The spectres of postmodern man.

The malign muse and the dreaming hero. You can only defeat the paperclip by being a good writer by your own devices. And there’s only so many ways you can save a princess.

See my epic Plato v. the Paperclip.—After more than 1000 pages of dialogue, they reconcile when the paperclip promises to destroy the human expressive organ totally by means of a secret power, which the philosopher agrees to because it reduces all life to material thought/memory, which he thinks might be the Ideal Spirit manifested.
A climactic scene is described wherein a nameless protagonist (later revealed to be Mario) wires a million paperclips together to climb out of the cave. He remarks that it’s like entering another world.
Please post a comment if you’d like to pay for a copy. Here is one of the Songs of Mario it features, which Socrates sings channeling imprisoned Toadstool:

Our Mario, on a toadstool,
Hallucinates sweetly.
Doleful thy trip—how many episodes, lost,
Overextended thy joy,
Our own heroic boy, in hilarious American dress?
Your mustache unhappy,
Thy vestments all vexed,
Thy taxing task repeated
As if you inhabited a vortex
Of cyclic nostalgia—your imagination hindered

By the harmlessness of your adversaries,

And your infinite dies.—O two-colored tired eyes!
Let the mad midis end!
Not another map

Amaze thee with experience
Nor a secret key way redeem it,
Nor a star reinvigorate.