Eppu – Page 9 – Co-Geeking

Captain America: Brave New World Teaser Trailer

August 2, 2024July 14, 2024Eppu

To drum up interest for Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel came out with a short teaser trailer:

Captain America: Brave New World Official Teaser by Marvel Entertainment on YouTube

Sam’s comment to President Ross (“I have to admit, I’m still getting used to the new look.”) reads to me as a suitably lighthearted way to acknowledge the change in actors from William Hurt to Harrison Ford. RIP, Mr. Hurt.

Obviously the story somehow weaves in shifts in global power—there are a lot of Asian faces, but not many specifics at this stage—and the Red Hulk. The latter is completely unfamiliar to me, so it should be interesting to see how Marvel is able to introduce us non-comic readers to the character. (As far as I can tell, their track record so far is hit or miss.)

I am looking forward to learning what (beside wings!) Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson brings to Captain America the character and the franchise. It’s been quite a while since we properly saw him in action. Looks very cool so far!

At this writing, BNW is expected to release on February 14, 2025.

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Light Academia: Love of Optimism, Joy, and Happy Endings

July 24, 2024November 3, 2024Eppu3 Comments

I posted about dark academia about a year ago when I learned of the phenomenon. Time for a sibling post of sorts: since then, I’ve discovered the style light academia.

According to Aesthetics Wiki, light academia favors positive themes in general, “focusing on optimism, sensitivity, joy, gratitude, friendship, motivation, and happy endings.” (Naturally still associated with the love of learning.)

Etsy HeatDigitalClub Watercolor Light Academia Clipart Bundle Sm

Apparently, the term was coined on Tumblr already in 2019. (Man, I must’ve been hanging around the wrong side of Tumblr not to have heard about it then!) Also, apparently cottagecore can overlap with light academia, as can a romanticized view of coffee shops as places for people-watching and studying.

Sounds like neutrals, earthy colors, white, gold, and pastels are especially favored. One article lists movies and shows with light academia aesthetics, including classics like Little Women, but also newer productions like Bridgerton, the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice or the 2022 Netflix adaptation of Persuasion. There are, of course, playlists and recommended activities or crafts. Some people even sell light academia mystery boxes on online platforms! I’ve found out that there are also other, established flavors I hadn’t heard of before: green academia and chaotic academia.

(Good grief, I feel officially old! At least there doesn’t seem to be any academia cores.)

While I love reading, knowledge, and learning, I confess I’m a little perplexed by this dissecting of various aspects of campus / university life into separate aesthetics. (Not to even mention the fact that Finnish universities by and large look quite different from these Anglo-American-style ones.) But I guess that’s what we humans do—we create endless groupings out of the same elements.

Image: light academia watercolor clipart by Anna Zhar at HeatDigitalClub on Etsy

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Quotes: If Wolverine Can Weep at a Movie

July 19, 2024May 26, 2024Eppu1 Comment

In honor of the movie Deadpool & Wolverine coming out next week, here’s a lovely tidbit concerning an earlier Wolverine movie. Sir Patrick Stewart apparently had the following to say on seeing Logan for the first time with an audience at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017:

“It was Hugh [Jackman] and [director] James Mangold and myself, and when it got to the last 10 minutes of the movie, it was emotional and intense, and I could feel myself getting choked up. Then I looked over at Hugh and he was wiping his eyes, and I thought if Wolverine can weep at a movie, Charles Xavier can do the same thing. Then Hugh reached over and grabbed my hand and we held hands for the rest of the movie.”

-Sir Patrick Stewart

HUGE props for Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick—it’s not always easy being a man and showing emotion in the Anglo-American world, never mind when you’re supposedly this tragic tougher-than-nails superhero. (Sorry, sorry, bad pun very much intended!)

(I do appreciate Sir Patrick so much—he’s such a humane and decent man, not to mention a superb actor!)

Lang, Brent. “Patrick Stewart on ‘Logan,’ Harvey Weinstein and Returning to ‘Star Trek’.” Variety, December 05, 2017.

Image via IMDB

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

When It Rains, It Pours!

July 16, 2024July 14, 2024Eppu

Not even a week after Erik spotted an incoming link from a fanfic published at Archive of Our Own, we started seeing increased traffic to another post on our blog, and we couldn’t figure out why. (Good grief—when it rains, it pours!)

Turns out a link to my post on the Netflix Murderbot adaptation was shared on the Murderbot subreddit.

Thanks for the link! It’s nice to be appreciated, especially since our blogging tends to follow whims which, I’m sure, appear very opaque to outsiders. 🙂 The reddit discussion had some interesting points, so it was definitely worthwhile to poke my head in.

(What baffles me, though, is how some redditors seem to have mistaken this blog for a news site. Perhaps I’m merely getting too old to think there are enough cues in the metadata and site sections to easily discount that idea…? I am, however, experienced enough to know most people won’t read our About page where it is spelled out that this here is a hobby blog, goshdarnit! *grumble grumble*)

Here there be opinions!

DIY Illusionary Labyrinth Wall from the Movie Labyrinth

July 10, 2024April 7, 2024Eppu

This is so epic and ingenious! Jen and John at Epbot built in their home a DIY version of the illusionary labyrinth wall from the movie Labyrinth for a theme party. You remember, the one with the worm? “Come inside, meet the missus!”

Here are a couple of behind-the-scenes photos:

Epbot Jen John Labyrinth Wall Behind Scenes1

Epbot Jen John Labyrinth Wall Behind Scenes2

As you can see, they built a small temporary wall to make a small hallway to step into. The opening between the rooms was partially covered with faux brick panels. Careful painting and lighting complete the illusion. (They even added the worm! Squee!)

Go ahead and visit Jen and John’s post for a video of John stepping through the opening—it’s really impressive! And other posts document the build process (one, two, three), the guest costumes, and a final reveal.

Such commitment – not to mention planning and building skills. Kudos!

In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

World’s First eVTOL Taxi Is Now on the Market

June 26, 2024April 7, 2024Eppu

According to Reuters, Chinese drone maker E Hang Holdings has started selling an eVTOL taxi on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping platform. EHang was certified for traffic by China’s aviation authority in October 2023.

The model, EH216-S, is an unmanned vehicle with 16 rotors and capacity for two passengers. Its maximum speed is 130 kilometres per hour and range 30 kilometres. It retails for about €300,000 (depending on exchange rates).

At first glance, around 300,000 euros sounds quite steep. Then again, in the U.S. market at least, pickup trucks can go for almost $100,000. That’s not even mentioning exotic cars, sports cars, and other specialized vehicles.

The bottleneck at the moment surely is the combo of safety regulations and pragmatics (the lack of infra). It seems that charging points for electric vechicles are being built so slowly, I cannot imagine what it would take to try and fit the maintenance facilities and parking spaces for flying cars, let alone flying electric cars, into our cities in a larger scale. Plus, what it would take to figure out how, in practice, they would fit into existing traffic patterns. It looks, though, that we might have to resolve those questions sooner than I thought.

Image by EHang

A Wondrous Jaina Proudmoore by Ibelinn Cosplay

June 12, 2024March 24, 2024Eppu

Ibelinn Cosplay from Norway made an absolutely astoundingly accurate cosplay outfit of Jaina Proudmoore. Take a look:

Everything looks like an exact match: the layers, the embellishments, the shading, the shapes—down to the stupid-awkward blocky shape of the World of Warcraft cloaks. It’s almost uncanny!

She shares more photos of her version of Jaina on Imgur, including the staff for the outfit, and more Ibelinn cosplays on Instagram. I highly encourage you to visit and admire!

Image by Ibelinn Cosplay via Imgur

In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Quotes: Her Backstory Unfolded Pretty Much as I Typed It

May 29, 2024May 26, 2024Eppu

In the acknowledgements for her novella Thornhedge, author T. Kingfisher talks a little about the process of writing this particular story.

“Many characters bolt off with the story, and I am left staggering behind them, frantically trying to take notes, but Toadling was very polite. Her backstory unfolded pretty much as I typed it. I learned she was raised by greenteeth as I wrote the sentence about them; I learned that she could turn into a toad when she did it on the page—all the little discoveries that you always make writing a book, of course, but happening at my usual typing speed, without sitting and staring at the wall for an hour, or nearly rupturing my wrist tendons trying to keep up.”
–T. Kingfisher in the acknowledgements for Thornhedge

I’m not a fiction writer, but I do recognize the phenomenon of suddenly uncovering details from role-playing. It’s delightful to just suddenly realize a pertinent, obscure, or particularly distinguishing detail about your character.

(This kind of serendipitous discovery also makes me think any algorithmically generated (“AI”) content won’t be replacing the most original types of human-generated content terribly soon, nor will machine translation replace human translators in a hurry. Oh, make no mistake, people will try to replace human creators with machines. But at least thus far we’re still more sophisticated when it comes to pure innovative leaps or getting smoother translations.)

There have been many times I’ve wished to be able to tap into the unconscious mulling process or consciously force a creative leap, but of course it doesn’t work that way. It makes the moments when it does happen all the more precious, doesn’t it? 🙂

Kingfisher, T. Thornhedge. London: Titan Books, 2023, p. 122.

Image by Eppu Jensen

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

Second Trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte

May 28, 2024May 26, 2024Eppu2 Comments

The second trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte is out, and the premier is only a week away. Let’s have a look at the trailer:

The Acolyte | Official Trailer | Disney+ by Star Wars on YouTube

“I sense this is only a small part of a larger plan. Some sort of shift to tip the scales.” Now, that sounds interesting—is it a nod to some sort of a loooong-time change in the force whose end we see acted out in the three movie trilogies? I have no idea.

Perhaps more interesting to me is the whodunnit portion of the story, however. I wish a little more about that was included in the trailers.

There’s also a behind-the-scenes clip:

The Acolyte | Creating the Acolyte | Streaming June 4 on Disney+ by Star Wars on YouTube

Sadly, it’s quite short. I’d be happy to have a much longer piece to whet my appetite.

Joonas Suotamo is still listed at IMDB for SW:TA, but unfortunately only for two episodes. Maybe that’s why I haven’t spotted him in either trailer. Looking forward to seeing more of him.

The two-episode opener for SW:TA premiers on June 4, 2024.

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