#annhilation

[localcryptidartwork]

I’m a fourth generation Floridian. I’ve been watching my beautiful home get destroyed piece by piece. The Southern Reach series feels like a haunting love letter I could never put into my own words.

[sahashbelvanie]

southern reach timeline

This isn’t going to be a comprehensive post, but I’m re-listening to Authority while reading Absolution, and I’m slowly picking up on things that form a timeline. I haven’t yet finished the Lowry section—three pages in and I’m already losing my mind. Lay off the drugs, Lowry.

Anyway, from what I can tell, Annihilation seems to take place in the 2010s, though in an alternate reality where factions and organizations like Central or the Séance & Science Brigade exist, and where Florida is known as the “Forgotten Coast.”

Grace mentions that strange phenomena have been occurring on the coast for a century, which—if taken literally—would date back to around the 1910s. The director’s notes state that the S&SB have been operating on the coast since the 1950s. If the Dead Town expedition took place 20 years before the Border came down, that would place it in the 1960s, while the Border fell in the 1980s (also around the time the Southern Reach was formed). The white-rabbit experiment occurred in the 1990s, although the time-warping effects sent them back to the 1960s.

The present-day story likely takes place in the 2010s, which would put most of the characters—Cynthia/Gloria, Grace, Lowry, Whitby, and Jackie—in their 40s to 60s. Control says his grandfather Jack is retired, which would make him quite old if he and Old Jim were “buddies back in the day.” Jim, probably in his late middle age during the 1980s, could have passed as a man in his 60s or 70s. So if Jack is still alive, he must be very old.

I’d like to make a detailed timeline of events, but that would require the conscious effort of actually writing these details down instead of lazily remembering them.

[diana-andraste]

Untitled, Jaroslav Vávra, c. 1960s

[longtimeballoon]

Summer, contemplation in the grass season

[mochamura]

another commission... the prompt was, 'gimme cat but in the style of annihilation'. my deepest apologies to jeff vandermeer

[leyezzeyee3]

im finding the switch up in descriptiveness very interesting from the first book? in the first book they’re all “the biologist” “the psychologist” “the anthropologist” “the surveyor” and the most you find out about them is that they’re all women. but in this book they’ve given such specific descriptions of their ethnicities/heritages which were completely unknown before. their names are still a mystery but it’s from a place of active defiance now. idk the ethnicity descriptions really stuck out to me. there’s some deeper analysis here i can feel it.

[thepastisneverdead1966]

The director: something about the biologist…she can’t hold down a fucking job, she has no close family or friends besides her late husband who she doesn’t give two shits about, she never gives straight answer to a straight question…She’s also obsessed with the ecosystem in that tidal pool…I can feel it in my bones, she WILL make Area X react

Me: Autism. She has autism.

[mossyjay]

bleh kinda art blocked, have this weird guy also PRESSURE TOMORROW RAHHHH i can already feel the fixation returning... pressure fans i will feed you trust