Eppu – Page 46 – Co-Geeking

Black Panther Is Coming to the Smithsonian African American Museum

June 29, 2018June 25, 2018Eppu

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian African American Museum of History and Culture screened the superhero movie Black Panther as part of their programming.

Now the museum has plans to incorporate the movie into their collections in a larger way:

“The museum acquired several objects from Disney’s record-breaking film Black Panther, including the hero costume worn by actor Chadwick Boseman; a shooting script signed by Ryan Coogler (co-writer; director), Kevin Feige (producer, president of Marvel Studios), Nate Moore (executive producer) and Joe Robert Cole (co-writer; producer); two pages of spec script; and 24 high-resolution production photographs. Plans for display of the objects are under consideration by the museum.” […]

“Black Panther is the first superhero of African descent to appear in mainstream American comics, and the film itself is the first major cinematic production based on the character. Black Panther illustrates the progression of blacks in film, an industry that in the past has overlooked blacks, or regulated them to flat, one-dimensional and marginalized figures. The film, like the museum, provides a fuller story of black culture and identity.”

Interesting! “Plans for display … are under consideration” definitely sounds like museum speak for planning a permanent exhibit. 🙂 In the meanwhile, the collection spotlight blog post, “Wakanda to Smithsonian”, includes a few images of the Black Panther hero costume (armor) on the premises.

Found via File 770.

Image by The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Ant-Man and the Wasp Trailers

June 27, 2018June 10, 2018Eppu

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens July 06, 2018—in about ten days! I didn’t know anything about Ant-Man going into the first movie, and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Just on the basis of that, I have high hopes for AM&tW.

This French poster certainly rocks:

Here’s the trailer from January:

Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp – Official Trailer #1 by Marvel Entertainment

And one from the beginning of May:

Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and The Wasp – Official Trailer by Marvel Entertainment

Basically the new one is the same as the January trailer except with more info. Still looks like great fun, though.

As for favorite side characters, Michael Peña returns as Luis, Judy Greer as Maggie Lang, and Abby Ryder Fortson as Cassie Lang—it’ll be great to see them all. Laurence Fishburne makes a first-time appearance as Dr. Bill Foster / Goliath. I didn’t realize that Michelle Pfeiffer is in the movie, too—cool cool cool. Hannah John-Kamen I haven’t seen before even though she’s been in Ready Player One and Game of Thrones; at least I don’t remember spotting her as a First Order officer in The Force Awakens.

Also, I just want to officially say that the GINORMOUS HELLO KITTY PEZ DISPENSER IS SO AWESOME! 🙂 😀

Image: Ant-Man and the Wasp poster via IMDB

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Happy, WoW-y Midsummer!

June 20, 2018November 15, 2022Eppu1 Comment

Juhannus is the Finnish celebration of midsummer. People usually go to a summer cottage, burn bonfires, sauna bathe, and enjoy fresh food.

Or… in our case, this year, stay in town and play! I’ve just started cleaning up my quest lists and churning out the last Legion achievements etc. in earnest before Battle for Azeroth launches in August.

I could even have a juhannus sauna in game. I’m pretty sure one of the Pinchwhistle Point huts in Spires of Arak is a sauna:

Tile floor, wooden benches, a large wood pail, and a stove for heating and making steam—sounds like a sauna to me!

Happy Midsummer! Hyvää juhannusta!

Images: 3-laptop evening by Eppu Jensen. Screencap from the MMORPG World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor expansion.

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Quotes: Comic Books Should Be in Every Library

June 15, 2018June 11, 2018Eppu

Stan Lee, the creator of several superheroes, opines on libraries:

“A library should be a way for a child—for anybody—to get the sort of reading that he or she wants, and hopefully that will benefit them. Not all stories in comic books are great; some may seem silly or ridiculous or a waste of time. But the youngster has to be able to read the book. And for that reason, comic books should be in every library.”

– Stan Lee

Did he just describe comic books as a gateway drug? 🙂

From an interview with Stan Lee for the American Library Association by Mariam Pera, found in American Libraries May 2014, p. 16.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Indie Scifi-Western Prospect

June 14, 2018June 11, 2018Eppu

I saw this a couple of months ago and meant to write about it then, but apparently stored *cough cough* the link somewhere really effectively and only now rediscovered it. Anyway:

A feature-length indie scifi-western Prospect, written and directed by Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell, premiered at the SXSW festival in March 2018.

An official teaser trailer is available on YouTube:

Prospect 2018 SXSW Teaser Trailer OFFICIAL by Prospect on YouTube

“A teenage girl and her father travel to a remote alien moon, aiming to strike it rich. They’ve secured a contract to harvest a large deposit of the elusive gems hidden in the depths of the moon’s toxic forest. But there are others roving the wilderness and the job quickly devolves into a fight to survive. Forced to contend not only with the forest’s other ruthless inhabitants, but with her own father’s greed-addled judgment, the girl finds she must carve her own path to escape.”

The movie stars Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal (whom I’ve seen in Game of Thrones and Kingsman: The Golden Circle; he is also slated to appear in Wonder Woman 2), Jay Duplass, Andre Royo (appearances in Agent Carter, Elementary, and Fringe), Sheila Vand, and Anwan Glover (also visited in Elementary). The runtime is about 1 h 40 min.

About a month ago, in early May, Variety announced that Gunpowder & Sky (who bought worldwide rights to Prospect) will release the film theatrically in the U.S. later this year. It looks also to be available for streaming on SingularDTV at some point. Until then, according to the movie’s Facebook page, it looks like Prospect will be playing at select film festivals and/or independent theaters.

An article in Ars Technica says that

“Prospect thrives more as a character-study due to the strength of its performances. In particular, Thatcher as Cee makes you feel each step of her transition from book-reading, punk- listening teen to cunning, hardened survivor […]”

Sounds intriguing—has anyone seen this yet? Thoughts?

Found via File 770.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

My Silliest WoW Pet Battle Pet Names

June 13, 2018June 11, 2018Eppu6 Comments

As a word nerd, I love puns. Nevertheless, I usually keep my RPG characters’ names pun-free if the setting or play style demand it, because I don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment.

Likewise, in World of Warcraft, my hunters usually have appropriate names for their tameable companion pets. Since pet battling is so much more meta than anything else, I do go all out naming my pet battle pets. Here are some I find most groan-worthy.

Legs came as a quest reward during Children’s Week. Mine is called Hello.

Chuck is a pet crocolisk and a fishing quest reward. I’ve seen people joke about Chuck Norris, but I haven’t yet had anyone recognize my Burn Notice reference (Chuck Finley is an alias for one of the POV characters, played by the legendary Bruce Campbell).

The floating ghostly skull named Bob is a reference to Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books.

The lesser voidcaller has a chance to drop from High Astromancer Solarian in The Eye. Mine is named for a muddled-up pun on the word avoidance and the fact that it’s a voidcaller. Not perhaps my best, but good enough of a name to keep.

Mirror striders can be found just hanging around in The Jade Forest in Pandaria. The name for mine is a bit esoteric: in the Finnish translation of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s nickname Strider is translated Konkari; Konkari spelled backwards is, you guessed it, Iraknok.

Willy is another Children’s Week quest reward. Appropriately, as a reference to another child-related work (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I named mine Wonka.

I can’t remember how I got my worg pup. I named mine Never Lupus, because whenever House encounters a case that defies his diagnostic abilities in the eponymous series, he always says “It’s never lupus.” We must’ve been just watching it.

My bound stream is called Dammed. Because that’s how you describe one. This one reminds me of a crossword puzzle clue, but AFAIK isn’t.

Any good pet names—of any kind—you want to share? Please do!

Images: screencaps from the MMORPG World of Warcraft

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

All-Female Ocean’s 8 Trailers

June 6, 2018May 27, 2018Eppu

An all-female installation in the Ocean’s heist series opens this Friday, June 08, 2018! IMDB’s description is short and sweet:

“Debbie Ocean gathers a crew to attempt an impossible heist at New York City’s yearly Met Gala.”

Here are two trailers:

OCEAN’S 8 – Official 1st Trailer by Warner Bros. Pictures on YouTube

OCEAN’S 8 – Official Main Trailer by Warner Bros. Pictures on YouTube

Looks like so much fun! Not everyone in the cast is a favorite, but you never know, they might become a favorite after this… 🙂

And, OMG, Ocean’s 8 is so gonna bust the Bechdel test out of the water and use it as a flotation device!

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Visual Inspiration: Two Birds, a Snail, and a Mushroom

June 5, 2018June 3, 2018Eppu

A few more possibilities for speculative writers and artists looking to break out of the Eurocentric worldbuilding mold, this time from among the Earth’s birds, snails, and mushrooms.

The male pink robin (Petroica rodinogaster) has a bright fuchsia chest and belly; the female looks drabber, with merely pinkish-tinged underparts. These small birds live in the cool temperate forests of southeastern Australia.

The many-colored fruit doves (Ptilinopus perousii) live on islands in the south-west Pacific Ocean (Fiji, the Samoan Islands, and Tonga). The male is yellow on the wings and back, red on the head and neck; the female is greener, darker on the back and greyer on the head and breast.

The violet snail (Janthina janthina) is a small purple mollusk found floating on the surface in tropical and temperate seas worldwide.

Indigo milk cap (Lactarius indigo) is a species of generally blue or blueish mushrooms found in eastern North America, East Asia, and Central America. The milk that oozes out of a cut or broken mushroom is also indigo blue, but slowly turns green upon exposure to air. According to Wikipedia, it’s edible and sold in rural markets in China, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Aren’t they all incredible?

Images: Pink robin by Dave Curtis on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Many-colored fruit dove by Tom Tarrant on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Violet snail cropped from photo by Ian Jacobs on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). Indigo milk cap by Arthur T. LaBar on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) and by Dan Molter via Wikipedia.

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?

Three Years of Co-Geeking

June 1, 2018May 27, 2018Eppu

Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky…

Third time pays for all…

Once the number three, being the third number be reached…

Dynamic Text- Monty Python: Holy Hand Grenade by Furnace1717 on YouTube

…it shall be heretowith known as the third anniversary of Co-Geeking.

Following are a few high points from the past year for us:

Favorite posts

Erik: My favorite post of the past year is What Makes a Fantasy World Feel European?, in which I tried to dig into some of the deeper elements of worldbuilding that keep imagined worlds tied to European models, even when some of the surface details are changed up. There is a great deal more that could be said on this subject, but I think the pattern I explored of cultural and economic integration combined with political fragmentation is useful for us to keep in mind when reading, writing, or thinking about secondary-world fantasy fiction.

Eppu: Like last year, I have a tie again. Firstly, Good Night, Cassini, Good Work, I’ll Most Likely Kill You in the Morning, for I continue to be flabbergasted over the amazing photos sent by the Cassini mission to Saturn. Secondly—and, interestingly, completely at the other end of human history—is the Ancient Clay Cup Animation of a scene laid out on a clay cup at the Bronze Age site of Shahr-e Sūkhté (or Shahr-e Sukhteh) in Sistan, southeastern Iran.

A Trio of Heroes

(a favorite geeky thing that happened this year)

Eppu: Black Panther the movie! It was visually beautiful and skillfully constructed (both storywise and with respect to the effects), but the absolute best thing about it was the humanity in the story. Like Erik said in our random thoughts post, “Black Panther feels like the movie we most need in 2018: a meditation on the temptations of division, resentment, and revenge and the hard choice of embracing a flawed and fractured world with hope.” Plus so. Many. Awesome. Women!

Erik: Superheroes aren’t just for white men any more. Although there have been non-white- and female-led superhero movies in the past, as aficionados will eagerly point out, the past year has felt like a corner being finally turned. Wonder Woman, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther all showed that getting people who aren’t white and male into significant roles in front of and behind the camera can lead to superhero movies that are both artistically awesome and financially successful, and the follow-up to Infinity War looks set to hand the massive Marvel Cinematic Universe over to a cast that is, at the least, a bit less overwhelmingly white and male than we’ve had so far. We haven’t reached anything like parity yet, but this past year was a good step.

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Quotes: I Only Regret […] Making My Detective a Finn

May 30, 2018December 22, 2018Eppu1 Comment

“[…] I only regret one thing—making my detective a Finn. I don’t really know anything about Finns and I’m always getting letters from Finland pointing out something impossible that he’s said or done. They seem to read detective stories a good deal in Finland. I suppose it’s the long winters with no daylight.”

– author Mrs. Oliver in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table

This excerpt comes from a Hercule Poirot novel. It’s a page-long burst by an imaginary author who doesn’t really care about getting certain details wrong, for example when one would use a dictograph vs. phonograph. That, of course, leads to feedback from more knowledgeable readers.

Being a Finn, I guffawed! Finns are busy readers indeed these days; it may already have been the case back in the 1930s as well.

(But, good grief, way to insult Romanians and Bulgarians, Christie! There’s a lot of interest in Christie’s writing, but on the other hand a lot of it hasn’t aged well, especially the racism and bigotry.)

Christie, Agatha. Cards on the Table. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011 [1936], p. 66.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.