinds of information to things she knows.

So, I’m unreliable. The information within the story is even more so. Every character has their own biases and agendas. Everyone has blind spots. Many people are either actively misinformed, reaching wrong conclusions, or simply lying. Kyoko’s narration is not an exception, and that the story is purely conveyed in that narration impacts what shows up in numerous ways. One of the major things I hope to do with things like interludes, in-universe documents, and extended notes is provide other perspectives, other elements of the story, characters, and world.…

Interludes

Interlude chapters are shorter pieces that I place between books. Some actually take place during the books, but I set them aside because I feel that interrupting the flow of the narration is more disruptive than it’s worth, particularly when the intention is that the story is fully intelligible without them. There are two basic types: Interludes, which are narrative stories, and documents, which are in-universe documents of various kinds. Both are optional, but they provide potentially valuable context for the books.

The reason for interludes is pretty straightforward. This story is written entirely in first-person limited perspective. That is to say, all of the narration is from Kyoko’s perspective, written in first person, and written with no additional knowledge beyond what she knows in the moment being described. One of the greatest strengths of this style, and the reason I prefer it, is that it allows the voice of that character to show through very strongly. Everything is seen from her perspective, which also showcases how her perspective works—what she prioritizes and pays attention to, what she ignores, the cognitive links she’s making. But this is also probably the single biggest weakness of this perspective, because Kyoko’s perception is not complete. There are events she’s not present for, and even when she is present, she isn’t going to see everything. There are details she doesn’t notice or doesn’t pay attention to, contextual meaning she isn’t aware of, assessment and interpretation she might get wrong, bias she introduces. This makes it feel real, but it does mean the reader isn’t seeing everything. Hence, there are side chapters which are meant to provide context and other perspectives.…

Caleb Moorhead

People lie to me a lot.

It’s inherent in my line of work. It’s inevitable. Attorneys hear a lot of lies. Cops lie about their intentions, about their evidence, about all kinds of things, really. Witnesses lie about what they’ve seen. Sometimes my clients lie to me as well, which is always frustrating. It’s very hard to defend someone when you’re working with inaccurate information.

I would much rather work with someone who was open with me about being guilty than try to represent a client who pretended to be innocent when they were very clearly not. It isn’t as though I would rat them out if they told me; it would be wildly against my personal and professional ethical codes to do so. At most, I might decline or drop their case, and even then I wouldn’t tell the police or prosecutors a word about what they’d said, because that confidentiality is a cornerstone of the legal system, and I feel strongly about maintaining it as an absolute. A client has to be able to trust that what they tell their attorney will be kept strictly, entirely confidential.…

Epilogue

Three weeks later, I was standing in a small apartment in a bad part of town waiting for someone to make a choice.

I still wasn’t entirely sure this would work. I’d worked through the theory extensively. I’d consulted with a ton of people about it. Alice, the wizard from the Tribe, had helped a lot with the underlying theory and principles involved. I’d been introduced to a guy named Nate who mixed magic with graffiti and was more shamanic in his focus, less tied to concrete and rational thought than a wizard. The categorization tools for mages would always be inadequate, but it was informative in this case. Wizards, as the most common categorization system defined them, were characterized by linear reasoning, structured and abstract thought, and rational logic. Alice fit that description perfectly, which was great for my education. But for this I also needed to draw on that more intuitive thought process.

So, I met Nate and we talked for a while. He introduced me to a girl named Opari who had personal experience of what I was doing here. Derek, Cassie, and Robert all had some amount of insight because of werewolf things. They also had a veterinarian that they worked with in town, which I found fascinating when they told me about her. Werewolves rarely needed medical care at all, but apparently there were some very specific things that sometimes came up that a vet was helpful with. So there was a vet in Pittsburgh who knew what they were, and I talked with her for a while. Hell, I even went back to my old cognitive neuroscience connections and asked them some questions.…

Oaths, Debts, and Favors

Several characters now have mentioned things like oaths, debts, and favors. These things have an enormous degree of weight assigned to them in this setting. Given that these things are so significant, there will be plenty more about them later on in the story. A lot of things, notably including why all this is the case, will not be explained in this note. But that still leaves plenty of room to explore things which Kyoko knows, which are common knowledge in this setting, but which will generally not be exposition in the story itself.…

Language Use

The narration mentions in places that Kyoko draws conclusions about someone based on their presentation and particularly on their use of language. This has shown up a few times now, and with Cassie the narration also observes how the way she presents herself has shifted. So why do different characters use language the way they do? It’s not the same pattern for everyone, not at all, and the differences are significant, even when they’re subtle.…