News Scooby-Doo Zoinks! A Scooby-Doo Live-Action Series Is Heading to Netflix By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on March 26, 2025 Screenshot: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Warner Bros. We’ve got another iteration of Scooby-Doo heading our way, whether we want it or not. The latest Mystery Inc. team is heading to Netflix with an eight-episode order. The series will apparently be an origin story about how Scooby first teamed up with Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Freddy. Here’s the official logline, per Variety: During their final summer at camp, old friends Shaggy and Daphne get embroiled in a haunting mystery surrounding a lonely lost Great Dane puppy that may have been a witness to a supernatural murder. Together with the pragmatic and scientific townie, Velma, and the strange, but ever so handsome new kid, Freddy, they set out to solve the case that is pulling each of them into a creepy nightmare that threatens to expose all of their secrets. Groovy… ? The project comes from Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg , who serve as writers and showrunners. Greg Berlanti’s Berlanti Productions, the company behind The CW’s Arrowverse, among many other things, is executive producing the project. “One of my first and favorite jobs in Hollywood was sitting with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera while they signed animation cells,” Berlanti said in a statement. “Josh and Scott and everyone at Midnight Radio have crafted a story that captures their amazing spirits and their genius creation. We are grateful to them and everyone at Warners and Netflix for the partnership in helping bring this iteration of Scooby-Doo to life!” This isn’t the first live-action version of Scooby-Doo, of course: A couple of decades ago Warner Bros. came out with a feature film featuring flesh-and-blood human beings (see the great Matthew Lillard’s Shaggy above) and a CGI Great Dane who loved Scooby snacks. The cartoon iterations of the team are many, including Mindy Kaling’s Velma, which has since been canceled. No news yet on when Netflix will submit our eyeballs to another Scooby-Doo endeavor. [end-mark] The post Zoinks! A Scooby-Doo Live-Action Series Is Heading to Netflix appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen It will take everything Vanja has to save not just the people she loves, but the future she’s fought for. By Margaret Owen | Published on March 26, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Holy Terrors, the third book in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves YA series—out from Henry Holt and Co. on April 1st. It’s been nearly two years since Vanja brought down the cult she started, and she’s still paying the price. As the Pfennigeist, she bucks the law in order to help the desperate and haunt the corrupt all across the empire—and no matter what, she works alone.But an impossible killer is tearing through royalty, and leaving Vanja’s signature red penny on every victim. Suddenly the Pfennigeist is no longer a folk hero but a nightmare. When even the Blessed Empress falls, the empire’s seven royal families must gather to elect her successor within a matter of weeks, or risk the collapse of reality itself… even though it puts every house in the killer’s sights.Vanja tells herself she’s wading into the royalty’s vicious games only to save the name she made, and the loved ones also in jeopardy. But the Order of Prefects has also put their sharpest official on the case, the one who swore he’d always find Vanja—until she broke his heart. Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad may no longer be the boy Vanja knew, but they’ll have to work together one last time to have any chance of surviving the deadly catastrophe coming for them all. The sun’s down, a purple velvet sky trimmed in lacy gold-tinged clouds by the time I leave. It’s not quite dark enough for me to take to the rooftops yet, so I try to blend into the crowds of penitents at the temple district’s sakretwaren market nearby. As I slow to peruse racks of incense and tiny effigies, a gray-cloaked figure at the edge of my sight slows as well. I catch my breath, then move down the row of stalls. So does the figure. I hang back a moment, wait for a gaggle of gossiping aunties to pass between us, then slip between two stalls, into the quieter lane behind the vendor stalls. A beat later, the gangly figure strides into the alley as well, one silver-trimmed sleeve peeking out from the cloak. Light brown hair—the prefect with the coachman earlier. I back up into the market again. It’s too late. Footsteps smack against the cobblestones in the alleyway. I break into a run, careening around as many carts and clusters of people as possible as annoyed shouts follow me. If I can lose him in the market— Another prefect blocks the exit at the end of the stalls. I bolt for another gap between vendors, but this time loop around and go right back into the market. The ruse works. Both prefects vanish into the lane I left as I cross into the opposite one, trying to come up with a plan. They’ve found me. The game just changed. If I can’t stay underground, I have to stay one step ahead. I dart out of the alleyway and run down the street, trying to put as much distance as I can between me and the two prefects as a matter of pure survival. Their contract with the Low Gods lets them draw on the power of the Low Gods themselves, and while I would trust Emeric’s restraint, I don’t know what these men are capable of. Sure enough, I see threads of silver slithering over the cobblestones. There’s a faint ping every time a passerby steps on one. I hurl myself forward, sprinting— A silver worm slips under my foot, and a horrible screech pierces the air. People clap their hands over their ears, swearing. All the other threads converge into one leading directly to me. I immediately spring for the first handhold I see, a window ledge for a shrine of the Spindle-dam. The silver line wavers at the foundation, sputtering. That’s right. Fortune and Death said the Low Gods couldn’t interfere with the prefects. Maybe that nonintervention goes both ways. I scale the side of the shrine and reach the roof, but I’m much too exposed; I need to get higher. The grander cathedrals are deeper into the temple district, gathered around a square. Each one has a thousand places to hide if I can reach them—and I don’t need to hunker down for good, I just need to shake the prefects. I jump to the next roof, then drop into the narrow passage behind it. There’s a ghastly hiss. The silver thread whips around the corner, streaking for me. I take off for the cathedral square. Awful short bursts of the alarm blare every time the thread catches up, cutting off whenever I pass through a shrine. When I reach the square, I hare for Fortune’s cathedral. If Emeric’s briefed my pursuers, they’ll expect me to flee here, and the silver thread will only convince them more. It hovers at Fortune’s doorstep as I catch the arch of a window frame and lever myself up, scrambling onto the roof of the Gambler’s Altar. There’s a narrow gap between it and the vestibule of Time’s basilica, one I know I can clear in a leap. The prefects will spend hours scouring Fortune’s cathedral, and that’s all I need. I make the jump, pop a window open, and drop into the basilica’s vestibule. When I look back out, the silver line hasn’t moved. Finally something went right. Buy the Book Holy Terrors Margaret Owen Buy Book Holy Terrors Margaret Owen Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Even if they figure out I’m not in the cathedral, they’ll expect me to keep running. Time’s basilica has a bell tower I can hide in, its entrance a stone arch just across the vestibule. I stay low, sneaking a look into the main atrium as I make my way over. The clergy are engrossed in their divination evensong, gazing into bowls of sand as pensive congregants wait for answers. No one even notices me slipping into the tower. Slate stairs spiral up out of sight. I start up the steps— And a creaking slam rings behind me, punctuated by the grate of a lock. I didn’t even see the door. Someone knew I would come here. Knew I would go high instead of far. And if I look back, I know who I’ll find. I falter, just for a heartbeat, just for him. And then terror drives me on faster than before. My legs burn, my lungs burn, my heart burns, all of it. There is one person who could anticipate where I’d run. One person who could trap me like this. One person who swore he would chase me, find me, choose me, every time. I have waited nearly a year and a half for this. Burned for it. Run from it. I can’t stop, not now. I hear his footfalls at my back, his ragged breath—I think he’s taking the stairs two at a time, damn him and his horrible long legs— My foot catches. I stumble and crash onto a landing. There’s a glittering chime as the pouch of rings spills behind me, sending them cascading down the stairs. The pursuing footfalls slow, just for a moment, to avoid slipping on them too. I force myself up and keep going. The world narrows to a blur of spiraling stairs—and then yawns open again. I’ve reached the belfry. A great bronze bell hangs to my right, the chamber an eight-sided cage. Tall windows have been cut into each face to let out the tolling, barred with railings to prevent clumsiness from turning lethal. There’s a ladder around the other side of the bell, but it’s capped by a trapdoor I won’t have time to fiddle with. I need a delay. I whip off my cloak and tuck into a niche by a window, one obscured from the stairwell. Just as footsteps approach the final bend, I fling my cloak out over the railing. It flaps into the night. From below, it’ll look like I just pitched myself out the window. “Vanja, NO—” Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad’s voice rings out as he throws himself up the last few stairs and rushes to the window. I glide behind him, reaching— He turns. And just as he said he would—he catches me. A fist wraps around my left wrist in an iron grip. But he missed my right. I press his own gold-plated knife to his throat, meet his gaze for the first time in over a year, and say sweetly, “Vanja, yes.” A tortured moment passes between us, locked together, winded. He looks older—of course he looks older, you ninny, he just turned twenty on the ninth—sharper, his black hair cut a little shorter, a tension to his mouth I don’t remember. He’s still built more or less like he aspires to be a decorative ficus when he grows up—insultingly, the bastard might even be taller—but he’s verging on filling out his crisp uniform coat, the starched linen krebatte around his throat looking marginally more merited. Gods, there’s still juniper lacing his breath, calling to a thousand memories. Behind his round-lensed spectacles, his dark eyes are—unreadable to me. I want to kiss him until we both suffocate. I want to push him down the stairs. I want to ask, What took you so long? I want to tell him everything and beg for another chance. “Well, say something,” I barely manage. He—he has to know I’m not the assassin. Right? Even after the way I left, even after all this time, Emeric can’t believe I’m a killer. His jaw works. His lips part as my pulse rattles. And then he stonily recites: “Vanja Ros, you are hereby being taken into the custody of the Order of Prefects of the Godly Courts. You—” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I snarl, heat rushing to my face—scheit, I’m such a fool to think any of this was salvageable when I ruined it myself. Then I recall the dead prince’s rings are probably still rolling down the steps and clarify: “I mean, I didn’t kill anyone.” “You are expected to comply with any orders issued by a prefect or affiliated staff,” he continues as if I’m not holding his own knife to his throat, “unless it infringes on—” “Let me go,” I protest, trying to yank my left arm free. It’s no good. “You know I didn’t do it—” “—infringes on your safety or rights as a citizen of the Blessed Empire of Almandy.” I keep squirming as my anger calcifies. He was supposed to be better than this. “I’m about to infringe this knife into your d—” “You are entitled to legal consultation with a qualified third party,” Emeric plows on, a line deepening in his brow. “You may inquire which crimes you are being charged with, but a prefect may choose to withhold any further information that jeopardizes their case.” He pauses and makes the face of a man procedurally obligated to make an enormous mistake. “Do you,” he grits out, “have any questions at this time?” “Just one.” “Of course,” he mutters. I flick my eyes to his right. “Have you ever considered changing where you keep your manacles?” Emeric’s grip slackens as he looks down, but it’s too late. Somewhere amid my tactical thrashing, his right hand’s wound up cuffed to the window railing. I finally wrench free and toss his knife over my shoulder. It hits the bell with a resounding clang. “I didn’t do it,” I repeat over his flurry of cursing, headed for the ladder. “We both know it. Walk away.” He doesn’t respond. Just as I get the trapdoor to the roof open, there’s a silver flash and a crack—damn him, his hands are free— I hoist myself up onto the belfry roof and hurry over to the parapet, scouring for a way out. I could climb down. No, I could try to climb down, and I’m sure once Emeric’s done laughing at me, he can walk down the stairs like a reasonable person and arrest me when I reach the bottom. The Pfennigeist is about to be caught. Again. Something about that—snags. I remember Benno laughing this morning, The locals say the Pfennigeist can vanish in plain sight. And I’d sneered back, Don’t believe everything you hear. I know Low Gods are what people believe of them. That enough people believed my lie of the Scarlet Maiden last May to raise my mother’s ghost to a god. But the Penny Phantom is just a name. Right? “Stop where you are.” Emeric’s rigid command strikes over the stones. Then, for a moment, terribly human bitterness breaks through: “You don’t have to make this worse for yourself.” “It’s a talent,” I say flatly, not turning around. “More of a calling, really.” My mind is racing. It’s too late to try invisibility, and there are no locks for me to break. That leaves one way out for the Pfennigeist. I think. I hope. I climb up onto the parapet as the bell begins tolling the hour. “Get down right now.” Emeric’s voice rises over the thunderous knelling. “That’s an order.” I give him a look of pure disdain. I’d feel bad if he was even a little afraid, but in his face, there’s only contempt. “Give up, Vanja. There’s no escape.” I glance down and immediately regret it. “A worse person might point out that historically, there have in fact been several escapes.” “This is your final warning.” He sounds so harsh I barely recognize the words as his. I ignore him and reach for a pocket. From the corner of my eye, I see his lips moving, fingers blurring as they trace bright runes into a wheel. There’s a strange, almost clunking noise, then—silence. The bells. They’ve stopped mid-ring. No, everything has stopped. The world is eerily silent, just him and me and the razor grin of the barest crescent moon above. Emeric’s breathing harder than when he was chasing me up the stairs, one hand clenched around silvery wrinkles in the air as if digging into the fabric of reality itself. He starts to stagger closer, sweat beading his face. It’s time. He’s stopped time itself to catch me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have stuck. Emeric’s eyes widen as I pull a vial from my pocket, its black cork marking it for the prefect order’s strongest witch-ash. Between his knife and his manacles, I’m not surprised he missed me nicking this also. (Doesn’t help that it, too, was in the same spot.) I bite the cork out and spit it at his feet. Then I lift the vial in an insolent toast. “To your health and honor, Prefect Conrad.” I tell myself: I am the Pfennigeist. I empty the vial down my throat, eyes on the stars. And I let myself fall. Excerpted from Holy Terrors, copyright © 2025 by Margaret Owen. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Holy Terrors</i> by Margaret Owen appeared first on Reactor.

News Free for All: The Public Library Trailer for Free for All: The Public Library Confirms Libraries Are Very, Very Good By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on March 26, 2025 Credit: Robert Dawson Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Robert Dawson There’s a new documentary celebrating the history and impact of libraries heading to PBS, and the trailer released today touches on the unequivocal positive impact they—and the librarians who work there—have on communities. Here’s the synopsis: Free For All: The Public Library chronicles the fascinating evolution of the American public library’s trajectory, from the original “Free Library Movement” that began in the late 19th century to the present, when many libraries find themselves caught in the crosshairs of the culture wars and struggling to survive amid budget cuts and closures. The feature comes from filmmakers Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor, who travel across the country visiting libraries large and small, including landmark sites in library history. Free for All also highlights several inspiring librarians, past and present, who, according to marketing materials, uphold “the library’s integral position within our democracy, spreading literacy, offering solace and refuge, and uplifting their communities.” “Our hope is that this film inspires viewers to see libraries anew—as dynamic, vital institutions at the heart of democracy,” the filmmakers said in a statement. “Libraries are more than places where stories are stored; they are where communities are built, where futures are imagined, and where dignity is upheld.” Free For All: The Public Library premieres on PBS’s Independent Lens on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at 10 p.m. It will also be available to stream on the PBS app at that time. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post Trailer for <i>Free for All: The Public Library</i> Confirms Libraries Are Very, Very Good appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird Down the Worst Roller-Coaster: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (Part 20) The wendigo has done its work well, and no one is safe… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on March 26, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, 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 continue Stephen King’s Pet Sematary with Chapters 58-60. The novel was first published in 1983. Spoilers ahead! Ongoing content warning for dead kids and pets. Jud’s slept through the night instead of watching for Louis. No, he didn’t fall asleep; he was put to sleep. He’s awakened by the sound of the porch door opening, then the front door. “Louis?” he calls, though he knows that whatever’s entered is “sent to punish an old man for his pride and vanity.” Footsteps approach, preceded by a “dirty, low smell—the smell of poisoned tidal flats.” Two shadows enter the sitting room. “Gage?” Jud asks. Church is the smaller shadow. Jud backs toward the kitchen, stumbling as Church twines around his ankles. He kicks the cat away. “It mayn’t be too late,” he thinks. “It’s back but it can be killed again.” Jud pulls a cleaver from the utensil drawer. “It ain’t a kid,” he reminds himself. “It may cry. But you ain’t gonna be fooled yet again. This is your last chance.” Church enters the kitchen first. Gage Creed follows, dressed in his moss-fouled burial suit. One eye is weirdly cocked. The other fixes on Jud. Gage grins. His babyish voice is perfectly understandable: “Hello, Jud. I’ve come to send your rotten, stinking old soul straight to hell.” Cleaver raised, Jud invites Gage to see who’s going to “fuck with who.” Gage says he’s seen Norma burning in hell. She was “a cheap slut” who cheated on Jud with all his friends. The thing’s voice changes to Norma’s: She knew about Jud’s whores, but he never knew he married a whore or how she and his friends laughed about him together… Jud springs toward Gage. Church trips him to the floor. He loses the cleaver. Gage attacks with Louis’s scalpel and drives its blade through the hand Jud raises. And the scalpel slashes again. Again. Again. * * * A truck driver helps Rachel fix her rental. A battery cable came off, weird thing to happen to a new car. Yes, weird, Rachel thinks as she drives on, feeling she’s being manipulated. Held up just long enough for something irrevocable to happen. By five o’clock, Jud’s dying. In Chicago, Ellie wakes from a nightmare, screaming. By quarter after, Rachel’s nearing Ludlow. She goes first to the Crandalls’ house. The peaceful dawn would usually give her a lift, but today brings “a dragging sense of unease.” Louis’s car isn’t in their driveway. When Jud doesn’t answer his doorbell, Rachel notices muddy footprints on the porch floor: very small prints, a child’s. Church meows inside. She opens the door. He sits in the hallway, whiskers beaded with blood. Crazily, memories of a monstrous Zelda interfere with Rachel’s rational fear that Jud’s hurt. Church meows upstairs now. Someone groans. Rachel runs to the second floor. Another groan, behind a closed door. Certain Zelda will be there, feeling like she’s shrinking to child-size, Rachel approaches. The door’s snatched open, and Zelda’s there, back twisted, “smelling of piss and death.” Her illness has dwarfed her, so she can wear Gage’s burial suit, and her eyes are “alight with an insane glee.” She’s come back for Rachel, to twist her back and put her permanently to bed— Then it’s Gage in front of Rachel, Church on his shoulder. His face is swollen, as if he’s been hurt and put back together by “crude, uncaring hands.” Rachel calls his name and stretches out her arms. Gage climbs into them and clings, one hand behind his back. “I brought you something, Mommy!” he screams. * * * Louis wakes around nine. He’s stiff everywhere, but his banged-up knee’s the big problem. Only the hope that Gage is back gets him up. No Gage upstairs, but from a window Louis spots a strange blue Chevette in Jud’s driveway, with Church curled atop it. Halfway downstairs, Louis remembers the Thing in the woods. His Disney World dreams merged with dreams about the Wendigo touching Louis to forever rot his good intentions. He’d become both a cannibal and the father of cannibals. He was in the Pet Sematary again, with the Batermans, and dead Jud with his dog Spot, Farmer Morgan with his bull, and—Rachel, dress splattered red. Behind them, sky-tall, the Wendigo stood… Stop, Louis tells himself. He’s going to make breakfast. After eating, he’ll shower, tend his injuries, and wait for Gage. The kitchen’s bright, but things feel awry, overshadowed. The phone rings. It’s Rachel’s father, asking if she got home all right. That’s when the sight of little muddy footprints freezes Louis’s heart. That blue Chevette, but where’s Rachel then? Louis lies that Rachel’s home and fine. Irwin tells him Ellie had such a nightmare overnight she couldn’t stop sobbing. They had to take her to the hospital, where she was sedated. Louis asks if Ellie said what scared her. She talked about Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, Irwin replies. How Oz had killed her mother. Crazy thing, that’s how Zelda pronounced the Wizard’s name—did Rachel ever tell Ellie about Zelda? The doctor says Ellie had a delayed shock from Gage’s funeral. She should be all right, but won’t Rachel and Louis come back to Chicago? After Louis says they will, Irwin adds that Ellie said something else strange: “Paxcow says it’s too late.” The call over, Louis sinks towards a swoon. Only the agony of landing on his swollen knee keeps him conscious. He fears Rachel’s dead. He knows he must wait for Gage, because wherever he might run, Gage would find him. What made him summon Gage back was grief, “the battery that burying ground survives on.” Its power feeds on Louis’s grief and sanity. He considers suicide, but first he must put things right. Tracing Gage’s footprints, Louis discovers his scalpel missing. Luckily, his doctor’s bag contains other potent things… As Louis prepares to act, he imagines a new family moving into this house, a young couple, no children yet but hopes and plans. They’ll congratulate themselves for getting the house cheap, not being superstitious about its recent past. And— Perhaps they’ll have a dog… What’s Cyclopean: Gage smells of “poisoned tidal flats.” When passing as Zelda, his face is “a raddled purple.” The Degenerate Dutch: Why is Wendy so obsessed with accusing women of infidelity? Or is that just the best way to get at men with certain obsessions? Madness Takes Its Toll: Madness takes a sizeable toll this week: Jud tries to hold onto his reason in the face of that horrible smell, “Zelda’s” eyes are “alight with an insane glee,” Ellie is “hysterical” in the older sense, Louis’s face is “out of a seventeenth-century painting of a lunatic asylum,” and he thinks that the wendigo has eaten his sanity. Ruthanna’s Commentary Sloooowwwww buildup—and now we’re on the downward slope of the roller-coaster, with no breaks. Gage and Church have teamed up, and no one is safe. The wendigo has done its work well, and while blood and obscenity-spewing 6-year-olds are certainly disturbing, the worst thing to me is how every single player has gotten separated from their loved ones. Jud, Rachel, Louis, even Ellie, have all been pried off solo one by one, naps and car breakdowns carefully choreographed to make sure they face the horror alone. (Sorry, Irwin, you don’t count.) The wendigo knows their vulnerabilities: the illusions and insults and areas of confidence and doubt that will make for the absolute worst possible experience and worst possible death. At this late date I can’t help but wonder about the monster’s motivation. If it wanted everyone dead, cat claws are in fact as good as a scalpel, and neither is as effective as a mind-controlled truck driver. But then, it’s a creature created by starvation and selfishness, so the point may in fact be cannibalism, metaphorical if not literal: children railing at adults with their worst fears in the worst possible language, expressions of love turned into routes for destruction, people dying in fear at the hands (if not will) of their loved ones. Getting killed by your toddler is much worse than getting killed by your cat. But then, I wonder… is Louis right that if he doesn’t interfere, “Gage” and “Church” will go off on a continent-wide rampage? Or rather, is he right that they’d still do that if he isn’t there to suffer for it, to feel guilty about being a “father of cannibals”? Nobody wants to get flayed by a zombie six-year-old, but for most people it wouldn’t really be personal. Wendy is more interested in Louis’s suffering than his death, or he would’ve been first under the scalpel. He is absolutely right that Ellie is still in Chicago, and that would be personal. And presumably Wendy would want to entertain itself on the way. Poor Ellie. Being a powerful little girl in a King novel is never good, and clairvoyance is not one of the fun powers to begin with. So she’s ended up in the hospital, sedated for “hysteria.” On the one hand, no one needs to be conscious and processing omens while her family is being murdered by her undead brother. On the other hand… on the other hand, sedation has been the consistent strategy for dealing with overset women and girls throughout this book, and that reflects something. Male emotion must be suppressed or translated into action, but female emotion is simply too intense for survival. Never mind that it’s Louis’s emotions that have proven deadly. I fear for Ellie’s future, and not just because of said undead brother. Under the best of circumstances, what are the odds that Irwin and Dory are up for keeping another mad girl at home, twenty years later? What will they do, for her own good? But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she’ll recover, at least enough to convince everyone that she’s articulate and rational and safe. And then she can set out on her own, beset by visions, looking for Charlie and Carrie to help her learn how to bear her burden. Anne’s Commentary If it had only happened another way. If she or he or they had only, if we had only, if you had only. Most heartbreaking, if I had only. One act of courage or honesty, one modicum of restraint, one moment sooner or later, one tiny whim, and things could have been different in a way that would have made all the difference. Someone who claims they never wanted to change something in their past is trying to avoid talking or thinking about that something. Fair enough. Lady Macbeth, practical even in her madness, mutters that “what’s done cannot be undone.” Jud Crandall, stolid Yankee fatalist when he’s done things too wild to accept the blame for, says, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier… A man grows what he can… and he tends it.” Intermittently, he knows this pithy credo is a cop-out. He admits to Rachel that “I better be able to take care of what’s happening [to Louis in her absence] because what’s happening is my fault.” Ain’t free will a bitch? But ain’t predestination a bitch as well? The Puritans tied themselves into knots trying to build a moral society around the idea that you’re either saved or you’re not—good actions can’t redeem you if you’re predestined for Hell, and vice versa. One solution: If you’re innately good, you’ll naturally prove it via your virtuous acts; innately bad, you’ll naturally prove it via your vicious ones. With this sort of theology in your cultural background, peace of mind may depend on labeling your “bad” actions as well-intentioned, springing from innate goodness, hence not really “bad.” Why does Jud take Louis to the Micmac burial ground? Oh, he knows Ellie will be bereft without her cat. Ergo, it’s only kind to restore the cat, pretty much intact. Never mind the consequences of Wendigo-powered resurrection. Suppress the notion that by sharing the Big Secret, you’re entangling another person in Its alluring webs. Its greatest allurement is this: What’s done can be undone. Including the ultimate if-only: If only my loved ones didn’t have to die. Some say they don’t reread books because they already know how the story ends. Such foreknowledge doesn’t matter to rereaders because they read for more than what happens in the final pages. They reread to enjoy the prose itself, the plot flow, the characters who feel like old friends or pet enemies. I experience another rereading phenomenon in many of my literary “second helpings.” Call it a suspension of foreknowledge, a sense that the characters’ fates are not finalized by the publication process, ink on paper, pixels on screens. Somehow, on a second or hundredth reading, things might happen differently. Pet Sematary is a reread novel in which I tenaciously cling to the hope things will change. I want so badly for the Creeds to live long and happy lives. King himself wanted it so badly that in Chapter 40 he wrote a whole alternate future for Gage. The immediate plot difference that makes all the difference is that instead of Louis’s fingers sliding off Gage’s jacket, they snag it, halting his son on the brink of the road. The chain of possible earlier saves is long: If only Gage tripped before reaching the road; if only Gage obeyed his parents and stopped running; if only Gage hadn’t gotten the urge to play catch-me; if only the Creeds had put up a fence to keep the kids safe from the dangerous road; if only that particular truck hadn’t come along; if only the truck-heavy road didn’t run by the Creeds’ property; if only the Creeds hadn’t come to Ludlow, where a malicious presence lurked in the woods hungry for death and grief and desperation. The chain could branch into the if-onlies involving Jud and others, all the way back to whoever made the Wendigo-assuaging burial ground to begin with. I know none of these if-onlies will happen. Yet I hope, and so viscerally re-experience the Creeds’ macabre tragedy. Am I looking for catharsis, a ritual cleansing through vicarious emotional release, that theoretical motor behind art in general, the weird and horrible in particular? To stretch the metaphor: If-onlies are the fuel of that emotion-motor, or at least a powerful fuel additive. What could-have-been makes what-actually-is all the more poignant, or in the case of Pet Sematary, all the more crushing. A parting conundrum: That the force behind Pascow’s apparition sees the future argues for predestination. That Pascow bothers to warn Louis argues that the future’s not preset. Through free will, Louis might alter his possible (even probable) destiny. Here’s a “fun” essay question. Extra points for including a concise yet comprehensive analysis of the Puritan/Calvinistic “shadow over New England weird fiction.” Negative points for those of you who just head-planted on your exam booklet… Next week, we revisit the town from “The Night Wire” with Stephen Graham Jones’s “Xebico.”[end-mark] The post Down the Worst Roller-Coaster: Stephen King’s <i>Pet Sematary</i> (Part 20) appeared first on Reactor.

News Avengers: Doomsday Marvel is Announcing the Cast of Avengers: Doomsday in the Most Annoying Way Possible It’s unmusical chairs. By Molly Templeton | Published on March 26, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share I have been staring, intermittently, at a livestream of chairs. I have been staring at this livestream of chairs for well over an hour. This is how Marvel has chosen to reveal the cast of Avengers: Doomsday: One chair at a time, an actor’s name across the back of each one. Positive: The Paul Rudd chair is small. Negative: It’s not small enough. It is a hobbit chair, not a tiny Ant-Man chair.Positive: Vanessa Kirby should be in everything.Negative: This should really be just one chair with Tatiana Maslany’s name on it, and she should play everyone. What we know so far: The movie will feature Chris Hemsworth, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Letitia Wright, Wyatt Russell, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. I am not willing to say who they are playing as I do not trust Marvel not to pull another Doctor Doom on us, but in other movies these actors play Thor, Sue Storm, Captain America, Bucky Barnes, Shuri, John Walker, Namor, and the Thing/Ben Grimm. The livestream is still going, so there may be more. The internet is not having this. Well, except when they’re having fun with it. Screenshot: Bluesky Screenshot: Bluesky We are also having fun with it. Screenshot Screenshot In conclusion: Screenshot This post will be updated when further chairs are announced. UPDATE: As I finished this post, Simu Liu’s chair arrived. Presumably he is playing Shang-Chi.[end-mark] The post Marvel is Announcing the Cast of <i>Avengers: Doomsday</i> in the Most Annoying Way Possible appeared first on Reactor.