Pet Sematary is still the blueprint, for me. Louis Creed makes the worst available choice at every turn. But you don't—at least, I don't—come out thinking "damn, this bitch is dumb." You understand exactly why he does what he does. Why he doesn't feel he has a choice at all. - ThreadSky

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social • 21 days ago

Pet Sematary is still the blueprint, for me. Louis Creed makes the worst available choice at every turn. But you don't—at least, I don't—come out thinking "damn, this bitch is dumb." You understand exactly why he does what he does. Why he doesn't feel he has a choice at all.

Reposted from Flowers in the Vattican

The interesting question narratively speaking, is always, why did someone make a terrible decision?

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timwburke.bsky.social•21 days ago

What's your take on "Where Evil Dwells"?

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social•21 days ago

If you mean "Where Evil Lurks," it's devastating and I fucking love it. Apparently there's a short called "Where Evil Dwells" but I haven't seen it

timwburke.bsky.social•21 days ago

I did mean "Lurks".

timwburke.bsky.social•21 days ago

It seemed to me that the guys knew the lore of the "demons," made the wrong decisions to protect their loved ones, but only made it worse.

therewithal.bsky.social•21 days ago

When I read it as a kid I thought it was good horror. When I read it as an adult I realized it's the most horrific horror because you know he's going to do it and you have to just sit there and watch. The inevitability of every choice is awful.

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social•21 days ago

It's truly one of the saddest books I've ever read and that's what makes it so scary.

haileypiperfights.bsky.social•21 days ago

He's rationalizing it in a way that makes sense when you feel how broken he's become.
It has to work because he NEEDS it to work, because it's too important not to work.

And then when it doesn't, he figures he just didn't go fast enough. Didn't try hard enough. It'll work this time, for sure.

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yes! And even before that, bringing the cat back—his first terrible mistake—makes perfect sense. He's trying to protect his daughter from pain. It's a totally understandable, utterly destructive impulse.

zeroisanumber.bsky.social•21 days ago

Jud Crandall makes the decision to resurrect the cat, iirc. But it was a terrible decision.

Tbf the characters speak often about the terrible influence of the sour ground and how it stacks events to ensure the most awful outcomes.

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social•21 days ago

It's Jud's idea but Louis chooses to go along with it, even though it's clearly crossing the barrier Pascow warned him about.

I'm always ambivalent about how much the burial ground actually controls their actions. Does it really or is that something Jud and then Louis tell themselves as an excuse?

haileypiperfights.bsky.social•21 days ago

That's when you get into the cosmic side of it. There's definitely a force at work, but how consciously responsible is it really? If you start skirting down the steep slope of a pit, yeah, you might slip and tumble and break your neck, but is that the pit and gravity's fault, or your own?

lindsaykingmiller.bsky.social•21 days ago

Right, like, I wonder if just the fact that the ground exists—and human nature—is enough to make all the rest inevitable.

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