#and though it fits each of them desperately-- i will think of kafka first and foremost always. simply because it's franz kafka.

[iniziare]

Aesthetically, we're going in order. Guizhong was the first within the HYV fandom, and Kafka was the second. I am also desperate to get that woman's voice to settle, which it still hasn't, so this'll kick me in gear for that. I think I also owe the most from her. So let's start the Kafka era, especially as the update will draw me back into HSR for a short bit.

And in honor of her, I need Abel Korzeniowski to stop giving me perfect instrumentals for her.

[windsweptlassie]

On Love

So as you know I made this uquiz with an open-ended question at the end, tell me something about love, and I’ve gotten the most wonderful responses! They range from descriptions of wonderful partners: 

Lauren: oh, how long I went without being myself until I met him and he showed me who I truly was and that my worth was higher than I ever thought was possible

Levi: I love who we are with each other. I love who I am with you. In your company I am me. In your company I am the best of me. The best with the best, I've told you. I wouldn't give you up for anything

Daniel: i fell in love for the first time when i was 17... at the time, i didn’t realize it was the first time, i thought i’d been in love before, a couple times actually, but falling in love at 17 was such a fulfilling experience, it felt so forceful yet so right. it’s when i first truly understood what love was. never before had i felt so understood and so cared for as i did when i was in love with her, and she was in love with me. it’s been nearly 4 years since then, and nearly 3 years since we broke up and stopped talking, and still, i think about her almost every day. i’ve never known anyone like her; to me, she was love itself.

El: oh i’m in love with everyone that i know op!!! especially my girlfriend, of course ,but also my friends and my family and random people on the street and uh

Grace: i’ve met my soulmate and we plan on getting an apartment and marrying after college

A: I’m going to ask the woman I love to marry me and I just wanted to tell someone because I am so excited

Jeremy: you ever have that feeling where basically after years of denying that someone couldnt understand you in a way or love you and then the next thing you know you happen to find that person and its just great from then on out? idk how to explain it anyways I love my boyfriend so much he means the world to me

Lucy: i am so happy i have found the one i love

to descriptions of best friends and favorite people:

Nightbyrd: Love is a hug from an alzheimer's patient who hasn't the foggiest idea who you are, but they know you're worth hugging.

H: I have been doing so much yoga with my roommate recently!! It's a great way to center my mind for an hour

Riv: [platonic] i’ve literally never met anyone who understands me in the way that my best friends do. they’re literally the best people in the whole world and i genuinely don’t know what i’d do without them. i love them with my whole heart

Cillian: when i talk about how much i love my best friend i get so teary eyed because i cant believe that such a genuinely wonderful person wants to speak to me every day - i care for her more than anyone else on this planet

O: my two besties are my sources of happiness and they’re so pretty i would die for them :D

to beautiful quotes:

Kai: "you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on." DARCYYYY PLS MY HEART CANT HANDLW THIS PAIN

Dorian: When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. He memorizes the wrecked metal details, ____the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. How people go on, and how people don’t. It was almost a year before I learned that his brother was a pilot. I can’t help it, I love the way men love. (accident report in the tall, tall weeds- ada limon, bright dead things)

Adam: every day I think about lemony snicket I will love you if I never see you again I will love you if I see you every Tuesday or however it goes. and it KILLS ME. love only fits in small things

Hero: “Your heart beats in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s… The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds.” - Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mary: "Love is watching someone die."

Alex: "meet me at blue diner, i'll take coffee and talk about nothing baby"

Sparrow: "How dare you love me like you've never known fear?" and "For you, the world," and "Darling, I was born to press my head between your shoulder blades," and "Will you start where I end?"

V: " You want to die for love. You always have. " and "someone will remember us, I say, even in another time" are living rent free in my mind 24/7 and I'm shaking. When will I finally be not the only one falling ?

Sahar K: To love another person is to see the face of god!!!

Miriam: all the love in the world is useless when there is total lack of understanding- kafka

Juls: Don’t you think they are maybe the same? Love and attention

to practices of love:

Leo; i love feeling happy bc somebody that i love is happy and comfortable....like its not about me i just love seeing you smile. we are safe together...idk i just feel it bro

A: I like to think love is leaning on each other during the light or dark days. Its a personal mission of mine to find out who I am and what I want. Yet I never seem to find my place in this world and as I look and look , I realise the only place I can be myself even with or without the efforts to find myself was done on that day or not, I am always tired so shall I lean on you? And you can lean on me as well. I shall be your fig tree and you shall be my favourite willow tree.

L: It's too late at night to be soul searching, but it's a journey we all seem to find ourselves on these days.

Anthi: feeling safe and at home, I guess (also I love frogs)

Julia: ive found that loving someone is like becoming your own thesaurus. you have to find or come up with infinite ways to say, you’re beautiful, or, i love you. it’s a gift

Galexies: ive been writing letters to the person i'd love one day since i was 14. i write them in a little journal usually, but i've been digitizing them into emails and sending them to one account that i'll give to them someday. i'd like to put pictures, but i haven't been outside much recently so theres that. i wonder if they'd like the sunsets i have on file, or if they'd find my cat cute in a bowtie.

Caeles: Love is sharing fruit slices and making someone tea at random

Dundy: Love is sending your friends cursed shit and watching them react in horror

to crushes and potential loves: 

Jess: I have a crush on my roommate. It sucks, but it's also wonderful. I get to be around him all the time when we're at school. we share a life together; it's rather domestic. I think a lot about marrying him and being domestic with him forever. It won't happen, and I'll move on eventually, but I'll be happy with him for as long as I can. I hope you feel loved tonight, because you are. Sleep well.

Aki: I so desperately want to believe that love is fake because I’ve seen what happens when loved ones leave but whenever I start to convince myself that I’ll never love anyone my best friend messages me telling me she loves me. She’s the only person I’ve ever pictured having a future with but love scares me and I don’t really know what to do but I think as long as she’s with me in some way, I’ll be fine

Hi: her her i keep thinking abt her.... gonna see her in 8 days or so i really miss her. its ok if shes never gonna love me like i want her to really being her friend spending time with her makes me the happiest girl on earth.... outsold antidepressants

Kit: this guy i have a crush on has hypnotically dark brown eyes and he's wonderful and shows me kindness like no one else

Juno: my crush has all the stars in his eyes

Mads: When I have the courage to meet my eyes with hers, the world stands still

Be Nice To Me: Look bro I never do these but I am yearning to hold them SO badly right now and someone needs to know it besides me

to the trials of love: 

Pppppp: I just wanna love like from the movies and what I read about.. but everyone tells me that that’s fictional and rare to find in the real world and it sucks bc it seems like all the guys I’ve met are terrible and the norms of society are all about not respecting women and uthdjdjdk

Manny: I have been in love before and I will be again but I’m not now and I miss it

Ok: I don't think I've ever been in love, though I love many people. I am waiting for the day I look at someone and can say, YES. IT'S YOU.

Chloe: idk rn i'm like okay with my love and i'm happy so we'll see i'm just a little cautious rn bc my last partner told me i didn't know how to love

L: love is so fucking complicated I don't even know where to start

Corrin: He’s not real and it worried me that I will never allow myself to live or be loved because I will always be waiting for him

Sean: Good luck it dont exist

Serena: i want 2 b in love :(( </3

13: I don’t know anymore

M: I just really don’t like dealing with it lol

to beloved characters: 

Janaya: I’m madly in love with my comfort and kin character and I hope maybe in the afterlife I can relive a life with him in some sort of dimension

Jhgjdf: when i was a kid i had a crush on ash ketchum from pokemon and id always daydream about being a female pkmn trainer and meeting him and we fall in love

to advice and prose: 

Mikolai: Love is earth, gentle and soft at first flight but upon being broken, drowns you in the dry choking wastes of its consequences...

Thex: Your hands will not go cold without someone to hold them. I am here. I will be here.

Kat: it is the nearest proof to god that i find myself surrounded by people who love in a way that complements so wonderfully the way i love

H: believe in love out of spite believe in love to prove everyone wrong believe in love because you were told not to and we will not do what we’re told anymore believe in love because it’s the strongest act of teenage rebellion we have left believe in love because it’s easier not to and when is easy worth doing? believe in love because everything says otherwise but you are untouchable, you are your own, you are not made by their design believe in love because, perhaps, you are love

Ali: I used to want a kind of love that feels like coming home and now I want nothing more than to be away from home on many different adventures

Em: you dont need to love yourself to accept it from others

to the small, the simple, and the sweet:

Ireal: Poems

O: Flowers

Fay: ah im sorry that i’m feeling unmotivated but you are very kind.

Ad: we love LOVE

A: <3

Isak: small things

H: intense

Hey: Listening to a clock ticking away

S: her

E: <3

Hania: Amorous, I adore that word ^^

Catboy: wholesome

J: i love love so much it hurts

Emmy: hi i love the song darkest of discos!! try and give it a listen!! <3

Nora: Love is painful, but most of the time love is great

Ariel: i like the comfort it can bring

M: i love love

to food!

Cool Whip: Matzoh ball soup!!

Woop: I love sausages.... I hope that's ok with you?

and animals too <3

Nee: hmm i have pet geckos and i love them very much!

96: raccoons ????

DJ Big Penis: cats

:3: I Love frogs,,, love is stored in the frog,,,

I hope that this serves as a sweet compilation of what love means! Love to all of you, it warms my heart so much to hear about your people and your geckos and your characters and soup and all the songs and quotes you love. <3 Strength to all of you who are figuring out to do about your feelings for your crush, and congratulations to you who are proposing or moving in with your person! Your words are a source of light to me, truly.

[romcomathon2016]

Loser (USA, 2000)

Predictions: Based on the title and the DVD menu picture of Jason Biggs in a stupid hat, we predicted that Jason Biggs meets a girl after losing a ski race. Also, we desperately hoped that he would be a less abhorrent protagonist than Hilarious Best Friend. :|

Plot: To Jason Biggs's credit, he was indeed the least abhorrent character in this film. His hair, until very late in the movie, was truly awful -- but he, as a person, was totally fine and inoffensive. We might even have genuinely enjoyed him, if Mena Suvari/the rest of the cast/the entire plot hadn't been so terrible.

Jason Biggs is a decent human being from a nice-seeming family, in which he is the first person to go to college. He moves to NYC to attend the college, where he is on full scholarship. He does okay in school, even though apparently GPA standards for this scholarship are VERY high; however, he struggles socially, because he lives with the worst people in the world. He basically rooms with the three biggest jackasses that a person could ever hope to meet. They eventually kick him out of housing and force him to move into an animal hospital.

Meanwhile, he meets Mena Suvari in Professor Greg Kinnear's literature class, and she is nice to him, whatever. BUT WAIT, we discover, she is Professor Greg Kinnear's...daughter? maybe? Looks like she could be -- OH NO, JK, SHE IS SLEEPING WITH HIM. OH GOD, YOU GUYS, THIS IS THE WORST TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIP YET. Pedophile Greg Kinnear is so deeply condescending and disinterested, while also being CREEPY SEXUAL with her all the time, and Mena Suvari is like, so into it???????? Everyone has problems. It's so bad. SO BAD!!!!!!!!

A-ny-way. One day, Jason Biggs asks Mena Suvari out, and she accepts, but, on her way to meet him, she is waylaid by his roommates and some roofies. NOT A JOKE, YOU GUYS. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THIS FILM THAT WE WATCHED WITH OUR EYEBALLS. Jason Biggs gets home from being stood up and finds her passed out in his bathroom (PS JASON BIGGS WHY DID YOU LET YOUR ASSHOLE NOT-FRIENDS THROW A PARTY AT YOUR OFF-CAMPUS RESIDENCE????), and takes her to the hospital. She, apparently, has been dumb enough to put Pedophile Greg Kinnear as her emergency contact, because she has...some kind of...financial aid situation?? and Jason Biggs's horrible ex-roommates take this as their cue to blackmail Pedophile Greg Kinnear into giving them better grades. So, long story short, Mena Suvari thinks Jason Biggs was in on the blackmail, and also she thinks Pedophile Greg Kinnear loves her now and wants her to live with him. I mean, seriously, girl?? COME ON.

One day, Greg Kinnear is buying Mena Suvari some new clothes (let's not get into it, you guys) and offhandedly reveals that Jason Biggs wanted no part of the blackmail. Mena Suvari, who was in the middle of making plans to sell her eggs (let's not get into this either), realizes that Jason Biggs was the one who truly loved her all along, and that she also loves him, blah blah, whatever. She goes to his place (the animal hospital) and wins him back. Good for you, girl. Now that he's gotten a haircut, he's kind of a catch! ...At least compared to everyone else in this film, who seems to have basically crawled out of hell.

Best Scene: The scene at the end, when Jason Biggs answers the door and we see that he's gotten a haircut. Oh my god, you guys, you don't know how we suffered for the first 90% of this film, looking at the haircut he previously had.

Worst Scene: LORD. Pretty much everything else???? But especially any scene between Pedophile Greg Kinnear and Mena Suvari. Their relationship, from the moment we realized that he was NOT her father, just made us want to strangle ourselves with a piece of kitchen twine.

Best Line: "Well, if Kafka were alive, he'd say, stop misinterpreting my novels, you pretentious bonehead!" -- Mena Suvari to Pedophile Greg Kinnear, in a fit of pique/one of the few moments when she seemed like a person we could stand.

Worst Line: "She didn't have to sell her eggs. [Jason Biggs] has first dibs on them." -- the final caption of the film, truly stealing the show as far as disgustingness. In terms of actual spoken lines, though! Everything Pedophile Greg Kinnear said. Almost everything Mena Suvari said. Quite frankly, even most of the things Jason Biggs said. DON'T EVEN GET US STARTED ON THE THINGS JASON BIGGS'S ROOMMATES/EX-ROOMMATES/CRIMINAL TORMENTORS SAID.

Highlights of the Watching Experience: Speculating as to why, when Mena Suvari took Jason Biggs to get new clothes at the Lost and Found, she did not take him to a barbershop instead. But it's okay; we got our wish in the end! More than we could have expected, frankly, from this otherwise dreadful film.

How Many POC in the Film: One black RA. Boy, NYC just gets whiter and whiter… Gentrification, man.

Alternate Scenes: The version of this movie in which Mena Suvari was Non-Pedophile Greg Kinnear's daughter, and he sternly encouraged her not to take beverages from OBVIOUSLY SHADY men she doesn't know, and to get her act together generally. She meets Post-Haircut Jason Biggs at a library study club, where they encourage each other to reach their full potential and tamely share some punch. Non-Pedo Prof. Dad Greg Kinnear is psyched to meet such an upstanding first-generation college student and becomes his mentor, Stand-and-Deliver-style. How uplifting! What a heartwarming film! (...Hmmmm. Maybe we're getting un-fun in our old age.)

Was the Poster Better or Worse than the Film: ...B-better? The poster is also really bad, but, to its credit, it tells you nothing about this film. Which, quite frankly, is for your own good.

Score: 2 out of 10 haircut-needing smooches.

Ranking: 59, out of the 63 movies we've watched so far.