Deconstructing The Lulz

The graphic novel and gameDead Spacegoes even further in its apt portrayal of such tiny monsters in its necromorphs - parasites which take control and zombify dead tissue - life forms that act as a disease - as an infectant - but in fact are another (conscious) life form which has no concern for the fragility of human being(s) while recognizing (unlike the virus, the microorganism) the consciousness of humans. Yet the two cannot be easily cleaved from each other. The necromorphs contort and reflesh their victims reducing their human hosts not to zombic hunger but to a fever only to spread the protracted death of necromorph existence. Furthermore, whereas zombies are reliant on the reduced faculties of their brain pointing towards a target (removal of the head) the necromorphs must be de-limbed until they can no longer move. The strategy of combating not the center of the organism but attacking the limbs can be connected to the Jihadi strategy of dieback machinery articulated in Negarestani’s article “The Militarization of Peace: Absence of Terror or Terror of Absence?” The strategy of dieback which the necromorphs invoke is a self imposed withering utilizing the exteriority of the body to protect its own viral interiority. The necromorphs cannot be destroyed only their transmission vessels can be hobbled and slowed.

Slime Dynamicsby Ben Woodard, p. 22