#Death Comes to Marlow

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]

Mystery Review: Death Comes To Marlow

Death Comes To Marlow — Robert Thorogood Judith, Suzie, and Becks are back—only this time, they find themselves embroiled in a classic locked room mystery. Unsurprisingly, there’s plenty of suspicious behavior, motives, and suspects to go around, as the murder occurred the day before the wedding of one of Marlow’s great and good.  I still really love this series.  The snark, mystery, and humor…

[thefangirlphenomenon]

is it just me or does the sequel rarely live up to how good and expertly crafted the first book in a series was? it usually feels like the first book was a labour of love, a frail newborn that the author handfed and nurtured while they just spat out the 2nd book with no regard for the characters or the story.

[living400lbs]

[L]Ike nearly everyone raised in the UK, she knew that a swan “can break your arm,” and she also guessed there’d be something unedifying about a completely naked seventy-eight-year-old woman wrestling with a swan.

Because ...[as] was always the case when she went for a swim from the boathouse at the bottom of her garden, Judith wasn’t wearing a swimming costume. Of course, she wasn’t. They were damp, dank things that clung to your body and ruined the true feeling of freedom swimming gave you.

From Death Comes To Marlow by Robert Thorogood

[drackiszunk]

41st book of 2023!!!

I love my Thursday Murder Club but I do adore the Marlow Murder Club.

I NEED A CROSSOVER!!!

[laurel-michaela-connor]

Death Comes to Marlow

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[plumdonutsv]

oh i forgot to say that i read the second Marlow Murder Club book, Death Comes to Marlow! it was good! sure maybe the killer was obvious but the way the story played out really made me think about other suspects. it was a fun read. it was almost as good as the first book. i’m excited to watch the series on pbs soon.

the “obvious” killer in this story was handled soooo much better here than in Lavender House bc why would you make the only straight character in the house the murderer?? like you can guess who did it when you meet the character and then the rest of the book isn’t really hinting at someone else idk

[rebeccareviews]

Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood

Robert Thorogood’s Death Comes to Marlow is a fun, well-written, and intriguing mystery with excellent characters. This is the second book in the series and, although it works as a standalone, it would be much more enjoyable if you’ve read the first.

Our favourite skinny-dipping and crossword-setting septuagenarian Judith finds herself in the middle of a classic country house locked room mystery! The filthy rich Sir Peter Bailey is a prominent member of the Marlow community. Although they have never met, he suddenly invites Judith to his house for a celebration the day before his wedding. She senses something isn’t right and decides to attend. During the party, there’s a horrific crash from inside the house and the Marlow Murder Club discover Sir Peter crushed under a cabinet in his locked study. The police believe that the death is accidental. However, the Marlow Murder Club sense something afoot and they’re on the case!

This is a solidly entertaining and excellently-paced book! I love the mature writing and cosy village setting. The humour is wonderfully done with some truly hilarious moments. I also love the book’s heartwarming moments, great insight, and depth. The intricate mystery is well-crafted with numerous viable suspects, some great red herrings, and excellent twists. There are so many unique and well-written suspects that you’ll be changing your mind about everything till the big reveal! I figured out some aspects of the mystery early on but I do like that I couldn’t guess everything because there are a few great surprises. The big reveal comes together quite nicely and logically. However, there are a few minor details to the elaborate mystery that don’t wholly make sense but they don’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I also like the light secondary mystery and its relation to the main one. But, I do wish there was less focus on it or that it contributed more significantly to the plot.

I just love this unique and wonderfully written group of women! Their realistically portrayed friendship is my favourite part of this series. I am also really pleased with the organic individual character development in this book. Brilliant Judith is a quirky hoot. I love her intelligent (and nosey!) sleuthing. Prim and proper Vicar’s wife Becks really shines in this installment! She contributes to the sleuthing in such unique and funny ways! I love her little side mystery and how perfectly it fits her character! However, the one weak spot in this book is Suzie. Although I like her enthusiasm for her dogs and her radio show comes hilariously into play, she is a little too oblivious and bumbling and not in the fun ways!

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this book in exchange for an honest review.

🧩🧩🧩🧩 out of 5 puzzle pieces!

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood

I enjoyed the previous book in this series and I was excited to see what this band of amateur detectives would dig up on another case. These books are cosy mysteries set in the beautiful Buckinghamshire town of Marlow, which I have been to and would love to revisit at some point. Walking around it in these books has proved to be great fun!

Judith, Suzie and Becky have had a relaxing time in the sleepy town of Marlow, since all the excitement of a string of murders the previous year. Wealthy local man Sir Peter Bailey is about to get married to his nurse Jenny and he’s throwing a party to celebrate. During the party, a loud crash rings out and Peter is discovered to have been tragically killed by an apparent fallen cabinet. Judith and her friends suspect that something is amiss and that this couldn’t have been an accident. But did anyone want Peter dead? 

I really like the humour in these books. Like Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, it is very British, so I’m not sure how well it would translate in other countries. However, it has a certain quirky charm that I think a lot of readers would enjoy. I think I would have liked a little more comedy though!

Judith and Becky both tend to give lengthy explanations of their thought patterns. This can get a little irritating and I definitely found myself asking them to get to the point faster than they did. I’m not sure why but I did find Judith more annoying in this book than in the first one. She seemed to be a bit of an interfering busy-body rather than a genuinely curious old lady, as she came across before. I still enjoyed her character but her flaws definitely showed up more clearly.

Becks is a typically kind, caring housewife with an incessant need to look after people and ensure that they’re OK. She immediately jumps into mum mode as Jenny grieves her fiance and I thought that this was very true to her character. Judith and Suzie start to get suspicious of Becks’ behaviour at a certain point in the book and it had me worried that she might be involved in some unsavoury business. Thorogood is a great at presenting multiple leads and I was certainly left with a fair bit to figure out throughout the narrative.

There are several points in the book where our male author makes reference to the fact that women are overlooked or discriminated against by men. It is unusual to see this mentioned multiple times in a book written by a man because it’s not assumed that it’s an issue that many men think about. Although these comments were all present at appropriate times, I don’t know whether it’s possible for the author to really understand the full weight of what he’s saying in lines like this. The story would have been the same without these lines, so I’m not sure he needed to comment on women’s experiences for the sake of the book.

Death Comes To Marlow is a fun, twisty sequel to The Marlow Murder Club. However, I think the conclusion was pretty farfetched in this one. I have also had my fill of Judith now, so I’m not confident I’ll pick up any future books in the series. However, fans of Richard Osman will almost certainly enjoy this lesser known, small town Britain series of cosy mysteries!

[ithoughtwedkiss]

i really fucked it up this time

@c4rcin0gen's tumblrrompa oc blog <3

tags:

#got a case of a love bipolar ♧ isoko shimizu

#the angry death of every hopeful thought ♧ katsu fujiwara

#delaware malewife ♧ marlowe valentine

#catboygirlthing ♧ yami beok

#mike schmidt kinnie ♧ june ivanov

#no no youre not you i am ♧ chiyoko saihara

#i will not hesitate to bark at you ♧ qimmiq

#i stabbed a kid when i was 15 ♧ kazahana suzuki

#days swiftly come and go ♧ kendrick millers

#what am i dying for ♧ kaguya suzuki

#the animals within me grew tails and talons ♧ aonani keahi

[secondstar-acorn]

Can you imagine what the average Teen High student probably thinks of Scary?

First, this girl and her band release an (admittedly banger) song fucking ripping into school darling Holly Smith, that girl who got crushed by a vending machine. And she makes FUN of her death in the song???? AND calls the song “Dead and Gone”????? It’s so Not Okay?????

Then, a few months later, other school darling Erica Drippins reveals on her true crime podcast that Scary Marlowe straight-up murdered the principal???

And THEN, you hear that that weird mascot kid’s house caught on fire and, oh yeah, Scary fucking Marlowe was seen at the crime??? And barely two hours later she’s posing with the creepy eldritch mayor she yelled at weeks ago, getting paid a shit ton of money for an “ice cream fundraiser” that the school definitely isn’t running????

It goes quiet for a bit, UNTIL Scary Marlowe gets sponsored by RED BULL for….doing the ice bucket challenge and a backflip. While acting really, REALLY weird. Oh, and she mentions that the weird mascot kid is her husband??? It’s unclear if she’s joking

Oh yeah and then she fUCKING GOES TO SPACE WITH WEIRD MASCOT KID AND GUMTOUCHER PISSFOOT AND JOKER KID AND the incredibly cool and popular anime teen!!!!!

So at this point, she’s definitely killed at least one person, maybe two, possibly committed arson, gone to space, and entered a polyamorous marriage with the weirdest amalgamation of people in school.

It dies down for a bit. UNTIL. She and her husbands (?) and a bunch of adults show up at the career fair and the FBI AND THE MAYOR COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND ATTACK THEM???? And then the Family Guy cast is there??? And a giant dog flies in and starts wailing on people??? And the dog. The dog bites off the Mayor’s arm, and some random old guy fucking PUNCHES HER HEAD OFF OF HER BODY. And then they all fly out on the dog!!!!!

And that’s the last time anyone sees Scary for an unspecified amount of time, so. Scary is a polyamorous murderer/arsonist/astronaut wanted by the FBI???

I mean the gossip at Teen High must be off the charts

[lorephobic]

the thing about philip marlowe is that he’ll meet a woman he likes and describe her like “she has great legs and a great pair of tits to match” but when he meets a man he likes he describes him like “he has captivating violet eyes and red hair that glints gold in the sunlight. (it is night when he meets this man) to him, i admit for the first time that i am terrified of dying. he holds my hand and tells me that he knows.”

philip marlowe can kiss as many women as he wants, but the way that he talks about men is unparalleled

[violetswritingg]

Main Masterlist

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imagines

Coming soon!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Series

Twisters

Thunderstruck

Tyler Owens x OFC!

Description: When cowgirl meets cowboy after a year of no-contact and chaos ensues during storm season!

Rating: M (Mentions of blood and death in Tornadoes and storms alike, angst and loss of loved ones, car accidents, Tornado aftermath, and injury to characters, slight age gap (5 years))

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 (Coming soon)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Young Justice

Canary Cry

Robin/Nightwing (Dick Grayson) x OFC!

Description: Her violence was silent. Until it wasn't.

"I'm fine."

"Fine is just another word for drowning."

Rating T-M (mentions of blood, child abuse, mental health, cannon situations of violence and the like. Loss of parents, hard of hearing/deaf character, poorly written fight scenes lol)

Act-One

0: Creation

1: He Left

2: Birthday's and Nightmares

3: Drop-Zone A

4: Drop-Zone B

5: Disappointment

6: School'd

7: Trash Go Boom

8: Home

9: Infiltrator

10: Outfiltrated

11: Truces and Text messages

12: Denial

13: Downtime

Act two

14: Bereft

15: Mortal Wounds

16: Home Invasion

17: Alpha Male pt.1

18: Alpha Male pt.2

19: Plant Subterfuge

20: Revelation

21: To be determined

22: To be determined

23: To be determined

24: To be determined

25: To be determined

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Titans

Only in Darkness

Jason Todd x OFC!

Description:

"Only in Darkness can you see the stars."

Or

Marlowe Knight stumbling upon a girl prophesied to end the world and going on the adventure of a life time.

Rating: M (Blood, cannon typical violence, sibling rivalry, scars, torture, trauma, angsttttt)

0.5

1: A New Chapter

2: Crime Scenes and Cafés

3: Dodged Calls

4: Cop Killer

5: To The Rescue

6: Blueberry Pancakes and Rooftop Memories

7: Phone Calls

8: Panic and Motel Conversations

9: Old Friends

10: Second Chances

11: Leaving

12: Nuclear Family Drama

13: On Edge

14: Different Places

15: On The Move

16: Training Season

17: Seriously? These Guys Again?

18: Chicago, She-cago

19: The Three Musketeers

20: TBD

21: TBD

22: TBD

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Peacemaker

Stargazer

Adrian Chase x OFC!

Description:

Back in 1939 the Court of Owls set out to create the first Talon, they called this initiative the Ghost protocol. Their product? everything they ever wanted in a solider for their nefarious schemes to keep their power over Gotham City.

Roberta Harris, Bobbie if you don't want to get shot somewhere important, never wanted this life. A 'criminal' to the world and a legend in the world of spy shit and black ops project's. The bomb in her head keeps her compliant with Waller's demands until Project Starfish wins her her freedom. What will she do now?

Or

A world in which an elderly lady moves to a small town in Washington state to get away from the superhero bullshit only to get pulled back in against her will. Growing along the way as a result.

Rating: M (For obvious reasons, it's Peacemaker)

1: Freedom

2: TBD

3: TBD

4: TBD

5: TBD

6: TBD

7: TBD

8: TBD

9: TBD

10: TBD

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Invincible

Valkyrie

Mark Grayson x OFC!

Description: In which two superpowered teens meet and fall in love amongst blood, death, and betrayal

Rating: M (Canon typical violence, betrayal, mental health issues, abandonment issues, child neglect, angsttttt)

Too Good To Be True

Carnage

Aftermath

Attacked From All Sides

Outer space

Nightmare

Burial Plot

Compromise

Shit Show

Shit Show pt.2

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

---------------------------------------------------------------

More coming soon!

[living400lbs]

For all that she’d enjoyed the drama of the day, she still spent most of her time on her own, and being surrounded by dozens of people for so long had been exhausting. She just wanted to get home.

From Death Comes To Marlow by Robert Thorogood

[forthegothicheroine]

How Other Great Detectives Would Solve the Riddler Murders

A series I do sometimes. This is based on The Batman (2022). I will be assuming that none of these universes have already established superheroes and supervillains unless it's also in that canon.

Sam Vimes: The Watch as a whole might solve the case, but Vimes is going to be in the wrong headspace. Carcer was bad enough as playful serial killers go, but a serial killer who liked Sam Vimes and wanted to be his best buddy? I think that would make Vimes need his own stay in Arkham.

Sam and Peter: This one is my favorite, it works so horribly well! The Riddler, having been a huge fan of American Vandal, addresses his messages to these two teenage goobers (and it is in fact in the form of vandalism.) Selina ends up saving their lives due to secondhand embarassment when she sees them trying to interview Carmine Falcone about whether he was on any Gothamite subreddits. (Oswald Cobblepot was happy to talk to them about it!) It all comes down to whether the pressure of stopping a serial killer causes the boys to bloom or break, and I'd like to hope it would be the former.

Phryne Fisher: I totally get why the Riddler would fixate on and write letters to Phryne, she's a very good person to fixate on and write letters to! (I've often said she's like if Catwoman were Batman.) Phryne sleeps with Selina and gets surprisingly flirtatious with Oswald. Having already taken down a cocaine ring, she knows enough to honeypot her way into the lower floor of the Iceberg, and very narrowly avoids death at the hands of Falcone. She can solve riddles easily enough, though I don't know if she'd put them together in time to stop the flooding of the city. I'll call this success with a similar casualty rate to Batman's.

Sammy Keyes: This one is a real dick move on the Riddler's part. Addressing your serial killer messages to a tween girl who'd been involved in catching other criminals, thus revealing she's living in an apartment illegally and potentially getting her taken away by social services? It's absolutely something he would do to make a broader social point, but still it's a serious dick move. I think Sammy is way out of her depth here but I want her to succeed because I love the idea of subsequent Sammy Keys books having recurring characters that include the one cop slightly sympathetic to her, the junior high mean girl, and the serial killer who sends her cryptic letters from incarceration.

L: I just know that somehow this is going to involve Edward Nasthon, Forensic CPA, being on the team to catch the Riddler and him and L having a vaguely but unconsumatedly homoerotic dance between friend and enemy. I don't think he'd want to kill L, though, since he'd rather have him alive to acknowledge him as the smartest coolest guy ever, so I'll give L the edge here.

Jane Marple: No matter how I twist it, I just can't see a scenario in which the Riddler would send serial killer messages to Miss Marple. Instead, I think Edward Nashton would just meet her at a tea shop, they'd have a friendly conversation about the novel she's reading, and then she'd call up the police and tell them she's found the Riddler.

Columbo: This isn't a great setup for Columbo, since his method of detection is all about catching people in their lies, which is hard to do with a killer who is a nobody and who keeps to the shadows. He would definitely put Falcone away in the course of the investigation, but I don't know if that's enough to stop the grander scheme in play. If he does catch him, though, he would stop the flood because Edward Nashton would be SO vulnerable to casual conversations about hypothetical approaches to crime.

Philip Marlowe: I think Marlowe would kind of work his way backwards here. He'd get deep into the grime of Gotham, end up stopping a plot to flood the city, follow that up by an investigation into the mob and unconsummated sexual tension with Selina, just barely escape getting murdered by Falcone, get hit on the head by Cobblepot and have hallucinations involving penguins with umbrellas, then finally catch Edward Nashton, the petty little nobody who killed people to make himself feel like somebody.

Dale Cooper: This is a good case for Cooper, lots of subplots that lead into other subplots, nothing overtly supernatural but a vague general feeling of curses and doom. He would find deeper meaning in all the coded riddles that pointed to dark truths about the universe, topped off with dreams of cats and penguins doing his taxes. I sure hope the Riddler is willing to wait for all that before flooding the city, because Coop works at his own damn pace.

Hercule Poirot: I can see Poirot fitting in to the art deco Gotham of the animated series, but the modernist urban grime of the 2021 film is viscerally unpleasant to imagine him in. He could solve the riddles and aid the police, certainly, but more than any of the other detectives, my mind is rebelling against my attempts to imagine these people in the same room at the same time.

Sam Spade: Selina Kyle hires him to help get her friend out of a jam at the same time as Cobblepot hires him to get a few murders discreetly solved before the cops get too nosy, and then Falcone tries to have him whacked when he gets too close on both accounts. The Riddler would take him completely by surprise, but I'm having so much fun imagining Edward Nashton looking up at him with big Peter Lorre eyes and babbling about what crime really means that I'll allow him to at least stick around for that. I think he can get out of this still alive, but it would be a close call.

Kinsey Milhone: Why her, she wonders? Sure, she's a detective, but she's hardly a household name. She goes through all her files to see if this could be connected to anything she's ever worked on, and lo and behold, back when she was an insurance fraud investigator, they always worked with a forensic CPA named Edward Nashton. Now, what could have ever become of that guy...

Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes either immediately solves this or fails utterly, and it all comes down to how quickly you think he could decode things using a computer.

[the-breath-in-air]

9 Queer Movies from the 1990s You May Not Have Heard Of

It's New Years, which means it's time for lists. And while everyone else is doing 'top X of 2023,' I've decided to list 9 queer movies from the 1990s. Why? Because I wanna. Plus, in discussions of representation, I often see folks talk about it with a heavy focus on mainstream 'Hollywood' produced movies, which leads folks to talk as though progress has been linear. As if, in the past there was no/'bad' queer representation and now there is 'good' representation. But of course it's not that simple. Plenty of amazing queer movies were produced in the past decades...they were just indie movies and thus difficult to find in a world prior to Netflix and Mubi and whatnot. But now we have streaming services, so allow me to share some of my favorites from the before times (specifically the 1990s).

Without further ado....here is an alphabetical list of queer movies from the 90s you may not have heard of (especially if you're under 30).

--

Beautiful Thing (1996) (dir. Hettie Macdonald)

Before there was Heartstopper, there was Beautiful Thing. It's a story about two gay teens, one sporty and one very much not sporty...and about how they deal with pressure to come out and pressure to hide who they are. It's a very sweet coming of age story, really. However, unlike Heartstopper, in Beautiful Thing the economic class of the protagonists plays an important role in the story (the characters all live on a counsel estate in London). The characters stories are nearly as much about them being working class as it is about the two main character being gay. It's one of the first movies I ever saw about gay teens, and I loved it. I still get a wistful smile every time I hear Mama Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music." (cw for parental abuse)

--

Edward II (1991) (dir. Derek Jarman)

The real Edward II was King of England for 20 years in the 14th century. At the end of the 16th century, Christopher Marlowe wrote a play about Edward's reign and eventual downfall. In 1991, Derek Jarman streamlined Marlowe's play and brought all the homosexual subtext between Edward and Gaveston way out front. In the film, Edward II is in prison and reflects on the events which have led him to that point. The trouble begins when Edward takes the throne and brings his exiled lover, Gaveston, back to England. All around them the rest of the aristocracy (including Edward's wife) conspire to bring Gaveston down. The movie itself is anachronistic (set in 1991), with minimal sets and costume, and staged a lot like a play. A lot of the dialogue is right out of Marlowe's play, though there are some changes to the story (notably at the end). It's honestly my favorite Derek Jarman movie, and frankly one of my favorite movies, full stop. (cw for blood, animal corpses, violent death)

--

Fire (1996) (dir. Deepa Mehta)

Fire is the first film in the Elements Trilogy written and directed by Deepa Mehta. Each film in the trilogy is about different characters in India, with the connection between the three being thematic rather than plot or character. Fire is about two Indian women, Radha and Sita, who form a bond through their struggles living within a traditional "joint-family" (i.e. a family where all extended family live together and all money and resources are shared). The women in this family have very little agency and this film explores how the two main characters navigate through it. The men in this film are also repressed by the social structure in which they live, and this film spends some time looking at that as well. It's a film about queer desire between women living under patriarchy. (All the movies on this list are available on streaming services in the US, except Fire. However, I was able to find it uploaded to a random YouTube channel) (cw for someone catching on fire, brief domestic violence (a slap), and non-consensual kissing)

--

Happy Together (1997) (dir. Wong Kar-wai)

In Happy Together, two men from Hong Kong travel to Argentina and eventually get stuck there when they run out of money and are unable to return home. The relationship between these two men is very tumultuous, with a lot of arguing and breaking up and getting back together. It's one of the first movies I saw in which queer folks have, just, regular ol' relationship drama - exasperated by the regular ol' struggles of life. (i cant remember if there are any content warnings i should put here; it's been a few years since i've seen it)

--

Lilies (1996) (dir. John Greyson)

Lilies is a Canadian film in which a prisoner requests a bishop come to the prison to hear the prisoner's last confession. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the prisoners have something else in mind when they begin staging a play. It turns out the bishop and prisoner knew each other as teens, and the play is about the events in their lives that led up to the prisoner being put on trial. So you end up with a play-within-a-play (or rather a play-within-a-movie). The film weaves between the production staged in the prison and the memory of the events in a really fluid way. All the prisoners portray their characters in the 'memory' sections, which lends itself to some really great moments in the prison sections. And at the heart of this memory/story is a queer love story. (cw for parental abuse, murder, fire, and suicide)

--

The Living End (1992) (dir. Gregg Araki)

This is a film about two young gay men who are diagnosed HIV positive. Unlike more mainstream films about HIV that came before (and after), The Living End wears its anger and pain on its sleeve. The entire world is entirely fucked up, and so these two men turn to a nihilistic outlook. The acting is just okay and some of the dialog is a bit ridiculous...but what draws me to rewatch this movie is the way that it conveys the emotion of the time. It's a ball of rage manifest on film. (cw for attempted suicide, rape, murder)

--

Love is the Devil (1998) (dir. John Maybury)

One of the problems with the average biopic is that it attempts to portray a person's entire life in a single movie. Thankfully, Love is the Devil doesn't have that problem; it focuses on only 8 years of Francis Bacon's life - the time he spent with a man named George Dyer. By this point, Bacon was already an extremely famous artist (and, at least in the film, a bit of an asshole). Bacon meets Dyer as Dyer attempts to burgle Bacon's studio - and thus begins an extremely dysfunctional love affair. If you want to see Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig portray this dysfunctional relationship, then this is the movie for you. Also, if you want to see a biopic that lets the subject of the film be portrayed as a shitty person, this is a film for you. (cw for bdsm, drug use, untreated mental illness, and suicide)

--

Orlando (1992) (dir. Sally Potter)

From right out the gate, Orlando announces its queer themes by having Quentin Crisp portray Queen Elizabeth I, and Tilda Swinton portray Orlando (a man). From the first scenes it becomes clear that gender is going to be a main theme in the movie. Orlando is a young man who will never grow old and never die. He begins life in the 1500s, during Queen Elizabeth's reign, and we see him (and later, her) throughout the centuries between then and 'present' day (1992). The film is broken into thematic chunks (poetry, politics, society, etc). In each of these chunks we see Orlando's life as it reflects the social norms of the time (especially gender norms).

--

Swoon (1992) (dir. Tom Kalin)

Like Rope (1948) and Compulsion (1959), Swoon is a film about the Leopold and Loeb murder. Unlike the earlier films, Swoon makes the gay relationship between Leopold and Loeb explicit. Their relationship in the film is fairly uneven, with Loeb being characterized as more of an explicit manipulator. Leopold, on the other hand, is driven more by wanting to please Leob. Complicating this dynamic is the way that Leopold is the one more interested in their sexual relationship. Is Loeb exchanging sex for help with his criminal activities? Or is Leopold committing crimes in order to elicit sex from Loeb? Or both...something a bit more complicated than either/or? The film, especially the latter half, eschews and lampoons the sensationalism of the reporting of the crime from the time. (cw for murder, blood (in black and white), and animal corpses)

--

Honorable mention goes to more well-known movies I didn't put on this list, such as: But I'm a Cheerleader, Velvet Goldmine, Bound, Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, My Own Private Idaho, Bent...there are actually a whole lot of queer movies from the 1990s, now that I think about it.

[zil-street]

12. The Hanged Man - Scary Marlowe

[Upright: Suspension, restriction, sacrifice, readjustment, improvement

Reversed: Willfulness, useless sacrifice, rushing, thoughtlessness, martyrdom]

I am so sorry in advance. I think the assignment of this card is much stronger now after the events of S2E36, so spoilers.

Ho boy! Scary is very willful and many of her actions seem more performative than based on what she really wants. Willy had, for a while, a very firm grasp on her and because of this many of her actions have hurt those she cares about. As of now she has suffered the death of her step-dad (aka the martyr in this situation). Wether improvement is too come, we shall see.

[Textless image below]