02.01.2026
In Water (wr. kiriko nananan) relationships feel muddy, and perhaps watery as the title entails -- they're devoid of anything heavy in them, they evoke a sense of the defeated, a repetitive consistency to remain in place, to not let go, to let go and ignore, to horrify oneself with the inconsistencies of the consistent. Nananan imagines the world in the everyday sense -- its sexual and social and emotional productions and happenings, they remain open to disposal and rectification, and yet are too self-absorbed to see into anything beyond their own selves. who mimics, who fights, who starts, who absorbs the other into the self. what sense of falsity and sedation invade the everyday lives of these characters, their horrors and their self-inflicted uncomfortableness. perhaps i read the works in this because of my own discomfort with intimacy, perhaps these larger emotions that dwell and are seamless are a part of intimacy which elides me. is deception intimacy? is unseeing intimacy? is belonging into each other intimacy? why do nananan's characters persist and insist into their relationships when its clear to the outsider that there's a thread in there that has fallen apart, or been broken. what form of desire keeps these people together, and keep orbiting each other despite either codependency, abuse, humiliation, dissatisfaction, depression, or anything else.