The Beauty of Ecosystemic Horror

I want you to take a deep breath. [Inhale] Breath sustains life. [Exhale]

And with life there is always struggle, and with struggle there is horror and beauty. Yet though that’s the fundamental reality of nature, it’s a reality that’s surprisingly difficult for media to capture. Stories that truly immerse you in the stunning nightmare that is being part of a biosphere, are shockingly rare… and intensely enlightening. Ecosystemic Horror is an abyss, and if you hold your breath and take the plunge... there’ll be no going back. [music]

Okay, so, what even is Ecosystemic Horror? It’s too visceral a concept to clinically define, so until we’ve chewed the meat of this video, let’s just say you know it when you see it. Instead, I’d like to start with a question. Do you think the life you’ve seen in this video so far… is dangerous or not? I’m guessing most of it seems iffy. But some of it, you might’ve rightly found eerily beautiful. Yet in nature, beauty doesn’t always mean safety. Ecosystems rarely conform to human aesthetics. Bright hues warn of poison, dazzling lights show aggression. While traditional horror makes its threats overtly unsettling, Ecosystemic Horror instead traffics in ambiguity (indeed, ambiguity is one of the keys to the genre). The result is environments where even the most picturesque lifeforms can’t be trusted. The only way to survive… is to entangle yourself in the ecosystem. But is understanding a biosphere something humans are truly capable of?

This is the weighty question at the heart of the breathtaking sci-fi series ‘Scavenger’s Reign,’ a story with the familiar setup of a group of people stranded on an uncharted planet, yet what’s decidedly unfamiliar is the planet’s ecosystem. At a glance, the world of ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ is stunning, vibrant, alluring, and also simply… dense. Many shots are so packed with biological detail it’s dizzying; creatures seen for just a few frames have entirely unique designs. In any conventional work of science fiction, such a world would be paradise. But ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ is one of the most subversive examples of Ecosystemic Horror I’ve ever seen, so suffice to say things aren’t that simple. The life in ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ is utterly hostile to any predictable notions of the natural world, wonderous species are dangerous, dangerous species are wonderous, and still other lifeforms survive in ways that are utterly indescribable. The ecosystem isn’t just visually alien, it’s emotionally alien, an ever-more-ambiguous tapestry of beauty and horror, and all attempts to understand it only seem to put the protagonists at greater risk. But what other choice do they have?

Perhaps the scariest aspect of ecosystemic horror is that once you’ve become part of a biosphere there is no opting out. An ecosystem is more than overt physical threats, it’s also subtler, more formless forces of rot and digestion. You can’t escape the environment you live in like you could a horror villain. The environment is omnipresent. Within you, just as you are within it. True ‘Ecosystem Horror’ is never just about monstrous creatures, because a single hungry predator could be avoided. But if the world is a stomach, eventually you will be digested. It’s only a question of time. Like the best works in its subgenre, ‘Scavengers Reign’ strongly makes the case that ecosystems can be all-consuming, though it assigns no moral clarity to that consumption. Flowers that grow from corpses are all the more beautiful for being well-fed. The most vibrant life blooms from death. But should the protagonists find this consoling? Accept that their bodies will fuel a wondrous environment? Is that how humans think? Of course not. If an ecosystem hungers for our species, its teeth had better be sharp. Because the natural response to being bitten… is to bite back.

Battling a violent environment with mutual violence feels logical, which is why, whether misguided or not, it’s typically the first instinct of characters in Ecosystemic Horror. Humans find safety in aggressively classifying, containing, and if necessary, neutralizing existential threats… so when an existential threat can’t be classified, contained, or neutralized… it’s uniquely disturbing. In both the film and the novel ‘Annihilation,’ an ecosystem in Northern Florida has… gone wrong. Its borders block all communication, flora and fauna have turned unnatural and ominous, and worst of all the area seems to be spreading like cancerous cells. So inevitably, humans build perimeters, establish labs to study it, send in teams to map and, hopefully, destroy it. But none of these methods seem remotely effective. You can’t fight ecosystemic change like you can wage a war, and the very idea that one could, subtly warps how the characters interpret this environment. Much of the life within the affected area is actually quite beautiful, the film especially emphasizing vivid hues and picturesque aberrations. There’s a real focus on macro-texture that feels drawn from the natural world; at the right scale, familiar organic patterns feel stunningly unfamiliar. But the humans of ‘Annihilation,’ at first, reject this dazzling incomprehensibility, instead determined to beat the environment into logical submission through categorization and conflict. …Yet violent, orderly resistance is not effective against something intrinsically unfathomable. A force of environmental transformation, vaster and more cosmic than any human intelligence, cannot simply be overpowered.

Ultimately, both the film, but especially the novel ‘Annihilation,’ present nature itself as something beyond our control and understanding. It’s notable that one of the most incomprehensible lifeforms in the book isn’t some otherworldly mutant, it’s a crown-of-thorns starfish, a real species from real tidepools, though if you’ve ever seen a crown-of-thorns, or any of the more eldritch phylum of life dwelling in our oceans, you’d understand the protagonist’s disbelief. Reflecting on the lifeform, she states: “The longer I stared at it, the less comprehensible the creature became. …The more I had a sense that I knew nothing at all—about nature, about ecosystems… And if I kept looking, I knew that ultimately I would have to admit I knew less than nothing about myself as well…” To gaze, unflinching, into the fleshy abyss, and still believe one could catalogue and conquer the terrors of an ecosystem, is to risk total self-annihilation. That doesn’t stop certain characters from attempting just that. (Spear scraping)

The self-destructiveness inherent to trying to fight the natural world is a core tenet of Ecosystemic Horror, and the reason why in both ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Scavenger’s Reign,’ those who suffer most… are those most resolved to master the environment. The ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ character of Kamen in particular embodies the horrific repercussions of an adversarial approach to survival. Thrust into a state of nature, Kamen is uncompromising and aggressive, yet even whilst believing he’s rising above the food chain, Kamen is ever-more implicated in the ecosystem, an ecosystem he cannot fathom any more than he can fathom his own self-destructive tendencies. Across this subgenre, environmental hardships expose each character’s personal shortcomings. Far more than his fellow survivors, Kamen is shown to be a hostile yet simultaneously self-pitying man long prior to his crash-landing. As needlessly antagonistic in his personal relationships as he now is towards the biosphere. But you can’t fight an ecosystem without becoming incriminated in it, this dark incrimination being another key to Ecosystemic Horror; in Kamen’s case, to survive he must form a grim pact with a creature called the Hollow, which he feeds a steady supply of corpses in exchange for protection and nourishment. Kamen and the Hollow bring out each other’s worst impulses, their codependent partnership wreaking havoc on their minds and bodies, but Kamen, ever determined to prove his way is the right way, continues to wield the Hollow like a weapon, prolonging his ineffectual war on the ecosystem, no matter the personal cost.

Likewise, the protagonist of the film version of ‘Annihilation’ is determined to wound the environment, driven by both self-loathing due to past mistakes, and a deep despair at the apparent loss of her husband. In both ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Scavenger’s Reign,’ negative feelings fuel vengeance, and vengeance fuels a need to simplify the natural world into a simplistic, defeatable villain. But the natural world is as indomitable as it is unfeeling. Raging against its ceaseless rhythms cannot save you from the dispassionate creep of the rot. It only hastens internal decay. That everything in nature decays, in spite of one’s fury, is a fact that exposes a more primal form of beautiful terror. While visually, organic decay is often breathtaking, emotionally it is uniquely unsympathetic. We don’t like to think about the true indifference of decomposition. Death does not offer ethical exemptions.

Few works reveal this dichotomy better than ‘Neva,’ a game which opens with the player’s wolf-companion being consumed by forces of rot, leaving you to raise its bereaved young cub. Though a work of fantasy instead of sci-fi, ‘Neva’ no less captures the raw wonder and fear of Ecosystemic Horror, for the journey to protect the wolf cub, though beautiful, comes without moral guarantees. Nature won’t offer unique compassion for the innocent creature, the game making it clear that all your rage and determination might not be enough to save the vulnerable pup from digestive forces, any more than you could save its parent. The specific embodiments of decay that you’re warring against appear parasitic, taking the form of dark, writing masses that infect various animals, but their revolting lifecycle doesn’t necessarily make such forces unnatural. Parasites are a part of nature, no matter how appalling we might find them; so are detritivores, organisms that feed on dead tissue. The stomach of a biosphere… requires a certain degree of corrosiveness to function. I’m reminded of how in the Ghibli film ‘Princess Mononoke,’ the most terrifying embodiment of decomposition comes from the very spirit of the forest, a force both horrifying… and inseparable from the breathtaking natural world. Decay is a vital part of all ecosystems, as unpleasant as we might find it. Earth has no obligation to indulge human morality.

Indeed, Ecosystemic Horror puts under magnification the aspects of nature that we find most distasteful, most morally-fraught. Yet facing these emotionally-thorny elements is central to truly understanding the lurid reality of a biosphere. It’s curious how, in the writings of Annie Dillard — most of which are stirring tributes to the beauty of the wilderness — she nevertheless describes insects as “appalling,” their vicious lives and frantic reproductive strategies, quote: “teeming evidence that birth and growth… are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful.” To mammals like us, the frenetic meat grinder that is the world of insects, like the world of fungal decomposition, is philosophically nightmarish. There’s a reason why Ecosystemic Horror draws inspiration from such spheres of life; the cruel indifference of nature, another key to the genre, by the way, evokes a deep, primal sense of disgust and fear in our warm-blooded brains. It doesn’t fit with our more romantic views of the natural world. It isn’t the way we want life to behave.

In some ways, we’re at an inherent disadvantage with our struggles to morally reconcile the fouler aspects of the environment. Studies have shown most humans literally have an inherent revulsion towards mold and certain insects — a deeply encoded survival instinct that helped keep our ancestors from accidentally poisoning themselves. But to take such instincts and then declare certain spheres of Earth to be indefensibly cruel is, of course, assigning a human ethics to the non-human. The engine of an ecosystem isn’t cruel… just indiscriminate. And there are few things more terrifying to us than a force that can’t be appealed to. No matter how we approach nature, each of our bodies will one day belong to the fungal networks and the burrowing insects. It’s hard to put a positive moral spin on that.

But is there truly no way to reach an equilibrium with an ecosystem? …While it’s perhaps impossible to fully protect one’s body from an environment, to fully comprehend or make moral sense of a biosphere… I still believe there might be room for a different type of understanding. On the surface, the game ‘Ultros’ is just as ecologically nihilistic as its contemporary works of Ecosystemic Horror, telling the story of a doomed space-vessel being slowly overtaken by an eldritch entity, whose influence manifests as a psychedelic biosphere of deadly plants. Yet though highly dangerous, this neon-hued environment also paradoxically holds the very keys to the player’s salvation. Learning to intentionally grow and cultivate the hostile vegetation, to reshape the lethal ecology into something more traversable, is the only way to survive.

In many respects, the ecosystem of ‘Ultros’ mirrors the one present in the classic sci-fi novelette ‘Swarm’ by Bruce Sterling. A story that also features a mysterious, sealed off environment that, despite its many dangers and disturbingly insectoid appearance, is nevertheless a place that humans can learn to live within through cautious cultivation. Now… ‘Swarm’ was recently adapted into an episode of the Netflix anthology ‘Love, Death & Robots,’ and without getting into spoilers, if you’ve seen the episode, you know that there are in fact darker forces at work within this ecosystem beyond the more obvious perils… which also turns out to be the case in ‘Ultros.’ Like many works in their genre, both stories suggest that while trying to work alongside an environment is an effective method of survival for a time, becoming an overzealous steward eventually exposes one’s true ignorance to an ecosystem’s innermost layers. It’s indeed a recurring pattern across Ecosystemic Horror, that even if characters form a temporary symbiosis with an environment, they’re inevitably challenged by a danger they’re unable to foresee, and in their hubris suffer the consequences. But for those willing to continually adapt, to change utterly alongside each ecological shift, there still is a glimmer of hope for survival.

In the end, ‘Ultros’ doesn’t completely dismiss the possibility that one would learn to live within its food web — even while acknowledging it would be a life much changed. For those unafraid of evolution, perhaps an ecosystem need not be a death sentence. Adaptiveness is fittingly our final key to the genre — for at its core, Ecosystemic Horror exposes how radical transformation is the only way to endure the unpredictability of a biosphere. It’s no coincidence that the few characters that make it through such works, are those who find the strength to shed all anthropocentric expectations and guidelines, and meet the environment on its own terms. In Scavenger’s Reign, the most prosperous survivors are not the ones with the greatest fury or raw willpower, but the ones most willing to calmly surrender to the ecosystem’s flow, and rethink everything when novel threats emerge. Though Scavenger’s Reign maintains that one can never fathom a biosphere in its totality, it nevertheless implies that if you remain adaptable, it is possible to weather even the most violent changes.

The film version of ‘Annihilation’ takes a similar, yet in some ways more extreme stance, suggesting that even if adaptation requires the complete destruction of one’s previous self, such a brutal transformation can still be both beautiful and meaningful. Many of the characters in the film are completely torn apart and both mind and body, yet they continue to find value in their new, redefined existence. Indeed, some no longer see the alien forces that warped their flesh to be destructive at all: “It wasn’t destroying. It was changing everything. It was making something new.” Transformation and consumption need not be emotionally caustic. I think of the gorgeous digital art of Adam Lee, art that brilliantly renders organic life in a state of surreal semi-mutation, and while many of these alterations are unsettling… as is the case in ‘Annihilation,’ other lifeforms possess a novel, vivid splendor that is all their own. A lot of these designs were created for the upcoming video game ‘Astropulse,’ which is shaping up to be a super interesting work of Ecosystemic Horror — oh wait it was canceled, this industry I swear to... but in the stories in this subgenre that… actually get to come out, there tends to be a bright side to each transformation. Change, even violent change, isn’t an inherent negative. To accept an ecosystem’s utter changeability. to be utterly changed by an ecosystem yourself, without succumbing to fear or revulsion… is lovely in theory.

When consuming a work of ‘Ecosystemic Horror,’ one of course doesn’t want associate oneself with the inflexible, aggressive characters that suffer comeuppance. You want to be the enlightened survivor, the figure that learns to transform with nature… but that’s of course easier said than done. Again, humans don’t take much comfort in the flowers that grow from our graves. Even if we wish to be so open-minded. Even if the petals have the most beautiful hue. We simply don’t like decay, regardless of the assurance of growth and rebirth. …In many respects, the setting of Rain World (because if I make a video about ecosystems without sneaking in Rain World I’ll spontaneously combust) has been grappling with this difficulty for almost a decade. The latest entry, ‘Rain World: The Watcher,’ perhaps faces these themes most head-on, as the creature you play as doesn’t survive the journey physically unchanged. Like a biological ship of Theseus, each environment you successfully journey through grants you a new skill, but subtly mutates your form, until it feels like there is very little of your original body remaining. The environment, too, is going through a radical and at times destructive rebirth, in part due to your own machinations: the player influencing it, just as it influences the player. Yet even when the environment and the player is most damaged, when decay is at its most absolute, there is always some new sprout pushing up from the putrid humus. The most breathtaking blossoms are still yet to unfurl.

But is this comforting? Is this an equilibrium? Is there beauty in the eternal churn of ecosystemic change? That’s not really a question I can answer. Ecosystemic Horror isn’t a really genre that traffics in definite answers… or even answers at all. There is horror and beauty. The rest is up to you.

I opened this video by asking you to take a deep breath. To consider, on the inhale and the exhale, the struggles of the natural world, and the terror and wonder inherent to that struggle. I asked you to take a physical action… because words alone often fall short when trying to convey the rawness of ecosystemic processes. Terminology is a net that the wriggling truth of nature often slips through. For instance, I made up the term ‘Ecosystemic Horror’ for this video, but it’s been a thing for a while, a dark pulse rippling through human storytelling, even if it didn’t yet have a name. Environmental and Ecological Horror are preexisting labels for nature-adjacent spookiness, and are definitely related to the works we’ve discussed, but to me there’s a deeper, more inherently consumptive and transformative subcategory within these larger umbrellas. This classification, however is also inherently insufficient, as are my attempts at defining it. To try and catalogue anything ecosystem-related is an inexact endeavor, for all our genera and subgroups, we often fail to capture the more visceral truths of a biosphere. As I said near the beginning, you know ‘Ecosystemic Horror’ when you see it — and when you feel it. Feel a certain awe, a certain revulsion, a certain lack of definition in the borders of the self. Though language conveys these narratives to us, they inhabit a space beyond language. They’re a texture. A waveform. The longer you stare into the fleshy abyss, the less comprehensible the abyss becomes. The more you have a sense there is no going back. [thunder echoes]

…You know, even though I just made a video about the abyss… I’d like to show you another abyss. But this one is special. Because although the darkest pit of mythology has held eldritch gods and monsters since civilizations dawn, so many of these primal terrors are seldomly explored. I’ve always wanted to shine a light on the most mysterious deities and demons in history… which is why I’m very pleased to finally be able to announce the new Curious Archive miniseries ‘Gods and Monsters.’ Here's the basic pitch for episode one: it’s a video where I sink my teeth into deep sea deities — exploring Lovecraftian gods, abyssal serpents, only the gnarliest stuff from the absolute lowest oceanic trenches, and if that sounds up your alley, I promise that the next episodes are even…. Okay, wait, I guess I also need to pitch Nebula.

Alright, so Nebula is the place where ‘Gods and Monsters’ episode one is available to watch right now. It’s a stable, ad-free streaming platform for early, exclusive Curious Archive videos, and early, exclusive videos from your other favorite creators. Tom Scott, who I’m so excited is back, has his next video up on Nebula right now a week in advance, and is going to be releasing all his videos on Nebula a week early. Other great people like Jacob Geller and Real Life Lore are dropping their own exclusives… basically, Nebula’s great, and I wouldn’t have been able to make this new ‘Gods and Monsters’ plus series without Nebula’s support, which is also, your support. By signing up for Nebula, you’re directly helping channels like mine stay afloat. And since we’re creator owned, we can also keep the price down, and if you sign up with the link onscreen or in the description, you can get Nebula at 50% off, just 30 dollars for the year or 2-dollars-fifty a month. Becoming a part of Nebula will help me continue to make this new series the best that it can be, I’m seriously so excited about it… but it will also help me continue to make stuff right here on YouTube, for everyone to enjoy. There’s no better way to support Curious Archive.

Also, if, like me, a monthly or yearly subscription model just isn’t your thing, you can instead use my link to get an unlimited lifetime of Nebula access for a one-time payment of 300 dollars, which is a full 200 dollars off, for an account that will literally never expire. And as I always remind people, if you’d like to share these videos, each Nebula subscriber automatically gets free, week-long guest passes so that friends and family can watch absolutely anything they want. You can also gift a month, a year, or even a lifetime of Nebula accesses using Nebula gift cards. There’s a lot of ways to enjoy Nebula, but there’s only one Nebula, one platform that I trusted to allow me to make this ‘Gods and Monsters’ series, while letting me have full creative control. So I hope you give it a watch. Again, sign-up links are onscreen and in the description. Please enjoy the abyss! And as always, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this entry, consider lending your support, by liking, subscribing, and hitting the notification icon to stay up to date on all things curious. See you in the next video.