#... searches that got me on a watchlist number ?

[delicatebluebirdruins]

Lockets and Rings

disclaimer this will be a ramble... no one should be surprised

so I just started rereading the Screaming Staircase and Lucy just picked up the locket of Annabel Ward (well obviously i am also finished at the time of posting) and I was thinking about how it is in the show and I won't presume to know why they changed it (maybe because it would be easier for Lucy to remove and how easy it was to put it front and center on Annie's finger and frames her face and i just think its a haunting image) but both serve to show the relationship between her and Fairfax in different lights (heck in show verse he could have given her a locket as well)

Lockets are often ways to remember something or someone. They contain pictures most of the time and sometimes locks of hair or maybe little love letters.

So often it is a connection to the giver a way of keeping them close. It contains a image or a piece of them.

Onto how it is in the book.

page 57 of my copy "once, that girl's living hands fixed it around her neck, think to make herself look lovelier for the day"

180 "maybe I just wanted to save something of her, so she wouldn't be completely lost" a thing that came through in the show (also glad the show added Lucy acting "odd" when connected to it

186 noticing the seam without noticing the seam

Later on I mention the presentation of the memories attached to this precious things in the show but here is the book 191-192 "first a man and woman talking; the woman's high-pitched laughter, the man's voice joining her as one. Then a sensation of fierce joy, of passion shared; I felt the elation of the girl, her feverish delight. A great bulb of happiness spread out to fill my world... The laughter changed, became hysterical in tone. The man's voice grew harsher, the sound twisted. I felt a cold, sharp jolt of fear... And then at once the joy was back and all was well, well, well... Until the next reversal, until contentment curdled, and the voices rose once more in anger, and I was sick with jealousy and rage... the mood-swings flashing past... And all at once came sudden silence, and a cold voice talking in my ear, and a final blaze of fury that ascended to a desperate shriek of pain"

emphasis mine the cycical nature the jealousy and rage of both parties "I was sick with jealousy and rage" and the final moment of anger

Inscriptions on the locket: same quote from Hamlet and 196 latin "my torment, my bliss" which is again very telling on how jealous and insecure Fairfax was.

page 218 "The necklace doesn't really add anything. Even without it Blake is clearly guilty" I have to add this line because it made my eye twitch like this is a reread and I know Lockwood follows up on it and it's incriminating evidence but still I had to share it. Inscriptions are important be it as simple as initials, words or what Fairfax did with the locket which is add a reference to a specific passage from "their" favourite play and "my torment, my bliss" and there is a record of it rings inscriptions depend on the size of the band and those can be slender so it would be very small writing (and we who have bad eyesight suffer with it example i have looked over the wedding rings in my grans jewellry box many times and today i found that does have an inscription of her name and my grandads it was in a bag that I halfheartedly labelled "not inscribed") but still receipts exist

244 Both show and book have an intruder working on behalf of Fairfax try to take the precious item back... inadvertantly shoving the trio onto the right path. That the importance of it is more than meets the eye.

250 I am very glad the show added more emphasis on Annie playing Ophelia in Hamlet as it joins Fairfax, Blake and her in this unwilling jealous love triangle (assuming Blake felt anything for her other than fondness of a coworker in the show we know she dated him for little bit) If we had more time maybe we'd have more than one mention of Fairfax and showbuisness.

and then we get a big gap and resume with

407 Fairfax performing under his middle name and the history of his acting stint being something he remained proud of and probably something he always wanted to do but expectations of his life kept him from his real true love his great pride but still love of money is greater than anything else.

409 "passion is what Annie and I shared" passion goes both ways it's a very strong emotion and we see it in the glimpse we got of their relationship

410 "Annie was not of the correct social standing, you see her father was a tailor, or something of that kind- and my parents would have cut off my inheritance if they'd known about her. Well, finally Annie demanded we go public. I refused, of course - the idea was impossible-so she left me... For a time she went around with Hugo Blake: a fop, a worthless dandy. He was no good and she knew it. Before long she was back with me." Everything Fairfax did was to keep the relationship secret and keep Annie with him it was Hugo Blake dropping her off at the door that was the ignition for his jealous rage ending with Annie's death. Fairfax also visited her in secret and waited for her inside. I don't think I have to say how terrifying it must have been to come home and the moment you're inside you're being confronted by an angry jealous man'

412 admitting he forgot the Locket for weeks vs "I often regret leaving it behind when I bricked her into that chimney. I knew it was monstrous. But I couldn't throw my whole life away for one mistake" which is actually not completely discrediting the idea that in his panic and guilt it slipped his mind to take it with him (but still him keeping it with him somebody could find and ask about it)

428 Annie hopefully moving on and the locket being destroyed in the funaces

Now lets talk about rings

When rings come into play in romantic relationships people tend to lose their minds a little. What with the empahsis on extravagant engagement rings and the simpler wedding bands.

Symbolically as a whole rings are unending circles a sign of an unending bond, a show of committment. No matter the relationship type.

so promise rings: it's a commitment ring without being a engagment ring or wedding ring "It's given by one partner as a token of their fidelity, and in turn worn by the other to show that the commitment is mutual." and can be used to signify a future engagement

Engagement and wedding rings can become heirlooms passed down through the years, and it's obvious what they mean but its the greater/ greatest emotional show of romantic commitment.

And I think having it be a ring in the show is incredibly cruel of Fairfax. We don't know what the interaction was like when she got given the ring and it's inscription but just think about the hopes she had for their relationship, for their future. All brought up because of a ring and a significant inscription for her "never doubt i love" because of what she did as an actor and the quote itself.

The snippets of conversation when Lucy channels Annabel. Fairfax seemingly making a mountain out of a mole hill and working himself into a rage. Talking about Hugo Blake dropping her off "did you tell him where to go?" and Annie not knowing what the problem was and just being happy that she gets to spend to time with the man she loved. "She's afraid *pants* It's alright he loves me you love me don't you." As well a the confusion and the desperation of "you gave me the ring. he'd never hurt me, never... stop, stop look at me you're hurting me stop please I can't bloody breathe" all draws out the pain Annie is feeling.

modes of death and other things

in the book Annie's death was seemingly accidental a hand raised in anger and a broken neck it was the cover up that made it murder. And I don't why I started thinking about this but lets diverge to another show another story. The Haunting of Hill House adapted by Mike Flanagan and Nell Crane's passing in the show. Her mother's locket (holding the images of her and Luke) turning into a noose. And with a hanging there is two ways to die a broken neck and suffocation. Suffocation is a hard way to go intimate no matter where you are, you are sharing the last breath of another person. It also a little premeditated? nobody gets accidently strangled right

[marveltrumpshate]

★ AUCTION WEEK INFO ★

We’re nearing the finish line! It's amazing that so many bidders are involved in our auction—we’ve surpassed an astounding number of bids, and we're looking forward to even more as things heat up in the final hours. We’re very grateful to you all, and we love that you’re so passionate about spreading the word and raising money for the wonderful charities on our list.

If you had to bow out from your bidding war, consider lending some change to a pod bid (aka group bid). Some pod bids may need an extra boost to win their auctions, and you can still help out even if you are only able or want to contribute $5! You can check the list of existing pod bids here. Feel free to start a pod bid on your own or in the #pod-bid-chat channel on our Discord. It's not too late to make one! If you make or have a pod bid that isn't on our pod bid list, let us know so we can update it.

Another option is to look at our golden needle tag, which includes auctions that haven’t been bid on yet. We know that some people don’t have much money to spare but still want to bid, and this is a great way to find auctions that may be affordable for you. You can also use our "current bid: low to high" sorting feature on our Auction Listings page (dropdown menu right under the "Auction Listings" heading) to see auctions that are within your budget.

If you want to narrow down your golden needle search to your favorite characters and ships, you can do so by doing a multiple keyword search (e.g., Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson "golden needle" for Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson golden needles. Note: some of the golden needles for certain characters/ships aren't showing up for some reason, so we recommend going through the few golden needles we have left to double check). Please refer to this page to see our tag list and some search tips and our search guide for more instructions on doing a multiple keyword search.

If you intend to use a proxy bidder in the final hours of the auction, make sure that you’ve chosen a trusted friend or mutual to bid for you and checked out our proxy bidding info post. You or your proxy will need to send us your details once the auction is over so that we can connect the right person with the creator.

Finally, remember that if you end up winning an auction, you'll have to send us proof of donation by 11:59 PM ET on November 2 at the latest. (what time is that for me?). We’ve got our bidders FAQ and donation guide to help you sort out what to do when the time comes.

____________________________________________

Read our daily update posts for more information:

Day 1 - Viewing Tumblr posts on mobile, using our auction watchlist feature, and changing your Discord DM settings

Day 2 - Bidder–creator matchmaking and group/pod bids

Day 3 - Commissioning gifts on a friend’s behalf (fanworks are great holiday gifts!)

Day 4 - Golden needle auctions

Day 5 - Creator auction promo tips

Day 6 - Staying involved when outbid/having a tight budget and making proxy bids

Auction spotlights:

Beta services, translation, and other fan labor

Craft or merch auctions

Digital, podfic, and vid auctions

Poly ships

Fanworks featuring POC

Fanworks featuring women

Best of luck with bidding. May the fastest mouse-clicker win!

[carlando]

thank you @hard4softthings for tagging me 🤠

last song blank you out by seafret !!

fav color moor green or washed blue

last thing i watched harry potter number three

next on watchlist percy jackson ep 6 probably

last game stardew valley woooo

last book the foxhole court by nora sakavic

sweet or savory or spicy savory has got to be

relationship single gal

last thing i searched online how to cold sear a steak

current obsession hockey, it’s bad, it’s devastating

greatest flaw procrastinator to extremes sadly

fic i’m currently reading checked swing by dilangley

tagging my bubs and some new homies @fratboybeezer @wehaveagathering @driccy @fewtrell @c2-eh @hauntedppgpaints @amylauren @palalabu @nbl-str-nvs @piastripropaganda @i--am-ironman @safetycarlando @otterpiastri @race-week

[boomstab-papa]

More recommendations from me, a freak who actually uses NoScript and would never go online without it again

TrackMeNot: by the same author as AdNauseam, this add-on makes gobs of automated, randomized, customizable searches on various search engines to mess up your ad profile even further. You can even tell it "yeah websearch how to make bombs and shit" if you want to fuck up the watchlists of government mooks who are also invading your privacy here in the name of "security". I don't use AdNauseam but I do use this one.

uBlacklist: Tired of ai-generated results clogging up your Google search results? Blacklist em! Also consider using a websearch that's not Google but yknow sometimes you have to try.

Facebook Container: Isolates your web activity from Facebook.

Multi-Account Containers: Stay logged-in to the same website under different accounts using different tabs. The tabs are color-coded for easy reference. Great for any website that has a one-email-one-profile type setup, but you use different profiles for different purposes (eg. your art twitter vs your shitpost twitter).

Shinigami Eyes: Highlights transphobic websites and blogs and such in red, so you can know in advance what you're clicking into. Makes blocking terfs on sight on tumblr easy.

I also want to note something about Video Download Helper. I've had it installed for ages. It USED to be useful. Now it will not download anything without a $30 companion app you have to install on your computer. I've gotten better results by right-clicking-saving on a video than with this add-on, and certainly even more luck right-click-inspecting a video in View Source to find the video's URL and save it myself. The add-on's reviews are full of spammed 5-stars, with a few real people scattered in there saying ''wtf they don't tell you that you need a paid companion app''. I don't recommend this add-on.

You know what add-on works REALLY well for downloading videos (on twitter)? Old Twitter. I don't use it all the time when I go on the bird app, but it's as easy as right-click-save. As an added bonus, it looks like Old Twitter, and I got it as a workaround back when Twitter was limiting the number of tweets you could view in a single day.

So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.

This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.

I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.

There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.

I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.

Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.

Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.

NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.

Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.

SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.

AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.

User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.

Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.

Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.

Webmail/Google Drive:

Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.

Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.

Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.

Accessibility:

Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.

Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.

Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.

Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.

Utility:

ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.

History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.

Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.

Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.

Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.

Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.

EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.

Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.

Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.

Browsing & Searching:

Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.

Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.

Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.

Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.

Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.

Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.

Website Specific:

PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.

Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.

Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.

Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.

BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.

Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.

XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.

Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips" and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.

BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.

Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.

[cowboymantis]

OKAY I figured out how I'll do the gifsets!!!

So just planning on making random gifsets for my favourite things bc I love doing those anyway!

But here are the ones I've settled on (for now, if I want to add another category I'll just edit this and add onto it):

[RGG] Gifsets

( via #rgg-gifsets )

Focuses on my favourite characters from Yakuza. All spin-offs included! Had to make a special category for Yakuza, simply because there are... so many...

[Games] Gifsets

( via #games-gifsets )

Focuses on my favourite characters from videogames. Well, any that aren't Yakuza characters, obviously.

[Toku] Gifsets

( via #toku-gifsets )

Focuses on my favourite characters from Tokusatsu shows/movies.

[Drama] Gifsets

( via #drama-gifsets )

Can be jdrama, kdrama, whatever. As long as it's not Toku! Focuses on my favourite characters from dramas.

[BiasETC] Gifsets

( via #biasetc-gifsets)

Started as a "bias" category (like for kpop) in my drafts, but settled on a much more broad one, but I like the term bias, so I kept it.

So this is basically for musicians and actors in general! Focuses more on the person themselves, not specifically the media they're in, as in a character they play, so if an actor I like plays a character that isn't my fav, WELL here's my less specific category :'D

[MV] Gifsets

( via #mv-gifsets )

MV = music video AND movie, but of course also shows count. Basically, just random media gifsets of either a certain mv/show I really like, a character I like that doesn't fit the other categories, or just think it looks cool! Since I'm not sure if I'll include much anime, I didn't want to do a specific anime category, so this can go in there too.

The format I'll (hopefully, if I remember) post them in:

Let's say, for example, if the first gifset in the category for BiasETC is of Taemin, then it'll be like this:

[BiasETC] Gifsets #1 - Taemin

I'll number them all, starting by 1 for each tag individually just for better organization. The numbers don't mean anything special, literally just to keep track!

But what if I decide a couple posts later (or just directly after that one), to make a part 2? Then I just keep the numbers going normally! So if I make a part 2, for example it could look like this:

[BiasETC] Gifsets #15 - Taemin [Part 2]

There is no time limit for this and there is no goal of how many posts I want to do until I stop, as long as I literally consume ANY type of media that moves, I will be adding onto this! :D And it will be completely random, just whenever I feel like it! Literally all just for fun

Why such a complicated, overly specific guideline list??? Because I love sorting random things, hell I've got hundreds of google docs just for lists about my current interests!!! Also it helps me better to keep track of what I've posted on here :]

Before I even started Kamen Rider, or Super Sentai, I have made specific lists with every season and special/movie on them, so that I can then make another list, aka my watchlist, to properly note down what I've watched. And for some reason, making the list was just as much fun as finally watching it, I was almost sad when I was done 😭😭

So yeah. You can always find this OG post again under #gifsets-explanation , and I'll be adding this onto all the posts I make!

I'll try to make a specific tag for every gifset I post, so if I ever make more parts, they can all easily be searched for. With the previous Taemin example, it could be something like #gifsets-taemin

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What to do when random airport security screening isn't all that random

With the holiday season upon us, folks will soon be flying to see folks. Some people are able to breeze through airport security lines with nothing more than a removal of their shoes. Others? Not so much: they're seemingly chosen at 'random' for 'additional screening' every time they step foot in an airport. I'm one of those people. I know what it is about me that gives the TSA, CATSA and other Five Eyes nations aviation security professionals the no feeling when I travel internationally. While it slows my partner and I down when we're trying to get on with getting to our gate, I appreciate the effort that the security personnel at the airports I fly out of put into making sure that everyone has a safe flight.

I can only imagine that not everyone chosen for additional screening on a regular basis feels the same. If you're looking for an explanation for why you might be getting that extra pat-down and bag search Lifehacker's got your back.

From Lifehacker:

What then might influence whether you’re chosen for enhanced screening? Well, we’ll preface this by stating the obvious: The TSA isn’t forthcoming about its selection process. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, the details that make up its algorithm cannot be made public for “security reasons.” (What we do know is that TSA uses Secure Flight, a pre-screening process that involves identifying “low and high-risk passengers before they arrive at the airport by matching their names against trusted traveler lists and watch lists.”) In other words, if you share your name with someone on the “No Fly” list, you will likely be stopped.

One other theory is that they determine your “risk” based on what might be considered “suspicious behavior,” like buying a one-way ticket or paying for your flight in cash... you might also be selected if you’re flying to or from what’s considered a high-risk country.

Happily you may be able to do something about all this hassle, if you're so inclined. If your name is on a watchlist, it's possible to apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a redress number. If you're approved for the number, simply pop it in with your traveler information when you book a flight and your issues should, maybe, disappear.

Oh, one more thing: According to Lifehacker, a few years back the ACLU took a look at 13,000 TSA documents that detailed how specific TSA officers pulled aside travelers for additional screening far more often than other TSA officers did.

https://boingboing.net/2019/12/12/what-to-do-when-random-airport.html

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #1: Lise

In this first instalment of a new feature, long-time member Lise, of Canada, answers our questions about how she uses Letterboxd, and why you should join her March Around the World challenge.

Hi Lise! How long have you been on Letterboxd? Lise: TV was still in black and white.

What do you mainly use Letterboxd for? Just a diary? Long reviews or shorter takes? Hilarious lists, or very f—king serious director rankings don’t @ me? I use the whole shebang: diary, reviews, ratings, watchlist, comments and lists, lots of lists. But mostly I use Letterboxd to keep track of when Jonathan is out to lunch (shameless plug for my He Says She Says list).

Do you rate films? Absolutely. I rely on ratings to add stuff to my watchlist, and I rate to let others know if I liked the film. I don’t read reviews for films I haven’t seen, so without user ratings I’d be snookered.

Tell us about your March Around The World challenge, in which Letterboxd members sign up to watch and review 30 films from 30 different countries during the month of March. How did it come about, and what’s involved? I took over the challenge from Berken, who created it and hosted it for the first year. I thought it was a brilliant way to explore the world on the cheap. The review component is important because it expands Letterboxd’s database, especially for under-seen films. It’s been a great success. Many participants like to create lists, and if they can’t watch them all in March they go at it for the rest of the year, which is great. The most important rule about the challenge is to forget the rules and watch international films during the month.

Still from Djibril Diop Mambéty’s ‘Touki Bouki’ (1973).

What are some of the interesting statistics you’ve noticed from your Marches Around the World? I consolidated all of the spreadsheets I’ve created for each challenge, and there were some surprises. The most viewed film is Touki-Bouki from Senegal (average rating of 3.7). Less surprising is that our most-viewed director is Ingmar Bergman (although I was happy to see Aki Kaurismäki from Finland in second place). The most-viewed countries are France, Japan and South Korea. Another surprise, the best decade is the 1920s (with the 1950s in a close second).

How has March Around the World enhanced your life? I’m not the sentimental type but when we get a new participant in the challenge I get the warm and fuzzies. If the genie were out of the bottle I would request that all overcome the ‘one-inch barrier’ (subtitles). Watching films ‘from away’, as our East Coasters would say, is one of the simplest ways to combat fears and/or prejudices about other peoples/nations/ways of life that we often don’t realize we have. Every time we identify or root for someone who is ‘other’ it chips away at the walls, and as Maya Angelou has said so eloquently, we discover that “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike”.

What are the responsibilities involved in hosting a Letterboxd challenge? It doesn’t have to be complicated. A challenge can be as simple as “watch ten films from your watchlist this month”. It’s all about tags. Define a tag, have people add it to their films and their lists, and then you can easily search for and filter those tags. Easy peasy. Mine is a bit more challenging because it has so many requirements, but thanks to some fantastic Letterboxders who volunteer to help with my spreadsheet (you know who you are), it all gets done in a timely manner.

How do you find the time to watch all those films in a single month?! Jonathan and I have never completed the challenge! Our best year was around 26. That year we got up earlier in the morning and watched the films with coffee, before going to work. That was the best. Nice and fresh and open to anything. Bonus is that we got to think about the film all day and the review-writing in the evening was easier. If it were up to me that’s the way I would watch films all the time.

What other challenges have you taken part in, and how have they enhanced your experience of watching films? Back in the day everyone was making a list tagged with List of Shame that you filled with all those “You seriously haven’t seen that yet?!” films. I’m still chipping away at it, but of course for every film you watch there are ten more you have to see. To help with the List of Shame I participated in Mr Dulac’s 5×5 series, where you selected five films from five directors and watched them at your leisure. It was a great way to complete filmographies. I still go to that list when selecting a film to watch.

Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘In The Mood for Love’ (2000).

What are your four favorites on your Letterboxd profile, and why? In the Mood for Love, because forbidden love is the saddest thing ever, and I could watch Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung go up and down those noodle-shop stairs all day long. The Thin Red Line, because it provides a great sense of place and it’s about the soldiers, not the war. Whispering Star because it is so quiet and touching.

I keep my fourth slot open for a rotating new favorite film that I want everyone to see. I could change these for a different set, but, oh, who am I kidding. I always feel terrible at the thought of ‘demoting’ a film.

What is your favorite or most useful feature? The watchlist, filtered by service. It is my dream-come-true feature. I sort by genre, hide short films, select ‘Stream only’ and ta-da! A list of films I’ve been meaning to see that are available to stream. (Now if only I could do the same for films that I own!) [Editor’s note: filtering by your own personal set of streaming services is a Pro feature.]

What’s a movie you’ve done a 180 on because of other Letterboxd members’ opinions? Great question. Memories of Murder is one of them for sure. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was when I first saw it, but so many of my friends gave it five stars that I watched it again and understood. And just this week, Moaning_Slug posted an interesting comment on my review of Buñuel’s Viridiana that actually makes me want to take another look.

What’s a movie you’ve really had to dig in on your feelings about, despite what everyone else on Letterboxd thinks? I am not easily bothered by or influenced by others when it comes to the films I love or despise. I seriously disliked Her and Boyhood and pretty much anything by Wes Anderson and all the high ratings have zero effect on me. The technical prowess of a film would never be something that could change my mind (here’s looking at you John Wick: Chapter 2 and 3). What would make me take a second look is if someone were able to point out that I missed something about what the film was saying. I’ve yet to review Jojo Rabbit because while I think poking fun at someone who aspires to dictatorship might actually prevent it from happening, I don’t know what to make of it when it’s making light of a historical or current [aspiring dictator]. Reading reviews about this could definitely influence my take on the film.

Colin Firth in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995).

What’s your go-to comfort movie? The one with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, the one with Chris Pratt and the talking ‘rat’, and the one with Tony Leung as badge No. 663 starring the Mamas and the Papas.

If and when you go to the cinema, where do you prefer to sit? Behind the shortest person in the room, near the back (I hate looking up—it’s a neck thing).

You’re Canadian. What’s the best Canadian film of all time? South of Wawa, about a donut-shop waitress who receives tickets to a Dan Hill concert in Toronto for her 35th birthday. Okay, so it’s not the “greatest film of all time” but it is my favorite, and it’s got the best last line ever!

These are the Canadian films I’ve seen in order of preference, this is a substantial list of Quebec films and [Letterboxd member] puffin has an extensive Canadian films list (stops at 2018). And I must mention these NFB short classics: The Cat Came Back, The Sweater and one of the most beautifully animated shorts, The Man Who Planted Trees.

When Parasite won Best Picture, what was the reaction in your household? We tested the bounce on our floor boards at Best Director. We tested the bounce on the ceiling boards at Best Picture.

Please recommend three other Letterboxd members we should follow. I can’t count, so here goes. I think everyone should follow Punq for the sheer number of films he watches and reviews, but mostly because I don’t think there is a film made before the 60s that he hasn’t seen. Graham Williamson is a good bet as well. His tastes are eclectic and his reviews are always packed with good observations and information. And I also have to recommend fellow Canuck puffin. I don’t know how he manages to watch so many films and review them. I always enjoy reading Melissa Tamminga, who asks questions and is very thoughtful in her reviews, and I have a soft spot for Peter H, who again personalizes his reviews. Nepotism be damned, Jonathan White always writes honest, interesting and personal reviews.

You also round up Letterboxd members who attend TIFF each year—what’s been a good thing about meeting Letterboxd people in real life? It’s great! Without naming names, I discovered that I could drink a 6'2" Norwegian under the table; a particular New Yorker is so stingy with his ratings that when he gives anything beyond three and a half stars you just have to watch the film; and a New Zealander personally knows anyone who is anyone in the industry over there and can give you all the dirt! Whenever we consider not doing TIFF we are always reminded that it would involve missing our Wednesday meet-up (as well as most other nights where we undoubtedly meet up for beer and film-related arguments), and we easily change our minds.

P.S. In the spirit of connecting Letterboxders… before the TIFF list I thought it would be good idea to create a ‘Letterboxd in [insert City]’ list, Toronto being the first one. It took off, and many users from different parts of the world created lists for their cities; the tag is letterboxdcity.

The March Around the World challenge starts 1 March 2020. Tag your list with ‘30 countries 2020’ and it’ll be added here.

[iffeelscouldkill]

Any day breathing

“Captain Tripathi. You’re alive!”

He presents it as a joke, to mask the very real fear that lies underneath those words. The fear that someday, she won’t come back to him safe and whole.

–

A/N: I wrote another thing :3

To the folks in the Starship Iris Discord: I finished it! This started out as a little ficlet idea that I had a while back: a Sana/Campbell concept based on Campbell’s stock greeting of “Captain Tripathi. You’re alive!” I wrote half of it down (I got sidetracked partway through) and then let it sit in my Starship Iris ideas notes file (god, you do not want to see the length of that thing) for ages.

Then, a conversation in the TSCOSI Discord about Campbell, pining, and Campbell’s probable reaction to the Rumor reports being uploaded to the public net (which I had totally forgotten about asfdfgsgsdgsg) inspired me to pick it back up.

It was meant to be a short, whimsical, feels-filled ficlet about Sana and Campbell’s conversations through the years. It turned into something… much longer than that.

Enjoyyyyy~

–

“Captain Tripathi. You’re alive.”

The first time he says it, the surprise is genuine. It’s hard not to be surprised to hear from this woman again – someone whose name had been only a rumour to him until very recently. He’d heard about her from contacts of contacts, mentioned here and there, always with a reverent tone. She had some kind of revolutionary past, he’d heard: was jailed as a dissenter, or had taken part in an uprising. One version of that story said that she’d led an entire planet in an uprising. He also heard that she’d hijacked a high-level Regime starship – possibly in mid-flight.

Whatever he was expecting when they finally met face-to-face, the slender, wiry woman in the brightly-coloured shalwar kameez with a streak of engine grease near her hairline and elaborate floral tattoos adorning muscular arms is not it. Sana Tripathi walks straight into his base of operations – a network of winding corridors and tucked-away cubbyholes in what’s meant to be a confidential location – flanked by a younger woman with a murderous expression and more visible weapons than he can take in with one glance, and demands two full sets of new identification, impeccable and untraceable, to get the IGR off their tail.

“I heard you were the best,” she tells him, a challenge.

Campbell holds out for a full fifteen minutes, but by the end of it he’s agreed to everything she asks for and feels distinctly like he’s gone ten rounds in the sparring ring they used to blow off steam back in the military, verbally speaking. She agrees to pay half up-front, with the promise of the rest once they safely reach their destination.

It’s an hour-long job, and he doesn’t know where the two of them go to lie low while he’s working, but exactly an hour later the glowering, heavily-armed woman is back to pick up their documentation. He’s a little disappointed that it’s not the Captain who came to collect.

The other woman – who tells him shortly that her name is Patel; the name on the papers he’s made for her is Kay Grisham – pays and leaves. He later hears that the IGR is conducting randomised searches at every checkpoint, detaining anyone whose background doesn’t quite check out neatly enough, or whose personal or ship ID papers look a little too new.

Campbell is completely confident in the quality of his work, but he’s not sure that Tripathi could pass a visual check, if she’s been on an IGR watchlist – and that friend of hers didn’t really seem like the subtle type. After thirty-six hours with no word, he figures the rest of the money is lost, but chalks it up as an interesting story to tell.

Two hours later, he gets a call from an unknown number. After running the standard traces on it (the IGR aren’t as good at disguising themselves as they like to think), he accepts the call.

“Is this Ignatius Campbell?” asks the voice on the other end – brisk, but with the hint of warmth and humour lurking underneath.

“Captain Tripathi,” he says in surprise. “You’re alive.”

“Of course,” the Captain replies blithely. “We delayed our departure slightly in order to catch the shift changeover for the randomised checks. The outgoing agents are always tired and less likely to bother with a full database check, and the incoming agents have never been briefed properly. Then we had to make sure that we weren’t being tailed.”

“Of course,” Campbell echoes. This woman is no amateur, and he realises that he’d managed to underestimate her even after everything that she’d managed by tracking him down, coming to him and persuading him to work with her. He makes a mental note not to do that again.

“So, I assume this call is about payment,” he adds, when Captain Tripathi doesn’t volunteer anything further.

“How very astute of you,” the Captain replies, too good-humoured to be mocking, and then proceeds to brazenly haggle him down a further twenty-five percent.

Campbell doesn’t believe in love at first sight, and he never will. But he does believe that there are people whom, when you meet them, the universe demands you sit up and pay attention to.

–

“Captain Tripathi – you’re alive.”

Even after resolving not to underestimate Sana Tripathi, Campbell is still surprised when he hears from her again. It’s been eight months, and during that time, his best-placed informants hadn’t picked up a single trace of Captain Tripathi or her companion. Not under the names he’d created for them, and not under the names they’d given him when they met.

It’s unheard of for him to be unable to track an alias he’s created (he wouldn’t be able to stay ahead of any potential threats unless he had that advantage), but he knows that the Regime has ways of making people vanish completely. It’s a cold, unpleasant realisation, and he experiences an unusually strong pang of regret considering that he barely knows this woman. But he’s sure that somehow, they must have slipped up and got caught.

So when Captain Tripathi contacts him again like nothing has happened, he realises he might just have to get used to unexpected developments.

He’s somehow not even surprised to hear that since they last spoke, she’s picked up a Dwarnian and some kind of renegade translator who has a history with the mafia. “He’s an academic, so he won’t be seeing any action, but he needs to have papers that will hold up if the ship is inspected while we’re docked,” the Captain explains casually.

“…Naturally,” says Campbell. “And speaking of your ship – I suppose you have a full work-up of papers for that, too? You know they’ve tightened the regs on those a lot recently.”

He tells himself he’s only saying it so that he can squeeze an extra job out of a contact he’s fairly confident will be good for the money. Not because he’s concerned.

“Are you suggesting that my ship’s paperwork is less than completely impeccable?” Captain Tripathi asks him with mock indignation.

Campbell suppresses a smile as he replies, “Given that it was made by someone other than myself, I’m surprised it’s held up this long.”

Their conversation concludes with him agreeing to redo the ship’s paperwork – somehow at a much lower price than he would usually charge for a second-time client.

–

“Captain Tripathi. You’re alive!”

It’s already become a joke between them by this point, the fact that Campbell answers Sana’s calls this way, and he waits in anticipation of the sarcastic response that he knows will follow. They’ve been in relatively regular contact since Campbell started playing middleman for some of their cargo, using his network of contacts to move it on and taking a cut. He’s stopped bothering to deny to himself how much he looks forward to their conversations.

But this time, the voice that comes down the line is not Sana Tripathi’s, but Arkady Patel’s. “It’s First Mate Patel, actually,” she says brusquely, and Campbell sits up slowly. “I know you guys traditionally open with like, twenty minutes of banter, but we don’t have time for that right now. We’re in a bind.”

Campbell has a cast-iron policy of not offering any favours, offering help to contacts, or otherwise sticking his neck out any further than he needs to. He keeps his relationships strictly about business and nothing more. Much like his ability to track an alias, it’s what’s kept him off the IGR’s radar for so long.

There are one or two folks whom he goes way back with – like Theodore “Red” Gregor, who was in his unit and a fellow dishonourable discharge. Campbell helped him set up his business on Elion. There aren’t many who could manage to stay in business while avoiding both the mob and the Regime, but if anyone could, it was Red.

But they’re rare exceptions to a very strict rule. Anyone else is on their own, or had better be prepared to owe him for a long, long time.

Campbell thinks about all this before he says, “What do you need?”

–

Campbell is ashamed of how long it takes him to realise that Sana is a fellow Telemachian. He’s usually good at identifying fellow homeworlders, even ones who have lived elsewhere. Telemachians have this spark, this spirit, a distinctive culture that even the Regime couldn’t stamp out of them.

They’re diverse, sure, and numerous, but you can always spot a fellow Telemachian if you know what to look for. They’re the unruly planet on the edge of a solar system, a little too far away from any established IGR base to monitor closely; a little too big to be brought to heel. There’s a reason that most protest songs originate from Telemachus – and that there’s been periodic unrest every few years since the coup.

They’re making small talk at the end of a call (something Campbell indulges in far more than he should), and Campbell is talking about evading the IGR’s latest clampdown and how hard it’s becoming to operate underground. “It’s enough to make me want to give it all up and become a vegetable farmer somewhere.”

“Wouldn’t you get bored?” Sana asks, playfully but with a hint of curiosity lurking underneath.

“Yeah. Probably.” Campbell’s not sure. Maybe if he had the company of the right person, it wouldn’t be so bad. “Just, all this running in place… it feels so futile.” It comes out sounding more tired than he means it to.

“Well, you know what they say,” says Sana, seriously. “When their foot is on your throat-”

“-any day breathing is a victory,” Campbell finishes. “I didn’t know you were a homeworlder.”

There’s a pause, and he thinks that Sana is weighing up what to say next. She hadn’t meant to give so much away, he realises – for all that he’s got to know a fair bit about the smuggling business that she runs, and the odd detail about life on board the Rumor, Sana is very cautious about revealing anything about her own past, or that of her crew, beyond what is strictly required to do business. Campbell has never minded that – he can respect a person’s boundaries. He doesn’t need to pry into Sana’s past to be sure that she won’t screw him over.

“I’ve moved around a bit,” she says, finally. “I spent a few years off-planet in the late 70s. Since then I’ve been… transient. Well, you knew that.”

Campbell inclines his head, though he knows that Sana can’t see it. He’s still considering what to say when she carries on,

“I don’t go back to the homeworld much these days. Actually, when we first approached you to work with us-” Campbell gives a wry smile at how much of an understatement that is, “-it was the first time that I’d been back to Telemachus in years.”

“It’s still home, though, isn’t it?” he says, thinking of the time that he’d spent in deployment; the years that he was on the run, unable to get word to his sister or his nephews. “After everything.”

“Yeah, it is.”

–

Campbell doesn’t really think twice the first time he invites the crew of the Rumor to have dinner with him.

It’s late in the evening, and the crew has just touched down on Telemachus a full twelve hours later than they’d originally planned. First there’d been some unprecedented solar flare activity en route, forcing them to take a detour, and then they’d been boarded by Regime agents in a “random” check on entry to Telemachus. Krejjh had been quickly hidden away in one of the ship’s many nooks and crannies, and the paperwork had all checked out (of course), but the agents had been both suspicious and thorough. All in all, the crew is obviously exhausted and a little fractious by the time Campbell meets them to pick up the cargo. Sana is doing her best to keep things businesslike, but she wilts visibly and rubs her hand over her eyes when she thinks he isn’t looking.

“Hey. Listen, we can go over all this tomorrow,” Campbell says, as gently as he can. “You guys’ve had a rough journey – what d’you say we grab a bite to eat instead?”

Arkady’s frown deepens, of course – it’s her job to be suspicious, and Campbell doesn’t take it personally. More to the point, he knows that it’s just her way of trying to look out for the crew. Arkady Patel is a lot more caring than she tries to let on. She might show it with jibes in the background of calls, or with threats and occasional bodily harm in the direction of anyone who threatens her friends’ safety, but she shows it.

For her part, Sana looks extremely relieved at the idea of being able to put business off until the morning.

“That’s really kind of you, Campbell,” she says. “It’d be great to take a bit of a breather, but we don’t want to impose…”

“It’s no imposition,” says Campbell, shrugging. “I was planning to go out to eat tonight anyway – I’ve been cooped up indoors too much lately. There’s a great hole-in-the-wall two blocks away from here – it doesn’t look like much, but the food is something else. Krejjh can come, too – they get all kinds in there.”

Sana tells him they’ll consult Brian and Krejjh before coming to a decision, but Campbell has a feeling that the answer will be yes, despite Arkady’s clear misgivings. Sure enough, Sana is back minutes later with a mild-mannered translator and an excitable Dwarnian (disguised with a large pair of novelty sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat) in tow.

Over the months – almost a year, now – that Campbell has been doing business with the Rumor crew, he has a sense of how they work together as a group: Krejjh piloting the ship and executing daring last-minute escapes; Brian joking and mediating and cooking slightly disastrous food; Arkady watching Sana’s back and intimidating obstacles into submission; and Sana alternately leading and mothering, driving ruthless bargains for the benefit of her crew.

But it doesn’t compare to the experience of eating at the same table, drinking the Rumor’s lethal home-brewed moonshine, listening to outrageous tales and laughing until his sides hurt.

The next day, Campbell is unsurprised when he doesn’t hear a word from the Rumor crew until nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. He himself only crawled out of bed at noon, and has since been avoiding light sources and slowly regaining his humanity over strong black coffee.

“Incoming call from Sana Tripathi.”

“Captain Tripathi,” Campbell says as he answers his comm. “You’re alive?”

“The jury’s definitely still out on that one,” Sana replies, her voice low and rough. Campbell chuckles, and then hopes the sound wasn’t too loud. “We’re at various stages of recuperation, but at a minimum, Arkady and I will be able to meet you with the cargo at our rendezvous point by three.”

“Make it four,” Campbell says, in deference to how utterly wrung-out she sounds. To cover this up, he adds, “I only joined the land of the living about half an hour ago myself. I’m going to need at least three more cups of coffee before I’m functional.”

“Four it is,” says Sana, businesslike, but with a clear undertone of relief. “We’ll see you there.”

“See you both soon. And, Sana –”

Campbell stops, wondering if he’s overstepping. Last night had been so easy, so fun – by the end of it, the Rumor crew felt like old friends. But it’s harder to recapture that feeling in the light of day, sober. What can he say – ‘Thanks for a great night’? ‘We should do this again sometime’?

(‘You have a beautiful laugh’?)

He clears his throat. “Don’t let Brian forget about that drink he owes me. And uh, you and the rest of the crew are always welcome to make a stop. To refuel, or…” He clears his throat again. “Or for whatever reason.”

“Thanks, Campbell,” says Sana, warm and genuine. “We’ll see you soon.”

–

Things start to get a lot tougher over the months that follow – on Telemachus and on every other planet that Campbell has contacts. Forgers and traders he’s worked with for years go silent, or are rarely heard from; he gets wind of abrupt crackdowns, the Regime imprisoning people who show the slightest bit of dissent, petty criminals being sent down with lengthy sentences.

Telemachus starts to stir. He hears murmurs on the streets. A leaflet is shoved into his hand by a hooded young person who is gone before he can blink. Campbell skims enough of it to know that he would probably be arrested if he were found with it on his person. He burns it, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before the protests start.

On his next call with the Captain to arrange a routine cargo drop-off, he can’t stop himself from urging her to be careful. Sounding amused, she promises him that she will.

“Are we still on for drinks at that bar you promised to take us to?”

“I don’t know what their house policy is on home-brewed moonshine,” Campbell warns her. “But of course we are.”

“Great. We’ll see you in a week, Campbell. Sana Tripathi out.”

He’s not expecting to get another call from her just three days later. Campbell is tense as he accepts the call, sure that something must be wrong.

“Captain Tripathi.” He hesitates over the second half of the greeting, and Sana speaks before he can say anything else.

“Campbell, hi.” She sounds well, but Campbell doesn’t relax, sensing bad news in her tone. “Listen, there’s no good way to say this, but… we’re going to have to miss our drop-off.”

“Oh.” Of all the things that Campbell might have thought were coming next, that wasn’t one of them. He knows he should be angry over being left in the lurch by a business partner, about how badly this will put him out, but instead he’s just… disappointed. And concerned. “What’s happening?”

“It’s – hard to go into too much detail right now, but… we’ve got to make an unexpected stop. Something’s come up, and… there’s no way we’re going to be in range of Telemachus for a while. I’m sorry.”

So, not just missing a drop-off, but possibly not making any stops for some time. Campbell is silent for a few moments, absorbing this.

“I know this will put you out in a major way, and I promise that we’ll make it up to you,” Sana says. “You’re our best customer, and we would never bail on you unless it was urgent.”

That’s what concerns me, Campbell thinks. “I… understand,” he says finally. “I’m not going to pretend I like it, but sometimes, that’s just how things are. I can find another supplier for the Scotch. They won’t be you, but…”

“Sorry, again, Campbell. We were… really looking forward to seeing you. Listen, we’ll give you half price on your next shipment. As an apology.”

Somehow, bartering isn’t as fun when Sana is just offering him a lower price – and when she’s doing it as an apology. “We’ll work something out,” he says. “I know you’ve got to keep Krejjh in hot sauce and Arkady in those elaborate hair products she denies using.”

Sana laughs. “Yeah, we might have to ration the hot sauce for a bit, but we’ll survive.” There’s a pause, and then she adds, “I’ll call as soon as I’m able. Let you know when we might be in the area again.”

“Do that. Good luck with… whatever it is that you have to do.”

“Thanks.” For a moment, Sana seems like she’s about to say something else, but then she closes with, “Speak to you soon. Sana Tripathi out.”

–

Campbell doesn’t hear from the Rumor crew for another three weeks after Sana’s call. All told, it’s been nearly four months since they last stopped by on Telemachus. Once upon a time, he would go much longer without seeing or hearing from the crew and not even think about it. But he’s got used to more regular contact – drop-offs every couple of months, and regular calls, sometimes not even about business. He enjoys finding out what the group has been up to, listening to the way that they joke together, the way Sana alternately cajoles and corrals them. How fond she sounds when talking to her crew, her found family.

He’s sure, sometimes, that he hears the same fondness in her voice directed at him. She’s never hesitated to match his banter, and he looks forward to the calls where they haggle over prices, exchanging insults that sound more affectionate than anything. Campbell would hate to cross a line too soon – he doesn’t want to ruin what is also a great business relationship and friendship. But on his calls with Sana, his catch-ups with the crew, their now-regular drinking escapades with ill-advised amounts of moonshine and ridiculous stories… he’s sure that there’s something more there.

He finds himself thinking about Sana at odd moments during the day: dwelling on her voice, her laugh; picturing her smile, her arms, her tattoos. He hopes that she’s safe, that whatever mystery errand took her away from Telemachus wasn’t dangerous. More than once, he’s tempted to put a call through and make sure she’s okay, but he stops himself. Sana said she would call as soon as she was able, and she’s always been a woman of her word.

He brightens when, in the middle of a slow evening, his terminal lights up and his computer intones, “Incoming call from… Sana Tripathi. Incoming call from…”

“Captain Tripathi,” he greets her cheerfully. “You’re alive!”

–

Then, Elion. A body turns up by the landfill. Sana’s accusation.

“In what universe would I turn on you for them?!”

Then they don’t speak for some time.

–

There’s a massive protest happening in the centre of Nestor, the district of Telemachus where Campbell is based. It’s loud enough and vehement enough that Campbell can hear it, just faintly, from where he sits in his cramped office, distractedly going through some accounts.

Normally, the Regime would have deployed riot police by now, violently suppressing the protest and arresting the instigators. But in contrast to how jumpy the IGR had been before, the machinery of the Regime has been oddly absent in recent weeks. As if all its resources are being focused elsewhere. This is the third protest in about ten days – and the largest. He also heard that there’s been some kind of major incident at a Regime lab in New Jupiter – a fire or an explosion or something. He’s willing to bet that it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Something big is going down.

Giving the accounts up as a bad job for now, Campbell dismisses the holographic screen with a wave of his hand and stands up. He needs some air.

Once he’s out of the house, it’s almost impossible to avoid the protest – it seems to be everywhere. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, Campbell walks towards the crowds, his coat collar turned up to obscure the bottom half of his face. Soon he’s close enough to hear some of what they’re shouting.

“THE RUMOR CREW DID NOTHING WRONG!” yells a man nearby, and Campbell’s heart almost stops. “JUSTICE FOR THASIA!” 

“JUSTICE FOR EMILY CRADDOCK!” another voice yells back.

Someone stuffs a leaflet into Campbell’s hand. He looks down at it. It’s a cheap, quickly-printed thing, just black text on off-white paper, and it reads:

WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND A FULL AND TRANSPARENT STATEMENT FROM THE INTERGALACTIC REPUBLIC ABOUT THE DISCLOSURES IN THE RUMOR RECORDINGS OF THE WIDESPREAD USE OF SPY TECHNOLOGY IN PEACETIME ASSASSINATION, ABDUCTION, AND THE INSTIGATION OF AN INTER-SPECIES WAR THE RUMOR CREW DID NOTHING WRONG!

Campbell roughly grabs the shoulder of the man who was shouting nearby. “What are these Rumor recordings?” he demands, brandishing the leaflet.

The man looks alarmed, and Campbell forces his posture to become a bit less “military”. “I’m not one of them,” he says, quickly. “I just want to know what’s happening.”

“They’re all over the public net, man,” says the protestor. The ‘where the hell have you been?’ is strongly implied.

“You should start by listening to Report 1: Violet Liu,” another protestor supplies helpfully.

“Thank you,” says Campbell, and lets go of the man’s shoulder. The man shrugs and rejoins the crowd, chanting,

“JUSTICE FOR ALVY CONNORS! JUSTICE FOR THE CREW OF THE STARSHIP IRIS! YOU CAN’T MAKE A PERSON DISAPPEAR!”

Back at home, Campbell discovers the man was right: the files are all over the net. The IGR is clearly penalising anyone who shares them, and trying to shut down the websites hosting them – his search turns up a lot of dead links and mysteriously deactivated accounts. But there are far too many sources to eradicate them all, short of completely shutting down the public net. Before too long, Campbell has a complete set of the recordings, Reports 1 to 9.

He starts to listen.

The report starts, after the introduction from someone who is clearly an IGR drone, with the panicked voice of a woman who sounds vaguely familiar. Campbell has a good memory for both faces and voices, and he’s sure this woman is the new recruit he’d heard briefly on the call with Sana before the Rumor landed on Elion. It might explain her link to the Rumor crew.

Sure enough, a few minutes later he hears Arkady, using the Kay Grisham alias that he’d made for her, years ago. He recognises the con she’s pulling, a trick that Brian Jeeter grandly refers to as “the Carmen Gambit”. He wonders what was so important about this woman that the Rumor crew went so far out of their way to rescue her. He looks for a timestamp on the recording, but it only shows when the file was uploaded to the public net, which was a few days ago. But Campbell has a feeling this was the reason that the Rumor crew skipped their drop-off in Telemachus.

He wishes that Sana had told him what they were doing. God knows he wouldn’t have been angry about them going to save a person’s life. He wasn’t really angry about it to begin with.

Campbell keeps listening, and learns the real reason for the Rumor crew’s detour: a cryptic message from a friend he thinks Brian might have mentioned once – Alvy Connors, a gifted coder moonlighting as a bartender. Campbell’s sorry to learn about his death. He realises that the protesters had been chanting Alvy’s name – but why would they care so much about this man’s death? Where did these recordings come from?

Two more reports in, and Campbell is starting to put the pieces together to form a horrible picture: how the Regime had known that the Rumor was headed towards Elion. How the crew’s IDs had become compromised. They were listening to every word, he realises. But how?

Sana and Arkady discuss trading with the Fowleys – a particularly low breed of scum that Campbell avoids dealing with if at all possible, but he knows the Rumor crew can’t afford to be that picky – on Elion, and Campbell realises that he must be about to make an appearance in the recordings.

Sure enough, as the group realises that they need new IDs, Sana makes the call. It’s surreal to hear his own voice coming from the computer, and Campbell realises he needs to be very careful from now on. Whatever event caused all these files to be leaked onto the public net, he’s now clearly implicated in it, too. At least the Regime don’t have a visual description, but they have his voice and his location, as well as some details about his contacts. He’ll need to warn Red Gregor.

The exchange between Arkady and Sana in the elevator on Elion makes him cringe. “Did it seem like he was hitting on you?” Ridiculously, he finds himself hoping that Sana will give some indication of how she might feel about that, but instead she expertly turns the conversation around on Arkady. “If we wanna open that door, can I just say that you and—”

“No, that door is shut and locked.”

Campbell thinks about how Arkady talks to Violet Liu, her upbeat mood in response to the other woman’s admiration, and smiles.

Things go downhill quickly after that. Campbell is tense as he listens to the exchange with the guard, the Carmen Gambit once again coming into play. It almost works – until the fatal announcement over the comms that blows the crew’s cover. Campbell reflects that the Regime’s ridiculous, stifling bureaucracy was probably the only thing that kept them from getting caught sooner.

He cringes again as he hears his own call come through, and Sana immediately decline it. He’d been a bit over-eager, calling as soon as he’d got Red Gregor’s message to say that the job had gone off without a hitch – he was really just looking for an excuse to talk to Sana. Clearly, Campbell needs to get a grip.

The recording ends, and Campbell looks at his holo-screen, thinking about what the next recording will surely contain.

“Computer, outside call. Ignatius Campbell to Sana Tripathi.”

“Attempting connection…” the computer intones. “Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Connection not available.”

He guesses he can’t blame Sana for declining his calls, after everything that he’d said to her before.

Reluctantly, he plays the next recording.

He listens to Violet’s attempts to speak to Arkady, Brian’s theories about the robot nanoswarm, and then Violet and Arkady’s conversation in the kitchen and Arkady’s gift of her mint plant. Campbell feels slightly indignant about the fact that Arkady never let on she was a fellow gardener. They could have exchanged tips!

Finally, he hears Sana accept his call in her room, and the friendly conversation quickly devolve into a tense exchange. He’s replayed that conversation endless times in his head, but it somehow sounds even worse than he remembers. Campbell wasn’t angry at Sana – he wishes he could have explained that somehow. But with everything that had happened, she was in no position to give him the benefit of the doubt. He wishes he could go back in time and…

He doesn’t know.

Then, something unexpected. Another call comes through to Sana’s comm, and she accepts it without waiting to hear the name – but Campbell knows that wasn’t him.

“Campbell, I agree it’s a bad idea for us to talk right now, but I just wanna say that if it was only me, I would probably risk it. The thing is, I can’t, I have to think about my crew, and you—”

Campbell’s heart stutters in his chest. “Computer, outside call,” he says, not bothering to pause the recording. “Ignatius Campbell to Sana Tripathi.”

“Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Connection not available.”

Campbell sighs and runs a hand over his face. He’s finally starting to get the picture, and he’s desperate to talk to Sana, to tell her that he understands now. He thinks about the way she’d spoken to ‘him’, the vulnerability in her voice. Damn it, he needs to talk to her. He has to make this right.

A man is speaking on the recording now, and Sana responds to him with anger. Campbell realises that he still has three reports left to go. He’s still far from understanding what has happened and where these recordings came from. The least that he can do is take the time to listen to them and understand what Sana has been going through.

He’s afraid of what the other reports might contain. But he would have known if Sana was hurt or worse – wouldn’t he? Surely Sana would still have come to him for help if she really needed it?

Nothing could have prepared him for the contents of the last three reports: the stunning revelations about Thasia, about why the war began; about the Regime’s use of a sentient swarm of nanobots to spy on dozens of its own people, indiscriminately, in every waking moment. His fists clench, hard enough that his nails dig into the palms of his hands, as he listens to Major General Frederick’s cold declaration that future strains of the nanoswarm will include a ‘kill-switch’. He listens to the sad story of Thasia and their doomed childhood friend, Emily Craddock. He understands now why the crowd had been chanting their names.

The crew’s hours of drunken singalongs and fake ‘confessions’ make him smile, but the smile is quickly wiped from his face as he hears the passage of time at the end of the report. “Two weeks have passed since our last update. As Major General Frederick said, we expect diminishing returns via this swarm of strain H.”

Then, the last few seconds. “Agent McCabe, look out the window!”

“Holy shit—”

Campbell can’t believe the recordings end there. He goes back to the site where he’d downloaded the files, to make sure he hadn’t missed one – but the website has already been taken offline. He scours discussion boards for any scrap of information. All of the commentators agree that there are only nine reports, but they have theories about what might have happened next – linked to the explosion (it definitely was an explosion) on New Jupiter. Odds are, it was the Rumor’s destination. But what happened?

He thinks about the words of the other Violet Liu. “If Plan B fails, not all of you will live long enough for Plan C.” He thinks about Violet coughing, Krejjh coughing, an inexorably deadly swarm of nanobots in the air. The Rumor crew taking one last, defiant, heroic stand because none of them could stand the alternative: to save their own lives at the expense of so many others.

“We have a saying on Telemachus, that when their foot is on your throat, any day breathing is a victory. So, I vote we push our luck.”

Campbell’s breathing is unsteady, and his throat feels tight and painful. He tries to fight down the rising panic in his chest, the voice in his head that fears the worst. Sana is alive. She has to be. He rubs at one eye with the heel of his hand, and it comes away wet.

“Computer,” he chokes out. “Outside call. Ignatius Campbell – to – Sana Tripathi.”

“Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Attempting connection… Attempting connection…”

“Campbell?”

Campbell is so stunned that for several long moments he stares at his computer, at the holo-screen displaying a successful connection, counting up the seconds on their call. “Campbell?” Sana says again. “Is that you?”

“Captain Tripathi,” he manages finally. “You’re…”

“Alive,” finishes Sana, with a smile in her voice.

[audiogrizzly]

Top 5 Games of 2019

It was a little tricky to construct a top 5 for this year, though there have been a couple of surprises.  I wasn’t expecting the year to be a bit crap as we are no w on the cusp once more of a new generation.  But 2012 wasn’t all that bad of a year (PS4 and Xbox One would release in 2013) and at the moment, everyone is doing alright.  PS4 has sold through over 100 million systems, Nintendo are definitely on an “on” generation with Switch, Xbox has been able to get back into peoples good books with things like Game Pass (on both Console and PC, their PC side they seem to really be turning around), there’s even interesting things happening in the mobile space with Apple Arcade.

This won’t be the last year where my top 5 games are full of current gen titles, I am expecting the new systems to drop in around November, last time it was hard to find a top 5 specific to PS4 (as I listed each platform separately back then).  It IS however, another list of mostly AAA tier games.  If you want to know what smaller more “interesting” games I have been playing, check out my honourable mentions at the end.

Also, follow me on Melee.  It’s this new image blogging service from Imgur which you can download now on the IOS App Store (its just on iPhone at the moment) and it has seemingly been built to help people share gaming related clips and images off of places like Twitter and Instagram (and err, here on Tumblr).  I posted a couple of daft clips of me failing in Modern Warfare and Destiny 2 and it didn’t take long for them to amass a few likes and comments.

That sounded like a sponsored advert but ain’t nobody paying me for this.  Let’s get into my top 5

5. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order

I was about to select Gears 5 to be my number 5 until I saw sense and cast my memory back to when I started playing Jedi (all the way back in November.  I was impressed by its intense action, impressive visuals and great characters.  I especially enjoyed the 4 armed pilot who always complains.  I did feel that towards the end I got sick of managing large groups of enemies so I dropped the difficulty to get through it, but I still haven’t achieved 100% of activities on all planets so I can still go back to it one day.

4. Borderlands 3

We all knew this was coming but not even I had any idea that we would have been actually playing it in 2019 way back at the start of the year.  For me, I look at the game.  I don’t care about weird magicians or their insane sounding legal woes, all I’m interested in is the work of a team who deserved better for their last title, but am still glad returned to what they do best, looting and shooting.  I enjoyed rejoining these characters I have followed over the last 10 years, all the referenced to older games, cameos from characters from Tales From the Borderlands and The Pre Sequel and was sad to see some people go.  I still have about a year of extra content to go through and I really appreciate the efforts they have made to make the game last longer than just one playthrough through in the Proving Grounds, Circle of Slaughter and Mayhem modes.  Though I have always tended to stick to Borderlands games and create builds for each and every vault hunter, so I will be doing that.

3. Mortal Kombat 11

It’s been a while since I last put a fighting game into my end of year round up.  And I HAVE fallen off MK11 a little bit, but this entry reminded me of how impressive it is for Nether Realms to pack their fighting games with some many things to do and keep people playing outside of just going into matchmaking and fighting others.  The Vault this year is basically another little adventure full of exploration and puzzle solving and the Towers of Time give you plenty of challenge and direction of many months to come.  You also have to give the developer credit for never backing down on the brutality of the game, they must have all got their heads together after DC Universe vs. and vowed never again to make watered down versions of Fatalities.  It is a game that keeps getting better and better.

2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare

I was debating whether or not to include this years CoD.  I always get the same type of enjoyment out of it each year, people complain that it never changes but I’m glad it sticks to a formula.  Of course they are not identikit games, there are new maps, new modes, new ways of building your loadout and new touches, like how in this year you can snap to edges to stay in cover while you shoot, there’s the new special equipment system where you can drop ammo or reduce your footstep noise.  Having doors you can either peek through or smash open adds another level of strategy, there have been times where I have been able to escape being under fire by closing a door, re-positioning and then wasting whoever just wanders in.

The campaign this year, good to see it back, but whatever, the co-op mode is Spec Ops again, like it was back in MW2 and 3 but on a much larger scale, I have yet to complete one of these btw.  But as always, it’s the multiplayer that does it for me and Modern Warfare deserves credit for being what must be the first AAA game to feature cross platform play, not just launch with it.  I know that games like Fortnite are popular, but I don’t see that as a AAA title, it doesn’t have the full package, it’s just a mode and it started off small.  Call of Duty is expected to be big each year, has a lot riding on it and allowing for cross play is a big step.  I especially appreciate being able to play with a keyboard and mouse on PS4 and being able to matchmake only with people playing with controllers on PC, in fact, I have never really given the game much of a shot on PC before as I know people just fall of it, there has often been low player numbers reported on the PC versions of CoD and it looks like it won’t have that problem this time round due to cross play.

Modern Warfare still has to contend with Destiny 2 and Overwatch for my time as my main multiplayer game but it’s still as fun as ever.

1. Control

Put this down as my main “surprise” game of 2019.  A game which was not on my watch list, though I was aware of it as you can’t ignore a game from the makers of Max Payne (I did skip Alan Wake and didn’t care much for Quantum break though).  Bought it at the last minute before its release, downloaded it and was wowed by the sinister nature of the environment you run around in.  This weird fictitious US government agency which looks into paranormal activity which you seem to have become in charge of because you picked up a mysterious weapon from the deceased Director while searching for your brother.  What then follows is about 12 hours of wacky powers and odd video clips as you unearth what has been going on in this strange ever morphing building.

I especially loved how the game never holds your hand too much, the map of each floor is vague enough that you also have to rely on in-game signposting to move around, as well as a bit of memory work.  There is also great humour involved too in some of the PSA posters on a lot of the walls, the antics of the caretaker and the videos you find of Dr. Darling throughout the game.

I did have a few weird technical issues with the game throughout playing, but still found it to be visually pleasing, there was this weird hitch that used to appear after coming out of the pause screen that always threw me, it would be followed by a few moments of low performance before getting back into the smooth action.  But this didn’t stop me from having a great time with Control.  Perhaps the game that will be the most prominent in my head when I think of 2019.

So there you have it, control is my best game of 2019.  But let’s look at the other new games I played throughout the year in my honourable mentions:

Gears 5

The Outer Worlds

Days Gone

Apex Legends

Far Cry New Dawn

Trover Saves the Universe

Concrete Genie

Devil May Cry 5

Tom Clancy's The Division 2

And also a special mention to these old games that were rereleased/remastered/repackaged etc in 2019:

Borderlands Game of the Year Edition Remastered

Halo Reach

And now, a look at the games I have on my watchlist for 2020:

Cyberpunk 2077

Last of Us Part 2

Ghost of Tsushima

Halo: Infinite

Watch Dogs Legion

Phantasy Star Online 2

Gods & Monsters

Doom Eternal

Overwatch 2

Diablo IV

Minecraft dungeons

Marvel's Avengers

Carrion

Streets of Rage 4

Will they all even come out?  Let’s find out, happy new year!

[self-proclaimed-chaotic-good]

Partners (4) | Tommy Akhtar x Reader

Words: 2392

Warning: Not much… please let me know if there are

A/N: Reader and Tommy finally acting into the case and reader finally meets Shelly. More talk about Bond.

-

You and Tommy had a new arrangement, different than what you had originally planned, but given your current situation, it was for the best. The clouds were letting up that day, so the sky didn’t look as dreary as the day before. Tommy didn’t talk about what happened at the cemetery besides what Shelly had told them about the banker and you didn’t push it. In the four days you’ve known each other, you were slowly getting in tune to each other’s thoughts and personalities. Tommy was more considerate with you and cigarettes by smoking while he’s outside the car and facing away when you’re outside together. So far, you fortunately hadn’t run into your dreaded uncle and you seemed to be more stable than the past two or three days.

After your discussion at the cemetery parking lot, you decided to quit the diner. The manager was sad to see you go, as well as some of the regulars that you helped serve, but it had to be done. Tommy told you about his dad’s health conditions and agreed to help remind him about taking his medication and lay off the booze. Meanwhile, you continue your search for the art collector and the connections with Davenport, trying to find their motive behind all those cases.

No one had contacted you yet, which somewhat surprised you. Your family wasn’t the type to just talk and check in with each other unless they need something. They were aware about what you’ve been investigating, although they don’t know about your investigation partner. You thought they would have at least checked in the progress of the investigation. It should be a relief that you were allowed breathing space and you try to shrug off the feeling that they were slightly behind the predicted schedule.

You were currently seated in the car, parked across of your targeted bank. From the logo that Davenport carries around, this should be the one that he worked at. You made note of the people walking in and out, checking for anyone that looked remotely like the mysterious art collector or any of the art collectors that Davenport was associated with. So far, you got nothing.

“One six-inch onion chicken sub,” Tommy announced, suddenly appearing near your car window.

You rolled down the window and grabbed the sandwich and drink from him, so he could climb into the passenger’s seat with more ease. You sipped on the soda as you scanned the streets out of growing habit. Tommy watched as you forced yourself to relax, rolling the window back up and taking a bite of your sandwich.

“So,” he said, swallowing down a bite, “have you come up with a Bond girl name, yet?”

You coughed to hide a laugh, having initially thought he was going to bring up something serious like the case. “Well, Lotus is definitely going to be in there somewhere,” you said.

“The color and the word lotus? Golden Lotus? Crimson Lotus? What’s your favorite color anyways?”

“(Y/f/c),” you answered.

“Tommy Bond and (Y/f/c) Lotus,” he said dramatically, spreading his hands as if reading off a wide movie sign.

“That sounds lame.”

“It’ll catch on,” he insisted, biting into his own sandwich. He let out a loud moan, making a point to face you and chew slowly. You suppressed another laugh, turning away to take another sip of your soda. “Listen. You need to lighten up. I’m the detective here, alright? I need to be the scruffy, cynical, and brooding one in this dynamic, okay?”

“I don’t want to let my guard down,” you said.

Tommy nodded. “Fair enough. Maybe you can be Bond. I can be… your Bond boy,” he joked, pausing mid-bite as the suspected banker strolled up to the building. “At least we know we’ve got the right place.”

“Anything from the network?” you asked.

Since quitting the diner, you had to find other ways to keep in contact with your network. Before, it wouldn’t have been so bad, and you could have simply walk up to a beggar and pay them off for information. Now, you were paranoid. If your uncle could somehow find out your address, who knows what method he had used to track you down. So, instead, Tommy volunteered to check up on your network and you made sure they knew that he was an ally, adding your uncle on their watchlist.

“The London Museum is getting all hyped up for their new exhibit. It’s just flyers everywhere. Two of the art collectors that Davenport is associated with had visited the museum recently. I didn’t want our trackers to get too close, so they followed them and found the general area where they live,” Tommy said, pulling out a zoomed up printed London map from the glove compartment. There was a red circle around two areas in the East and the South-West, marking where the art collectors reside.

Your eyes briefly left the bank’s entrance to look at the map, leaning in closer. “Those are high-end suburban areas in London. It’s a good thing they didn’t get any closer,” you noted.

Tommy hummed in agreement. “We just need to find a way to get closer.”

“Follow them ourselves? Break into their house or sneak our way into a private party?”

He nodded. “We might have to. Which one are you more confident in, breaking into their house or sneaking into a party?” he asked with a straight face. “I, personally, would rather break in than attend a snobby party, but there’s free drinks, too.”

“Don’t want to wear a tux, Mr. Bond?” you played along.

“Do you want to see me in a tux, Miss Lotus?”

“I rather you in a tux than me in a dress. But, I also rather us in shady garb sneaking around suburban houses than either of us fancily dressed mingling with high-noses.” You thought for a moment, taking the time to finish up your sandwich. After swallowing, you said, “Do we have to break into their house, though? Can’t we just hack them or figure out how to steal Davenport’s bank statements for any money transference linked to the art collectors within our timeline?”

“You know how to do that stuff?”

You shrugged. “How hard can it be?” Tommy raised an eyebrow, as if saying “Are you serious?” You snorted, pushing his arm. “I’m kidding. I was the secretary in the family business, remember? I had to do a lot computer and paperwork, so I’ve hacked before. Besides, we could also sneak into his hotel room, rifle through his stuff, then pop back out.”

“That sounds easiest. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? We’ve wasted so much time because of you,” Tommy accused, crumpling his sandwich rap.

You threw your own rubbish at him and poised your hand above the car key. “Should we start heading out?” you asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

You started the car and followed Tommy’s instructions towards the hotel that the banker had been staying at. Businessmen usually reserve a room at a nearby hotel when conducting shady meetings, often reserving the same room every time. Humans were creatures of habit after all. The hotel itself was away from the industrial and business area of the city, making it less likely for them to run into familiar faces. Luckily, Shelly worked at that hotel and had kept track of Davenport for the past few days, under the request of Tommy. He still hadn’t spoke to you about her much, and it really wasn’t your business. Although, you’ve shared a fair amount of your history, the fact that Tommy and his father offered their apartment to you was a fair enough trade in your opinion.

Tommy shifted around his seat as you drove, digging through his pockets. “What are you doing?” you asked him.

“Looking for my cigs,” he muttered, “Must’ve used them up already.”

“Want gum?” You held up the pack towards him without taking your eyes off the road.

“Thanks.”

He took the pack and pulled out a stick of gum, tossing the pack back after shoving the gum in his mouth. He leaned closer to the dashboard, peering through the windshield and pointed the next direction. You signaled left and turned. As the hotel came into view, Tommy leaned back in his seat with a sigh.

“Want to follow me inside?” he suddenly asked without looking at you.

“Thought you’d want me in the car so we could book it once you’ve got the information we needed?” you said.

Tommy shrugged. “We just saw him arrived at work. He won’t be back for a while. According to my friend, he doesn’t come around the hotel until nine or ten in the evening to meet his clients. Could use more eyes. Given the number of clients he meets, especially the nature of those meetings, he may keep some documents in the hotel’s safe. We can search around for more clues that involves your family or at least where he keeps his other documents or where he lives.

You didn’t push him and decided to follow along. If you couldn’t tell by the architecture or the size of the building, the interior of the hotel screamed expensive. This was the type of place where the rich come to stay either for a business trip, a get-away, or an affair. You felt out of place in your casual attire as you stepped into the chandelier lit lobby. Dusty rose drapes hung from the windows and parts of the ceiling, the walls were creme and the floors were marble, and the lights seemed to dim the further you walked in. Tommy led you to the side where the front desk was.

“Tommy,” a woman’s voice called out, causing the both of you to turn.

The same blonde woman from the cemetery walked up to Tommy with a big grin, wearing an elegant off the shoulder crème dress. She was gorgeous with her wavy shoulder length blonde hair, brown eyes, and bright contagious smile. Tommy greeted her, giving her a quick hug that you felt would have been longer if you weren’t here. He turned to you and held out a hand.

“Shelly, this is (Y/n). (Y/n), Shelly,” he introduced you.

“Hi,” you said, sticking a hand out to her.

“It’s nice to meet you. Tommy’s mentioned you before the other day,” Shelly said, taking your hand in a firm shake.

You released her hand and stuffed your hands in your coat. “Has he? I’m sure there wasn’t much to mention about me.”

“Well, he said you’re his new partner for the case he’s working on,” she said, glancing between you two. “Tommy usually works alone, so it was kind of surprising that he’s actually having someone help him for once.

“Really? Was he always this stubborn?”

Of course, they knew each other in school. You thought back to Tommy’s conversation with his dad the other day and how he mentioned that she was his friend’s girl. You tried to put the pieces together, although you’ve continued to remind yourself it shouldn’t be any of your business, but you couldn’t help it. It was a habit of yours to figure out someone with the clues you’re given. His friend must’ve been the one that passed away, hence meeting up at the cemetery and there was something going on between Tommy and Shelly.

“Yes! Ever since I can remember he- “

“Okay, if you ladies are done gossiping about me,” Tommy interrupted, stepping in between you and Shelly. “We need to continue on with some business.”

“I haven’t even reached the good part,” Shelly teased. Tommy gave her a warning look, which responded with a playful roll of her eyes. “Okay, come on. I have his room number and the housekeeping keys.”

“Stay close, alright,” Tommy whispered to you, his arm brushing yours as you set off to follow Shelly.

“Well, where else am I going to go?” you asked, raising an eyebrow at his orders.

“There’s a few nosy people at this hotel. In case we get caught, at least we’d be together and think of a cover story,” he said.

“We came to bang,” you quipped with a firm nod of your head, as if he had agreed to use that cover story.

Tommy aggressively wrapped an arm around your shoulder. “That seems to be the running theme when it comes to lying about our relationship, hasn’t it? Didn’t realize you were that eager,” he said, referring to the time you messed with the other waitress back at the diner.

You pushed his arm off. “Have you been here before?” you wondered.

He stiffened, his eyes shifting away from you, briefly hovering over Shelly who continued to walk ahead of the two of you and not paying attention to your conversation. “And what makes you think that?”

You shrugged. “Nothing,” you said.

It wasn’t just the fact that he knew exactly how to find the hotel, his body language seemed that he was familiar with the stifling atmosphere of the fancy place. With his personality and line of work, he wouldn’t have chosen a hotel like this to stay in. He had headed straight for the front desk, he didn’t look around for it. He, at least, was familiar with the type of people that would visit the hotel and their behavior. Maybe it was just an assumption on his part with being familiar with high- and middle-class people in general. In the end, it was all speculation in your head.

Shelly lead the two of you towards the elevator and up to the upper floors before heading down the corridors to Davenport’s room. She handed Tommy the key, a silent exchange between them as they looked at each other. You busied yourself with memorizing the interior designs and the number of doors down the hallways. You jolted when Shelly laid a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“Sorry. It really was nice meeting you. Keep Tommy out of trouble, yeah?” she said with a small smile.

“I can’t promise that. You know him better than I do.” You were breaking into a banker’s private hotel room and about to rifle through and possibly steal confidential information. If anything, you were aiding him in trouble and Shelly was enabling it.

-

A/N: I actually liked Shelly in the movie and thought they were cute together, but this is a Tommy Akhtar x reader story and I liked the idea that reader and Shelly would quickly get along.

[marveltrumpshate]

★ AUCTION WEEK INFO ★

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If you had to bow out from your bidding war, consider lending some change to a pod bid (aka group bid). Some pod bids may need an extra boost to win their auctions, and you can still help out even if you are only able or want to contribute $5! You can check the list of existing pod bids here. Feel free to start a pod bid on your own or in the #pod-bid-chat channel on our Discord. It's not too late to make one! If you make or have a pod bid that isn't on our pod bid list, let us know so we can update it.

Another option is to look at our golden needle tag, which includes auctions that haven’t been bid on yet. We know that some people don’t have much money to spare but still want to bid, and this is a great way to find auctions that may be affordable for you. You can also use our "current bid: low to high" sorting feature on our Auction Listings page (dropdown menu right under the "Auction Listings" heading) to see auctions that are within your budget.

If you want to narrow down your search to your favorite characters and ships, you can do so by using our tag list. Click on any character or ship (or even fandom, universe, fanwork type, rating, or content tag) listed. You can then sort the auctions that appear using the "current bid: low to high" feature. It's worth checking out our search guide for some search tips too!

If you intend to use a proxy bidder in the final hours of the auction, make sure that you’ve chosen a trusted friend or mutual to bid for you and checked out our proxy bidding info post. You or your proxy will need to send us your details once the auction is over so that we can connect the right person with the creator.

Finally, remember that if you end up winning an auction, you'll have to send us proof of donation by 11:59 PM ET on November 4 at the latest. (what time is that for me?). We’ve got our bidders FAQ and donation guide to help you sort out what to do when the time comes.

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Read our daily update posts for more information:

Day 1 - Viewing Tumblr posts on mobile, using our auction watchlist feature, and changing your Discord DM settings

Day 2 - Bidder–creator matchmaking and group/pod bids

Day 3 - Commissioning gifts on a friend’s behalf (fanworks are great holiday gifts!)

Day 4 - Golden needle auctions

Day 5 - Creator auction promo tips

Day 6 - Staying involved when outbid/having a tight budget and making proxy bids

Auction spotlights:

Beta services and other fan labor

Craft or merch auctions

Digital and podfic auctions

Poly ships

Fanworks featuring POC

Fanworks featuring women

Best of luck with bidding. May the fastest mouse-clicker win!

[un-enfant-immature]

Watchworthy’s personalized TV recommendation app will help you find your next binge

Ranker, an online publisher that turns crowdsourced lists and fan-rankings into a data business, is now turning its attention to the world of streaming services. The company this week launched a new app, Watchworthy, that helps you find something new to watch across TV networks and over 200 streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV+, and many more.

Ranker, as you may already know, is the website that always pops up in search results when you’re looking for some sort of “best of” round-up — whether that’s in entertainment, music, sports, culture, history or across other topics. On the site, online visitors can vote on their favorites in categories as broad as the “best hip-hop artists” or as niche as the “best coconut oil brands.”

Ranker’s TV lists are among its more popular categories and one that makes the most sense for turning into an app. And right now, everyone is looking for something new to watch as we’re stuck indoors due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

While there are already a number of apps promising to offer TV recommendations — like Reelgood, TV Time, Yidio, and JustWatch, for example —  Watchworthy’s advantage is Ranker’s data powering its recommendations. Its machine-learning platform applies first-party correlation data it has amassed over a decade from one billion votes on Ranker.com. As the company explains, this makes its data more “statistically relevant.”

For example, its data indicates that “Better Call Saul” fans tend to like other gritty, dark dramas like “House of Cards,” “Ray Donovan,” and “True Detective” but also more cerebral comedies like “Nathan for You” and “High Maintenance.”

To figure out what sort of TV programs interest you, Watchworthy at first launch jumps you into a rating experience to provide it with your data. In 60 seconds, you fly through a ratings feature that uses a Tinder-like interface where a right swipe is a “like” and a left swipe is a “dislike” (and up is “not sure”). After you thumbs up and down a selection of shows, you can begin to browse your recommendations.

In my test, this initial set of recommendations was already above average compared with some of the other apps I’ve tried. Your mileage may vary, of course, as it’s a highly personalized experience. Watchworthy may not have offered dozens of precise matches to my tastes at first, but it did remind me of several shows I had seen in passing and thought at some point I might like to try, as well as a few new discoveries.

  Its suggestions are ranked by a “worthy” score that indicates the likelihood that the show is worthy of your time. You can also filter the list of recommendations by service, genre, runtime, and MPAA ratings.

The app got a little better after spending a little more time to like and dislike more shows and to personalize it as to which streaming services I was using. This allowed me to integrate recommendations from more sources — like HBO, Apple TV+, Disney+, Showtime, and others.

However, I did get to the point where liking and disliking didn’t refine my recommendations further, so there is a limit to what Watchworthy can do. I also found the app to be a little lacking on the reality and nonfiction side of things. It tended to push recommendations of scripted shows, despite my having “liked” shows such as “The Great British Bake Off,” “Windy City Rehab,” and “Queer Eye,” among others.

As you find shows you like in the app’s recommendations, you can add them to the universal watchlist in the app for easy access.

  You can also create an account to save your data. Watchworthy at launch supports Apple’s private sign-in option, as well as Google, Facebook, and email.

The homepage of the app also integrates Ranker’s existing TV lists. The website has over 50,000 of these, but the app isn’t an endless scroll. Instead, it updates the home page with relevant, timely content. For example, today’s lists include “Shows for Self Quarantine,” “Shows to Distract You,” “Funniest Shows on Netflix,” “Best Family Shows on Amazon Prime,” and other round-ups.

The new app serves not only as a discovery tool for TV viewers, cord-cutters, and binge-watchers, but also as fuel for Ranker’s data collection business. Ranker licenses its data and insights to third-parties, like marketers, advertisers, researchers, developers, and service providers. However, its data isn’t focused on demographics so much as it is on “psychographics” — meaning, your tastes. Ranker isn’t asking you for private information, only what you like.

In a way, Watchworthy serves as a demo app of what can be done with Ranker’s psychographic insights, in this case, for TV viewers. But the same sort of system could be built for other categories, like music, cooking, film, travel, and more.

The company says this year it will also make its Watchworthy app available to connected devices, like Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV. It also plans to add movie recommendations and shared watchlists.

Watchworthy is a free download on iOS with Android to come. On any mobile device, it works from watchworthy.app.

[icharchivist]

Ok so I know there's theorys that Dice is from a rich family or maybe Otome's? son due to how fling posse is connected to the government; what if Dice is part of the family from the previous government? Now I know there has been little to no info on the previous gov but Stella, especially with the stuff on Dice being a king from a fallen kingdom, has been giving me ideas haha. Also fling posse might hate the gov? Like Ramuda wants to kill Otome and Gentaro seems to not like it with the whole1/2

2/2twin theory thing. But anyways those are just some of my ramblings that I thought of while listening to Stella (again) haha. Sorry if this made no sensr

______________________________________________________

Oh no no don’t apologize it’s neat i’m glad you came and told me about it!!! Hi!! welcome here overthinking about our boys!! (and wow overthinking listening to Stella is such a mood nonny ily)

But by all account i think this theory could stand just as much as him being Otome’s son, especially if we take Stella to the word yeah! 

Like yeah, the Posse seems to be really against the government in some way or another, Ramuda had expressed wanting to tear it all down (and all of humanity with it which implies already some very dark history and resentment for the government for him to be this extreme about it)(and the fact he has little to no past outside the government, that his name means “Random Number” and that apparently in the TDD Drama Tracks (only something i’ve been told by a friend so sorry if it’s not entierely accurate) he becomes extremely evasive when they discover a plot of children trafficking to someone involved in the government- yeah there might be a lot of shady things there) and Gentaro at least has the government keeping a close eye on him for a reason or another, which seems at least to be that Gentaro has some knowledge over shady elements of the government whenever he experienced them or has reasons to at least be on a watchlist. (the twin theory ofc but twin or not it’s something that Gentaro knows about the child trafficking going on that we know happened as described by the TDD drama track-)

But then we have Dice and, pardon the pun, but he seems to be Ramuda’s trumpcard by all account, his joker dare i say. I have no doubt Ramuda picked them all for a reason and so he did for Dice, and obviously him being Otome’s son would be a sort of, like, keeping Otome at bay, like waving her son in front of her to somewhat have a control over her - if it’s not that, then Dice must be still a sight that must have that strong of a message against the government. 

Dice in particular has expressed absolutly no opinion over the government, so honesty god knows what he himself might be thinking about all of this. Stella is the only dive we have on that but since it was written by Gentaro and perhaps with forshadowing of the writters we don’t know how much is something Dice “I live 100% in the present” would think, how much of his own experience actually leaked into his verse.

NOW HOWEVER just like you said, if we take Stella for its word, Dice is presented as a Fugitive, a King that had fallen, with a throne far out of reach and even if i remember well, a mention of a closed door that was the result of all the war and desolation, and the system in power, which pretty much looks a lot like what we know of Chuukiuko and what Otome’s government has instored (the motif of door/gates is still used a lot to reference this specifically government controlled section of the country after all).

So while ofc it still gives some elements for the Otome’s son theory, there are perfect arguments to be made as of him being son of the previous’s minister for exemple. It would give complete different reasons for Dice to run away, one being really of a fugitive running for his safety and would give all sort of reasons on how he would burry this specific part of his life away and even more so his whole search on “why he was kept alive” (as by stella) and “him wanting to feel alive” (as for his motto)

Imo i think Dice is definitly associated with one of the Major Power In Place in the Government, either before or after Otome’s rise to power, and that’s exactly why Ramuda had reached out for him: Dice’s presence in his team possibly passing a message that Dice isn’t even aware he’s sending. 

Him being the son of the previous government would make more grim how he accepts what befall his way in a way, as in a way, he would already have lost everything and would have been in danger if he hadn’t given up everything - which, again as you point out, fits a LOT his verse in Stella. 

The Otome’s theory is still very compeeling to me though bc i do end up caring more giving a face to his potential parent ahah, and there would be implications of Dice distancing himself from his mother on his own terms, and there could still be still a conflict in Dice as well, his family is responsible for what happened now with the government. However it does make that you have to reach in his verse in Stella than the alternative that can work quite litteraly if he was the son of the opposition. 

All we really have about the opposition tbh is the brutal execution Otome did on live TV by killing the previous prime minister in the TDD’s manga, which again can feed this theory especially in regard to Stella (”the throne is behind a monochrome window” that Dice says, everytime i hear “monochrome” i think of a picture, or an image, a TV perhaps - quite litterally that could refer to this Coup d’Etat, but again there’s room for it to be about both Otome or the Opposition - it is just FAR grimmer if it is the Opposition bc it would imply seeing his parent being killed on live TV and oof. That said that would raise a whole tone of concerning questions as of how Dice was willing to bet his life for a hypmic if his father indeed died because of it and oof. So much angst fuels for headcanons there.)

The other thing that Stella could hint at as of Dice being son of the opposition would be the fact he was “driven away” rather than leaving on his own volion - so it depends again on how litteral we should take Stella on that regard, but there is definitly a subtext there. Ofc like i said we can reach for the other theory in say, “was driven away because his morals didn’t allign anymore with his family” which is also something echoed in Stella “ Is the ideal belief the poison that leads to death?” but there’s also nothing that contradicts him being the son of the Opposition with that either. (it depends if you think it’s “he always had those beliefs via his family and it became a danger when Otome got into power” or “he couldn’t even face his own mother anymore”. Honestly any takes bring to angst and i’m IN for it).

In the end what it changes is whenever Ramuda is using him as a reminder to Otome than she didn’t destroy the full previous government, or almost a threat/hostage by keeping her son (after all she doesn’t need to know the details of his alliance with Ramuda and Ramuda could use it all that much- and since he’s in friendly terms with Dice it’s not like Otome could do anything for/against Dice without Dice to be suspicious). Either way i do feel like Dice would much more likely be a Taunt against the Government, as far as Ramuda’s goal is concerned. 

I still feel strongly for him being Otome’s son bc the Drama™ but you’re entierely right that the subtext about him being perhaps the son of the opposition is there in Stella and can be supported by pieces of canon. The thing is that most of the elements we have mostly hint at “Dice is linked to a Powerful part of the Government” so every clues can be used as a double edged sword, but still there. And all of those clues still hints at a LOT of Drama.

And I love Drama. 

So yeah I really like both theories and tbh I didn’t even think much about the possibility of him being the opposition’s son before that so that was a cool exercice to try to think about it, and it does bring a very cool alternative storyline. I think i’d be content with both personally but i really dig them both.

So thank you so much for sharing :3c i truly appreciate and that’s a tons of fun! 

Thanks for the message ;O

[clockworkopera]

LoS (Part 6): Predictions- Who Dies and Final Ships

Disclaimer: My theories are built not just on the Dark Artifices, but from all the previous books as a whole, and will contain SPOILERS if you haven’t read them. These ideas are based solely on book canon.

(edit: This was written before the release of LoS. Some ideas may be a little out of date...still interesting!)

The chapter titles of LoS are all lines from the poem Dreamland by Edgar Allan Poe. (I reposted the poem in my blog and the website Shmoop does an excellent line by line technical analysis for the truly dedicated) If it is a real place and not symbolic then it is a hard to find land in Faerie that crosses paths with the dead. Theory: The Lord of Shadows is the ruler of this obscure kingdom.

The Unseelie King may call himself the Lord of Shadows, but without the Black Volume, I don’t think he has the power to back that claim, like Gwyn without his cloak or the Queen without her crown. It’s probably why he put that line in the Faerie rhyme: “To regain what you have lost, Find the black book at any cost.” He wants the book so he may rule in truth…

PREDICTIONS ON WHO DIES:

Warning: These picks will be controversial—but not all I think will stay dead (will explain as I go)

Kieran is being held in Faerie for the crime of killing another Fae. I think he killed Iarlath when he was done questioning him in Lady Midnight--#1

I think some of the Centurions are going to die, maybe Jon Cartwright #2. And where the Centurions are, the Inquisitor won’t be far behind—Robert Lightwood #3. (Mostly I picked him because I have some great fan fic ideas and I need his character to be alive for them. I’m just waiting for all my well laid plans to get wrecked—I know that is not a sound basis for a pick, but there it is)  

I had thought long on Diana, but decided against her because I know we’re going to hear more from her POV: I think she will be revealed as the transgender character and a possible ship match with Gwyn. It just seems like her character has too much of a role to play to be killed so early, but she is still on my watchlist.

Catarina Loss is also high on my watchlist. There is a lot of rumbling with the rise of the Cohort and she is a warlock. And she also was teaching at the Scholomance which puts her running with the Centurions. She also has a history, background with Diana, Magnus, Tessa and Simon. Her death would cause a lot of ripples throughout. We readers are vested in her so her death wouldn’t be an arbitrary character, but would matter, and affect the future decisions on all of the above.

I think the Seelie Queen will die, but that won’t be until the third book. The title of Number 3 is Queen of Air and Darkness, so she would have to be alive for at least part of it.

That leaves my final pick:

Cassandra Clare said the ending would be ‘brutal’. The only reason I came up with the following is because I asked myself who is the one character that can’t die, coupled with the statistical improbability of seven children of one Shadowhunter family surviving into early adulthood. I worked from there. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT A BLACKTHORN DYING GO NO FURTHER. (Although I don’t think he’ll stay dead)

Which Blackthorn cannot die?

Ty

The absolute and most brutal.

His death would absolutely crush everyone. He has such a unique and amazing relationship with everyone in the family that his death would have the most repercussions on every character. I have an awful image of them standing over his dead body. Helen. Mark. Julian. Livvy. Dru. Tavvy. And Emma. Kit.

And I think that Emma who believes in the Parabatai curse will think it’s the reason he died.

But, hope is not yet lost, because that Pandora’s box of hers will get smashed.

There is general fandom consensus that when Emma stabbed the Black Volume something happened to her. LM (597) Emma: “She shrieked with pain as what felt like a bolt of electricity went up her arm. She heard Malcolm laugh, and a wave of energy shot from his outstretched fingers, slamming into her body. She was lifted and hurled backward, magic tearing through her…”

Malcolm: “Oh, that was precious…That was the hand of God, Emma!”

What had the Black Volume done to her? Her chest felt as if something heavy had been rolled onto it, and her arm burned and ached.

Theory: It’s two-fold. CC has hinted that Cortana has some wicked capabilities and some magic of its own. I think the power of the Black Volume bound itself to Cortana much like Clary did heavenly fire to Heosphoros. But, I think what she was feeling was a sympathetic magic where she will become the only one who can wield Cortana’s power.

I think seeing Ty dead (or any of the children, and of course Julian for that matter) will shatter open that box and she’ll try to bring him back by wielding Cortana in some instinctual way. But, it wouldn’t turn out like how she thought, because the power would then turn Ty into the Lord of Shadows and he’d be half alive, half dead ruling this kingdom of Dreamland and then Cassandra Clare could keep us hanging there for two year. 2 YEARS, Gah!

It would be a good set up for QoAD. Emma wouldn’t be able to leave Julian until they found a way to get Ty back. A search for him would echo the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice. They would need to go to the Seelie Queen to pass through her lands, maybe need some other favors—which leads back to her Crown. Then, my thought would be when they got there they couldn’t return with Ty unless there was someone to replace him.

My first incarnation: In a gallant move of self-sacrifice and to prove his love to Mark, Kieran would volunteer thus becoming the new Lord of Shadows. Maybe he’d think he and Mark could then be together after he died, because this Dreamland seems like a place for the dead. But, then CC confessed that she isn’t the author to read if you don’t like the idea of Triads and knowing that is a possibility I’ve revised my theory. I think she’s going to have a lot of fun exploring messy relationships full of cultural differences, human emotions like jealousy and weaving different strengths and weaknesses of three personalities into one maybe (maybe not) congruous relationship. And that doesn’t even include what Cristina’s mother will say—  

I still think that someone will have to replace Ty, but I’m now voting for Gwyn. He’s got work experience on his resume and the hunt doesn’t allow women and if he is courting Diana it would be an incredibly tender gesture for him to offer her a kingdom to be his queen.

I write drafts, then sit on it for a week before posting, in case I have any other weird ideas. I was annoyed to have these, because I thought I might have this wrapped up:

Alt Theory: Malcolm Fade died while using of a mega necromantic spell from the Black Volume. What if the necromancy was enough to preserve his life and he is now the Lord of Shadows? There is Annabel still to consider. He would really want to find her. And, poor Emma—all she would have wanted was to kill her parents’ murderer and instead she gave him a promotion…

Alt Theory: Lord of Shadows is a title and we assume is a he, because of ‘lord’. But, if that power went through Cortana and Emma now wields it, could she then be the Lord of Shadows. (This goes back to Part 5 Theories) If she were a descendent of James Herondale whose warlock talent was becoming a shadow puts her as a prime candidate and with Magnus’ spell of forgetting and the belief that she is a ‘normal’ Shadowhunter could hide her from everyone, even herself.

FINAL SHIP PREDICTIONS:

Emma and Julian—with the irony that the Parabatai bond is the only thing that gives them enough power to fight whatever battles come in Fae, but when they return to the mortal world the Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters are waiting for them—eek!

Mark, Kieran and Cristina Triad—messy hot relationship

Livvy and Diego—but she’s only 15, and he’s 18/19, so they should be on a very slow track to dating. If Jaime turns Emma and Julian into the Clave I think she’ll blame Diego.

Ty and Kit—go for it! There is a lot of talk about Livvy/Kit parabatai possibility, but I think Julian will nix any idea of that given his own experience.

Dru will be one half of the main characters for Wicked Powers. She’ll be about eighteen then, and might have a latent warlock power too.

2 YEARS! Gah!

***Then you do know that by the time Cassandra Clare’s done with the Wicked Powers she’ll will be wondering about the futures of warlock Max and Rafael and Tavvy.

I don’t think she’ll be able to help herself :)

(Part 7 is coming, but it’s more random ideas about characters throughout the series—not necessarily Lord of Shadows specific—I have some good ideas on Tessa, some wacky ones on Church and few others. If you have any questions or thoughts please contact me! Then I’m officially done until the release!)

[bwprowl]

It’s a bit of a slow news week as we inch towards the twin titanic reveal-fests of Winter WonFes and Toy Fair, but we’ve still got a few things to check out, with superstar Sentai and Russian-style Rangers from either side of the pond, plus some surprising new Marvel drops. I’ll also mull over available Transformers bootlegs, plus a recent release from a line I haven’t looked at enough. All that and an adorable, Nendorable Korra-ble, here on Tuesday Night Toys!

New Stuff: Cosmonauts

A new blockbuster movie means an explosion of new, previously-unheard-of merchandise for the source material. I saw it with Transformers back when the first film came out in 2007, and it’s set to happen again with Power Rangers and that movie next month that I’m still patently unsure about. In amongst all the new Funko Pops and plush toys and other collectible gewgaws, we’ll be getting this bizarre little piece: A set of Russian-style nesting dolls designed after the five original Rangers, plus Alpha 5! PPW Toys is putting these out, and as far as esoteric shelf-space hoggers go, you could do a lot worse. I hope for more fun stuff like this to come out of the renewed Power Rangers licensing blitz this movie will be leading, for better or for worse.

On the other side of the Power Coin, if you thought you could escape my pre-premier Kyuranger hype even here, then you thought way wrong. Pre-orders for the toys of the newly-numerous Super Sentai series have been steadily going up, headlined by the main mecha: The shamelessly Scramble-City-style KyurenOh! 

Boasting the unique-to-Sentai ability for each individual unit (here called ‘Voyagers’) to form either an arm or a leg around the red Ranger’s main Shishi Voyager, this ‘bot will start with an unprecedented number of configurations, especially including the four extra Voyagers that are sold separately from the main set. And how cool do Hebitsukai Voyager and Tenbin Voyager look?

Surprising no one, I think I’m going all-in on the mecha on this one, but as with Zyuohger, I’ll be sticking with the smaller, cheaper, but more posable mini-pla versions. Assisting in this is that AmiAmi is now offering those in single sets, for half the price of the full boxes you had to buy before. I’m glad I already got my pre-order in, since they’re all sold out already, natch.

Some new Marvel Legends figures were surprisingly revealed a little while ago. These would be the 3 ¾” Legends that were rebranded from the Marvel Universe line, and they’ll be filling out the Marvel Cinematic corners of your smaller display space. Looks like there will be at least three two packs all based on the most recent movies in the line: Dr. Strange with an astral projection of himself, Star-Lord and Yondu, and the current iteration of Spider-Man with the Vulture he’ll be fighting in that Homecoming movie. The Guardians of the Galaxy set is the most appealing to me, of course (look at Yondu’s goofy grin, he looks great!), but I really want that Spider-Man movie to be good, so if it is, I’ll likely get that one as well.

Wishlist: Lockoffs

Transformers has always been a line that attracted countless counterfeit versions of its wares, from dime-store knockoffs to convincingly-recreated G1 bootlegs. More recently though, a different variety has emerged, as Chinese eBay accounts and other somewhat-shady places offer tweaked fake versions of relatively-recent molds. You see these all over the place searching for TFs on eBay; they mostly encompass the recent movie toys, either being versions in new color schemes, or upscaled with die-cast added for value. There’s of course that delightful AoE Hound with the bio that was written based on Thew, but I recently had to throw this big ol’ black Lockdown on my watchlist, because the prospect of a bigger, badder version of design I liked (from a film I otherwise didn’t) is rather appealing, and these things don’t even cost that much! Maybe I’d feel a little bad going in on a fake, but not that much, as I spend plenty on Hasbro’s Transformers already. If nothing else, these are interesting purely from a standpoint of showing all the various pillars that make money off Transformers’ selling power, whether they legitimately should or not.

Speaking of things that popped back onto my radar, the ol’ Pose Skeleton line it appears is still going strong, with plenty of playsets and even a bunch of animal and dinosaur companions for your bony buddies! These little things have always been a hoot, especially with the accessorized options you can lend them, all for pretty dang cheap. The latest expansion just-released for your flesh-challenged family is the ‘Cute Person’, a shorter, pink-tinted skelley with a cute lil’ bow headband. It’s a good excuse to add another to your skeleton hoard, even if you had a few already.

And of course, unless you were living under a rock for the past couple weeks, you know the first Yuri on Ice Nendoroid went up for pre-order.

Yes, I still need to watch this show

On Desk: Uncommon Korra

Korra from the titular The Legend Of series was a pretty unexpected release for the Nendoroid line, for being a western cartoon as well as the show having been over for almost a year and a half when the toy was first revealed (GSC tends to like to do very recent, current series for their toys). Response must have been good though, since they opened the orders from western-only to worldwide through their usual Japanese avenues (which amusingly meant I was able to order this west-focused toy of an American character for cheaper through a Japanese shop), and even added a few extra accessories to it at the last minute!

The instructions even include English. They know what they're about.

Korra does feel like GSC testing the waters with this kind of release though. Even with the extra accessories, she still feels a bit bare-bones. She has a few different arms and legs, but they're all in service of just a few different generic action poses; the 'extra mile' Nendos sometimes go towards recreating specific points of the series isn't found here. She also only has two faces, and since one is the Avatar state, she really only has the one facial expression, which is almost unheard of for this line (especially given that Korra did have quite a few memorable faces throughout the show).

Granted, the base figure itself is very nice. All the details are present and nicely-accurately conveyed at the scaled-down chibi proportions. The hand-poses she comes with in particular are nicely effective for what they are, and her little hair-dainglies can even swivel around a bit! And she can use what she has to assume a variety of cool bending-based action poses (accompanied by the extremely nice elemental accessories). The fire and water streams especially look great, and just on their own make for an unmistakable awesome desktop Korra.

The one really cool thing the toy can do is assume that aforementioned Avatar state. Swapping in the faceplate and arranging all four element effect parts around does the trick, and it's actually surprisingly easy to get it all set up (nowhere near the madness I engaged in with Chris), and looks admittedly pretty impressive when it's all done. As a display piece, this might be the best way to default to having your Korra. It's eye-catching and adorable, as a Nendoroid should be.

Overall, Korra's impressive mostly that she got made, that GSC branched out like this. She's pretty light as far as Nendoroids go, not a bad toy by any means but not outstanding either. If you're a fan of the show like I am, she's pretty much a must-own, but there's simply not enough to her to recommend as a general purchase. I am really glad I got her though, and am excited to see if GSC follows up with anything else.

You enjoy the rest of your night, everyone! Have fun, I'll be here when you get back!

[sheminecrafts]

Watchworthy’s personalized TV recommendation app will help you find your next binge

Ranker, an online publisher that turns crowdsourced lists and fan rankings into a data business, is now turning its attention to the world of streaming services. The company this week launched a new app, Watchworthy, that helps you find something new to watch across TV networks and more than 200 streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV+ and many more.

Ranker, as you may already know, is the website that always pops up in search results when you’re looking for some sort of “best of” round-up — whether that’s in entertainment, music, sports, culture, history or across other topics. On the site, online visitors can vote on their favorites in categories as broad as the “best hip-hop artists” or as niche as the “best coconut oil brands.”

Ranker’s TV lists are among its more popular categories and one that makes the most sense for turning into an app. And right now, everyone is looking for something new to watch as we’re stuck indoors due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

While there are already a number of apps promising to offer TV recommendations — like Reelgood, TV Time, Yidio and JustWatch, for example — Watchworthy’s advantage is Ranker’s data powering its recommendations. Its machine learning platform applies first-party correlation data it has amassed over a decade from one billion votes on Ranker.com. As the company explains, this makes its data more “statistically relevant.”

For example, its data indicates that “Better Call Saul” fans tend to like other gritty, dark dramas like “House of Cards,” “Ray Donovan” and “True Detective,” but also more cerebral comedies like “Nathan for You” and “High Maintenance.”

To figure out what sort of TV programs interest you, Watchworthy at first launch jumps you into a rating experience to provide it with your data. In 60 seconds, you fly through a ratings feature that uses a Tinder-like interface, where a right swipe is a “like” and a left swipe is a “dislike” (and up is “not sure”). After you thumbs up and down a selection of shows, you can begin to browse your recommendations.

In my test, this initial set of recommendations was already above average compared with some of the other apps I’ve tried. Your mileage may vary, of course, as it’s a highly personalized experience. Watchworthy may not have offered dozens of precise matches to my tastes at first, but it did remind me of several shows I had seen in passing and thought at some point I might like to try, as well as a few new discoveries.

Its suggestions are ranked by a “worthy” score that indicates the likelihood that the show is worthy of your time. You can also filter the list of recommendations by service, genre, run time and MPAA ratings.

The app got a little better after spending a little more time to like and dislike more shows and to personalize it as to which streaming services I was using. This allowed me to integrate recommendations from more sources — like HBO, Apple TV+, Disney+, Showtime and others.

However, I did get to the point where liking and disliking didn’t refine my recommendations further, so there is a limit to what Watchworthy can do. I also found the app to be a little lacking on the reality and nonfiction side of things. It tended to push recommendations of scripted shows, despite my having “liked” shows such as “The Great British Bake Off,” “Windy City Rehab” and “Queer Eye,” among others.

As you find shows you like in the app’s recommendations, you can add them to the universal watchlist in the app for easy access.

You can also create an account to save your data. Watchworthy at launch supports Apple’s private sign-in option, as well as Google, Facebook and email.

The homepage of the app also integrates Ranker’s existing TV lists. The website has more than 50,000 of these, but the app isn’t an endless scroll. Instead, it updates the home page with relevant, timely content. For example, today’s lists include “Shows For Self Quarantine,” “Shows To Distract You,” “Funniest Shows On Netflix,” “Best Family Shows On Amazon Prime” and other round-ups.

The new app serves not only as a discovery tool for TV viewers, cord-cutters and binge-watchers, but also as fuel for Ranker’s data collection business. Ranker licenses its data and insights to third-parties, like marketers, advertisers, researchers, developers and service providers. However, its data isn’t focused on demographics so much as it is on “psychographics” — meaning, your tastes. Ranker isn’t asking you for private information, only what you like.

In a way, Watchworthy serves as a demo app of what can be done with Ranker’s psychographic insights, in this case, for TV viewers. But the same sort of system could be built for other categories, like music, cooking, film, travel and more.

The company says this year it will also make its Watchworthy app available to connected devices, like Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. It also plans to add movie recommendations and shared watchlists.

Watchworthy is a free download on iOS with Android to come. On any mobile device, it works from watchworthy.app.

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