Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver Devil in Silver: Aasif Mandvi Talks About Shooting Dr. Anand’s Major Scene Reactor interviewed Mandvi about his character’s journey over the course of the show. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 5, 2026 Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Warning: This episode contains spoilers for the fifth episode of The Terror: Devil in Silver, “Vermillion.” The fifth and penultimate episode of The Devil in Silver has more than one shocking moment, and one of them involves New Hyde’s managing psychiatrist, Dr. Anand. Dr. Anand, who is played by Evil alum Aasif Mandvi, has a run-in with Dorry, New Hyde’s long-term patient played with disturbing perfection by Judith Light. That run-in involves Dorry crushing Dr. Anand’s face into a pulp and tearing him open with her bare hands. It’s not subtle, and it’s a scene that Light, in character as Dorry, would constantly remind Mandvi of on set. “She would always just come up to me and secretly whisper [in a singsong voice], ‘I’m gonna kill youuuu… I’m gonna kill you…’ It was kind of a creepy thing that she would do to me,” Mandvi told me in an interview. Mandvi talked more about Dr. Anand’s final scene, how the social commentary of the show attracted him to the role, and what he thinks his character on Evil, Ben, would think of New Hyde. Read on for our full discussion. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. What attracted you to the role of Dr. Anand from the get-go? It’s a great role, and multi-layered, and there’s a lot of complexity to the role. As an actor, it felt like it was fun to dig in and sink your teeth into something like that, and then I just liked the social commentary that the series has. I’d done this show Evil, and that was a real mix of horror and social commentary as well, and this lived in a similar space. I also liked the idea of Dr. Anand caught between being a person who genuinely, I think, wants to do good, and then also being beholden and being imprisoned himself inside this institution. He’s a middle management guy who’s stuck in this place where he knows he has to compromise his ethics and sense of right and wrong in order to keep the institution going, and that’s an interesting conundrum that I think that we see a lot in our world right now. He’s interesting because as episodes go on, it’s not quite clear how much he acknowledges or knows about the supernatural component as well. Did you have a thought in your mind of how much he knew what was really going on in New Hyde? I think he’s in denial about a lot of it. It was always a question for me: How much does he know? And then the question became: How much is he willing to look in that direction? I always got the feeling that he was a man who didn’t want to see the things he didn’t want to see. He wanted the institution to run smoothly, and with a certain level of consistency. For him, keeping the institution going was more important than losing the institution altogether, and so whatever he had to compromise in order to do that he would do. And then this other stuff with the devil and the supernatural, I don’t think he knows quite what to make of it, and I thought that was interesting, because I don’t think he buys into it 100%, but I think he knows that something is going on, and so I imagine it gives him an ulcer. Image: AMC+ It’s ironic too, because he gets punished for trying to do good at the end. And that’s the thing, right? As long as he just goes along with it and doesn’t take any action, he manages to survive. But the minute he takes action, the metaphor of the devil, through Judith’s character, kills him. I feel like that was a really powerful scene and moment in the show, but also a message about what the show was saying. At the end of the day, it’s all about just get in line, follow the rules, don’t speak up, just take your meds, non-compliance is not an option, all that kind of stuff. And when Dr. Anand decides to step out of line, the institution stamps down on him and kills him. And again, I would say we see more of that in the world today than we want to. It was an interesting and powerful metaphor. When did you know what would happen to your character? I think I got all the scripts prior to shooting, so yes, I probably knew before then. And it was kind of fun, because Judith was always in character when we were shooting. I rarely saw her out of character and she would always just come up to me and secretly whisper [in a singsong voice], “I’m gonna kill youuuu… I’m gonna kill you…” It was kind of a creepy thing that she would do to me.” That is creepy, especially from her. Yeah she was always Dorry, with the whole wig and the teeth thing. She was very much in that character the whole time. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Can you talk about actually filming that scene, just what that was like? It was bizarre. There’s a lot of things that we do in this business where you look back on it, and you go, “Oh, right, that’s a weird thing that I had to spend the day doing.” That day I spent like five hours just [making grunting sounds, as one does when their face gets smashed in]. They had to shoot it at all different angles, and then they had a prosthetic, and they had a stunt guy. But I just remember Judith sitting on top of me just screaming for God knows how many hours. Did she stay in character for that too, in between takes? In character the whole time, yeah. It was a day. On one hand, I got to lay on the floor all day. On the other hand, I was basically told, “We just want the sounds of her hitting and smashing your face.” And I was like; I know a lot of things that I can call upon but that is not necessarily one of them…  what does that feel like to have your face smashed in? Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Have you seen end product of it? The final version on screen? I haven’t seen that one yet. It must be a weird thing, to see yourself in something like that. Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about it. My wife was like, “I’m not watching it.” It’s a weird thing… I’m trying to think if I’ve died in many things. I don’t know if I have or not, but in this particular gruesome fashion, this was a first, although I did get to take a selfie with the guy who had my smashed-in face. Well that’s good for memories! And for my last question, I have to ask: you mentioned Evil, and I’m a big fan of that show as well. Do you have a take on what Ben [Mandvi’s character on that show] would think of New Hyde if he ended up in there in some capacity? I think Ben would have quite a field day trying to figure out what was what, and what was real, and what was not real. This show starts to become less ambiguous as it goes along, whereas Evil always remained ambiguous about what was real and what was not. And I think in this case, if Ben went behind that door and ended up in that other world back there, I wonder if it would be more like the episode we did on Evil where he gets stuck in the elevator down in the basement and is suddenly faced with his worst nightmare and fears. So, I don’t know, but I definitely think that Ben would be checking the entire place… he’d be checking into the air conditioning. The season finale of The Terror: The Devil in Silver premieres on AMC+ and Shudder next Thursday, June 11, 2026.[end-mark] The post <i>Devil in Silver</i>: Aasif Mandvi Talks About Shooting Dr. Anand’s Major Scene appeared first on Reactor.

Books post-apocalyptic fiction Finally, a Unit of Measurement for a Certain Kind of Moral Depravity… We’ve all encountered this trope in post-apocalyptic fiction before. Let’s give it a name… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on June 5, 2026 Credit: American International Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: American International Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios Remember this old essay? The morning after I finished writing the article below, Reactor published an article by Ruthanna Emrys titled “Ixnay on the Post-Apocalyptic Cannibals: Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell.” Emrys’ column could have sent my mind down the path that led to the essay below… if I’d read it before writing the essay and not after. What a coincidence—I guess it’s “People Don’t Really Act Like Post-Apocalyptic Novel Protagonists” time! So, I recently became aware of the absence of a potentially useful unit of measurement, one I could use in review after review. It’s lack came to me as I was reading John Christopher’s 1956 The Death of Grass, which is rather counterintuitively about the death of grass and the consequences that follow. I don’t know how we’re supposed to get that from the title. The property being measured is temporal: how long does it take protagonists in an existential crisis to embrace war of all against all, to start murdering their way towards refuge—or, having refuge at hand, to aggressively prevent others from joining them? Obviously, crisis calls for resolute action. Imagine, for example, that you were on an escalator and that escalator halted. Provided you waited an acceptable time for the escalator to start up again or for rescue to appear—five or ten minutes—I don’t think anyone could reasonably criticize you for whipping out a machete to carve your way to freedom. Likewise, light cannibalism or establishing a Cosmic Circle commune working along proper Degleresque1 lines is just common sense under those circumstances. To quote A Mighty Wind’s Terry Bohner, “You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.” Even granting the above, fictional characters seem to make the jump from conventional middle-class grudging coexistence to homicide and warlordism astonishingly quickly. For example, The Death of Grass’s heroes… well, no. Protagonists… conclude that impending famine means it’s every man for himself so quickly one might suspect they’ve been dying to hoist the Jolly Roger all along, and only waited for a pretext. This is almost certainly true for gunsmith Pirrie, who allies with the central characters early on. Pirrie brings his wife Millicent along not because he loves her, but because he is afraid she might thrive without him. As soon as opportunity presents itself, he murders Millicent and replaces her with Jane, whose parents he has just helped murder. I would be in no way surprised to discover Pirrie was a serial killer (or worse) pre-famine. While Grass’s characters might seem a bit hasty, an objective survey of works such as Varley’s Slow Apocalypse, Ward Moore’s “Lot,” Ing’s Pulling Through, Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer, Tucker’s The Long Loud Silence, and others—too many to list here—suggests that in fact these characters are not really all that exceptional. Survival-oriented pragmatists abound! DO NOT BOARD ESCALATORS WITH THESE PEOPLE. The lack of a formal measuring system makes it more difficult to compare works along that specific axis. Happily, I am here for you. More accurately, Ray Milland and Ward Moore were here for you, but I am going to steal their credit. In Ray Milland’s film Panic in the Year Zero! (Based on Moore’s “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter”), Los Angelinos Harry Baldwin and family set out on a camping trip. The Baldwins become aware something is wrong about 2 minutes, 45 seconds into the film. By about the 3-minute, 30-second mark, they see ominous flashes. At about the 6-minute mark, they witness a mushroom cloud rising over Los Angeles. At the 7-minute mark, emergency broadcast radio confirms atomic attack. At the 9-minute mark, Harry sees another man2 assault a gas station attendant. 10 minutes in, Harry abandons any thought of returning to rescue his mother-in-law. Over the next minute, Harry convinces himself civilization may have collapsed. At minute 13, Harry asserts survival will have to be on an individual basis. Finally, at just under the 23-minute mark, Harry commits his first survival-related crime. Now, Panic was not filmed in real time. The 10 minutes between the Baldwins suspecting something is up and Harry concluding it is every man for himself is probably somewhat longer. An hour seems like a reasonable guess. Therefore, I suggest one hour as the basic unit of measurement for the interval between characters discovering there is a crisis and them deciding to chuck every civilized value overboard in the name of survival. I further propose this unit be henceforth be known as “the Baldwin,” in honour of Harry, who with his family contributed absolutely nothing to the (entirely successful) US war effect in the course of the Baldwins’ post-apocalyptic crime spree.I don’t know if the Baldwin will be useful to you all, as a concept, but I suspect I will get considerable use out of it.[end-mark] Researching “Cosmic Circle” and “Claude Degler” can only surprise and delight you. ︎Who also witnessed the attack and its effects. ︎ The post Finally, a Unit of Measurement for a Certain Kind of Moral Depravity… appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Romantasy Read an Excerpt From The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley The stakes are high, the love is forbidden, and the slow burn turns steamy… By Brigitte Knightley | Published on June 4, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy, the second book in Brigitte Knightley’s Dearly Beloathed romantasy series, out from Ace on July 7th. Osric is a member of the Fyren Order, a guild of assassins who gleefully murder for money. Aurienne is a Haelan, a scholar-healer whose Order’s motto is Harm to none. Clear-cut absolutes separate them: good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark…Until they don’t.When Osric first bribed Aurienne to heal him, he never imagined those lines would begin to blur. But every healing session draws them closer together. He finds himself developing unwanted feelings for Aurienne as her capable hands heal his body—and his heart.Aurienne’s perfect life has been flung into chaos in the form of a devastatingly handsome assassin. She should be in her research lab, not illicitly healing a Fyren every full moon—nor wrestling an attraction to him that threatens to slip into something else.Things go superbly sideways when Osric and Aurienne discover more about the deadly Pox deliberately unleashed through the Tīendoms. The plague may be the work of another Order—an Order far nastier than either of them can handle.As the lines between Osric and Aurienne continue to blur, the balance between peace and war, and love and hate, trembles, shifts, and hinges on a heartbeat. When Aurienne materialised at Rosefell Hall, she clung to the waystone to wait for her stomach to turn right way up. Waystone travel always made her woozy; successive dips into the graticule made her nauseated. The stars spun too quickly overhead. The gravel drive ribboned queasily away. A piece of darkness detached itself from the waystone. It said, “Hiya.” Aurienne did not pierce Mordaunt’s eardrums with a scream, but he would have deserved it if she had. He was dressed in his deepest hood and blackest cowl. Only his pale eyes were visible among the shadows, along with a few artistically placed strands of hair, silver white in the dark. He pulled down his cowl to uncover a scar-crossed grin. Aurienne had not foreseen the tingle of gladness that possessed her at the sight. As though she had missed it. As though it mattered to her. She quelled the feeling. Mordaunt swept towards her in an elegant bow. “My saviour has returned. You’ll no doubt find it impertinent of me to tell you what a delight it is to see you again.” “I wouldn’t if I thought you were sincere,” said Aurienne. “Spare me your theatrical ardours.” The smile gave way to a laugh. Mordaunt had cast off the softness of their rooftop talk. He was himself again: debonair, arrogant, mocking. There was, however, a new thinness to his face. Cíele was right—he looked like he’d been ill. “Have you been sick?” asked Aurienne. “Why?” “Your face.” “How dare you?” “Answer me.” “I’m fine,” said Mordaunt. “Quite over it, actually.” “What happened?” “Stomach bug. Don’t start quizzing me about diarrhoea. It’s not manners.” “You should tell me when you’re not well,” said Aurienne. “I’m your Haelan.” “You’re my Haelan,” repeated Mordaunt. He passed a hand along his jaw. His smile lingered but his eyes were unamused. Then, as one seeking distraction, Mordaunt gave Aurienne’s outfit a look of assessment—this she did find impertinent—and asked, “What look were you going for? Lonely Adventuress? Exploratrix?” Aurienne gave his ensemble an identical look of assessment and asked, “And you? Widow in mourning? The remains of the deceased?” And then they were at each other again, irresistibly, a pin to a magnet. Mordaunt, vexed, called her a Paroxysm. She informed him, on general grounds, that he was an Adhesion. He called her a Vortex. “Fiasco,” said Aurienne. “Crisis,” said Mordaunt. “Sybarite.” “Malapert.” “Furuncle.” “Niminy-piminy.” “That’s not a noun.” “Neither are you.” Buy the Book The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy Brigitte Knightley Buy Book The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy Brigitte Knightley Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget It was a fruitful exchange. It reminded Aurienne that Mordaunt was the most constitutionally irritating man she could possibly have been cursed with healing. They glared at each other; aggravation simmered and spat between them. Mordaunt said, “I’ve so missed the pleasures of your company.” He led Aurienne into crumbling, rambling Rosefell Hall through the kitchens, where he shed his cloak and cowl to reveal a wildly unnecessary—though splendidly cut—silver suit. Aurienne was greeted by his motley pack of dogs. Rigor Mortis (Great Dane), Arson (retriever), Perjury and Forgery (border collies), Outraging Public Decency (bulldog; prolific farter), High Treason (borzoi) and Crème Brûlée (whippet) all limped to her and collapsed around her feet. Tails flumped at the floor in greeting. Diverse Felonies, an arthritic terrier who usually objected to Aurienne’s presence through vigorous, voiceless barks, greeted her with cheerful belligerence. Crème Brûlée, the timid one-eyed whippet, permitted himself to be stroked. Arson liberally coated her black clothes with cream fur. High Treason, possessor of a long empty vessel instead of a head, leaned into her from behind and buckled her knees. Mordaunt snapped out an instruction to sit, which his pensioners ignored as they smeared wet noses all over her. Aurienne was also greeted by Mrs. Parson, Mordaunt’s steward—a sturdy, sensible woman, out of place in the household of a Fyren—and Mr. Parson, the groundskeeper, kindly and shy. Mordaunt opened the door of the house’s sole usable sitting room. Perjury and Forgery herded Aurienne in. The sitting room was in its usual state: it was a room of rococo exuberance in which an art gallery and an antique shop had fought. The antique shop had won; both had left debris upon every surface. Aurienne cleared away the bric-a-brac on the coffee table—crystal bottles shaped like anemones, a terracotta horse—and replaced it with Grette’s pies from the Publish or Perish. “Did you buy me dinner?” asked Mordaunt. “Yes.” “Romantic.” “Economic.” “What?” “They were on offer, two for one,” said Aurienne. “Steak and ale or chicken and mushroom?” Mordaunt chose the steak. They ate. Mordaunt said his pie was lovely and tender, unlike Aurienne. She said her crust was superbly flaky, just like him. Aurienne extracted materials from her satchel. She laid a map of Glastonbury Tor—the outcrop upon which the Druids had built their stronghold of the Færwundor—on the table. “We were meant to pool our information on the Færwundor tonight,” she said. “I brought what I could find. What have you got?” “I’ve got a plan.” “Show me.” Mordaunt fished about in his pocket and pulled out a bit of paper, which he gave to Aurienne. It said: Plan: Make a plan. Aurienne delved deep into the font of her patience. “Your plan is to come up with a plan?” she asked. “Bit shit, isn’t it?” “It’s well shit,” said Aurienne. “You are riding my last nerve.” “My favourite place to be,” said Mordaunt. “But at least you’ve been inside the Færwundor. That’s something.” “Er—I haven’t, actually.” “You haven’t? But you killed the Druids’ Seer.” “I killed him at a restaurant,” said Mordaunt. “In London.” “A restaurant?” repeated Aurienne. “It was his birthday party.” “You killed a man at his own birthday party?” “Obviously: I knew he’d be there. What?” Aurienne and Mordaunt stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. The gap between their principles yawned wide. “So many of the things you do frankly erode my faith in our species,” said Aurienne. “I’m not convinced we are the same species,” said Mordaunt. “Immoralist.” “Valkyrie.” Aurienne pressed fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Right. Excellent. Perfect. So we’re going into the Færwundor blind.” “Not that blind,” said Mordaunt, pointing to the table. “You’ve got a map.” “Exterior only. We’ve got a few Druid contacts at Swanstone—they’re a major source of plantings for our medicinal gardens—but I daren’t ask for too much information about their headquarters. All this map confirms is Glastonbury Tor’s position over three ley lines and that two watercourses cross somewhere within it, which coincides with Widdershins’ translation notes for the Begbéam moon.” Widdershins was a professor who claimed to have translated the inscriptions on the Monafyll Stone, an ancient obelisk depicting a healing pilgrimage to be followed at the full moon. Aurienne and Mordaunt had harassed the man in his own home to obtain his translations, which described the pilgrimage in the vaguest and most unhelpful terms. Aurienne was using Widdershins’ notes to guide her interpretation of the data—it being understood that by “data” she meant a quantity of ill-sourced, poor-quality, unverified anecdotes describing miraculous healings at the full moon. This was the sum total of the research project upon which Mordaunt’s healing was predicated: maps with scribbles on them, fabricated translations, and anecdata. Ludicrous. Ludicrous, and yet. Frankly, the most ludicrous part of it all was that, following this poorly conceived “treatment,” Aurienne had arrested Mordaunt’s seith degeneration. Somehow, on the basis of fairy stories and healing sessions at the full moon, they had done something heretofore medically impossible and stopped the progress of an unstoppable disease. That was immense. A triumph. Or a coincidence. It was too late to be sceptical, but too soon to celebrate. Aurienne looked up. Mordaunt had placed two heart-shaped nipple pasties over his eyes. No: the most ludicrous part of it all was him. “La vie en rose,” said Mordaunt, looking about. Aurienne had been using the nipple pasties as markers on her map. She plucked them off his face. “Focus, please. The two watercourses may be subterranean. There’s a persistent legend that Glastonbury Tor is hollow—that there’s a large cave system within the hill. Some myths suggest that passage to Annwn can be found down there. The Celtic Otherworld,” she added, in the face of Mordaunt’s blank look. “A paradise of eternal youth, where disease is absent.” “What are all those wiggly bits going round the Tor?” asked Mordaunt, tapping at white lines circling the Færwundor. “Fortifications?” “That’s the labyrinth I’d mentioned to you.” “Not much of a labyrinth,” said Mordaunt. “Looks more like a spiral.” “Whatever it is, we’ll have to go through it. It’s the only way to the entrance of the Færwundor.” “And what’s in the Færwundor itself?” “I don’t know,” said Aurienne. “It’s the Druidic headquarters, so I imagine it’s fairly rustic. A stone tower full of herbs and pestles and things, like an old-fashioned apothecary. Maybe an altar or two. Almost ninety percent of my data for the Begbéam moon points to dawn as the best time for a healing. I suggest we meet at three in the morning to give ourselves time to get into the Færwundor to attempt it. The nearest pub is the Hairy Hodmedod.” “All right.” “I wish we could’ve entered the Færwundor by legitimate means.” Aurienne sighed. “This would’ve been so much easier.” Mordaunt emitted a disdainful tut. “Legitimate is boring. It lacks Incident.” “How do you propose we proceed, then?” “I’m going to shadow-walk the two of us right through,” said Mordaunt, in an extremely offhand way, given the ludicrousness of the suggestion. Aurienne was a Haelan. Haelan did not walk the Dusken Path. She could not possibly have heard him correctly. “I’m sorry,” she sputtered, “shadow-walking? Me?” “No,” said Mordaunt. “Me. I’ll carry you along.” “You’re joking.” “I’m not,” said Mordaunt. “Stop clutching your pearls. We’ll be in and out before you can blink.” Aurienne—who had actually been clutching invisible pearls at her throat—lowered her hands. “I follow the Bright Path. I don’t even know what will happen to me if I try to walk a Dusken one.” “Nothing. You’ll be a passenger.” “You’ve shadow-walked others along with you before?” asked Aurienne. “Yes,” said Mordaunt. “How did they fare?” “All right, I think. They hadn’t an opportunity to share how it felt afterwards.” “They ‘hadn’t an opportunity’?” repeated Aurienne. “No.” “Because you murdered them?” “Because I murdered them.” “Brilliant.” “I promise you’ll be fine. Let’s do a few practice runs. Come with me.” Mordaunt drew his cloak and cowl back on, and led the way to a high-columned ambulatory round the back of the house. Like most of Rosefell Hall, it was overgrown and derelict; poor Mr. Parson, solely in charge of the estate’s thousands of acres, had managed to keep most of the flagstones clear, but moss crept inexorably between cracks and up columns. It also made its way onto the statue of a kore at the far end of the ambulatory. The kore’s chiton was adorned now with green lacework. Her stone basket held scruffy dandelions and a single courageous daisy. There was a surprisingly lush, well-kept kitchen garden bordering one side of the ambulatory, which Mordaunt indicated was Mrs. Parson’s. Aurienne remained unenthused by Mordaunt’s idea but, having no better suggestion to make, found herself limited to sprinkling a bit of disaster-mongering into the conversation. “I don’t think it’s wise of you to shadow-walk two people at once. Your seith system is fragile. You mustn’t push it to extremes.” “Carrying you along isn’t extreme.” “Is the carrying along literal?” asked Aurienne. “Yes,” said Mordaunt. “Do you want to be my sack of potatoes or my bride?” “Potatoes,” said Aurienne. “Unromantic choice, but you are starchy.” “Have I got to do anything?” asked Aurienne. “Use my seith?” “No,” said Mordaunt. “I’m going to sweep you off your feet.” Which he proceeded to do. He slung Aurienne over his shoulder, exactly as though he were handling a sack of potatoes, which offended her. She hung there with her arse in the air. The chicken and mushroom pie she had just eaten sloshed into a new position. “I’ve changed my mind,” said Aurienne, tapping at Mordaunt’s back. “Bridal-style, please, or I’m going to lose my dinner.” Mordaunt slipped Aurienne into place accordingly. Now she found herself in the appalling position of being held like a lover by him. He smelled of blackthorn smoke and shaving soap. He radiated his usual warmth. She had desired to be In Control, and would have preferred anything to this intimate positioning. It felt perilously natural to be held by him. Such was Fate’s sense of humour. Aurienne wished that Fate would mind its own business and not meddle in her affairs. The moon above was almost full. Lovelily she cast her light on Mordaunt, who held Aurienne like a paramour in the dark. “Ready?” Mordaunt squeezed her tight. “Don’t want to leave bits of you behind.” “Leave bits behind?” repeated Aurienne. Before she could ask for a more fulsome report of the risks involved in the shadow-walk, Mordaunt swept her into it. First they were here, at one end of the ambulatory, and then they were over there, at the other end. About ten percent of Aurienne’s brain registered fascination with this feat. The rest of it sloshed against her skull in a nauseated stew. Mordaunt might’ve warned her that every moment in the shadow-walk would feel as though her molecules had spun out and joined the iniquitous dark—that she would lose all sense of sight; that her breathing would be oppressed by the thickness of his seith over her; that, after each discombobulating step, she would be left with a brain like a centrifuge; that she would want to spew out the entire contents of her GI tract, as well as the organs themselves, if they would kindly detach themselves for the purpose. Aurienne came out of a near faint to find herself clinging to the front of Mordaunt’s cloak. Masticated chicken pie heaved ominously in her stomach. She would never eat again. “Bit vomity, eh?” said Mordaunt. Aurienne disentangled herself from Mordaunt to stand on her own. Her triumph lasted but a moment; the world whisked itself out from under her feet and sent her scuttling sideways like an excited crab. She fell into a heap. The world oozed. Presently it congealed. A swimmy eye cast in Mordaunt’s direction confirmed that he was trying not to laugh about as hard as she was trying not to vomit. Also: he had lied. He had promised that she would be fine. She was not fine. Mordaunt squatted next to Aurienne and said, “Down like a bag of spanners.” “This isn’t funny,” said Aurienne, clinging to flagstone and dirt. “It’s an unalloyed delight.” Aurienne could normally stem nausea with her tācn pressed to her own forehead. She tried. It didn’t work. This was not regular nausea. This was sickness born of walking the unwholesome Path. Her every fibre shook in revulsion; her very seith tingled in alarm at the wrongness of it. “You’ve walked the Dusken Path now,” said Mordaunt. “You must be the first Haelan to do that.” Aurienne was not gratified by the honour. “I’m a d-disgrace to my Order.” “Let’s try again,” said Mordaunt. “Permit me to help you up.” She flung a hand in his direction and said, tragically, “If I die tonight, see to it that someone feeds my cat.” Mordaunt’s gloved hand closed on her bare one. He pulled her up, took her in his arms again, and stepped back into the shadow-walk. Blackness came over Aurienne; the pressure of his seith pushed against her brain, against her guts. She was conscious, in ways she had never wished to be, of the exact shape of her pancreas and her eye sockets. Aurienne and Mordaunt materialised a few feet away. Aurienne squirmed out of Mordaunt’s arms. She went down again, exactly like a bag of spanners. Mordaunt knelt next to her. “You’re doing better.” His confidence seemed imprudent to Aurienne, presently indisposed. The world continued its spin. She considered anchoring herself to it using her teeth, but didn’t, because she needed her mouth to say, “I wish to die.” Excerpted from The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley Copyright © 2026 by Brigitte Knightley. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy</i> by Brigitte Knightley appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver The Terror: Devil in Silver Readies Us for a Final Teamup in “Vermillion” And we get another look at New Hyde’s past. By Alex Brown | Published on June 4, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share For the fifth and penultimate episode of this season, Dory confronts her past, Pepper decides his future, and Miss Chris takes a stand. We begin with Dr. Cleave (Robert Sean Leonard) of the review board. He is ostensibly investigating the death of Coffee—real name Kofi—but is mostly just checking the boxes so he can shut down the unit. Josephine seems lost and worried, Scotch Tape is defensive, the patients will only say “I don’t know what happened. I was in my room.” I’ve given Miss Chris a hard time, but Coffee being executed by the state for the crimes of being disabled and Black has lit a fire under her feet. Good on her for calling out that “hospital brass” treat New Hyde like they “don’t exist at all” until “doo-doo hits the fan, if you’ll excuse my language.” Dr. Anand also has the chance to fight back, but instead he sulks and accepts his fate. The only person with any power at all, insignificant though it may be, sits there. He grows a bit of a backbone after he gets his walking papers, but too little too late. While he may not have an explicit deal with the Devil, he is nevertheless a willing partner. Anand keeps his job as long as he supplies the Devil with souls and the hospital board with cash (i.e. patients) and the moment he can no longer provide either, he is discarded. Violently. Young Dory—or Dorinda, as she’s known before being imprisoned in New Hyde—reminds me of Loochie, except when Loochie gets emotional they get violent and when Dory gets emotional she cries. It’s obvious she has something going on with her brain, whether mental illness, neurodivergence, or some combination of the two is unclear. It’s also obvious that Dory’s husband, Ralph, is a patronizing asshole. She can’t do anything right. He’s a saint for having put up with her, blah blah blah. To watch him lie to her about going to the eye doctor before a special date at a fancy restaurant and then betray her so cruelly, my God.  Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC The real Dr. Walter reminds me a lot of Anand. He has moments where he feels bad about torturing Dory… but it doesn’t stop him from shoving an ice pick into eye socket and digging around in her gray matter. He looks at Ralph like he’s trying to get him to take it back or talk to her first. But in the end he does what every staff member at New Hyde does: nothing. It doesn’t matter if the Devil is real or not. His job is to keep the money/patients coming in and he does his job well. He has plenty of chances to interrupt the process or stand up for his patients, and he takes none of them. Maybe he feels bad about it, but what good does that do Dory or anyone else whose brains he scrambled?  Speaking of lobotomies, Dr. Walter is likely named for Dr. Walter Freeman, the American doctor who popularized them. In 1936, Freeman was the first to perform one in the US. According to one survey, by 1952 nearly 50,000 people in the US and Canada had lobotomies performed on them; the majority were women, with some being subjected to multiple surgeries. It goes on to say: “Five of the six patients in the case study by Freeman and Watts were women whose symptoms—apprehension, insomnia—seem incommensurate with their treatment, but whose status as women sanctioned it. A patient previously fearful of aging could now “grow old gracefully” and care for her home. She complained of a lack of spontaneity, but her husband praised the changes her surgery had wrought, declaring her “more normal than she had ever been,” possibly the least credible measure of therapeutic success in the annals of history. By 1942, 75% of the lobotomies Freeman and Watts had performed were on women.” Dory got hers in the late 1960s, about the same time Freeman was banned from performing them after one of his patients died while being subjected to her third lobotomy.  Image: AMC+ This “now he knows he has to get out” business poses some intriguing questions about what happens if the Devil actually does get out. It isn’t trying to attach itself to the staff or Cleave but to patients like Dory and Pepper, patients who will be transferred to a new facility. It wants to jump to a new food supply like a tick looking for a new host to gorge on. Setting aside the supernatural elements, facilities like Dr. Walter’s New Hyde are often one or two grants or greedy board members away from crumbling into Dr. Anand’s New Hyde. Even the so-called good hospitals are often bad for long-term patients. Dory lived through New Hyde in both its good and bad years, and she has the psychological scars to prove it. When New Hyde was good, Dr. Walter used a mallet to crack her skull open and cut a chunk of her brain out. When New Hyde was bad, Dr. Anand overmedicated her and punished her for noncompliance. I’d bet good money if lobotomies were still permitted, Anand would’ve given all his patients one.   These book club choices sure aren’t subtle. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of letters from a man in a mental health crisis so severe he cut his own ear off then took his own life. It’s so interesting that Anand resonated with the passage where van Gogh talked about patients “helping each other” so much that he decided to become a doctor at a mental hospital. When I hear that passage, I don’t think “isn’t it nice that the patients were a little family,” but “conditions were so poor at that institution that the only people looking out for the patients were the patients themselves.” Anand inadvertently recreated the same conditions that failed to help van Gogh.  Loochie sees themselves reflected in van Gogh. Both are artists stifled by their mental health issues. Both have violent outbursts they can’t control. Both feel insignificant and isolated. Loochie’s conversation with Nana, especially the part about what Loochie did to their brother, hits so much harder when you know the story of Vincent and his brother Theo. Theo always supported his brother’s artistic dreams, and even when he was hospitalized he never gave up on him. He had syphilis when Vincent died, and it’s widely assumed that Theo’s demise was hastened by grief. That relationship stands in stark contrast to Loochie and everyone else in her biological family.  Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC While Loochie is desperate to connect to her family, Pepper is pushing his only biological family away. He doesn’t want what happened to Coffee to happen to Anthony, especially not after last week when the Devil went strolling through Pepper’s guilty memories. Anthony showing up to offer comfort to the dad who abandoned him is so sweet. It’s a strange experience to be the adult child of a deadbeat dad. You spend your childhood longing for the attention of a man who doesn’t want anything to do with you, but by the time you become an adult you realize you wouldn’t be the person you are if he had been in your life. You want the dad who didn’t exist but don’t want the man who did. In Anthony’s case, he’s lucky that Pepper turned out to be a pretty decent guy who made a shitty choice he regrets and is now trying to repair that damage.  The-Devil-As-Louie gave Pepper various names for the malevolent force haunting New Hyde, and Miss Chris gives us another: duppy. Duppy are creatures from Black Caribbean folklore, based on supernatural beings from West African folklore. Miss Chris is smart enough to back out of Arnold Visserplein’s (Stephen Bradbury) room, but foolish enough to tell that duppy her big plan for trapping it in Northwest. Never tell the enemy your plan!  Image: AMC+ Dory has a complicated relationship with men. Ralph treated her like she was disposable. Pepper thinks he’s smarter than her. Anand thinks she’s a pathetic nutcase. The Devil (who isn’t a man per se, but often takes the form of men) thinks of her as nothing more than a cog in the machine that funnels food into its maw. Coffee was her only male friend who wanted nothing from her but companionship, and now he’s dead. Dory has blood on her hands, but so do the staff and so does Pepper. Dory didn’t cause the violence at New Hyde; she was forced by men and the Devil to do things against her will. But she also made the choice to try and stop people from stopping the Devil. She was compliant, she did “his dirty work.” She had good intentions, but people were hurt in part because of her.  Maybe wherever the patients get moved to will be better than Northwest. Maybe it’ll be worse. Maybe intervention wouldn’t have mattered because it’ll be more of the same; new wing, new staff, same forced compliance and underfunding. Coffee might still be alive if Pepper had been compliant or Dory had interfered earlier, but that life would have been as empty as Dory’s. Before, Coffee and Dory were alive but not living. Is half a life better than none, or would you rather go out early but on your terms? Coffee was murdered for trying to help his friends. Would he say that was a fair trade? Dory took decades of suppressed rage—at the patriarchy, at the men who abused her, at herself—and fought back at the cost of her own life. Was it worth it? It’s up to Pepper, Loochie, and Miss Chris to make his sacrifice mean something..  Next week we find out if Pepper’s final boss fight is successful or if Loochie is right that they “ain’t going home.” The finale is going to be a doozy! Quotes Cleave: “How long did you know the deceased?” Dory: “Which one?” I know that’s not supposed to be funny, but I admit I cackled. Image: Emily V. Aragones/AMC Final Thoughts The opening shot of the flickering bulb and the blood spatter is so haunting Hey! It’s Wilson! The young man staring at Dory when she arrives at New Hyde is a young Arnold. The way he looks at her makes me wonder if the Devil was in him back then? Maybe he uses Arnold’s body as a vessel now? Josephine does an excellent horror movie scream. I’m soooooo excited for a Loochie, Pepper, and Miss Chris team-up. That can’t be all we get of Robert Sean Leonard, can it?  Poor Scotch Tape. The guy has been first on the scene for so much death. If the Dr. Walter we keep seeing is actually the Devil in disguise and Arnold his (unwitting?) henchman, then who is the third entity in what Dory and Coffee called the holy trinity? Was it Dory?[end-mark] The post <i>The Terror: Devil in Silver</i> Readies Us for a Final Teamup in “Vermillion” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays video games Embracing the Therapeutic Power of Katamari Damacy Who knew that rolling giant balls of garbage around could be so joyful? By Leah Thomas | Published on June 4, 2026 Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment “My,” my father says, “Earth is really full of things!” It does not feel like a criticism, even if the things he is referring to are mostly useless. In this colorful realm, it’s my job to tidy up a world that’s reminiscent of my real-world apartment any time one of my disorders compels me to upend every last drawer at once. The things in question are a broad range of objects that amalgamate in any living space: stationery, thumbtacks, toilet paper, batteries, orange peels, tubes of lip balm, potato chip cannisters, and spiders. While a few of these objects—such as Shogi tiles and Hina dolls—would be less commonplace in non-Japanese households, a cucumber is a cucumber regardless of where you’re from, and a mess is a mess. Someone has to clean it up. Your father, who made the mess to begin with, can’t be expected to do it. He is the King of All Cosmos, and has other whimsical, catastrophic plans to look forward to. He has already broken the universe beyond repair, thanks to a naughty bout of drinking that resulted in him somehow erasing every star from the sky. It turns out this has made him very unpopular with the denizens of the universe, and he has to find new stars somewhere, so why not just make them from all those useless things piling up on Earth? You might resent him for it, and certainly, when Dad asks you to tidy dozens of live crabs from a backyard only to then imply you’ve done a poor job of it, he is a hard person to appreciate. He may be the quintessential Bad Dad. Like many parents who are quick to delegate the terrible fallout of their selfishness to their offspring, the burden of fixing the universe falls to you. “You owe Us for your existence,” he informs you. “We collect on the debt. Yes?” How could anyone argue with that inane logic? Besides, in the charming, batshit world of Katamari Damacy, he’s the only dad you’ve got. And if it takes rolling trash, then furniture, then animals, then people, then vehicles, then cities into stars to earn his approval? Well. For all that this premise sounds bleak, anyone unwittingly exposed to the Katamari aesthetic would never suspect it. In Katamari, the world is made of bright colors, cubed edges (years before minecraft, mind you), and whimsy, set to a fantastic Shibuya-kei soundtrack, which is some unlikely mishmash of genres ranging from jazz to rap to pop. There is much to love about a cult-classic game franchise like Katamari. Whatever more I may say will be more junk rolled into the ever-growing sphere of its long-standing reputation as a triumphant pioneer in the indie-game canon.  But go on, kids! Make stars from the trash your parents gave you… Dust to Stardust? Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment I am very late to the game when it comes to admiring Katamari Damacy. The first game was released in 2004, and my family had only just purchased its first shared gaming console, a PlayStation 2. I remember the early ads for Katamari because they exist in the same surreal pantheon of bizarro advertising as that one wild Quiznos sub commercial and the infamous Skittles Midas Touch ad. In the commercial, a secretary walks into a beige lobby and tells a salaryman to follow her. He closes his briefcase and leans forward as if to stand—only to remain seated, pulling the entire sofa with him. The sofa folds into the woman, who becomes stuck to it as well, and then folds out the door and absorbs the cleaning lady. In essence, anything a katamari rolls into becomes part of the growing mass, kicking and mewling and flapping. The commercial is memorable because it breaks one barrier the game never does: the live-action commercial depicts this disturbing fate using human beings rather than pixelated cartoons. It’s a delicate line between dreams and nightmares. The truth is that Katamari presents the goofiest of body horrors, but body horror all the same. We are all familiar with religions or creeds that tell us we return to the universe after death; or if we aren’t religious, we at the very least know the Law of Conservation of Mass: matter can neither be created nor destroyed. As creatures composed of organic stuff, we have a lot more in common with the junk in our houses—nail polish bottles and toilet brushes and our silly little tchotchkes—that we might like to admit. Eventually, we all decay and merge with the world again. Take your pick of oracles—Carl Sagan or Moby or any random fantasy novel—and consider the message they convey: we are all made of stardust.  And maybe it isn’t trying to be that deep, but Katamari goes one step further. What if the stars are instead made of us? I am oddly charmed by this more ambitious doom. Rarely is the transition from cognizant individual to squirming mindless mass so abrupt, or, well… amusing? I am delighted whenever I absorb a screaming schoolboy or a pompadoured Yankee. The twinge of guilt I feel when I roll over another tomcat and hear his questioning “Meow?” as he becomes one with my rolling hell-cluster is immediately quelled by the knowledge that he and all his new companions will make for a beautiful star. It might come as no surprise that this whole beautiful disaster of a game was the brainchild of an art student. The series creator, Keita Takahashi, was a talented graduate from Musashino Art University, the same university that produced auteur Satoshi Kon, Hello Kitty creator Yuko Shimizu, and horror author Ryu Murakami. Takahashi was known for his eccentric, playful sculptures, among which was a goat-shaped planter that drained water through its udders. He grew bored with sculpture and began working in the art department of Namco in the late ’90s, where he found himself brainstorming new games. According to Takahashi, the seed of the idea for Katamari began with fond recollections of an old arcade game—I mean, 1880s old—tamakorogashi. You’ve played some iteration of it, probably; remember those plastic keychains with metal balls inside, and the objective was to spin or tilt the damn things until each ball rolled into a corresponding hole? Tamakorogashi is also credited as one of the major inspirations for modern pinball. Perhaps it is a testament to the oddity of Takahashi’s brain that he realized his ambition to create a game that was “not formulaic” by designing a game around so mundane a concept as cleaning up a mess. Of course, we could all clean up our houses instead of playing, and find our lives better served: “You don’t need cleaning in a video game, son: we have cleaning at home!”  But that’s not the point. The point is that even the dullest, simplest chores in life can be reimagined and transformed into something playful. With a stable of young game designers at his side, the Katamari Damacy project slowly gained traction. It was not an easy sell, and Namco remained unconvinced until Takahashi secured a student aid grant to help develop the project further. It has since spawned a critically acclaimed franchise containing more than twenty games, and has been frequently cited as a major inspiration for independent game designers. This impact is probably greater than I have any real sense of—I have played a lot fewer indie games than most avid gamers, which is why it took me twenty years to fall for the Prince and his Bad Dad. Even so, I have felt the impact of Katamari in unlikely places. In the horror game Inside, for example, there comes a point when the player character, a frightened little boy, begins merging with other human beings to form a screeching mass of rolling flesh.  Na-naaaa, na na-na na-na na na, na Katamari Damacccccy! Ghost in the Slipper Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment The word “katamari” means “cluster,” and “damacy” means “soul.” That’s a great title, because this stuff has a real soul, buried under layers of sheep and shopping carts and a kraken or two. The objects we surround ourselves with do help us ground ourselves in the world and define who we are, after all—you can pry my collection of yokai-cat figurines or my Blythe dolls from my cold dead hands. Here in Japan, there exists extensive folklore about a specific type of yokai (spirit) known as tsukumogami. The word translates to “object ghosts.” According to legend, objects that reach 100 years in age are granted sentience. While many yokai have sinister intentions, most tsukumogami are innocuous, playful creatures: the awakened koto that plays forgotten memories at night, a talkative tea kettle used as a peace offering in a historic tale. While tsukumogami stories maintain a unique charm, most cultures share stories about magical objects. In the immortal words of a charming candlestick in one Academy Award-winning animated film, “Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.” While tsukumogami stories deliver a variety of moral lessons, many warn owners not to neglect their possessions. Things, however cheap or simple, should be taken care of. Culturally, this notion remains a core principle in Japan. Anyone who goes thrifting in Koenji can tell you that secondhand items are usually in impeccable, often brand-new shape. In general, despite the gachapon refuse and endless layers of plastic wrapping and disposable utensils, Japanese values place a lot of emphasis on the concept of mottainai: waste not, want not. Compounding this, perhaps? It is exceptionally difficult to get rid of trash in Japan, thanks to strict rules about rubbish sorting and specific pickup days. People who are overwhelmed, depressed, or busy are bound to miss these days and find themselves slowly surrounded by piles of plastic bags. You might be familiar with anime or news reports about hikikomori dens, where people withdraw and live in isolation. While many families take part in a traditional deep cleaning before the New Year, those who don’t maintain bonds with family sometimes avoid any such activity. In Japan, it is quite rare to be invited into someone’s apartment, and much more common to meet in a third space. In short, it is all too easy for one’s home to become a guilt-ridden temple of hidden waste.  But there is zero shame in the messes of Katamari. Roads cluttered with cones and thermoses and yards buried beneath toys and cleaning supplies and appliances are vibrant landscapes, as fun to explore as they are satisfying to clear. Nothing is hidden away, and the larger your katamari grows, the more it can absorb, until even pets and people become part of it. If our stuff is junk and so, ultimately, are we, why should we feel bad about it? We are what we are. It doesn’t mean everything is meaningless. Every object is catalogued with measurements and a blurb as it joins your cause, evidence that a life is being lived, shedding candy wrappers like our bodies shed hair and skin. Gross? Who cares. I do not think that Katamari is trying to make one clear statement about consumption. Instead, I think it takes an insightful look at the chaotic world we’re all inhabiting and finds the beautiful levity in it. It might be impossible for us to really clean up our planet, and maybe it’s ludicrous to try, but by golly, this little guy is trying anyhow, so who cares if his dad is a hater? The true catharsis in Katamari comes not from tidying up a room, but tidying up the mind along with it.  Don’t you ever stop, lonely rolling star! Keep going. Konmari vs. Katamari? Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment Professional organizer Marie Kondo suggests that every object thrown away should be thanked for its service before being disposed of. Teddy bears should be blindfolded before meeting the trash bag so we don’t incur guilt looking into their eyes one last time. Unwanted gifts on our shelves should be appreciated not for what they are, but for the sentiment, which frees us from having to keep that damn ugly sweater. Give each object a salute and then chuck it, until you are surrounded only by those things that make you happy. This approach to organizing a life has been effective for me and countless others. The katamari approach is less mindful but just as satisfying. It does not hurt that it is imaginary. The therapeutic benefits exist all the same. The soundtrack alone is the aural equivalent of touching grass.  The mess in these games is ultimately unconquerable, especially for a subpar player like me. Katamari is known for its unique controls. Using two Joy-Cons is as essential as rowing on both sides of a rowboat if you don’t want to go in circles. In real life, my coordination could never. But with practice, navigating that rolling adhesive ball becomes easier and easier. It’s rare to sense improvement so concretely in gaming. It’s weirdly encouraging, and maybe that’s another lesson: Managing the mess of daily life is a challenge, but it can get easier. The point is to keep rolling, because what the hell else can we do?  I should really clean my apartment. It will only get messy again, sure, but there will be a brief few days when the sunlight hits the apartment walls just right and the cat dander does not overwhelm me—and then I can sit on the sofa and play Katamari in peace.[end-mark] The post Embracing the Therapeutic Power of Katamari Damacy appeared first on Reactor.