#this is so kafkaesque

[themiserablechick]

Screw milk and honey why aren’t we writing about waking up a grotesque bug man any more

[beaft]

i've spent most of today having the most surreal and comedic hospital experience of my life. i'd tell you about it but i fear you'd only accuse me of making it up for notes.

[fr0gg13b413]

Girlhood is a spectrum: biblicially accurate angel <--> gregor samsa

[taxonomicons]

“Would you love me if I was a worm?” Duh. too easy. Pick something more repulsive like a gas station toilet or Weezer

[saionjeans]

hot take but “vermin” is a pretty fascinating episode. especially after seeing the climactic buildup of the last episode with utena refusing to fight her best normie friend. “wakaba flourishing” is an incredible episode because wakaba is a character we’ve spent so much time with thus far and yet whose psyche we still don’t really understand. an episode that elucidates her anxieties, especially with regards to never being prioritized or being seen as “special,” is immediately followed up by “okay.... now who tf is this random bitch lmfao😭” which actually serves to drive home wakaba’s point even harder!

this girl isn’t just some random brunette nothing, she doesn’t even have a valid claim to touga’s heart. we’ve seen kozue, tsuwabuki, shiori, and wakaba establish significant ties to their black rose counterparts in the first arc, but keiko has never actually articulated any thoughts of her own until now, merely parroted nanami’s sentiments. of course, keiko feels similarly about touga as nanami does, but on a far less profound scale. keiko's obsession with touga is tangential; he embodies a role that she desires proximity to. nanami’s obsession with touga is ontological: he has made himself her entire world.

but of course, the people who have the most claim to touga within a black rose [psychological] framework, nanami and saionji, cannot actually fight in a black rose duel. they do fight their rose bride duels with and through touga, but it is imperative that only non-student council members fight with the black rose. so instead of nanami or saionji in that elevator, with good reason, it’s keiko. someone who has never been abused by touga, who has barely even exchanged a few words with him.

and touga is, for his part, largely absent from this episode. keiko’s primary relationship in the episode is between her and nanami. nanami is the true focus of this episode, her constant fear that she will not be “vermin” externalized through the bullying of/lashing out at those she deems unspecial. and in this way, nanami mirrors wakaba, as she clings to touga as wakaba clings to saionji, their prince, their shining special thing whose proximity elevates them beyond the “vermin” of ohtori.

touga may be special within the walls of ohtori, but nanami is special to the narrative. who else gets entire episodes dedicated to their mishaps and struggles completely extraneous to the ongoing dueling plot? she may be the narrative’s punching bag, but she is nonetheless focalized by it in a totally unique way. so in an episode that ostensibly focalizes touga, it feels apt that nanami once again entirely eclipses him.

keiko and the rest of the student body constantly establish that nanami is only special via her proximity to touga, and nanami believes it. but all along, that was never actually the case. nanami doesn’t need touga to be compelling. in fact, touga is primarily compelling through his role as nanami’s brother/abuser. nanami is fed a lie her entire life: that she could only be worthy as long as her older brother shone his light on her. that without the attention of that special, shining boy, she was nothing, nonhuman, vermin. but when she finally pieces together the implications of that lie and the violence of its consequences, she resists. she wants to to surpass her brother, who she once was, everything.

the real truth is simply that she’s been worthy all along. and anthy steps across the threshold, beyond the gates of ohtori.

[earlgodwin]

"Confession and lies are one and the same. In order to confess, one tells lies. One cannot express what one is, for that is precisely what one is; one can communicate only what one is not, that is, lies. Only in the chorus there may be a certain truth."

— Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923.

[dailykafka]

Tumblr, stop trying to be Kafka

[zanywitchchaos]

Kafka's shrine is getting bigger everyday

[cyancherub]

just read 'the tenant' by roland topor. hands down fav book of the year so far.............utterly deranged, surreal, disturbing. OMG

[a-purple-girl]

"'i am not well; i could have built the pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason."

-franz kafka (letters to felice)

[myadhdbot]

[senilephilosophy]

Some TV show: [A quirky guy wearing, I dunno a tie with a shoe print on it?]

The most uncreative, unimaginative consumers of media: OMG! this show is so SURREAL. It’s the most Lynchian thing I’ve ever seen in anything. Holy fuck this is so Kafkaesque, literally the most Junji Ito thing anyone has ever done.

[kajillionaires]

gregor samsa

[sunmisbf]

gifts my mom brought me 🫶

[robotbodies]

its so fucking hardto be an undertale fan on tumblr when the tag. looks like thqt

[vegetable-soup-wizard]

I love Franz Kafaka so much because in every one of his poems he’s like

“I’m a solitary creature. There’s no one in earth who could understand me”

and every tumblr girlie goes omg he’s literally me