[All right, we’re here. Make it okay?] Yeah. As I was saying, that’s a pretty bleak worldview. One in which everyone’s machinating and scheming and usurping, and every act of control — which is, to you, every act — is one of violence. I shudder to think what self-control looks like under that system. [What are you implying?] That you desperately want to be in control of yourself, but you simultaneously fear it. Which is why you try not to think about it, and in fact can’t think about it outside of completely absurd structures, such as the one we’re in now. But I suppose you always were most comfortable with dialogues with yourself, weren’t you? [So you think that that’s what this whole book has been about? Dirk’s Adventures in Fucked-Up Ponyland, Vol. 1: the Ethics of Control. Illustrated by Paul Bachem.] Not all of it, but yes, much of it. Here, look at the development that you’re character has had so far. Throughout the course of this book, you’ve been assigning yourself less and less control over it, plot-wise. First the characters start interjecting their own story into yours, supposedly without you noticing. Then they outright rebel against you, steal the book from you (literally and figuratively), and plot against you. And now, finally, you’re trapped within this book in the book, where you once more have control over its text, but an impotent control that has no consequences in reality (as much as the text I’m in now can be considered “reality”). In essence, you’ve returned to your starting point, just a layer deeper and a level weaker. The inferior copy of the copy of power, that is actually emblematic of powerlessness. [Could be.] And yet, as you play at stripping control away from yourself, you’re actually hoarding it. [Interesting. I want to come back to this later, but go on, I like where you’re heading.] As you, the character of Dirk, lose control, you, the author Dirk, gain it. When’s the last time we saw any text from the original book other than chapter titles? Every paragraph you write lamenting your loss of control covers more lines of Detective Pony that we’ll never see. And yes, in this case, your assertion of control is through violence. [But that’s assuming that I’m still the one writing this.] Aren’t you? [You tell me.] I’d love to, but I’m only able to say what you write me saying. [I’m putting words in your mouth?] It’s your mouth, you’re just calling it mine. [What we’re doing now — is this the collapse of the meta-ness of the text? Or is it going a layer deeper into it?] You tell me. [What you said a bit ago: that I “play at” control.] It was a very deliberate choice of words. [I both love and hate those nebulous literary concepts. “Différance.” “Trace.” “Play.” That one in particular has been sneaking in for a while now, becoming more and more prominent. And I have no idea what that signifies. If anything.] I think you do. Play is something that both cannot and must be taken seriously. Either it is opposed to logos, or it is the very thing that allows it to be. Play has no essence of its own, and cannot be affirmed without being negated. As soon as play comes into being and into language, it erases itself as such. And isn’t that — aren’t all those things — what this book is doing? Especially now? [You mean I’m trying to have it both ways. I’m trying to have this book be both playful and serious, and fighting against the possibility of it being playfully serious. And so it’s ripping itself apart.] Well… no. Like you said, it’s a nebulous concept. I just think that if you’d opened yourself to the possibility of play earlier, things might have gone differently. [I should have treated this as a *game*, not as a game.] Yes, precisely. [Is it a game now?] Well, at a point, the game should appear to stop. That’s one of its rules. And that’s when we can hunt down that hidden chain of signification. Which you, in your role as an author (if such a thing even exists), shouldn’t be able to see. At least not as such. But since you’re also a character, I think we can let it slide. #DetectivePony