Dream Match - Round II

Welcome back, sports fans! Today we continue my new series of "fantasy booking" articles that try to take a more sensible and nuanced look at 'who would win' questions in the superhero fandom than working out which character has the biggest numbers. Rather than prattle on, we're going to jump straight into our next fight, so get ready for some no-holds-barred, one-fall action!

Perfect Cell Vs Lobo

The most deadly Android devised by the twisted mind of Doctor Gero, Perfect Cell and the last of the Czarians, because he killed the rest, the Main Man, Lobo. Both are considered the pinnacle of dangerous foes in their settings and both have incredible recuperative powers, able to return completely from something as small as a single cell and having no trouble at all surviving in the vacuum of space. Both have gone toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful heroes in their respective settings, usually coming off worse, but there's no denying that anyone who can give Son Gohan or Superman a run for their money is a powerful force indeed.

Perfect Cell
Created from the DNA of the most powerful fighters in the universe (and Yamcha), Cell was designed to be the last word in Doctor Gero's revenge against Goku for the destruction of the Red Ribbon Army. After having absorbed his "siblings" Androids 17 and 18, Cell achieved his Perfect form, making him the strongest being on Earth, and possibly in the universe at the time (ok so we didn't know about Buu and Beerus). For the purposes of this article, we're borrowing some ideas from Dragon Ball Multiverse, namely a version of Cell that won the fight with Gohan and has grown in power since destroying the Earth. Power Scaling and that kind of thing are for other versions of this concept, not us, but let's just go with Cell can do everything he did in the Cell Games Saga and probably has picked up a few new tricks since them. Given the nature of Dragon Ball Z in particular, judging just how "powerful" Cell is is pretty fraught, but we know he can destroy a planet basically whenever he wants, regenerate and get a Zenkai boost from a single intact cell and push an Ascended Super Saiyan to breaking point.

Lobo
The Main Man, the last Czarian and the once Pope of the Triple-Fish God, this mercenary, marauder and mayhem-prone monster is generally considered a force of nature more so than a supervillain by many. Strong enough to give the Man of Steel pause, and impossibly durable to the point of absurdity, Lobo has powers for days, and casually breaks the most basic laws of physics by smoking in the vacuum of space and making conservation of mass cry. Being a character better suited to comedy for the most part, Lobo's strength is kind of irrelevant, he can do whatever he wants, at least until a hero turns up to pull him back into line. And this doesn't need to be Superman, with Adam Strange and Animal Man having pulled it off before. Lobo cannot fly under his own power, but has a flying motorcycle or similar to hand most of the time. Being a bounty hunter by trade, Lobo is also perfectly comfortable with using a wide variety of improbably sci-fi weapons, or something as simple as a chain.

Why We Fight
So this is pretty simple, Cell (or at least the version we're using who defeated Gohan and got off Earth) is a cosmic threat, and the Main Man is more than happy to collect on any price that Cell gets on his head as a result. Whilst scaling DBZ characters against more traditional superheroes is fraught, I think it's not unreasonable that a being like Cell, almost unkillable and capable of destroying whole planets on a whim, would pose a major issue for entities like the Green Lantern Corps or Nova Corps, possibly even the Space Knights. Turning to a creature like Lobo for help may just be the best in a series of bad options. Of course, once their paths are set, these two warriors will need little encouragement to start fighting.

How Cell Wins
With energy blasts, insane recovery and zenkai boosts in his arsenal, Cell seems to have an easy win on his hands, but he's never fought anyone like Lobo. Against any protagonist from his own series, Cell can just remove atmosphere for an easy win, but that's not going to stop the Main Man by a long shot. Cell is also a pretty serious character, so Lobo's more comedic style will pose a challenge (assuming that this version didn't have to fight Arale at some point). That said, Cell's durability is probably the best way for him to win this fight. While both Cell and Lobo can regenerate from a tiny fragment of themselves, Cell gets a major power boost after each near-death, so he eventually will be strong enough to win easily, at least in theory. It's risky, but raw power is something that Cell can conceivably never run out of, so stamina is his best strength in this match-up.

How Lobo Wins
The big advantage that the Main man will carry into this fight is experience. Lobo has taken on more foes than Cell, and at a much bigger variety, tangling with Lanterns, New Gods, Kryptonians and more in his long life of mayhem. Odds are, he's fought another regenerating foe in that time, so once he figures out that even a fragment of Cell will enable him to come back not only whole, but stronger, Lobo is in with an even chance. Of course, Lobo will have to lay his hands on a weapon capable of obliterating Cell in a single blast, which, while entirely possible, is no mean feat in the heat of battle. The Main Man is a canny fighter though, and Cell is all ego, so luring the killer android to some kind or armoury or technologically-advanced planet is pretty doable with the right motivation. Lobo has figured out how to fight and defeat foes like Santa and the Easter Bunny, Cell is within his wheelhouse.

And that's that! Two titans of power coming to grips, who do you think would win? Come back next time as a pair of obscure monsters go toe-to-toe in a brawl which could threaten the multiverse itself!

Superhero Media: M.O.D.O.K. - Season 1

I hadn't heard anything much good about M.O.D.O.K., or anything at all, really before I finally got around to watching it. I'd put it off because the idea of waiting a week between half hour episodes sounded a little tedious. When I discovered that M.O.D.O.K was a Marvel version of Robot Chicken with the voice cast of Ducktales and Patton Oswalt in the lead, I was intrigued, when Mandrill showed up and wasn't even the deepest cut in that episode, I was all-in. The buy-in for M.O.D.O.K. is pretty steep, with the extreme sitcom elements taking over more than the Superhero stuff in most episodes and the character being nothing like any representation in the comics, there is a tonne of stuff to enjoy, even if it's just getting Dewey Duck flashbacks every time Ben Schwartz speaks.

I never really got into Robot Chicken, but I watched the compilations on YouTube, and I feel I appreciate what they were going for, so a Marvel version unafraid to give us versions of Tenpin, The Living Corporation and the Clagmarites is pretty much perfect for me, even if I've never liked MODOK much outside of his appearance in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I'm sure if you're a fan of MODOK, then this series is a little grating, to say the least, but given that I'm specifically the kind of person to love this specific thing, I can't help you there. I'll admit that the more sitcom style elements don't really do it for me, but that said, the episode where MODOK and his wife accidentally time-travel back to the 1990s and see themselves as students was one of the best in the series. And if you can't laugh at a joke about Mandrill's dick, are you even really a Marvel fan at heart?

I get that people don't like M.O.D.O.K., as it's odd and full of stupid jokes and way more clips of MODOK on the toilet than are probably strictly necessary, but I do find it strange that people are so vocally hateful of the series online. I mean, if you don't like it, don't watch it? I had seen nothing about M.O.D.O.K. online and wasn't even aware it was essentially Marvel Robot Chicken until I started watching it, so surely it's not that hard to avoid. Unless, of course, you're someone like me who has to watch, read or play every piece of superhero media they can get their hands on and then write about it on a blog almost no one really reads. Oh god, am I the MODOK? Nah, I have a Master's Degree, two jobs I love, plenty of friends and I own my home, I'm doing alright and don't tie my self-esteem to this blog. I'll watch more M.O.D.O.K. if it happens, I certainly enjoyed the first season enough.

Thinking Out Loud: Why the Encore Matters

Back in 2019, in the wake of Avengers Endgame, I wrote an article called "Why the Endgame Matters" about the cultural impact of the film and why a silly superhero adventure was one of the most important moments in the decade. Like most of the insightful, thoughtful and passionate stuff I write on here, no one read it. My review of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter however, still gets regular hits. Media literacy was already dying before AI folks, AI is just the cowhammer to the skull of an entire generation of readers. Anyway, I went to see Avengers Endgame Encore the day after it dropped (that was a soon as I could get there) and, once again, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. So let's do this again. Whatever it takes. For starters, the "additional content" in the Encore is a series of post-credit scenes that tie into Doomsday (which I'll go over later) and an introduction from Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. There are no AI-replaced actors, or changed lines or anything like that. There's been a bit of cleanup and some ADR, but otherwise, Encore is the film that's been burnt into my soul for seven years and counting. 

Watching Earth's Mightiest Heroes battle Thanos and travel through time again, the main feeling I found myself sitting with (aside from unmitigated glee) was one that I have become increasingly familiar with as I approach my 40th birthday; nostalgia. Given my time spent researching online Far-Right radicalisation, nostalgia is something I tend to wary of in general, so it took me a fair chunk of Encore before it occurred to me that the time I was being whistful for wasn't some mythical time of my childhood when I had an incomplete understanding of the world; it was for less than 10 years ago. I missed 2019. Acutely. The obvious reason behind this feeling was clearly that I miss the MCU films being good, right? No, actually. Though the "Superhero Media" will take a while to come through the backlog, I have enjoyed much of Wave 4 and think that after nearly 20 years, expecting every film to be the same quality is a little silly. Nor was I more than reasonably melancholy to see Chadwick Boseman in his iconic role again; rest in power, king. No, as I sat there positively rapt with joy, I found I wanted to return to a world before COVID. 

Now this isn't just some "the last decade has been shit" rant (though it has), but rather, I believe Avengers Endgame was the last big cultural moment the Global North shared before the pandemic started and that by watching again with all that behind us, not to mention the wars, genocide and climate collapse due to AI ahead of us is a genuinely uplifting experience. And one we can learn from. The tech bros, governments and billionaires they all work for and aspire to be are Thanos. They aren't just winning, they won a long time ago, before most of us were born. We may not be able to pull off a time heist, we may not save the world, but we can sure as hell Avenge it. If this is the end of everything we've known then I want to drag the ones who caused it with us. Whatever it takes. We lost so much during the pandemic because the few didn't want to make less money and it never changed. We don't have super powers but we can vote, march, join unions, write letters, shoplift, engage with the community, punch a cop, bomb a pipeline, delete Facebook, use public transport, help each other. Assemble. We are Groot. 

Superhero Media: Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla

Ok, where to start this one? Spacegodzilla was created when DNA from Godzilla was taken into space by Mothra in a previous film and merged with alien spoors. What? This is Godzilla, this is what you get. Aside from the typical absurdity of science, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is a great outing for the King of the Monsters, playing like a kind of finale for the previous few, even though there is at least one more considered to be in this series to come. Minilla is quarantined on an uninhabited Pacific island by the United Nations' Anti-Godzilla task-force where he can be studied and guarded by the "last Japanese soldier who can't let go of the war" cliche, which I would have though was a little racist, but hey, if the Japanese are doing it I guess it's ok? There are competing plans to use a team of psychics (who exist in the Godzilla universe) to control Godzilla's actions and to use Minilla as bait and kill Godzilla with a high-tech super bullet, but these are put aside as soon as Spacegodzilla turns up and starts destroying cities.

There is a big focus in Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla on the human G-Force and how they scramble to combat the new threat and the fallout related to the conflict. This is actually really good, as the Kaiju action scenes are brilliant, but the damage and trauma that the human characters suffer, albeit in a PG-ish way, provides a counterpoint and grounds the entire film. Having lost Mechagodzilla, G-Force is fielding a makeshift robot with a crew made up of whoever is still alive and has the correct skill-set, so there is a very Japanese sense of fatalism pervading Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla, though the ending is more hopeful than many Japanese films that follow a similar thread. Whilst Godzilla is the preferable alternative to Spacegodzilla, so far as G-Force and humanity is concerned, the presence of either is a problem to be resolved, once again framing the Kaiju as a force of nature, or walking disaster more so than actual characters. To say that the Kaiju are devoid of any personality, there is a scene with Godzilla on the beach dodging booby traps that really shows off how well a rubber suit can convey emotion, would be false, but it's the humans who really sell the story.

As much as I love the rubber suits and classic Kaiju cinema, films like Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla do run up against the limits of this approach. The "Mosterverse" Legendary films out of the USA, which use CGI of course, can have the Kaiju show a lot more personality and carry the story in their own ways. Trust me, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is amazing, one of the best I've seen lately, and I had a ball watching every minute of it, but much like Final Wars, it's not the kind of film I'd be showing someone to get them into Godzilla as a franchise, it's just too... too Godzilla? Like, look at the first few sentences of this article, Spacegodzilla's origin is really silly and the entire film ends with two guys in rubber suits slapping each other, this genre is almost nonsense! However, the "there" that is there is really damn good. It's a story about the human spirit, fatalism and the dangers of unchecked technology. Godzilla is the human potential and all of the dangers inherent within that potential. Godzilla is both the alpha and the omega of development, and understanding that going in is perhaps the secret to enjoying these films beyond the silly fun.

Five Video Game Genre Conventions that need challenging

Regular readers will know that I'm not really a big player of video games. I enjoy them and put some time in on the Switch or PlayStation most weeks, but I don't keep up with new releases, don't follow the culture, and probably couldn't pick between a picture of DOTA and League of Legends. I grew up with Zelda and Mario and Tetris like most of my generation, but as I hit adolescence, my interest tapered off, not because I wasn't interested in Video Games, but Video Games became increasingly less interested in me.

Back in the day (read: My Day, you ungrateful kids), titles like Commander Keen and Day of the Tentacle tried to be fun and innovative; taking risks and trying new directions for the still-emerging Video Game market. With the exceptions of Nintendo and Sega, Video Game software wasn't a market that one could expect to make a great deal of money in, people did it (partially) because they loved it. This view may seem nostalgic in the extreme, but have a look at companies like Midway or Rare back before they hit it big; I'll wager the "CEO" was living off instant ramen and really cheap coffee until Mortal Kombat or Goldeneye hit the shelves for the first time.

These days, Games are big business, which is (typically) a good thing for the industry; developers get the funding to put out some amazing titles and the boundaries are really being pushed as to whether Games can be considered Art or 'read' as 'text' in the same manner as Film and Television (in an academic sense, of course). However, success has always bred imitation, and the Video Games industry is feeling this trend hard at the moment. Take a good hard look at your favourite game and you'll probably find that it "borrows heavily" (or steals directly) from another popular game before it. The problem with this trend is not only the obvious stagnation of experimentation within games development, but also half the games you get to play seem exactly the same.

So, without further ado, here's a shortlist of five common features of Video Games that have shown themselves to be problematic, at least according to me in my grumpy and stagnant corner of the internet. 

1. Time Limits

As with most of the things on this list, I'm not saying that Video Games need to do away with Time Limits entirely, just that it proves to be an unnecessary crutch for poor storytelling. Back in the misty, far-off days of Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System, there were no Continues, no Save Points and only so many 1-UP Mushrooms, so the only reason not to take a painfully long time agonising over every jump was the timer counting down from 300 in the corner of the screen. The original The Prince Of Persia also made good use of this mechanic, docking time from the Game Clock for each death. So it's not a big conceit to admit that a timer on a game can ratchet up the tension and aid in the suspension of disbelief.

However, when every second level (or mission or whatever) throws a timer up on the screen and screams at me to get out of the burning building (or away from the bomb or get to the hostage), the sense of tension is replaced by a sense of irritation. I'm in a freaking burning building, how is my natural intention to do anything but run for my life? In a film or television programme, dramatic tension can be added with music or other, less melodious, background noise; only in 24 and one episode of M*A*S*H can one see a clock up on the screen to increase tension. There are many films where a bomb is counting down to a climax, but it is only in video games, where the player is directly linked to the narrative, that a ticking clock is a common device to keep the protagonist under the pump. If only this technique was not included in almost every game, it wouldn't be so bothersome.

 

2. Boss Fights

Back when games were made with a resplendent 8 bits of graphics, the occasional fight against a fire-breathing turtle was an important signpost of progression amongst dozens of same-looking levels. What is interesting is that, in today's world of Quick Time Events and complex interactive storytelling, at least one Boss Fight can be found in every game. Certainly, a climatic and thematically appropriate battle against a worthy opponent at the end of a game can be satisfactory, but not every game can make this formula work. Think back to Red Faction for a moment, did the boss there really add anything to the game? Shooters are particularly bad at boss fights, a game that has primarily featured goons with a variety of guns and body armour throughout has its tone shattered when the head Mafioso turns up in a walking tank with jets and lasers.

As with my complaint against time limits, it is not the concept of Boss Fights that I find disagreement with, the Metal Gear Solid franchise has always made its Boss Fights engaging and story driven. Instead, it is the seeming necessity of repeated Boss Fights in games where they simply do not fit. Personally I think that because video games have always had Boss Fights, that they continue to do so, gamers expect and accept them as part of the gaming experience, regardless of their suitability in any given game. Once again I point to cinema as a proof that conflict is not the only climax that a story can utilise.

3. Downloadable Content (DLC)

With increasing profits in the Games Industry comes an increased drive to create successful titles and release them to the public. When a highly anticipated game is pushed back due to unforseen circumstances, the furore released is akin to that evoked by the Nuremberg trials. To combat this, many developers leave parts of a game unfinished, making "patches" or even whole levels and characters into little downloadable packets so that people won't call them out for putting the game out a few weeks late. In some ways this is a good thing; games are released in reasonable time and overly long delays are avoided. However, is it just me, or does this seem like a little bit of a cop out? If a game is not finished, why is it being put into stores? It's not like a film is put into the cinema with some of the post-production remaining to be done. Perhaps it is too much to assume that the gaming public could be expected to wait patiently for the whole game to be ready, but honestly, is it that much to ask? Think about it this way, if you wait a little bit longer for a game, you could play it straight away, no patch downloading, no wait to play the bonus missions, just the whole game, in the box.

Of course, it is not merely a lack of completion that causes DLC, there is the ever-present driving force of money to consider. If someone is willing to pay $100 for a game, what are the chances that the same person will pay a few dollars for an extra mission or a new character to play? When a story is continued through extras like this, it evokes in me the same feeling as the "Extended Universe" novels associated with various Television and Film franchises. If someone is so engaged with a text as to pursue every permeation of it, it always seems that the makers of that programme/game/film are right there with an open till. That's my real problem with DLC, I guess, it's a cheap cash-in and unabashedly so; like "Collector's Edition" DVDs and fake Master Swords to hang on the wall.

 

4. Chase Sequences

When playing a game like GTA or Need for Speed, one expects to chase another vehicle down a hazardous road a few times, it's part of the experience of the game and an accepted part of game play. When one is tasked with chasing someone down in a First-Person Shooter however, something feels amiss. Much like Boss Fights and Time Limits, chases have become a common element of most games from Platformers to Shooters. Once again, the odd chase that works within the narrative of the game is fine, but far too often a chase can be used to bridge an obvious gap. If travel needs to take place to link up the various narrative strands of a game, there are more options than a chase, if nothing particularly interesting is going to happen during the journey from A to B, perhaps it doesn't need to be covered. Too often the length of a game is padded out with unnecessary sequences that distract from the story and the chase scene is one of the worst culprits.

5. Push Start to Play

This may be a bit of a petty complaint, but why is the Start Screen different from the Menu Screen? The time and effort of programmers, designers and artists has been wasted on a screen that is seen for seconds at most. What difference would it make to have a game load up straight into the menu? In the worst cases, after pressing Start, more time is spend loading before one can access the menu and actually start playing the damn game. Admittedly, I'm not a programmer, and perhaps there is something important about pressing Start that I'm missing, but it really seems like a convention of games that is only still around because almost every game in history has had it. I understand that sometimes a demo or cut scene is visible before the menu appears, but again, is this really necessary? Also coming into this category are the self-promotional ads that games start up with, Gamers seem far more astute about production than one would expect, so many would know exactly the origin of a new game. The fact that a handful of game creators are becoming as well known as Film Directors (in the right circles) makes the self-promotion seem a little unnecessary.

 

That's all for today, hope you enjoyed the read.

Superhero Media: Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Is Marvel Ultimate Alliance the greatest superhero video game ever made? Well, I think it's great, but you may have a different take. When Doombots and Ultron Drones make a coordinated attack on the SHIELD helicarrier, Nick Fury assembles a team (initially Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and Wolverine) to fight off the villains, kicking off an adventure that touches some pretty damn obscure corners of the Marvel Universe. In terms of game-play, Marvel Ultimate Alliance can be repetitive and the whole thing is very dated by now, but the story and core concept of the game directly inspired me to start Supers gaming and my SuperSystem Ultimate Alliance project in particular. Although the game doesn't have every character (Hawkeye and Hulk always felt absent to me), the fact that Luke Cage, Deadpool and Black Panther are playable years before they hit culturally is pretty impressive; I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that Marvel Ultimate Alliance was my first introduction to Luke Cage. As was the style at the time, the game is heavily influenced by the Ultimate Marvel comics, with Cap and Thor in their Ultimates costumes, and some story elements having that general kind of vibe.

Throughout the game, the heroes will travel to locations as diverse as the Omega Base, Atlantis, Attilan, Mephisto's Realm and Latveria, really getting around the Marvel universe and embracing some of the sillier elements of the setting. Of course I want to take Ghost Rider to Skrullos to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier to defeat Doctor Doom, who has stolen the powers of Odin. Something the later games would struggle with is adaptation, trying very hard to realise certain comic stories (or even films) in the game narrative; Ultimate Alliance avoids this, coming across more as a "greatest hits" of the Marvel comics. Trip to Asgard? Hell yeah! War in Atlantis? Why not! Murderworld? Yes please! There is a lack of fear in Ultimate Alliance, it revels in the weird and the wonderful, not trying to be overly serious, in the Murderworld level the players fight Clowns, play dodgem cars and play a crane game to unlock Blade as a playable character. It's amazing and every time I play it I look at circus terrain online and consider a small table. My little gaming clique is getting ready for some Reign In Hell at the time of writing, you can bet I'm eyeing off the terrain for a Mephisto's realm scenario at some point.

Suffice to say, Ultimate Alliance is a big inspiration for my own games with miniatures. Not just the "anything goes" ethos, but in that I tend to use teams of 4 heroes. Basically, I played Ultimate Alliance and came away thinking "but what if I could use the Justice League, Hellboy and the Phantom"? And the rest is basically history, the long history of this blog and my never-ending project of collecting, painting and writing games. Four is a good number because you can get a spread, but the game doesn't slow down much, plus tends to be about as many people as I can get involved in a Convention game. I've never got much of a campaign going (yet), so my games have rarely left the city table, but you can bet I want to go to space, Atlantis, Hell and just about anywhere else I can scrounge the terrain for. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is dated as hell and maybe not a great game when all is said and done, but I maintain it's some of the best inspiration going for Superhero tabletop gaming, especially with miniatures. Just be warned, you'll almost certainly be adding Terracotta Warriors, Vikings and Demons to your shopping list of Supers minis.

Thinking Out Loud: Public Image Unlimited

Launched at the height of the Speculator Boom, Image comics, a creator-owned alternative to the big boys Marvel and DC, set out to be a unique and fresh voice in the comics industry. Famously, they did so with a lack of quality control, lawsuit generating disagreements and a great many missed deadlines, but despite a rough start and nearly collapsing several times, Image is still around today and is considered a purveyor of quality product. As well as producing the wildly-successful The Walking Dead and Invincible series, Image has become a home for smaller works like Empowered and Madman as well. Just what is and isn't part of the Image "universe" can be tricky to discern, as they don't have separate divisions like DC with Veritgo, but much like Marvel, quite a bit happens in the main Universe. If you've taken my advice and read Invincible, for example, during the "Invincible War" story, we see Youngblood, Spawn, Madman, Cyberforce and more fighting to save the Earth.

Actually, it goes beyond that, because an evil version of Invincible jokes that he thought Cyberforce broke up, a reference to the fact that the comic was canceled mid-run and had an excuse retconned in later. It's interesting, because back in the '90s, in order to have the appearance of having an actual continuity, Image comics did their own take on the New Gods that was pretty poorly received and way overblown to the point that they hired Alan Moore to write the wrap-up that buried the damn thing forever. No really. But, like the greats they strove to be, all that nonsense happened in the broader continuity still. I've been reading the series Local Man, about a former '90s heyday character being disgraced and having to move back to his tiny home town; it does a great job of capturing the mood of classic Image, whilst playing like a riff on Fraction Hawkeye combined with the early seasons of Smallville. In one part Jack, the protagonist, tells a priest about the time he met god during a massive crossover event and he was massive golden robot. That event happened in the comics, but Jack wasn't there as he was invented for Local Man.

What's the point of mentioning all this? Well, the willingness of Image to acknowledge and even celebrate their awkward adolescence, combined with Frew comics having unbroken continuity since Thor knows when has kind of got me thinking about my own work and the stuff I've jettisoned Vs what I kept. I've often said that I'll never bother posting my Dragon Ball Z fan-fiction, and I still probably won't, as it's really badly written, but maybe I can have those characters return in some way. Hell, I posted that Danton stuff as an exercise in preservation, but who's to say that having a Tri-Colour Dynamo or humanoid Badger wouldn't be fun in a game sometime? I mean, I love that Spider-Man had a Spider Buggy and an antagonist called "Turner D. Century", so why not embrace the times that what I did was a little cringy and silly? I never really delete old documents or throw out old notebooks (seriously, I found hand-written 3rd Edition 40k army lists the other day), so maybe some of my abandoned ideas have some merit I'm missing out on or have just ignored? Let's find out.