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First: my "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" Coursera course is really very simplistic, I should be finding it challenging, not feeling annoyed at everyone for missing obvious points. And when the one POC in the videoed tutorial ever so gently suggested that maybe The Lord of the Rings has some troubling racial subtext the lecturer changed the subject :/ :/ Then while they happily chatted about the repeated theme of evil cripples in "To The Dark Tower Childe Roland Came" there was no suggestion that any of them saw this as anything but extra flavour to the general unpleasantness of the situation :/ :/ So...yes, let's just wallow in ancient tropes without thinking about their limitations or damaging effects. Sure.

Second: two games I was reccomended as examples of transcending the usual limitations of their genres.

In Dear Esther you wander a small island, hearing fragments of a man's story, and feel melancholy. It's like an interactive sad little art house film. The surroundings are beautifully rendered and they combine with the music and sparse narration to create a very effective sense of melancholy but there is NO PLOT. I enjoyed it to start with (it really does feel like exploring a beautiful desolate beach at dusk) but got bored by the end and didn't think the narrator's story was interesting enough to warrant a whole game. Gone Home did the "Experience a story as you wander around a setting" thing better imo, though it wasn't as pretty. But I don't tend to enjoy arty films with no plot either (or men poetically describing their pain), and a lot of other people found Dear Esther very effective. Warning: some of the content of this game could be very triggering, I don't want to spoil it so will put the specific warnings under a cut.

Ristorante Amore, on the other hand, made me angry. It would be a cute, slick, moderately well written m/f and m/m dating sim...if it weren't for the pretentious gimmick the writers chose to put over the top. It suffers pretty badly from "Not like other girls" syndrome, blatantly mocking other dating sims despite really not being all that different, and clearly thinking female characters only have value if they fit into the "~feminist~ strong female character" box (male characters of course can be much more varied. Also they get to be queer). If you can grit your teeth through all that the characters themselves are likeable enough and I did enjoy the romances, but overall the game left a bad taste in my mouth.

( Dear Esther content warning )

Movies: Star Trek: Into Darkness! Saw it today! Apart from one or two VERY SKETCHY DECISIONS RACEWISE(*) and some silly plot holes it was quite enjoyable. It hit me in the Star Trek TOS feels without saying or doing anything very new, I don't know how enjoyable it would be for anyone who doesn't feel lots of affection for the original series and/or previous movie, though there were thrilling explosions and all that. The female characters and POC got to do stuff and be competent but it was mostly about Spock and Kirk (and to a lesser extent Bones and then the rest of the crew) The Spock&Kirk relationship wasn't self consciously slashy, just friendship which in no way conflicted with Spock/Uhura etc *ships Uhura/Spock/Kirk even more than previously* Anyone who hasn't seen the original movies who liked this one should definitely watch them, there's some cute paralells (maybe start from 2, I have heard bad things about 1)

Music: Fantasies by Metric. Which I discovered almost entirely through Homestuck fanmixes haha. Really enjoying it, bought a copy from JB Hifi.

Games: Candy Box! Silly fun little browser game. Give it a little while to get going before you give up on it.

What I'm reading/playing etc right now:
Jade Empire, finally got it to work. It didn't grab me though so I've played like 5 minutes.

What's next:
I'm not sure!

(*)This spoilery link captures my feelings, and I am very glad I was spoiled. Seriously, JJ Abrams, you couldn't even be as progressive as the 1960s?

I spent much of today playing The Royal Trap (EDIT: now known as Confines Of The Crown), the new game from Hanako games, creators of Magical Diary. It's been a lot of fun.

The game is set in a vaguely 17th century-ish pseudo-Europe notable mainly for being a matriarchy. Men have a moderate amount of power, but cannot inherit and must wait to be married off to a woman with land to support them. The main character, Madeleine, is a minor noble who acts as valet/bodyguard to the sweet young Prince Oscar. They are in a nearby kingdom with various other Princes vying for the hand of an eligible Princess...when THINGS HAPPEN and the player must choose who to trust/makeout with etc.

The structure is like Katawa Shoujo and a lot of other visual novels: Past a certain (clearly signposted) point the plot splits into one of at least four distinct paths, and each of these splits at the end into good, average and bad ends based on your past decisions. SAVE OFTEN. Most of the "good" ends require a romantic relationship with the relevant guy, but there's f/f friendship and romance options and nonromantic happy-ish endings.

I've done all the good ends (EDIT: Gaston path definitely grew on me :D :D) and they were all (a) sweet and (b) focussed more on finding stability for everyone the main character cares about than Twue Love.

Still a pretty heteronormative game, and everyone except the sly fey guy from pseudo-East-Asia and ambiguously brown pseudo-French maid is white. The way the game treats sex and gender is well meaning but may upset some people (ask me if you want details) But it's a story about a kickass woman dealing with a bunch of complicated crap, making out with cute boys (there are no f/f makeouts afaict ;_;), and deciding her own fate and I enjoyed it.

Reading the feminist sff carnival which has lots of interesting links. Reading this one about how amateur RPGs are even more unimaginateively conservative than commercial ones I was struck by how deeply cool it would be to have a Tamora Pierce RPG ("The Song of The Lioness" or maybe one of the later ones with a party of young people whose powers work together(*)).

I've only managed to stop myself trying to make one by remembering how quickly my "The Colour of Magic" NWN module went up in flames.

On a related theme, Part 3 of this essay on "And we shall March" has some (imo) really cool ideas for how Alan Moore could have used the Golliwog in LoEG:The Black Dossier. Parts 1 and 2 talk about where golliwogs and minstrelry etc come from and their history (not a pretty place), part 4 is a bibliography and Part 5 talks about what Alan Moore actually did with the goliwog (bad things, apparently)

Something I am fascinated by is the idea of all the really cool stories that don't get told because our blinkers make us incapable of seeing they could ever exist. I have nothing but admiration (and envy) for the writers who tell these stories, as a reader I love that that moment of seeing the world from a different perspective you didn't know was there, like the best of science fiction or theoretical science (well, it's the same feeling to me :))

(*)Ooh! Or a Planeteers one! Ok, I'll stop now :)