Interview: Leigh Alexander on Mona

Hi, yes, still alive, still writing. I won't bother you with the particulars of my absence, only tell you that I'm back and I have something y'all might find interesting. So let's hop to it.

Leigh Alexander is one of the best game critics in the industry right now. When I say "critic," I don't mean the usual games press shorthand for "someone who tells you if a game is good or bad," but someone who actually examines and analyzes our experiences with games: how they make us feel, how successful the mechanics are at relaying its goals and themes, what these tell us about ourselves, and so forth. In the last half year, she's become one of my go-to sources for nuanced games criticism alongside Cara Ellison and Patrick Klepek. Leigh is originally from Massachusetts, currently living in New York City, and often pops in and out of London for conferences and the like. She also, I must impress, has an incredible voice, as evidenced by the "Lo-Fi Let's Plays" she occasionally posts on YouTube. 

Leigh recently took time out from her critical work to write and self-publish Mona, a short story with illustrations by Emily Carroll, whose horror comics like "His Face All Red" often leave me feeling more than a little disquieted. It is part homage to the landmark horror game Silent Hill 2 and part fan fiction of it. I know I've written at length about the awfulness of fan fiction, but Mona is a fine exception to that rule, a character piece that emulates the dread of its source material rather than aping its characters and setpieces. Rather than following in SH2's supernatural footsteps, it's a work of what I call "moral horror," where fear or terror is derived from the characters' actions, as with YellowBrickRoad. It's at once a commentary on that game and a part of it. And Leigh was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about it.

Interview: YellowBrickRoad Co-Director Andy Mitton

Pictured: Andy Mitton

The other week I wrote about how YellowBrickRoad, an independent horror film written and directed by Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton, did a number on me. I seriously hadn’t been that emotionally and psychologically worked over by a piece of fiction in a while. Though my essay on the movie helped me come to terms with how and why it had affected me as much as it did, I was still intrigued by this harrowing puzzle of a film. So I reached out to Mitton, a Los Angeles filmmaker originally from New England, and he was kind enough to answer my questions about YellowBrickRoad.

Daniel Link: What's the genesis of your and Jesse's premise behind YellowBrickRoad, and how does House of Leaves come into play?

Andy Mitton: At the start, we just thought the idea of hearing music from an unknown source in the forest was a fresh way to portray a ghostly presence. It was our favorite kind of scary—the uncanny, the thing that cannot be there, but is anyway. Just like that door upstairs in Navidson’s house in House of Leaves, which is among my and Jesse’s favorite books. Lynch and Kubrick also became references as masters of the uncanny and squeezing it for all its wrongness. The story within was both around maximizing the potential of that idea, and also telling a cautionary tale about the nature of ambition—something we were exploring on a personal level, anyway, just by uprooting our lives to try and make a movie. We put some of our own dream-following fears and misgivings into the emerging story of Teddy Barnes’ obsession.

Interview - Growing Pains: Horror Edition, Part III

In the vein of last week and the week before that, I'm interviewing someone who considers themself a bit of a horror "fanatic" and asking which work or works in the genre has stuck with them and how their feelings toward it have changed depending on time or events in their life. In this final case, I'm cheating quite a bit and speaking with someone I know rather intimately: myself.

Interview - Growing Pains: Horror Edition, Part II

Continuing last week's theme, I've turned to a fellow horror buff and asked them a few questions about what work in the genre has stayed with them, for better or worse, and how their feelings toward it has changed over the years or due to events in their life. This time around, my close friend Xander Harrington stepped up to the plate.

Interview - Growing Pains: Horror Edition, Part 1

Hey everyone,

It's the 31st, which means two things: it's Halloween, one of my favourite days of the year, and The House on Ash Tree Lane is back and revamped. I said this site would focus exclusively on horror from now on, so to get us into the groove of things three horror buffs--one of my current favourite writers, my best friend, and yours truly--elaborated on how certain works in the genre have stayed with them over the years, and how their feelings toward them have changed. I present to you the first.

Interview - Radioactive Bishop

While he's occasionally been featured on this site for his twisted sense of humour, Riley Byrne is probably best known around Ottawa as ambient-electronic musician Radioactive Bishop. I recently had the chance to interview him (i.e. I sent him a texting saying "interview?" and he replied with "coo"). So here we go.

Interview - Jon Bois

Sports and I don’t go together. I doubt I’ve kicked a ball or made a basket since my last gym class in grade 11 and the most interested I can muster for any championship is the Winter Olympics hockey finals every four years—and even then, only if the Canadian men or women’s team is involved. If there’s a competition I follow with Superbowl levels of enthusiasm, it’s whatever election is going on at the moment.

So when I say I follow a certain sportswriter almost religiously, you know how big that is.

Louisville-based Jon Bois  has been writing for the sports blog SB Nation for the past few years with a unique focus on the absurdity of professional athleticism both on and off the field. He also writes for the recently resurrected site Progressive Boink on occasion. Recently, I had an opportunity to interview him via email on the subject of fumbles, nerdery and animated sports GIFs.

Interview - Cameron "Josef K." Suey

While I’m averse to anything remotely resembling risk in real life, I adore horror fiction in any medium, and masochistically enjoy the feelings of tension and paranoia resulting from a particularly effective work. Creepypasta is a font for these types of stories, though admittedly it’s a kind of “diamonds in the rough situation,” with a lot of its content originating from that cesspool of a message board, 4chan. But working late on a lonely winter night a year and a half ago, one of the site’s aforementioned jewels caught my eye: “Zero,” by Josef K., the deeply unnerving apologia of a nihilistic survivalist unleashing a viral plague upon the human race. Intrigued by the short story’s pessimistic, “no turning back” tone, I decided to click the author link and check out more of Josef’s work on his site. Roughly an hour later, I was steadfastly hammering out the rest of my essay, eyes solely on the computer screen and not daring to look toward the nearest window. I had just finished the story “Exit,” and was terrified at the thought of so much as glancing at those panes, only to see some long, pale face staring back.

The author inadvertently responsible for ruining my sleep on several occasions is not actually the protagonist of one of Franz Kafka’s unfinished novels but Cameron Suey, a 33-year-old husband, father and video game producer based out of San Francisco. When he hasn’t been working on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel, Suey has crafted some of the scariest stories I’ve ever read. He was also kind to answer a few questions about writing, perspective and inspiration I sent to him via email.

Interview - John Cheese

Oh hi, small but dedicated reader base. It's been months--Hell, an entire season--since the last time I posted here, but I have returned, both with the promise of new and utterly trivial entries on the Simpsons, Die Hard and Animal Man, as well as a Very Special Announcement. Mack Leighty, best known to the Internet by his pseudonym John Cheese, has been entertaining and enlightening people for the past year with his weekly column on Cracked.com. Whether he's writing about overcoming his alcoholism or the Hell of being a video game sewer repairman, John's been consistently funny and touching in his output. To boot, he served as the basis for the eponymous character of Cracked senior editor David Wong's comedic horror novel, John Dies at the End, the film adaptation of which will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival later this month.

Recently, John gave any random schmuck on the Internet the opportunity to throw a few questions his way, an offer I had a physical inability to pass up. So without further ado, Mr. Cheese holds court on humour, influences and cinematic doppelgangers.