konpaku: Random Poison Abridged

Soo….as I’m following a couple of series and the Reading Together works quite well for keeping track of thoughts regarding my current reads and I kind of did something like this with this post already, I thought, it was high time that I rant a bit about what I’ve seen in the past week in a more appropriate setting.

What am I going to do?

Each Wednesday evening I will publish a post in which I collected the thoughts I had throughout the week while watching the latest or any episode of a series or maybe even a movie.

Depending on how my time allows it, the comment will also be for those that I watched that day.

You’re warned: There will be Spoilers.

Let’s start

Sleepy Hollow – Season Two, Episode 17: Awakening (Watch Date: 19.02.)

I do believe I haven’t mentioned yet that I am watching this series, but tadaa: I do.
It’s a really interesting concept and even though it had me confused more than once throughout the first season, do I still enjoy it.
It has great characters and interesting foes.

Anyway, from the beginning I kind of felt odd about [...]

Agent Carter – Season One, Episode 8 – Valediction (Watch Date 25.02.)

I can’t believe this season is already over…
When I read last week that the upcoming episode would be the finale I was utterly shocked. It was far too soon to leave Peggy (and Jarvis I feel the need to add him here).
It’s such a fun and great and cool series and Hayley Atwell is just such a beautiful and brilliant actress. James D’Arcy does a great job as well and it’s just such a joy to watch those two interact.
Right after the first episode aired I wanted to watch more and I dearly hope the series will be renewed for another season – and many more after that.

The finale followed [...]

What were you watching?

What episodes or movies did you enjoy throughout the week?
Anything you’d recommend checking out?
Let me know in the comments below!

Continue Reading: What'cha Watching Wednesday

Um wieder in den richtigen Schreibfluss zu kommen, haben wir (DF.PP Entertainment) uns überlegt euch mit kleinen Geschichten zu erfreuen.
Die Idee kam Fairy als Poison Bilder für ihren Adventskalender gesammelt hat, zu denen sie dann eine Geschichte geschrieben hat.

Das Gleiche wollen wir auch auf unserem gemeinsamen Blog machen und es soll unter dem Motto: Dein Bild – Eine Geschichte dort veröffentlicht werden.

D.h. wenn ihr Bilder habt, zu denen ihr gerne eine Geschichte lesen möchte dann schickt sie uns und wenn uns eine Geschichte einfällt, dann wird sie auch geschrieben.

Und das sind die Regeln fürs Einsenden:

• Du musst im Besitz der Rechte des Fotos sein (Du wirst natürlich im Beitrag benannt – außer du willst anonym bleiben)
• Das Bild muss vernünftig/anständig sein (keine Darstellungen von Gewalt, Rassismus, Pornografie etc.)
• Das Bild muss per Mail (als Anhang oder Link) mit dem Betreff “Dein Bild – Eine Geschichte” an eine der folgenden Adressen gesendet werden:
  • Lasst euch überraschen, wer die Geschichte schreibt: df_ppentertainment(at)yahoo.de
  • PoiSonPaiNter schreibt die Geschichte (Englisch/Deutsch): poisonpainter(at)ymail.com
  • DarkFairy schreibt die Geschichte (Deutsch): therealdarkfairy(at)gmail.com

Wir werden uns bemühen, aber wir können nicht versprechen, dass es wirklich zu jedem Foto eine Geschichte geben wird! Gibt es eine Geschichte, wird diese mit dem entsprechenden Bild zusätzlich auf unserem jeweiligen Blog verlinkt.

Vollständige Beiträge: Wir leben noch! und DF.PP Entertainment re-animated

As you might remember did I re-discover my wand core on Pottermore not long ago. By now I have played a bit again and started thinking that it might be interesting for my mum as well, simply because she likes point and click games.

From this thought another one started to form:

If my parents went through the sorting, which house would they get?

And thus started the Pottermore Experiment.

The Experiment Set-Up

To learn the answer to my question I had to register my parents to the site (see Link above).
When I made the account for my mum I had the slight fear they wouldn’t let me, as I already used the E-Mail address with mine. But I was able to create it and clicked through the tutorial pages while my mum read them. I tried letting her navigate by herself, but she’s awful at using the touch pad on my laptop ( I didn’t even bother to do either when it was my dad’s turn).

Therefore I navigated through the game and read the questions and answers out loud for her and later for my dad again (They by the way had different questions). While my mum knew what I was up to, my dad only realized it when we started the sorting, but neither of them were as curious as me.

Both times I tried to not influence them by stopping at certain answers I found most fitting, but I do believe some of their choices where more a “I have no idea what I’m supposed to answer so I’m just randomly picking one” than “Yes, this sounds like me.”.

But I still got my results and that is what counts in the end (however weird they might be).

The Wands

[...]

Houses

[...]

Conclusion

[...]

Anyway, have you tried sorting your family members into the different Hogwarts houses?
What were the results and do you agree with them/are you satisfied with them?
Let me know [...] :D

Full Post: The Pottermore Experiment

[...] we had our office Christmas party and instead of the usual feasting we attended a Crime Dinner – or Dinner Crime, as they called it – for the occasion.
It was a quite interesting experience that I’d like to talk a bit about.

The  premise for the event was as follows:

“You’ll be attending a fashion show where an award for street fashion will be given to an unknown designer. During the ceremony a murder will take place and the killer has to be found.”

This means that throughout the evening and between the meals, we would get to see a couple of actors perform a crime play. It also meant, that some of my colleagues had to pose as models or other characters that didn’t have text-roles…

The whole set-up already started on our arrival, when one of the actresses introduced the people entering the hall by stating their name and fashion label.
Luckily we arrived before she started doing this more excessively.
She did look me up and down, but she either couldn’t decide on a label or didn’t want to say anything due to the “Don’t you dare”-look I think I had on my face…

Before any courses were served we got to see the first scene that was pretty much the introduction of the main characters and the basic storyline. Shortly after it the speculations started on who would be the killer.

Yet, I turned the conversation to look at who will become victim instead and presented my theories to my colleagues that sat at my table.
They found it reasonable and we shelved the conversation until the next scene.

When it was over I stated:

“Now it’s clear that she is the victim. She just got poisoned with this-and-this. Though probably by accident.”

The amazed look on my colleagues faces was quite priceless, when they thought my words through and agreed with them. :D

Needless to say in the next scene...

Continue reading: I've apparently watched to many crime shows

As I again am struggling to work on any of the proper posts I still need to finish, I’d like to get some thoughts/questions out of the way about stuff I recently watched. Needless to say the following contains Spoilers and probably doesn’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t watched the stuff yourself.

Doctor Who – Kill the Moon

For some reason I simply can’t get over this quote from the episode:

“My gran used to put things on tumblr”
(Lundvik)

[...]

Supernatural – The Song Remains the Same

As I have recently caught up with the show and am currently working on a season-summary for The Extremis Review I again came across this conversation:

MICHAEL
You’re my true vessel but not my only one.

DEAN
What is that supposed to mean?

MICHAEL
It’s a bloodline.

DEAN
A bloodline?

MICHAEL
Stretching back to Cain and Abel. It’s in your blood, your father’s blood, your family’s blood.
(The Song Remains the Same)

[...]

Supernatural => Destiel?

When I started to watch the show I was well aware of the Fandoms love for Destiel(, which is the Shipping portmanteau of the pairing Dean/Castiel). I’m generally not the slightest bit interested in fanmade pairings, but this one made me curious enough, to see for myself, if it was really as obvious as the fans claim.

While I can see a deep (or profound as Castiel called it) bond between the two characters – and I kind of feel bad for writing this – can I not see any romantic feelings that would be displayed by them…

[...]

Jack the Giant Slayer

The movie with X-Men and About a Boy star Nicholas Hoult in the titular role is a fun watch, if you don’t pay too much attention to details that is.

When I first watched it a couple of weeks ago I was already bugged by the far to modern looking leather jacket of the hero, but when I re-watched it yesterday with my mum, I noticed something even more strange:

Continue Reading: Questions upon Questions

Ich möchte für dieses Weihnachten meinen eigenen Adventskalender erstellen.
Das Türchen soll dabei ein Foto und eine von mir geschriebene Kurzgeschichte zu dem Bild enthalten und das ist der Punkt bei dem ich Hilfe brauche.

An all euch Fotografen da draußen:

Wenn ihr irgendwelche Fotos habt – seien sie weihnachtlich, mit Schnee oder nicht – bei denen ihr gerne eine Geschichte zum Bild erfahren möchtet, dann sendet mir bitte was ihr habt.

Insgesamt werde ich, natürlich, 24 Bilder brauchen, aber ich kann nicht versprechen, dass mir zu jedem etwas einfällt, also könnt ihr auch gerne mehrere Einträge schicken.

Und das sind die Regeln fürs Einsenden:

• Du musst im Besitz der Rechte des Fotos sein (Du wirst natürlich im Türchen-Beitrag benannt)
• Das Bild muss vernünftig/anständig sein (keine Propaganda für Gewalt, Rassismus oder andere schreckliche Dinge)
• Das Bild muss über die Kommentare, Nachrichten (z.B. Facebook, Google+ oder Mail) oder wie auch immer du es bevorzugst geschickt werden.

Ich denke mal der absolut letzte Abgabetermin ist der 23. Dezember gegen Mittag (UTC +1), aber ich hoffe bis dahin alle Einträge fertig zu haben.

Du gewinnst nicht wirklich etwas mit der Einsendung außer Aufmerksamkeit für deine Arbeit und eine Geschichte, aber vielleicht ist das ja schon genug um die Weihnachtsstimmung in Schwung zu bringen. :)

Mal sehen, ob wir das zusammen hin bekommen.

Ich bin jetzt schon gespannt was ich so bekommen werde. :)

konpaku

Vollständiger Beitrag: Adventskalender Hilfe

So much for me not writing anything until June…
I am really good at keeping up with my own predictions…
But after spontaneously attending the advanced showing of X-Men: Days of Future Past yesterday, I can’t help myself giving an on time review for it – and yes it will contain Spoilers.

What is it about?

DoFP is a continuation of both X-Men: First Class and X-Men: The Last Stand and starts off in a dystopian future where specifically programmed robots hunt down mutants and humans who are helping them (or are capable of one day having a mutant offspring). In their hunt the so-called Sentinels have destroyed the Earth quite thoroughly and to stop this war from ever happening the remaining X-Men think up a clever plan: Stop the whole thing from ever getting started.
To accomplish this the prominently featured Wolverine’s mind is sent back in time into his younger self’s body to help a lost Charles Xavier to find shape-shifter Mystique and stop her from killing Bolivar Trask, the mastermind behind the Sentinels.

The watching experience

As I hadn’t decided on going to the cinema until Tuesday I wasn’t sure if I’d actually be able to get a ticket, but I wasn’t surprised to find the cinema hall only half empty either. Though I did expect the people attending an advanced viewing to look a bit more nerdy – though there were a few examples of that. Some of them seemed more like they just wanted to see the next movie of the franchise and picked the date out of schedule reasons, but I digress.

The good thing about watching something in the cinema is that you can see the reaction of other viewers straight away and there were a couple quite interesting ones.
Two of them were due to the mutant Quicksilver.
When they had shown how his fast movements seem to him and how he could defeat their enemies in mere seconds nearly the whole hall was laughing at the scurrility of the slow/fast motion sequence and his slight editions to the movement of certain objects and persons.

The second reaction was way before that scene when his mother announced him as “Peter”. Several murmurs rose up as those who know the franchise from outside the cinema noticed the wrongness of the name. Though I do have to admit that while I was confused at the name I simply couldn’t remember what it truly was. It is by the way “Pietro” as I now know again. I am not sure if this “mistake” will be the same in the English version of the movie, as again I’ve only seen the dubbed version. If you know more, let me know in the comments below. (Apparently as Wikipedia has been changed now, the English version is also “Peter”.)

The third reaction was towards the end of the movie at the conclusion of the time travel and the imminent annihilation of the future mutants.

Continue Reading: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Some days ago a link was spread across social networks that advertised a game called “2048: Doctor Who Edition” published on usvsth3m.com. The link was usually accompanied by a taunt “I reached the X*th Doctor! Can you beat me?” (*X being the number of a Doctor).

I believe I do not need to repeat myself about what Doctor Who is, let me just tell you this: My natural curiosity of course got the better of me and I tried it myself.

What is the games goal and how is it played?

The game gives you a four times four grid and two starting tiles with usually the lowest possible pattern.
The goal of this game – and it’s original versions, to which you can find links below the Doctor Who Edition – is to combine the tiles with similar patterns using your arrow keys to get up to the highest possible pattern.
In the DW case you combine the tiles with the pictures of each Doctor to reach the Eleventh, while in the normal 2048 you combine numbers to reach the eponymous number (don’t worry you follow the binary numbers starting with 2 and don’t go up from 1 to 2048).
But only the direct predecessor allows you to create a higher tile (Two First Doctors create a Second Doctor tile, two Second Doctors create a Third Doctor and so forth).

Are there any strategies involved?

As it is a kind of logic game there are of course many possible strategies.
I tried several things myself, like randomly moving the tiles around to make them fit, keeping everything on the left side or keeping everything on the right side.
But the one I used after repeatedly playing it for a couple of times was to...

Continue reading: 2048: Doctor Who Edition

I already had thought about writing about Norse Mythology a bit more than the few mentions I had so far. Therefore I also see this as possibility for me to start my work on it properly.

As I mentioned in my review for Thor: The Dark World was I sceptical about the Thor-film in regards to its adaptations of the myths. I already new a few things about the myths when I first heard about the film/the characters and the more I learned about both the myths and the Marvel-version, the more I was reluctant to actually try it. The way they portray characters and their relationships with each other seemed so wrong to me that I had a hard time grasping my head around it.

So with this post I want to show you some of the major differences between the adaptations of the myths in Marvels Cinematic Universe’s “Thor” (and its follow-up films) and Norse Mythology itself. Please do keep in mind that I am not an expert on this matter and most of this is recited by memory, so if you see any mistakes you are more than welcome to inform me about them.

What confused me the most when I started watching the first Thor film were the

Family relationships;

especially Loki being Thor’s brother.

Deep down in the back of my mind something practically ranted at me: “He is not the brother. He wasn’t the brother. Was he?” until I took my Laptop and looked it up.
Needles to say my nagging mind was indeed correct: According to Norse Mythology Loki is NOT the brother of Thor, but instead the blood brother (meaning no blood relationship whatsoever) of Odin, as Loki otherwise would not have been allowed to stay in Asgard due to being a giant. Though he does share some rather funny adventures with the God of Thunder (including for example cross-dressing, but covering that would stray too far away from the topic).

Another strange change are Thor and Sif, which in the original are married, while in the Marvel universe they are but friends. They fight alongside each other with Sif having a crush on him and Thor simply ignoring it and swooning over the “mortal” Jane Foster. In the comics I believe Sif even becomes a Valkyrie, which would make any proper relationship quite impossible (in the myths they are the ones picking up the fallen warriors that are granted access to Valhalla, their “heaven”).

Not mentioned at all in the films, so far, are other family members of Thor and Loki.

Continue reading: Thor: Movie vs. Myth

This time a quite on time review about Thor: The Dark World as I have just watched it in the cinema.

But before I start I’d like to say: Back in 2011 I refused to watch the Thor movie, due to my dislike for Marvels approach on the myths. I only did it because someone in The Forum claimed it would be essential for understanding The Avengers, which I’d really wanted to see. So I borrowed a copy of the DVD from Iron Eve and watched it the day before we went into the cinema.
And what can I say?
Looking at it as just a movie it was pretty entertaining.
I only had to not think about it as Marvels (crippled) version of the Norse Mythology, (otherwise I’d be pretty much like the comic artist Humon in this comic).
For the Marvel Cinematic Universe to move on they had to continue with stories about the supposedly demi-gods of Space-Asgard.
So one kind of had to at least watch it to see if there is any major link from this towards the next Avenger movie.
My reasons for actually watching it in the theater were kind of weak…

#1 Christopher Eccleston plays the villain: As I probably won’t get to see “The Day of the Doctor” I at least wanted to see “my” Doctor on the big screen.
#2 Tom Hiddleston reprises his role as Loki: Apart from the fact, that Hiddleston is a brilliant actor, the character is pretty fun, but more to that later.

So much for my motivation to see this movie…*cough*

But what’s the movie about? (If you can’t guess from the meaningful trailer)

Unsurprisingly Thor: The Dark World or Thor 2 is the continuation of the events of Thor and The Avengers. The nine realms went into chaos after the Byfrost (The Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, that is used for travelling between realms) was destroyed and Thor and his Warriors Three and the Lady Sif have to sort it out after it was repaired, while Loki is put into prison underneath the palace. All the while life on Earth continues and we meet Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis and Dr. Eric Selvig again, trying to cope with live after everything that had happened. While doing that Jane discover an anomaly and is transferred to a different realm where she accidentally re-awakens an old power source called the Aether, which then inhabits her. With it the Dark Elve Malekith awakens as well, striving to get a hold of it. Long before the current events his kind has battled Odins father Bor to gain control over it. He wanted to return the universe into the state of darkness it was before the light and the realms were created and for that he needed the Aether and a special constellation of all the realms, the so called convergence, when all realms are within a straight line, which is coincidentally close by. So all the hammer-wielding hero needs to do to save the day: Free the imprisoned brother, save the girl and stop the elve.

The watching experience

Continue Reading: Thor: The Dark World