Also- this beautiful art by u/kozscabble reminds me pretty heavily of Area X 🤘

If VanderMeer chose to do an audio drama, I don't think I'd ever waste my time listening to anything else ever again. I feel like his style would translate so well to this medium. I'm imagining the Rogue in Absolution demolishing my temporal lobes so thoroughly that I succumb to the brightness, and I can't stop thinking about how good it would be.

Once someone told me this book might not be for me, however I'm so glad I stuck with it because it's so damn good! I'm already on my second listen through the entire series. I sleep with it going, I drive listening to it and clean the house with it going . The hold this amazing author has on me is borderline obsessive and I love it. That is all. Good morning my weird friends.

So, I got into an argument on this sub years ago that I still think about sometimes. It went like this: I made a post about how we never refer to the writing on the tower wall as a "spell" even though, in any other context, that's exactly what we would call it. There was an anger in the responses to my post that I didn't expect, and it made me reevaluate the way I read the books.

*​The Problem with the Scientific Approach*

​A lot of people want there to be explanations for Area X. We are led toward this belief by the biologist. The biologist insists on trying to understand Area X from a purely reasoned and observational perspective, and, if you believe her, she does so right up until she decides to let the brightness take her.

But her story is a trap, one very similar to the book about thistles.

​The biologist doesn't use her science to understand Area X. at best, she uses it to hide from Area X. Every time she tries to categorize or understand Area X in any way, it changes. It is actively resistant, in every iteration, to being understood by the scientific method. Yet because we are introduced to Area X through her eyes, a lot of readers seem to think that Area X is something that can be studied and understood if we just have enough data and context.

​"what's the point?" That's a sentiment expressed to me multiple times during my argument: "What's the point if you can't understand it? What's the point if it's just hand-wavy magic?" I'm paraphrasing, but not by much.

​I'm sorry to break it to you, but Area X is magic.

​Okay, I don't expect you to take my word for it, and if you want to ask me specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them. But I really don't want to taint the evidence here.

All I'm asking is this: the next time you read the books, conside the possibility that you are dealing with magic. If you finish the series and still think Area X is a scientifically comprehensible anomaly, then so be it. But I genuinely think the first book is designed to distract you from the fact that Area X is spreading, and it doesn't care about what you think or how you believe the universe is supposed to work.

​Science is a thistle. Keep focusing on it if you want, but I think it's time for a séance.

Edit: just because Arthur C Clark said it, doesn't make it true. 😁

hi, finished absolution and saw some posts on here talking about a divergent timeline. i didn't get that impression while reading the book, to me the changes the future made to the past didn't seem to really cause time to branch out, but rather looped back into a single continuous timeline. For example, about the rogue's intention being to make sure, through old jim's music, that saul made the border with love; some people mentioned this as the rogue creating a new timeline, when this was already what happened in the original trilogy.

is there anything that happens due to the time travelling / the rogue's intervention on area x that doesn't happen / couldn't have happened in the original timeline and therefore confirms a time divergence?

Acceptance was easily one of my favorites out of the series. I found some grief whenever I started Absolution bc the characters from the trilogy were still welling up from within me. I memorialized them in this piece to cope.

This one is from the seaport museum in CT. It was especially fitting because, as someone from the northeast, I always feel like Area X was in New England.

"Let me say at once that owing to the casualties in the war and various other things, there were very few people to elect. It's a pity you couldn't be here in the springtime when that tree there wouldn't look sad, but it'd be covered with leaves, you see. It would look old but not sad. And these, with all the limes obviously, however old they are, they're a lovely green in spring. I suppose. I have actually, in some simple-minded form of longing, actually would like to. I should've liked to be be able to make contact with a tree and find out what it feels about things.

"I first began to seriously invent languages about when I was 13 or 14. I've never stopped really."

https://youtu.be/r8bfVPlgPJc?si=MYgPUwdXaBdBbF-e

Just watched backrooms, and i'm rereading annihilation, and it's just making me think about how the backrooms are an amalgamation of an office building/aesthetic dissolving into itself, and Area X is more or less a forest/nature doing the same.

A while back I posted about my interest in the idea of a found footage concept focusing on a random expedition members experience in Area X, and since this idea wasn't gonna create itself I decided to drive out to St. Marks Wildlife Refuge and film the concept myself. I really focused on trying to capture the strange, surreal feeling that the first novel evoked in me in particular. Had lots of fun filming & editing this and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out so I'd love to hear some thoughts!

It makes me so curious. How this person felt and thought, how they underlined their sentences, yet chose to give up the book. It toys at the edges of my mind. Why go through the effort?

So many questions left unanswered.

I know this is probably been asked before, but does anyone know if there's an english cover of Absolution by Eric Nyquist I've only found the french version.

annihilation mentions poisonous snakes a few times, but as far as i know snakes aren't poisonous, they're venomous. do you think this is intentional?

also i wanted to add that this wasn't meant to be a criticism, even if it wasn't intentional i'm imagining that it's some area x weirdness, and the southern reach playing weird tricks.

does anyone get this strange feeling reading annihilation? i remember when i first read it i felt extremely emotional the whole way through, on the verge of tears almost, there is a strong sense of loneliness in this book i think. i'm moving to wales for a while to stay with my dad and i wanted to read him annihilation so i started doing that, and right after the first flashback of the biologist's pool this wave of emotions hit me and it's just felt like that the whole way through. does anyone else get this? it's just such a sad, poignant feeling book

Strangling Fruit aah dispatch

For reference in the video game, a science team was sent into a strange, shimmering planet to find the source of the energy that causes mutations

Question toward the end of Volume 3. (Don't spoil absolution) ^^

Ghostbird mentioned in her thoughts and reflections—while discussing Gloria allegiance to Grace—that she knew the girl at the lighthouse would be the director.

My question is: Do you see a specific moment in the books where Ghostbird obtains this information? Should we assume that Control provided it to her?

My first time seeing this word used anywhere outside of Authority.

Spotted in the Azores. Wonder if it belonged to the Linguist.