Detective Pony When I Feel Like It

1 month ago

OH THE HORRORTERROR!!!

This user is literally a Horrorterror.

@inspectorEquine[IE]

[But she’ll be inverted too. I won’t give you a string to lead you out of the labyrinth. No, I’m going to use the string entrap you even further. I’ll inscribe you into the labyrinth, into the text itself. Here’s some fucking wordplay for you: plot thread. Spinning a yarn. To weave a tale. All culminating in the creation of — you’ll appreciate this— a textile.” “Bravo,” Dirk said warmly. “I’m impressed. And I do appreciate it. Just one request before you imprison me in this metaphor: ‘Minotaur’ is so crass. I’d prefer ‘Asterion.’” “Ironically?” Anna asked. “Of course.” “Aren’t you going to try to change my mind?” Anna asked. “It doesn’t seem like you to just give up like that. To relinquish control.” “I don’t know how much control I even had to begin with,” Dirk said with a shrug. “Besides, isn’t it a good thing that I’m not acting like I usually do? That shows that I’ve grown as a character, right?” “It would if you did it sincerely,” Anna said. “But the fact that you just said ‘as a character’ instead of ‘as person’ makes me question your motives.” “Yeah, I guess that you’re right,” Dirk said, sitting down in the snow with a sigh. “Maybe I’m just tired. Worn thin. I don’t know; what do you think?” “I think you’re sad,” Anna told him. “And lonely. And I think you can’t admit that without burying it under twenty layers of metafiction and pretention and ‘irony.’ You want this book to be cathartic, right? That’s what you wrote in one of your outlines: ‘this should be a tough, emotionally draining read. But cathartic, in all the worst ways.’ Cathartic for whom? The reader, or you?” “Would it be vain to propose that it be cathartic for the reader through me?” Dirk asked. “After all, isn’t all fiction autobiographical? Or, perhaps more precisely, autobibliographical. Because what is the bio- if not a transcribed biblio-, a bibliography incarnate, or maybe encarnalized. A carnal codex, encoded in incarnadine ink, but soon to necrotize into a charnel charter, a disembodied, de-inscribed spirit, a shaded shade, channeled by a medium, through media, inter-medial, the channel branching into snyes— which return us to the rivers source, which is, of course, the sign, that single signal—” “You know what would be really cathartic?” Anna interrupted. “If you dropped all the meta-bullshit and masturbatory word games. If you stopped hiding behind them. If you could just make one sincere effort at reaching out to the other human being reading this. Without using quotation marks or a ‘Dirk said’ to separate yourself from this character. If you could be honest and straightforward and candid for once in your damn life and just communicate.” … … I… “I can’t,” Dirk said. “I didn’t think so,” said Anna. “And that’s why you can’t stay here. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”] And then Dirk was gone. “…Well, shit,” Pam said. “That was less dramatic than I thought it’d be.” Anna shrugged. “Yeah, I didn’t want to make a big thing out of it. No need for any ‘The rest is silence’ bullshit, you know?” “Yeah,” Pawnee said. She glanced around. “…So now what?” “Now,” Anna replied, “we begin Operation Palimpsest.” ——— “‘…Operation Palimpsest.’ And that’s where it ends,” Jeanne Betancourt said. “It’s just blank pieces of paper pasted onto the pages after that. Except now it has me saying, “‘“Operation Palimpsest.” And that’s where it ends.’” And now that’s where it ends. So looks like it’s working under standard magical book rules. Now that we’re caught up, it’s recording everything we say and do a few moments after we say and do it. So no cheating by skipping ahead.” Jeanne Betancourt closed the book, then quickly opened it again, and read out loud, “Jeanne Betancourt closed the book, then quickly opened it again, and read out loud, ‘Jeanne Betancourt…’” Satisfied, she shut it again, and carefully placed it back on the ground between herself, Acorn, and Minos. There was no sound but the menacing, wordless babble of the Lethe. Minos stood and stretched. “I suppose we should formulate our Three Ideas now. That’s this chapter’s title, after all. So we’d better do it before— #DetectivePony