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Weekend Reading: Real Funny, Scary Funny, Real Scary

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While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured our attention, and should also capture yours.

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Where “It” Was, Adrian Daub, Los Angeles Review of Books

Stephen King writes stories set in a specific place; those small and mysterious places that have to be felt, not seen, along the coast of New England. And yet, tales marinated in personal childhood have resonated with the world over. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but King happens to be one of the most successful authors in history. On the 30th anniversary of It (1986), a book that arguably encapsulates all of King’s core themes, Adrian Daub talks about what the book meant to him, despite growing up on the other side of the planet.

The Parallax View, Michael Thomson, Real Life

Videogames aren’t the first medium to strive for realism, but what that means for virtual reality is a sentence to endless hyperreality. Beyond the uncanny valley, Michael Thompson writes about the faults of abstracting our world through a blender into another, the redundancy of only appearing real.

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Photo provided by Norm Macdonald to The New Yorker

My Greatest Gig, Norm Macdonald, The New Yorker

An ideal world is one that’s just a bunch of Norm Macdonald’s anecdotes about the comedy world. In one step towards that utopia, he has released a memoir, Based on a True Story, filled with truths, half-truths, and flat out lies. The New Yorker has released an excerpt so you can spend at least a few minutes in this hypothetical better world.

The Creepiest Series On YouTube, Daniel Oberhaus, The Awl

I know, I know: what “Creepiest Series On YouTube” isn’t the “Creepiest Series On YouTube?” But with as much walk as talk, Daniel Oberhaus explores the making of “Marble Hornets,” a branching gothic tale born online that threaded itself into the web we now know as the creepypasta phenomenon.