#too many really strong memories attached to that one specifically and it’s also a masterpiece

[annarubys]

revenge is my favorite mcr album but the black parade is my favorite album of all time. this is a sentence that makes sense to me

[raendown]

Chapter: 5/9 Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 3534 Rated: M Summary: Walking patrol around a university for mages probably sounded like a wild time but Tobirama has never found it all that exciting. He’s not even technically supposed to be here. When responding to a tripped alarm becomes a desperate attempt to stay alive, however, excitement is the last thing on his mind. All he’s ever wanted is a quiet life alone with his books until he finds himself bound to Uchiha Madara in the most impossible way and finally learns to think about more than just himself - in a way.

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Chapter 5

“Can you brush my hair for me?”

Tobirama paused in buttoning up his shirt to give the man on his bed a flat look. “What?”

“I said can you brush my hair for me? I want to look at least halfway presentable and it always looks better when you do it. If I pretend to be polite and say please will you do it?”

“One of these days I’m going to invent a spell that will brush your hair for you. Levitation or something. No, wait, I hate levitation spells. They’re so finicky.” Snatching the brush being wiggling enticingly under his nose, he asked, “Why do you even care what you look like? They’re just dumb adolescents.”

With a satisfied smile Madara turned away from him and settled in to a cross-legged position.

“It doesn’t hurt to take a little extra care with one’s appearance,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

“Are you calling me a mess?” Tobirama demanded. Just for that he made sure to catch a knot in the thick chuck of locks within his grasp and pull hard. Madara gurgled out a protest.

“Careful with that! I was not calling you a mess!”

Scowling, Tobirama let it slide. He wondered if Madara had noticed the same thing he did when they woke up that morning. The longer they were able to stay apart the less he seemed to be able to sense what the other was thinking and that bothered him more than it should. If anything he should have been celebrating getting a little more privacy back but somehow he just felt oddly alone. It was, embarrassingly, a relief every time they had to touch again and he could once more feel Madara just on the other side of that thin wall between their thoughts.

Pulling the brush a little more carefully – he didn’t really enjoy the echoes of pain their bond fed through to him, after all – Tobirama sat quietly and listened to Madara rambling on about his lesson plans for the day. He didn’t have a lot of opinions to give other than admitting that a lot of it sounded quite boring to him. But then anything that involved sitting still and being lectured on a subject he had already studied would always sound boring to him.

When Madara finally announced that he was satisfied with his own appearance Tobirama nodded and stood up.

“Finally. Now turn around so I can change out of my sleep pants.”

“At least I down have to hold your hand and close my eyes anymore.” Madara turned away as asked and pulled the notes Hashirama had sent over in to his lap.

Tobirama scoffed. Now that was a bit of separation he actually didn’t mind. His partner was right that those first couple of days learning how to function when they had to stay attached were mortifying. Tossing on a pair of pants to match the button down shirt he’d already changed in to, he paused and looked down at himself with a frown.

“I look fine, right?” he asked. Madara was smirking when he turned around.

“Who’s worrying about their appearances now?”

“You got in to my head!” Tobirama reached over to tug on a lock of that perfectly brushed hair. “I can’t help it! We’re rubbing off on each other more and more with every day. Next thing you know we’ll show up somewhere in matching outfits talking in unison. Actually, can we do that? I want to freak out Hashirama.”

Madara rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, though when Tobirama dropped a hand on his shoulder he could feel that the man was at least a little intrigued by the idea.

Since it was well past breakfast by the time they left home there weren’t actually many people around for the first few minutes of their walk. The residential areas were barren, anyone not currently sitting in their first period class probably still sleeping or just getting up, so the two of them held hands with the assurance that there was no one there to see and start rumors from it. It wasn’t until they passed the residential hallways and turned in to the wing where the classrooms began that they let go, instead walking so closely their arms brushed on nearly every step. Still a bit suspicious looking but not enough to confirm any of the ridiculous rumors that neither of them had been seen in days because they were on their honeymoon.

As if that would ever happen.

The twenty minutes it took to get to the right classroom were mostly spent in silence, both of them trying their hardest not to make eye contact with anyone wearing that weird hunger in their face people get when they’re trying to confirm something they think they already know. Madara did nod to some of the students that called out to him. Tobirama didn’t much bother looking around; the only people who ever waved to him were Hashirama, Mito, or his cousin Touka who had left the university after one year of classes, declaring them much too boring. He would have been bothered except that he much preferred it that way. Socializing had never been his strong suit.

Despite knowing intellectually that Madara’s students had missed him, they were both startled to open the door and find several dozen faces staring back at them with brilliant smiles and neatly folded hands, every one of them with their textbooks out and placed at the top left corner of their desks. It was nothing short of surreal.

“Students or thralls?” Tobirama muttered out the corner of his mouth, shrinking away from all the creepy eyes focused on them. Madara grunted and turned to scowl at him.

“They are not thralls,” he hissed quietly. “A bit odd, though, they’re not usually this well behaved.”

One of the nearby students overheard them, apparently.

“We thought we’d surprise you, Uchiha-sensei! Everyone knows how much you like it when things are neat and tidy.” The young man smiled proudly, teeth stretching from ear to ear, and Tobirama tried his best not to think about how cute he looked with all that curly hair and those cheekbones that so closely resembled the man at his side. “I like your new shirt, too!”

“Flattery will get you nothing, Kagami,” Madara told the kid with a note of suspicious in his voice.

“Aw come on, we were just trying to do something nice for you!”

“Do your homework on time for once,” Madara snorted. “That would be nice.”

Kagami, as was apparently his name, wilted and turned away to sulk in the other direction. While his appearance was undoubtedly similar to Madara’s his personality seemed to be uncomfortably reminiscent of Hashirama instead. Tobirama really wasn’t sure what he thought of that. It was a relief to follow his partner towards the front of the room and slip behind the ancient desk covered in perfectly neat little stacks of paper and pens all sorted by color.

If there was one invention he would always be grateful to the non-magical community for it was pens. Sometimes Tobirama still came across an old ink pot in one of his closets and he always shoved it right back in to the mess with a shudder of memory. Normal folk were almost lucky not to live half as long as anyone with magic, saving them the trouble of remembering such dark times as the days when homework was done with quill and scrolls. Keeping track of it all had been a nightmare no matter how many extra pockets he sewed in to his clothing.

Settling himself in to the very center of the staging area at the front of the room, Madara swept his eyes over the class before him with an expression that Tobirama had come to realize meant he was looking for something specific.

“There’s a few faces missing,” he noted eventually.

“Uh, I think the Transformative Spells class last period had an accident,” Kagami piped up from his seat. “So anyone who was there is probably in the infirmary right now.”

“Ah.” Madara frowned, worry flashing through him so strongly that Tobirama felt it even from several feet away, although he let nothing of it show on his face. Without saying anything more on the subject he launched right in to a recap of what they should have been learning over the week while he’d been gone.

While he spoke he moved back and forth across the empty space at the front, stopping at the desk every couple of minutes to reach for a random object or tidy something that Tobirama had fiddled with, anything to use as an excuse for their arms to brush together and reestablish their connection. When he wasn’t getting smacked on the shoulder for messing with stuff Tobirama explored whatever items had been left out in easy reach. He passed over the homework assignments that someone else seemed to have graded – Madara just didn’t seem like a happy face sticker kind of guy – and instead pulled a binder towards himself that had no label at all. In his experience the things that went unlabeled usually had the most interesting things inside.

Generally they were also forbidden or taboo but that only made them more interesting.

First making certain that Madara was focused on his lecture, Tobirama flipped the binder open. His first reaction upon finding nothing inside but lesson plans was of irritated disappointment. Upon taking a closer look, however, he realized that he had accidentally stumbled on to something beautiful after all: Madara’s handwriting.

There hadn’t really been any need for his partner to write anything down over the past few days and suddenly Tobirama mourned that fact. He’d never seen more elegant script in his life. Each letter was a masterpiece, perfectly crafted with a patience he would never have himself. His own writing was usually cramped and rushed as he tried to get as many words on to the page as he could and as quickly as humanly possible. Not once in his life had he taken the time to make anything half as pretty as the lettering in front of him now. Madara’s writing was so nice just to look at that it took a couple of minutes for Tobirama to actually read what was written on the pages.

When he’d seen the title ‘Lesson Plan’ and a date from nearly a week ago he had assumed it would be nothing but a general outline of the material they were expected to cover. He was surprised to see the level of detail this plan included, complete with notes in the margins about which subjects his students were doing well on and could advance quicker as opposed to which they seemed to be struggling with and needed to have covered in more detail.

In all the years he’d spent here at the university – and despite still enjoying his earlier centuries it had already been a lot of years – he’d never known any of the teachers put this much effort in to planning their classes. Although to be fair he had no evidence that anyone other than Madara made their plans so detailed but that only worked as a point in the man’s favor. Tobirama had always assumed that lesson plans were no more than a rough outline, lazy and thoughtless, copy and pasted from all the years before. Knowing they were more than that gave him a little more respect for the position and it only got better as he kept reading down the page.

Underneath all of the technical details was a small section where Madara had penned in a few notes about specific students, who seemed to be having trouble with what and how to help them work through those issues, sometimes a personal reminder that this student or that one had reacted a certain way to his teachings and even suggestions to himself about how to tweak his lecture for the future. It was thoughtful.

Tobirama closed the binder and pushed it away from himself, uncomfortable suddenly and unable to pinpoint why. It was interesting having everything he thought he knew about someone slowly flipped upside down, there was no denying that, but it was also jarring and brought up a lot of introspective questions he wasn’t at all prepared to deal with.

No one liked to think they were so self-involved that they could judge someone else so wrongly.

Madara trundled over to brush against his arm a few moments later and Tobirama tensed, eyes darting up to make sure he’d replaced the binder of lesson plans exactly where it had been before. With the obsessive organization system it would be all too obvious he had touched something if it were even an inch out of place. Luckily for him Madara wasn’t even looking at the desk. He stopped at Tobirama’s side to put a hand on his shoulder and look down at him with an expectant expression.

“I wasn’t listening,” he admitted quietly. Oddly, Madara didn’t even look annoyed. He turned back to the class without removing his hand.

“Take Tobirama here as an example. His natural element is water, the complete opposite of mine, but I have seen him both invoke fire and use fire runes. Can anyone tell me why that’s possible for him?”

“Because I’m just that good.” Tobirama smirked when a handful of students tittered.

“No,” a quiet voice piped up from the back. “It is because fire runes channel raw magic from the closest ley line and do not rely on a caster’s abilities while invocation begs power from the spirits themselves with no magic passing through the one invoking them at all.”

Madara squinted around the room until he found the one who had spoken and then nodded once in satisfaction. “Very good Shino, that’s exactly correct.”

“Good to know they have their basics down,” Tobirama muttered under his breath. “They’re only, what, fifth year students?” He grunted when the hand still resting on his shoulder clamped down extra hard in retaliation.

The lesson went on to a discussion of when it was best to use fire runes over any other options, always easier than invocations though they were also less powerful, and Tobirama let his attention wander off again. He considered going through the desk drawers when he ran out of things to inspect on the top of it but one look from Madara had his hands curling together in his lap. As much as he did enjoy riling the man up he wasn’t looking to become a visual aid by having his hair set on fire. Madara wore sparks much better than he did.

Boredom had set in again long before one of the students casually asked whether fire or water was stronger since the two elements were considered natural opposites. He was in the process of opening his mouth to gleefully suggest they make a demonstration of it when a bell began to chime to signify the end of the period, Madara’s eyes rolling back with visible relief.

His partner called out homework assignments over the sounds of everyone packing up their things and warned them that he probably still wasn’t back on a permanent basis so they should expect their substitute again. While he was busy shouting Kagami made a point of stopping by the front.

“It was nice to meet you,” he said, leaning over the desk to smile at Tobirama.

“Probably. I’m an absolute delight.”

The boy laughed at his joke, peeked over at Madara, then covered his mouth to laugh a bit more. “I’m sure you are.”

He was gone a moment later, joining the flood of bodies rushing off to their next class. Luckily for Tobirama’s attention span it was Thursday and Madara only happened to teach one period of class on Thursdays. For years his only social interactions had been the rare occasion he made it down to the dining hall at proper meal times or when Hashirama deigned to stop by his rooms. Even the librarian had stopped trying to pull him in for a chat when he went down to check out more books. He understood that his partner needed to get out more often than once a week but personally his own quota for human interaction had more than been met.

Madara didn’t count as company, not with their minds so closely intertwined that they couldn’t bear to be apart.

When the room was empty and the door snapped shut behind the last student Tobirama eyed the binder of lesson plans before standing up to watch his partner clear off the various things he’d written on the whiteboard. Yet another invention to be grateful to the non-magical community for. Chalkboards were so messy. It had actually taken Mito several years to convince her husband to install them in all the classrooms; not because of any budget concerns but simply because he stubbornly clung to the aesthetic of chalkboard classrooms in the castle which housed the university. Sometimes Tobirama wondered if Hashirama had only taken the job of Headmaster so he could pretend he was still living four centuries ago.

“Learn anything new?” Madara asked after the whiteboard was clean.

“Yes, actually, although I didn’t listen to a word you were saying.” Tobirama dragged his eyes away from the binder of treasures and pulled as innocent of an expression as he could manage. It had exactly the desired effect of making the other man roll his eyes.

“How–? No, never mind. I don’t think I want to know what you think you learned if it wasn’t anything from the class.”

Tobirama cocked his head to one side and noted that it seemed Madara was getting to know him as well as he was getting to know Madara. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing but it wasn’t really something he could stop so he simply allowed the thought to pass him by.

Standing up from the desk at last, he made his way over to stand next to his partner and weave their hands together with a sigh of relief that Madara immediately echoed. All the small excuses for brushing together had been the only thing that kept him sane throughout the past hour and they had another twenty minute walk ahead of them until to make it back home. It was good to know they could separate now but it was still better when they didn’t have to.

“I used to hate you,” Tobirama grumbled, personally offended that he couldn’t say he still did.

“Yes and I still have no idea why.” Madara lifted one arm like he meant to cross them and then awkwardly aborted the motion after he realized he couldn’t with his other hand occupied. “I’m lovable! Your brother always says so!”

“Hashirama’s opinion doesn’t count, he loves everything that breathes in his general direction.”

Madara puffed his chest up to argue back and then deflated almost immediately. “Or things that don’t breathe. I caught him naming all the flagstones in the front courtyard once,” he admitted. Tobirama closed his eyes to block out the exasperated shame.

Together they puttered around cleaning up the classroom and putting away all the things Madara had used to demonstrate whatever he’d been talking about. As much as Tobirama normally couldn’t care less for having everything put away so long as he remembered where to go find it again later – laughable considering he never remembered where anything was – he found himself pointing out things that were still out of place and dragging Madara along behind him as he popped over to put something else away.

Once everything was back where it was supposed to be and all the books on Madara’s desk had been set at right angles again they were free to head on back home at last. Madara spent most of the walk making a case for why they would go back to class again the next day, whining that Fridays he only taught two classes and that it wouldn’t be too much different than just one class, especially since they were hours apart. Tobirama mostly let his wrinkled nose make his opinions on that known. It wasn’t the classes he objected to in particular, just the upset to his daily routine. Ever since this whole thing began his life had been steadily changing bit by bit, again and again, and all he wanted was to find a little equilibrium again.

Finally turning down the hallway where their rooms were located and finding Uchiha Izuna leaning against the wall with both hands in his pockets certainly was not a path towards finding his equilibrium. The mental connection between him and his partner lit up with startled happiness at almost the exact same moment Izuna looked down to see that they had once again linked hands as soon as they were out of the public eye.

“What the fuck Aniki!?”

Tobirama closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Hopefully the gods would see fit to send enough for both of them.

[theunsentletterstoyou]

Dear Muse:

Hi S.

I feel I owe you an explanation, as best I can, of me unintentionally being a total creep on your birthday, though feelings are always tricky to put in writing and this won’t be adequate. Hopefully this will reassure you that I never meant to make you uncomfortable in the slightest – really the very last thing I ever wanted. I feel awful and I’m (still, a month on!) really sorry. I know you said not to worry about it at all and you're probably long over it yourself, but I can’t help it! This might not help. It might make things worse. I’m a terrible judge of these things, as you can probably tell. But here goes.

I don’t fancy you. While I doubt you believe that, it should hopefully go without saying. I mean – eleven and a half year age gap?! But just to be totally clear.

But I sort of approach that feeling from two directions, which collide very uncomfortably and add up to something that from anyone else's point of view probably looks romantic.

First – ever since you were three and impressed me so much with how incredibly mature you were for your age (I'm really surprised you remembered that conversation, last month, so many years on – how on earth do you so clearly remember so long ago and being so young?), I've had the hugest squish on you – to borrow a term from Tumblr. Like a crush, only platonic. A very intense feeling of friendship and desire to be your BFF, basically. I've always really liked you. (Not "like liked", but regular liked, but then again LIKED bold italic underline and larger size, you could say). Not love, but way stronger than regular friendship; I have no idea why. I always regretted that we weren't closer friends than we were. And even after we lost touch for so long I still remembered you very fondly and wanted to be friends again. I'm just rubbish at not letting life get in the way, and suddenly months became years became almost a decade. Turns out seeing you again ended up in almost instinctively releasing all that "HELLO FRIEND :D!" in a great rush before thinking how strong that's coming on from your viewpoint. Oooooops.

Second – you are beautiful. Really unexpectedly pretty.

I don’t mean sexy. I couldn’t find you sexy if I tried. I mean (1) eleven and a half year gap, so UGH, and (2) old close friends, and (3) I first knew you when you were a little baby and vaguely remember changing your nappy once, which would rather kill that thought even if it arose. There's this thing called the Westermarck effect – where someone who has grown up with someone else or known that person as a child can never find them sexy, scientifically it prevents inbreeding – which is very much in effect here. You’re not dating material in my eyes, just not attractive like that, and never will be.

But having said that, looking so to speak with the eye of an artist rather than a lover, the way one might look at a pretty flower or a sunset or a cute kitten or something (horribly objectifying, sorry, but there isn't a better way to put it), or the way I can tell certain celebrities are handsome – David Beckham, say, or Bradley Cooper – without any romantic interest, in the general sense of the word, you are extraordinarily beautiful.

Except it’s stronger than that. The same general feeling as finding a random celebrity generally good-looking or admiring a nice landscape or painting, only up to eleven. For an even better comparison: Seeing you is like walking around on a rainy day, when everything's grey and dull, and then suddenly the rain lets up a bit and the sun shines a bit, and a really bright rainbow appears. And I can’t help but stop and stare at it, with this “wow!” sense of wonder and awe, and think of how beautiful it is. And it’s not something I could ever have any sort of relationship with or even touch – and I have no desire to, even the thought of that makes no sense at all. But the striking sudden and unexpected beauty of it sticks in the mind long after the rainbow itself vanishes, and leaves me with a lasting sense of joy. I think most people I know would react to a rainbow the same way. You’re like that. I did write a song very, very long ago (when you were 3-4) calling you “Rainbow Child” – you might have heard it back in May – it’s still so true.

But there's no real sense of love attached, except insofar as I love everyone in your family (the totally non-romantic way, just a very strong friendship almost like extended family). It's definitely not attraction in the usual sense and I have absolutely no interest in anything more than friendship ever – “oh good”, I hear you say – it’s just “this girl! She's so... well she doesn't seem to be anything in particular. But wow, look!”

You just have one of those faces – this is something I've experienced with a couple of other people – that seems to stand out from far away even in a crowd, as if you were highlighted, to the point that I ask myself “there was a crowd too?” It's literally attractive, compelling like a magnet, my eyes almost can't help but be drawn to you when you're in the same place as me, and my thoughts do the same when you're not. It’s sort of like, if you’re looking at a big painting and most of it is black and white but there’s a red circle somewhere – your eyes just immediately and consistently want to go to the red circle. And you might walk away from the painting and think about that red circle again later in the day because it’s just so visually appealing to you compared to everything around it.

Another comparison I could make was brought on by something Sinead and I were chatting about before you turned up when I popped in last month: at one point she showed me your DVD collection and we got to discussing films, and she mentioned how a clip from one film got inexplicably stuck in her mind for ages afterwards, like a sort of “visual earworm” I think was her phrase. You know the thing: it's like having a favourite song that's so nice you want to listen to it over and over on a loop as long as you can, and maybe that song's a bit catchy and gets stuck in your head, and you find yourself humming it, even when you're not listening to it. And again, you couldn't date music – but you could certainly call some tunes beautiful. I get a visual version of that with your face. Like a Vine loop, maybe. Speaking of which, your actual Vine is insanely addictive!

It reminds me of something I once read in someone's autobiography:

“One of the most vivid experiences I have ever had was sitting quietly for at least an hour before a picture by the Dutch painter Vermeer, and absorbing its sheer beauty… The room was crowded with people, but I was oblivious of them, as I was equally oblivious of the passage of time. As a result of this act of concentration the vision of this particular masterpiece is indelibly stamped on my mind which has forever been enriched by it. I know that my ordinary acts of seeing and observation have been sharpened by that experience. There was drawn from me an acknowledgement of the greatness of the artist and his painting and I caught, with awe, the light of his inspiration and creativeness. It awoke in me a desire to follow in his footsteps and create something beautiful.”

In general, the way I feel about you is the feeling one gets when looking at a beautiful painting. But more specifically, like that man with that particular painting, your face is imprinted on my memory. It's sort of formed the background to most of my other thoughts since late April. Look up Shakespeare's Sonnet 113 and you get a pretty good description (admittedly in olde language) of how I feel. Normally when I see something pretty I just think “wow pretty” for a moment and move on. I’m not sure why you stick so much! I suppose it was the combination of you being quite pretty and that being completely unexpected – at another point we were looking at the family photos on your wall and Sinead showed me an old Vine clip of hers featuring a few of them which pretty much perfectly sums everything up from my point of view – you might know it, the one where she's comparing old photos to your present-day family with increasing surprise. "Then. Now. / Then - now. / Then, now! / THEN! NOW! What's happening to the world?!" She remarked, and I wasn’t going to actually say it but agreed, that your whole face has really changed. Even between then and now too and that wasn't even too long ago! And until April, I hadn’t seen you for so long, since you were seven going on eight: still don't really have any idea how I've managed to keep in touch with your whole family but keep missing hearing from you directly for over a decade. I've always been bad at keeping up with people but that was absurd. I missed you hugely, by the way. So since then I’ve felt exactly like her in that clip, only stronger (“THEN!! / NOW!!” :O :O :O).

You probably got the idea a few comparisons ago, but I just wanted to be totally clear. Getting technical for a bit (because that's how I roll...), I find you incredibly aesthetically attractive. This is a thing that's distinct from, but usually linked to and the beginning of, attraction in the conventional sexual or romantic sense – yes, those are two distinct things. If you know, just skip the rest of this paragraph! There's sexual attraction (“I'd like to get in your pants/hugs/kisses/touching up and ultimately make babies”) which is absolutely not there AT ALL. There's romantic attraction (“I'd like to date you/buy you flowers/"long walks on the beach" etc etc and ultimately marry you”) which is also definitely not there at all. And then there's what this actually is. Aesthetic attraction, in this case disconnected from any other sort. Which is “I wouldn't like any sort of relationship with you beyond simple friendship and could do fine even without that, and have zero interest in any sort of physical contact, but WHOA, your face, I want to look at it SO MUCH, no more than look, but really look and look for as long as possible and just never stop – in an ideal world I'd like to spend time around you just watching you, from a nice respectful distance, and just... drink you in, because you're so incredibly good-looking”.

On top of this (possibly a sort of by-product, but I don't know), as I once told your sister, and you might already know and have seen some of it – every time I've ever seen you, going back years, I've come out shortly afterwards (within a week or two) with some sort of art. Sometimes music, sometimes poems (you've seen a few), sometimes a short story or two, pictures once (not of you – I can't draw people!) And it's quite good art, or so most people who've seen it reckon. Which is remarkable because otherwise I'm not artistic in the slightest. I'd be happy to show you any of it, just ask. You just... really inspire me creatively, for some reason, and that bit has actually been around practically since you were born. If I had to sum you up in a word it would be muse.

I think my point is made. I brought you a present out of simple appreciation and wanting to just… thank you for just being you, super pretty and inspiring you – no actual desire for any relationship of any sort attached. I’m leaving everything right here. It was hard to tone things right. I was going to send you a birthday card, at least, anyway. I’d do the same for Sinead just out of general friendship. I didn't sign it with my name out of the worry you'd react just the way you did. Wasn't expecting for you to answer the door right as I stuck it through your letter box though – so much for anonymity.

I know what you're thinking: if he doesn’t fancy me, then why the "someone special" and why sign the card "admirer"? Simply because anything more (in both cases) was too strong, but anything less not enough. It was hard to find a word for how I feel – for a particularly close-feeling and beautiful friend but it never quite crossing into love –and I picked and phrased the card very, very carefully. Probably not carefully enough, but I tried. (Thank goodness “someone special” is a card category, it does the job quite well.) Even “admirer” is a bit strong, but having linguistic-geek leanings, I settled on admirer for etymological (language origin) reasons: it comes from Latin ad-mirare – literally, to look at, with affection and respect. For some reason it all seemed like a good idea at the time!

That was going to be the last deliberate direct contact I ever had with you after you said you weren't comfortable with it. But I just wanted to clear things up as well as possible, so that hopefully you aren’t uncomfortable any more. I know this is the third(?) time I’ve said “you won’t hear from me again” (random encounters aside), but this time I mean it, unless you care to reply.

I hope you know now I meant well, and would never not mean well. And I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable even now. That's the very last thing I'd ever want; the thought of you creeped out feels like physical harm to me.

I hope you enjoyed the Isle of Wight! Always a pleasure to host you :) 

With friendship

T

“Memories” – or “Thoughts on a Visual Earworm” early June 2016 

I cannot forget you! Although I last saw you in April, And now it is June, in my mind I can still see your face. Both waking and sleeping, your memory fills every moment, And summer's long days seem pale shadows of Summer's sweet grace. In all idle moments, my mind jumps to thoughts and to visions Of memories of you, both old and more recent to see, And trees, houses, people – my eye ‘shapes them all to your feature’, As Shakespeare once wrote! Tell me, when will I ever be free? Will it take till the summer fades out into red-golden autumn For Summer to fade from my memory into the past? Or will even in winter each day seem as bright as the summer And might memory-glimpses of you to the New Year last?

And why am I thinking of you? I’d not seen you in ages, Since you were a child, barely thought of you most of that time, Then I saw you again for the briefest few hours – but for weeks since You’ve written yourself into poem after verse after rhyme! You’re almost a stranger to me, and so very much younger, And we barely spoke – so why should I be thinking of you, When many more people have been in my life for much longer, And meant so much more to me: family, friends, lovers true? Why over them all does your likeness seem laid every moment? Why do you inspire every word, line and note of my art? Why though we might not meet in person again for ten more years, Do I find you in each passing moment engraved on my heart?

I wish I could tell what I’m feeling for you, but can’t place it – Romantic it’s not, for the thought makes me sick to my core, Yet a joy and a wonder at thinking of you overwhelms me And a lively creativeness turning to art more and more. It links to a realisation that you are attractive: In strictest of senses – my mind turning always to you, But not in a way that says ‘her I would like for a lover’ (Thank goodness, you cry) – more ‘I’d like to spend time watching you, Then drawing and painting and singing and writing about you’: Like poetry given girl’s form, or a portrait made living, Or a song in a body, that’s how you seem to me, sweet Summer; ‘Aesthetic attraction’, that could be the term for the feeling.

You stand out in a crowd, as if highlighted under a spotlight, As if life were an image in sepia, black, white and grey, But a single bright colourful part of it grabs the attention, And remains in the memory long after looking away. Or as if, on a dull rainy day, there shines out a bright rainbow, An iris of colour so vivid that cuts through the rain And illumines the world with a halo of red, orange, yellow, Green, indigo, violet bright – and then fades out again, Yet while it is there one can’t help but to stare at its beauty, It fills all the heart with a wonder, a joy and an awe, And its image enlivens the mind with its bright shining colours, So that all of the rest of the day the world seems dull no more. 

I don’t love you: you can’t love a painting, you can’t love a rainbow, Or a flower, or a sunset, but ‘beautiful’, yes, you could say, And could want to stop, stare at them, dazzled with wondrous amazement, And drink in the transcendent beauty of such things all day. And that's what you’re like, Summer, ‘Rainbow Child’ (so I once called you In a song that I took from a novel): if I had the choice And if rainbows and sunsets and beautiful you didn't vanish, I’d spend hours just watching your face, listening to your sweet voice. When we’re in the same room, your face draws my eye like a strong magnet, When we’re not, I still find that my thoughts to you keep on returning, Like a visual kind of an earworm, stuck in my memory On a loop, red-brown hair and bright eyes in my mind always burning. 

Whenever I see you, I find myself turning creative, And trying to capture your beauty in colour and line, But I cannot paint, cannot draw, so it turns into music And poems and prose, to describe your sweet face so divine. (Or rather to try to describe it – my words cannot capture How you move, how you talk, how you laugh, how you smile, how you look: Ten poems would not be enough, and I'm getting the feeling One couldn't sum you up in words even in a whole book!) A ‘muse’ I would call you – a girl who inspires an artist: Indeed I’m no artist except after I have seen you, But then how it flows out, the music and poems and colours, Attempting to echo the memory of beauty so true! 

I felt it when you were young too – but now stronger than ever, And far longer-lasting – a month it’s been, yet still you're here In my mind, in my eye, and on all things imprinting your likeness, A sight that with each passing moment seems ever more dear; So lovely, like art made incarnate, infusing my memory With big brown eyes, dark waves of hair, and a face from a dream, Well named, as reflecting the beauty of beautiful summer – The sun, sky, leaves, flowers in bloom; like that season you seem, Full of light, full of laughter and joy, so vivacious and vibrant, Even when summer passes, still Summer will live in you yet: Though autumn and winter tear leaves from trees, bring cold and darkness, Remembering you will bring sunshine: and I can’t forget.

[losingallhopewas-freedom]

100 Art Therapy Excercises.

Emotions

Deal with emotions like anger and sadness through these helpful exercises.

Draw or paint your emotions. In this exercise, you'll focus entirely on painting what you're feeling.

Create an emotion wheel. Using color, this activity will have you thinking critically about your emotions.

Make a meditative painting. Looking for a creative way to relax?  Have trouble sitting still to meditate?  Meditative painting might be just the thing you're looking for.  No painting skill or experience necessary - only a desire to relax and become more creative.

Put together a journal. Journals don't have to just be based around words. You can make an art journal as well, that lets you visually express your emotions.

Explore puppet therapy. Puppets aren't just for kids. Make your own and have them act out scenes that make you upset.

Use line art. Line is one of the simplest and most basic aspects of art, but it can also contain a lot of emotion. Use simple line art to demonstrate visually how you're feeling.

Design a postcard you will never send. Are you still angry or upset with someone in your life? Create a postcard that expresses this, though you don't have to ever send it.

Create a family sculpture. For this activity, you makes a clay representation of each family member-- mother, father, siblings, and any other close or influential family members to explore emotional dynamics and roles within your family.

Paint a mountain and a valley. The mountain can represent a time where you were happy, the valley, when you were sad. Add elements that reflect specific events as well.

Attach a drawing or message to a balloon. Send away negative emotions or spread positive ones by attaching a note or drawing to a balloon and setting it free.

Collage a heart. Collage your childhood memories in a heart formation.

Relaxation

Art therapy can be a great way to relax. Consider these exercises if you're looking to feel a little more laid back.

Paint to music. Letting your creativity flow in response to music is a great way to let out feelings and just relax.

Make a scribble drawing. With this activity, you'll turn a simple scribble into something beautiful, using line, color and your creativity.

Finger paint. Finger painting isn't just fun for kids– adults can enjoy it as well. Get your hands messy and really have fun spreading paint around.

Make a mandala. Whether you use the traditional sand or draw one on your own, this meditative symbol can easily help you to loosen up.

Draw with your eyes closed. Not being able to see what you are drawing intensifies fluidity, intuition, touch and sensitivity.

Draw something HUGE. Getting your body involved and moving around can help release emotion as you're drawing.

Use color blocks. Colors often come with a lot of emotions attached. Choose several paint chips to work with and collage, paint and glue until you've created a colorful masterpiece.

Let yourself be free. Don't allow yourself to judge your work. If you think your paintings are too tight and controlled, this collection of tips and techniques to try should help you work in a looser style.

Only use colors that calm you. Create a drawing or a painting using only colors that you find calming.

Draw in sand. Like a Zen garden, this activity will have you drawing shapes and scenes in the sand, which can be immensely relaxing and a great way to clear your mind.

Make a zentangle. These fun little drawings are a great tool for letting go and helping reduce stress.

Color in a design. Sometimes, the simple act of coloring can be a great way to relax. Find a coloring book or use this mandala for coloring.

Draw outside. Working en plein air can be a fun way to relax and get in touch with nature while you're working on art.

Happiness

Art can not only help you deal with the bad stuff, but also help you appreciate and focus on the good. Check out these activities all about reflecting on your personal happiness.

Collage your vision of a perfect day.Think about what constitutes a perfect day to you and collage it. What about this collage can you make happen today?

Take photographs of things you think are beautiful. No one else has to like them but you. Print and frame them to have constant reminders of the beautiful things in life.

Make a collage related to a quote you like. Take the words of wisdom from someone else and turn them into something visually inspiring.

Create a drawing that represents freedom. The Surrealists embraced automatic drawing as way to incorporate randomness and the subconscious into their drawings, and to free themselves from artistic conventions and everyday thinking.

Document a spiritual experience. Have you ever had a spiritual experience in your life? Paint what it felt like intuitively.

Make a stuffed animal. Soft, cuddly objects can be very comforting. Use this project to create an animal from your intuitive drawings.

Work on a softness project. Using only soft or comforting objects, create a work of art.

Build a "home." What does home mean to you? This activity will have you create a safe, warm place that feels like home to you.

Document an experience where you did something you didn't think you could do. We all have to do things that we're scared or unsure of sometimes. Use this activity as a chance to commemorate one instance in your life.

Think up a wild invention. This invention should do something that can help make you happier– no matter what that is.

Make a prayer flag. Send your prayers for yourself or those around you out into the universe with this project.

Portraits

Often, a great way to get to know yourself and your relationships with others is through portraits.

Create a past, present and future self-portrait. This drawing or painting should reflect where you have been, who you are today, and how see yourself in the future.

Draw a bag self-portrait. On the outside of a paper bag, you'll create a self-portrait. On the inside, you'll fill it with things that represent who you are.

Choose the people who matter most to you in life and create unique art for each. This is a great way to acknowledge what really matters to you and express your gratitude.

Collage someone you admire. If someone has ever helped inspire your path, collage this person.

Create an expressive self-portrait. Paint in expressive colors. Select colors for emotional impact.

Draw yourself as a warrior. Start thinking about yourself as a strong, capable person by drawing yourself as a warrior in this activity.

Create a transformational portrait series. Transform your perceptions about yourself with this list of self-portrait ideas.

Imitate Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Using objects that have meaning to you, create a portrait of yourself.

Draw yourself as a superhero. Many people like superhero stories. We resonate with the themes in the stories, with the dilemmas and problems that superheroes face, and we aspire to their noble impulses and heroic acts.

Create a body image sketch. Practice life drawing to fall in love with all of the varieties of the human body, including your own.

Draw a mirror. This activity is based around a Piet Mondrian quote: "The purer the artist's mirror is, the more true reality reflects in it." It involves letting die what is not your true reflection, is getting back a truer reflection of yourself in your mirror.

Trauma and Loss

These activities will ask you to face some unpleasant aspects of life, but with the goal of overcoming them.

Draw a place where you feel safe. An art therapy directive for finding your safe place for healing from trauma.

Create a mini-diorama. This diorama can showcase an important moment in your life or some trauma that you've experienced.

Create a collage of your worries. What worries you in your life? Cut out pictures from magazines to represent these worries.

Draw something that scares you. Everyone is frightened of something and in this project you'll get a chance to bring that fear to light and hopefully work towards facing it.

Turn your illness into art. Struggling with a potentially terminal illness? Turn your illness into something meaningful with the creative journal method.

Paint a loss in your life. If you've lost someone you love or something, paint it. This will help you to remember but also to recover.

Make art that is ephemeral. Sometimes we have a hard time letting go, but this project will teach you that it's ok if something doesn't last. Use materials like sand, chalk, paper or water to create art that you will destroy when it's done.

Collaging

If you prefer to cut and paste rather than draw or paint, these projects are for you.

Create a motivational collage. You can hang this collage somewhere you'll see it everyday. Filled with images you find motivating, it'll help you keep pushing on.

Create a face collage on a mask. We all wear masks of some sort. This project lets you showcase what's in your mask and the face you put on for the world.

Create a clutter collage. Are there things cluttering up your life? In this project, use words and pictures to show the clutter in your way.

Create a calming collage. Choose images that you find soothing, calming or even meditative and combine them to create an attractive collage that can help you to relax.

Collage a painting. To complete this exercise, you'll first need to create a simple, abstract painting on paper. Then, tear this painting up and create another. Think about how you felt when you had to tear up the first painting and which you like more.

Self

Examine aspects if who you are and how you see the world through these amazing art projects.

Draw images of your good traits. Creating drawings of your good traits will help you to become more positive and build a better self-image.

Draw yourself as an animal. Is there an animal that you have a special interest in or feel like is a kindred spirit? Draw yourself as that animal.

Create a timeline and journal the most significant moments in your life.This timeline will be the story of your life, with the most important moments highlighted visually.

Put together a jungle animal collage. Choose jungle animals that you find the most interesting, draw them, and then reflect on why you've chosen these specific animals.

Sculpt your ideal self. If you could make yourself into the perfect person, what would you look like?

Draw the different sides of yourself. In this project, you'll explore the different aspects of your personality, giving each a visual representation. You might only have one or two, or maybe even twelve.

Make art with your fingerprints. Your fingerprints are as unique as you are. Use ink and paint to make art that uses your fingerprints.

Draw yourself as a tree.Your roots will be loaded with descriptions of things that give you strength and your good qualities, while your leaves can be the things that you're trying to change.

Design a fragments box. In this project, you'll put fragments of yourself into a box, helping construct a whole and happier you.

Paint an important childhood memory. What was a pivotal memory in your childhood? This activity asks you to document it and try to understand why it was so important to you.

Write and illustrate a fairy tale about yourself. If you could put yourself into a happily ever after situation, what role would you play and how would the story go? Create a book that tells the tale.

Design a visual autobiography. This creative journaling project asks you to look back at your life and make a visual representation of it.

Create your own coat of arms. Choose symbols that represent your strengths to build your own special coat of arms.

Draw a comic strip about a funny moment in your life. Enjoy a moment of levity with this exercise that will focus in on a comical even that happened to you.

Build your own website. Websites are very versatile ways to express yourself. Build your own to express what's most important about you.

Create a box of values. First, collage or paint a box the represents you. Then, place items inside the box that represent the things you value the most.

Gratitude

Here you'll find a collection of projects that will help you be happy about what you have and express your gratitude for it.

Document your gratitude visually.What things are you grateful for in your life? Paint or collage a work that represents these things.

Create a family tree of strength. This exercise honors those around you who support you. Paint those close to you who offer you the strength you need.

Make something for someone else. Making something for someone else can be a great way to feel good and help someone else do so as well.

Make anchor art. Who are the anchors in your life? In this project, you'll make an anchor and decorate it with the people and things that provide you stability and strength.

Draw all the positive things in your life. Everyone has at least one good thing in life, so sit down and figure out what makes you happy– then draw it.

Sculpt your hand in plaster. Once it's dry, write all the good things you can do with it right onto the hand.

Paint a rock. This project is meant to offer you strength. You can approach it in two ways. One option is to paint the rock with things that empower you. The other is to paint it with struggles you overcome.

Write on leaves to create a gratitude tree. What are you grateful for? This project asks you to write those things on leaves to construct a tree or banner of gratitude.

Map of consciousness collage. More often than not, in a single day, we can feel conflicted in our consciousness in several different ways. This directive helps to explore personality dynamics by mapping them out visually with spontaneous collage and drawing.

Create a snowflake out of paper. Write ideas about how you are unique on the snowflake.

Build a personal altar. This is a highly personal project that will help connect you with your spiritual side and honor your resilience.

Inside the Mind

Take a look inside your mind to see what's going on with these projects.

Create a blot art. Like a classic Rorschach test, fold paper in half with paint or ink in the middle and describe what you see.

Mind Mapping. Make a visual representation of your thoughts to figure out how your mind works.

Make a dreamcatcher. Having bad dreams? Create this age-old tool for catching your dreams with a few simple tools.

Draw your dreams. You can learn a lot from what goes on in your dreams, so keep a dream journal and use it for inspiration to draw or paint.

Miscellaneous

If you're still looking for something to empower, help or soothe you, these projects may fit the bill.

Use natural materials. Leaves, sticks, dirt, clay and other natural materials can help you get in touch with the natural world and the more primal side of yourself.

Build an archetype. Check out this series of projects to build a set of archetypes, or ideal examples, that can help you explore how you see the world.

Use your body as a canvas. You don't need paper when you have you body. Paint on your hands and feet or anywhere else to feel more in touch with yourself.

Sculpt spirit figures. Connect with those that have passed on or your own spiritual essence using these sculpted figures.

Make art out of recycled items. You can reuse old items that have meaning to you or just re-purpose something you have laying around. Either way, you'll get insights into how you can reshape and reevaluate your own life.

Collage with old photographs. If you're uncomfortable using old photos you can make copies, but with this project you'll draw out one characteristic you see in the person in the photos.

Create your own interpretation of a famous work of art. How would you have painted the Mona Lisa? Using a famous work as your inspiration, create your own work. It could help reveal more about your lens on the world.

Work collaboratively. Art can be better when two work at it together, so find a partner and collaborate on just about anything.

Use a found or made object as a paintbrush. Whether it's something sharp or something soft, make your own artistic tool and use it to express what you're feeling.

Make crayon stained glass. Reflect upon your spiritual side with this project that lets you create your own stained glass window.

Paint a window. Windows let you see in and see out. Paint yours with things you want to hide or show to the world.

[meanderfall]

//puts chin in hands and stares at u adoringly, for the cute questions: 1 - 6 - 13 - 15 - 42 - 74 - 91 - 120 - 128 - 133 - 136 - 144 and 147!!!

ajflsdhfalkhf adri you spoil me rotten!!!! Thank you my love!!!

(this is going under a read more bc holy shit)

1. Who was the last person you held hands with?

I’m pretty sure it was when I met up with one of my friends after her class in summer school?? we just sat down together and like held hands while we talked. And I think that was the person bc tbh it is entirely likely i’ve held hands with my younger siblings between then and now (I guess i might not have a specific memory about it bc i havent seen my siblings in like 2 weeks ;;A;;)

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Honestly, I love passionate people, the people who adore things and others with everything they have, and people who are clever (which doesnt mean being good at school), and those who are a little bit snarky and a lot silly (well silly at the right moments i guess, there’s a time and place for everything!!! //whispers professor oak taught me that). People who take themselves too seriously aren’t for me.(Also, on a more “oh that’s really hot!” level, competency?? at anything, just having something you are really good at, and just how focused they are and absorbed in what they’re doing, and the concentration, all those things are so attractive omg) 

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair?

YES

AND IT’S SO UPSETTING BC IT NEVER HAPPENS, NOBODY EVER PLAYS WITH MY HAIR OR SCRATCHES MY HEAD OR ANYTHING WHERE IS MY PHYSICAL AFFECTION I NEED IT SOMEONE COME OVER HERE AND CUDDLE ME

15. What good thing happened this summer?

oh god, i have the emotional memory of a gnat. This summer… was pretty terrible tbh, but a good thing that happened was the time I spent with you?? like overwatch (and I finally started to enjoy playing it!!!) or when we watched rvb together (and drace!) and then the next day when we spent like six hours listening to music, that was fantastic! Besides that, I’m happy I’m getting closer with @anthcny-stark and @theaussiedragon too, and like! those two days I spent with my older brother and we just hung out and watched stuff together and my younger siblings! We binge-watched things together and had a blast!!!! so i guess a lot of good things have happened this summer, it’s just hard to remember when life in general is awful.

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean?

Depends! And it’s hard to tell because I’m a pretty quiet person in general. Pretty sure most of my family would assume that I’m snarking in my head, but I would say most of the time when I’m quiet, I’m just spacing out, just staring into the distance with my mind blank. Other times I could just be exhausted or have a headache. Though, if I’m with a group of friends that you know I’m usually comfortable and loud with and I’m not saying anything, I’m likely going through some kind of depressive spiral where I feel like nobody would actually miss me if I was gone and even if they did, I could be easily replaced and basically I’m not really important to anybody, and I could disappear and they wouldn’t really care.

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have?

Two. The stuffed fox and a unicorn that has not left the box I put it in when we moved. (I had???? a shitton of stuffies but I gave them away when we moved bc I had never mastered the art of sleeping with stuffies so they were mostly a nuisance when they were in bed with me, and like I get stupidly and easily attached to anything so of course I loved them to death, but really my comfort object has always been my blankie, who is now ridiculously tiny for my size and I basically ball up and cuddle with when I sleep if I need that comfort.)

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now?

No. I think I would only feel that way if I was angry and I’m not angry about anything atm so no.

120. Are you afraid of the dark?

I used to be! Had a nightlight and everything. Now the only thing about the dark I’m scared of is the possibility of walking into something. I actually really like the dark (well as long as it’s in an environment I know lmao dont knock me out and put me in a pitch dark basement in the middle of nowhere)

128. Would you change your name?

If I could find a name I liked and felt a connection to, ye! My name is just… cumbersome and unwieldy to the tongue and it’s… pretty hideous tbh. I don’t know how to put it, ever since I was a kid, I always felt like my name was unique but not in the good way. It stuck out like sore thumb, and was stupidly long, and like, I would look at it and recognize as mine, like felt a connection to it? but it wasn’t a fun connection. It’s like those moments when you look at yourself in the mirror and it’s like you’re realizing that that’s what you look like to other people, that is your physical form, and there’s a weird disconnect between the two, and it’s fucking weird.

133. Favourite lyrics right now?

adri you hate me dont you, do you have any idea how hard this question is!!!!! how am i supposed to choose??? (the answer: I’m not. I’m choosing all of them. All of my favourite lyrics right now. I hope you’re happy adri)

“Oh everything’s a messAnd all these sorrows I have seenThey lead me to believeThat everything’s a mess” Dream by Imagine Dragons

“Happiness, feels a lot like sorrowLet it be, you can’t make it come or goBut you are gone - not for good but for nowAnd gone for now, feels a lot like gone for good” Happiness by The Fray (the part that really hits me is italicized)

“Make my messes matter.Make this chaos count.Let every little fracture in meShatter out loud.” Jupiter by Sleeping At Last

“Stitch by stitch I tear apart.If brokenness is a form of art,I must be a poster child prodigy.Thread by thread I come apart.If brokenness is a work of art,Surely this must be my masterpiece.I’m only honest when it rains.If I time it right, the thunder breaksWhen I open my mouth.I want to tell you but I don’t know how.” Neptune by Sleeping At Last

I can’t pick a favourite so, all of Saturn by Sleeping At Last. All of it.

“Much too tired to try,Much too stubborn to quit” Hit or Miss by Sleeping At Last.

“maybe distance is the only cure?Far away from hurt is where healing occurs.But all you really want to do is make them proud,Don’t you? don’t you?It must be so hard, in the mess you’re always cleaning up,To believe in the ghost of unbroken love.But I promise you,The truth is that you’re loved. so loved.” Silhouettes by Sleeping At Last

“Cry heart, cry yourself to sleep, cry a storm of tears if it helps you breatheIt helps you, if it helps you breathe” Homesick by Sleeping At Last

“Show meHow to struggle gracefullyLet the scaffolding inside of me be strong enough to hold this tired body upOnce more […]

So I will try, try, try to breathe‘til it turns to muscle memoryI’m only steady on my kneesBut one day I’ll stand on my own two feet

And I’ll run the riskOf being intimate with brokenness […]” Son by Sleeping At Last

“They say don’t let them inClose your eyes and clear your thoughts againBut when I’m all alone, they show up on their own […]They say “Just push them down, just fight them harderWhy would you give up on it so soon?” […]

Life is pain, life’s not fairSo angels please, please stay hereTake the pain, take the fear” Inner Demons by Julia Brennan

“Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever didLooking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kidAnd I’m still standing after all this timePicking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind” I’m still Standing (the cover by Taron Egerton)

“I feel fine enough, I guessConsidering everything’s a mess.” Pinch Me by the Barenaked Ladies

“I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desertBut I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime“ In a Big Country by Big Country

(yes i know about 90% of these is SaL, but they have some of the best lyrics ever???) (also true story, the moment i read the question, i forgot every song i ever listened to lmao)

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed?

Unless it’s a hot and/or humid night and I need the airflow, the door is closed. Leaving it open makes me feel vulnerable?? (and that’s true throughout the day as well, if my door is open it’s bc I’m feeling open and wouldn’t mind people coming in to talk to me). Not to mention I usually sleep naked.

Fun fact! In the old house, I would sleep with the door open (mainly in case my cat wanted to come sleep in bed with me), but what ended up happening, bc I’m a paranoid and suspicious fuck, I would immediately awaken whenever someone would go to the bathroom (bc there was only one bathroom (for seven people!) and it was right across the hall from my room), and I would look to see who it was (which often resulted in awkward eye contact) before rolling over and going back to sleep. According to one sibling, the fact that I was always awake when they went was “really fucking creepy”. (I DIDNT DO IT ON PURPOSE THOUGH!!!!! I WOULD HEAR FOOTSTEPS AND AWAKEN, NOT MY FAULT!!! the worst part is that I can sleep through anything else. Cat sleeping on my face? no problem. Thunderstorm? Can’t hear a thing. My cats duking it out with an owl, which apparently woke up the entire house? sleeping like a baby.)

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?

Sorry, I read the question and started drooling. Um, definitely have to go with milk chocolate. (White is a close second! Dark chocolate is too bitter for my tastes.)

147. Mars or Snickers?

Mars. (I do not like peanuts in my dessert. Or nuts in general.)

[justinmoviereviews]

The Class of 2016

This will be updated, and reviews are subject to be totally meaningless. Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing about a movie, ya know?

Free State of Jones - Gary Ross

This movie looks amazing. I’ll be honest, I didn’t pay a lot of attention. It’s really long. Matthew McConaughey frees the slaves, or something. It looks and sounds great. It made me want to live in the south. Anyway, with this I’m done obsessively watching movies from 2016. I don’t think there were any masterpieces from last year, but it definitely popped out a couple really solid movies. I'm not so into rankings, but here are my top six, and they are truly in no order at all. These are just the six movies from last year that I would hang on my wall:

The Lobster Manchester By The Sea Everybody Wants Some! Green Room Hell or High Water Moonlight

Hacksaw Ridge - Mel Gibson

You can skip the first hour of this--we probably don’t need another movie where a guy falls in love with a girl and then holds firm to his convictions, especially when it’s done in a way as hackneyed as this one is--but the second half is awesome. The ultra-bloody war movie you’d expect from the guy who made a snuff film about Jesus.

Hidden Figures - Theodore Melfi

Say this for these kinds of movies: they’re getting better. The black characters have more agency, the white characters are less benevolent. At the very least, this movie seems like it was edited by someone with a good handle on why inspirational Hollywood stories about black people so often feel like they’re designed to make white people feel good about themselves. In this movie a black character flips out at her unfair treatment in a room full of white people, the titular figures solve their own problems without the help of benevolent crackers, and Kevin Costner’s colorblindness stems less from some future anachronistic moral code than from his being too obsessed with his project to notice anything else. This is a perfectly adequate crowd pleaser, and it’s not offensive. Take your girlfriend.

Suicide Squad - David Ayer

Comic book origin stories are so stupid. In the real world, government agents don’t pitch presentations on recruiting super heroes, because in the real world there aren’t super heroes. I might like these movies better if they didn’t try to take place in the same planet where people file w-4s. Maybe it’s Christopher Nolan’s fault for doing it semi-plausibly. Whatever. I’m not a comic book guy. At all. An airplane is the only setting in which I will ever watch this movie from beginning to end. But I like Will Smith a lot, and I like Margot Robbie.

The Accountant - Gavin O’Connor

Ignore the haters. This movie rocks. 

Ghostbusters - Paul Feig

Ignore Milos Yiannopoulos’s pedophile ass. This movie rocks.

Florence Foster Jenkins - Stephen Frears

Eh, they’ve made worse. Stephen Frears really seems to like old ladies.

The Magnificent Seven - Antoine Fuqua

Any movie that has Chris Pratt avoid death by performing card tricks is not going to be as cool as it wants to be, but this is a fun movie to watch. I’m always gonna go with the half-assed western over the half-assed comic book movie. And Denzel Washington can still do this shit better than anyone even when it’s in between takes of Fences.

Hell or High Water - David Mackenzie

Killing Them Softly is a movie about a bunch of underworld criminals tightening their belts and pumping their auditor to save money in a down economy. It’s soundtracked by political speeches from the 2008 Presidential election. It’s one of my favorite movies in recent memory. I’m a sucker for flicks that foreground the sociopathic nature of the banking industry as a regular feature in American life. I’m also a sucker for westerns, and for manly movies where everyone is an alcoholic. This is so much smarter and more controlled than it needed to be. It’s a minor masterpiece.

The Founder - John Lee Hancock

Nobody is better at playing a regular-ass uncharismatic scrub than Michael Keaton. Not Matt Damon in the Informant! Definitely not George Clooney in the Descendants. This might be the first straight biopic I’ve ever actually liked. A middle class striver opportunes himself into a goldmine, and eventually becomes successful enough that he can start acting like a shithead.

Nocturnal Animals - Tom Ford

This movie starts to fall apart about 20 minutes after you finish watching it--a dark thriller about a guy standing up his ex-wife on a dinner date? But in the world where style trumps substance, this is a masterpiece. Dark, foreboding, atmospheric, with a great cast and a killer score. Was a strong contender for trailer of the year. Michael Shannon should be in every movie.

Everybody Wants Some!! - Richard Linklater

Linklater splits the difference between his love of the pseudo-intellectual conversation and his unparalleled ability to show young adults hanging out. The baseball team’s voluntary summer practice is easily the best scene of the year. His best movie since Dazed and Confused.

The Lobster - Yorgos Lanthimos

The dialogue--and the movie--is like someone breathed life into stick figures and forced them to fuck or face unspeakable consequences. There’s a lot of “do you like the beach? I like the beach because I like looking at the ocean. I’m glad you also like the beach,” like these characters aren’t human but are desperately trying to fake it. Too weird and too singular to be the movie of the year, but I had a huge grin on my face during every batshit second of this.

Sausage Party - Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan

Let’s be honest, no one gets a freer pass than Seth Rogen. Once upon a time studios considered the big budget comedy a viable genre, and gave careers to people like Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell and Mike Judge, all joke-writers who, at their laziest, were pound-for-pound funnier than Rogen is (except for Sandler, who for the past 20 years has been less funny than the average Geico commercial). For better or worse I spent my teenage years quoting movies like Super Troopers and Detroit Rock City. Does anyone quote Superbad? Or This Is The End? The funny thing about my back is...I guess.

Having Judd Apatow’s affection didn’t used to be enough to monopolize a genre, is what I’m saying. And yet, there’s a pretty huge but coming. Because I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Seth Rogen has a gift for premises that none of those other joke-writers did. At heart he’s a very smart art nerd. He’s not really that funny. He relies way too much on dick jokes and swearing. But he’s figured out how to lean on his funny friends. And with Sausage Party, he’s figured out how to emulate the topsy-turvy cleverness of Pixar, and turn it into something as watchable as any of the movies they make.

The Birth of a Nation - Nate Parker

There are better movies, but it’s never gonna get old to watch slaves murder slave owners in the antebellum south. 

20th Century Women - Mike Mills

A movie of tiny moments that point to a specific moment in the lives of five people and the intricacy of their relationships. It identifies the profundity of little moments better than Boyhood, and the characters are as well sketched as any others in any other movie I can think of. So Jesus, why do I feel so cold about it? Is it because there’s a political sourness I can’t shake away? Because it feels kinda like Mike Mills wants points for being a real feminist? When this movie feels like a coming of age story, or a story about five people bouncing off each other in well-meaning but not-entirely-beneficial ways, it’s as good as it gets. When it feels like the next step in men writing deep female characters so the Huffington Post genuflects to them, I’m out. Or maybe I just don’t always give a shit about coming of age stories anymore. It’s one or the other.

Sully - Clint Eastood

Sooner or later, after he’s alienated the last living millennial by campaigning for President Trump in 2020, Clint Eastwood is going to shuffle off this mortal coil into whatever Valhalla awaits his generation of stoic American men, and we’re really going to miss him. He tells unfussy stories about uncomplicated heroes living in a decent world with clear cut moral guidelines. Here he turns a high-stakes true event into a medium-stakes story about a guy doing his job well. This is his best late-period movie.

Love and Friendship - Whit Stillman

Fans of Comedy Central may be familiar with a show called Another Period, where comedian Natasha Legerro plays a comically horrible social climbing society woman from some manored century, in a send up of Jane Austen costume dramas that nonetheless carries a feminist streak because of how put upon the women are. I occasionally have it on while I do other things, and I don’t dislike it. Like many late-night alt-comedy shows, it could be great with a bigger budget and more ambition attached to it. As I was first typing this review up, I accidentally wrote Another Period at the top instead of Love and Friendship.

Cafe Society - Woody Allen

Woody Allen has so mastered the epiphany that life doesn’t exist on a moral plane that even when he is on the autoest of autopilots he still handles the observation with profundity (Hannah and her Sisters is his philosophical masterpiece, and I would say unquestionably his best movie). This movie is very much on the autoest of autopilots, and Allen still is a writer first and a director second, but this is good territory for him. On the acting: Steve Carrell is funny and charming and seems like a great guy, but he’s not always a good actor, and he’s miscast here. Jesse Eisenberg is ehhh as the moderately more handsome young Woody Allen character (he kills the movie’s comic highlight, where he meets a first-time hooker). Kristen Stewart is the best actor here, handling second-rate Woody dialogue not as an Annie Hall or as a Kristen Stewart, but as a character of her own creation. 

The Neon Demon - Nicolas Winding Refn

Refn wants to make sound and light shows. He doesn’t want characters, he wants mannequins. He doesn’t want plot, he wants to set up perfect shots. I ultimately came out high on Drive, but made fun of it for being Eurotrash. Now I realize it was more like his version of a studio compromise. This is the kind of movie Refn wants to make--the kind of movie so devoid of external input that Keanu Reeves showing up as a pedophile murderer qualifies as fan service. I can see Refn thinking this is his masterpiece. I can’t imagine a single other person on earth actually riding for it.

The Witch - Robert Eggers

Religion is more fun to ponder than to hate on, which is why Silence is a more interesting movie than the Witch. This movie can and should be weirder and scarier than it is, but it spends too much time showing it’s family devolve into superstitious madness and not enough time bringing home that fucked up bacon. It needs more bleeding goats, is what I’m saying. But stay for that ending, because it’s a good one.

Silence - Martin Scorsese

There are times, during some of Andrew Garfield’s narration, or when the camera flashes to a photo of a suffering Jesus, when this movie starts to veer into Bergman territory--Silence is the most Bergmanish movie title since Shame--but Scorsese doesn’t really make art films in that way. His movies are more literal, more grounded in plot, their darkness is violent and visceral. One could argue that a movie like this is more subtle than anything made by the Swedish depressive. One could also argue that it just has less going on. It’s a tough one, not that it’s hard to watch, but it’s hard to comprehend. As for the easy stuff--it looks great, the acting’s great, the writing is smart as hell (and I can’t emphasize that enough. There’s a character who serves as both a figurative mind-fuck and as goofy comic relief). Still kickin’ around at 74, nobody is better at making these things than Marty is. The question the movie asks, I think, is that it’s easy to die on the cross for God, but letting other people die for him? That’s a whole lot harder. And if he isn’t even there? Well then, you’re a terrorist.

La La Land - Damian Chazelle

If this weren’t the runaway Oscar favorite, I wouldn’t have seen it. The question is, would anyone have? If something is getting raves from smart people I assume it’s good, and if it doesn’t look good than I assume it’s subversive somehow. So what is this? A throwback. Damian Chazelle is the only guy right now making movies inspired by “Singin’ in the Rain.” I mean, see this one a theater and yeah, it’s a good time. But don’t buy it or call it the best movie of the year or anything. That’s crazy.

Moonlight - Barry Jenkins

If we weren’t starved for movies about black people, would this movie be so canonized? And if it wasn’t so canonized, would anyone have seen it? Kind of this year’s boyhood, where seemingly random moments in a person’s childhood may or may not be key life-shaping events. What’s most impressive is how the moments depicted are both good and bad. This isn’t Precious. It isn’t some poverty-life horror show. Here’s a kid burdened by vulnerabilities living a sort-of normal life told in vignettes. Poignant. Kinda boring though.

Fences - Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington reading the phone book would be a good movie, which is good, because this movie is basically him reading a phone book. Just kidding! The first hour is perfect--immaculate acting, phenomenal writing, compelling story-telling. The second hour lost me. This is a movie (or play) where the main character tells his wife that he’s impregnated his mistress and that he plans on staying with her. Okay. Then, after his mistress gives birth she dies on the operating table. The main character is devastated, but truthfully, for both him and the story, what incredible good luck!

Allied - Robert Zemeckis

This is a bad movie for two reasons: the plot and the acting. The plot--what if my wife’s a spy? Oh no! She is!--is surprising, but not in a good way. The acting is a bigger problem. Brad Pitt is the coolest guy in Hollywood, probably one of my five favorite actors, and capable of really good stuff, but when you give him traditional leading man roles and don’t figure out how to make him be interesting in them, he’s incredibly dull. Benjamin Button had this problem. Allied has it even more.

Manchester by the Sea - Kenneth Lonergan

I don’t think a single person reads this blog but I still don’t want to spoil this movie so I won’t talk about the ending. But holy fuck. The definition of a slow burn, as in you’re gonna fall apart in the car halfway home from the theater. Best Oscar bait movie of the year for sure. Maybe best movie of the year.

Inferno - Ron Howard

I have never read a Dan Brown book, but the Da Vinci Code is my favorite TBS movie, and Angels and Demons is probably my second, so it gives me no pleasure to tell the truth here, which is that this movie sucks.

The Girl on the Train - Tate Taylor

I am still baffled by Gone Girl the movie, mostly because it isn’t good, so give this one credit for being the pulpy garbage Gone Girl pretends it isn’t. But the more I thought about this movie, which I very much enjoyed at the time, the more sour I got. It’s pulpy garbage, redeemed in part by Emily Blunt who pulls a Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler and crushes this role like Steve Smith crushed the Panthers after they cut him.

Arrival - Denis Villeneuve

Oh no, I’m already getting bored of writing these. The New Yorker’s review of this movie is perfect and I wouldn’t disagree with any of it. This is a movie that sets its premise up perfectly and then yada yadas over the entire substance of its plot. I still score it very high though, because the twist is borrowed from my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel, and because I love the way the aliens look.

Midnight Special - Jeff Nichols

Jeff Nichols hasn’t made his masterpiece yet, but he’s in danger of becoming my favorite director. If he turns Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton--two guys great at exploring the decency of masculinity--into his regular acting troupe the danger gets even greater. I watched this one on a plane, which is the worst setting possible to watch a movie with a substantial portion of its budget devoted to its special effects, and the ending rings a little underwhelming (would be better on a normal-sized TV) but nobody does male characters as well as Nichols. Also, and look for this refrain whenever he shows up in a movie, nobody in Hollywood right now is more interesting or exciting than Adam Driver, even in this role, which kinda short-changes him.

10 Cloverfield Lane - Dan Trachtenberg

Another airplane watch, and another movie I come to praise for its acting and then complain that the special effect ending didn’t work on me. There are questions without answers in this movie which bugs the hell out of me, but I’m glad to see my man from the Newsroom and the girl from Scott Pilgrim getting work. Mostly, I’m glad to see one of our finest actors, John Goodman, play someone other than a dad. Let me explain to you something the Coen brothers already know: It is long, long past time for the Goodmanaissance. He should have five Oscars for his performance in the Gambler alone.

The BFG - Stephen Spielberg

Classic kid’s book becomes movie kids will like.

Our Kind of Traitor - Susanna White

Dud Le Carre novel becomes forgettable, poorly directed movie. High point: Stellan Skarsgard, and you get to see his penis.

The Shallows - Jaume Collet-Serra

Hollywood is as snobby and irrationally biased as anyone, but take away the budget and the spectacle and this movie isn’t that different than the Revenant. I mean that is a compliment, I liked both movies a lot. But while the Revenant won Leo his Oscar--something not even Scorsese could do--this one is never going to escape its proximity to Sharknado and its T&A qualities. Blake Lithely, last seen trying to score Oxy from Jon Hamm, equips herself very well.

Sing Street - John Carney

Irish mise-en-scene is great, music’s even better, the older brother relationship is fun and sweet and might even choke you up. There are plot issues you’re a dick for bringing up, but they’re there. Apologies. Also, if you haven’t, go see the Commitments.

The Nice Guys - Shane Black

Ryan Gosling was the revalation here which is weird to me because he’d already showed off all these tricks in the Big Short. He’s better there, in my opinion, and Russell Crowe as the pudgy decent badass is who really carries the day. Hannibal Burress shows up as a bumblebee in the greatest cameo since whenever the last time Tom Waits showed up in a movie. This one starts with a ton of promise, and gets increasingly rote until by the end the heroes are in the same shoot out Shane Black’s been making for 30 years. Funny though, and if they make a sequel I’ll see it.

The Forest - Jason Zada

I briefly belonged to a gym with a big dark room where a bunch of treadmills pointed towards a giant screen TV, and they’d show movies. Sometimes they’d show real movies like A Force Awakens and Concussion (which I never caught all of so I won’t review here but the parts I saw were surprisingly damn good), and sometimes they’d show cheap direct to video horror movies, like a movie about a house break-in that I’m positive was financed by a home security company, and this one. I actually liked this one, purely because it looks real good and it takes place in the Aokigahara Forest in Japan, which I’d never heard of before but got really interested in.

Green Room - Jeremy Saulnier

A grindhouse flick with Patrick Stewart nicely underplaying a psycho neo-nazi, this isn’t as good as Blue Ruin--one of the best movies of the past five years--but it’s pretty damn good.

The Jungle Book - Jon Favreau

There’s a scene in this movie where Scarlett Johansson plays a snake that alone is worth the price of admission, even at the bumped up 3D price. The movie doesn’t ever get that dark again, but the fact that someone had the idea to Dark Knight up the Jungle Book, and it worked as well as it did, is flabbergasting. 

Hail, Caesar! - Joel and Ethan Coen

I don’t know how people who aren’t inclined to like every Coen brothers movie feel about this one--my mom and sister hated it--but I loved it. Weird, goony, centered around a bizarre communist subversion subplot that ultimately means nothing, this is the Coens at their not-giving-a-fuck best. In fact, skip La La Land and watch this subversive throwback to Hollywood’s gilded age instead. It’s way more fun and way more evil, and stars the god Josh Brolin.