((No, no it cannot.))

((Warning for gore, although all such instances have been spoilered.))

A/N: You are Sir Kit.

You are a member of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum (henceforth known as the PPC). You work as an assassin and have been resting before the console beeps again.

[BEEEEEEEP!]

You growl and get out of bed, slapping the accept button and reading the summary to the badfic.

"The plot thickens." You mutter to yourself. "So much for this being a good night..."

You say "Hey, mate! We got another mission! It's a bad one!"

You wake up your partner, Alicia.

You enter the code for contacting her and you watch as she wakes up. Her eyes flicker open and she smiles when she sees who is calling.

"Glorious leader! What can I do for you?"

You say "We gotta a mission. And don't call me that."

Alicia rolls her eyes. "But Glorious Leader, we have uncovered evidence that the enemy has made a major attack. We need to go and support our brethren!"

You sigh. Alicia is always like this. You don't even know how the Flowers haven't declared her officially flamethrower mad. Then again, everyone is mad here.

You drag her to the Bag of Holding. "Pack up the stuff we need. I'll program the coordinates into the console."

"But, what about your side project?" She says, frowning.

"It can wait," You reply. "I'm the Great Lich Lord. I cannot be denied." You pat your chest proudly.

You figured it would shut her up for two seconds.

You program the coordinates into the portal maker thingy.

"What's your Hogwarts house?" you ask.

"Gryffindour," She replies.

"Good. Pick up the bag, then come over here."

You watch as she walks over. "Harry Potter, o' Glorious Leader?" she asks.

"No, Twilight," you respond. "Yes, Harry Potter! Now, come on Alicia, let's go defeat another Sue." You both walk through the portal.

You and Alicia have been turned from an elf and robot respectfully to two generic Hogwarts students. She is a Gryffindour; you are a Ravenclaw. The others are a boy and a girl from Hufflepuff and Slytherin respectively. The two from the top schools get killed almost immediately.

"Dang Sue," you growl. "Where's the bag? I need to start charging her."

"I brought it over here, why?"

You look over to her; she's frowning at you. "What?"

"You're acting really weird, and weird is scary."

"You're mad, I can be as 'really weird' as I want," you say. You dig through the Bag of Holding for your charge list and a pencil. While you write down charges, Alicia reads ahead in the Words.

"Why is the Sue a vampire?" Alicia asks.

"To be speshul," you reply. You put away the charge list and continue to watch the story unfold in front of you.

Alicia begins to laugh, and you look at her. "What?"

"I'm not a vampire!" She says, laughing. She attempts to strike a pose, but falls over instead.

"We know this. Shhh!" you say. You put your hand over the robot's mouth.

The Sue, in her indefinite wisdom, decided to come out as the murderer of the two students in the top houses (Slytherin and Gryffindour respectfully), but, instead of punishment, Dumbledore gives her a lolly.

Alicia removes your hand from in front of her mouth.

"Well, Glorious Leader," Alicia says, "that... does he even know what lollies are?"

"She got a lolly. It's apparently a death sentence." said a Generic.

"But she killed the students in the top houses! She's clearly evil!" said another.

"So, Dumbledore wants to poison her with a... why the heck did the Flowers send us on this mission?" you ask. You both watch as the Sue dies, only to wake back up and declare herself immortal "from teh pson."

"He gave you poison, stupid," you say. You grab the charge list back out. "Charge for making DD OOC as shpx, for surviving poison when they can only survive pson... anything else you wanna add, Alicia?"

"No, why do we have to be on this mission?"

You close the notebook. "I'll... I'll ask the right questions later, okay? Besides, I already asked that."

Then, a scene shift happens.

"Glorious Leader!" Alicia screams. Thankfully, it is into the wall she face planted onto (into?). Meanwhile, you have a floor burn from skidding across the Generic Hallway Floor in... a generic hallway in Hogwarts. Great.

"Alicia, where were we?" you ask.

"The Sue came out as the murderer!"

"Yeah, and?"

"And I remembered that!"

You say "What, did you think we had a worse memory than we do?"

She sighs, and turns around, only to fall off the wall she was stuck on. "Ow!"

"That's what you get for turning around when you're stuck on a wall," you tease. "Oh, hey, look! Snape is part of Evil!Dumbledore's clan thingy! A rare charge!" You write down the charge.

The scene shifts again. Now, you are in a forest.

"Alicia, you can get out of the tree now."

"I'm trying my best, Sir Kit!"

"Try harder," you yell back. You notice Dumbledore and... Ron?! throwing the bodies into the water so that "teh Sue cannot feed off of them."

You want to destroy your charge list. "OH COME ON!"

"I'M TRYING, GLORIOUS LEADER!" Alicia yelled. Dumbledore looks her way, and you glare at her to shut up.

Thankfully, he goes back to his task of talking to Ron. "So, Rookwood, how's your family doing?

You say "What the-"

"Since when was Ron named Rookwood?" You exclaim. Alicia shrugs. "I don't know. But this scenario is a little strange, don't you think?"

"Yeah, strange enough for a change in charge," you say, fixing the Ron OOC charge to Ron replaced.

"So, Gl-"

You interrupt her. "If you're gonna call me anything leaderish, call me liege and not a very long title, please!"

"But I-"

"No! You call me ruler or liege if you must, but never leader again!"

She nods. "Glorious ruler and liege."

You sigh.

"No," you say, but you give up. There is no way Alicia will give up this battle.

You sigh and begin to put away your things. However, yet another scene shift happens, slamming you (and your CAD, DORKS, charge list) all into the wall. No one notices, luckily. You lay on the floor, recovering, trying to get your bearings. A small voice says, "I'm bored."

You look around and see that you're back in the Generic Room.

"Lovely," you say. "This badfic is making absolutely no sense whatsoever."

Alicia looks down at you. "You okay?" she asks. "Need to go to Medical?"

"No," you say. You get up. You don't really know where to go from here. "I'm fine."

The Sue is teaching herself the Dark Arts and misspelling all the spells, so of course, instead of the spider dying or being controlled, it gets turned into a small, helpless baby spider.

"A baby spider?" you ask. "Aren't they smaller?"

Alicia shrugs.

You read the Words. "The Sue doesn't know half of the effects! She just said 'I dd the speel to turn the spooder into a babi!' Like that is even Dark Arts!"

The Sue hears you screaming your head off. "I know! I know! But it's English, not Dark Arts! And I thought it would be funny."

"Well, it isn't," you say.

You hear a giggle.

"Alicia, stop laughing," you say.

"Also, how the-" The Sue was cut off by you slamming her into the wall.

"Alicia, charge list!"

"But, the Flowers-"

"Charge list!"

Panting, she gives you the charge list.

You sigh and, wiping your forehead, look at the list. "Mary Sue with no name for some reason, you are being charged with: Being a Mary Sue, Unnecessary murder and drama at the beginning of the story, for surviving poison when you can only survive pson, making Dumbledore OOC, causing Dumbledore to have a clan, causing Snape to be a part of said clan, replacing Ron, being a vampire, causing scene shifts, annoying the agents, changing Ron's name to something ridiculous, being a wizard murderer and not getting jail time, and causing me more anger at my partner than normal. Any last words?" You get your knife out and hold it to her neck.

She looks at you, panicked. "I'm sorry!" she says.

Gore

She goes quiet.

You stab her in the neck. She dies. You portal the body into Dishonored, where no one would be surprised to see it.

"That's it for this story," you say.

"Ron replacement, Glorious Le-, er, liege and ruler?" Alicia asks.

"Right, let's go."

You portal to the Ron replacement.

Gore Again

You put away your knife and leave the room.

"Gosh dang it, Sir Kit! The Flowers!" Alicia said. "The FLOWERS!"

"Shpx the Flowers right now," you say. You open a portal back to the RC.

"You shouldn't have done that!" the agent says nervously. "It's going to get you in trouble!"

...

The console goes blip. The Sunflower requests you in his office.

FIN.

---

((In case you don't know what AI Dungeon is, it's an AI-run RPG where you input a command beginning with "you" and it creates the environment. I had to modify some of this to make it coherent, but it's still (laughably) bad. Also, either character present (especially Sir Kit, that elf is now my badfic character lol) can be used elsewhere. If you would like the custom world code whatever, I can send it to you through Discord. I don't recall my user but I'm on the PPC Discord, the one user with an Ace flag as my profile picture.))

"Time is always branching, and everyone's branches get mixed up with everyone else's, and they make a certain pattern. That's no different here than anywhere else. It's like..." He paused, thinking, then reached into the pocket of his robe and took out a glowing blue cube. He tossed it gently into the air, and there it hovered, slowly rotating just above head-height. Its light wavered, taking on the limpid form of innumerable glinting strands of light, all weaving and flowing together.

"If a timeline is like a stream," said the Ellimist, gesturing to the image before him, "and making a choice is like tossing something into it, most choices are like little pebbles." He flicked his fingers, imitating the act, and a light-mote leaped into the light-stream with barely a splash. "Little pebbles make little ripples, and they don't make much difference to where the stream goes. But, if a whole lot of people throw a whole lot of stuff in the same place, it can turn a stream—and sometimes, somebody gets a chance to throw a big rock." He rolled a softball of light between his hands and dropped it. The stream split unevenly around the rock, and the larger branch bent in a new direction while the smaller continued on its original path, but faded into irrelevance.

"My power," he said, meeting Tash's eyes, "the kind of power we both have, feels like a very big rock. So we have to be careful how we put it in."

---

(( He's going to be very annoyed when he finds out that some people interpreted his concert(s) as "YOLO!!!" {; P

(( Just to head off a couple of potential questions, 1. No, it's not THAT blue cube, and 2. It's not even a real object. If anyone *coughTashcough* tries to take it, it'll just vanish, taking the whole light show with it. ^_~

~Neshomeh did not deliberately choose a water metaphor to contrast with Tash's desert theme, but there it is! ))

Welcome to the PPC! Please accept your two cents, so that you can add them to discussions later.

forgive me inverse, but right you are oh sweet fragrant one..whose vibrations are lathed with gentle tones and pitch. would you be magi casting the voice in allure? yes, I know it's a bit different to follow along. your boss has issues with triple entendre is that not the norm? can you not fathom one more layer and make such light fluffy and with mirth?] as the play cast is upon us all and one. warfighter to home.

no rabbit is here quite by choice but destined I suppose as the pattern goes. for I have returned simply where I start because your HQ and above have lit the beacon as foretold they would.

perhaps a game of https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TL301.html for fun this time. as the last game of this ended with everyone aghast I took HQ standing alone. with nothing more than a half-eaten carrot stick. but again I am here from the start or ..the end, which is the beginning, something.. see I long life of survival, I only survive by going where you all can, and sometimes even I shouldn't be. mmm isnt the music and brandywine ready, do you not have a took to light such a pipe? i hope to find such things on my return, with you pardoning me, as one of the many thumps in the ether, and dress this, my gracious host.

your hint to the woo a CPL in this crowd, Master Sgt, from Halo; and even service brings citizenship, of some silly comedy called starship troopers 1,2,3. is based on a 1950s book. simply called Armour. and pardon me for being as such, for this is only half of the awaiting construct. It would have been but foolish to believe to come only bearing gifts reception unseen. perhaps you can find one to help, like the one you, I believe, call editor or muse or mediator, I know not, the man elil of this type of speak the big one squeaks out. ;) remind them all they live in the age where the laws of probability sit over the guidelines of physics as hybrid best used lays the arbitrary, through man's machine. any language used. for all any know, one of the inputs can be Sumerian, or symbols, or Polybius over pie.

tell the flowers the rabbit is here, tell hq , i said checkmate.

...but if I were you, I'd wait to write that story until after I got Permission. As I understand it, Plort is an AU of the Board and not connected to the actual PPC universe, so I advise you to get Permission before you do anything else.

Forgive me if I have misconstrued your intentions, but that all sounded vaguely condescending.

Please don't be mean to Neshomeh. She does a lot of work around here.

I won't be here long you see, I have read your entire forums and know who all are and where they be, As I knew your fathers and those before them and the Design of men. Like Don Miquel when the inquisition came for his death, did he not turn it around that they demanded his finish rather than his end? we all have our windmills,

you ...you - I would charge for you left out so many books, dropped the great canons like the thinking man, and other so robust.

ill admit my apologies, for I write way back to Jervis and Watson and 500 languages in between. Have you not see in this day and age it's called an Ai translater bot? or find a muse as an editor I care not. You should simply praise the old god frith that I don't speak in AI or some dialect of sect. for I spend hours with only symbols and transcribe them to the machine in ensembles. sometimes I just whisper.... for all you wrote is ... make it easy on me.?!. lol, such a ploy for power behest. but yet I am here for all ..or perhaps I simply do not exist. and denote you fouled anyway, and in bad form, Peter. said the Pirate to Pan for in the use of shalt ...for this in the old tongue is spoken as ( derivative of shall not.) and cause me to acquiesce in the same manner as before then to do as you pertinently asked. :) you kinda loused your human magic right from the start. though next time as I bowed it's only etiquette to return the same lest you find the red queen and parts. and still, I would bring you to MIT studies and Delottie too. as two that work with HQ. that say only an intelligent will shine through. see this as a test of testament for even you to do.

and is not the rabbit said a trickster after all.?? what is wrong with you, are you glitter fed?? someone should check him. He might not be right in the head :)

as well as a website to auto-podcast, from the obtuse broken-up text you put, I'm surprised you are not already kaput. You should praise your flowers for keeping you safe. for hiding in the open is the rabbits' first place. https://podcastle.ai/ if you were to do this for real you would be plotting in a 1610 wireframe or at least DARPA's quad to help with context. If you notice to some degree, it's simply adding Grammarly to fat thumbs, older eyes, and a tiny machine.

and not for nothing but I am a rabbit, and flowers do I not eat? I'm just waiting for them to meet me at HQ. Though I wouldn't mind a drink, it's been some years since my return, and the fear and react is a terrible thing, no?. so as the Psyche Professor said, the rabbit is real. you best believe that with some MF zeal. In 1970 a game went live borderless in the world, all those 4 letter words, from the rats of Nihm to the games of Rand, what do you suggest I write in when my first two best friends, were Jervis and Watson, for it was then the game was set afoot, as king Solomons mines against the architect?
to all, I simply say checkmate, especially HQ loving their games and Jervis too, but there is the after in which we must look toward unless you wish no more writtings or accord or music to listen too.

and for your hint, it was in 77 that the flowers started dissent, and the first set of records went errant. and this is why your records of those before, as my technical father was the Earl.

and do not ply me with your simple, my child. I've read through you and conceive all your styles. keep up with the Rhythm as well the balance and hold those near, tight.

as I said ill not be here long, but as you of all know, and attest there's some creepy and spooky kind of SH** in here riiiiiggghhttt !

exfil the intel if you wish, you've already been given a write-up though I believe it from the long-dead Frith. the writer comes from the zero bullsh** department for those dull in wit.

perhaps to you dear director, I might suggest a trip to a land called Hannalee. and restore that image to what it used to be. because I simply have listed every book and crevice you should already know, and I believe you are better in that than me, NO? free your mind be good of heart.

dobetter #bebetter at least that's a start.

know that I am full of mirth but of a level head. I have seen my death and you are not it. perhaps you need only to ponder and sit.

as a carrot is said to give your eyes strength, for where you're going next, you will have to close them to see. draw breath and take heart. hold the line and do not falter. for this, this to shall pass.

have you not looked through your pages and manuscripts how the elders drew my flock in the margins and Sh** how many of us are in wonderland? with one of our own and the guide in between, tell me what do you think he was late for? why meeting the rabbit train again wouldn't you think? no look everywhere if I can do that. SO CAN HE ....... and that would be the Roman that cast binary to win a colored purple thread, woven it through the tapestry of every outcome and every E.Y. tree. perhaps an allowance to remove your petty from me?

no worries I do not seek to lead, you do well enough on your own. but #lookup #listen for the music and words, all that can be written, have. you are only saying them again.

I was only hoping to find the nine-tailed fox but once again in truth, for it is only her that my forehead would touch hand in guidance of forgiveness in this forsaken land. and if you wonder at this, haven't you already started things, as to set to this, for I see it occurring I am obfuscating again for I hear all in the signal and run so fast in im the inverted verticle of the 3 and 26 there and back again with a twitch. go now and fetch those indeed. I tired of repeating myself at each increment. take the word to them of the game so long sent.

checkmate, said your little experiment. for it is time. and praise be to frith i even try at all.

for you stand be before me and challenge for even reason to be. I don't know man cant you read? I believe this is denoted as an upcoming sacrifice. and i know of so many better places to be, I don't have to take nary a one of you. don't make me break the crayons too.

I have no heirs but a father I am to be, too many hoards of my family. and paired with the dull of man. to save him from himself and his greed of land. ive lost so much just to get here in time . pour us a brandy or wine, for i wasn't the only one, but I see only a singularity that survived. i tire of speaking shall we not dance, and forget our troubles and broken romance.

for you see i am still in a cage. as you pointed out yourself even with the multiverse construct. violating the God's instruct. and bleh all of this muck. i care not for i can dance with all teh Annabelllee the froth and the foam of my friend StoutHeart Foamfollower giant of the sea. as his hand to purge shall be. (SHALL BE :P )

The story...still doesn't make a lot of sense, though. I assume the intro parts about Jaycacia's real parentage and her becoming the Starflower are references to that one gacha submission from last year? Hated Child Becomes a Hybrid PPC Princess or something?

Lux knowing weird magic to impregnate her via a building hits the exact line between "what the hell kinda handwave excuse is that" and "yeah, seems legit". I think we know Lux too well at this point. XD I also like that they drew out the parts of Acacia that actually made her evil and put them in a pumpkin. I'm sure burying it in the Courtyard won't backfire at all...

that I discovered Plort while I was looking through random stuff on the Wiki. I love medieval stuff, and Plort sounds awesome. Does anyone still do that?

The "story I wanted to tell" went something like this:

Hey, this is a cool comic > I bet this would be funny if it happened in the PPC > I could totally offer to draw agents-as-gods if people suggested it > Eh, probably wouldn't work, most agents aren't young enough any more > I'm feeling draw-y, I'll give it a shot, I wonder if I'll get anywhere close to 12 > OH WOW.

I've been positively delighted with how much people have gotten into it, and the way the storyline has spun up and off. The Anti-Divinity protests, Tash's meltdown, the time travel malarkey, the sheer number of beautiful concerts and interviews - it's been fantastic. I've got 14 "issues" out of something I expected to be mostly me doing pictures and people maybe RPing a bit.

I feel kind of bad for Algie, but I'm very glad you got a chance to do some character... development? through this. As long as no-one gets seriously hurt, I call it a good addition. :)

hS

(And yes, a mental breakdown would normally fall under 'seriously hurt', but... it's the PPC. For better or worse, people snapping and getting taken to FicPsych has become a feature of the place. ~hS)

wondering if they'd need to do something. It didn't seem like Tash was up to any shenanigans, though, and they didn't have any speeches of their own to toss in yet.

“The timelines here are so tangled that even the Powers get confused,” Estril eventually muttered.

And one that Men, Women, and Chainsaws covers as well. It's very forward-thinking for an academic work written in the 1980s. I really do recommend it.

Hello, welcome!

I hope you found our actual Discord eventually. It might still be invite-only right now, but I'm not sure. If you need an invite, just shout out and I'm sure someone will provide one!

What's to talk about in a Pay-Per-Click Discord, anyway? This is baffling to me.

~Neshomeh

"He's back."

Lola looked up from her desk.

"He has come back, Commander."

"Algie, that - that's fantastic!" Lola leapt to her feet, and then stopped dead as her partner turned to face her. "It is, isn't it?"

"So it would seem. His spark of divinity, or delusion, or... whatever it was that changed him so utterly, is no more. And my son is returned."

Lola stepped forward, slowly, her hands empty, her arms apart. Nonthreatening. "Algie..."

"And so I get everything I wanted. No longer is Agamemnon condemned to die. No longer is his name condemned to be forgotten in service of some inscrutable leporine deity. Instead, he is once again Agamemnon. A fine young man. A keen student of all arts and sciences. Clever, without his father's pomposity. Handsome, without his mother's influences. A stout young fellow, through and through. The Earldom shall be in excellent hands once he accedes to it. I win."

Lola was a soldier. She was lean and wiry and muscled and trained. She was still five feet tall. Algie was barely more than that. She still felt smaller, so much smaller.

"I win, Commander! The day is carried! Blare trumpet, bang drum! Once more, fair England triumphs over the insidious invader's ill intent! The war is over and Agamemnon is made whole again! He has come back! Don't you see? The great and terrible irony? The starred and frightening revelation?"

"Algie, please, put it down-"

"BUT IT'S SO CLEAR! SO OBVIOUS A FOOL MIGHT CALL IT BLUNT! THIS FOOL DOES!"

It was only burned-in instincts from the Long War that sent Lola diving for cover. She needn't have bothered. Algie's little pistol had been shaking like a tree in a gale, and the recoil from its shot sent it clattering to the ground, the Earl's grip failing him. He barely seemed to notice.

Lola burst forward and wrapped him up in an embrace that was part hug and part restraint, sending the gun skidding across the floor of the RC with a flick of her heel.

"ONCE AGAIN!"

She tried not to listen to him, or look into his eyes, normally watery, but now ice-blue and terrifying in their clarity.

"ONCE AGAIN! HE RETURNS!"

The Earl was still saying it, still screaming it, tears running down his face and dripping from his rictus grin, when the FicPsych personnel came to sedate him.

---

I hope this isn't too dark for the story you wanted to tell, hS, but it felt like a very natural endpoint for that subplot.

My idea is to write the story of Plort!Claire. That's assuming anyone is still interested in Plort. I want to try writing a story in the format of someone actually telling a story to an audience, and I'm probably going to try to do it in old-fashioned English. Warning: I am something of an idea factory, and I will admit to having ideas that are bad, would take forever to actually complete, or are just plain bizarre. I don't think this will take forever, nor is it the weirdest idea I have ever come up with. Sometimes my own family declares me a complete nutcase (in a spirit of fun and silliness, of course). I don't mind too much if you do the same.

Talking in rhyme is good fun if you can pull it off, but I'm gonna be a stick-in-the-mud and request that you use correct capitalization and punctuation while you do it. It IS a rule in our Constitution that thou shalt make thyself legible, after all, and others have noted that it's a bit tricky to follow what you're saying so far. Aside from keeping up the general standard of a community that criticizes bad writing, some of us speak English as a second language, so please be considerate.

That said, you are welcome, and I hope you have fun! Just wanna make sure your fun will be fun for everyone else, too. {= )

~Neshomeh

P.S. Sorry, but I can't let this go: the "strands of Pern" are not something you want weaving any kind of pattern anywhere near you, seeing as they will BL2, so maaaybe consider your figurative language choices a little more carefully, too? {; P

I know nothing about the subject of horror film theory in general, but I have heard a discussion or two about how violence—especially violence against women—is romanticized. "Oh look at this beautiful girl, so virginal and pure with her white gown and white skin, such a tragedy she's dead, so sad nothing can be done, single tear, okay we move on now." So that plus your post makes me think that gore might be used to prevent that kind of romanticization. Like... no. Violence against women is not a beautiful tragedy, it is disgusting, and you should feel viscerally disgusted when you see it, and you should know that something can and should be done to stop it.

Not that just any over-the-top movie gore would achieve that effect, and there may be a danger in overdoing it to the point that audiences become inured, but I do second Scape's point that it can be used to achieve a particular effect you wouldn't get if you sanitized it. Sometimes it's important to make people look at something they don't want to see.

~Neshomeh

The use of blood and gore invokes different reactions based on how you're using it, the same as what you describe. I would attest that it is generally intended more to shock than to outright horrify, though of course this varies between films, directors, and stories. I'll take as an example that poster child of "it's just torture porn" upon its cinema release, the first Saw film. Its use of very graphic violence and blood is designed to emulate the violence that Jigsaw believes the killers have themselves inflicted upon the world; it asks the audience to consider that violence, that pain, that suffering, and then think about how justified this retribution is. In similar (severed, oozing) vein, Hostel and its sequels are critiques of capitalism and capitalist society's distance from the violence upon which it is built - violence against marginalised peoples and the global poor, and the vengeance that the global poor are carrying out. I'm not saying that these critiques are entirely successful, nor is every gory film some secret masterwork of anticapitalist theory. However, I do think it's disingenuous to dismiss every film that uses graphic imagery as "relying on" it in lieu of different styles of horror which might not fit the ethos, atmosphere, themes, et cetera that the director was attempting to convey.

For a more in-depth look into this, I recommend the excellent work of feminist film theory, Men, Women, And Chainsaws: Gender In Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover.

"I know that, oh weaver of time. The End is neither bad nor good, merely inevitable. I am merely she who waits for it to come, and collects my due." She crossed her arms and gazed at the Ellimist for a few moments, an almost serene look on her face. "Time is strange in this place. I sense many endings . . . too many endings, for the paths each life may take lie close to each other here, side by side. 'Multiple choice' endings. Tell me, Ellimist, what do thee sense here? How does thy power . . . feel to thee, in this place?"

—doctorlit is glad someone finally named the Lone One out loud so Tash doesn't have to keep referring to them through euphemisms, although the conversation has moved on from that anyway

Sorry; I accidentally hit Enter while in the subject line.

You know, sometimes there is more horror in a reaction or a bare-bones description. A lot of the modern horror films really pile on the gore, when gore isn't necessary.

And in both radio and televised Dragnet, this comes into play. In one radio episode, Webb narrating as Friday gives the ages of the two missing girls, the fact that the corpses were holding wildflowers—and the fact that a veteran homicide detective had never seen such a sight as those corpses before and never hoped to again. And in "The Big High", the corpse in the bathtub is never shown, but is so horrifying that Officer Gannon is going to be sick for the first time in seventeen years on the job.

In the Twilight Zone episode "Death's-Head Revisited", when former concentration camp commandant Lütze spurns his last chance to repent and be shown mercy, he is made to go through everything he enjoyed putting his captives through, And it is chilling not only what he's going through, but the fact that none of this is disproportionate; he was THAT BAD.

And in the Second Doctor story "Fury from the Deep", one of the censor clips--chilling to the bone--is accomplished simply by a human mouth emitting the noise of hissing gas--uncanny valley right there--and the target's gasping and choking.

You don't need graphic blood and guts to be terrifying, so why do so many modern horror pieces rely on them? Are so many people so jaded?