#90s crime

[volatiledebasement]

Stay strong, Lorena.

Drawn on 19-24.08.23.

[byjove]

The Italian restaurant in my mom’s hometown WAS definitely a mob front. The owner briefly served in the Italian military, immigrated to America in his twenties back in the early 70s, mysteriously had enough money to open a chain of Italian restaurants and was convicted for trafficking cocaine across the Virginia/West Virginia area and spent 15 years in prison.

My mom had worked as a waitress at the place while she was a teenager and throughout her 20s and she realized that when she was sent to the restaurant’s sister location in West Virginia in a mysteriously packed car by her mysteriously nice boss, it probably wasn’t pizza ingredients she was hauling. It was the 80s. She was a tiny, very naive, conventionally attractive church girl with no criminal record so she was the perfect unwitting drug mule.

The thing was, this restaurant and the man who operated it were locally loved. Beyond large scale organized cocaine trafficking, food was his other passion. Everyone waited anxiously for him to get out of prison and when he did this guy started a crusade against the corrupt local sheriff’s office. He started doing anti-police brutality advocacy work WHOLEHEARTEDLY. Donating to local families who had been victims and participating in local drives and awareness campaigns.

Made men usually do local charity work but the balls on this guy to take up sword and spear against shitty corrupt ineffectual law enforcement. Incredible. One thing about Appalachians is that we hate the cops and we love social agitators. This guy lived a long eventful life and died recently of natural causes and the overwhelming outpouring of love for him on Facebook was incredible, a uniting force that the town had not seen in decades, everybody was sharing their favorite stories about him and I’m sure local law enforcement was fuming.

[verityreadsbooks]

Mystery series: Mitchell and Markby

So as I discovered earlier this month that there is a new book in the series after a nearly 20 year gap, so this week’s I’ve taken the opportunity to write about Ann Granger’s 1990s cozy detective series. The Mitchell and Markby of the title are Meredith Mitchell and Alan Markby. She is a civil servant for the Foreign Office who has spent several years working abroad and he is a Detective Chief…

[spinachjuice]

All the people above 45 in my life are very excited about me watching Twin Peaks

[ultrakillblast]

BATMAN RETURNS (1992)

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern - Wild at Heart (1990)

[allwhiterain]

Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter as Tyler Durden and Marla Singer in Fight Club (1999)

[fanofspooky]

David Cronenberg’s horror movies

[texaschainsawmascara]

Thursday (1998)

[aroaceleovaldez]

completely disregarding retcons/errors from HoO, aka the series full of both internal and external inconsistency, I wanna talk about Luke cause it is literally a constantly battle in the fandom of what the hell is up with Luke. And as somebody who likes to rattle Luke around like a six year old with a headless barbie I would like people to stop yelling about misinterpreting a very simple scene after like 15 years.

So here's my breakdown. it's quite simple: Yes, when Luke was dying, he was asking if Annabeth was in love with him romantically. This has absolutely nothing to do with Luke's own feelings. Luke very explicitly did NOT love Annabeth romantically. This is established many times over. Seriously go read Demigod Diaries or something.

Luke was asking if Annabeth was in love with him because he had already caused her so much pain, he couldn't die peacefully if he knew he was about to break her heart on top of it all. He wasn't implying he had any thoughts of reciprocating it. He was just asking permission from Annabeth to die, through the lens of "Will it absolutely ruin your life right now if I kick the bucket?" because if it was going to, then he wouldn't want to. Annabeth reassured him she'd be fine if he died and he went "alright cool peace out ✌️." It was not at all related to Luke's own feelings towards Annabeth. Her opinion of him mattered, mostly in "I care if you will be hurt by this," but he did not feel romantically towards her.

Now HoO has one (1) line that implies Luke did like Annabeth, but HoO also gets Literally Everything Wrong, including making simple errors within like 3 chapters of itself, and given it is retroactive, regardless we can pretty definitively disregard it.

Also like, the meta reason for that scene, and also the Rachel scenes like two minutes later is entirely to clear the air for Percabeth to happen. Like, it's literally just to have an excuse for Annabeth go to "No I conveniently don't have any hang-ups about previous romantic feelings I didn't have that may impede me dating the protagonist" followed immediately by Rachel going "Percy btw as your secondary love interest: I am explicitly unavailable now. Go date Annabeth." Like that's the other purpose there and why those scenes follow each other at the end of TLO. It's just wrapping up loose ends for the romance subplot and confirming that the tension between Luke and Percy in Annabeth's life that Percy had built up was not real and didn't need to be further addressed.

[visucene]

for the primal fear fandom (which has been dead for the past 27 years) 🔥🔥🔥

[of-fear-and-love]

Angela Bassett in Strange Days (1995)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Natural Born Killers (1994) directed by Oliver Stone

[skillzyo]

not to be controversial on main, but I actually really enjoyed season 2 of Arcane and I especially loved Caitlyn's arc.

The way they showed how her grief changed her directly after her mother's death with no time to process or mourn??? beautiful. The way she felt responsible in her own way because she didn't want to hurt Vi at the deranged tea party by killing her sister? Spectacular. Latching on to anger and hatred because it's easier than dealing with the grief of her loss and trauma? Brilliant.

And Ambessa capitalizing on that? Filling the chasm that Caitlyn's losses left behind? Delicious.

But as time goes on, she realizes the person she's becoming. Now that the grief of her mother's loss has scarred over, she becomes aware of just how much she's changed and the toll it has taken on her. The scene with Maddie, where she keeps shrugging off the physical intimacy (outside of the sex they just had), shows this inability to accept affection because she knows she doesn't deserve it. (I'm sure there's also Vi in the back of Caitlyn's mind as well).

She actively challenges Ambessa's decisions in regards to Zaunites in Act II. But there's also this drive to make her proud as well because Ambessa has that affect on people (Ambessa is a fantastic character in this regard and I love her).

And by Act III, she has accepted what she has done in her grief and anger and hatred. She hates what she is and what she's done. She knows there's no way to take any of it back.

So she moves forward.

She gives Vi the chance to escape with Jinx, knowing she'll be alone again afterwards. She puts herself in the thick of the battle against Ambessa's forces in the plan to stop Viktor. Even with a gun to her head followed by a knife in her side, she never stops fighting. Not just for Piltover now, but for Zaun, too. In the fight against Ambessa, she sees what needs to be done to give Mel the upper hand and she knows what it will cost her.

She does it anyway.

Iconic.

Caitlyn will never be who she was before the loss of her mother and she knows nothing will erase what she did in the aftermath.

But she will always keep moving forward.

[ultrakillblast]

Todd McFarlane's SPAWN (1997)

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Patricia Arquette as Alabama Whitman - True Romance (1993)