Gosh, I never did talk here about the Star Wars cinematic universe series Andorbeyond posting the trailers back in 2022. Long story short: we watched it, loved it, and have seen it more than once. Good quality all round; in fact, it’s my absolute favorite in the Star Wars tv-verse. The only question was how long will it take to make more…!
Finally, finally, there are trailers and a release date for Andor season 2. Here’s the first:
The trailer music is obviously picked for the lyrics, but it’s an odd choice in terms of mood. But there’s dancing, joyous dancing by the look of it, and Cassian cleans up nice. Clearly a lot of rebellious things also happen. Looks, props, and costumes are good, too, from what there is to see. Some new, atypical environments like the grain field grabbed my interest. It’s good to see so many returning faces among the cast.
And the second trailer:
Andor | Official Trailer | Final Season Streaming April 22 on Disney+ by Star Wars on YouTube
The city in a valley with concentric, star-shaped walls is fascinating; I’d like to see more of that. It has the feel of a medieval castle city, except HUGE. Mon Mothma’s growing terror is chilling to watch; Genevieve O’Reilly is one of my favorites in the series, and she continues to do an amazing job.
A pretty tantalizing behind-the-scenes video has also been released:
Ok, wow. I knew from elsewhere that season 2 will cover multiple years, but somehow I’d missed that the events here, over four years, take us into Rogue One. Sounds too fast, almost, but we’ll see how skillfully they’ll create the overall arc.
Season 2 of Andor is set to stream on April 22, 2025, with a three-parter of a premiere. This time it seems the episodes are grouped and released in threes, with the final bunch released on May 13, 2025. We’ll definitely have to spring for another few months’ worth of subscription.
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One of the most prominent topics currently is artificial intelligence. Of course everyone knows—or should know—it’s not real intelligence as we generally understand it. The term seems to have some real staying power, though.
Regardless of what one wants to call the current iterations, machine learning or algorithm-based systems appear to be here to stay. People are starting to figure out what they could be used for in everyday life, not just at the office or lab.
One popular sentiment among creatives goes along the lines of: I want AI to do the dishes for me so I can create, I don’t want AI to create for me so I can do the dishes. I hear you, fellow creatives, and agree! This post talks about what I’d want those systems to do for me. (Eventually. We still must solve several issues, e.g. how to program them without egregious copyright breaches, to mention just one.)
(Please also note: I do realize that computing takes a lot of energy and materials, and that energy production and extraction of minerals aren’t unproblematic processes. Also, the ethics of the current generative models need serious attention; I’m still fuming over Meta’s massive book pirating as revealed by The Atlantic. The point of my post is not to dwell on the problems, however. This is basically just a random, long-winded wish list.)
TL;DR: My preferences boil to complex tasks, specificity instead of generic sludge, and effective analysis of massive amounts of data.
Below is a non-comprehensive list of some specific tasks I want done better, whether by “AI” or not, in no particular order.
For a while, there have been rumblings that World of Warcraft characters will get a new home base of sorts, perhaps a little like garrisons in the Warlords of Draenor expansion. This new system has been dubbed housing.
In a news article “A First Look at Housing” from February 2025, Blizzard describes some of their design priorities: customization (adjusting the widest possible range of features in your house), ability to socialize (unlike garrisons, player housing is supposed to encourage interacting), and longevity (like pet battling or transmog, it is here to stay).
In addition, it’s designed to scale with the player’s interest, namely spending as little or as much time as you want on housing. However, they didn’t yet say whether it’s possible to skip entirely. If, as it’s likely, there will be introductory quests to unlock housing, it should be a simple matter to just not do anything house-related.
I mean, I am one of those geeks who will want to dive in right away and fine-tune things to my heart’s content. But not everyone cares about the same kinds of gaming. (I’m still miffed at Blizzard trying to force pvp on all players. Nope, that won’t happen; I refuse, and if it means I won’t see some of the story or get certain rewards, then I won’t. Anyway.)
To begin with, Alliance will apparently have one housing zone (inspired mainly by Elwynn Forest, with some Westfall and Duskwood sprinkled in) and Horde another one (inspired by Durotar, its coastline, and Azshara), with “more possible places to live in the future”.
It’s still unclear how the system will work exactly. For example, how players will access their zones and the houses within has not yet been revealed. What we do know is that “[y]our houses are also shared amongst your Warband with your different characters being able to come and go” regardless of faction, and that “[h]ousing rewards are also shared across your Warband”. But does that mean we can have, say, multiple Horde houses and no Alliance ones at all? They do use a plural in your houses. Or are players limited at launch to one on the Horde and another on the Alliance side?
It seems there are also two decoration themes, one dubbed folk (which looks a little more Alliance-flavored) and the other rugged (more Horde style). Whether we’ll be able to mix and match items between the themes is still unclear, though. It’s reportedly been confirmed that players will be allowed to mix and match aesthetics.
The ability to visit your friends’ or guildmates’ houses sounds fabulous. But in addition to housing zones, there are also neighborhoods, which are instanced and can be either public or private, with room for 50 houses. That raises more questions—what about houses within a public neighborhood? (Or private, for that matter.) Is just anyone able to walk right in, or will there be some limits at the plot boundary (like in a real-life town)? Will we be able to name our private neighborhoods? Or houses? What will happen to cities—will everyone just decamp to housing zones when not conducting, say, auction house business, visiting a barbershop, or training? Can we pull out mounts in housing zones? Will there even be a reason to visit an auction house in a city, if your mount can provide for you?
Currently decoration edits are divided into two modes, basic and advanced. While the basic mode allows you to quickly place items in a, well, basic order, the advanced mode barely restricts you: the post “A Look at Housing Interior Design” from March 2025 says that “[i]nternally using this, [Blizzard] employees have taken bushes and made them into garland [sic] for their fireplaces, constructed a boat’s prow from a bed, or made paint buckets into small spice racks for their kitchens.”
There’s a short compilation video of some work-in-progress customization options:
Looks absolutely fantastic! Even if all of the assets might not work exactly like this in the final version, it looks like there will, indeed, be a massive amount of details you can tweak, from floorplan to moving windows to placing objects on top of others to adjusting some of the colors, and more.
Another fantastic (literally!) feature is that the house interiors will not be limited by the exterior footprint. (Think of the mage tower in Stormwind.) Apparently the inside can also follow a different style than the outside, but more than that we do not yet know.
I find this concept of player housing very exciting! I’m tracking the release info, so I’ll know when to block time off in my calendar and what real-life events I might have to work around. At the moment there’s only speculation, though. The most specific I’ve seen so far is prior to the next expansion (WoW: Midnight) maybe around mid-December, while “winter 2025” is confirmed but still aggravatingly unspecific.
It’s currently also unclear whether players will be required to purchase Midnight in order to access housing.
Ohwell. As long as it’s actually a good system, I can wait. But it would be a treat to get to play in new housing over the Christmas break, wouldn’t it?
Artist Suzie Grieve harvests materials from the local woodlands and fields in the Lake District, U.K., with a focus on the weeds and invasive species, and weaves baskets out of the fibers. And they are very neat and beautiful:
The twist? Some of her baskets are not just neat and beautiful, and they’re not just small, they’re tiny. T I N Y!
Even if these baskets were of a more typical size, they would be impressive: the careful selection of materials to create stripes from naturally different colors, the planning and placement of patterns to create a pleasing whole, and the high quality of the work.
Then you shrink everything down to mere millimeters and centimeters, and the challenge grows larger. MUCH larger! I’ve done enough small-scale sewing to comprehend some of the challenges involved when scaling down the size of a project.
This is seriously impressive work requiring skill, imagination, and dedication. Kudos!
If I ever heard of a Red Sonja reboot project, I must’ve immediately forgotten it, for the fate of movie projects is unknowable and often fickle, and that is multiplied for genre projects starring women.
Now, though, it sounds like Millennium Media’s Red Sonja is due for release later this year in the UK and Ireland. This version is directed by M.J. Bassett and written by Tasha Huo and Roy Thomas on the basis of Robert E. Howard’s original comic book characters. Matilda Lutz plays Sonja.
I hazily remember the previous adaptation from 1985 starring Brigitte Nielsen. ‘Twas the time when there were so few SFFnal movies and tv series in the boonies where I grew up that you pretty much had to see everything coming your way if you wanted to see anything. If I recall, it was like the 80s Conan adaptations—Conan the Barbarian in 1982 and Conan the Destroyer in 1984—which is to say pretty campy, but attempting very, very, very earnestly to bring epic fantasy to screen.
Bassett’s version is filmed in Bulgaria and Greece, and reportedly will have a different tone from male-gaze versions of the character. While both of these details sound promising, and while I would love to see more genre projects led and directed by women, somehow I seem to doubt the movie will be released on the big screen here in Finland. We’ll see.
The first two installments of the 10-episode series will be streamed on Friday, May 16. This double feature will be followed by new episodes every Friday through July 11, 2025.
They also released the first two photos of actor and executive producer Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot, one with helmet on and the other with helmet off.
There really isn’t much detail in these photos; I wish there was a little more. Stylistically they’re not too far off of what I imagined on the basis of the books, except that Murderbot’s armor looks too flimsy. (Maybe they’ve written in a reason for that?)
This February’s press release also describes the series as a comedic thriller, which is interesting in itself. Yes, there are comedic elements, and yes, there is suspense and combat—in fact, I remember being flabbergasted when Murderbot exploded into action literally on page two of All Systems Red. I mean, it wasn’t a surprise that some fighting would be involved, but that quickly? It was an unusual attention-grabbing move to barely introduce your main character, never mind the world, before sweeping your readers into a fray with large hostile life forms with big teeth. Not to mention the trouble at the DeltFall survey site and the threat of EvilSurvey that steadily mounts through the book. Makes me wonder exactly which aspect, the comedy or the thrill, has Apple TV decided to focus on, or if both feature equally, whether they’ll be able to pull off a nice balance.
The IMDB entry for Murderbot reveals another two tiny tidbits: there will be a spaceship named Twodor and a named side character Venenek, neither of which appear in Martha Wells’s original writings. I’m sure IMDB will fill in more info as the release draws nearer.
One thing is sure: this spring will be a great time to re-read Murderbot. Not that there’s ever a bad time. 🙂
Today marks three years since the beginning of Russia’s needless and embarrassing three-day special operation war in Ukraine. I very fervently wish I had been wrong about the length of the conflict.
As a Finn, it’s a little bewildering to think that technically our neighboring country is at war, for the fighting is so distant, literally a thousand kilometers away. Or was initially; as the years have gone by, action has been inching closer.
For one, Ukraine has started striking at targets within Russia. The closest target facility to us (so far, I think) is in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland (its seaport handling oil and gas has seen more than one drone hit). That’s some 200 km / 130 miles as the bird flies from Helsinki—not that far away, really.
From my point of view, the conflict in Ukraine feels like a proxy war. Their ability to mount an effective defense keeps the rest of us on the perimeter of Russia’s ambitions safe—or if not safe, exactly, at least safer and at least for now. As awful as it is, I kinda want the war to go on longer, because it engages Russia’s forces and focus in one place; when it ends, they will again have the resources to plan “special operations” elsewhere. Continuing conflict gives us time to update our defenses and channel more help to Ukraine.
But at the same time, I definitely do not want the war to continue. It’s dreadful, and it needs to end, with Ukraine’s independence intact. Please and thank you.
My favorite of Alice’s four collages is the first. It shows her versions of the Shire, Gandalf, and Erebor:
The Lonely Mountain Dwarf ensemble is fantastic: the little touches of fur in her boots and the edges of the vest, the embroidery on the tunic, the warm-looking leggings, the knit armwarmers and chunky cardigan, they all contribute. Add to those the puffy shorts (or skirt?) plus the fairly simple leather accessories with brass-colored metal accents and visible, chunky topstitching. Very nice!
The third mashup is also very neat, with the three principal human cultures of the Lord of the Rings—the rangers, Rohan, and Gondor:
Gondor is perfect, so austere and bleak. Her version of the rangers I find too dark for my liking—not a fan of black, even if it has its uses—but the profile I agree with.
Alice reminds the readers that her outfits aren’t cosplays, but her styling the contents of her wardrobe. And why not, if you can do it this well! While at times I don’t have exactly the same readings of the various Middle Earth cultures as she does, I do appreciate the combinations of elements from our mundane world and the suggestions she’s able to create through the careful selection of details. Makes me want to look at my closet with a new eye. 🙂
In the past few weeks, Marvel has been actively marketing Captain America: Brave New World—understandably, as the movie opens next week. (Already!) I thought these two featurettes below were worth linking to. (Note that a spoiler warning is in effect!)
We get a few more glimpses of President Ross’s Red Hulk, more walk talk—in fact, SO much war talk—and perhaps a few second’s worth more of Sam Wilson.
More tantalizingly, however, a fleeting hint that appears at the very end of the older of these clips (the one saying Get Tickets Now—cue to the 1:20 mark) seems to be saying that Joaquin Torres from the MCU series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (played by Danny Ramirez) will get his own wingsuit. And, indeed, the IMDB cast listing confirms it: he’ll become the next Falcon. That should be interesting, since we’ve only ever seen Sam’s take on how to make use of the wings.
BNW releases on February 14, 2025 in the U.S.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Co-Geeking 
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