amphibious creature

Oak: the Platonic ideal of a tree. This is the tree of which you've drawn 1000 in the margins of your school notebooks. 10/10.

Willow: graceful, dramatic, and so, so thirsty. Will always have a special place in my heart because my childhood home had one in the yard, and I had a swing under its canopy and could hide there and read. 12/10. Unless it's near your sewer line, then -10000/10 because it will wreck your pipes.

Coconut: iconic. For a temperate clime gal like myself, I see one of these and my shoulders drop two inches. I'm on vacation, and this beaut is keeping me cool. 10/10. 11/10 if I'm sipping coconut water straight from the fruit.

Pine: ever walk on a trail in a pine forest on a blanket of fallen needles? Pretty fucking magical, wasn't it? And the smell? Sign me up. 10/10.

Spruce: best Christmas tree. Look at that thicc caboose! You know you want to put some tinsel on that thang. 10/10.

Palm: it wasn't specified, so I chose to interpret this specifically as date palms, because I love dates. 10/10. Nature's candy.

Apple: ever go picking in the early cool days of autumn, when you're still excited about hoody weather? The smell of the orchard? Walking around with a big basket picking different varieties? Eating donuts and drinking hot cider before you go home? 10/10. 11 if it's an Evercrisp.

Sequoia: I mean. Absolute unit. 13/10.

Baobab: the Sequoia of Madagascar. Just look at this thing. It's a certified Creature(TM) of a tree. 13/10.

Magnolia: Iconique. The belle of the garden. 11/10.

Birch: Haunted. Every single one of these is part fae on its mother's side. I'm not convinced they can't follow you through the woods as you hike. 11/10.

The Green Place was around them all along, and it takes this long, cyclical journey to understand that, both for them and for the audience. The circular narrative structure is an absolute work of genius, and the fact that the entire plot can be boiled down to “they leave and come back” is an indication of how well this works as an action movie - that the plot is simple enough so everyone can understand what’s going on while explosions are going off and cars are racing past at 100mph - yet it’s still incredibly rich and wonderfully complex too.

Hannibal (2013-2015)

Hannibal (2013-2015)