#mark fisher

Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher

Kind of a general lament about The Man. Not untrue, but also sort of felt like a conversation 2 disgruntled line cooks would have over cigarettes behind the restaurant.

Feelings, Manjit Thapp

A graphic novel that follows a woman’s emotional rhythm alongside the seasons. Just picked this one up on a whim because I liked the art style. Worth the read if you’re into softer stuff.

Catching the Big Fish, David Lynch

Read shortly after the death of the legend. More memoir than instruction manual but contains many nuggets of wisdom.

Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

Didn’t understand a damn word of this one. Need to reread when I fully develop brain.

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

This one really shook me up for a while. Really powerful book, a great life philosophy, makes sense intellectually but hard to live by. A good perspective to keep in mind.

On The Genealogy Of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche

A wacky book by a wacky guy, but much to think about. Some parts felt intuitively true, other parts felt like a blueprint for fascism. I did enjoy how Nietzsche writes like he’s shaking his fist at you personally.

Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault

Historically fascinating and philosophically terrifying. Proof positive of your most paranoid social fears.

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Aww yeah baybee. This shit took up every spare brain cell for like 3 months this year. A new all time favorite. Tennis, drugs, and videotape. And but like so anyway.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Actually haven’t finished this one yet, Libby ran out when I was halfway through. but it’s really good and so I put it on the list. Kind of terrifying, in multiple ways, also spicier than I expected. Intending to finish as soon as I get my copy back but that may be in ‘26.

Honorable mentions

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

Heard the controversy and read all the spoilers before reading. Enjoyed the first 1/3 or so but DNF’d about 60% through when I realized the story wasn’t getting any more profound as it piled on soap opera theatrics. Glad I at least tried to read it because it led me to discover Infinite Jest and DFW.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace

Consider The Lobster, David Foster Wallace

Listened to a few essays from each. Both ASFTINDA and Lobster were my constant companions when I was working long ass shifts at the arcade I worked at as a second job this summer. I did a lot of my listening at work with a secret earbud under my hair.

Oblivion, David Foster Wallace

Haven’t read every story yet but thoroughly enjoyed Mister Squishy (one of my favorite DFW stories) and Good Old Neon. If nothing else 2025 was far and away my year of DFW.

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, D.T. Max

An official biography of David Foster Wallace. Haven’t finished but wanted to know the context in which his works were written.

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

An old favorite from high school. Listened to it as a bit of a break from Infinite Jest and it’s better than I remembered. If it hadn’t come out before Discipline and Punish I would have assumed that was a huge influence.

Megg, Mogg and Owl (assorted comics), Simon Hanselmann

My favorite comic of all time. Read mostly on Simon’s Instagram page. Hilarious, filthy, and often poignantly sad.

Yup, that's the thesis. Sooooo...

The church rave side quest always struck me as strangly significant for a side quest. Its length is also roughly in the same league as the political vision quests.

Essentially, the church storyline deals with nihilism and postnihilism (or existentialism). The anomaly in the church, the Swallow, turns out to be a small concentration of Pale, the epicenter of a coming Pale expansion. Pale, as I understand it, functions as a kind of materialization of nihilism. In his video essay on the Pale, The 41st Precinct compares the Pale to the Nothing from The Neverending Story, which is materialized ignorance or lack of imagination. The Phasmid tells us that the Pale is a product of the human mind alone that "eats away at reality". This is, by the way, reminiscent of the theory of infra-materialism. Instead of creating communism through shared belief, people create the Pale through a shared disbelief.

The Pale is the nearing End of History, or more precise, a materialized disbelief in historical progress, in personal improvement, in short, a lack of hope. Despair. Per the Phasmid, non-human animals and plants do not hope or despair, as they live in the moment.

The Pale is sometimes also described as condensed 'pastness', like when past human utterances can be heard when you listen to radio frequencies that travel through the Pale or the old blind lady that spent so much time in the Pale experiencing the memories of people of ages past that she forgot who she was herself. Stuck in the past. A negation of the future.

The Pale is a materialization of the Slow Cancellation of the Future, to speak with Mark Fisher.

Noid is an explicitly ideological character, but rejects all the official ideologies of the game, while Egg Head is the opposite, as he can be talked into endorsing any of the official ideologies. The Ravers, I also suggest, each represent a different skill from each of the four skill categories. Noid is Drama, Andre is Volition, Egg Head is Shivers, Acele is Interfacing. In short, The Ravers have a particular, outsider relationship to the official ideologies.

There are obvious parallels to punk/anarchism here, especially with Noid. The importance of music, an underground scene, anti-establishment/anti-authoritarian, egalitarian sentiments, even Encyclopedia's remark on possible overlap with fascism (in the marginal case of fascist punks).

Combine this with Egg Head's mission to make the anodic dance beat, the HARDCOREST of hardcore songs, one that is radically NEW, one that the Arno van Eyck thought describes as a "glimpse of the future". How you make this song is very relavant. Egg Head already has a tape with the basis, to which you add a melody from a discarded tape by none other than Arno van Eyck, allowing two of his music stems to reunite, forming a song that wasn't meant to be. A glimpse of a future that wasn't meant to be. Rather hauntological, to speak with Mark Fisher.

Moreover, you use the Pale anomaly to create a bass beat for the song. You accept the conditions of nihilism, but then use them to move beyond moral paralysis. Postnihilism, you might say. Noid speaks of striving for "true life", a life without "fear" (despair) and "internal division". In a sense, the Phasmid sort of represents the hardcorest version of this mode of existence. It does not have emotions, only states. That is to say, it does not feel, but simply is. It exists, and it is very fine just existing.

I do not have very nice bowtie to conclude this ramble, but maybe ill elaborate in a future post. something something existentialism and acid communism, to speak with Mark Fisher.