Caro’s Writing Roundup, Oct. 4th, 2015

Hi all! 

Here’s all the gaming-related stuff I’ve written since the last time I wrote one of these roundup posts!

Princesses, Mushrooms and Everything: On the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., a reflection on what that game meant to me at the time of its release.

The Blue Butterfly: On Life Is Strange, Alternate Timelines, and Accepting the Things We Cannot Change

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Everybody’s Been Left Behind by the Rapture: On Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and human storytelling in games.

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The Severely Limited Travels of Super Mario Maker: I love Mario Maker, but I think it’s missing the ability to make one vital thing–the sense of a journey.

Lost on the Coast: Maybe I’m cheating a bit on this one. It was posted on my personal blog, not my gaming blog, but it does discuss games briefly in the context of a backpacking trip I took in early September.

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else Heart.Break () Journal One–Out on the Town: Personal reactions to the early events in the game else Heart.Break (). 

On the Road With the Women of The Wheels of Aurelia: OutRun, The Wheels of Aurelia, and the scarcity and importance of female road trip narratives.

The Game is Not Yours: Thoughts on The Beginner’s Guide: Intended audiences, personal experiences with art, and when those experiences or our reactions to them cross over into a violation of the artist. 

And, brand new on VICE: Grace Under Pressure: On the Thrilling Heist Mechanics of The Swindle

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You can find all my pieces for VICE here.

I also have co-writing credits on two recent Feminist Frequency videos, the Women as Reward video and the supplemental Women as Reward Special DLC Mini-Episode.

If you’d like to dig further back through the archives, you can find my previous writing roundup post here

Lastly, in addition to my regular appearances on Wild Guesses and The Crockpot, I was pleased to recently be the guest on Josiah Renaudin’s podcast The 1099, where we discussed topics including the value of reading and writing criticism that challenges the status quo, the ways in which the discussions around games have and haven’t changed in recent years, and the character of Quiet in Metal Gear Solid V.

If you like my work and you’re able to do so, please consider making a contribution to my Patreon. Those contributions are essential to letting me keep doing this kind of writing. 

Thank you so much for reading!