The best example of how Flatland is a piece of fiction where A Square, the author, literally does not know what the hell he's talking about half the time is all the stuff about the Universal Color Bill, because as it is presented the segment on the Color Bill is one of the most biased and propaganda filled things I've ever seen spouted from a narrator who claims he Knows What's Up with the world he lives in.
Like ooooh, gee, so the only reason the Universal Color Bill got so widespread was because a Mean Traitorous Circle with an Irregularity that he should have been killed for but wasn't due to Circumstances that nobody actually knows or remembers (but in A's opinion was definitely pity because we all know how CHARITABLE the Circles are) came up with it, and used his tricky cunning Irregularity mind powers to make the Bill so foolproof and amazing that if it had gone through it would have toppled all of society and allowed all the icky women and disableds and lower classes to have something close to equal rights.
(And it had to have been an Irregular Circle because yes the Irregular Circle is also icky and cunning but at least he's a Circle and any Isosceles would have simply been too brain dead to have come up with such an evil cunning Bill and THIS is why eugenics are good, so those mean old disabled people that we allow to live don't stab us in the back for our charity.)
And wow, you're really telling me that right when the more upper-class women of Flatland, those who care about their standing and who are most supportive of eugenics because of the privilege they're afforded by their marriages and lineages, started to agree that this society-destroying Color Bill was a good idea, (because it would actually give them a bit of respect, authority and safety if they were regarded as being as precious as their husbands,) the Circles just happened to hear about this poor orphaned daughter of a Polygon who was accosted by a very very real and scary and uncouth lower class Shape and tricked so thoroughly into believing he was a higher class Shape by employing the very evil colors that these poor Lines were starting to come around to?
(Not to mention that even in the story itself the Isosceles is framed as both a vile, duplicitous mastermind tricking a poor innocent upper-class girl into marrying him, but also an idiot who "accidentally" dabbled in paints from a Tradesman he'd definitely just robbed, and either painted himself or coincidentally "caused himself to be painted" with the exact same color pattern as a Dodecagon. Because for this story to work, he has to be an absolute monstrous brute, an Isosceles of the "low sort" with hardly any brains, while also being cunning, clever and cruel enough to pull off a marriage ruse and take advantage of a poor orphaned maiden. Stupid enough to be looked down upon but smart enough to come up with this plan like the perfect boogeyman.)
And man, it sure is unfortunate that this marriage, which A Square admits only happened because of a wild amount of near impossible accidents and an "almost inconceivable" lack of research on the part of the bride's remaining family, in a society where lineage is checked thoroughly before marriage, just happened to be consummated despite all the odds being stacked against it. Did he pretend to be a member of a high ranking family? Did he make up a name and family history? If nobody can decide if he even painted himself on purpose, I doubt him creating a whole persona convincing enough to fool the daughter of a Polygon and any family members would be part of the story... that would frame him as far too intelligent for an Isosceles with a brain of four degrees, and we can't have anyone thinking that sort is intelligent.
So then are we to believe that the daughter and her remaining family were stupid enough to just accept a supposed Dodecagon with no family ties or history? That seems unlikely. With no family history, his sides may not even matter-- maybe he has an Irregularity in his line. Maybe he was disowned for failing his Sight Recognition exam. No respectable girl in her right mind would marry a Dodecagon with no family history! And it's so, so convenient that this woman, who already knew this Isosceles, because he had already tried to court her in the past, never recognized him once throughout their new courtship, until the marriage was consummated.
And it's so convenient for the Circles that her reaction upon discovering what was very clearly a near astronomical feat of deception was to kill herself, in a society where we already know the Circles are really cool with killing its citizens if it helps to maintain the status quo. But there really isn't anything suspicious about that, of course, because the only way that a daughter of a Polygon would ever wed a lowly Isosceles is if she were tricked into it, even if the process of being tricked was so lengthy and complex that it would be near impossible for anyone to pull off without either the bride or the bride's family being in on the deception, and the only reaction any decent girl would have upon realizing she'd been tricked would be suicide.
And the fact that she was orphaned and this man apparently tried to court her in "former days." So how former? And who was the one rejecting the marriages? How did she feel about this attempted courtship in "former days?" As a daughter of a Polygon, she surely had no say in who she married, so her opinions on this man are completely up in the air, and the idea that she would at no point during this new proposal, recognize this man who had tried to seek her affections before is... implausible, I would say. What the Circles would want you to think, of course, is that the Isosceles tried again once she was orphaned because she was vulnerable then. That's possible, of course, but got necessarily the given that it would seem like.
But the idea that a Line and an Isosceles may have come up with a plot using color to be allowed to be married despite their class differences is Absurd, of course! They're too stupid for that! And that the Circles may have picked up on what had happened and taken the woman out of the picture and then twisted the story to suit their needs is preposterous, of course, just ignore how often they twist history and kill citizens to keep the status quo. The fact that this specific version of the story is the exact type of thing that would tug at the heartstrings of upper-class women who love eugenics and classism and their own nebulous purity more than they actually love themselves, enough to literally militarize a great number of the more reactionary ladies? A coincidence, I'm sure, but one that was oh so good for crushing the Color Bill and using those scared, privileged women to help murder Chromatistes and the rest of the rebels in a political set up.
... And of course, all those holes in the story, all that propaganda even assumes it was a real story to begin with. Because it very well may be completely fabricated.
Before telling the story, A Square straight up admits that this is the perfect type of story for someone in power to make up to scare a portion of the populace, but he absolutely refuses to actually, legitimately entertain the prospect. Instead, he just barrels ahead and tells the story of the Evil, Cunning Irregular Circle, and the Poor Orphaned Polygonal Maiden and the Brutish, Tricky Isosceles and how that Completely True and Real Tragic occurrence definitely, positively happened, and also definitely happened exactly the way all the Circles said it did. The fact that this is all completely absurd and reads like literal propaganda and was literally used as propaganda to scare upper-class women into falling back in line does not matter to A, because this was the story he was told and he Understands The World He Lives In, and the Circles are always right except for the whole Third Dimension thing.
TL;DR: A Square is a stoodge who will fall for anything the Circles tell him, no matter how absurd, and every single thing he says that is not him literally laying out laws should be taken with ten bowls of salt, because he has no critical thinking skills.
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