It doesn’t bode well for future generations that role-playing—and not just in the scarier sense where online gamers go that extra step to insist they’re assuming their characters’ identities—isn’t good for your health, because there’s no real-life HP meter dropping to tell you that staying up an extra hour for 1K more EXP isn’t helping that buffer you’ll need to get through the day tomorrow. (Three coffer keys and a Shaman’s Cloak within only a few hours’ time, however, was worth it, no? I remember when the Beadeaux one alone took days.) The more willing we become to compromise our flesh & blood bodies for the virtual attributes of a digital avatar stored on a server a million miles away, it’s easier for me to imagine the human race wasting away into sexless Asgards who might then be downloading their soulless consciousnesses into super-shells, as Niles Caulder tried at the end of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, to compete with the rest who still prefer their pursuits visceral. This is what you get to read when I’ve got a cold or allergies or something that’s hit me up with a headache that’d surely cover the neck, shoulders and most of the upper body of smaller-skulled sentients like my beloved, an ominous scratchy throat and no appetites whatsoever, plus an abject fearcertainty of death were I to attend Nicole’s yoga class.