Movies & TV Daredevil: Born Again Daredevil: Born Again Is Getting Lazy in “Gloves Off” Wilson Fisk keeps coming to Matt Murdoch’s (metaphorical) house and peeing on the rug. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on April 8, 2026 Image: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Marvel Studios Hello—I am not Leah! But as they are currently away, I have been asked to mind the Daredevil store. In the spirit of laying everything out as they would, this week’s episode is called “Gloves Off,” written by Chantelle M. Wells and directed by Solvan “Slick” Naim. A Spoilery Recap We open on the world’s from Bullseye’s point of view: Ben Poindexter is living in a nice new apartment (apparently someone was happy to rent to the guy under an assumed name though he likely had no history or credit score and let’s not even try to parse out where his money is coming from because he sure doesn’t seem to have a job) with a routine similar to the one he had before he met Wilson Fisk and his life went to hell. He’s doing pushups! Wrist rotations! Making his bed with hairpin precision! Making his eggs! He’s listening to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” in his head and we’ll let him have it because he’s just trying to have a day. And then he makes an extra egg for his neighbor’s cat (the neighbor is named Mrs. Smithers, which is already funny, but that’s got nothing on the cat, who has a food mat that reads “Mr. Meowgi”) who is, for some reason, fed in the hallway of their apartment building. Mrs. Smithers believes that this makes Dex (who she knows as Tony) such a nice boy. Dex heads to a diner, orders a banana milkshake—with whip, because he’s right, that is what everyone wants—and calls in to the AVTF hotline claiming Frank Castle is in the diner with a gun. The place is promptly filled with goons all holding rifles. Dex dispatches them while Billy Joel continues to play. Image: Marvel Studios There’s a guy at a table who has inexplicably ordered the lobster. He’s holding a tiny dog, which Dex takes the time to let him know is unsanitary (no, that was the dining choice, buddy). The guy is worried this means he’s about to be offed, too, but Dex assures him that he’s one of the “good guys” before using a ketchup bottle to mark the door with his little logo on the way out. We’ve got another Phisk video reminding folks that the Northern Star may have exploded, but the important thing is the boxing match Fisk is starring in to raise money for the New York Born Again Revitalization Project—which is such a mouthful, I’m going to refer to it as NY: BARP whenever it comes up. At the current Resistance HQ, Karen is filming Soledad Ayala’s testimony about how she was detained in a cage by the AVTF, while Daredevil talks to Duquesne. He’s out, sadly: The Swordsman isn’t much of a superhero in environs such as these; he feels he’s getting too old for this shit. On the upside, he’s given Karen an account number, so the resistance now has a sugar daddy, which they do desperately need. Karen needs to get this latest SD card to BB, but it’s too dangerous outside. Angela insists on doing the job as she stole an AVTF truck and is on their list. Daredevil doesn’t disagree, but he does remind her that wearing her uncle’s amulet is a major responsibility. Suddenly, the group is discovered by Christofi Savva, the first mate of the Northern Star; he’s here to help and can tell them everything. Meanwhile, Vanessa is heading to Albany to meet with the governor on Wilson’s behalf. She calls him out on sending her away right before his prize fight, and while Wilson insists that he’s just tying to keep her safe, she’s not pleased. Matt and Karen talk next steps with Savva, knowing that they’ll need to rope Kirsten in to take his statement. Karen doesn’t think that should be hard, given that most of the Task Force will be at the fight tonight. You know, the fight, being held at Fogwell’s, the gym where Matt’s dad had his last fight. At least the two of them are canny enough to realize that this is a blatant lure. They’re unfortunately also bright enough to realize that they’re not the only folks that might be intended for the trap: Bulleye is, too. Which means Matt has to save him, of course. They tell each other that they love each other before they go off on their separate tasks, so that’s probably not a bad omen at all. The AVTF bust into Kirsten’s office, insisting that she might be hiding Duquesne, and she tells them off while they make it clear that due process and the law don’t mean a thing as far as they’re concerned. At the free port, Wilson is worried about their many leaks, but Mr. Charles is there to ask why all the weapons from the Northern Star are still in New York and not on their way to do what they were intended to do in Guinea-Bissau. Charles believes that Wilson Fisk is having a very hard time controlling his very small part of the world. They exchange thinly veiled threats, and then less thinly veiled ones when Buck dispatches Charles’ armed guard. Wilson tells Charles to be patient and insists he will make good on… whatever he’s ostensibly promised to the big boss lady. Image: Marvel Studios We get two meetings between women: Karen goes to talk to Kirsten, and (finally) lets her know that Matt is alive and okay. Kirsten asks what she needs. Then we see Vanessa’s meeting with Governor McCaffrey, who is very clear on her stance: She doesn’t like Wilson at all… but she likes Vanessa. While she refuses to back Mayor Fisk, she will back the two of them together. As Vanessa herself was previously arguing to her husband, they’re a package deal. Angela gets the SD card to Javi for drop off to BB and tells him not to screw it up. Matty proceeds to gear up in their one AVTF uniform and shouts the NYPD out of the diner Dex destroyed earlier. Some quick detective work gets him the coin from his own church that Bullseye flung, so he heads home for, presumably, the first time in a long time. He sits in the pews and prays to Saint Lucia. The new priest-in-training hears him and they have a chat. Matt presses him for information, and he does give him what small amount he knows about Dex because Matt insists that he will be saving lives if he does so and promises not to kill him. He learns that Dex has a view of the church from his apartment window, which allows him to easily track the guy down. There’s a massive fight in his apartment, and Dex eventually takes Mrs. Smithers hostage and tells Matt that he means to do one good deed to make up for Foggy’s death: He’ll do what Matt can’t do. He’s going to kill Fisk. Dex gets away from Matt and heads to Fogwell’s while Savva gives his testimony to Kirsten. They plan to hand him over to U.S. marshals, who are meant to keep him safe. (It’s like they’ve never been on their own show before.) Daniel meets BB with their ringside tickets to the match. Javi shows up and pretends to be a fan, taking a picture while he slips BB the SD card. Daniel is visibly suspicious, but they play it off and continue their not-date. Fisk is preparing for the match and asks Buck to keep the front door unguarded; Buck hates the idea of Wilson making himself bait, but he gets a call about Savva and Wilson tells him to take it and tie up their loose ends. Image: Marvel Studios Daniel buys a bunch of swag at the match, which he shows BB (and us by extension) in great detail, for no reason, of course. One of them is a very ugly bust of Fisk surrounded by the city, made of glass. Sheila says that she hopes he got the employee discount; of course, Daniel didn’t even know one existed. The fight begins and Wilson promptly begins wailing on The Matterhorn. Savva and his escort are murdered by Buck, and Fisk gets word, leading to renewed vigor in the ring. Right as The Matterhorn is about to go down, Vanessa enters in a white dress. (Metaphors! Visual cues!) Wilson gives the guy two final punches, after which he’s taken from the ring on a stretcher. The crowd is cheering, though some people—BB, Sheila—are visibly stunned. Vanessa tells Wilson that she came to him with a win, but he insists that she leave as quickly as possible. Bullseye is already taking out AVTF officers with extreme prejudice while Wilson screams at his men to get Vanessa out. Vanessa pulls a gun on Dex; Dex throws the ugly glass keepsake; Wilson hits the keepsake with his champion belt, shattering it into a million pieces; Daredevil arrives to stop Dex and swings him through the front window to safety. If you’re paying attention through all this, you can see Vanessa frozen behind Wilson. Because, you know, the stupid glass swag. It shattered, and now a piece of glass is lodged in her head. She’s bleeding everywhere, staining her white dress. Wilson screams for an ambulance, laying her gently on the floor of the ring. (I’m sure that’s sanitary…) Grace Image: Marvel Studios Okay, I’m extremely tickled by aspects of how the prize fight is being constructed, I’ll give them that. Using Fogwell’s to host is just mean and absurd to boot: If you wanted to make the maximum amount of money—as this thing is meant to be for charity, remember—you’d hold it at Madison Square Garden, not some dinky ancient gym that has somehow, magically, not closed in the intervening years of superhero battles and nonsense. Calling it “Scrappin’ in the Kitchen” is just adding insult to grievous bodily harm here; he might as well have named it Hey, Double D, I’m Pissing in Your Living Room, Better Come Stop Me! There was a point where I thought the entire episode was going to be from Dex’s point of view… and I kind of wanted it? Particularly after they show him doing so well for no discernible reason. Where’s he working? How did he establish a false identity? How often is he just stalking Matt and why is it so easy for him to do it? Duquesne turning over a rich guy bank account to Karen is adorable. I’m not sure how useful it ultimately will turn out to be—how’s the post office working these days? Can they get stuff delivered easily? Where are they sourcing their food and medicines and such? I am curious about what Fisk has promised Valentina’s people, of course, and always enjoy any excuse to watch Mathew Lillard do his thing, The monologue about wombat shit was delightful; his exhaustion at dealing with Fisk’s extreme sensitivities is more than fair. Image: Marvel Studios While I’m annoyed at the extent to which they’re short-handing Matt and Karen’s relationship, I am glad that they’re being relatively adult about their feelings for this segment. Yeah, they love each other and they both know it. Is it circumstantial to this moment? Maybe. Does it matter? Not so much. They’re both being shelter in the storm to each other for now, and that works in this fragment of time. Deborah Ann Woll has this incredible grounding effect as an actor, even when the premise of her scenes are silly. The show should be thanking her on bended knee every episode. I wish the scene with Karen and Kirsten had gotten more time because I want to know more about their relationship in general; Karen has a tendency to hold people at arm’s length, which is deeply ironic because she’s so good at gaining trust. If she really believes that she’s a manipulator, as she said to BB not long ago, we should learn more about how that feels to her, and what it’s like to be on the other side of it with someone who is firmly on her team but less personal with her, like Kirsten is. Also, just, more Kirsten too, please? The person doing what used to be Matt’s job, the part that actually makes the Daredevil premise compelling? Oh, and I’ve got to give a shout-out to Matt’s prayer to St. Lucia because Leah obviously would. Lucia (or Lucy) is the patron saint of the blind—because she was tortured, in a version of her story, by having her eyes gouged out—and also of martyrs, which feels particularly important here.  Retribution Image: Marvel Studios Sorry, is it tacky to put your own music in an episode of a show you’re directing? Slick Naim’s “At a Disadvantage” is playing at the start of the fight segment and it just feels weird to me. The song worked, I think, but it felt wink-wink at a moment that didn’t need it. And I started with that because I’m not even entertaining the possibility that Vanessa could be dead because that would be beyond tackiness in my book. I get that Daredevil loves having Matt and Wilson in their parallels, and they’re currently unbalanced because Matt lost Foggy and Wilson didn’t lose his most important person. Oh wait, but he did, though. He just lost him ages ago. There’s a Wesley-shaped hole in Wilson’s life. It’s been there for years and it’s never talked about because his love for Vanessa is pretty all-encompassing—but Wesley was, in many ways, equally (though differently) important. Buck is clearly pseudo-Wesley for all intents and purposes, and he doesn’t remotely approach who the man was to Wilson Fisk. So, in many ways, Matt’s parallel was the one working to catch up. I’m assuming that this is just a way of pulling Vanessa off the board for the rest of the season because if she was truly dead, Fisk as a character would be useless in any capacity going forward. One of the best pieces of the first season was Vanessa making it clear to Wilson that he needed to treat her like a partner in order for this to work, and Fisk coming to terms with the fact that his wife is his superpower. When they are in sync, they are unstoppable; it’s one of the only times when I’m practically happy to root for villains, heinous though they might be. This whole episode abruptly turned that premise on its head by making her a liability, and did so in an extremely boring way. So she better be fine, or currently getting resurrected by the Hand, is all I’m saying. And I suppose we’ll just have to weather Wilson Fisk’s breakdown in the meantime. Fiorello’s Desk Image: Marvel Studios Here’s where you lose me, with regard to that boxing match: Wilson Fisk has nearly a hundred pounds on the guy he’s fighting. Now, I know that he’s likely being framed more as the “layman” in this situation due to not being a professional boxer with a career in the ring, but weight classes are a thing for a reason. I don’t care how many fights The Matterhorn has won in his career, he is still two-thirds of the guy he’s duking it out against. Obviously the whole thing is rigged from go, but my question is simply: How did anyone think this would make Fisk look good? If he wins—which is clearly the intention here—how does it not come off as this giant whaling on a much smaller guy who, for all his years of professional training and dozens of wins, could barely get a right hook in? I’m assuming this is meant to be the beginning of a downturn for Fisk, but his own team should be setting him up for success regardless, and this feels egregious. Why is anyone in Fogwell’s cheering? They all stop once Wilson drops him, but he’s been spraying the ring with the guy’s blood from the bell. This shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Quotes! “I mean, the milkshakes are good.” —This poor server, who genuinely cannot understand why anyone would ask what a diner is “famous for” (If it’s a good one, in New York, it’s famous for always being open with a menu longer than a James Joyce novel.) “We’re a matched set. I should be there tonight.” —Vanessa, who knows where their narrative strength is coming from “Little Lego walls of wombat shit to get the bitches. They literally shit bricks!” “Charles, you are not on my agenda.” —Wilson Fisk being arguably very diplomatic in the face of an opening speech about wombat mating processes Closing Arguments Image: Marvel Studios This was a rough one. While there are good bits being woven in, it’s extremely aggravating to watch them set up so many intricate pieces and then wipe the board every time things get too complicated. Let them get complicated! This should be messy! That’s why one of the best parts of the episode was Daredevil nodding along with Angela when she told Karen that the AVTF was already looking for her, so why not risk her life out there. Messy! All of them could die or disappear at any moment, and they know it. Okay, Savva didn’t, maybe. Poor guy. He missed out on the first show’s season three arc, which hinged entirely on getting a witness to the stand. (It didn’t work out for anyone.) I’m going to have to chat with Leah about the priest-in-training’s behavior in this episode, though, because I feel like he did a patently terrible job? Just because Matt promised not to kill a guy? Let’s just say, Father Lantom this guy is not, to the point that this feels like a major error in the plot. At least Lantom knew exactly who he was sending out with what information he chose to give when he talked to Matt. This new guy told an AVTF officer where a suspect was, ostensibly knowing that people are being disappeared off the streets by people in these uniforms, just because he knew the guy wouldn’t die. Not great, not-Father! The fact that Matt didn’t tell him off for it was even weirder? I know he can get fixated, but how is this a guy you would want in charge of the church where you grew up?[end-mark] The post <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Is Getting Lazy in “Gloves Off” appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From Mortedant’s Peril by RJ Barker In a city of ancient automata, strange spirits, and sleeping gods, a cleric of death finds his own life on the line… By RJ Barker | Published on April 8, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Mortedant’s Peril, the first volume in a new fantasy trilogy by RJ Barker, out from Tor Books on May 19th. Irody Hasp is a Mortedant, a cleric tasked with reading the last thoughts of the dead—though no one thanks him for it. No Mortedant is popular, but Irody is scarcely tolerated even by the other members of his own guild, and rarely selected for anything but the lowliest of jobs.This impoverished existence would be dismal enough—but after reading the corpse of a low-level records keeper, Irody’s troubles quickly multiply when his own apprentice is murdered, and all fingers point to him as a suspect. The only way to save his own skin is to find the real culprit himself, an investigation that quickly attracts powerful enemies with few scruples, and draws him into a plot that threatens the entire corrupt yet wondrous city he calls home. Chapter 1 Ventday As a Mortedant, the dead speak to me. It is a pity they rarely say anything useful and there is little coin in it. Dirrivan Murser had been a simple downtier record-keeper and now he was dead. It was as plain as the black robe, floppy hat and kohl rings around my eyes that marked me as a Mortedant. He lived, or had lived, in the second secant on the eastern side of the first tier of Elbay city. The eastern side had always been the most disreputable place to live, though truthfully, anything below the third tier was less than reputable and I would not have been here unless I had no other choice. It appeared to me that Dirrivan Murser had died of exactly the sort of unpleasant disease that lowtier types so often did. The body stank of vomit and I had no desire to touch the corpse and end up with whatever had killed him. I have always had a healthy fear of disease and was in a poor mood as I like to keep Ventday for myself, but work was scarce on the ground for Mortedants. And especially me. My unwillingness to touch him was unfortunate given that the laying on of hands was an important part of my services. Not all Mortedants touched their charges, but that was because some of us were frauds who got by on family name and reputation rather than ability. I was not a fraud. In fact, I was more talented than most of those who left the Mortedants’ Priory. Therefore, I knew that the laying of hands was absolutely necessary. Still, I did not have to like it. Mortedants rarely attended lowtier deaths like this; to do so was seen as a punishment within our priory. Though that was not why I was here. My neophyte, Malkin, lowtier himself and put upon me as I was unpopular, had found this job and assured me there was coin in it. Much-needed coin. Apparently this man, Dirrivan, had put away a large amount of money but the family did not know where. If I could find a clue to its whereabouts in the last thoughts of the deceased, I would receive a percentage. Hopefully it would be enough to head off my fearsome landlady before the month’s rent became due. I did not ask how Malkin had come across the work – sometimes it is better not to know when dealing with the lower tiers. ‘Do you have the deceased’s last will and testament?’ I asked his woman. She was a hard-bitten-looking piece with a face that might have frightened off death had it looked her way. In her hand she had a cabbage and a short knife for chopping, which she brandished in a way that made me nervous. ‘I thought it was your job to get it, from the records people,’ she said. Suspicious too. I did not like suspicious people. They were difficult to deal with and often tried to get out of paying their bills. Though she was technically correct. However, the queues at the records hall could last for hours and the clerks were often incredibly rude and expected a hefty bribe. ‘Sivver Murser.’ My neophyte, Malkin, stepped forward. A skinny boy of no more than fifteen years, Malkin understood downtier people and their ways, which was useful. ‘What Mortedant Hasp is trying to say is that as the priory turned you away’ – he had not told me about that – ‘he cannot use the usual channels, like, not without a lot of delay, and we need the will to complete the paperwork. So we can make it all official after the fact an’ all.’ He gave her a shrug. ‘You know what Elbay’s like. This city loves a bit of paperwork.’ Sivver Murser nodded slowly and Malkin continued in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘We have to pay to take a will out of the records office too, and of course that cost is passed along to you. But Mortedant Hasp is thoughtful like that, of costs and stuff. So he thought we could get the will off you instead.’ Malkin gave me a nod and the woman chewed on her bottom lip. ‘Well, I suppose any saving is good,’ she said. ‘Howling Lord knows death crows like him are a greedy lot.’ She nodded towards me as if there was any doubt about who in the room may be greedy. ‘It weren’t right, you know,’ she said to me. ‘What is it,’ I said after a lengthy pause, ‘that weren’t right?’ ‘How he died.’ ‘Death comes in many forms,’ I told her. ‘One minute, he were filling in his journal, which he were obsessed with, the next he’s sick on himself and dead. Ain’t right.’ ‘Well—’ I began, but she cut right over me. ‘And my old Dirrivan, he would never have left us with nothing. So you find whatever he had hid away.’ With that she put down the cabbage, but not the knife, and left us, going into a back room from which I could hear the crying of children. Many children. ‘Why you putting this off?’ said Malkin. ‘And I told you that you should have checked the will up at the records office.’ Buy the Book Mortedant’s Peril RJ Barker Buy Book Mortedant's Peril RJ Barker Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget ‘You did not tell me the priory had already turned this job down,’ I whispered. ‘They take a dim view of Mortedants going freelance. If we had gone to the records office I may have been censured.’ Malkin shrugged. ‘As long as they get their coin they don’t care. Same the city over.’ ‘If there is any coin,’ I hissed. ‘If you’re wrong about him having money hidden away there’s nothing but the standard fee in this for us, and that wouldn’t even cover a bribe.’ He shrugged. Despite coming from the first tier, the lowest, Malkin was often surprisingly free with coin. My coin anyway. ‘Well, get this over with quickly then, Mortedant Hasp, and we can get back to the rooms and have some soup.’ ‘Soup?’ I tried to give him my best withering stare, but street crows like Malkin are, in my experience, very hard to wither. ‘I asked you to get us meat.’ ‘But only gave enough money for knuckle bones. You’re lucky I know the butcher and he picked out a few still had meat on ’em.’ Another shrug. ‘If you look carefully in the broth you’ll find some. Probably.’ ‘You,’ I said under my breath, ‘are the worst neophyte I have ever had.’ ‘I’m the only neophyte you’ve ever had,’ he said. He could be a very rude and dislikeable child on occasion. ‘And I was the cheapest to employ too. So don’t pretend you’re about to send me packing. Who’ll carry your bags then? Not you with your arms like sticks.’ He was wrong in that. I was quite capable of carrying my bags and was surprisingly strong despite my slender frame. And handsome, but in a very refined way few could recognize. However, what he said about money was true. The role of a Mortedant was a fabled and honoured one in the many-tiered city of Elbay. Most still thought that Mortedants made fine money. Even though the priory had somewhat fallen from grace it was still expected that a Mortedant would attend the deaths of the better families, for show if nothing else. There to delve into the ebbing mind of the corpse, see what secrets they wished to be known. Or if a death was suspicious then a Mortedant would be called to unmask the killer. For our services, we received a share of the estate. Of course, you only made fine money if the priory gave you fine work, such as reading the last thoughts of the dead from families with money. I very rarely got fine work. I rarely got any work. The work I did get was mostly downtier, so I was forced to grub about in places which are far below my station in life. ‘We will not need the full ritual and set-up,’ I told him. ‘There’s barely room in here for us, the woman and the corpse box. The spirit tent will only get in the way.’ ‘She might expect it,’ said Malkin. ‘Us downtier types like a bit of theatre.’ ‘I don’t pay you for sarcasm, Malkin. We’ll blow out the lights. Make it dim.’ ‘Already pretty dim in here.’ The woman returned with a rather scabrous looking sheet of paper which turned out to be Dirrivan Murser’s will. She pushed it into my hand. ‘Here it is,’ she said, ‘and I know what’s in it. Barely enough for your fee.’ Malkin had not told me this woman may not even be able to cover the basic fee. I gave him a look, which he returned quite insolently. ‘But he was always on about how he had a big payday coming, and before the festival he’d have us out the city and into a better life. So that payday is mine now. I want it.’ ‘You don’t sound like you cared about him very much.’ I gave the will to Malkin, and he scanned through it, quickly filling in the mortedancy forms before putting the will in the tent bag. It was frowned upon to take jobs that were not specifically allocated to us by the priory, but I also frowned upon not being able to eat. As long as the paperwork was done and my percentage paid, I would most likely be forgiven a small breach of protocol. Probably. If not I could always blame Malkin. ‘He never did much for me alive, so I hope he is of some use now he’s dead.’ She could not have had much of a life, I supposed, stuck in these small rooms with all these children and a man she did not like. But life in Elbay was hard for most, and unfair to most too – myself included. In fact, it was particularly unfair to me. Having said that, my next words were, I admit, a little unprofessional. However, in my defence, that small room did smell very bad. Whether it was the corpse or the living occupants I am not sure. ‘I’ll knock ten per cent off my fee if we don’t bother with all the ritual.’ She eyed me up suspiciously. Wrinkled her nose. Perhaps she disliked the smell of her rooms too. ‘Will it still work?’ she said. ‘You’ll still be able to read his mind?’ ‘The ritual is more for the mourners than the mourned.’ She looked from me to the corpse, then back to me. ‘Alright then,’ she said. ‘Get to it.’ ‘I shall. Malkin, the lights please.’ He folded away the forms and doused the candles around the room while I moved over to the body and took off my gloves. I felt the woman hovering expectantly behind me. ‘Some room, please, Sivver Murser.’ She backed off a little and I prepared myself. Of the three great priories – the Worshipful, the Spurriers’ and the Mortedants’ – there is little doubt we are the most talked about, and the most disliked. Such a close association with the dead brings few friends, but I believe our work is valuable. Words of intended apology from the deceased, via a Mortedant, have healed feuds that have run for generations. Hidden fortunes have been unearthed, long-lost family members found and terrible murders solved by our skills. In fact, everyone knows someone whose friend has had a remarkable experience with the Mortedants. Even now, when we have fallen far from grace, the richest and the most powerful of Elbay cannot have a distant relative die without the full ritual of spirits, and even the lowly, such as Sivver Murser, bring us in to unearth the secrets of the dead. Tradition ploughs deep furrows through our city. Yet our skills are widely misunderstood. What Mortedants see in the minds of the dead is rarely more than a few seconds’ worth of their end. And even that can be very blurred and confused. No one tells you this, of course. Not even other Mortedants. The start of my neophancy had been mired in misery because of it. I had thought I was a very poor Mortedant indeed. It was only when I met a student named Kuridan Satury, and he recruited me into a mischievous campaign of diligent snooping and listening in at keyholes, that I realized I was probably better at it than most of the faculty. I could even see far deeper than a few seconds if I pushed myself. No, lack of skill had never held me back. That most other people are jealous of that skill is my real problem. Nonetheless, whether Dirrivan Murser had coin or not, I suspected his sivver was about to be disappointed. I was not one to delve deep any longer; all it had ever brought me was trouble and a headache that hung around for days. If the man had coin and it was important to him – and it is important to everyone in Elbay – I would surely find it drifting at the top of his mind. I laid my hands on his forehead. The corpse was as soft and ineffectual as he had probably been in life. Maybe as cold too. Nothing came to me immediately. The slow movement of decay filtered into my mind, the ebb of what he had once been as it moved away from the world of flesh and to wherever it is we go afterwards – to the arms of the Howling Lord, if you believe the Worshipful. Though most of them are quite mad. I felt a sense of sadness from him, and maybe there was a hint of a secret, but everybody has secrets. Still, I worked, I dug a little, I sifted and sorted in the murk of a dead mind until the final words came, clear as clear could be. ‘Not sure them berries were good.’ And that was it. His last thoughts. I remained touching his forehead for a bit longer, making sounds of effort because it always does to put on a good show. For a fleeting moment I thought there may be something else, some deeper worry. But people were often worried when they were dying and the depths hold dangers, so I did not pay much attention. An errant word floated up – ‘festival’ – but probably meant nothing. It was soon to be the Festival of the Last Siren and every downtier layabout was looking forward to nearly a week of free food and drink. I stepped away. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’ I pulled my gloves back on. ‘No sign of any hidden fortune.’ I noticed that Malkin had already stacked my bags by the door and was using one foot to hold it open. He had the woman’s cabbage in his hand. An odd boy. I hoped he was not intending to steal it. ‘He was thinking of buying you a ribbon,’ I said. It was the sort of thing I believed downtier women very much liked to hear and hoped would give her a little solace. ‘A ribbon?’ she said. ‘Yes.’ I gave her my best smile. She did not seem impressed. ‘At the festival. A red one.’ ‘He wanted away before the festival,’ she said. ‘I reckon you know what he ’ad, and you’re going to keep the money for yerself. You death crows are all the same.’ She stepped forward, knife in hand, and I had the distinct impression I may be in danger. ‘Now, you tell me where my coin is, crow, or I’m gonna skin you piece by piece until you do.’ She moved closer, knife glinting. I tried to speak but the ability had momentarily fled. Then a cabbage hit her in the face. ‘Run, Hasp!’ shouted Malkin, and the boy was already half out of the door with my bags. I followed at a speedy lope. Excerpted from Mortedant’s Peril, copyright © 2026 by RJ Barker. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Mortedant’s Peril</i> by RJ Barker appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Testaments The Testaments Is Rewriting Gileadan Sisterhood, For Better or Worse Can the Handmaid’s Tale sequel succeed despite one big change from Margaret Atwood’s novel? By Natalie Zutter | Published on April 8, 2026 Credit: Disney / Russ Martin Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Disney / Russ Martin When the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in 2017, it quickly established a distinctive style—the delightfully bitchy needle drops, the closeups on Elisabeth Moss’ furious face—that became so familiar that in later seasons it lost some of its bite. By contrast, Hulu’s spinoff The Testaments finds more success in building on the nostalgic tropes of teenage coming-of-age stories, even as the series seems to want to stand on its own from its forebear. It aptly balances the softness and whimsy of teenage girlhood, of burgeoning adolescent friendships and attractions, with the sharpness of girls growing together and away from one another. Not to mention the dawning realization that they live in a world of monsters—not Gilead’s neighbors, but the Aunts ushering them toward the much-older Commanders who need (but also want) them to birth the next generation of Gilead’s poor girls. While The Testaments’ unflinching portrait of girlhood in Gilead works best in the scenes set in the cafeteria or at their closest approximation to prom, the series could trust itself more to build momentum. The first three episodes are a slow start, but the world they establish is key—not necessarily the Gileadean backstory (though the culture shift is fascinating), but rather the inner workings between this group of teenagers who are each other’s entire world. Spoilers for the first three episodes of The Testaments. Content warning for sexual assault of a minor. Dear readers, I’m going to assume that most of us have been watching and reading along for the past decade. That we’ve teared up through every increasingly more awful interaction between Offred/June and Agnes, the child she bore as Hannah in what was once the United States of America, now nearly subsumed into the new world order. That we’ve been eagerly waiting for this reintroduction to Agnes as she comes of age, to see Gilead through her eyes. To have her meet Daisy, her foil in so many ways and her link to both her life before and, hopefully, her life after Gilead. When I wrote about the Handmaid’s Tale series finale last year, I was under the impression that The Testaments would follow the book’s time jump, so that 15 years would have elapsed from season 1. Instead, only four years have passed since June and Mayday liberated the Handmaids and regained control of Boston, roughly a decade since the start of the series. The showrunners also moved around some key events in Agnes’ life, putting her into contact with Daisy at a much younger age. While this makes for an excellent teen dystopian drama framework, it futzes with one of the most compelling parts of the book and arguably the series’ overall lore. (Don’t worry, I’ll put book spoilers behind a tag.) Whether said narrative sacrifice is worth it remains to be seen. The Future of Gilead Credit: Disney / Russ Martin Gilead is scrambling, and it is fascinating to watch. No longer are they smugly lording their superiority over other nations; even after losing Boston a half-decade ago, they’re on the defensive. With the emancipation of the Handmaids, they’ve lost the cornerstone of their culture. That doesn’t stop them, of course, from subjugating the women who are left, but the hierarchy and the milestones are more reactive, more throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks.  Perhaps that’s why Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) has enjoyed the greatest elevation in status, immortalized both in statue form and with a premarital preparatory academy named after her. Despite Lydia’s clear faltering in conviction at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, and Gilead’s converse loss of faith in her, the two entities seem to recognize that they need one another if this twisted experiment is to continue on. Agnes MacKenzie (One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti) is the rare daughter of a Commander, seeing as her father was hastily promoted following the mass assassination of the core Commanders at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale season 6. Agnes is considered the privileged princess among her peers, whose fathers include a dentist and other humble Gileadean professions. Even in a dystopia, teenage girls are gonna teenage girl, which is to say bond over the shared quirks of their adolescence while still adhering to a subtle pecking order. Agnes’ best friend is Becka (Mattea Conforti), but they have to hide their bond behind platitudes and secret pinky promises, lest they be seen making any connections that could threaten future marriages and motherhood. Hulda (Isolde Ardies) is the lovable weirdo whose dangerous fascination with science seems to be tolerated for now, while Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard, a delight) is the queen bee clearly nursing her own insecurities about getting left behind in girlhood. Then there’s Daisy (Lucy Halliday), one of the foreigner Pearl Girls. These white-clad missionaries possess the obnoxious fervor of the converted, in that they’re trying to prove themselves twice as worthy as the girls who have grown up within Gilead’s structure. Their presence seems mostly tolerated by both Aunts (who put them to work as free labor while housing them at the school) and Plums (Lydia assigns Daisy to shadow Agnes), though no one seems to expect them to grow up into proper Wives. Of course, it quickly becomes clear that the holier-than-thou Pearl Girl persona is just a cover for Daisy, who is working with the rebel network Mayday for her own vendetta. This is Gilead’s first generation of girls to properly come of age, even if it’s not entirely the way that Gilead’s architects intended for them to. With the Handmaids all gone, there is no safety net; if this totalitarian theocracy wants to perpetuate itself, these barely-pubescent girls will have to bear lots of children—and to believe that it’s everything they could ever want. Blessed Be the Fruit / May the Lord Open Credit: Disney / Steve Wilkie In just a few years, Gilead has retconned its own fertility rituals. Gone are the Handmaids in their blood-red gowns, moving through town in blindered pairs; the cruel monthly Ceremony has been replaced by a cheerily dystopian version of The Care and Keeping of You—just not one that the girls are allowed to read. Despite every single citizen acting as if it’s such a blessing to be potentially fertile, it’s the same messaging as before: Gilead’s women are only good for having babies. It’s shocking to watch a household function without a Handmaid, to see Agnes recreating Offred’s movements around her own home yet in an entirely different context. Her Martha, Rosa (Kira Guloien), is the closest thing she has to a nurturing mother figure (“Under His Eye, cutie pie” kills me every time), and while it’s clear that Agnes is constrained within this ecosystem, she is a much more pampered prisoner. Imagine being a preteen and proudly ringing the bell at school so that all your peers can obediently troop out and applaud your uterine bleeding, then gaze longingly at your shiny new green pin. Menarche triggers a midnight initiation ceremony that feels very secret society, yet it’s another cruel fakery, fooling these girls into thinking they have any power over their futures. I would be remiss in not mentioning Gilead’s previous failed experiments in child-brides. There was Nick’s Econowife Eden Blaine (Sydney Sweeney), who cheated on her husband with a Guardian and was sentenced to a Romeo & Juliet-esque death. Later we met Esther Keyes (Mckenna Grace), a senile Commander’s Wife who was raped by her husbands’ Guardians before getting her bloody revenge. Despite her eagerness to join Mayday, Esther was forced into Handmaid servitude; the last we saw her, she was unable to succeed in either poisoning herself or getting a hysterectomy because unfortunately she was finally pregnant. Both girls were seeming outliers, situations that quickly spiralled out of control without proper monitoring. Perhaps that’s why Lydia is running the premarital prep academy, to keep Gilead’s future Under Her Eye. But it’s still unclear what the most desired outcome is. The Powers That Be seem to have accepted that the Handmaid experiment is not worth recreating, but what will happen to either the Plums who don’t get their periods, or the ones who do and still struggle to conceive? Will they become Econowives, or Aunts, or something else? Field Trips & Assemblies Credit: Disney / Russ Martin You know what in Gilead does stay the same? The Particicution, although it’s been rebranded for the younger generation as an Assembly: the special guest is another sinfully lustful man, brought to their school for them to sentence. The Plums are too tender to rip a man limb from limb, which was how Gilead allowed the Handmaids to exercise their rage; but they still get plenty of practice in enacting violence, even if only by pointed fingers and vengeful screams. These scenes are among the series’ most compelling: the varying fashions in which the girls are conditioned to turn on one another, to voice their deepest insecurities into demeaning insults or watch with gleeful dread the impact that their words have on another’s body. When the Handmaids did it, the viewer could see via Offred that they were more coerced into it for survival; when it’s teenage girls, you can see how much more deep-rooted it is. While the pilot makes the Plums’ first Field Trip grimly funny, as they’re intentionally brought to regard the hanged bodies of men tempted to rape—tempted by girls just like them!—the second Field Trip is even more disturbing. In lieu of a museum or workplace, they are brought to the household of Penny Judd, their former classmate-turned-Wife. It might as well be a life-size version of Agnes’ dollhouse, the way the Plums flitter through its rooms, playing house and hostess while the Aunts stand around like bored chaperones (one of many small character moments that make for excellent details). Daisy & June Credit: Disney / Russ Martin Daisy’s first instance of losing her cool is perfect, as she is the only girl who can’t handle watching the Guardian get his hand chopped off at the Assembly. Though Agnes is the only one to witness Daisy’s outburst of blasphemy, it establishes the fascinating push-and-pull power dynamic between them. If Daisy were a real Pearl Girl, it would be a test that Agnes initially fails by offering not to tattle on the other girl. But when Daisy does confess—ostensibly to keep up her pious persona?—and Agnes joins in on the “dirty girl” shaming, Daisy reverses it by accusing Agnes of not reporting her, which leads to a very sisterly scene of the two of them suffering through brushing their mouths out with soap. Daisy the double agent is a bit confounding; she didn’t have to go through these mental hoops, unless part of her Mayday mission is to determine how brainwashed Agnes is? If her endgame is to smuggle Agnes out, as I initially suspected, it would make sense for her to test the boundaries of how much the two might form camaraderie or if Agnes is likely to turn on her when the stakes are higher. Except that may not be The Testaments’ intended story, because of how the timeline got shifted. There is one sticking point I have to address; it involves book spoilers, click here to skip past them. SPOILERS START In the book, Daisy is Baby Nichole (let’s just use the show spelling), the child that Offred has with Nick, who is eventually smuggled into Canada by Mayday. Writing the novel in 2019, Atwood drew from the show plotlines to make Baby Nichole an international news story, a symbol for Gilead versus Canada, imprisonment versus freedom. Daisy-as-Pearl-Girl doesn’t find her way to Agnes until the latter is training to become an Aunt, which further highlights the age difference. Discovering that they’re sisters strengthens their bond for escaping Gilead, and is heightened by both meeting Offred and eventually their respective fathers.  But by the Handmaid’s Tale series finale, Nichole/Holly is only three or four years old, meaning she would be seven or so at the start of The Testaments. So instead it seems as if the writers gave Daisy every other character detail except for her true parentage; later episodes give her a birth name that’s a lovely Easter egg but seems to cement her status as someone else. But then why cast Halliday, who’s a dead ringer for Moss? It would have been equally cool if Daisy were Janine’s daughter Charlotte—which would also explain some of the tenderness that June has for her—but the timing doesn’t line up for that, either. The next best guess is one of the Angels’ Flight kids that June got out at the end of season 3… although that would make her old enough, it doesn’t jibe with June’s comment about Melanie and Neil adopting a baby. Come on, guys! The Handmaid’s Tale adaptation built its strongest and most devastating emotional beats upon mothers saving each other’s children, even or especially if they couldn’t be reunited with their own. June interacting with Daisy as a wry mentor figure while a stranger to her own daughter grounds their brief scenes together and makes me hope we’ll get more flashbacks of the two of them crossing paths before Daisy becomes a Pearl Girl. It also parallels the Star Wars problem of, everyone can’t be a Skywalker; at some point, you have to broaden the scope to include more ordinary people caught up in these extraordinary times. (Can you tell I’m talking myself into it?) SPOILERS END I’m struggling a bit with Bruce Miller’s quote that “there’s nothing in the world as powerful as a 14-year-old girl.” It makes Agnes or Daisy sound like disenfranchised Katniss Everdeen, when the Plums are more like the District 1 tributes. It was difficult enough for June, who knew exactly what was going on, to be able to rebel both in small everyday ways and then in massive, border-shifting ways. And she was aware every day of her subjugation and how things were before! Agnes and her peers have the added hurdle of having to unlearn the ways in which Gilead brainwashed them. It doesn’t mean they can’t have an impact, but it makes me more skeptical of how much they’ll change the world. If anything, them being 14 makes me want to freeze time for them, to linger in that period before adulthood and everything changing. That’s what The Testaments captures, even in a dystopia; the second half of Miller’s quote is about Agnes, and June, and the others, creating forbidden bonds where they’re meant to compete and cut down. That’s what I’m most watching The Testaments for. Pearls & Pins Credit: Disney / Russ Martin Agnes and Daisy’s voiceovers, like June’s, imply some sort of frame narrative. (BOOK SPOILERS) In the Testaments novel, they’re witnesses quoted in an investigation related to Gilead’s fall (SPOILERS END), but whether these voiceovers are diegetic like June’s or standard TV voiceover is yet to be seen. I’m digging how both this show and the new season of For All Mankind play with familiar coming-of-age tropes with their teenage protagonists—the Plums and the Happy Valley high school grads in alt-history 2012 figuring out how to spend their last summer on Mars before real life encroaches. The needle drops continue to be excellent, from the trailer’s nostalgic conjuring of the Cranberries’ “Dream” to Blondie’s “Dreaming.” And what song(s), I wonder, will accompany the shift to nightmares… The new colors and cuts of this show’s dystopian fashions never fail to fascinate me. While purple would initially seem a head-scratcher of a color to bridge the little girls’ pink and the Wives’ teal, Miller clarified in the THR feature that it’s actually plum—intended both as the metaphor for ripeness, but also with the justification that it’s a natural dye; no chemicals for these future Wives. I’ve noticed no one has yet adopted Serena Joy’s widow mauve pantsuit ensemble. Daisy’s daring pearl tragus piercing must have some ulterior purpose and/or meaning, though I did notice it on the other Pearl Girls; interesting for Gilead to support piercings in that context. “May the Lord open, Daddy” is a line that makes me shudder-scream every time I say or type it. I’m still holding out hope that the Testaments showrunners are intentionally playing with time, especially with Agnes narrating that she can only approximate the passage of time. Could it be that the four years is a red herring and it’s been far longer? Most likely not, but a girl can dream. What’s your read on The Testaments so far?[end-mark] The post <i>The Testaments</i> Is Rewriting Gileadan Sisterhood, For Better or Worse appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Disaster Bisexuals and Space Whales: Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall This SF take on Moby-Dick has captured something fundamental about the fragility and interconnectedness of human life. By Jenny Hamilton | Published on April 8, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Will you take it as a brag if I tell you that I have read Moby-Dick twice? I read it in college in two successive years because the “American Literature to 1850” professor and the “American Literature since 1850” professor both felt entitled to claim it. 1 There is way too much whaling talk in it, to my recollection—sometimes a classic just actually has some major structural flaws, like Huckleberry Finn—but if you are comfortable skipping around, it’s a pretty good read. Funny, dark, a slow-moving tragedy. Hell’s Heart is one of two queer Moby-Dick retellings that have come out lately, and its author, Alexis Hall, author of a fascinating assortment of books, including one of my top five romance novels of all time (give it up for Pansies), has not paused to wonder if restraint might be in order. 2 Hell’s Heart goes balls-to-the-wall from page one, following disaster bisexual I as she falls in with a hot Terran harpooner named Q and signs on for a three-year space voyage to hunt space whales. I has more debts than instincts for self-preservation, and she’s horribly allured by the doomed and dire ship’s captain, A. With the gravitas and credentials of a person who has read Moby-Dick two (2) times and didn’t even get a good grade as recompense one of those times, 3 I feel qualified to say that Hell’s Heart is a worthy successor to its original. It’s sprawling and funny and strange. It takes long existential detours in between episodes of whale-fighting and crewmate-fucking. That second part, I admit, did not feature in the original text, but we assume it would have, had Herman Melville not been writing in the still-Puritan fetters of 1851. 4 In line with a lot of SF these days, the world of Hell’s Heart is deeply rooted in financial precarity and corporate greed. The protagonist ships out with the Pequod in part because she owes money to the Aphrodite Pharma State, having taken out loans to cover surgical changes to her body. From what we can tell, most or all of her shipmates are in similar financial straits. I is also an apostate member of a Christian-ish church by way of the Ferengi from Star Trek, and there’s an amusing (but dark) through-line of I sharing her church’s profit-focused interpretations of familiar biblical passages. As the three-year journey continues, and A sinks deeper into her obsession with killing the Möbius Beast, at the expense of the ship’s profit margins and therefore the crew’s earnings, conflicts over money and religion and destiny threaten to destabilize the whole ship. If Hell’s Heart has a flaw, it’s that Hall leans too heavily on cutie-pie fourth-wall breaking. An occasional wink to the audience—a reference to that one tweet about leopards eating faces; Q’s Latin dialogue consisting mostly of quotes from Catullus or Cicero or the Vulgate Bible; a really delightful joke about Elmo—would have been fine, but it really has to be a garnish, not the whole dish. There were just too many sperm jokes! I would have even been fine with actual sperm jokes, which I could relay to my mother over coffee and she could tell me she regrets giving birth to me, but these were mainly just the author reminding us, at regular intervals, that it’s amusing for sperm whales to be called that. Buy the Book Hell’s Heart Alexis Hall Buy Book Hell’s Heart Alexis Hall Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Aside from that, I’d like to make the case that Hell’s Heart is a pandemic novel and should become the pandemic novel of record in our genre. Please do not walk away yet! I agree with you, in the main. I too do not want to read books about the pandemic. I am no longer even willing to read books about a pandemic. It’s been six years since COVID started, and very few authors have bothered to try writing the big pandemic novel, or even acknowledge in their work that we experienced a massive paradigm shift circa 2020/2021 and it sent a lot of people off the deep end in ways that the world may not ever recover from. (We did all get to learn a bunch of sea shanties, though. That was cool.) When I say, then, that Hell’s Heart is a COVID novel, I mean something maybe a little different. In the acknowledgments, Alexis Hall thanks the lockdown-era Moby-Dick chapter-a-day read-a-long for the opportunity to read Moby-Dick, and it was like a key had turned in the lock of the book, and everything about it suddenly made perfect sense. There is no pandemic in this book (although, as I say, there is quite a lot of capitalism), but it feels like the pandemic, anyway, and its aftermath. Hear me out. They’re trapped on the Pequod for a matter of years. They’re all so fed up with each other, and also extremely horny. If A causes them to miss an opportunity to meet up with another ship and bone everyone on board that other ship, mutiny becomes a real risk. Nothing about anyone’s religion makes sense, but a worrying number of religious people seem to want a lot of other folks dead. Instead of taking any living person’s advice, the captain has a troubling codependent relationship with an AI that seems to be encouraging her worst impulses, but also using up computer processing power that the crew would greatly prefer was devoted to streaming porn. One guy falls into an open Leviathan carcass, goes insane from all the guts, and starts a death cult, which is much cooler than the parallel incident in the source text (rip to Pip but Marsh is different). 5 Do you see what I mean? Do you feel the pandemic vibes? Do you remember when we all, for some reason, watched Tiger King? Do you remember the brief hope that we might experience a sea change in air filtration standards, but instead we got like four new food delivery apps to create the illusion of freedom for the prolecariat? 6 Do you remember how disconnected from reality you felt when Christian megachurches started insisting it was a deeply held religious tradition for them to abjure face masks and take ivermectin enemas for Communion or whatever? In Hell’s Heart, Hall has captured something fundamental about the fragility and interconnectedness of human life. Our current moment feels like a long, slow, idiotic slide into preventable disaster, as we all scramble to pay bills and the decision-makers let us fall into ruin in furtherance of their own stupid little agendas. For all of I’s jokes, for all of her cynicism and dysfunction, she is recounting the story of a tragedy, a monumental, pointless loss of life. It’s dark, and funny, and terribly human. I had, if you’ll forgive me, a whale of a time.[end-mark] Hell’s Heart is published by Tor Books. The professor of the From 1850 course gave me a two-one instead of the first I deserved, so I’m loath to admit Moby-Dick should have belonged to him and not the To 1850 professor. But it’s true. My intellectual honesty is but one of the reasons I should have gotten a first in that class. It’s fine. It was a while ago. I’m not still mad about it. ︎It is not! No gods no masters! ︎I DESERVED AN A. I ALWAYS GET AN A. I AM AN A STUDENT. THEY SET THE CURVE BY ME. THAT IS THE WAY OF THINGS. ︎1851, a year that is famously after 1850. I should only have had to read this book once. My grievances are many. ︎If you were not cruelly forced to unfairly read Moby-Dick twice (it was good, it was fine, just maybe not twice), you may not recognize this as a Moby-Dick joke but it was one. Award me a first immediately. ︎ I’ve just come up with this word. Does this work? I know we have precariat, but I wanted to be innovative. I never use the actual word “proletariat” because I find it funny to say profiterole instead. Maybe this is why I didn’t get a first. Maybe it was because I am Like This. That’s fair. ︎The post Disaster Bisexuals and Space Whales: <i>Hell’s Heart</i> by Alexis Hall appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird The Same Thing I Do Every Night: Poetry by Maxwell Gold Like the Weird itself, poetry can be hard to define… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on April 8, 2026 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 celebrate National Poetry Month with a selection from 2025 Stoker nominee Maxwell Gold—“The Naigoth Waits,” “Where No One Goes,” and “Chthonic Dreams,” all published in May 2022 in The Horror Zine. Spoilers ahead! (What does it mean to spoiler poetry? Does it describe the story threading through? Linguistic turns that otherwise delight? Just click the link: avoid these hazards, do!) Once more, the beastly task that is trying to summarize a poem rears its mocking head. A longer poem, especially a narrative one like Coleridge’s “Christabel,” that’s doable. The shorter the poem, the less it tells a straightforward story, the harder the exercise, and the less “useful.” I visualize one of these poems as an Australian thorny devil (Moloch horridus), not to be confused with the North American horned lizards (genus Phrynosoma) that can squirt foul-tasting blood from their eyes. Thorny devils don’t have to shoot no damn blood from their eyes or anywhere else, because just looking at their array of defensive spikes is enough to make an attacker’s eyes bleed. Plus they have a fleshy bulb on their napes that they can present as their real head. Poems also have fake heads, often in multiples. The predatory summarizer, thinking they’ve spotted the gist of a piece, snaps at it only to be humiliated in front of their lit-crit packmates. And off scoots the lizard-poem, having defied capsulization once again. What the parting whisk of its tail signifies is: Dare my thorns, read me whole, or go hungry.  Nevertheless, I’m going to write three summaries, one for each of Gold’s prose poems. To keep them concise, I’ll attempt to do it in haiku-form. “The Naigoth Waits” What is a naigoth?Maybe it has leath’ry wings.Graveyards figure, too. “Where No One Goes” The keep of NäigöthsHungers, yearns, with entropy.I think it can’t be. “Chthonic Dreams” I’ve dreamt of foul thingsCrawling ‘neath the world’s bedsheets.No more sleep for me. What’s Cyclopean: Tenebrific skies. Chthonic palaces and dreams. Rubescent auras. Weirdbuilding: What’s a naigoth anyway? It sounds like it might be related to a shoggoth from Yuggoth. Or a Nazgul. [ETA: Anne solves the mystery below.] Madness Takes Its Toll: If you don’t ever sleep, guess what happens? Buy the Book Neurotica: Poems Maxwell I. Gold Buy Book Neurotica: Poems Maxwell I. Gold Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Ruthanna’s Commentary Like the Weird itself, poetry is hard to define. My own grasp is tenuous enough that when I commit poetry, I tend toward rhyme and scansion (as you all saw last week). It may or may not be good—indeed, there are cynical critics who dismiss the whole of formal poetry as played out—but it’s undeniably not ordinary prose. Whereas free verse falls into the murky chasm of knowing it when you see it. A mood piece with lots of line breaks and good wordplay might be as easily sold for a drabble as a poem. Perhaps, like the dragons and spaceships of cover art, it’s all just marketing. Once you’ve found something you like, it doesn’t matter what shelf you grabbed it from. In this case, the shelf in question was the 2025 Stoker poetry shortlist. Six names I don’t know, and Maxwell Gold has undeniably Weird pieces online. Very nearly old-school, his stuff reminds me of Lovecraft’s Fungi From Yuggoth cycle. No sonnets here, but the mood rests on unapologetic worldbuilding and neologism. Näigöths flap from poem to poem, motifs repeat, everything slips through the sands of Lady Hourglass. That’s the worldbuilt showing, but there’s also direct telling: we don’t have to guess how the narrator feels. It’s a litany of classic attraction-repulsion: drawn, gripped, uneasy, curious, afraid. Adjectives mix the straightforward “darkest” and “despicable” with the sesquipedalian “tenebrific.” And then there’s the “fuckery.” Which I love, because whomst among us hath not looked around as elder gods rise and reality slides into Nyarlathotepian chasms, and thought, “Not this fuckery again.” The horror isn’t that something new is rising to overturn our comfortable lies, but that the comfortable lies are so far back that we can barely make them out by squinting, and the eldritch worst has become all too familiar. Lovecraft assumes the Dreamlands, with all its wonders and terrors, reachable. Navigable is a whole different question, but the problem with what lies beyond the wall of sleep is that it’s hard not to go there. Gold, however, is squamosifying anxiety-ridden insomnia. “Hideous things” crawl “underneath the bedsheets of the world.” Try to sleep, and the Sisyphean fuckery is right there under the surface. Stay awake, avoiding the nightmares that divide “sleep” from “actually resting,” and REM will pursue you anyway, sticking golems and beasts and “zombified skeletons” in every corner. “Every day” you’re thinking about them, and yet that lack of escape doesn’t make it any easier to close your eyes. This is my favorite imagery of the poem set: the pull between sleep and sleeplessness demonstrably as no-win as that between attraction and repulsion. Nightmares are a living force, perhaps with more agency than the non-sleeper at whom they “paw.” The “broken palaces” are made more disturbing by their location “under the crusty nethers of oblivion.” It’s both cosmic and greasily corporeal. And yet, it’s not blood’n’guts’n’cannibalism, just the miserable embodiment of lying in bed two hours after you lay down and five before you have to get up and do things. Sisyphean fuckery indeed. The other line that fascinates me is the bedsheet-lurkers chasing the non-dreamer “through graveyards of time and space where no one would remember me, forsake me, or dare to understand why I never slept”. The fear of being forgotten is familiar, common, Lovecraftian. But the other two: why fear that no one will forsake you? Especially while also fearing that they won’t understand your worst fears? Again, tension: the uncomfortable middle ground of having people who want to help, but don’t want to understand the Horrors well enough to actually help. But they keep trying… and you keep having to try and explain, when you haven’t gotten any sleep. Maybe? But how do they stay in this awkward middle ground while also forgetting you? Attraction and repulsion, cycles of fleeing and returning, and a tension that doesn’t resolve—maybe that’s what makes the poetry. Anne’s Commentary Hey, those haiku-summaries were fun! They also helped me focus on what I think are the “big messages” or “crucial observations” or (to evoke the most dreaded word teachers can utter in literature classes) the “themes” of Gold’s poems. I’m tempted to emulate Ruthanna’s comments from last week’s discussion of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, in which she gave us an original poems in sharply ironic iambic septameter. I’d have to stick to haiku, though, and I’m afraid that would get self-indulgent after a dozen or so. “The Naigoth Waits” indeed had me asking the question that opens my summary-lyric for the poem: What’s a naigoth? Here’s the image of one to which my searches led me. It’s a figure designed for tabletop gaming by the phenomenally talented 3D artist Brayan Nafarrate. It appears to be Nafarrate’s creation rather than a creature of any “real-world” mythology. It’s hard to tell from the photograph, but zooming in on projections to the beast’s sides seems to show leathery webbed wings. Scale the naigoth up enough and send a flock of them out over “graveyards of sword and sin,” these wings could probably “[darken] every earthly corner.” “Where No One Goes” mentions a Castle of Näigöths—alternate spelling for the same monster? “Grinning statues of despicable winged creatures” guard the surrounding landscape. Maybe they’re representations of naigoths extant or extinct. That maybe-avatar of Time, the Lady Hourglass rules here among the “chthonic palaces and decayed ruins,” although if she’s actually littered “vast fantastic dreamscapes” with her sands, I wonder if she’s in much greater shape herself. Besides, whisperers in the “stony corridors” spread “galactic rumors” that “there’s not much time left,” so is there concurrently not much remaining of Lady Hourglass’s recording innards? Hungry old entropy gnaws away at the Castle; inevitably, like other dreams, it will disappear “through the dark apertures of [the narrator’s] thoughts.” And through those “dark apertures” is where no one goes, or can go. Without the dreamer, can there be a dreamland? With his third poem, Gold grabs me at “chthonic,” one of my favorite weird-fiction words. “Thon-ik” is evidently the right pronunciation, though I tend to forget and say “Chuh-thon-ik.” It refers specifically to the ancient Greek gods and other mythological beings who live in the underworld or underground. More generally, it refers to all things earthly, earthy, dark, or deep-rooted. Brian Lumley named the tentacled slug monsters in his Burrowers Beneath Chthonians. Gold grabs me even harder with his first sentence: “Not a day goes by when I don’t tremble at the thought of hideous things crawling underneath the bedsheets of the world.” It’s bad enough to picture monsters tunneling or cave-dwelling or even cellar-slumming underfoot, but monsters in your bed? And not just lurking behind the bedskirt but crawling in the sheets. Getting all noxiously intimate with your naked toes and skin while contemplating where in all this slumbering lusciousness they should sink their teeth or mandibles or stingers or stiletto-tipped feet or ovipositors for the love of all benevolent gods…. Gold could be using “bedsheets” metaphorically, to refer to the epidermal layers of the earth, below which chthonic things live. But I think too highly of him to believe that. I believe he wants us to twitch in our covers tonight, anticipating a slimy/chitinous/squamous brush against our soles. Not that the other two poems are deficient in this regard, but “Chthonic Dreams” bursts with darkly gorgeous images and language. “The muck and rust of time.” Monsters that “rattled their tired bodies” while “coated in greasy, dirty possibilities.” “Broken palaces under the crusty nethers of oblivion.” Listen, if there’s one experience you don’t want to have, it’s being broken under oblivion’s crusty nethers. Not that I’d know. Or that I’m implying Gold would know, personally. Let’s just say we both heard about it from friends to be left unnamed. Okay. Let’s close with an appropriate haiku. Or two. No more, I promise. To dream is a risk.Time, past, future, live in dreams,Waiting to get you. Not to dream is worse.To rise intact, more or less,That’s braving the fight. Next week, we get back to Good Stab’s stabbing story in Chapters 9-10 of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.[end-mark] The post The Same Thing I Do Every Night: Poetry by Maxwell Gold appeared first on Reactor.