12thbiologist

[12thbiologist]

#yes for science

[12thbiologist]

does anyone have Thoughts about the director’s chapter in acceptance being written in second person? it’s intriguing me but i know jack shit about literary analysis 👍👍

#yess all of this. great meta!! #i think the first persona n third person also feel further away because they inherently put distance between the reader and narrative #''I do this'' and ''He does that'' theres a gap between whats happening and the audience; even if youre in a pov of a character you're stil #separate from them #but second person eliminates that and merges the reader into it and gets the (arguably) most reliable pov #much like area x merges things together into their ''pure'' form etc.

[12thbiologist]

more fascinating details from vandermeer

#absolution spoilers #the southern reach

[12thbiologist]

BTW the mycelium has already overtaken me and it's delightful

[12thbiologist]

(excerpt from absolution from vandermeers twt)

new levels of autism are being reached in the southern reach. i already love cass so much

#absolution spoilers #<- going to use this more now as we get closer to release! block if u want to go in blind

[12thbiologist]

a few more of those annihilation inspired mock stamps :)

img sources: blue and white abstract painting (2020), emily bernal, unsplash id: emilybernal / forest view in the menterschweige district near munich (1841), heinrich dreber / a book of whales (1900), frank evers beddard, w. sidney berridge

[12thbiologist]

If you like my art or my blog or if u dont want me to die you should read annihilation immediately alternatively theres a really good reading on ytbe please please plseae

#REALLY GOOD OMG

[12thbiologist]

so youre saying theres a chance

[12thbiologist]

another fascinating absolution tweet from vandermeer......

#very excited #absolution

[12thbiologist]

ohh my god 2 hours long talking about southern reach ohh heaven on hearth

#good video despite the clickbait thumbnail and its not about the movie at all haha #Youtube

[12thbiologist]

okay im back having looked at all the page breaks in part 2: DEFINITELY A PATTERN!

there are 4 instances of the chapters having page breaks at the end and they all follow a trend with regards to the invasion/presence of area x. forgive that this is maybe incomprehensible and makes no sense.

there is a break between chapter 010 and chapter 011, this is because 010 ends with control getting ready to leave the southern reach and 011 begins with him at home. he's crossed a sort of border in doing so. however, the break is not present between 011 and chapter 012 because something is crawling around on the roof of his house, violating the "border" between his work an home, and 012 begins with him back at work. the border expanded to encompass his home.

in chapter 012, control cleans up the former director's office and paints over the writing behind the door. in this process he ends up accidentally creating a significant barrier of paper stacks, chairs, and desks. there is a break between chapters 012 and 013. i think he was able to shrink the border, or eject it or make his own, with his chair barrier and cleaning.

there's another break between chapters 014 and 015. control is leaving the expedition wing at the end of chapter 014 and he's back sequestered away behind his chair barricade at the start of chapter 015. he crossed back through his chair border.

the final chapter break is between 015 and 016. chapter 15 ends with control realizing he's being hypnotized by lowry and about to leave the southern reach. chapter 016 starts with him at a diner. he crossed the border once again when he left the southern reach and the diner is not encompassed by it.

and then the page breaks are completely disappeared after chapter 018 as that's when he loses all ability to separate himself from the southern reach and gets too close to ghost bird.

yay! i love when mediums are used to their fullest extent even in their most mundane aspects!

#imo only the breaks in part 2 are super relevant because the presence of the border is dependent on what happens in the chapter #the others are based more on the parts overall tone #also part 2 is the longest part. shrug #southern reach trilogy #the southern reach trilogy #authority #area x #control

[12thbiologist]

YES oh my god i think you're very very onto something. i looked at each time the chapter "border" (im calling them that now its very good) is present in part 2 and im not sure if i want to say it's intentional but, but there are somewhat consistent trends re: the idea of control "entering" or "exiting" places. when control leaves the southern reach at the end of a chapter, the chapter border is there, and when he enters the reach at the beginning of one, it's not there to proceed it.

there are some places where the chapter border being there feels necessary due to formatting, but at the same time the way he's chaptering is very intentional so i'm not sure!! i'd have to do an analysis of every chapter ending/beginning lol

but i DEFINITELY think it's meant to be a border, excellent observation omg

interesting note about the chapter breaks in authority, the 4 parts of the book each do chaptering differently.

in part one (incantations) all chaptering is done in the traditional way:

the page before has white space and the new chapter begins on the next.

in part two (rites), chapters start beginning without white space:

the chapter title just marks the change without a break in the text. there are still traditional chapter breaks, though

in part three (hauntings) it switches to be exclusively the second kind of chapter break and now every chapter is just a continuous stretch of prose without white space to break between them.

in part four (afterlife), chapters are gone.

very interesting! what does this mean? i don't know. im guessing it shows the ways control is losing control over his life and therefore over the structure of the narrative as well

[12thbiologist]

hi! i’m an english major who is obsessed with the southern reach and im thinking of looking into scholarship on the series. i know you also really enjoy the series and im curious if you know how of any analysis on it? totally ok if not, just thought it’d be interesting to ask you!

hi! so ill admit ive never read any actual scholarship on the southern reach, but after looking i realized there is!! a lot!! i recommend searching around google scholar to see if anything peaks your interest :33

#definitely going to read some of the stuff i found there oooohhh baby

[12thbiologist]

started thinking abt annihilation while i was working on those FL wildlife stamps and i thought it'd be fun to come up a set of stamps based on scenes from the book, which then got me thinking abt the poor usps worker stuck making the trek out to the border to drop off & pick up the mail. i assume it'd be similar to the process for sending & receiving mail from remote research stations, like mcmurdo in antarctica. here's the first two of the set, exploring the descent/ascent into the tower & first contact w the crawler

img sources: bulletin monumental, v.35 (1869), société française d'archéologie / stone staircase at fort point, san francisco, CA (2014), wikicommons id: tcolburn52

[12thbiologist]

#looks at vandermeer. which expedition had 24 people sir. #<- edit its the first expedition. i forgot. >_< #anyway im sloshing into the aquifer o/

[12thbiologist]

do u have any tips on how to annotate books? ive been trying to lately bc I love buying used books w annotations but I get so nervous ab writing in books or being wrong ab observstions etc...!!

number 1 tip is that there are no such thing as wrong observations!!!! to me, annotating is less about adding to or enhancing the text with your observations and more about solidifying your own experience of it. especially annotating a book the first time. so theres really no wrong way to do it! even if your observations are "wrong" factually, its still meaningful because thats how you understood the text at the time :3

other than that, its really just about diving in and getting over the nerves of ruining the books haha! there is truly truly no wrong way to annotate, so it's all about finding how you like to do it and running with it. i only started annotating when i read annihilation a couple years ago and felt like i just had to, so i did!

for me, i'll first annotate a book with pencil to ask questions in the margins, underline lines i find impactful, and then usually add page tabs to mark important moments. these are both removable forms of annotation at the end of the day, so it helps a lot to "break in" the book and get used to writing in it

after that, i go with permanent materials (pens, highlighters, etc.) for future annotation and such. i really like using different pens/colors each time, so that way the annotations age the book, like rings on a tree :)

my copy of annihilation with annotations on the annotations (lol) as an example of the "rings"- each annotation set brings another layer of analysis over time

TLDR; BASICALLY just have fun with it. start with pencil if you're afraid, you can always erase it

#hope this makes sense? i just have fun and do whatever i want as im reading ^_^;

[12thbiologist]

ngl seeing you annotate/sticky note authority might be the final straw that kept me from buying the southern reach trilogy (i just finished reading my borrowed copies) 🙇

hell yesss!!! owning physical copies of books that you can just absolutely destroy with annotations is SO MUCH fun. my copy of annihilation has 3 reads worth of annotations and its my magnum opus \o/ i very much recommend it

#also soft cover is the best for annotating in my experience. part of why im so sad absolution is hardcover for its first run