However, Jahan very specifically chose not to have the usual synthetic skin covering applied to Inga, as he wants his “droids to look like droids.” Well, there’s a few problems with Inga being a human replica droid, and most of them are just more of the ridiculous and laughable sexism still running rampant in comics.

Is she looking for robot porn?

First things first: the antennae on her ears. How would you mold flesh around that, as you would if Inga was completed? Perhaps those were added on later at Jahan’s request, but they still stand out. (In the real world, they were probably placed there to add details to her otherwise simplistic head.)

Next is the beauty mark and molded lips. Inga clearly does not have a nose; that makes sense, as that would be made of flesh. So why is there a specific beauty mark and full metal lips on a metal face? In a human replica droid’s completed form, you wouldn’t see them. They’re only there to make her look “sexy,” which is damned creepy on a robot.

Buckle up, it gets weirder.

Here’s the big standout — or rather, the two big standouts: Inga’s metal boobs. Last time I checked, boobs were made of flesh (or at least flesh covering jiggly silicone). For a droid designed to be indistinguishable from a human, how would a rock-solid rack help her fit in? (Especially when some lecherous scumbag attempts to cop a feel, which always happens in adventure stories.)

Last but not least…Inga has high heels.

What’s next, a pole?

Those aren’t boots or other footwear, mind you; those stiletto heels are part of her actual frame, which means that she also doesn’t have any toes. Jahan specifically said that he wanted Inga to look like a droid, which means that she came this way from her builder. Now, even though it seems that Inga was a custom job, the fact remains that she was specifically designed to infiltrate human society. Try to imagine the absolutely freakish creature that would result if they covered her in synthetic flesh! No way in hell could that blend in. Not only that, high heels aren’t exactly combat-friendly. Superheroines often wear them because they’re supposed to look sexy. That ain’t right on a robot.

I don’t know if Inga’s stripper-bot look was artistic license on behalf of penciler Stéphane Roux, or if Inga was specifically described this way by writer John Ostrander. Either way, it’s a shame; Roux’s art stands well enough on its own, and Ostrander should know better than to resort to such sexist nonsense.

Or, even worse, the creators thought that readers couldn’t possibly understand that Inga has a female personality unless they specifically designed her visual appearance around stereotypes. “Dammit, if she doesn’t have titanium tits, birthin’ hips and six-inch heels, fanboys won’t know what to think!”

It’s a shame, because other than her looks, Inga is a pretty cool character. Her espionage skills have proven most valuable to Jahan, she can hold her own in battle, and she’s likely a tribute to Maria, the robot from the classic silent film Metropolis. That’s always great to see. But given Inga’s fanboy-pandering design, I can’t help but shake my head and laugh.

(And shudder in horror at people who get off on a goddamned robot.)

I need to make something incredibly clear: art appreciation is subjective, but art itself is not. What most people fail to realize is that any piece of art, no matter the medium, still requires certain techniques in order to produce it. Those techniques are not opinions; they are merely processes subject to criticism just like anything else.

Take a film, for example. Your personal opinions on the overall product nonwithstanding…how was the acting? The editing? Sound design? Special effects? All of those are tried-and-true techniques that are taught, learned, and mastered. If a film is poorly edited, your comments on it must take that into account, otherwise you’re simply wrong. The same applies if a film has fantastic special effects, but you pan them because you didn’t like how they were used to advance the story. You’re incorrectly dumping your opinion on quantifiable techniques, rather than feelings toward the final product.

Criticism should be specific rather than generic. When it’s the latter, you’re often criticizing someone’s appreciation of the medium rather than actual details of a certain work within that medium. That has nothing to do with the work itself, and thus has no place in proper criticism of art.

“My constellation is THAC0. Get it?”

Much ado has been made about the impending fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. (“5th Edition” is not its official name as of yet; the project’s codename is “D&D Next.”) Aside from the expected rules changes, what’s really notable about this is that publisher Wizards of the Coast is crowdsourcing this edition of D&D. They’re attempting to take into account the various ups and downs players have experienced over the past few decades, especially the outrage over rule changes in the 3rd and 4th Editions. Using all of this fan-supplied information and a series of special playtests, their aim is to create a new, definitive form of D&D that’ll unite the warring camps and also bring in a lot more new players.

I can certainly understand longtime fans’ anger at major rules changes, especially the rapid ones during the 2000s. Aside from often throwing rules and strategies you were long familiar and comfortable with out the window, these changes meant your sourcebooks and stuff were now out of date and needed to be replaced. Sure, you didn’t have to go out and buy all of the new material, but you could usually forget about new products supporting the previous system. That’s a big problem, especially for gamers who’ve invested a lot of time and money into D&D. There’s a lot of players who simply quit playing, or moved on to more popular RPGs like Pathfinder.

As to how the D&D rule changes affected me personally, I had it a bit easier than most. I played a lot of D&D as a kid, but then fell out of the game for about twenty years. The reissued red box rekindled my interest in Dungeons & Dragons about a year ago. The game I’m currently playing in (as a tiefling wizard) is using 4th Edition rules and characters derived from the Essentials books. There’s a few players in our group who are new the game, and in my case, someone who hadn’t played in nearly two decades. As such, I wanted to start on the ground floor along with everyone else. I barely remembered the rules from Advanced D&D 2nd Edition (when I last played), so I didn’t mind the heavy revisions in 4th Edition.

Not only that, 4th Edition and its Essentials companion line made it easier for newbies and more advanced players to cooperate in the same game. That seems to be the modus operandi in Next, albeit to a much larger degree. Wizards of the Coast have implied that fans of rulesets as far back as 1st Edition will be able to comfortably play side-by-side with adherents of later versions, like 3rd Edition. That’s a pretty big gap in terms of playing styles.

All of this is a ways off, of course. If Next comes out in late 2013, for example, that’s certainly better than the ridiculous three-year span between 3rd Edition and its update, 3.5. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see this new version hit shelves in 2014. All of the playtests and feedback required for a project of this magnitude will result in a long period of quality control, but if the end result is a superior product, then I have no problem waiting.

My current game will not be “upgrading” to Next when it comes out, to the best of my knowledge; our DM has a tremendous wealth of 4th Edition material which should keep us incredibly busy for years to come. I haven’t invested as heavily in 4th Edition as most players, but I’ve still purchased a considerable number of books and accessories in order to play and enhance the game. If moving to Next requires a complete overhaul of my D&D library just to play, I will not be pleased. Comments from Wizards of the Coast seem to indicate that this will not be the case, but we won’t know for sure until Next is released.

In the meantime, hopefully I can gain access to some of the playtests. My local hobby shop will almost certainly host a few Next Encounters games, too. Time will tell, but I think that Next could be just the shot in the arm that D&D needs.

(Now if only they’d bring back Dragonlance…)

This is commonly used by detractors as a way to shit on the show; opponents claim that instead of telling a solid story, Star Trek writers would always throw in some long, made-up words instead. (I’ve actually heard Doctor Who fans denigrating Star Trek for its technobabble. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!)

Star Trek enthusiasts are well aware that technobabble includes plenty of fictional stuff, to be sure; the warp engines in particular are the crown jewel. But without them, the show wouldn’t go anywhere, now would it? (No pun intended.) More importantly is the fact that Star Trek‘s technobabble includes just as much (if not more) real world science. Sometimes it’s technology already in use here in the modern age (e.g., fiber optic communication, touchscreens, solid state data storage). In other instances, it’s stuff that’s theoretical or in the very early stages now, but ends up being commonplace in the future era in which the various Star Trek series are set (e.g., soliton waves, wormholes, faster-than-light travel, directed energy weapons).

This makes perfect sense, as our scientific achievements grow every day. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the stuff created for Star Trek that became science fact in the real world as a direct result of the show, like communicators (cellphones), padds (tablet computers), replicators (3D printers) voice-activated computers, et cetera. Science fiction becoming science fact is nothing out of the ordinary, and Star Trek is a much larger contributor to that than most people realize.

Don’t get me wrong, when the technobabble on Star Trek is overdone, the plot often goes off the rails. But claiming that it’s all fictional, and Star Trek‘s sole claim to fame, is just a blatant lie.

Believe it or not, I never owned any of the famed Nintendo Game & Watch series; my cousin had Balloon Fight, but playing that was about as far as I got. The LCD games I owned were all made by Tiger Electronics. I started with generic fare like Baseball and Bowling before moving into adaptations of popular console games, but I played the hell out of ‘em all the same. A few of my friends in elementary school had LCD games, too, so we’d often play them during lunch or recess, passing the games around so everyone could try them. The games were tough as nails, and more focused on pattern memorization than any real gameplay. While the other kids laughed at me and went home to play Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest on their NES, at least I had the LCD version to amuse me.

I owned a few others: Double Dragon, Gauntlet, and Karate King come to mind. Moving beyond the Tiger sphere, my brother had a few Acclaim and Konami LCD games, like NARC, Gradius, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Basketball (yeah, you read that right). But of course, my favorite LCD game should come as no surprise:

(photo from The Mechanical Maniacs)

And look, it even features the same crappy US boxart from the NES game! Sure, it sucked in comparison to the original Mega Man 2, but it was the only way at the time I could get my Mega Man fix whenever I wanted. Surprisingly enough, I never had the Mega Man 3 LCD game back then, which is a shame since the NES original remains my favorite video game of all time.

By the late 1990s, LCD games had dropped in popularity like a stone, since the Game Boy was cheap and games for it were plentiful. LCD games are still around, but most of them are far worse than you could imagine. They’re little more than shitty cash grabs found in the impulse buy sections of big-box retailers. The big exception to this rule, however, is in the board and puzzle game genres. Games like chess or sudoku are very hard to screw up, as the rules really haven’t changed; program them in, and you’re good to go.

I lost my collection of LCD games long ago, much to my annoyance. I poke around on eBay from time to time trying to find a deal on some of my old favorites, and I’ve managed to score worn copies of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, Mega Man 2, and (finally) Mega Man 3. They’re often missing the battery door, but that’s an easy fix: I just bought some non-licensed Tiger games for a few bucks, and Frankensteined ‘em for spare parts.

In the early 2000s, I did manage to find a few of Nelsonic‘s old Nintendo wristwatch LCD games, like Zelda and Super Mario Bros. Surprisingly enough, they were rather cheap, and still in the boxes! (No, they weren’t knockoffs. I checked.) Their appeal didn’t last long, but they were still a cool novelty. I ended up trading them away for some other game, I’m sure. They just didn’t grab me the way the Tiger games did, despite the awesome Nintendo characters. (The tiny controls on a wristwatch didn’t help, either.)

With the underground popularity of “demakes” like Halo 2600 and Super Smash Land, I think the time is ripe for LCD adaptations of more popular games. C’mon, who wouldn’t want to play an LCD Portal or Uncharted?

I’m not talking about that dumb Comic Book Guy meme. That would be “Worst. Episode. Ever.”, which is completely separate yet still annoying. I mean the tendency of everday Internet dwellers and professional critics alike to dub something as the worst ever, when it is clearly not. (Sure, it’s possible for something recent to be the worst ever, but I’ve rarely if ever seen this.)

Further inflaming things is that they’ll label something the worst ever…until the following year, when something else becomes the worst ever. Wash, rinse, repeat. That clearly means that the preceding items weren’t nearly so bad, now were they?

For example, take this summer’s superhero film Green Lantern. It wasn’t great, but I’ve heard more than one critic dismissing it as “the worst comic book movie ever.”

Are you kidding me? Have these fools never seen schlock like Superman IV: The Quest for Peace or Batman & Robin? Even non-comic book fans could likely name five to ten superhero flicks off the top of their heads that make Green Lantern look like Citizen Kane.

This whole “worst ever” practice is blatant ignorance of and disregard for history. I understand that more often than not it’s either a) just the usual mindless bullshit from the average Internet troll, or b) a shameless ploy to pull in more page hits by making an inflammatory statement. In that case, I hereby declare this entry to be the worst blog post ever.

…until next year’s worst blog post ever.

About twice a month, I play in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with a group of my friends. We have a party of seven, which is a bit large for most adventures, but our Dungeon Master is skilled at amping up the challenges accordingly.

Anyway, my character is a tiefling wizard. The tiefling race offers some intriguing storytelling possiblities, and as for the magic-user vocation, my choice of that class was twofold. One, I’ve never played a wizard before; In the past, I played thieves and occasionally a paladin. Secondly, when my current game started, the group already had a thief, two fighters, a ranger, and a cleric. (A paladin joined us two months ago.) They definitely needed some magic-based support.

My character and our party’s ranger tend to stay out of the melee and fire off attacks targeting multiple foes or causing area effects. This is all well and good, and I’ve managed to annoy quite a few enemies this way, but the amount of damage I actually inflict is trivial.

You see, much of a wizard’s life consists of waiting around to grow more powerful. I’m currently at level four.) This is not a knock against our DM, nor the adventures we’re playing in; this is common drawback to all magic-users. While wizards start out with the ability to target more than one foe at once, it comes at the cost of barely scratching them.

Other party members are routinely dealing out over twenty points of damage; I’m lucky if I can break ten. I do have a few more powerful spells, but they’re all dailies; that means I can only use them once per day in-game. If we’re exploring a dungeon and I use a daily power early on, I can’t use it again until we’re finished with the entire area. (Camping out in a creepy dungeon is not wise.)

My area-effect spells are becoming more useful as enemies go stronger, since my attack powers aren’t nearly as effective. I’ve convinced enemies to attack on another, confused them, and even immobilized them. That makes them easy pickings for our fighters, so I’m least I’m helpful in that regard. Otherwise, I’ll just have to settle for hiding in the shadows, plinking enemies with ice shards and electric shocks.

At least until I hit level five. Then I can finally cast Fireball.

I find these commercials insipid and insulting. They’re sexist towards women, as they imply that jewelry is the only thing that makes them happy. They’re also equally sexist toward men, as they imply that you’re not a real man if you don’t buy them these perfect gifts. This is done with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Thankfully, my girlfriend hates that shit just as much as I do. Does she enjoy jewelry? Sure. But she doesn’t see it as a damned requirement for happiness, and she’d much rather pick out her own styles. She also doesn’t give a shit about brand names or pricey crap, either. Yet another of the many reasons why I love her.

So take a stand this holiday season. If some sensible jewelry is on your lady’s wishlist, fine; but if an overpriced glittery trinket is the only way to keep her affections, kick her to the curb. You don’t need that kind of high maintenance nonsense.

All of the expected stuff is present and accounted for: the Christmas tree, stockings, house lights, gifts, and a big meal to cap it all off. Aside from the generic celebratory pieces, I’ve also got some Christmas traditions that not everyone observes. Some might be fairly unique, at least to the best of my knowledge. Read on…

• Christmas specials and films. Once December rolls around, I’ve got my triple threat of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I own them all on DVD or Blu-ray Disc, since the television broadcasts edit the shit out of them. (That, and I ditched cable almost two years ago.) I’ve been watching those three each and every year with family or friends since as far back as I can remember, and starting last year, I unearthed A Garfield Christmas to add to the mix. For holiday films, I really only watch two on a regular basis: A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. As with the specials, I know there’s plenty more great ones out there, but I’ve got to stick with my favorites.
  • Quick sidenote concerning A Christmas Story: my girlfriend and I have created our own tradition surrounding the film, since it’s one of our favorite movies. We hunt down some unique gourmet hot chocolate, and drink it while viewing the flick, often accompanied by some other holiday-themed dessert. (Yes, that includes fuuuuuuuuuudge.)
• Annual ornament. Every year, I buy a new dorky ornament for my folks’ tree, and it’s often one of Hallmark’s offerings. Plain glass bulbs and the like bore me, so I feel the need to spice things up a bit with ridiculous crap like Star Trek ornaments and talking Muppets. C’mon, who wouldn’t want Statler, Waldorf, or the shuttlecraft Galileo on their tree? Especially since the Borg Cube routinely scares the shit out of my mother when she turns on the tree lights. Resistance is futile.
• Cookie decoration. This one goes way back. Since I was very little, my mother would make a batch of basic round sugar cookies on Christmas Eve, and my brother and I would coat them with frosting, icing pens, candies, et cetera. Now we’re fully grown men…and we still decorate the damned cookies. How could we not? Cookies are delicious, damn it, and you really can’t outgrow them. They’re always a hit when we bring them over relatives’ houses the next day, at least. We also construct a giant stacked cookie heavily laden with frosting and icing, which we’ve dubbed “the Conan Cookie.” We then try to convince each other to eat the monstrosity, because we’re stupid.
• Board Game Eve. No, that’s not the name of some esoteric stripper. You people are sick! On Christmas Eve, my family plays a board game or two. After my folks hit the hay, my brother and I keep playing until at least midnight. We try to vary it up every year, from common offerings like Scrabble and dominoes to more unique fare like Architekton and Fluxx. Either way, grumbling and swearing competes with Christmas spirit.
• Wolferman’s English muffins. The baked goods from Wolferman’s aren’t cheap, but holy shit, are they worth every last damned penny. Their massive English muffins in particular are a tasty staple of our Christmas morning breakfast. In fact, they pretty much are breakfast; the scrambled eggs and whatnot are just accessories.

That’s a decent bunch, but there used to be even more. Here’s a few traditions from times past that have faded away as my brother and I grew up.

• Voice recording. When we were kids, my father would always break out the tape recorder on Christmas Eve and ask us about our wishlists. He’d then read us a Christmas book, and it was off to bed with us. The next morning, everyone opening their gifts was also recorded. I guess it was cute at the time, but those old tapes are rather painful to listen to in retrospect.

• The long walk. As you know, children find it impossible to sleep on Christmas Eve. My folks went for the direct approach to solve this problem: they marched us around town until we were ready to drop. That’s how it felt at the time, anyway; we really were just going for a walk that lasted a mile or two, with a hot chocolate bribe halfway through. It was annoying at the time, but I can’t fault my parents’ logic: it worked!
  • My brother and I still go for a walk on Christmas Eve, but for different reasons. We don’t get to hang out that often, plus it’s always good to get out of the house for a bit if it’s not too cold outside. (And it’s still a good excuse to nab a hot chocolate or coffee.)
• The light drive. Once or twice in December, my father would pack us all into the car and drive us around town to look at other people’s Christmas lights. Most folks had fairly basic displays, from a lone tree with lights in the front yard to the electric candles in the windows. A few random folks went all-out; there’s two houses in particular that to this day still set up massive Christmas villages on their front lawns. Bear in mind, these are tastefully done, high-quality villages, not the tacky overload that’s so common nowadays. There was none of that inflatable crap back then!
• Christmas lists in the Noel mailbox. Most kids wrote wishlists or letters to Santa, and my brother and I were no different. We usually stored them in this mailbox ornament on our tree; it was one of those homemade deals that were knitted on a plastic frame, with giant “Noel” text on the side. The idea was that the lists would magically transport themselves to the North Pole (read: our folks nabbed them when we weren’t looking). Laugh all you want, but if we believed in Santa Claus, then how was that any more ridiculous? Anyway, our days of writing letters to the big man in red are long gone, as is our sneaking downstairs late at night to try to snare Santa in a Calvin-style trap…but that Noel mailbox ornament still hangs on the tree.
• Christmas Eve Christmas. As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, my mother’s a nurse. Hospitals don’t close, and back in the 1980s, she had to work a lot of second shifts and holidays. For a while, this meant that every other year she had to work Christmas Day. That blows. But spending Christmas together as a family was paramount, so my folks had an ace up their sleeve. The first time this happened, my brother and I woke up on December 24th…only to find a pile of gifts under the tree, and a letter from Santa. The letter explained that my mother had to work the next day, so Santa felt that we should all get our gifts early to spend the time together. We were thrilled to get our gifts a day early, and my folks got to sleep in since us kids were clueless. Clever ploy, huh?

There you have it. Even if you don’t give a rat’s ass, I still had to write all of this stuff down for posterity’s sake. You know how crappy my memory is, and yes, that extends to stuff I celebrate every year.

Got any notable traditions of your own? If you celebrate winter holidays other than Christmas, those still count, so make your voice heard.