Suppliant My Children's Murderer To Implore, And Kiss Those Hands Yet Reeking With Their Gore

he was right to fear the helmet: it makes it impossible to tell father from foe.

The last image was the first image and only one I meant to make. starting thought (that I don't think I communicated well tbh): "A shot looking up the walls of Troy where Odysseus is dangling Astyanax from the top by his heel, reminiscent of Thetis dipping Achilles, ready to plunge him into his namesake, the river Scamander, brimming with Trojan blood below, while the Achaeans watch in expectation. And the walls are cyclopean, of course!"

you know. standard classicist mental illinois.

maybe one day i'll be better at art and think of a better way to communicate that concept? dipping the baby in the river to cement his legacy? idk. i'll probably come back to it someday.

Loved the Annihilation book, just saw the 2018 movie, and thoughts on the ending. Heavily spoilers, partial ending explanation.

The first moment in the movie I stopped and said “Wait, that makes no sense” is the ending when Lena walks on the beach with the glass trees. Up until this moment I followed with a ‘eldritch cosmic horror being unreality” mindset, but this moment stopped me.

Because it made no sense to me that there could be any sort of mutation that results in clear, crystalline forms. This movie hammers in that biology is being disfigured, but not non organic forms; we see the old buildings, the boats are practically untouched, old weaponry is usable. So why now with these trees? Minerals don’t have dna to mutate.

But THEN the movies goes on, and Lena is replicated with a green being. And we see the inside of the lighthouse, the underneath with that shimmer black moving WHATEVER, and the creature itself, which is an iridescent green. Then it all makes sense.

Sand is the largest source of silicon in the world, and silicon is the second most abundant element on earth. Sand is also a primary ingredient in glass. Silicon -> Sand -> Glass -> Glass trees.

This is the best photo I could get of the being underneath the lighthouse, if you’ve seen the movie you know it’s more shimmery, almost liquid, looking identical to the material on the right, which is solid silicon.

Silicon is also used in making computer chips and wafers.

Silicon wafers have a holding, greenish iridescent shimmer as well, much like the being that tries to relocate Lena at the climax.

Here’s the thing about Silicons atomic properties. Silicon has 4 valence electrons, and if you remember grade school chemistry, an unreactive, stable atom has 8. So silicon is semi stable, but would really like to bond with other atoms to achieve 8 valence electrons. This basic concept is what makes it a good semiconductor, or a material that easily allows electrons to move through it. There’s a lot more technical science that has to do with it I’ll cut out, but some elements are ‘injected’ into silicon to manipulate these properties, creating a system that allows electrons/electricity/energy to very very easily run through it. A very popular choice is phosphorous.

I couldn’t get photos of the scene, but Oscar Isaac’s human character self immolates with a PHOSPHORUS grenade. When he destroys himself, it’s a contained, rapid fire that does not spread to his surrounding and dies out fairly quickly. But when the creature is then trapped in a phosphorous blast, it doesn’t dissolve, but continuously burns. The burn doesn’t spread to the regular stone of the lighthouse, but absolutely rips through the underground area and being growing on the side of the lighthouse that the movie has us believe is a living creature, apart of the clone, or obviously at least the same substance that one (aka me) might say is silicon.

Here’s one last thing about silicone properties. The material most related to silicon on the periodic table is carbon.

All known organic life is made of carbon. Period. If it’s alive it’s carbon. Many traits responsible for why carbon makes life possible is shared with other Group 16 elements. Silicon is the closest Group 16 element to carbon. Therefore, it is hypothesized that any non-carbon based life would have to be made of silicon. Many theories and sci-fi stories play with the idea of an alien life being made of silicon is more environments that can accommodate that.

So back to my initial confusion. I was confused as to why the creature, or the shimmer, or whatever force that is responsible for the movie could make clear, crystalline, glass like trees. It’s ability was clearly stated to genetically mutate living things. But I’m arguing that somehow through sci-fi movie reasons, the creature is silicon based life, or become silicon based upon hitting the sand at the beach, then perhaps adapted into carbon based life.

After this scene, when Lena is being interrogated, she is asked ‘Was it carbon based?’ Imma say that is a very, very relevant question, and maybe the entire point of this line of questions. So cool thing the movie did, it all still makes sense.

End credits: the reason we don’t see silicon based life is it would theoretically require an insane amount of energy to sustain. Doesn’t react with this theory but yo it’s a movie they gotta make it work somehow.

wish the piraeus archaeological museum had a public catalog but hey everyone check out this c. 420-410 funerary stele from salamis with a tragic actor staring at his mask

actaeon the hunter and king lycaon

“Penelope Unravelling the Web,” by Willy Pogany

Illustration for “The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy” (aka “The Children’s Homer”), by Padraic Colum

Yet think, a day will come, when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phoebus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scaean gate.

almost a week of school left i am doing it for him.

stand on the axe blade of light and dark

what Aeneas saw when he wake up, received the fire of Vesta.

ehh read Aeneid, love you Virgil💕

reunion.

some sketch I drew in March;)

twenty years across the sea