As an added bonus, you can watch me get in shape and learn how to actually sew as the years go by!

(I'm still trying to dig up photos for costumes that pre-date my digital camera. Might be easier to throw the old costumes on and pose for new pictures...)

Character Info	Reference Image	Costume Image
Character: Yuna Description: High Summoner From: Final Fantasy X (video game) Costume Debut: Halloween 2002
Character: Éowyn Description: Shieldmaiden of Rohan From: Lord of the Rings (book/movie) Two Towers movie used as costume reference Costume Debut: Halloween 2003
Character: Princess Zelda Description: Princess of Hyrule From: Legend of Zelda series (video game) Oracle of Ages used as costume reference Costume Debut: Halloween 2004
Character: Seung Mina Description: Naginata warrior From: Soul Calibur series (video game) Soul Calibur I - 1P used as costume reference Costume Debut: Halloween 2005 Facebook Album with Seung Mina Photos
Character: Ayane Description: Lavender Ninja From: Dead or Alive (video game) Dear or Alive 2 used as costume reference Costume Debut: Halloween 2006 Facebook Album with Ayane Photos
Character: Anibelle Description: Magical inventor and runt demon From: The Wotch (webcomic) Costume Debut: Halloween 2007 Facebook Album with Anibelle Photos
Character: Vanessa Description: Witch of Immolation From: Luminous Arc (video game) Costume Debut: Halloween 2008 Facebook Album with Vanessa Photos
Character: Talwyn Apogee Description: Space explorer From: Ratchet and Clank series (video game) Costume Debut: Halloween 2009 Facebook Album with Talwyn Photos
Character: Roxy Richter Description: Roller-skating lesbian ninja From: Scott Pilgrim (comic book/movie) Comic Book appearance used as costume reference Costume Debut: Halloween 2010 Facebook Album with Roxy Photos
Character: Melaka Fray Description: 23rd-Century Vampire Slayer From: Fray (comic book) [Buffy spin-off] Costume Debut: Spring 2011 Facebook Album with Fray Photos
Character: Poison Description: Pink-haired TG street thug From: Final Fight Costume Debut: Spring 2011 Facebook Album with Poison Photos
Character: Hsien-Ko Description: Chinese Zombie... thing... with claws. From: Darkstalkers and other Capcom games Costume Debut: Halloween 2011 Facebook Album with Hsien-Ko Photos

This post has some large-ish charts in it that can screw with the front page layout, so I'm putting it behind the spoiler fold.

Click Here to Reveal Spoiler

My original plan was to try and get kicked out, but between a sneaking suspiction that witchcraft might still be a criminal offense in Kentucky and the fact that the person standing behind me in the ticket line was a hulking dude that I was not sure I could take in a fight (and when I say this, do consider who I have thought I could take in a fight) wearing a T-shirt that said "Fight Socialism" in the kind of bolted-on metal pseudo-blackletter font you might expect to see "Spin̈al Tap" written in, I decided to resort to plan "b" of visiting the museum in an orderly fashion and then posting a scathing rebuttal from the safety of my own home.

But before I talk about the museum itself, let me clarify some things about myself so you can understand the lens I was viewing it through.

• I'm a big fan of the Scientific Method. While I do tend root for challengers to widely-accepted theories (for example, I'm hoping to see Modified Newtonian Dynamics beat out Dark Matter), I want the battle to play out in a purely scientific arena and not a cultural or political one. Evolution I acccept as fact. It's scientifically sound. I'm sure nature has some more curveballs to throw at us, and we'll have to revise the textbooks a few times on some of the exact processes, but that's the kind of stuff we'll uncover by means of glorious science (SCIENCE!).
• While I do consider myself spiritual, I've never had trouble reconciling my religious and scientific beliefs. Abdul Bah'á can say it better than I can.
• I know a thing or two about science, but I also know a thing or two about scripture. This might surprise most of you, but I'm actually rather fond of the Bible stories. Not so much the lengthy sections about begetting or the laundry lists of things that can get you into hell, but the accounts of the people and the things they did. About part-way through the museum I realized that had they just stuck to Genesis and not tried to science it up, I probably would have enjoyed it... but then again, it wouldn't have been crazy enough to have gotten me in the doors.
• This shouldn't surprise you at all, but I'm also a big fan of meme-splicing -- and I'm using the word "meme" here in its original, broader, sense of a cultural meme, not in the more recent sense of an Internet meme. The idea of blending science and religion, though the results would not have a place in any scientific arena, does not offend me aesthetically. Quite the opposite, actually. As a comparison, the History Channel documentary series Ancient Aliens makes claims that are every bit as far out there as what the Creationists spin, and sure, I've caught them a few times fudging the history and the science to make their point but I don't care because that series is entertaining as fuck.

Without further ado, my review...

The Good

• There were a couple spots where they managed to use the whole setup to teach a genuine good life lesson. They had these ordinary-looking rocks that glow under UV light, and accompanied it with a message about how ordinary-looking people could shine, too. They had a bit about how since we're all really distant cousins since we originated from the same two people, we shouldn't be racists or xenophobes. I can get behind that.
• Adam and Eve were dark-skinned, and it kinda looked like they tried to make the two of them look like an amalgomation of the world's different races, so kudos for that. Noah, Moses, the apostles, and such all actually looked like Middle-Easterners, too, and not Caucasians.
• The full-scale sections of the Ark, I'll have to admit, were kinda cool just to see. I guess they based it on Greek ship-building.

The Amusing

• I have to give them points for effort. There was someone who actually ran a computer simulation about what would happen to global climate if massive amounts of divinely-conjured rainwater were suddenly added to the Earth's oceans.

The Peculiar

• I guess poison dart frogs weren't poisonous before the Sin of Adam?

The Sketchy

• I love me some dinosaurs, but they really did seem tacked on as a way to get kids to want to go to the museum. I kind of thought they were going to claim they died in the flood, but then they showed Noah loading them onto the Ark and never really did explain why they aren't here anymore.

The Bad

• Their "that's our story, we're sticking to it" agenda caused them to miss some interesting opportunities. Did you know that there's some geological evidence that Noah' flood may have actually freaking happened? I bet a lot of you didn't¹. And if you went to the Creation Museum, you still wouldn't know... because the geological stories start three thousand years earlier than their 4004 BC story, and are typically limited to a single sea. (Perhaps they also didn't want people to be intrigued by this and then learn about Manu, Deucalion, and Utnapishtim, and their respective floods as well)
• There were parts where they just clearly got the science wrong. Noah, for example, was able to fit the dinosaurs onto the ark because there were "only about 20 kinds of dinosaur." Also, I'm not able to think of a specific example but there were a couple spots where they claimed that "scientists have no explanation" for something that they actually do have an explanation for. Also, there were some flagrant misuses of the Anthropic principle.
• Not only did they get their science wrong, but their history was kinda shaky, too. Not only did they completely gloss over the complex and storied (and at times messy) processes which brought what we know today as the Book of Genesis to be what it is, but they were really stretching Luther's Sola scriptura philosophy out of its original context to appropriate it for their own purposes.
• While they did respond to the question of the discrepancies between the distinct Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25 creation stories, their response was little more than "DEVIL DEMONS HATES GOD AND SPEEK TEH LIES!!" The same response was presented for the gap and day-age interpretations of Genesis 1.
• There are spots they don't even have their own story straight. They frequently cited 4004 BC as the year for Genesis 1:1 and 1 AD as the birth of Christ, even though the Ussher chronology which popularized the 4004 BC date assumed a 4 BC birth of Christ, placing His birth an even four millenia post-Creation.

The Laughable

• There's a 7-minute-long looping video at one point of two brothers, one who is playing violent video games and is portrayed as a desensitized killing machine, and another who is watching Internet porn. It was part of a scene designed to show what happens when you turn away from the Church and follow only secular teachings. I guess the numerous scandals from Born-Agains are the exceptions that prove the rule here?

The Ugly

• There's one room that's clearly designed just to scare children. In the Garden of Eden exhibit, right after the bit about the forbidden fruit, you actually walk down a sloped hallway to the lower level, then turn a corner and there's skulls flashing on the walls and harsh lighting and gravestones and stuff. There was a child ahead of me who was running up excitedly, no doubt hoping there were more dinosaurs around the corner, only to turn around in horror, crying, and grabbing his mother's leg.
• The first couple of rooms they present you with are actually relatively reasonable. They show a simplified but accurate account of the prevailing scientific theories of how the Earth came to be and contrast it against literal Genesis, and then they finish with a statement about how you can make your own choice about which of the two theories you can follow. For a moment, they make it seem like they're not going to think any less of you for being scientific about it. But then right after they show you the awful things that happen when people choose the secular path (you know, they play violent video games, do drugs, get abortions, and do all those other things that religious folks never get caught up in).
• Blatant and unapologetic selective/inconsistent use of science where it suited them and scripture where it didn't. How did genetic diversity recover so quickly post-deluge? Evolution happened, silly. (They don't actually use the 'e' word, but that is pretty much their actual answer)

The Inexcusable

• They had the perfect opportunity to follow up many of their exhibits with a message of environmental stewardship. Throw one of these passages on a plaque, say "Look at this awesome stuff God made, let's be sure to take extra good care of it," and maybe actually use their museum to do some good. Deplorably, they discarded the green angle, probably because it would conflict with their hideous "end times" message. I'm sorry, but even if you subscribe to the end times, the fact that it's over 1900 years past when they first thought the end times were around the corner, couldn't they at least be bothered to try to take care of things for another few millenia? They took some time to throw in some anti-choice and anti-gay potshots into their exhibits, so it's not like they're concerned about being politically neutral, either.
• The people who designed the museum are retaliating against a fight that was never picked with them. Their sad misconceptions are not any more clearly evident than in the hallway where the side of a church is being demolished by a wrecking ball with the words "Millions of Years" carved into the side. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if the idea that the Earth is more than 6000 years old, and that natural processes can produce geological and biological diversity, is enough to challenge your faith, then I have to wonder about how strong your faith was to begin with. I'm sorry you feel that way, I don't want to dump on you, but for the love of all things good and pure, don't take your theological crises out on folks like me.

The Take-Home Messages

The Creation Museum itself may be nothing more than a high-octane disservice to both geology and theology, but that doesn't mean I didn't get anything out of my visit. Just as you need physical exercise to keep your body in good form, it feels like it was a good philosophical, spiritual, and critical thinking exercise to walk down that road for a bit and then clearly and concisely list out everything that didn't sit well with me. I feel like I came out of that place stronger, in a way, and with a clearer picture about where we can go from here.

For starters, it's clear to me now more than ever the importance of supporting proper museums. High production values (of which the Creation Museum can boast) carry with them a certain authority. An ounce of presentation seems to take you as far as a pound of content². It's an unfortunate reality, but one I'm afraid those of us who know better are just going to have to acknowledge and play to. You know how Pluto's recent re-classification found its way into the public eye? It wasn't in scientific journals or Wikipedia articles or textbooks, even though the debate had been rolling for quite some time on those venues before it became widely known. It was Neil deGrasse Tyson's decision to showcase only the 8 planets now recognized as such in a museum.

I also have to wonder if this whole rabidly anti-science attitude coming from the born-agains is a byproduct of how the topic of religion has become a bit of a taboo in our culture. In every other cultural aspect—food, costume, music, literature—you'll see casual, everyday cross-pollination. Religion, for whatever reasons, has found itself in this special, hyper-sensitive nook in our society. The TV shows, movies, and video games I grew up with show off a wide spectrum of cultural legends but more often than not shy away from bringing religion into the mix. It's not surprising, in this age where our cultural works have been industrialized, that producers would shy away from the "r" word to avoid alienating demographics and losing market share. But I have to wonder, if the same Born-Agains that made the Creation Museum had been exposed to a variety of faiths in an everyday setting, would they be so quick to decide that Genesis was meant to be the one true literal account of past events? On the flip side, would your average scientifically-minded-but-not-personally religious folk be able to have better conversations with those of a more spiritual persuasion, were they more familiar with religious customs at a social, non-academic level?

So... that was my experience. I may have, at this point, spent more time writing about the Creation Museum than I spent actually inside of it, so I think I'll sign off. And then send a donation to the museum of actual science in Cincinatti to offset the price of admission paid to the Creation Museum.

¹ I learned this from—you guessed it—Ancient Aliens.
² The presentation-over-content bit is the reason why I've often bet folks that with proper attire and a letter with a nice letterhead on high-grade paper and a raised seal, I could carry a loaded firearm onto an airplane. I've never had the guts to put this theory to the test. Let's hope I never do.

Most of them are personal favorites, a couple are thrown in there on account of being too iconic to leave off the list (Mario, Chun Li), and a few more that aren't favorites but have fun cool mechanics that I'd like to see in a fighting game (Hibito, Boy and his Blob, Prince of Persia, TF2 Engineer).

In case you need a key...

Top Row

• Samus Aran from Metroid
• Mario from Super Mario Bros.
• Link from The Legend of Zelda
• Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog
• Kanto Trainer from Pokémon
• Pac-Man from Pac-Man

Second Row

• Seung Mina from Soul Calibur
• Ayame from Tenchu
• Kerrigan from Starcraft
• Tassadar from Starcraft
• Mega Man from Mega Man
• Tron Bonne from Mega Man Legends
• Crono from Crono Trigger
• Mammal from E.V.O. Search for Eden

Middle Row

• Chun Li from Street Fighter II
• Simon Belmont from Castlevania
• Spyro from Spyro the Dragon
• Ratchet & Clank from Ratchet & Clank
• [Random]
• Yuna from Final Fantasy X
• Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII
• Hibito from Draglade
• Amaterasu from Ōkami

Fourth Row

• Ryu Hyabusa from Ninja Gaiden
• Toe Jam and Earl from Toe Jam and Earl
• Engineer from Team Fortress 2
• Chell from Portal
• Kirby from Kirby's Dream Land
• Meta Knight from Kirby's Dream Land
• Izuna from Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja
• Petra from Arcana Heart

Bottom Row

• Boy & Blob from A Boy and His Blob
• Purple Tentacle from Maniac Mansion
• Jade from Beyond Good and Evil
• Kratos from God of War
• Prince of Persia from Prince of Persia
• Fatima from Luminous Arc

DLC Character Pack #1 (Not Pictured):

• Robot Unicorn from Robot Unicorn Attack
• Master Chief from Halo
• Rogue from Power Stone
• Chuck from Decap Attack

A few characters got left off because their native mechanics were either way too off the wall (The Prince from Katamari, Maxwell from Scribblenauts), or just flat-out unsuitable for a fighting game (flOw creatures, Q*Bert, Lolo -- although I did make exceptions for Pac-Man and Purple Tentacle on this point) a few more got left off because I wanted to keep things down to two fighters per series (Auron, Lightning, Raynor)

I hereby give permission to anyone with the time and clout to track down the insane licensing necessary for this to use my idea :)

Knowing that, it's not much of a surprise that I'd be interested in the concept of geographic identity. One thing that's kind of never sat well with me is how inorganic North American borders are, so, in an effort to actually find a more organic hierarchy than county, state, and national boundaries, I made up this chart. It's something I've been coming back to here and there for a number of months now, burying myself in various geographic databases and scrawling together crude multiple map overlays in Photoshop at various scales.

Each box is one possible answer to the question, "Where do I live?" Some of them would be rather peculiar answers, but they'd all be correct. They are sorted generally from smallest (at top) to largest (at bottom), and in the case that one region is completely contained within another region, I draw a line connecting them.

Once I had it all sorted out, I tried to draw a line from the very top of the chart (my house) to the very bottom (the Solar System), at each point expanding to the next largest box whose described area seemed the most natural -- this is the highlighted route.

Without further ado, the results of my personal geographic identity survey:

When I talk about 'locks,' I'm not just talking about physical locks, either. I'm talking about the sign on the door that says "Emergency exit only, alarm will sound." What's so special about those doors that makes them emergency-use only? Nothing is special about them. Exactly zero bad things would happen ever were every emergency door in the world stripped of its arbitrary 'emergency' designation. I will not even concede an exception for the emergency door located at the back of a moving school bus, because exiting from the regular door while the school bus is moving carries the exact same risks. You know how the interstate system was designed to be used as a weapon against communism (I might be fuzzy on some of the details of that one) but we're allowed to use the interstate during the always that we're not being attacked by communists? I mean, I'm glad we have fire exits. It's nice to know that if the building I am in is on fire, I have several options for escape. But during the vast majority of the time that the buildings we frequent are not on fire, why shouldn't we be able to enjoy extra entry ways? Are they afraid that people trying to enter through these doors are going to block the escape route of the people fleeing the burning building, as if the hordes of people rushing the exit and the blazing inferno will not be enough to make the would-be entrant think, "gee, maybe now is not the best time to walk inside this building?" It's like Mitch Hedburg said: "If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit."

But here's where my pet peeve starts to diverge from what people consider "normal": not only do I hate extraneous locked doors, but I hate anything that is locked. I hate locking my front door. I do it, I recognize its utility, I understand that it's kind of an irrational thing to hate doing but I hate doing it all the same and I hate that I'm expected to do it. If I leave my door unlocked in defiance, and I get robbed, most of you would think "well, what did you expect, you dumbass?" before you'd think "what kind of asshole walks into an unlocked house and takes shit?" Hell, I don't know what the law is but I wouldn't be surprised if an insurance company could reject my claim based on 'negligence' if I made a habit of leaving my door unlocked. Never mind that anyone truly determined to rob my house always has the option of breaking through a window, at which point my stuff is no less stolen and I've got the cost of replacing a window to deal with on top of it.

And, after much rambling, this finally brings us around to my thesis: that the lock was a terrible invention. Locks are treated as if they are solutions to problems, when in reality, they just cover problems up. Locks make up a giant socio-psychological landfill into which the whole of human civilization has been dumping non-biodegradable problems for millennia. They allow us to stop thinking about the real problems at hand, content with the knowledge that the problem will, for the moment, not be an inconvenience to us. When an apartment building has problems with break-ins, thefts, and vandalism, the response is often to get stronger, more secure locks. Maybe a camera or two. But the problem isn't that a building somewhere has weak locks; the problem is that there are thieves and vandals. Sometimes the real problem is even a level or two deeper than that, depending on what the motivations for stealing were. The response, however, is typically the same: install better locks.

There are a lot of things in this world other than mechanical locks that serve the same function. Password-protected websites. Copy-protected media. Apple's whole software development and testing scheme for iOS devices, as an example, requires you to first make a lock and then make the key that opens it in order for you to run your own software that you wrote on your own device that you bought. It's as annoying as a baby with a cell phone in a theater and I'm not under any delusion that someone who wants to play Primrows for free won't be able to find a way. All these digital locks, like mechanical ones, still don't truly solve anything, and can still be bypassed.

If I were to take a stab at psychoanalyzing myself, I'd have to guess that my disdain for locks is that they take away options from people in a sweeping, brute-force manner that robs even the people who would not abuse their freedoms. I'm not suggesting that I (or anyone else) should have free reign over the world to do whatever I please with it, but when I see a lock I see a jarring disconnect between the things in the world that should not be taken and the things in the world that are bolted down. Were I to walk to the playground down the road and kick the first kid I saw in the face, I would clearly be in the wrong, and yet, neither the playground, nor my foot, are locked away. On the other hand, if I'm on a walk when a freak tornado hits and I need to find shelter fast, I'm going to be praying that the first door I try to open isn't locked, knowing damn well that it probably will be.

So... what happens, were I to suddenly get my way? All the locks in the world, gone in the blink of an eye? We'd have problems. I won't even try to imagine otherwise. They wouldn't be new problems -- they'd all be old ones that we never got around to really dealing with -- but they'd be no less problematic, and trying to deal with all of them at once could very well bring the world to its knees. Let me, instead, propose something within the realm of sanity: next time you lock something, take a moment to think about why you're locking it. Remind yourself what it is you're locking out. Nobody's ever solved a problem they didn't think about.

And yet, when I turn the lens inward and look only at my own life, and what I've accomplished, it becomes somewhat of a banner year. Barely a moment of truly smooth sailing, but unquestionably rewarding. Early in the year, I remarked that 2008 was "bump," 2009 was "set," and 2010 was showing potential to be "spike."

To try to leave this year on a pleasant note, I'm going to list out all the accomplishments that contributed to my personal "spike" of 2010 (ordered more-or-less chronologically):

• Debuted as a mascot for the Vaudeville Vixens
• Underwent, and recovered from, the second (and final) stage of birth-defect-eliminating surgery
• Joined a recreational roller derby league that I had a hand in starting up
• Signed an agreement with a movie studio for one of my posters to be a set dressing in a movie
• Became a published game developer with the release of Primrows
• Kicked off 'season two' of an original-setting science-fiction RPG campaign
• Got drafted as a skater for the Vaudeville Vixens
• Helped with the redesign of the Mad Rollin Dolls website
• Nearly doubled the amount of merchandise available in my online store over the course of the year
• Volunteered my services and expertise for another year with Community Shares of Wisconsin

(Also, those of you in Facebook land... I'm pre-emptively pleading the fifth for the question, "Hey, wait a second, am I on this chart?")

• Triskaidecathalon
• Cisgendered agenda
• Prophets caught on film
• Gorram frakkin' belgium
• Dangerous on the Dance Mat
• Legalese singularity
• Redemption of Ceres
• Spiracabana
• High-Impact Development Environment
• Climate Change De-debunking
• Newton's first law of web marketing
• A Retribution Revolution

Now, although I found tournament brackets for each of the regional tournaments on DNN and WFTDA's site, one thing I hadn't seen yet was a giant March Madness-style bracket that covered the entire playoffs, so I whipped one up. Half way in, it became quite apparent why this had not been widely attempted... but, undaunted, I charged on, and came up with this:

(One kinda big caveat: I couldn't find an official 2010 bracket for the Championships, just for the four regional tournaments, so I used the 2009 Nationals bracket structure in its place -- which means a big chunk of this bracket might actually be all wrong if they wind up tweaking the seeding.)

1. When the help of God arrives and victory, And you see men enter God's discipline horde on horde, Then glorify your Lord and seek His forgiveness. Verily He is relenting.

2. Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, "Even if the Lord were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?" But he said, "You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it."

3. O Lord, you know: remember me and visit me, and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors. In your forbearance do not take me away; know that on your account I shall suffer insult.

4. Whatever the rancor they may have in their hearts we shall cleanse and remove. Streams of running water shall ripple at their feet, and they will say: "We are grateful to God for guiding us here. Never would we have been guided if God had not shown us the way. The apostles of our Lord had indeed brought the truth."

5. Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

6. "How can I have a son," she said, "when no man has touched me, nor am I sinful?" He said: "Thus will it be. Your Lord said: 'It is easy for Me,' and that: 'We shall make him a sign for men and a blessing from Us.' This is a thing already decreed."

7. We made them the leaders of those who call to Hell; and on the Day of Judgement they will not be helped. A curse lies upon them in this world, and on the Day of Resurrection they will be despised.

8. But I have hated Esau; I have made his hill country a desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.

9. Whoever knows me as the Unborn, the Beginningless, the great Lord of all worlds -- he alone sees truly and is freed from all harm.

10. This is a message for mankind that they may take a warning from it, and may know that He is the one and only God, and that men of wisdom may reflect.

11. Verily God will admit those who believe and do the right into gardens with streams of water running by. But the unbelievers revel and carouse and subsist like beasts, and Hell will be their residence.

12. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth. I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.

Click Here to Reveal Spoiler

The Objective

Assemble a team of nine fictional characters from any published work or works. Their goal is to escort the One Ring from Rivendell to Mt. Doom and destroy it, as quickly and as safely as possible, and with as few casualties (both among their own ranks as well as among those of the Free People of Middle Earth) as possible (both among their own ranks as well as among the free people of Middle Earth).

The Rules

• No tweaking! You pick a character, and you get them with all of their own virtues and flaws -- you can't, for example, choose "a non-evil version of Sephiroth" or "Scrooge McDuck with a mithril exoskeleton and eyes that shoot lasers."
• No coaching! You pick a team, they have to be able to come up with their own strategy. Furthermore, you can't warn them about things you only know because you've read the books, and you can't give them a crash course on Middle Earth geography before they're summoned to Rivendell.
• Someone needs to actually carry the Ring. It's not gonna throw itself into Mount Doom, you know. As an exception to the "no coaching" rule, you do get to pick who starts out with it. Try to have a back-up, and do be careful who holds it (remember, Gandalf was afraid of what the Ring might be able to do through him, so use a similar amount of caution before giving it to Yoda.)
• You are responsible for making sure your team will gel. If you put the soldier guy from Starship Troopers on the same lineup as one of the bug dudes from District 9, don't blame me when they don't get along too well.
• For those of you who participated in the original event, try Challenge Mode: form a second team, without repeating any of the nine characters you picked originally.

My Team

My original team was Taki, Gandalf, Yuna, Ratchet, Clank, Ash, Jack Bauer, River Tam, and Togepi, and you can read about them here. My Redux Challenge Mode team -- with those nine off the table -- goes a bit like this:

1. Meta Knight, from Kirby. Not only is this guy exceedingly bad-ass, but he knows and respects the order of things -- he'll defend Pop Star from threats to the balance of nature the rest of the world is blissfully ignorant to, so vehemently that he often gets mistaken for a villain. But he doesn't crave power: when an ancient power granted him a single wish, all he asked for was a chance to test his skills against a legendary warrior. Certainly among the last who would be tempted by the power of the Ring, he'll be the one carrying it out of Rivendell.

2. Zeratul, from Starcraft. Dude can go invisible without any Rings of Power. And he's attuned to "dark" energies and stuff, but without being all evil about it. The guy figured out how to slay the essense of a Zerg cerebrate, so he might bring some unique skills into the mix that would be useful down in combating Sauron.

3. Petra Johanna Lagerkvist, from Arcana Heart. Since they've yet to release an English-language game with her in it, I can only pick up on bits and pieces of her story, but best as I can tell she's on some sort of absurdly bad-ass Swedish church-run metaphysical black ops squad trained to combat supernatural threats to our existence. Also she has an ethereal pet unicorn whose power she can channel. Despite not knowing her character better I just simply can not exclude her from this team, because come on, how awesome is that?

4. Zillael, Petra's aforementioned ethereal holy unicorn Arcana. (It's unclear from the game if Zillael should really be considered a separate character entirely or as more of a power that Petra has command of, but I'll go ahead and set aside a roster spot for her anyways).

5. Satsu, from Buffy Season Eight. So... with my last team, I discussed the need for a ninja. Satsu's not exactly a ninja, but she's a Slayer, and she has ninja gear, so I'm gonna add her to the team and call it good, and just cross my fingers and hope that she and Éowyn get it on. While there don't seem to be any actual vampires roaming Middle Earth, the whole place is ripe with dead things that hate the living, and demonesque beasts from a forgotten era. And if we're talking Slayer vs. Ringwraith, I'd have to give the edge to the Slayer, especially with that whole "I am no man" loophole in play.

6. Tron Bonne, from Mega Man Legends. OK, there is no doubt that this is a questionable choice -- she's a villain in half the games she appears in, for crying out loud -- but I'm afraid she's necessary to round out the party dynamic. See, my original team had a ninja but no pirate, leaving the whole potential Legolas/Gimli "we're from opposing cultures but, being brought together by difficult circumstances, we became best of friends" dynamic completely not capitalized upon. Plus, she's a freaking genius, and packs enough firepower to take down Isengard solo. Yeah, yeah, she'll probably try to take the ring for herself at some point -- but when she's been really pushed to a moral test before, she always reveals herself to be good beneath the surface. So I'm going to take this risk.

7. Dumbledore, from Harry Potter. I figure after the last four somewhat obscure characters, you were good and ready to hear about a character you know. He's an accomplished Wizard but all that is only the secondary reason I'm putting him on the team. The primary reason he's on the team is his capacity for trust. We've got Zeratul and Meta Knight, who are both kind of stoic and mysterious and prone to being misunderstood, Miss Tron who actually might not be entirely trustworthy, and who even knows about Petra -- without a decent leader in place, this party would disintegrate within a night of leaving Rivendell, and Dumbledore's manner of not letting the hideously evil break his demeanor or resolve will help the party keep its spirits. Back to the wizarding, he might be able to work some occlumency to keep the Eye of Sauron at bay. Just, you know, let's hope nobody lets him near the Ring -- I'm not certain what happens when you mix it with the Elder Wand, but it can't possibly be good.

8. Aragorn, from Lord of the Rings. Thus far, we're lacking anyone on the team with even the slightest knowledge of Middle Earth... with Gandalf off the table in Challenge Mode, my next best bet will be to go with Aragorn.

9. Wall-E from Wall-E. Wall-E's role in the party? Back-up. He'll be there to push Meta Knight up the last 500 feet of Mount Doom, scurrying through a tight passageway in Moria to open a gate from the other side, or fixing one of Tron's gadgets with a bit of shiny he happened to pick up and keep around days ago. And let's not forget the moral support he'll bring -- I mean, he's cute as hell, how could you not cheer up a little after seeing him?

Your Turn

Have at it! Come up with your own team, critique mine and each others', and just generally have fun with it.