The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Posts tagged as “links”

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XLI

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XL

I overheard this fleetingly on Radio 6 (Gods bless ’em, as always) and immediately smashed that like button.

Annihilation: In defence of the Shimmer

Two mutated deer, their antlers clad in vibrant flowers, stand in a beautiful verdant forest, looking quizzically at the camera

Alex Garland’s Annihilation is nominally a horror film.1 Team of scientists goes into an evil forest, gets picked off one by one with cool body horror effects, blonde final girl makes it out and is irreversibly traumatised, movie ends, many such cases.2 But i’ve never seen it that way.

Might i just be a contrarian? Certainly, the biosphere our characters enter is cruel, but i think it’s a useful exercise to consider the situation from its perspective. The government is on their Gods-know-how-manyth expedition into the Shimmer at this point, and up until now, it’s all been military men. Cripes, if i were a sentient self-regulating ecosystem and all these feds started probing around my internals because they want to kill me, i’d develop an immune response too.

The world beyond the Shimmer is beautiful beyond description. It is a place where the sky glistens in iridescent3 waves, where every sort of plant grows from every sort of bush and beast, and where death is just one step in a beautiful cycle of life and rebirth.4 It blurs the line between not just the species but kingdoms of life — flora, fauna, and funga all mingling and merging together equally under one roof. Barring the terrifying human–bear hybrids, that’s a world i’d like to live in.

Plus, it seems willing to learn. In the ending “fight” (cue the noise), allegorical for the obvious as the visuals may be, the alien throws not a single punch. It’s learning by doing, mimicking every move Lena makes, enough to turn into a rudimentary facsimile of her — and even after its destruction, the ending glimmer in her and her husband’s eyes makes clear a part of the Shimmer’s essence is here to say. I say that’s for the better.


P.S. Here’s some stuff i’ve been listening to recently (sorted from “bleep bloop” to “strum strum”):

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXIX

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXVIII

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXVII

A WIP map of the world in 2099
I feel a little bad for posting so many link roundups effectively in a row, so here’s a preview of things to come…

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXVI

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXV

A map of the Near East and Balkans with a focus on travel destinations and such
Š Zhaoxu Sui

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXIV

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXIII

A website with a tangled web of place names

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXII

A room decorated with an Egyptian mummy, an abstract painting of a Russian church, and icons of Jesus

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXXI

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume λʹ

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXIX

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXVIII