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It's always bothered me that when people adapt Kafka's Metamorphosis they depict Gregor Samsa as a roach. Cockroaches do not undergo metamorphosis. They are born as nymphs which are just smaller wingless versions of the adult form.
Kafka writes that Gregor can only enjoy rotten food. Which also makes him not at all roach-like. Roaches strongly prefer fresh vegetables to rotten ones.
I always imagined him as a beetle. Which implies that the man Gregor was a larvae for all his pre-bug life.
I thought that was the whole point of the story... We're all grubs, and Gregor reached the next stage... but none of the grubs in his family could understand him.
@futurebird this is the first time I've been interested in reading the actual story.
It's actually very good.
And I haven't been able to understand or appreciate any other of Kafka's work.
@futurebird You are... not a typical person.
That's an observation, not a criticism.
@futurebird I wonder if Kafka got it all wrong. Great take.
It's more the common illustrations of the story that have it wrong than Kafka. I thought the story was about how disappointing it is when your kid turns out to be a useless writer. Autobiographical about metamorphosis into the wrong sort of creature. A useless and horrible creature if it lives in your house rather than under a log in the woods, or flying through the forest.
@futurebird The word used in German is „Ungeziefer“ which translates to „vermin“. And he has a „carapacelike“ back.
@futurebird And later on he is called „Mistkäfer“ (dung beetle) by other people.
*edit to correct autocorrect*
and Gay 
@futurebird when my kiddo was studying this book in school (and I was helping him study it) we read about how many people depict the bug as a roach but that the words he uses to describe the bug were purposefully vague and the point was that it wasn't a specific bug. It gets translated as roach in many versions but that's the choice of the translator/scriptwriter.
@futurebird Someone once told me "It's not Kafkaesque to wake up an insect. If you wake up an insect and your first thought is that this might make you late for work...*that* is Kafkaesque." That completely changed my perspective on a lot of things.
@sinvega @futurebird Wow, I haven't seen this and it's great. I absolutely love comedy that juxtaposes the banal with the existential like that.
It's also why this commercial from Welcome To Nightvale lives in my head...not rent free, but certainly as a shabby deadbeat roommate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxaNCyWsWrc
@roadriverrail @sinvega @futurebird Night Vale has some great commercials in that vein. I'd forgotten about that one, but I'm glad to have been reminded.
As far as mixing the existential and the banal, check out Luke Humphris's recent work. Here's the one that I think spells it out the most directly: https://youtu.be/Yohfoz_50J4
@player_03 @roadriverrail @sinvega @futurebird I have three Night Vale t-shirts because it helped me go through one of the worst periods of my life. If anything it captures perfectly how sometimes "humour" is just another name for acceptance of cosmic, existential dread.
@Illuminatus @player_03 @sinvega @futurebird I've heard a hypothesis that laughter started as a way to signal "What I thought was a danger was in fact not." So, for example...unk bunk the early human hears a rustling in the bushes and goes into alert thinking it's a predator, but then only a tiny bird comes out of the bushes...hahahha! That's hilarious! I thought we'd die but it was harmless!
From that point of view, transforming dread into humor is a way to save us from our own thoughts.
@roadriverrail @Illuminatus @sinvega @futurebird OSP's Red talks about the overlap in her latest Trope Talk. https://youtu.be/06BUGWthQ70
The line between comedy and horror is thinner than either genre would like it to be.
...To which a commenter replied:
As someone who writes both, I will have you know that comedy has no problem with how close it is to horror. Horror, on the other hand, has never stopped whining about it.
And I mean, yeah. The unknown is a source of horror, but it's also a source of comedy, and comedic works can take full advantage of that.
Night Vale, for instance, does it all the time. Some kind of monster is invading, all hope is lost, we bring you now to the weather... Oh wait, it turns out the librarians were visiting town hall to file a complaint about their working conditions, and no one was hurt.
@roadriverrail @Illuminatus @sinvega @futurebird It's what TV Tropes would call a cat scare. (Obligatory warning: link goes to TV Tropes, infamous time waster.)
A Cat Scare is a strong buildup of high tension, followed by a fright that turns out to be something harmless (say, a startled cat) to release that tension.
But the article goes on to discuss how often this gets double-subverted. There's a dramatic buildup, it turns out to be something harmless (subversion), but then the camera pans around and reveals something actually dangerous approaching from behind (double subversion) while the character is breathing a sigh of relief.
So it turns out that horror can make good use of comedy after all.
@roadriverrail @Illuminatus @sinvega @futurebird The Onion does a great job of blurring the line in their Sudden Ominous Music Heard Across U.S., Nation Panicking video. The video could be legitimately scary horror, if not for the absurd premise.
Officials are saying not to let your phone ring suspensefully two or three times, because the call will likely be completely harmless—a neighbor or a friend—but be very careful after you hang up. When you're standing there relieved, that is when the horrible event is most likely to occur.
@player_03 @sinvega @futurebird Wow, that was...intense. Really.
@adhdeanasl @futurebird NGL, I felt just like that.
@adhdeanasl OMG your alt text is perfection, kudos!
@roadriverrail @futurebird @jepyang recent years have opened my eyes to a lot of the meaning in literature written under authoritarianism, dictatorship etc - far too often I find myself thinking - OMG _THAT_ is what Stansilaw Lem meant in that story…….
@junklight @futurebird @jepyang Indeed, I tried to read Lem in 2005, before the current arc of history *and* before I knew as much as I did about the Cold War. It was kinda "Eh, cute, but...?" I should go back and try it again.
@j3j5 @futurebird Maybe I should have pushed through the first couple episodes of that show...
@roadriverrail @futurebird Just saw a tiktok where someone said they woke up in the middle of the night to a cryptid / their personal sleep demon standing at the foot of their bed - and their only thought was "you don't scare me, I have to go to work in 5 hours, flit off"
@lmorchard @roadriverrail @futurebird
"Dude, I work with the public. You're not even the scariest thing I've seen this week."
@roadriverrail @futurebird
<wakes up as an insect> "Is this covered under my employer's health insurance?"
@wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird
It's not on the approved list of valid reasons to work from home, Gregor. Be in by 9am.
@TonyJWells @wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird That's the thing though. There's a bit at the end of the novel where the rest of the family decides to just take the day off from work. They write notes and send them off and head off to the countryside. It's a subtly implied contrast with Gregor at the beginning.
The comedy and tragedy is that Gregor has this terrible thing happen to him and his first thought is to worry he might inconvenience other people.
@foolishowl @TonyJWells @wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird
I've seen this with relatives more than a few times: they get seriously or life-threateningly ill and the first thing on their minds is that their spouse or children will become so worried.
@wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird the horror stories I know about US health insurance practices I believe <waking up as an insect> sounds like a precondition
@wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird
Yes, but only if it's congenital or a result of one of these conditions (see appendix A). And the only insect doctor in your town is out of network
@roadriverrail @futurebird While the opposite, which is waking up as a human after being, say, a dung beetle, and starting to roll balls of feces to seduce potential partners, non ironically makes more sense.
@roadriverrail @futurebird omg why did I never realize this
@futurebird And that's actually the original title of the story. "Der Käfer” — the beetle.
@futurebird Or well, not title, there's a song based on it with that title, but it's mentioned in the story.
@futurebird Reading this description kind of made me think of descriptions of trans self-discovery, as coming out of the egg. Although it's not clear whether Gregor is coming out as himself, unappreciated, or as something else, just confusing to all. Intriguing thing to think about!
@futurebird it's obviously a beetle, we there are not that many cockroaches in Europe. Beetles are way more common.
@bookstardust @futurebird Now that's interesting, since one of the more common species of cockroach in the northern US is called the German cockroach.
@futurebird ooh, that's an interesting interpretation!! So he never really went through "metamorphosis," in a sense, or it was delayed...? It makes me think of someone who has had severe trauma and never fully "grew up," per se
@futurebird
Larva Man
Larva Man
Does whatever a
Larva Can
Turns his skin
Into silk
To be a bug
Of lesser ilk
Look out!
Here comes the
Larva Man!