<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Matthew Byrd</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/">https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838943">https://reactormag.com/?p=838943</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/starfleet-academy/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Starfleet Academy 1"> Starfleet Academy </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to <i>Starfleet Academy</i>’s Big Sisko Episode</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Writer Tawny Newsome breaks down the battle to pay tribute to Captain Sisko and Avery Brooks in Starfleet Academy&#8217;s latest episode</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/matthew-byrd/" title="Posts by Matthew Byrd" class="author url fn" rel="author">Matthew Byrd</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 6, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo: John Medland/Paramount+</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 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https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sisko-Starfleet-Academy-1-1100x733.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sisko-Starfleet-Academy-1-768x512.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sisko-Starfleet-Academy-1-1536x1023.png 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sisko-Starfleet-Academy-1.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo: John Medland/Paramount+</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p><em><strong>Note: This article contains light spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 5 &#8220;Series Acclimation Mil.&#8221;</strong></em></p> <p>While we won&#8217;t dive into the full spoilers here (you can find more of those <a href="https://reactormag.com/star-trek-starfleet-academy-showrunner-explains-how-this-weeks-episode-is-a-love-letter/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in this review</a>), it&#8217;s safe to call <em>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</em>&#8216;s latest episode (&#8220;Series Acclimation Mil&#8221;) a massive tribute to both <em>Deep Space Nine </em>and Avery Brooks&#8217; beloved character, Captain Benjamin Sisko. <em>Starfleet Academy</em> co-showrunner Noga Landau even referred to it as a love letter to both <em>DS9 </em>and Sisko in our <a href="https://reactormag.com/star-trek-starfleet-academy-showrunner-explains-how-this-weeks-episode-is-a-love-letter/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recent interview</a> with them. And now, in an expansive (and excellent) <a href="https://trekmovie.com/2026/02/05/interview-tawny-newsome-on-gargantuan-task-to-give-ds9-resolution-on-star-trek-starfleet-academy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">interview with <em>TrekMovie</em></a>, episode writer Tawny Newsome explains how the episode came about.</p> <p>&#8220;I was pretty adamant that for this episode, it was our job to make this an homage, a celebration, and really a bit of a correction for what I feel has been an oversight in a lot of modern <em>Trek</em>,&#8221; says Newsome. &#8220;We haven’t talked nearly enough about the Siskos, about Benjamin Sisko, or about the show <em>Deep Space Nine</em> at all, despite it being a massive addition to our canon. So I was pretty adamant. I’ll say I was frothing at the mouth some days about how important this was. So if anyone thought it was too much canon, they shared those details among themselves.&#8221;</p> <p>Even though <em>Starfleet Academy</em>&#8216;s writers have thus far not shied away from using the series&#8217; setting and premise as an excuse to dive <a href="https://reactormag.com/starfleet-academy-wall-of-honor-easter-eggs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">deep into <em>Star Trek </em>lore</a>, the Sisko storyline is its own beast. Not only is it a relatively deep cut (despite <em>DS9</em>&#8216;s resurging popularity in more recent years), but addressing that storyline at all means running the risk of interfering with the deliberate ambiguity that makes it so powerful. So far as that goes, Newsome and the writers wanted to work as closely as they could with the <em>DS9 </em>crew in order to make sure they were doing the right thing. That process involved partnering with one of the biggest players in the Sisko storyline, actor Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko in <em>DS9</em>.</p> <p>&#8220;Cirroc and I were on the phone and at lunches for months and months and months and months trying to figure out how we could get this done,&#8221; says Newsome of working with Lofton. &#8220;Getting the episode made was such a gargantuan feat, and I have had so many partners locked arm-in-arm in battle. Between [co-showrunners] Noga Landau and Alex [Kurtzman], Cirroc, [executive producer] Aaron Baiers&#8230; don’t even know where to start, but all I can tell you is that it was seemingly so impossible to be able to address the hugeness of the Sisko story with some of the limitations that we have because of canon, some of the limitations that we have because of available actors. And we really just wanted to honor the man, Avery Brooks.&#8221;</p> <p>Brooks retired from acting roughly 20 years ago, but even if he was willing to appear on the show, having him on-screen again risked compromising the story the team was trying to tell. However, Brooks was a presence behind the scenes where he approved of the episode nearly every step of the way.</p> <p>&#8220;I don’t know if he has seen it yet, but he has read it,&#8221; Newsome says of Brooks&#8217; involvement. &#8220;It was really important for us as the writers to get his blessing at multiple steps along the way, thanks to Cirroc, who deserves an executive producer credit for this episode. He was well aware of things, maybe even before I was authorized to share them. But I was like, &#8216;We got to make sure Mr. Brooks is cool with this.'&#8221;</p> <p>Though Brooks doesn&#8217;t make a physical cameo, we do hear Sisko&#8217;s voice towards the end of the episode. Interestingly, that audio clip wasn&#8217;t taken from <em>DS9</em> but came from a more personal source. </p> <p>&#8220;That is a private recording that belonged to Mr. Brooks that he very graciously allowed us to use,&#8221; Newsome reveals regarding the audio that was taken from Brooks&#8217; spoken word album <em>Here</em>. &#8220;I still get chills thinking about how it came to be, because I was very anxious asking him for anything. Because this man has given so much of his artistry, his life and himself to this franchise&#8230; he very graciously allowed us to have this.&#8221;</p> <p>Perhaps more importantly, Newsome feels that the writers were able to honor Brooks&#8217; long-standing belief that Sisko would never abandon his family without them actually having to show the character or even definitively say what happened to him. </p> <p>&#8220;We had to square that with the fact that we have seen a lot added to the canon, and there hasn’t been any mention of seeing him,&#8221; Newsome muses. &#8220;So we sort of had to get into the territory of something that maybe science and Starfleet records can’t explain. So that’s why we wanted to put it in Jake’s mouth at the end where he literally says, &#8216;I can’t prove it.&#8217; But all those things you think he missed, he didn’t. He was there.&#8221;</p> <p>And even though the entire episode is a tribute to <em>Star Trek</em> fandom as much as it is a tribute to Brooks and Sisko, Newsome says she snuck in one additional Easter egg few fans may pick up on.</p> <p>&#8220;I made them put in Kerrice [SAM] saying some version of &#8216;I can live with it,'&#8221; Newsome says regarding a variation of <a href="https://reactormag.com/star-trek-ds9s-in-the-pale-moonlight-and-the-option-to-backtrack-on-the-road-to-hell/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one of Sisko&#8217;s most impactful lines</a>. &#8220;And someone who kept doing a version of the script later kept taking it out. And I kept putting it back in, probably seven or eight times. And finally, it made it to it made it to filming.&#8221; [end-mark]</p> <p></p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/">Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to &lt;i&gt;Starfleet Academy&lt;/i&gt;’s Big Sisko Episode</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/">https://reactormag.com/avery-brooks-approved-starfleet-academy-sisko-episode/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838943">https://reactormag.com/?p=838943</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Leah Schnelbach</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/">https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838847">https://reactormag.com/?p=838847</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/movies-tv/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Movies &amp; TV 0"> Movies &amp; TV </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/scarlet/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Scarlet 1"> Scarlet </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Mamoru Hosoda&#8217;s <em>Scarlet</em> Gives Us a Gender-Swapped, Purgatorial <em>Hamlet</em></h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">I&#8217;m not sure which afterlife includes the GIANT FLYING ELECTRICITY DRAGON, but I want to go to that one.</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/leah-schnelbach/" title="Posts by Leah Schnelbach" class="author url fn" rel="author">Leah Schnelbach</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 6, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Credit: STUDIO CHIZU</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.8.5h14.4a1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.3 1.3v10.8a1.3 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https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-Top--e1770392295335-1100x504.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-Top--e1770392295335-768x352.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-Top--e1770392295335-1536x704.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-Top--e1770392295335-2048x939.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Credit: STUDIO CHIZU</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <p><em>Scarlet</em> is a new anime from Mamoru Hosoda, director of <em>Mirai</em>, <em>The Girl Who Leapt Through Time</em>, and <em>Belle</em>. I got to see it during the New York Film Festival, but it’s hitting U.S. theaters this weekend (including IMAX in a few places). Like <em>Belle</em> it focuses on the point of view of a young woman in a retelling of a classic tale, in this case, <em>Hamlet</em>.</p> <p>Scarlet (Mana Ashida) is the Princess of Denmark, and lives happily with her father, King Amleth (Masachika Ichimura), and less happily with her scheming mother Gertrude (Yutaka Matsushige). When her uncle Claudius (Kōji Yakusho) murders her father in order to marry Gertrude and rule the kingdom, the young girl plots revenge. Unlike in the original play, she’s extremely proactive in her plan, with little of the original Hamlet’s self-sabotage. But her plan goes awry, and she ends up dead, trapped in a terrifying afterlife, while Claudius and Gertrude rule together in blissful evil.</p> <p>Mamoru Hosoda sat down and said “Sure <em>Hamlet</em>’s great, but could it be <em>better</em>? What if I gender swap it and make it play out in an unsettling purgatory, whose rules are unknowable, with the threat of dissolving into nothingness always seconds away? And while I’m at it, maybe I’ll interrogate the idea of vengeance itself, and ask whether maybe humans should try to break the cycle of unending violence before we destroy ourselves?”</p> <p>It <em>sounds</em> incredible, and parts of it are—but I’m not sure that it lives up to its extraordinary premise.</p> <p>I’m not sure if it even could.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="515" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-1100x515.jpg" alt="Scarlet (Mana Ashida) meditates on vengeance in Mamoru Hosada&#39;s Scarlet." class="wp-image-838867" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-1100x515.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-740x346.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-768x359.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-1536x719.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-1-2048x958.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: STUDIO CHIZU</figcaption></figure> <p>But the parts of this film that work are incredible. The animation is gorgeous. At some points it’s an excellent epic anime, at others it becomes a sort of photorealistic landscape that feels utterly alien. At others, hilariously, Hosoda uses the clean, simple style of a slice-of-life anime series, that serves to highlight the strangeness of the afterlife he’s created. Also there’s a <em>giant flying electricity dragon</em>—any movie with a <em>giant flying electricity dragon</em> is worth my time.</p> <p>The other fun thing in this otherworld, where time is pretty meaningless, and life and death coexist, is that a lot of the problems of earthly life have carried over. Bandits teem across vast deserts attacking and looting caravans of people. And there is the constant threat of violence; if you’re injured badly enough in this otherworld, you dissolve into nothingness. We see this sequence many times over the course of the film, sometimes showing people who are at peace with their ending, and other times with people who claw to remain conscious.</p> <p><em>Hamlet</em> provides the spine: Claudius’ betrayal of his brother Amleth is the catalyst for the whole story, characters from the play show up in various remixed forms, and several of Shakespeare’s iconic scenes are used in new ways. Scarlet herself is an instantly compelling character, maybe even more so than her original—it’s hard to watch someone come back to consciousness after death and fight their way through piles of rotting corpses without rooting for them. I think one of the strengths of the film is that it isn’t bound to <em>Hamlet</em>, however. It uses it as a springboard.</p> <p>The film’s afterlife is both exciting and existentially terrifying, at least at first. There doesn’t seem to be much order to it, no rules, no <em>Handbook for the Recently Deceased</em>. The landscape is desolate and beautiful, and when the electricity dragon appears, it’s to hurl lightning bolts down upon the souls below. This seems to be kind of a punishment? But the morality isn’t really explained. Everyone in this purgatorial state is at risk of being killed again by roving bandits, at which point they seem to truly and completely disappear, and there’s also the sense that a person might simply dissolve after a while. This sets a certain kind of stakes, but the problem is that as the film goes along, it drains a little of the mystery from the film, since since you’re basically watching characters who are in constant physical danger, and hoping they don’t die—the same way you’d hope that with living characters. I wanted the stakes to be a bit different for dead people in another realm.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="502" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-1100x502.jpg" alt="Scarlet (Mana Ashida) demands that Hijiri (Masaki Okada) face the reality of his death in Mamoru Hosada&#39;s Scarlet." class="wp-image-838864" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-1100x502.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-740x338.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-768x351.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-1536x701.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-4-2048x935.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: STUDIO CHIZU</figcaption></figure> <p>Soon after waking to this new kind of consciousness, Scarlet meets a paramedic named Hijiri (Masaki Okada). The young man insists he isn’t actually dead. He’s also dressed in casual 21^st Century clothing, carries a modern medical valise, and is clearly from something more like our era. Scarlet is confused, and sometimes offended, by Hijiri’s upbeat outlook on life. She’s frustrated by his habit of stopping to help anyone who needs it. For her, the quest for vengeance is all-consuming, and the people she meets in the afterlife are either vehicles or obstacles for revenge.</p> <p>As you can probably guess, this becomes one of the main tensions of the story. Scarlet’s worldview is dark, violent, and bitter. She sees herself as a weapon, and can’t imagine the kind of life Hijiri describes to her, where people try to help and support each other, and there’s time for music and fun. The other tension, of course, is Scarlet’s quest to find her nefarious uncle in the afterlife and destroy him. So what if time passes differently on the other side, and almost everyone who ever cared about this fight is now in the afterlife, or just&#8230; gone? So what if Scarlet’s own father, the betrayed king, long ago passed into nothingness? Scarlet’s mission has to transcend everything else, right?</p> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="488" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-1100x488.jpg" alt="Scarlet (Mana Ashida) and Hijiri (Masaki Okada) help their fellow dead in Mamoru Hosada&#39;s Scarlet." class="wp-image-838866" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-1100x488.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-740x328.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-768x340.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-1536x681.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Scarlet-2-2048x908.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: STUDIO CHIZU</figcaption></figure> <p>That’s why we love the story—the catharsis of watching Hamlet kill his uncle in the final moments before his own tragic death—right?</p> <p>Hosoda tries to use this classic tragedy to explore the tragedy of vengeance as a concept. By moving the action to an afterlife, he underlines how wasteful the original story is: Hamlet, a young man of many talents, popular with his people, with great friends, spends the last months of his life on murder and dies without accomplishing anything but his vengeance. Scarlet, a young woman of many talents, is murdered by the same man who murdered her father, and rather than using her afterlife to find some sort of new adventure, she rededicates herself to the earthly mission that got her killed.</p> <p>For a time the film seems to be trying to explode that plot, to show Scarlet different ways of being. But sometimes the discussion between Scarlet and Hijiri gets much too heavy-handed, and sometimes the film paints itself into a corner once the battle between Claudius and Scarlet moves into the otherworldly realm. I think my sticking point is just the opening of the film promises a story that will take us in a lot of different directions, but a lot of the plot comes down to swordfights and battles—just like the original Hamlet. But having said <em>that</em>, the ending of the film is complicated and deeply moving, and I still think this is an audacious and often moving work, and a fascinating adaptation of Hamlet as well. Anime fans, Shakespeare fans, and especially devotees of Hosoda&#8217;s work will find a lot to love in <em>Scarlet</em>.[end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/">Mamoru Hosoda&#8217;s &lt;em&gt;Scarlet&lt;/em&gt; Gives Us a Gender-Swapped, Purgatorial &lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt;</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/">https://reactormag.com/movie-review-scarlet-mamoru-hosoda/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838847">https://reactormag.com/?p=838847</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Vanessa Armstrong</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/">https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838843">https://reactormag.com/?p=838843</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/the-wizard-of-oz/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag The Wizard of Oz 1"> The Wizard of Oz </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">After Almost 30 Years, <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> Will Once Again Air on Broadcast TV</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">The movie will air on the classic television channel, MeTV</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/vanessa-armstrong/" title="Posts by Vanessa Armstrong" class="author url fn" rel="author">Vanessa Armstrong</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 5, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Screenshot: Warner Bros.</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.8.5h14.4a1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.3 1.3v10.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 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<path d="M16.4962 4.49458C17.2844 5.84153 17.6786 7.31473 17.6786 8.91423C17.6786 10.5137 17.2844 11.9888 16.4962 13.3396C15.7079 14.6904 14.6384 15.7599 13.2876 16.5482C11.9368 17.3364 10.4617 17.7306 8.86223 17.7306C8.01273 17.7306 7.17856 17.6081 6.35967 17.3632C6.81121 16.6515 7.10967 16.0239 7.25508 15.4806C7.32396 15.2203 7.53059 14.413 7.87498 13.0584C8.02804 13.3568 8.30738 13.6151 8.71299 13.8332C9.1186 14.0513 9.55483 14.1604 10.0217 14.1604C10.9477 14.1604 11.7742 13.8983 12.5013 13.374C13.2283 12.8498 13.7908 12.1285 14.1888 11.2101C14.5867 10.2918 14.7857 9.25862 14.7857 8.11066C14.7857 7.2382 14.558 6.41933 14.1027 5.65402C13.6473 4.88871 12.9872 4.26499 12.1224 3.78285C11.2576 3.3007 10.2819 3.05964 9.19513 3.05964C8.39156 3.05964 7.64157 3.1706 6.94513 3.39254C6.2487 3.61448 5.65751 3.90912 5.17154 4.27647C4.68556 4.64382 4.26848 5.06665 3.92026 5.54497C3.57205 6.02329 3.31567 6.51882 3.15113 7.03157C2.98659 7.54433 2.90432 8.05708 2.90432 8.56984C2.90432 9.36576 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https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wizard-of-Oz-768x489.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wizard-of-Oz.jpg 1476w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Screenshot: Warner Bros.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>There’s no place like broadcast television! Starting in 1959, <em>The Wizard of Oz </em>was a broadcast TV staple, airing as a television special once a year (with the exception of 1963, for whatever reason) on CBS. In 1998, however, CBS aired the film for the last time—Ted Turner, who owned the IP, moved the film exclusively over to his Time-Warner cable stations. Since then, it’s aired on TNT and TBS several times (it also, controversially, played at <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-wizard-of-oz-las-vegas-sphere-footage-controversy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Sphere in Las Vegas</a>), but not on a free broadcast network… until now.</p> <p>According to <em><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-wizard-of-oz-air-broadcast-television-metv-october-1236496052/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Hollywood Reporter</a></em>, MeTV has purchased the exclusive broadcast rights for <em>The Wizard of Oz. </em>The network, which focuses on classic TV, will air the film several times in October 2026 as part of its <em>Halloween BOO-Nanza </em>campaign, twenty-eight or so years after its last broadcast in 1998.</p> <p>“<em>The Wizard of Oz</em> is more than a movie, it is a shared American experience that was defined by the annual tradition of gathering around the television set,” Neal Sabin, vice chairman of Weigel Broadcasting, which owns MeTV, said in a statement to <em>THR</em>. “We are thrilled to bring the film back to broadcast television this October on MeTV. It will be presented without any edits and will be surrounded by surprises we will announce later….”</p> <p>MeTV is available on broadcast television over the air for most of the U.S. if you want to get out your TV rabbit ears. It&#8217;s also available via Frndly TV, Philo, Fubo, DirecTV Stream and Sling TV. [end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/">After Almost 30 Years, &lt;i&gt;The Wizard of Oz&lt;/i&gt; Will Once Again Air on Broadcast TV</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/">https://reactormag.com/30-years-the-wizard-of-oz-air-on-broadcast-tv/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838843">https://reactormag.com/?p=838843</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Vanessa Armstrong</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/">https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838801">https://reactormag.com/?p=838801</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Ready or Not 2: Here I come 1"> Ready or Not 2: Here I come </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Sisterly Bonding Gets Bloody in <i>Ready or Not 2: Here I Come</i> Trailer</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Four families are now hunting down Grace… and her sister!</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/vanessa-armstrong/" title="Posts by Vanessa Armstrong" class="author url fn" rel="author">Vanessa Armstrong</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 5, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.8.5h14.4a1.3 1.3 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9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2-740x493.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME." srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2-1100x734.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RON2_13482_v2.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Grace (Samara Weaving) continues to have a not-so-great time in <em><a href="https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ready or Not 2: Here I Come</a></em>. In the 2019 horror comedy <em>Ready or Not</em>, she survived her fiancé’s wealthy family trying to murder her in a twisted game of Hide and Seek.</p> <p>It turns out, however, that rich a-hole family was just the beginning. In the upcoming sequel, four families are now in a game to hunt her down and kill her for sport. And to get her to play, they’ve abducted her sister (Kathryn Newton) and are making them both play along.</p> <p>The comedy in this comedy horror, if today’s trailer is any indication, comes from the actors involved. Weaving and Newton convey an understandable WTF attitude toward being hunted down by billionaires, with the accompanying over-the-top gore giving scenes an additional soupçon of absurdness.</p> <p>And as for the psychopathic billionaires? <a href="https://reactormag.com/two-very-familiar-faces-have-joined-the-game-in-ready-or-not-here-i-come/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Actors Sarah Michelle Gellar</a>, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, and David Cronenberg give them each a special panache, as does Elijah Wood, who plays the lawyer overseeing the proceedings.</p> <p>We’ll get to see what directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence) bring us when the movie, written by <em>Ready or Not </em>scribes Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, heads to theaters on March 20, 2026.</p> <p>Check out today’s trailer below. [end-mark]</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <site-embed id="18209"/> </div></figure> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/">Sisterly Bonding Gets Bloody in &lt;i&gt;Ready or Not 2: Here I Come&lt;/i&gt; Trailer</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/">https://reactormag.com/ready-or-not-2-here-i-come-trailer-2/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838801">https://reactormag.com/?p=838801</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Leah Schnelbach</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/r-l-stine-the-dead-girlfriend-and-diane-hoh-guilty-teen-horror-time-machine/">https://reactormag.com/r-l-stine-the-dead-girlfriend-and-diane-hoh-guilty-teen-horror-time-machine/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838588">https://reactormag.com/?p=838588</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/books/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Books 0"> Books </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/teen-horror-time-machine/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Teen Horror Time Machine 1"> Teen Horror Time Machine </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Dearly Departed: <em>The Dead Girlfriend</em> and <em>Guilty</em> </h2> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/alissa-burger/" title="Posts by Alissa Burger" class="author url fn" rel="author">Alissa Burger</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 5, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a 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11.7513C4.78371 10.1926 2.89605 9.41364 0.678713 9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="407" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/teen-horror-dead-girlfriend-740x407.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="cover of The Dead Girlfriend by RL Stine" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/teen-horror-dead-girlfriend-740x407.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/teen-horror-dead-girlfriend-1100x605.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/teen-horror-dead-girlfriend-768x422.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/teen-horror-dead-girlfriend.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>The characters in teen horror novels are constantly breaking up, making up, and swapping partners, with lots of high tension drama, hurt feelings, and elaborate revenge plots. In R.L. Stine’s standalone book <em>The Dead Girlfriend</em> (1993) and Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book <em>Guilty </em>(also 1993), there’s the added complication of death, which presents a dangerous combination of intrigue, suspicion, danger, and grief.&nbsp;</p> <p>In Stine’s <em>The Dead Girlfriend</em>, Annie Kiernan and her family have just relocated to the small town of Shocklin Falls, where her parents have taken jobs at the local community college. They moved in early May, so Annie is stuck finishing out the year in a new school, where she makes friends and enemies alike. But first, while going for a bike ride around her new town up to a cliff overlooking the local falls, she meets Jonathan Morgan. Dark, brooding, and handsome, he stands at the edge of the drop off, staring intently down, and Annie’s first thought is that he plans to jump. She screams, making a memorable first impression, but he makes just as big of an impression on her, with Annie reflecting “I think I fell in love with him then. Or something like that. I’m not sure. It’s impossible to explain” (8-9). Jonathan tells her he had no intention of jumping, laughing off the very suggestion. It appears that he has been stood up by a friend who was supposed to meet him there, but he’s plenty happy to hang out with Annie instead, which promises to be a pleasant adventure … until she goes to grab her bike and finds that someone has slashed both tires in the few minutes she has been talking with Jonathan. He walks her—and her disabled bike—home and asks her to be his date to a party on Friday night, and all seems to be doing pretty well for Annie’s first afternoon in Shocklin Falls, until a mysterious girl named Ruby catches up with them, cryptically tells Annie “Watch out for Jonathan [&#8230;] Really. He’s dangerous. A real dangerous guy” (21), then pedals away.&nbsp;</p> <p>Annie runs through a series of possible explanations in her mind: maybe Ruby and Jonathan are frenemies, or Ruby is a potential romantic rival for Jonathan’s attention, or the girl just has a weird sense of humor. Whatever it is, Annie shrugs it off, embraces her new life in Shocklin Falls, and heads out on her Friday night date with no serious reservations. At the party, Annie meets lots of new people, including Jonathan’s best friend Caleb, whose idea of a good time is to climb the fence surrounding the local batting cages and pretend he’s a monkey, and Caleb’s horrified and long-suffering girlfriend, Dawn. While Caleb is a bit much and Annie can’t get a read on exactly what Jonathan and Ruby’s relationship is—sometimes they seem to really dislike each other, other times they sneak off into dark corners to have what look like pretty intimate conversations—Dawn really takes Annie under her wing, helping her get acclimated to her new school and their friend group.&nbsp;</p> <p>Dawn’s the one who tells Annie about Jonathan’s former girlfriend, Louisa. There’s a memorial display of Louisa at school, featuring “a photo of a pretty girl. She had all-American good looks. Bright blonde hair. Flashing blue eyes. High cheekbones like a model. A beautiful smile revealing perfect white teeth” (53). Louisa’s death is shrouded in mystery and this uncertainty seems to be at the heart of the warnings Annie has heard about Jonathan: Louisa and Jonathan had gone for a bike ride and were at the falls when she died, and no one knows exactly what happened. Jonathan told people that he thought he saw someone on the path, went to check it out, and when he came back, Louisa was nowhere to be seen. When he looked over the falls, “he saw her bike. Down below. All mangled. It had caught on the rocks [&#8230;] They dragged her body out downriver [&#8230;] Two days later” (60). It could have been an accident, foul play, or suicide, and while just about everyone who knew Louisa has pretty strong feelings about what they <em>think </em>happened, no one knows for sure.&nbsp;</p> <p>Tensions build and despite her reservations, Annie finds herself unable to resist Jonathan. But someone else seems to be trying just as hard to keep Annie and Jonathan apart, orchestrating “accidents” to frighten Annie and take her out of the picture. Someone sabotages her research project file, deleting all of her notes and replacing them with a clear warning: “STAY AWAY FROM JONATHAN. IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE” (71). She gets threatening phone calls with similar whispered warnings. The school computer Annie habitually uses is rigged to electrocute her when she touches the keyboard. When Annie has a birthday party at her house, someone horrifically murders her poor cat, who is adorably named Goggles. And Jonathan’s behavior becomes increasingly troubling, including another bike ride to the falls (which you would think he wouldn’t be quite so anxious to return to time and again), where he takes off in a panic, leaving Annie behind.&nbsp;</p> <p>The falls are at the heart of the mystery and are also where the truth is revealed, though it comes out in layers. Annie finally broaches the topic of Louisa’s death with Jonathan, figuring that it can help her solve the mystery of who is trying to scare her away from him. She is sensitive to his silence, assuming that his reluctance to talk about Louisa comes from grief and pain, as she notes that “You’ve never talked about Louisa once [&#8230;] You have to tell me the whole story about Louisa. I know you cared about her so much” (161). But it turns out this couldn’t be further from the truth and Jonathan explodes, screaming “Are you <em>crazy</em>, Annie? [&#8230;] I <em>hated </em>Louisa! I hated her so much,<em> I killed her</em>” (161, emphasis original). At first glance, this seems like a pretty straightforward confession, but it’s really just hyperbolic angst and Jonathan quickly goes on to clarify that he didn’t push Louisa, but he blames himself for her death because “If I hadn’t brought Louisa here, she wouldn’t have died” (164), which really isn’t anything close to the same thing.&nbsp;</p> <p>There’s more to his feelings of guilt though, because while he was dating Louisa, Jonathan and Ruby were also seeing each other, and he planned to break up with Louisa so that he and Ruby could be together. While everyone thinks Jonathan and Louisa were alone at the falls on the day Louisa died, Ruby was there too, and Louisa went over the falls when he left the two girls alone together for a couple of minutes. This brings the mysteriously complicated relationship between Jonathan and Ruby into clearer focus, as Jonathan confesses to Annie that “After Ruby killed Louisa, I was sick. I couldn’t stand the sight of Ruby. She kept trying to get me to go out with her. But I felt so guilty. So horribly guilty. I didn’t want to even <em>talk </em>to Ruby again. But she kept following me. She would never leave me alone” (167, emphasis original). Ruby followed Jonathan and Annie to the falls and when he identifies her as the murderer, she emerges from the woods screaming, with her face “twisted in a frightening expression of pure rage” (165), repeatedly calling Jonathan a liar. Jonathan and Ruby’s altercation becomes physical and in the struggle, Ruby falls over the edge of the falls and while Annie had felt brief certainty that Jonathan wasn’t a murderer, it seems like he is now and if he wants to keep that secret, Annie has to go too.&nbsp;</p> <p>When Annie goes to flee, it’s friendly, reliable Dawn to the rescue … except this salvation is just another bait-and-switch. Dawn has been constructing a narrative, positioning herself as beyond suspicion of being interested in Jonathan by dating Caleb, which allows her to be in Jonathan’s orbit without being identifiable as one of the many girls vying for his affections. And she’s figured out the next step of her narrative construction as well, one in which Annie is both murderer and victim, and she and Jonathan can finally be together (whether he likes it or not). As Dawn lays out this sequence of events, “I saw Annie push Ruby over the cliff” (175). After that, she tells Jonathan, “Then [&#8230;] Annie tried to push <em>you </em>over the side. But Annie slipped, and she accidentally fell herself” (175). Dawn is going to eliminate the competition, cover for Jonathan killing Ruby, and in return, he’ll have to love her. (How Caleb factors into this equation is a bit of a mystery, but Dawn sees him as collateral damage, entirely disposable, whether that means breaking up with him or pushing him over the cliff too). Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that—Ruby DIDN’T fall to her death, she summoned the police, and they come rushing to the rescue. After giving their police statements, Annie and Jonathan are right back to happily dating … actually, even happier, now that no one is receiving death threats.&nbsp;</p> <p>Jonathan’s grief process (or lack thereof) is a point of speculation and misunderstanding in<em> The Dead Girlfriend</em>, but mourning is a central focus of Hoh’s <em>Guilty</em>, in which Kit Sullivan has to figure out how to move on and cope with the tragic death of her boyfriend Robert Brown, who everyone calls Brownie. Kit and Brownie met during freshmen orientation in a very “opposites attract” dynamic: a shy girl meeting a life-of-the-party guy. They have a strong and close-knit friend group, including Brownie’s sister Callie, Kit’s high school friend Allen, and her roommate LuAnn, and Brownie’s new friend Davis. Much like Jonathan and Louisa, no one knows exactly what happened when Brownie died because he and Kit were the only ones who were there: they took a canoe out on the river near campus, but the current was stronger than they were prepared for, the canoe capsized, and while Brownie got Kit to the shore and safety, he was swept back into the current and died. But in this case, no one blames Kit except for Kit herself, who struggles with survivor’s guilt and goes to great lengths to try to outrun her feelings of grief and responsibility.&nbsp;</p> <p>For starters, she changes her name: Kit is short for Katherine and after Brownie’s death, she starts going by Katie instead. This is intended to be a clear and self-defining break between her pre- and post-trauma life, though it is a bit of an uphill battle. Allen, who has been her friend since they were in high school, has always known her as Kit, though he seems to go along with whatever will make her happy. When Katie’s roommate LuAnn slips up and calls Katie by the wrong name, Katie quickly and brusquely corrects her, saying “I told you not to call me that [&#8230;] I told <em>all </em>of you. If you don’t call me Katie, I’m not going to answer you” (21, emphasis original). What’s more, Katie’s new name comes with some big personality changes as well: while Kit had been reserved and responsible, Katie is much more spontaneous and a bigger risk taker. She dances in the fountain in the quad, blows off homework to go to parties, climbs the rickety fire escape at Nightmare Hall, and breaks into the gym to go swimming in the university pool after hours. Brownie was the life of the party and in some ways, it seems like Katie may be trying to step into his role as a way of keeping him alive and close, but she is also doing all she can to avoid having to cope with her complicated feelings of grief and responsibility.&nbsp;</p> <p>All of Katie’s friends reassure her that Brownie’s death was an accident and that no one blames her, but this comfort is complicated when someone begins harassing and threatening Katie. Things go missing from her room and someone writes “GUILTY” (27) in the dust on the hood of her car when she and her friends are at the movies. After she climbs in the window at the top of Nightmare Hall’s fire escape, she is looking around in a closet when she hits her head on a beam and is knocked unconscious; when she comes to, she has been zipped into an industrial-strength garment bag where she is slowly suffocating and has to fight her way out. While she’s swimming in the empty pool, someone grabs her from under the water and pulls her down, nearly drowning her. She starts hearing Brownie’s voice, first in her dorm room, saying “<em>It’s all your fault</em>” (42, emphasis original) and later, singing “Happy Birthday” in an empty room at Nightmare Hall where the friends have gathered for a birthday party. Katie finds herself fighting for her life while trying to figure out which of her friends might secretly blame her for Brownie’s death. To make matters worse, given her recent erratic behavior, her friends are quick to dismiss Katie’s fears, telling her she’s imagining things, overreacting, or just making things up. Katie struggles with these responses and ultimately blames herself, asking herself “Why couldn’t people take her seriously? Okay, so she hadn’t been <em>acting </em>like the kind of person people took seriously, since … since that day on the river. She’d give them that” (106, emphasis original).&nbsp;</p> <p>Much like in <em>The Dead Girlfriend</em>, there’s a whole lot more going on than meets that eye and the truth must be revealed one layer at a time. Brownie’s sister Callie seems the most likely to be devastated enough to seek revenge for Brownie’s death, and to some degree, she did. Brownie’s ghostly voice came from a tape recorder, with the audio content coming from the family’s home answering machine following an altercation about their parents’ car and a birthday message Brownie had sent Callie the previous year. Callie hid in Katie’s room and in Nightmare Hall with the tape recorder, playing Brownie’s voice to torment Katie. Callie wanted some measure of revenge, telling Katie “It’s your <em>fault </em>my brother’s dead … he’s gone … <em>gone </em>… I’ll never see him again, and it’s your fault. But nothing ever <em>happened </em>to you! You weren’t punished. You just walked away. Somebody had to <em>do </em>something. So I did it, and I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all” (136-7, emphasis original). Callie wanted to make Katie pay and when this truth comes out, Katie is devastated, but also somewhat relieved … until it turns out that Callie was behind <em>some </em>of the terrifying occurrences, but not <em>all </em>of them. She didn’t write “GUILTY” on Katie’s car, she didn’t attack her in the attic in Nightmare Hall, and she didn’t try to drown her, so presumably there are (at least) two people out to get Katie. As Callie explains, “I was trying to punish you, not scare you” (140) and while it takes some time and thought for Katie to come to terms with what Callie’s saying, she ultimately has to accept that Callie is not the attempted murderer.</p> <p>The motivation becomes even more complicated when it turns out that Brownie didn’t drown in the river: his death was the result of a head wound, which everyone thinks he sustained when he crashed into a rock while being swept along by the current. This is a game-changer for Katie and her overwhelming sense of guilt, because her assumption has been that he didn’t have the strength to get back to shore because he spent it all saving her and couldn’t keep afloat. Once she knows he was hit in the head and likely knocked unconscious, she is able to accept that it really was just a terrible accident … except that of course, it wasn’t. There was a collision between Brownie’s head and a rock, but it was the result of someone intentionally hitting him in the head after he had fought his way to shore, then pushing his body back into the fast-moving current. Katie begins to suspect Brownie’s friend Davis when she discovers that Davis has a picture of her and Brownie. As far as Katie knows, there were only two copies of that particular picture: she has one and Brownie had the other in his wallet the day he went in the river, though when his wallet is recovered, the picture is missing. In the aftermath of Brownie’s death, Davis has been supportive, understanding, and as the weeks go by, expressing a romantic interest in Katie, which just might be a motive.&nbsp;</p> <p>But again, this is only part of the story. When Katie goes to Allen’s room to talk to him, she finds the room empty and when she opens her closet door to borrow a sweater, she finds another copy of the picture (which apparently <em>everybody </em>has). But Allen’s copy is a little different: “A giant blowup of the picture of Brownie and Katie, smiling at each other … Katie’s own smiling, happy face, bigger than life, was staring back at her from the closet wall [&#8230; but] where Brownie’s dark brown eyes and curly hair and devilish grin should have been, <em>Allen’s </em>thin, serious face had been pasted into place” (160, emphasis original).&nbsp;</p> <p>Apparently, <em>everyone </em>loves Katie, but Allen feels particularly proprietary in his affections, since he’s loved her the longest and he loved her when she was Kit. When Allen discovers Katie in his room, he tells her that Kit “was supposed to be with <em>me </em>when we got to college. Everyone knew that. My parent’s, Kit’s parents, our friends … maybe we were just pals in high school, but I knew it would be different when we got to college [&#8230;] no more high school stuff … and I was sure she’d see me differently away from home. I figured she’d finally be ready to admit that we belonged together. Forever” (166). Katie flounders for a moment, uncertain “why he was talking about her in the third person. He kept saying, ‘Kit.’ But <em>she </em>was Kit” (166-7, emphasis original). Switching from Kit to Katie may have been her way of claiming ownership and agency of herself and her experience in a traumatic time, redefining herself by changing her name, but for Allen, this renaming has become something more akin to dissociation. As far as he is concerned, Kit and Katie are two different people, with two different personalities, and while he’s not even a bit sad that Brownie is dead, he can’t forgive Katie for killing Kit. <em>That’s </em>the murder for which he has decided Katie is guilty (as he wrote on her car) and that’s why she has to die.&nbsp;</p> <p>When push comes to shove—almost literally, as Allen gets ready to force Katie off an old bridge over the river that nearly killed her once already—Katie saves herself by channeling Kit. She plays up the helpless girl he became obsessed with: “‘I can’t move,’ Katie said breathlessly, changing her voice, returning to Kit’s soft, unsure quality. ‘Allen, I can’t move!” She didn’t have to fake the terror in her words” (183). Hoh highlights the complexity of Katie’s identity negotiation, synthesizing components of these different parts of Katie’s past and present in the way she uses both names, all while keeping Katie firmly in control, foregrounding her strength and ingenuity. Katie plays into Allen’s desire to control and rescue her, drawing on a selective library of their shared memories to position him as her knight in shining armor, which allows her to save herself. When he sees through her performance, he tries to push her in the river, though by then he’s close enough that she can take him down with her. While Katie was terrified of the water the first time she found herself there, relying on Brownie to save her, this second time around, she saves herself. After she hit the water, “she began swimming frantically toward shore. The water was shallower now, quieter than it had been when the canoe had overturned. That seemed a million years ago now, another time, another place. She had been so frightened to find herself in the river. Paralyzed by fear, panicked into helplessness [&#8230;] Not <em>this </em>time. There was no one here now, no one to help her but herself. Katie had to save Katie” (190, emphasis original). And she does. Davis and Callie are waiting for her on shore and when Katie disappeared, they put the pieces together and called the cops, who are ready to take Allen (who also survived the fall and the water) into custody. But Katie didn’t have to be rescued, she didn’t have to be pulled from the water, and she no longer has to doubt whether or not she has what it takes to fight and survive.&nbsp;</p> <p>In both <em>The Dead Girlfriend </em>and <em>Guilty</em>, the protagonists’ deceased romantic partners are just one piece of the puzzle. Louisa and Brownie’s deaths cast long shadows over Jonathan and Katie, both in how they cope with that loss and in how others see them. But neither of those deaths are what they seem to be, with conflicting motives and narratives going on beneath the surface of which neither protagonist is aware. Dawn is certain that she and Jonathan belong together, while Allen has no doubt that he and Kit are meant to be, but these “love stories” are tales of obsession and fixation, one-way desires that remain invisible and unspoken even as they destroy the lives of those around them. In the end, it’s not so much the dead boyfriends and girlfriends that are the true horrors, but the rivals disguised as friends who made them that way.[end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/r-l-stine-the-dead-girlfriend-and-diane-hoh-guilty-teen-horror-time-machine/">Dearly Departed: &lt;em&gt;The Dead Girlfriend&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Guilty&lt;/em&gt; </a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/r-l-stine-the-dead-girlfriend-and-diane-hoh-guilty-teen-horror-time-machine/">https://reactormag.com/r-l-stine-the-dead-girlfriend-and-diane-hoh-guilty-teen-horror-time-machine/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838588">https://reactormag.com/?p=838588</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/disney-eragon-series-adaptation-showrunners/">https://reactormag.com/disney-eragon-series-adaptation-showrunners/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838744">https://reactormag.com/?p=838744</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/eragon/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Eragon 1"> Eragon </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Disney+’s <i>Eragon</i> Series Has Finally Found Its Showrunners</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Can there ever be too many dragons on TV?</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 5, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a 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</post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Almost <a href="https://reactormag.com/disney-christopher-paolini-eragon-adaptation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">four years ago</a>, Disney+ announced that a new live-action adaptation of Christopher Paolini&#8217;s Inheritance Cycle was in development. Not just <em>Eragon</em>, the first book—previously adapted into a middling movie—but the whole four-book series, with Paolini on board as co-writer.</p> <p>And then we didn&#8217;t hear a peep more. But the show is still in the works at Disney, as it turns out, and now it&#8217;s got showrunners! <a href="https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/eragon-disney-series-todd-harthan-todd-helbing-showrunnners-1236651963/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Variety</em> has</a> the news that Todd Harthan and Todd Helbing have signed on as co-showrunners, with Harthan sharing the show creator title with Paolini.</p> <p>Todd Harthan co-wrote the 2007 movie <em>Skinwalkers</em>, but most of his work has been in TV, where he&#8217;s been a writer and showrunner on <em>High Potential</em> and <em>The Resident</em>, among other series. He also created the series <em>Rosewood</em>.</p> <p>Of the two Todds, Helbing has the stronger genre resume: He was a writer and showrunner on <em>The Flash</em>, and co-created <em>Superman &amp; Lois</em> with Greg Berlanti (he was also showrunner for that series). His first writing credit, on IMDb, is an episode of <em>Smallville</em>.</p> <p>Helbing was also a writer and supervising producer on the second season of <em>Black Sails</em>, which is sort of funny: One of his <em>Black Sails</em> colleagues, co-creator Jonathan E. Steinberg, is now the co-creator of Disney&#8217;s <em>Percy Jackson and the Olympians</em>. Like <em>Eragon</em>, <em>Percy</em> was initially a poorly received film before becoming a Disney+ series.</p> <p>According to <em>Variety</em>, the logline for the <em>Eragon</em> series is: “When destiny selects an ordinary teenager to become the first Dragon Rider in over a hundred years, he must forge an unbreakable bond with his dragon, master ancient magic, and challenge the mad king who destroyed the Riders.”</p> <p>No casting or production timeline has been announced for <em>Eragon</em>.[end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/disney-eragon-series-adaptation-showrunners/">Disney+’s &lt;i&gt;Eragon&lt;/i&gt; Series Has Finally Found Its Showrunners</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/disney-eragon-series-adaptation-showrunners/">https://reactormag.com/disney-eragon-series-adaptation-showrunners/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838744">https://reactormag.com/?p=838744</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Stefan Raets</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/">https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838280">https://reactormag.com/?p=838280</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/fictions/excerpts/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Excerpts 0"> Excerpts </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/science-fiction/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Science Fiction 1"> Science Fiction </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Read an Excerpt From <i>After The Fall</i> by Edward Ashton</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/edward-ashton/" title="Posts by Edward Ashton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Edward Ashton</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 4, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" 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decoding="async" width="740" height="407" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-header-740x407.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Cover of After The Fall by Edward Ashton." srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-header-740x407.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-header-1100x605.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-header-768x422.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-header.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>We&#8217;re thrilled to share an excerpt from <em><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250375650/afterthefall/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>After The Fall</strong></a></em>, the new novel by Edward Ashton that&#8217;s part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire—publishing with St. Martin&#8217;s Press on February 24.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the &#8220;good&#8221; grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.<br><br>But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for <em>pets </em>like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.<br><br>Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.<br><br>John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?</p></blockquote></figure> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div style="height:20px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">Chapter One</h3> <p>“John!” Martok bellows as he bursts through the door. “I have news, my friend—wondrous, wondrous news! You’ll not believe what fell to me in the markets today!”</p> <p>John turns away from the window, the only one in the bare boardinghouse room he and Martok have shared for the past two months, where he’d been passing the afternoon watching the machinations of a murder of crows as they attempted to scavenge the carcass of a dead rat from beneath the wheels of the passing trundlecars in the street below, to see his patron hanging his formal sash on the hook by the door. Martok’s three-fingered hands are trembling with excitement, so much that it takes him two tries to get the sash to stay, and the crest that runs down the center of his broad bald scalp is flushed a happy pink.</p> <p>“John!” Martok says again, then crouches so that his head is nearly level with John’s and spreads his arms wide. “Come to me, my friend! This has been a truly wondrous day!”</p> <p>John hesitates a bare moment, then sighs, crosses the tiny room in three strides, and steps into the gray’s crushing embrace. Martok lifts him, thick hands pressing John against the hairless, wrinkled skin of his chest, spins him half-around, and sets him down again with his back to the door.</p> <p>“Ask, John! You must ask!”</p> <p>John takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly, mostly to make sure Martok hasn’t cracked his ribs in his exuberance, then says, “Please tell me, Martok. What wondrous thing did you find in the markets today?”</p> <p>He’s expecting to hear something about a new sash, or a refurbished handheld, or perhaps a particularly ripe piece of fruit. Consequently, he has no idea how to react when Martok says, “A home, John! I have found us a home!”</p> <p class="has-text-align-center">***</p> <p>The intricacies of the grays’ economic system have never been remotely clear to John. What education he received in the crèche was mostly structured around learning ways to serve a future patron in practical ways. He was taught to cook, to clean, and to shoot (small-caliber weapons only, sufficient for hunting native game, but not remotely suited for penetrating the leathery, three-centimeter-thick hide of a gray). He knows there are some humans at work in the markets. He’s seen them there from time to time, has even seen Martok forced to barter with one of them on a few occasions. Whatever arcane knowledge of debit and credit that those humans have gained, however, did not come from the crèche, and Martok has never shown the slightest interest in passing along to John any small understanding of economics that he might have.</p> <section class="wp-block-shop-the-book shop-the-book"> <h2 class="shop-the-book-headline">Buy the Book</h2> <div class="shop-the-book-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Cover of After The Fall by Edward Ashton." /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-mobile image-cover"> <!-- <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="After The Fall" /> --> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Cover of After The Fall by Edward Ashton." role="presentation" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-title text-h3">After The Fall</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-author">Edward Ashton</p> </div> </div> <button type="button" class="inline-block px-8 py-4 text-center btn tablet:py-3 text-h6 bg-red text-white shop-the-book-button" id="buy_book" data-trigger="modal" data-target="#modal-1770405747" aria-open="false" aria-label="Buy Book"> <span class="inline-flex items-center button-label btn-label"> Buy Book </span> </button> </div> </div> <div id="modal-1770405747" class="shop-the-book-modal"> <div class="shop-the-book-modal-inner"> <button class="js-modal-close absolute top-5 right-5 z-10" type="button" aria-label="icon-close"> <svg class="w-[19px] h-[19px]" width="18" height="19" viewbox="0 0 18 19" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-label="close" role="img" aria-hidden="true"> <path d="M1 17L17 1" stroke="black" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M1 17L17 1" stroke="black" stroke-opacity="0.2" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M17 17.0809L1 1.08093" stroke="black" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M17 17.0809L1 1.08093" stroke="black" stroke-opacity="0.2" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> </svg> </button> <div class="shop-the-book-modal-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-modal-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="After The Fall" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-modal-image-mobile image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/After-The-Fall-.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="After The Fall" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-modal-title">After The Fall</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-author">Edward Ashton</p> </div> </div> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-label">Buy this book from:</p> <ul class="not-prose ebook-links ebook-links-shortcode"><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0F5PDP11C?tag=tordotcomgeneral-20" data-book-title="After The Fall" data-book-store="Amazon"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Amazon</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/7992675/type/dlg/sid/tordotcomgeneral/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/9781250375650" data-book-title="After The Fall" data-book-store="Barnes and Noble"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Barnes and Noble</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781250376220" data-book-title="After The Fall" data-book-store="iBooks"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">iBooks</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250375650" data-book-title="After The Fall" data-book-store="IndieBound"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">IndieBound</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=9781250375650" data-book-title="After The Fall" data-book-store="Target"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Target</span></a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> </section> <p>John has seen enough, though, to know one thing for certain: He and Martok are poor. If he’s being honest with himself, that much was clear to him even on the day Martok took him away from the crèche. John was not one of the children who lined up eagerly to show off their skills for the grays who came by shopping for a bond. He was small for his age, with a high, piping voice and a slight stammer that came and went, with timing seemingly designed to maximize his embarrassment. Awkward with his peers and mostly terrified of the grays, John hung back as far as the nursemaids would let him when visitors came to the crèche—and as a consequence, he was passed over, time after time after time.</p> <p>He still remembers the moment when he realized that he was dooming himself. He was twelve, and a girl named Tila had just aged out without a bond and been unceremoniously put down in the alley behind the crèche. As one nursemaid heaved her body into the refuse bin and two others herded the children back into the building, it struck him suddenly, with the force of a physical blow: <em>That’ll be me someday.</em></p> <p>By the time Martok came by, John was, strictly speaking, already past the age where he should have been declared permanently un-bonded. The only reason he was still there, the only reason that the nursemaids kept shoving him out in front of every gray who came by, was that he was still small enough to pass, and the nursemaids in his crèche, despite their general indifference and occasional cruelty, didn’t actually enjoy putting humans down. Martok has never said exactly how the two of them wound up walking out of that place together, but John strongly suspects that when the nursemaids realized that Martok was just window-shopping, that he didn’t have enough credit for the processing fee, let alone for the purchase of a bond, they offered up John for precisely what he was worth—which is to say, for nothing at all.</p> <p class="has-text-align-center">***</p> <p>“I don’t understand,” John says. “A home? Isn’t this our home?”</p> <p>“This? A home?” Martok crosses over to the pantry in two short strides, reaches inside to pull out a protein brick, and tears off a bite half the size of John’s head. “This squalid hovel?” He gestures broadly with the hand holding the brick, spraying crumbs from both his hand and his thick, wrinkled lips in an arc half the size of the room. “This cramped, wretched hole? No, John. This is no home. This is a place of bare subsistence, sufficient only to keep our heads dry and our bodies warm as we wait for the gods of fate to hand us the opportunity that we have been awaiting.” He takes another bite, chews, and swallows. “And now, my friend? Now they have.”</p> <p>Martok drops onto the big bed that takes up a quarter of the room’s floor space, pops the remainder of the protein brick into his mouth, and then flops backward with his hands folded behind his head. “We leave this place tomorrow. I shall settle accounts with our twice-cursed landlord once we’ve had our breakfasts—it wouldn’t do to tell him before he’s fed us one last time, of course—and we shall be on our way. I have already secured a trundlecar to take us as far as the central terminal. From there, I’ve booked passage to the terminus at Lake Town.”</p> <p>John waits a beat for him to go on, then says, “Lake Town? That’s where we’re going?” John has never seen Lake Town. He’s never seen much of anywhere, honestly, other than the bits and pieces of Farhome, the city that still houses nearly eighty percent of the grays on the planet, that Martok has seen fit to show him. He’s heard of Lake Town, though. It’s the farthest western extension of the grays’ footprint on this world, a barely populated outpost on the southern shore of a mostly frozen freshwater sea. He’s not sure what sort of home Martok might have found there, but he’s hard-pressed to imagine that it could be any better than this place.</p> <p>“Oh no,” Martok says, his chest rumbling with laughter. “Lake Town is a terribly depressing place, John—a refuge for miscreants and ne’er-do-wells who have been driven from the more polite society of Farhome, mostly for perfectly good reasons. I spent two thoroughly unpleasant years there when I first made landfall on this world, and I have no interest in ever returning. Lake Town is not our destination. It is simply the farthest extent of the transport network. I intend to stay there for the shortest time that we can possibly manage.”</p> <p>“Oh,” John says, then reaches up to scratch the back of his head. “I’m confused.”</p> <p>Martok sits up again, and his lips fold back from his thick, square teeth and two stubby upturned tusks in a parody of a grin. “As well you might be. You would not know this from our time together, John, but I was not always the soft city dweller that you see now. Years ago, I was considered quite the adventurer, and I expect that experience will serve us well now. Upon reaching Lake Town, we shall strike out southward, away from the lakeshore. Our destination is some fifty kilometers along, over hill and bramble, across rill and stream, and through trackless wilderness.”</p> <p>He leans back, and the bed groans as his weight settles onto his elbows. “As I have already implied, I had a most fortuitous meeting in the markets today. In particular, I met a worthless scion of the Greatfoots, a distant descendant of the Chief Administrator himself—Daro Lia née Greatfoot by name. It seems this wretch had acquired a great deal of property beyond the reach of polite society, south and west of Lake Town in what was once an agricultural region of sorts. He purchased this property not because he had the slightest idea what to do with it, of course, but merely as a speculative investment. Such follies are common among the more useless members of the wealthier clans, you know. They have abundant credit, but they lack the wit to imagine how to invest it usefully. It seems he had some idea that Lake Town was due to expand greatly, and that when it did, he would be in a position to profit massively.”</p> <p>With that, Martok gets to his feet again and begins pacing—a singularly unsatisfying thing to do in such a tiny space, but John knows by now that when Martok is excited about something, he has a great deal of trouble holding still.</p> <p>“This ignorant Greatfoot has such an impoverished imagination that he could see no use for land such as this beyond the construction of more of what we already see around us. When it became clear, as it should have been from the outset, that no expansion in the direction of Lake Town was in the offing, he had no ability to see other possible avenues of progress.”</p> <p>He stops pacing then and turns to face John, arms spread wide. After a moment’s hesitation, John hazards, “But… you did see some such opportunity?”</p> <p>“Yes!” Martok says, and starts pacing again. “Of course! I am no failed third nephew of a wealthy clan, John. All my life, I have had to earn my way by my wits, and as this dullard poured out his tale of woe over a half-full tankard, I could already see what he could not. I let him ramble on for an hour or more, and then, my voice dripping with sympathy and fellow-feeling, I offered, strictly as a favor to both him and his noble clan, to relieve him of the burden of his misbegotten investment.”</p> <p>Martok seems about to burst with self-satisfaction. John, though, is beginning to feel a familiar, gnawing unease. This isn’t the first time that Martok has had a brilliant idea, one sure to bring him the wealth and acclaim that he clearly deserves.</p> <p>A quick glance around their squalid room tells the tale of how those other opportunities ended.</p> <p>“So…” John says. “This Greatfoot, he just… <em>gave </em>you the title to this property?”</p> <p>That stops Martok’s pacing again, and when he turns to face John, his face has lost some of its smugness. The gnawing in John’s belly turns abruptly into a sharp, stabbing pain.</p> <p>“Well, no. Of course not. Even a decadent Greatfoot dandy would not be foolish enough to simply hand over an opportunity like this to one he’d just met, would he?”</p> <p>John closes his eyes and breathes in, then out slowly. When he opens them again, Martok’s gaze has dropped to the floor between them. “Martok?” John says. “What did you give him?”</p> <p>“Well,” Martok says. “Nothing, really. A pledge, only. He was in such desperation to be rid of the property that he lent me the credit to take it from him. I had only to pledge him collateral.”</p> <p>Collateral? John’s eyes sweep the room. Everything Martok owns is here. What could he have…</p> <p>Oh gods.</p> <p>“Martok?” John says, slowly, evenly. “Did you… no, you couldn’t have. Please tell me you didn’t pledge him my bond?”</p> <p>Martok turns away, flops back onto the bed, and covers his face with his arms. “What does it matter what I pledged? I tell you truly, John. At the rate he offered me, this property will pay for itself a thousand times over.”</p> <p>John drops back into his seat by the window and buries his face in his hands. His heart seems to be trying to pound its way out of his chest, and when he speaks again, his voice is trembling.</p> <p>“When is the first repayment due to him, Martok?”</p> <p>“Sixty days,” Martok says. “An eternity, really.”</p> <p>John knows the answer to his next question, but he asks anyway. “And do you have it? Do you have enough credit even to cover the first payment?”</p> <p>Martok doesn’t answer. Outside the window, the crows have given up on what remains of the carcass in the road and have fallen to fighting among themselves over a hunk of protein brick that’s been dropped by a passing gray. John closes his eyes again and breathes in, breathes out.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <p class="has-sm-font-size"><em>After the Fall. </em>Copyright © 2026 by Edward Ashton. All rights reserved.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/">Read an Excerpt From &lt;i&gt;After The Fall&lt;/i&gt; by Edward Ashton</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/">https://reactormag.com/excerpts-after-the-fall-by-edward-ashton/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838280">https://reactormag.com/?p=838280</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/chiwetel-ejiofor-mike-flanagan-exorcist/">https://reactormag.com/chiwetel-ejiofor-mike-flanagan-exorcist/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838602">https://reactormag.com/?p=838602</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/the-exorcist/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag The Exorcist 1"> The Exorcist </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Chiwetel Ejiofor Joins Mike Flanagan&#8217;s <i>Exorcist </i>Movie</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Perhaps he will be the one doing some exorcising?</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 4, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Screenshot: Netflix</p> </div> <div 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9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="395" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OldGuard-02-740x395.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Chiwetel Ejiofor in The Old Guard" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OldGuard-02-740x395.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OldGuard-02-1100x587.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OldGuard-02-768x410.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/OldGuard-02.png 1500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Screenshot: Netflix</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>The horrors are coming along nicely. In 2024, Mike Flanagan signed on for <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-next-exorcist-movie-might-get-mike-flanagan-as-its-director/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a new <em>Exorcist</em> film</a>—one that was originally assumed to be the follow-up to David Gordon Green&#8217;s poorly received <em>The Exorcist: Believer</em>. But Flanagan is instead doing his own thing. In November, <a href="https://reactormag.com/mike-flanagans-exorcist-movie-scarlett-johansson-details-cast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Scarlett Johansson signed on to star</a> in a film that is reportedly a “<a href="https://variety.com/2025/film/news/scarlett-johansson-exorcist-movie-1236591122/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">radical new take</a>” on the <em>Exorcist</em> franchise, set in the same universe as the 1973 original.</p> <p>It was previously announced that Johansson will be joined by <a href="https://variety.com/2026/film/news/mike-flanagan-exorcist-release-date-1236633686/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jacobi Jupe</a> (<em>Hamnet</em>), who plays her child, and <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/01/the-exorcist-diane-lane-cast-mike-flanagan-1236698455/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Diane Lane</a>, whose role remains unknown. One is tempted, of course, to assume that young Jupe will wind up possessed, in keeping with the plot of the original film, but one actually knows nothing at all. Perhaps this time it&#8217;s a mother facing possession. Flanagan, who is writing and directing, is not exactly known for taking the most straightforward options.</p> <p>Now we&#8217;ve got one more star in a mysterious role: Chiwetel Ejiofor (<em>The Old Guard</em>, <em>Children of Men</em>) <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/chiwetel-ejiofor-joins-scarlett-johansson-in-new-exorcist-1236494538/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has also joined the cast</a>, reuniting him with his <em>Life of Chuck</em> director. (Flanagan does love to reuse his ensemble!)</p> <p>According to <em>The Hollywood Reporter</em>, &#8220;Sources say the actor will be playing an ex-con turned priest.&#8221; </p> <p><em>The Exorcist</em> is expected to begin production in New York City next month. It&#8217;s set to begin haunting theaters on March 12, 2027.[end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/chiwetel-ejiofor-mike-flanagan-exorcist/">Chiwetel Ejiofor Joins Mike Flanagan&#8217;s &lt;i&gt;Exorcist &lt;/i&gt;Movie</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/chiwetel-ejiofor-mike-flanagan-exorcist/">https://reactormag.com/chiwetel-ejiofor-mike-flanagan-exorcist/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838602">https://reactormag.com/?p=838602</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/plan-b-from-outer-space-lucy-snyders-sister-maiden-monster-part-11/">https://reactormag.com/plan-b-from-outer-space-lucy-snyders-sister-maiden-monster-part-11/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=838513">https://reactormag.com/?p=838513</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/books/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Books 0"> Books </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/reading-the-weird/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Reading the Weird 1"> Reading the Weird </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Plan B From Outer Space: Lucy Snyder’s <i>Sister, Maiden, Monster</i> (Part 11)</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Mareva deals with the cosmic apocalypse in the conclusion of Sister, Maiden, Monster</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/ruthanna-emrys/" title="Posts by Ruthanna Emrys" class="author url fn" rel="author">Ruthanna Emrys</a>, <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/anne-m-pillsworth/" title="Posts by Anne M. Pillsworth" class="author url fn" rel="author">Anne M. Pillsworth</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on February 4, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/plan-b-from-outer-space-lucy-snyders-sister-maiden-monster-part-11/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 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h-[17px]" width="18" height="18" viewbox="0 0 18 18" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-label="rss feed" role="img" aria-hidden="true"> <g clip-path="url(#clip0_1051_121783)"> <path d="M2.67871 17.4143C2.12871 17.4143 1.65771 17.2183 1.26571 16.8263C0.873713 16.4343 0.678046 15.9636 0.678713 15.4143C0.678713 14.8643 0.874713 14.3933 1.26671 14.0013C1.65871 13.6093 2.12938 13.4136 2.67871 13.4143C3.22871 13.4143 3.69971 13.6103 4.09171 14.0023C4.48371 14.3943 4.67938 14.865 4.67871 15.4143C4.67871 15.9643 4.48271 16.4353 4.09071 16.8273C3.69871 17.2193 3.22805 17.415 2.67871 17.4143ZM14.6787 17.4143C14.6787 15.481 14.312 13.6683 13.5787 11.9763C12.8454 10.2843 11.841 8.80097 10.5657 7.52631C9.29171 6.25164 7.80871 5.24764 6.11671 4.51431C4.42471 3.78097 2.61205 3.41431 0.678713 3.41431V0.414307C3.02871 0.414307 5.23705 0.860306 7.30371 1.75231C9.37038 2.64431 11.1704 3.85664 12.7037 5.38931C14.237 6.92264 15.4497 8.72264 16.3417 10.7893C17.2337 12.856 17.6794 15.0643 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src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sister-maiden-monster-header-740x407.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Cover of Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A Snyder" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sister-maiden-monster-header-740x407.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sister-maiden-monster-header-1100x605.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sister-maiden-monster-header-768x422.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sister-maiden-monster-header.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Welcome back to <a href="http://reactormag.com/columns/reading-the-weird" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reading the Weird</a>, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Chapters 29-30 of Lucy Snyder’s <em>Sister, Maiden, Monster</em>. The book was first published in 2023. Spoilers ahead!</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <p>Erin sprouts a new growth from her temple: &#8220;a shiny gray-headed protrusion about the size of a golf ball.&#8221; Mar worries. Erin may be a monster now, but she still sometimes reveals the old Erin.</p> <p>Erin summons Mar to a toolshed rendezvous. Savannah&#8217;s asleep with baby dodecapod Gregory curled around her. Mar feels guilty about her unmotherly repulsion. Surely the helpless creature deserves better than Savannah.</p> <p>Erin, she sees with horror, has clawed off her temple growth, exposing her brain. A gray umbilical cord trails from the wound to a jellylike blob cradled in her taloned hand. She growls that she can&#8217;t &#8220;ascend&#8221; with the &#8220;memories&#8221; this &#8220;cerebryo&#8221; holds, and she forces Mar to swallow it. Two images flash through Mar&#8217;s mind: a coffee can holding an antique key and a hidden keyhole in a basement wall. Erin instructs her to use the key when &#8220;the stars are right.&#8221; What&#8217;s behind the wall will enable Mar to choose her future, though neither choice will be &#8220;benign.&#8221;</p> <p>Next morning Mar wakes to Savannah cursing out &#8220;Michael&#8221; for not warning her that the &#8220;Cleaving&#8221; was imminent. Now she can’t get a proper supply of scalpels and sutures. What’s the Cleaving? Better Mar doesn&#8217;t know the details. Just stay inside today, especially after sundown.</p> <p>From her room, Mar watches Savannah haul cutlery and tarps into the barn. Her labors done, Savannah collapses with Gregory. From the barn come Archivist screams, &#8220;at once dreadful and thrilling.&#8221; Mar finds the monsters &#8220;rutting into each other… and slashing themselves open with knives.&#8221; Erin leads the &#8220;grisly congregation&#8221; in a litany about &#8220;existing in and with one another,&#8221; and rising to the &#8220;Mother of All&#8221; by escaping &#8220;the forms of this world.&#8221; As the Archivists staple and stitch each other together, Mar realizes what the Cleaving is. From Erin&#8217;s memories, she now knows Dr. Shapiro&#8217;s whereabouts, but also knows she can&#8217;t escape the manor yet.</p> <p>On the sixth morning after the Cleaving, tremors shake Mar awake. A gigantic sky-hole opens over the city, a portal to a huge ringed planet. A massive space ship emerges. With Erin screaming that it&#8217;s time to &#8220;join our masters in the star shadows,&#8221; the fused Archivists fly to the ship. Savannah sighs that one day she’ll get her own wings. Mar asks if all the humans are dead. Savannah doesn&#8217;t know. Regardless, it’s just Mar and Savannah and Gregory now—at least until Mar has more squiddos.</p> <p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p> <p>With the Archivists gone, Erin&#8217;s memories &#8220;blossom&#8221; in Mar&#8217;s mind. She sneaks into the manor basement, finds the antique key and a keyhole hidden behind a switchplate. The key triggers a wall to slide back, revealing a wood-paneled study like what &#8220;a wealthy, educated gentleman of yesteryear&#8221; would have built. From the LED lights in the gas fixtures and some modern books among the aged esoteric tomes, she figures Mayne updated the place. There&#8217;s also a vinyl record on top of a turntable. On its cover is a strange yellow symbol and the title <em>Into the Hands of the Living God</em>. A &#8220;dreadful urge&#8221; makes her play the record. Atonal music sounds from a solo violin, and Mar lapses into vision.</p> <p>She&#8217;s standing above a wave-swept lake. Overhead shine three moons, twin suns, and three black stars. The starlight drives her to &#8220;transcendent darkness.&#8221; Footsteps approach. Through tears she sees a figure dressed in yellow robes. His face is &#8220;blank, pale,&#8221; but he says he wears no mask. He&#8217;s come to show Mar her future. At his touch, she&#8217;s transported a millennium forward. The Mayne manor&#8217;s gone; in its place is a &#8220;shuddering amorphous mass of gray-white flesh,&#8221; over which crawl monsters that pull &#8220;squirming larvae&#8221; from its numberless birthing sacs. The blob&#8217;s only feature is a vast maw lined with humanish teeth, which the monsters constantly feed. It&#8217;s what Mar will become, the yellow-clad stranger says: Earth&#8217;s &#8220;new fertility deity. All powerful yet helpless. Wise yet mindless. Revered and yet an abomination.&#8221;</p> <p>Mar begs the stranger to kill her, but even he can&#8217;t overcome the immortality imposed by his &#8220;adversaries.&#8221; But he offers a choice. If she accepts the gift he&#8217;ll leave for her, she&#8217;ll have no more offspring. She&#8217;ll prevent the repopulation of Earth and be free to live out her immortality as she chooses, in a world &#8220;silent but for the wind in the trees and the waves crashing upon the empty shores, just as [he wishes] it to be.&#8221;</p> <p>Waking in the study, Mar finds a ring carved from human bone and inlaid with the Yellow Sign. When she puts it on, it sinks spikes into her bone, becoming immovable. At once she feels her embryo cysts subsiding. &#8220;Hallelujah,&#8221; she whispers.</p> <p>Savannah&#8217;s &#8220;scared and furious.&#8221; She can&#8217;t pull the ring off, but a meat cleaver should do the job. Mar punches Savannah unconscious, strength enhanced by the ring. But she can&#8217;t murder her jailer. Instead she hurries to pack. Leaving, she sees Gregory sleeping in his aquarium-crib. She has three choices. She can leave him with Savannah. She can euthanize him (but how?). Or—</p> <p>Mar steels herself to pick up Gregory. His red skin is covered with velvety silver fuzz. He&#8217;s warm and just slightly squishy. A little fishy-smelling. But his eyes are blue, like Leila&#8217;s.</p> <p>Though her &#8220;rat brain&#8221; tells her she knows nothing about babies, human or alien, her &#8220;superstitious mind&#8221; tells her to have faith—she&#8217;ll figure this out. She asks Gregory if he wants to come look for Dr. Shapiro. He yawns and garbles: “Agafa!” She’ll take that as a yes.</p> <p><strong>What’s Cyclopean:</strong> “Cleaving” is an autoantonym: it means both cutting apart and binding together. Boy howdy, does it ever mean both of those things this week.</p> <p><strong>Libronomicon:</strong> Mark Mayne’s secret office has been repurposed, but still contains <em>High Performance Habits</em> and <em>High Growth Habits</em>. Neither of those seems particularly useful at this stage of world history, unless you use very different definitions of “high,” “performance,” and “growth.” Of course, Mareva doesn’t open them, so maybe they <em>are</em> about reshaping your body to ascend into the stars, and/or to grow eldritch infants.</p> <p><strong>Weirdbuilding:</strong> Wave hello to <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-road-between-worlds-the-music-of-erich-zann/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Erich Zann</a> and the <a href="https://reactormag.com/borrowing-from-pickmans-library-robert-w-chamberss-the-yellow-sign/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">King in Yellow</a>.</p> <p><strong>Madness Takes Its Toll:</strong> “On drugs” is not really necessary at this point to explain Savannah’s mania. Or her suggestion to Mareva that “psychologically, ignorance is your friend”.</p> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Anne’s Commentary</strong></h3> <p>In the &#8220;Acknowledgements&#8221; for <em>Sister, Maiden, Monster</em>, Lucy Snyder thanks Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon for soliciting &#8220;Magdala Amygdala&#8221; for their <em>Dark Faith: Invocations </em>anthology. She adds a special thank you to Broaddus for sending her favorite editorial acceptance ever:</p> <p>&#8220;Lucy, what the fuck is wrong with you? Good grief that story was messed up. Thanks. I think.&#8221;</p> <p>About the novel that grew out of &#8220;Magdala Amygdala&#8221; and Savannah&#8217;s origin story, &#8220;My Knowing Glance,&#8221; I&#8217;d like to echo Broaddus&#8217;s sentiments. I&#8217;m sure that he doesn&#8217;t <em>really</em> assume dark fiction writers must be deranged. I&#8217;m sure he didn&#8217;t <em>really</em> think &#8220;Magdala Amygdala&#8221; was &#8220;messed up,&#8221; except in a <em>good</em> way. As Stephen King wrote in <em>Danse Macabre</em>, messing around in the darkest recesses of one&#8217;s own—and one&#8217;s reader&#8217;s—mind is legitimate practice:</p> <p>&#8220;I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I&#8217;ll go for the gross-out. I&#8217;m not proud.&#8221;</p> <p>Snyder does plenty of terrifying and horrifying in <em>Sister, Maiden, Monster</em>, but I&#8217;ve got to say it&#8217;s in the sheer volume, inventiveness and outright unabashedness of her body horror that the novel excels. &#8220;Body horror&#8221; is the polite term for &#8220;gross-out,&#8221; right? And it encompasses sexual horror as well as guts-and-gore and miscellaneous biological ickinesses? Or put sexual horror in its own category, if you prefer, in which case <em>S, M, M</em> excels in both categories, and also in the subcategory of reproductive horror. Gregory&#8217;s birth may outdo the C-section via vampire teeth in <em>Breaking Dawn</em>. But in a good way: it’s kind of neat that the Mother of Calamities can do her own c-sections. At least until she evolves into an amorphous gray mass without any limbs to wield scalpel-claws.</p> <p>Fortunately, by that time she&#8217;ll have birthed enough squiddos to serve as midwives, &#8220;pulling squirming larvae from fleshy sacs that rupture like boils.&#8221; No, nuh-uh, I cannot—this is <em>Dr. Pimple Popper</em> on a cosmic scale. In her final form, I just realized, Mar must look like a protoshoggoth in labor. Or even like Azathoth Itself, given the King in Yellow&#8217;s description of this final metamorphosis as a terrible deification in which Mar would become a &#8220;living god,&#8221; but also &#8220;All-powerful yet helpless. Wise yet mindless. Revered and yet an abomination.&#8221;</p> <p>Given the looseness of abomination nomenclature in the Cthulhu Mythos, it&#8217;s difficult to exactly categorize the entities using Snyder&#8217;s PVG virus to transform Earth into their latest breeding colony. Erin and Savannah refer to the deities they see in their visions as the &#8220;old gods&#8221; and describe them as &#8220;whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars.&#8221; My first impression is that their &#8220;old gods&#8221; are the primal and ultimate entities more &#8220;properly&#8221; referred to as the Outer Gods: Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep are those best &#8220;known&#8221; to humans, though &#8220;unknowable.&#8221;</p> <p>In a letter to James F. Morton, Lovecraft wrote that &#8220;Great Old One&#8221; <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-most-merciful-thing-in-the-world-call-of-cthulhu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cthulhu</a> is the offspring of Nug, who is the offspring of Yog-Sothoth and <a href="https://reactormag.com/llovecraft-reread-anders-fager-furies-from-boras/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shub-Niggurath</a>. The prominence of cephalopod-like creatures among Mar&#8217;s present and future offspring suggests that it may be Cthulhu and his minions who are taking over Earth. This makes Mythosian sense given Derleth&#8217;s claim that Cthulhu and Hastur are half-brothers embroiled in eternal rivalry. One of Hastur&#8217;s principal manifestations is the King in Yellow, whose sigil is the <a href="https://reactormag.com/borrowing-from-pickmans-library-robert-w-chamberss-the-yellow-sign/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yellow Sign</a>. Erin first sees the Yellow Sign in the hospital where she&#8217;s recovering from her initial bout with PVG; it&#8217;s set into the pavement of a courtyard. Staring at the weird symbol, Erin&#8217;s transported in vision to the Mayne manor, which she senses is a &#8220;keep fit for a king. Or a living god.&#8221;</p> <p>As Erin&#8217;s transforming into a winged Archivist, she again hears the &#8220;old gods&#8221; whispering, but she also hears a &#8220;faint, insistent whisper in the castle manor.&#8221; Somehow she knows her new masters wouldn&#8217;t approve of her listening to the second whisperer, but she cherishes it as her &#8220;special secret.&#8221; What&#8217;s in the manor basement is a hidden study where Mar will find a vinyl album emblazoned with the Yellow Sign and titled <em>Into the Hands of the Living God</em>. Listening to the record delivers Mar to a lake under twin suns, triplet moons, and black stars: Carcosa and Hali, where the King in Yellow will offer her an alternative to eternal squiddo production.</p> <p>Mar only discovers the hidden study through the memories which Erin literally feeds her before the Cleaving. Erin has to get rid of these memories in order to ascend, because they are associated with her secret alliance to the King, aka Cthulhu&#8217;s fraternal enemy Hastur, and it&#8217;s to the Team Cthulhu spaceship that the Archivists will joyfully flock. So the King in Yellow must have been plotting all along to sabotage Cthulhu&#8217;s Earth takeover by luring Mar, Cthulhu&#8217;s Mater Calamitas, to Team Hastur!</p> <p>Whew. The tortuous plot makes sense at last, or at least this is the sense I make of it. It&#8217;s a narrative road it has been well-worth following despite (or sorta because of) the frequent gooey patches!</p> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Ruthanna’s Commentary</strong></h3> <p>This has been a wild book. I have to confess, “birth control provided by the King in Yellow” was not on my bingo card. I’m glad they have Plan B in lost Carcosa. Even if they have it mostly because they prefer lifeless orbs to elder god remodeling styles. Planetary cancer or lunar desert? You decide!</p> <p>It’s not actually as bad as lunar desert, though. <em>Humans</em> have gotten purged, but as far as I can tell there was no universal slaughter of cows, platypuses, or pine trees. And the ocean is already full of mutated dodecapods. So with things <em>not</em> being overrun by cancer babies (doo de doo dah doo doo de doo, dah doo), there’s a solid foundation for ecosystem preservation and regrowth. Unless the King in Yellow has further plans, always possible.</p> <p>Erin dreamed of a god-king palace in the hills. Mayne Mansion doesn’t quite measure up – no god-kings here, as of the book’s end. So is Savannah going to set herself up as a death goddess? Or will it become a Carcosan monument? Given the secret interdimensional musical passage in the basement, I’m betting the latter. The door is open. Things can pass through in both directions. I’m betting the next thing through, when she wakes up, will be Savannah—and if she doesn’t get swatted for threatening the King, what will <em>her</em> gift look like?</p> <p>Ohhhhhh. Were the Carcosans also guiding the feds, suggesting sigils and processes most unhelpful for the elder gods’ long-term plans? That would explain a lot.</p> <p>We originally picked this book because I wanted something with all the angry queer girl cooties ever. Snyder has delivered in spades. Coming down to the end, I’m fascinated by our trinity of angry queer girls:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Erin: lesbian (her sexually unexciting “fiancé” turns out to be an unfortunately-repressed egg; her passion is for Betty), angry about the kyriarchy and how she’s been pushed into a generic story about what you’re supposed to want. Archivist, accepts her eldritch “gifts” but doesn’t let the gods entirely override her human values or desires. Ultimate fate: cuts out her human values and gives them to Mareva, “cleaves” with Betty, ascends to join the biblically accurate abomination.</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Savannah: bi, angry about the kyriarchy and abuse. Culler and bodyguard, accepts her destiny and gives up her pre-existing morals (which she did seem to have, briefly) in favor of homicidal hedonism. Ultimate fate: uncertain. Maybe Carcosan gifts, maybe punishment for failing her mission, maybe ascension and new worlds where she can play slasher. Or maybe she’ll wander the barren earth, looking for things to kill so she can get one more orgasm.</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Mareva: ace, angry about how kyriarchy and abuse have fucked over her family in particular, and about the expectation that women (she and her sister in particular) should reduce themselves to brood mares just because gods say so. Intended to be the mindless magna mater, but holds onto her morals. Refuses her shitty destiny with Erin’s help. Ultimate fate: Immortal and unkillable, wandering what remains of Earth with baby Gregory, looking for food and shelter and survivors.</li> </ul> <p>I’m rooting for Mareva, and maybe even Gregory, and against <em>all</em> the super-kyriarchical powers trying to remake Earth in their preferred images. And for more messed-up stories from Snyder.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" /> <p>Next week, we travel under other dangerous skies, populated by other leather-winged monsters, in Caitlin Kiernan’s “A Travelogue for Oneironautics.” You can find it in her <em><a href="https://subterraneanpress.com/kiernan-bds/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bright Dead Star</a></em> collection. Then in two weeks, join us for our new longread: Stephen Graham Jones’ <em><a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-buffalo-hunter-hunter-stephen-graham-jones/d1b4a8cac4757e4e?ean=9781668075081&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buffalo Hunter Hunter</a></em>![end-mark]</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <section class="wp-block-shop-the-book shop-the-book"> <h2 class="shop-the-book-headline">Buy the Book</h2> <div class="shop-the-book-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-Buffalo-Hunter-Hunter.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Cover of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones." /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-mobile image-cover"> <!-- <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" 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