Avengers Arena?

[King Ursa Major]

He was inspired by Hunger Games? Really?

I'm a little iffy about this title, what do you guys think? I'm already caught up with it.

[Vartox]

I think the concept behind it is bad, I don't like that so far the writer has been killing off existing characters and spotlighting the new ones, I don't like the fact that pretty much the only reason any of these characters are being developed at all is so that we'll feel bad when they die, I think the writing is mediocre. The art is nice although action scenes are a bit confusing tho.

Basically I don't like it and I'm not going to bother with it anymore.

[King Ursa Major]

Vartox

I think the concept behind it is bad, I don't like that so far the writer has been killing off existing characters and spotlighting the new ones, I don't like the fact that pretty much the only reason any of these characters are being developed at all is so that we'll feel bad when they die, I think the writing is mediocre. The art is nice although action scenes are a bit confusing tho.

Basically I don't like it and I'm not going to bother with it anymore.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Jin_of_the_thunder]

i'm just going to copy and past something i wrote before

Quote:

I really can't stand this series, its complete garbage.

they can call it a homage to battle royale and hunger games all they want but its a complete rip off, their is a cynical part of me that thinks they wouldn't even attempt this if they didn't have those big disney lawyers in their court.

their is so much wrong with this and i'm gonna rant about all of it.

first off as someone already stated, its a blatant rip off but they've missed the core points of books like battle royale, the sophisticated social commentary. and even if the original series didn't have that social commentary, they at least had an original plot idea. this story just steals another stories entire plot and setting and concentrates on the most superficial parts of the other stories.

lets talk about the character development that hopeless keeps harping about, he does none of it. when he goes into a characters past he just shows us what we already know and expect of that character and then kills them off. he didn't make the character grow, or present them in a different light, he just steals other characters that are already well loved because other more talented writers but the effort in to make us love them, and just kills them off.

the truth is he hasn't written this book, he's written nothing. this book doesn't require writing. all you have to do is take battle royal or hunger games, strip away anything thats deep. and replace everyone with marvel characters. thats all he's done, nothing more.

what really gets to me is hopeless's arrogance. just by looking in the comments page at the back of issue 1 and 2, the one that was mysteriously missing from issue 3 (gee i wonder why) and he says crap like "I love these characters too, and yes their will be deaths but they will all be treated with dignity." the fans of these comics don't have a problem with death, or much of a problem really if its done for the purpose of a the a good story. but as i've said, this story is just a rip off of another story.

These characters we loved, that other writers made us love because of well thought out and decent story telling are now going to have the lives ended in a s**t rip off of another better comic, thats what depraves them of dignity, thats why we hate this book.

and yeah i'll just say it, i'm mad that one of my favourite characters died in the last issue. Juston Seyfert. he was a character that still had so far to go, just like a lot of these characters and now it looks like he's dead. great.

I wanna know what goes on in marvels heads. i mean its like they forget that in the 60's the x-men were canceled. THE FRICKIN X-MEN' it was only in the mid 70's that they brought them back and they got popular again. and now this is how marvel treats characters that don't sell well nowerdays. bad bad marvel.

[g00kie_m0nster]

I'm steering clear; even the logo reeks of "Battle Royale rip-off"! talk2hand

[EvilWizard321]

I love this series so much. I've collected up to issue six and am waiting for issue seven to come out in a few days. The main reason I love this series is because it has a lot of my favorite characters in it and even though one of my favorites died first I still think it was written extremely well.

The whole reason already established characters were killed off first was to set up the tone for the readers. If Hopeless had killed off a new character there wouldn't have been any impact to that characters death, and you would feel like all the established characters were safe. So far, each character that's died has died for a reason. Issue six's death was well built up and I'm loving the new characters a lot more than I did from the first two issues.

This is a really great concept and I could really care less if it's stolen from Battle Royal/ Hunger Games. Come on, there's nothing new under the sun, there's just a different way to tell your story.... which is what my screenwriting teacher has been telling us. I really hope some of you guys reconsider reading this series. It's not bad at all and I love all the characters in this book. Yeah, most of them are going to die, but I love tension built up stories with lots of emotion in them. I'm really looking forward to issue seven this week.

[EvilWizard321]

Jin_of_the_thunder

i'm just going to copy and past something i wrote before

Quote:

I really can't stand this series, its complete garbage.

they can call it a homage to battle royale and hunger games all they want but its a complete rip off, their is a cynical part of me that thinks they wouldn't even attempt this if they didn't have those big disney lawyers in their court.

their is so much wrong with this and i'm gonna rant about all of it.

first off as someone already stated, its a blatant rip off but they've missed the core points of books like battle royale, the sophisticated social commentary. and even if the original series didn't have that social commentary, they at least had an original plot idea. this story just steals another stories entire plot and setting and concentrates on the most superficial parts of the other stories.

lets talk about the character development that hopeless keeps harping about, he does none of it. when he goes into a characters past he just shows us what we already know and expect of that character and then kills them off. he didn't make the character grow, or present them in a different light, he just steals other characters that are already well loved because other more talented writers but the effort in to make us love them, and just kills them off.

the truth is he hasn't written this book, he's written nothing. this book doesn't require writing. all you have to do is take battle royal or hunger games, strip away anything thats deep. and replace everyone with marvel characters. thats all he's done, nothing more.

what really gets to me is hopeless's arrogance. just by looking in the comments page at the back of issue 1 and 2, the one that was mysteriously missing from issue 3 (gee i wonder why) and he says crap like "I love these characters too, and yes their will be deaths but they will all be treated with dignity." the fans of these comics don't have a problem with death, or much of a problem really if its done for the purpose of a the a good story. but as i've said, this story is just a rip off of another story.

These characters we loved, that other writers made us love because of well thought out and decent story telling are now going to have the lives ended in a s**t rip off of another better comic, thats what depraves them of dignity, thats why we hate this book.

and yeah i'll just say it, i'm mad that one of my favourite characters died in the last issue. Juston Seyfert. he was a character that still had so far to go, just like a lot of these characters and now it looks like he's dead. great.

I wanna know what goes on in marvels heads. i mean its like they forget that in the 60's the x-men were canceled. THE FRICKIN X-MEN' it was only in the mid 70's that they brought them back and they got popular again. and now this is how marvel treats characters that don't sell well nowerdays. bad bad marvel.

I know you posted this like three months ago.... and also I really want to talk about this series....

So first off you said that Hopeless isn't good with character development. I don't think that's true. When I started this series I had no clue who any of the characters were at all. I had to go back and collect all of Avengers Academy to know who Reptile, Hazmat, X-23, Mettle, and Juston Seyfert where. I'm also now collecting Runaways so I can have a better understanding of who Chase and Nico are. I'm really glad that Hopeless gave us a bit of back story for readers who weren't familiar with the already established characters. Besides the flashbacks we're given tons of character development from everyone in the arena. Hazmat has to now deal with losing the love of her life, and trying to be strong enough to protect Reptil and X-23 now. There was a really great moment in issue four where Chase and Nico wanted to team up with the AA survivors, but that relationship ended with Hazmat almost killing Chase because she didn't trust him.

We're also given a lot of character development for the new characters in issues five and six. I now have two new favorite characters from those issues, Cullen Bloodstone and Anachronism. Those guys totally steal the spot light in those issues and you get to understand where they're coming from and how they feel about this whole situation. The Braddock Academy students, I find, are just as interesting as any already established character and there is a lot of explaining who they are and where their loyalties lie.

Now onto the writing, I would definitely say that Hopeless knows how to write and he's setting up the plots for later issues. Everything can't be explained within the first issue, otherwise where is the mystery to be solved... like, How the hell is Arcade so freaking powerful now? How did he kidnap all these kids? Are certain characters really dead or are they secretly alive? When will someone from the outside try to rescue the kids? There are all these questions which will be answered as the series goes on. Hopeless has a lot of explaining to do so he has to know how to incorporate these questions into his series. Which involves writing. I know that this series is using the whole "fight to the death" plot, but this kind of plot has been around for a while and has been adapted a lot. A few other examples besides Battle Royal and Hunger Games of this plot can be seen in, Death Race, Gamer (which kind of does something like it), Operation: Endgame, Lord of the Flies (a group of boys are trapped on an island and start killing each other... but this one might be stretching it a bit), The Running Man.... These are all examples of, mainly films, using the same kind of plot as Battle Royal. It's a very popular kind of plot so it shouldn't be a surprise that we were bound to get a super hero kind of version of this popular plot.

I'm going to assume that you didn't read after issue three when you made this post, but Hopeless continued to do the writers letters at the end of the issues again. A lot of the comments are really positive and there are a few people on the fence with the series, but every issue past three has a writers letter section.

Finally I wanted to let you know that Juston isn't dead.... Necessarily yet. He has a question mark over his picture which means that we don't know if he really is dead. Apparently he's going to be showing up in issue eight, and there are some previews online of his return. I don't think he's going to live long though, but he's also one of my favorite characters and I hope that if he gets killed off he dies heroically, almost like Mettle's death.

There, now I'm done slightly ranting at a comment made a few months ago.... Glad I got that off my chest.

[Chris Powell]

EvilWizard321

Now onto the writing, I would definitely say that Hopeless knows how to write and he's setting up the plots for later issues.

Not sure about this because he definitely doesn't know how to read. Otherwise he wouldn't have gotten Darkhawk's powers wrong. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. I predicted he would Powell's powers wrong.

[EvilWizard321]

Chris Powell

EvilWizard321

Now onto the writing, I would definitely say that Hopeless knows how to write and he's setting up the plots for later issues.

Not sure about this because he definitely doesn't know how to read. Otherwise he wouldn't have gotten Darkhawk's powers wrong. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. I predicted he would Powell's powers wrong.

I don't know that much about Darkhawk, except mainly that he did do a cameo in a few issues of Runaways. From what I saw of him he had some anger issues and didn't want to be Darkhawk anymore. That was back in 2005, so I don't know if Darkhawk dealt with those issues, but I am kinda upset that his fate is unknown for the time being. He has a cool design and I thought he was really cool when he decided that he wanted to protect everyone. I'm not entirely sure how his powers work, so I can't back up any thing I could say about the matter.

However, I did find it interesting that in issue four, the one that focused on Chase, we saw what happened to Darkhawks powers. The main questions I really want answered about Darkhawk are, is he still alive? and Who has the ability to take away his powers like that? I'm wondering if it was one of the Braddock Academy kids. It could be since some of them were kinda responsible for attacking the others at night.

[Chris Powell]

EvilWizard321

Chris Powell

EvilWizard321

Now onto the writing, I would definitely say that Hopeless knows how to write and he's setting up the plots for later issues.

Not sure about this because he definitely doesn't know how to read. Otherwise he wouldn't have gotten Darkhawk's powers wrong. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. I predicted he would Powell's powers wrong.

I don't know that much about Darkhawk, except mainly that he did do a cameo in a few issues of Runaways. From what I saw of him he had some anger issues and didn't want to be Darkhawk anymore. That was back in 2005, so I don't know if Darkhawk dealt with those issues, but I am kinda upset that his fate is unknown for the time being. He has a cool design and I thought he was really cool when he decided that he wanted to protect everyone. I'm not entirely sure how his powers work, so I can't back up any thing I could say about the matter.

However, I did find it interesting that in issue four, the one that focused on Chase, we saw what happened to Darkhawks powers. The main questions I really want answered about Darkhawk are, is he still alive? and Who has the ability to take away his powers like that? I'm wondering if it was one of the Braddock Academy kids. It could be since some of them were kinda responsible for attacking the others at night.

His anger issues were resolved in War of Kings. In fact, due to the nature of the amulet, Chase should be having them now. Here's the kicker...

NO ONE HAS THE POWER TO TAKE HIS POWERS LIKE THAT! This was dealt with in a multi-issue story arc in the original Darkhawk comics. You rip the amulet out of the armor, HE DOES NOT REVERT TO HUMAN. You rip the amulet out of the armor, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT. Hopeless has either blatantly ignored canon or (and more likely) he knows as much about Darkhawk and used him because "he has a cool design."

And hell...why not give a useless p***k of a character a new cool set of powers?

[EvilWizard321]

Chris Powell

His anger issues were resolved in War of Kings. In fact, due to the nature of the amulet, Chase should be having them now. Here's the kicker...

NO ONE HAS THE POWER TO TAKE HIS POWERS LIKE THAT! This was dealt with in a multi-issue story arc in the original Darkhawk comics. You rip the amulet out of the armor, HE DOES NOT REVERT TO HUMAN. You rip the amulet out of the armor, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT. Hopeless has either blatantly ignored canon or (and more likely) he knows as much about Darkhawk and used him because "he has a cool design."

And hell...why not give a useless p***k of a character a new cool set of powers?

I wouldn't say that Chase is a p***k. He had the girl that he loved die in his arms twice. And now he has to protect one of his best friends, that he kinda has feeling for. He isn't a p***k because we haven't seen him get to be a p***k in these past few issues. Heck, he tried really hard to make the alliance with the Academy kids work. When Reptil and him were sitting alone together at night, and Reptil confessed that he almost really did kill Nico because he didn't trust them, Chase retorted by saying that if Reptil ever said something like that to him again he was going to kill him.... That's not being a p***k, that's protecting the only person that you love and trust.

Again, I wouldn't know much about Darkhawk and how his powers work. I might have to go out of my way and pick up a book or two about him.... but I'm pretty sure that Hopeless will explain this situation in future issues. I don't think that he blatantly forgot about that detail, since if he's using already existing characters he should know their back stories. I would say wait and see, if it isn't explained then it really doesn't bother me that much. It might bother other people who actually know the character, but it wont bother me. I like Darkhawks design, he seems really cool and he looked cool in the few panels that I saw him in. He's also the oldest player in the arena, so Hopeless didn't neglect to explain that detail.

And yes, I really do think Darkhawk looks cool. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to say that, even though I know nothing about the guy. So from an uneducated fans point of view, I would love to see more of him.... even if Chase has the power now.

[Chris Powell]

EvilWizard321

Chris Powell

His anger issues were resolved in War of Kings. In fact, due to the nature of the amulet, Chase should be having them now. Here's the kicker...

NO ONE HAS THE POWER TO TAKE HIS POWERS LIKE THAT! This was dealt with in a multi-issue story arc in the original Darkhawk comics. You rip the amulet out of the armor, HE DOES NOT REVERT TO HUMAN. You rip the amulet out of the armor, NO ONE ELSE CAN USE IT. Hopeless has either blatantly ignored canon or (and more likely) he knows as much about Darkhawk and used him because "he has a cool design."

And hell...why not give a useless p***k of a character a new cool set of powers?

I wouldn't say that Chase is a p***k. He had the girl that he loved die in his arms twice. And now he has to protect one of his best friends, that he kinda has feeling for. He isn't a p***k because we haven't seen him get to be a p***k in these past few issues. Heck, he tried really hard to make the alliance with the Academy kids work. When Reptil and him were sitting alone together at night, and Reptil confessed that he almost really did kill Nico because he didn't trust them, Chase retorted by saying that if Reptil ever said something like that to him again he was going to kill him.... That's not being a p***k, that's protecting the only person that you love and trust.

Again, I wouldn't know much about Darkhawk and how his powers work. I might have to go out of my way and pick up a book or two about him.... but I'm pretty sure that Hopeless will explain this situation in future issues. I don't think that he blatantly forgot about that detail, since if he's using already existing characters he should know their back stories. I would say wait and see, if it isn't explained then it really doesn't bother me that much. It might bother other people who actually know the character, but it wont bother me. I like Darkhawks design, he seems really cool and he looked cool in the few panels that I saw him in. He's also the oldest player in the arena, so Hopeless didn't neglect to explain that detail.

And yes, I really do think Darkhawk looks cool. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to say that, even though I know nothing about the guy. So from an uneducated fans point of view, I would love to see more of him.... even if Chase has the power now.

I can guess exactly how Hopeless will get himself out this mess because it's the only to explain why Arcade is now a reality warper....they're in a video game/simulation. Cliche/hackneyed but I'm putting my cash on that.

[EvilWizard321]

Chris Powell

I can guess exactly how Hopeless will get himself out this mess because it's the only to explain why Arcade is now a reality warper....they're in a video game/simulation. Cliche/hackneyed but I'm putting my cash on that.

There's been a lot of speculation for this theory. Issue seven is supposed to focus on Arcade, and I'm assuming it will explain how he got all these new powers. I'm hoping that this theory isn't true, because it seems like a really big cop-out for all this emotion that he's been building up. I love all these characters in the story, new and old, but I would be upset if Hopeless' big reveal was that they were all in a video game simulation.

I think that Arcade is working with someone else, who is responsible for his new found God like powers. I also think that all these characters really are dying. I'm not placing all my chips on one hand, because that's stupid. I'm open to what ever Hopeless throws at me, but I really do hope he doesn't do the whole virtual reality simulation. I'm getting a feeling, based on Hopeless' response to fan mail about this question, and through out the issues, that this whole series is really happening.

[Jin_of_the_thunder]

EvilWizard321

Jin_of_the_thunder

i'm just going to copy and past something i wrote before

Quote:

I really can't stand this series, its complete garbage.

they can call it a homage to battle royale and hunger games all they want but its a complete rip off, their is a cynical part of me that thinks they wouldn't even attempt this if they didn't have those big disney lawyers in their court.

their is so much wrong with this and i'm gonna rant about all of it.

first off as someone already stated, its a blatant rip off but they've missed the core points of books like battle royale, the sophisticated social commentary. and even if the original series didn't have that social commentary, they at least had an original plot idea. this story just steals another stories entire plot and setting and concentrates on the most superficial parts of the other stories.

lets talk about the character development that hopeless keeps harping about, he does none of it. when he goes into a characters past he just shows us what we already know and expect of that character and then kills them off. he didn't make the character grow, or present them in a different light, he just steals other characters that are already well loved because other more talented writers but the effort in to make us love them, and just kills them off.

the truth is he hasn't written this book, he's written nothing. this book doesn't require writing. all you have to do is take battle royal or hunger games, strip away anything thats deep. and replace everyone with marvel characters. thats all he's done, nothing more.

what really gets to me is hopeless's arrogance. just by looking in the comments page at the back of issue 1 and 2, the one that was mysteriously missing from issue 3 (gee i wonder why) and he says crap like "I love these characters too, and yes their will be deaths but they will all be treated with dignity." the fans of these comics don't have a problem with death, or much of a problem really if its done for the purpose of a the a good story. but as i've said, this story is just a rip off of another story.

These characters we loved, that other writers made us love because of well thought out and decent story telling are now going to have the lives ended in a s**t rip off of another better comic, thats what depraves them of dignity, thats why we hate this book.

and yeah i'll just say it, i'm mad that one of my favourite characters died in the last issue. Juston Seyfert. he was a character that still had so far to go, just like a lot of these characters and now it looks like he's dead. great.

I wanna know what goes on in marvels heads. i mean its like they forget that in the 60's the x-men were canceled. THE FRICKIN X-MEN' it was only in the mid 70's that they brought them back and they got popular again. and now this is how marvel treats characters that don't sell well nowerdays. bad bad marvel.

I know you posted this like three months ago.... and also I really want to talk about this series....

So first off you said that Hopeless isn't good with character development. I don't think that's true. When I started this series I had no clue who any of the characters were at all. I had to go back and collect all of Avengers Academy to know who Reptile, Hazmat, X-23, Mettle, and Juston Seyfert where. I'm also now collecting Runaways so I can have a better understanding of who Chase and Nico are. I'm really glad that Hopeless gave us a bit of back story for readers who weren't familiar with the already established characters. Besides the flashbacks we're given tons of character development from everyone in the arena. Hazmat has to now deal with losing the love of her life, and trying to be strong enough to protect Reptil and X-23 now. There was a really great moment in issue four where Chase and Nico wanted to team up with the AA survivors, but that relationship ended with Hazmat almost killing Chase because she didn't trust him.

We're also given a lot of character development for the new characters in issues five and six. I now have two new favorite characters from those issues, Cullen Bloodstone and Anachronism. Those guys totally steal the spot light in those issues and you get to understand where they're coming from and how they feel about this whole situation. The Braddock Academy students, I find, are just as interesting as any already established character and there is a lot of explaining who they are and where their loyalties lie.

Now onto the writing, I would definitely say that Hopeless knows how to write and he's setting up the plots for later issues. Everything can't be explained within the first issue, otherwise where is the mystery to be solved... like, How the hell is Arcade so freaking powerful now? How did he kidnap all these kids? Are certain characters really dead or are they secretly alive? When will someone from the outside try to rescue the kids? There are all these questions which will be answered as the series goes on. Hopeless has a lot of explaining to do so he has to know how to incorporate these questions into his series. Which involves writing. I know that this series is using the whole "fight to the death" plot, but this kind of plot has been around for a while and has been adapted a lot. A few other examples besides Battle Royal and Hunger Games of this plot can be seen in, Death Race, Gamer (which kind of does something like it), Operation: Endgame, Lord of the Flies (a group of boys are trapped on an island and start killing each other... but this one might be stretching it a bit), The Running Man.... These are all examples of, mainly films, using the same kind of plot as Battle Royal. It's a very popular kind of plot so it shouldn't be a surprise that we were bound to get a super hero kind of version of this popular plot.

I'm going to assume that you didn't read after issue three when you made this post, but Hopeless continued to do the writers letters at the end of the issues again. A lot of the comments are really positive and there are a few people on the fence with the series, but every issue past three has a writers letter section.

Finally I wanted to let you know that Juston isn't dead.... Necessarily yet. He has a question mark over his picture which means that we don't know if he really is dead. Apparently he's going to be showing up in issue eight, and there are some previews online of his return. I don't think he's going to live long though, but he's also one of my favorite characters and I hope that if he gets killed off he dies heroically, almost like Mettle's death.

There, now I'm done slightly ranting at a comment made a few months ago.... Glad I got that off my chest.

i actually have been following it, and I still don't think that hopeless is a good writer, I mean hazmat post mantels death, there hasn't been any real character develop. all we've seen her do is cry, get angry and then never mention it again. and i'd also argue mantle didn't get a heroic death, his lines "I don't care about them, I only care about you" were the least mantle like things he ever could of said. he made it clear when he did show up he showed up for hazmat and would of let the rest of his friends die.

I agree that the bradock academy kids are interesting, but they're a blank slate. i don't see why he couldn't do the entire book like that, with new characters as apposed to grabbing a bunch of well loved characters and sticking them in this comic, the only reason for this I can think they did this was to get a bunch of people who normally wouldn't read this title already emotionally invested.

I still stand by my conviction that he isn't a good writer, I think he's a very lazy writer while i'll admit that the scenes with bradock were good what he does with the other characters is lazy

[EvilWizard321]

Jin_of_the_thunder

i actually have been following it, and I still don't think that hopeless is a good writer, I mean hazmat post mantels death, there hasn't been any real character develop. all we've seen her do is cry, get angry and then never mention it again. and i'd also argue mantle didn't get a heroic death, his lines "I don't care about them, I only care about you" were the least mantle like things he ever could of said. he made it clear when he did show up he showed up for hazmat and would of let the rest of his friends die.

I agree that the bradock academy kids are interesting, but they're a blank slate. i don't see why he couldn't do the entire book like that, with new characters as apposed to grabbing a bunch of well loved characters and sticking them in this comic, the only reason for this I can think they did this was to get a bunch of people who normally wouldn't read this title already emotionally invested.

I still stand by my conviction that he isn't a good writer, I think he's a very lazy writer while i'll admit that the scenes with bradock were good what he does with the other characters is lazy

I'm glad you're still reading it, but I do disagree with you. I've read almost all of the issues of Avengers Academy, just haven't read the Fear Itself issues, and I thought that Hopeless got Mettle right. Him and Hazmat are fan favorites and the fact that Mettle sacrificed himself to save the girl he loves was very heroic. It was also almost like Mettle was also refusing to play Arcade's sick game. Hazmat isn't my favorite character, and yes she is pretty annoying, but I think she'll improve as the issues come. I understand that she's being a tough chick because she feels like she has nothing left to lose. You can tell that Hazmat wants revenge and is going to try and take Arcade down when she gets the chance. We've only really had about three issues worth of focusing on Hazmat, we know she'll make it to day 29 so there will probably be more of her that can be fleshed out later.

I also think Hopeless has matched up the characters quite nicely. Nico and Chase are paired up with Cammi, one of my new favorites. The Academy kids have broken up at the moment. Juston is possibly alive at the moment, but We know nothing about Darkhawk's final fate.

I'm kinda glad that Hopeless has done a mix of both new and old characters. It's good for Marvel because I've been scrambling to collect as many issues of Avengers Academy and Runaways as I can. I love the new characters and I love the old characters. I have no problem with what Hopeless has done so far.... So I guess it's safe to say that we can agree to disagree.