Tag: sgsun6

Seriously Geeky Sundays are Back!

Posted on by in Geeky Sunday
Featured Image - Comic Books

Hello everyone! I am still alive. My brain just happened to take a trip across the multiverse of writer’s and artist’s block. It’s been years since I’ve had it this bad, and let me just say that I did not miss it. At all. I’m fighting it and fighting hard! 

Onto today’s Seriously Geeky Sundays topic: comic books: 

I was an avid fan of all things manga, so most of my answers are going to be about manga or graphic novels rather than your traditional comic book series. 

2nd – Comic Books

Normally the 1st of May is Free Comic Book Day, however, due to the pandemic, the organisers have chosen to move it to August with the hope of being able to celebrate it when stores are open again. I considered changing this week’s theme and then chose not to; it might not be Free Comic Book Day but we can still celebrate our love of comics 

Let’s start at the beginning; what was your first comic book?

Sailor Moon – I can’t remember the exact one, but when I was a junior in high school, one of my friends would bring her backpack full of manga and let us borrow them. I remember many a time slipping one inside a textbook during a particularly boring class and reading it. 

The first manga that I actually owned was also Sailor Moon related. Again, I can’t remember which one (it was so long ago). I remember buying every graphic novel I could. I sketched so many sailor concepts. So.Many.Of.Them.

Sailor Moon
Which comic did you read recently?

George Takei’s  They Called us Enemy

Which comic series would you recommend to someone just starting to read comics?

George Takei’s  They Called us Enemy because it has historical significance. It’s written and illustrated in a gripping way that is easy to follow. (I suggest this graphic novel to everyone. It is a must read about a not so great part of history). It’s a good graphic novel for someone just starting out. There aren’t a million characters or complicated quests (those are best saved for later).

What comic series do you have on your TBR (to be read) list?

I’ve been out of the comic book world for so long that I don’t know anymore. I enjoy a good manga or graphic novel, but I hate the ones that have a million issues and never end, which is the main reason why I haven’t kept up with them. I like stories you can start and finish without needing to read a 50 volume precursor.

With that being said, I’d like to read The Boys. Everyone who follows me knows how much I love Amazon’s adaptation of it. Another one I’d like to check out is Attack on Titan. I saw the first season of the anime on Netflix and was obsessed with it for a while (I have the  jacket and cape, just to give an example).

Photo courtesy of Prime Video
What are some of your favourite comic book series/titles?

My favorites tend to be stand alone comics or graphic novels (or ones with no more than 5 in a series for the reasons I mentioned in the last question). 

Babylon 5 – The Psi Corps and You
Things to Come –  written by Walter Koenig

Bablyon 5 - The Psi Corps And You!
I love this cheesy Psi Corps propaganda, okay! 😉
Who are your favourite comic book artists?

Naoko Takeuchi – creator of Sailor Moon
Hidekaz Himaruya – creator of Hetalia: Axis Powers (I love his style of eyes!)
Yuu Watase –  creator of Fushigi Yûgi. If you want to see beautiful art, check her stuff out! 

Fushigi Yuugi
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

A Fun Filled Year of Blogging

Posted on by in Geeky Sunday

Today marks one year since Heather launched Seriously Geeky Sundays. Has it been a year already? It feels like it was yesterday that I stumbled upon Pinterest in a desperate search for blog prompts that were actually enjoyable for me.

Before I start rambling and take the thunder away from today’s questions, I’ll just dive right in.

But first, wishing everyone a happy Easter! Maybe one day soon things will start getting back to normal. 

4th April – Happy First Birthday SGS!

One year ago Seriously Geeky Sundays was launched and this week we’re celebrating our first birthday by looking back over the last year of prompts.

What was your favourite theme?

Conventions – It was so much fun to sit down and write about my unique perspective on working at conferences. I enjoyed reading everyone’s perspectives as attendees! 

Cosplay – Talking about one of my favorite pastimes was a blast (albeit, I’ve been lazy with cosplaying incognito over the past year for obvious reasons), and again, it was so much fun reading everyone’s posts and looking at their cosplay pictures. 

What theme did you like the least?

There aren’t any I disliked. Heather put a lot of thought and energy into creating six exciting prompts each week–can we give her a giant THANK YOU for doing this? I know how hard it is to come up with things to write about, and she’s been doing it every single week for the past year! 

Thank you, Heather, for bringing strangers together through fandoms and blogs. It has helped me get through 2020. 

Thank you for 52 weeks of prompts, Heather!
What question made you think the most?

Many of them forced me to consider things I haven’t thought about, and for that I am glad. It is good to experience something different or something that puts you out of your comfort zone every so often. I’ve enjoyed answering questions I wouldn’t normally stumble upon.

After skimming through past SGS posts, I decided on What is your favourite wedding scene? from What’s Your Cup of Coffee? for two reasons: 1. I don’t particularly like the romance genre, so it was extra challenging to come up with an answer about scenes I tend to skip (ha ha!). 2. I ended up writing a piece of fan-fiction that enabled me to come up with a wedding scene I actually liked. 

Ed and Jack
Ed and Jack <3
Which theme reminded you of something you’d forgotten?

Welcome to Grasshopper’s Realm – The World Wide Web of Us. I managed to find one of my ancient angelfire sites from the early 2000s and take a dive down memory falls. I spent a good amount of time sifting through long forgotten drawings and journal entries from yesteryear. 

Banner depicting a website from the early 1990s
1996 here I come!
What do you enjoy most about Seriously Geeky Sundays?

I’m so glad I found it last year. As Winst0lf said in his post, the pandemic put a huge damper on inspiration, and I could barely get a sentence out, let alone a full blog post. I couldn’t believe my luck after scrolling through endless cycles of the same Live Laugh Love journal prompts on pinterest and spotting Heather’s SGS.

SGS forces me to keep my creative mind flowing because the prompts are things I’m interested in and aren’t your run of the mill, generic questions. I’ve enjoyed meeting new people through it and cannot wait to see what the second year of SGS brings.

What themes or subjects would you like to see come up this year?
  • Conventions Part II – Another round of questions based on conventions
  •  Geeking by in a COVID-19 World – How has everyone coped during the insanity that was 2020? What geeky things got you through it all?
  • ,Guest Prompts – A series of prompts created by guests (sort of like Around the World in 8 Sundays, but guests). 
  • What geeky things will you do once things get back to normal? 
  • Cosplay Part II – Another round of cosplay questions
  •  What-if scenarios involving characters and fandoms

Sealed and buried for all time his Stargate…

Posted on by in Geeky Sunday

We’re back with another fun filled Sunday Monday! Heather from geeking-by.net is running a poll on Seriously Geeky Sundays right now. Check it out!

Around the world in 8 Sundays, Africa

28th March – Around the World in 8 Sundays [Africa]

It’s the final Around the Sundays theme and our Seriously Geeky Sundays ship has reached its final destination; Africa!

What is your favourite fandom set in Africa?

Marvel’s Black Panther (Wakanda forever!) and Stargate (1994 film). I talk about Stargate in another question, so I’ll focus on Black Panther. I loved everything about it right down to the costumes and sets. It captivated me because it was so imaginative and had a cast of well written (and acted!) characters. And can we give the wintery Jabari tribe some love? Goodness, as I’m searching for clips, I’m remembering every single thing I absolutely adore about the movie!

Who are your favourite fictional African characters?

T’Challa – He first appeared in Captain America: Civil War, and he was immediately one of my favorite MCU characters ever to appear on screen. MCU hero rankings:

  1. Captain America
  2. T’Challa
  3. The Scarlet Witch
Africa is a popular setting for video games; have you played any of them?

It’s been forever and a day since I’ve had time to indulge in a good game. I had to take a detour around memory lane for this one, and sadly, I’m coming up short! Maybe this is a sign to get back into gaming because the only games I can think of are old SNES games based off of Stargate and The Lion King (I LOVED those games, by the way!) 

We’ve been exploring fictional countries with this series and there are more fictional countries attributed to Africa than any other continent. What are your thoughts on this?

I don’t have any thoughts on it because I don’t think I’ve read many books with fictional African nations. I wish Wakanda was real, does that count? 😉 

Africa is home to Egypt and ancient Egypt has been given the pop-culture treatment many times. Which has been your favourite?
Stargate 1994

Ancient Egypt, the obsession of my teenage years! Oh where, oh where, do I even begin? If something even remotely mentioned ancient Egypt, I raced to consume it! Out of all my favorite things featuring ancient Egypt, none captured my imagination like Stargate (1994 film)

Stargate, 1994 Ra's first appearence

To say that I was obsessed with this movie would be the understatement of last century. I drew what seemed like a million pieces of fanart for it, made up stories about it with my childhood best friend, and pretended I was an Egyptian goddess when I felt like it. There is much more to this list, but for brevity’s sake, I’m ending it there. Ya’ll have no idea how obsessed with this movie I was. High Castle is the closest thing to my teenage years of Stargate love (just to give you a glimpse into what levels of obsession we’re talking about here!). This is barely the tip of the iceberg, ha ha!

Kurt Russell Stargate
Holy smokes, I cannot believe I found the image I had in my Kurt Russell binder!

I think I still have my Kurt Russell binder with my teenage self’s magnum opus of Stargate fan fiction somewhere.

And for some fun trivia, did you know there was a book series based off of the movie? I read all of them (there is no way my younger self was NOT going to).

  • Stargate: Rebellion (October 1995)
  • Stargate: Retaliation (September 1996)
  • Stargate: Retribution (October 1997)
  • Stargate: Reconnaissance (May 1998)
  • Stargate: Resistance (October 1999)

Another fun fact! The original movie was supposed to be the first in a trilogy. It’s been a project that has been off and on over the years (I’ve longed given up hope for it). 

Stargate, 1994 Horace guards

Welcome to Grasshopper’s Realm

Posted on by in About Queen Grasshopper, Geeky Sunday

To say that I was thrilled when I saw this week’s Seriously Geeky Sundays topic is a huge understatement. I am excited to go down memory lane with this one–even if it reveals just how old I truly am. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that I was hanging out in chat rooms discussing the Backstreet Boys or logging into Angelfire to update my website.

Banner depicting a website from the early 1990s
1996 here I come!

14th March – The World Wide Web of Us

Way back in 1989 on March 12th Sir Timothy Berners-Lee invented the internet. We all started our journey on the World Wide Web at different times, and while we’ve each had unique experiences we’ve all ended up in the same place; right here reading these prompts! Join in celebrating the anniversary of the internet by sharing your answers this week 

When did you first start using the internet?

Personal computers were still evolving and were just becoming widely available to the general public when I was a teenager. Back then households had one computer. Yes, just one.

We got Internet at home when I was a Junior in high school, but I didn’t use it regularly until we moved and I started going to a different school. I remember feeling lost as I sat down in front of a computer in Computer Lab and asking the girl next to me how she found all those pictures of the backstreet boys on hers. By the end of that period, I was an expert in all things Yahoo search and JPEGs. 

Backstreet Boys
The Backstreet Boys!
What nostalgic things do you remember from your early days of the internet? (Example)

We were all in the same boat of discovering this new and unexplored technology. We collectively felt a mixture of awe, a deep longing for knowledge, endless quests to gather as much information as you could on your favorite topic, and wondering where that new friend you made in the chat room was from. 

If you found an awesome website, you wrote down the url, brought it to class, and shared it with your friends or you added it to your favorite links on your website (everyone had a links page back then).

With that being said, I have to go with Yahoo, Angelfire, Geocities, and chat rooms. I liked finding themed rooms to talk about all the teeny-bopper stuff I was into back then.

A small snippet of my old Angelfire site’s links page.
How long have you been blogging?

Off and on since I created my first web page, Mishkin’s World. It was your standard 90s mess of midi players, animated gifs, repeating backgrounds, and text (I remember a lot of people would turn their sites into journals and diaries before the term blogging became popular). Sadly, I could not find Mishkin’s World on Wayback Machine. I did, however, find the second site I made, Mishi’s Sanitarium.

Before your eyes gaze upon the horror that are these screencaps, I must fully warn you of the cringe; the absolute and utter chaos coupled with bad fanart. Click to view full size. And yes, I plan to redraw “Wolf Master” and the emo crying girl.

Did you ever belong to any online fan clubs or message boards?

You bet! If it had to do with the Backstreet Boys or Sailor Moon, I was there. I frequented Save Our Sailors all the time (SOS was a Sailor Moon fansite dedicated to not canceling the show and airing all of the seasons in the US).

Sailor Moon
What are your favourite sites on the internet?

Oh how times have changed. If you had asked me in 1999, I’d have listed specific urls, but now? I mostly just use social media like Facebook and Twitter. I don’t have a favorite site anymore, but if I had to pick one, I’ll go with YouTube. I get so much use out of that site. There are so many helpful tutorials, documentaries, time killers (ha ha), and great stuff to play in the background when I draw on there.

Do you have any geeky online stores to share with us?

Oh goodness, yes! A group of us back in high school thought we were the most badass hackers on the planet because we could get into the library computers and change the backgrounds. I mean, we all had seen Hackers, and suddenly Hackerman!

Me in all my strange 2003 glory! Behind me is my first PC. It served me well.

Geeky Sunday: International Women’s Day

Posted on by in Geeky Sunday

Hello, Everyone! I am back with another fun filled Seriously Geeky Sundays brought to you by Heather! I’ve been busy these past two weeks with a virtual conference, so I hope today’s post makes up for it.

Women's Day

7th March – Maiden, Mother, Crone

March 8th is International Women’s Day (IDW), a worldwide celebration of women, and later this month it is also Mother’s Day in the UK. What better time to think about the leading ladies of fandom?

Who is your favourite leading lady?

I couldn’t possibly choose just one! There are so many well written women that I’ve admired over the years, so I included a few honorable mentions at the bottom of this question.

Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise – the first Alien movie was ahead of its time and still holds up even to this day. She is such an iconic character, and I’ll always rank her among my favorite female leads.

Ellen Ripley - Alien
Ellen Ripley – Alien

Honorable Mentions

  • Starlight – The Boys
  • Queen Maeve – The Boys
  • Kimiko – The Boys
  • Princes Leia – Star Wars
  • Delenn of Minbar (Babylon 5)
Which kickass female fighter do you admire?

My favorite female fighter will always be Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games trilogy. She’s realistic with her fears, failures, and emotions, yet she has the intellect and skill to survive and bring hope to those around her.

Katniss Everdeen - Hunger Games
Katniss Everdeen – Hunger Games

Honorable Mentions

  • Princes Leia – Star Wars
  • The awesome ladies on The Boys! 
  • Juliana Crain – High Castle
Who is the most badass female villain in your opinion?
Queen Daenerys I Targaryen
Queen Daenerys I Targaryen

Fire breathing dragons. Need I say more? I wish the final season had the full 10 episodes because Daenerys became one of my all time favorite villains in the span of a single season. She always had it in her, and I wish we had gotten to see more of it in Westeros.

Do you have a favourite fictional mother or grandmother?

You know I’m going to pick Helen Smith from High Castle, right? Because I pick Helen Smith from High Castle. She protected her children at all costs, and when she failed to protect her son, she went through a dark, emotional spiral, but she came out of it with the realization that she had been wrong and that she was going to save her daughters and take down a certain ideology no matter the cost.

Helen Smith - Season 3
Helen Smith – Season 3
IDW is about celebrating women’s equality and inclusivity in all fields; what characters have championed this cause?

If something is obviously preaching at me, I tend to not take interest in it. I want to be immersed in a book, show, or movie, so much so, that I lose track of time and forget my woes. Examples of inclusivity done right include The OA, The Expanse, and MCU’s The Black Panther film

The OA
The OA
Which women in pop culture inspire you?
  • Wonder woman (she was an icon of my childhood!)
  • Galadriel – Lord of the Rings/The Hobbet
  • The Romulan Commander from Star Trek: TOS
  • Major Kira – Star Trek: DS9
  • Catwoman (kid me loved cats and wanted to be badass, okay!)