#he's basically made them this romantic to immortalise them

[oshiawaseni]

Trails of Love Hori's been paving down in the build up for the series' ending

Part I: The Shape of an Eternal Bond

Romantic Love. Falling in love. When we break it down, what really is it, but a deep emotional connection formed with someone, an overpowering instinct that screams at you to protect that person, and the vulnerability you allow yourself to succumb to when your logical 'self-preserving' mind and it's hurt-proof walls is completely overrun by your heart's most based need to be close with them, the object of your affection.

And who shows these feelings for each other the most in BNHA? Bakudeku, right? Of course it's them.

It's something so obvious and yet this somehow feels overlooked by almost everyone in the fandom: I’ve never actually seen Izuku feeling happy or excited about his relationship with Ochaco, nor elated about getting to spend more time with her. But Izuku and Kacchan? The feelings they both have of longing to be closer to the other and every single action they took for that, chaotically and passionately smashes the "stable pleasantness" of IzuOcha right out of the park.

Izuku views getting to speak 'normally(?)' with Kacchan as a miracle on the exact same level of importance as being mentored by the greatest hero of their generation (and his U.A. room looks like what it looks like). This scene gave the cutest 'Work life: check. Love life: check' vibe.

Is it really all that surprising that BKDK have had plenty of development in this area while IzuOcha has had almost none? In fact, as BkDk became closer, the "expected end game" pair has gone in the opposite direction. And why does this not strike odd to "bkdk canon" doubters or the fans that ship IzuOcha? It really is no coincidence how many moments we’ve accrued about this mutual feeling and attraction that exists only between Izuku and Katsuki.

I want to be closer to you. I can't imagine life without you. vs Why are you so confused when I show you I care about you, too?

It's so simple - but maybe it being so simple is why this is not something we really stop and take a minute to think about specifically. About how this 'obvious' concept of two people desiring to become closer is one often shared between lovers and those who are falling in love.

And how that fits with bkdk because this longing for deeper connection has existed between them almost since the beginning... and we haven't been talking enough about it.

I want you to think about the true feelings and meaning lying behind these moments that have inspired the writings of many fic and meta:

Izuku's desperation and suffering at Kacchan being taken away...

the hurt and loneliness that pools within Katsuki's heart from his fear of being left behind (and alone) by Izuku...

the regret they both felt in not using their own hand to reach out and connect to each other (believing their hand 'wouldn't be enough') and putting those feelings aside to prioritise their boy's rescue and safety...

the distress Katsuki felt in facing his biggest fear of all - losing Izuku for good - forcing him to become a true hero, for his sake...

and the total overwhelming despair Izuku felt in realising he didn't make it in time and he had lost his hero.

This is it, this cover was Hori locking them in. Holding his Kacchan so precious, placing his hand gently over his heart, trying to somehow connect to it. The appearance of an enraged and protective alpha ready to strike down the monster who did this to his mate. This is the vision Hori wanted to draw for bkdk and it cemented the deep romantic love and bond that's been growing between them, rewarding those of us who have picked up on their trails of love and causing meltdowns baked in confusion for the rest.

They've had many scenes like these throughout MHA. Scratch a little at their surface and what lies underneath every single one of them is the pining desire Izuku and Katsuki both share of wanting to be together. The need for the other to be by their side and within reach.

And they don’t share this feeling with anybody else.

It’s always been this way exclusively for them and I think this aspect of their relationship was established by Hori to tell us they will stay feeling this way forever.

If Izuku is right and he takes back everything and the course of their future gets put on track again, then maybe the idea of them holding onto each other and never letting go isn’t all that far from reality.

After they graduate, I can't imagine these two not choosing each other every single time, until the very end of their days: becoming a hero wonder duo, moving in together, living their best domestic life complete with their adorable husbands banter (but repackaged into something so much more loving and soft which befits them), nurturing their relationship... letting themselves fall deeper in love...

It's so easy to imagine this all happening, simply because of their desperate need for closeness to one another in the manga.

They can’t imagine their life without the other.

Their love is a multi-threaded story that's been told to us over, and over, and over again. Through Izuku and Katsuki's every action and by the mouths of others (which I'll be covering in my next post).

I honestly believe that since the beginning, Hori has been carefully leaving trails of their passion for each other, simply to say this: While this series may be coming to a close, Izuku and Katsuki’s bond, that brings them only closer and binds them tightly together, will transcend the very last of their inked pages and never end. ❤️

Part Two -> Intro & Compress

[queerchoicesblog]

Until My Very Last Breath

Folks, the Ancient Greece wlw miniseries suggested by @jackievarma for the wlw writing project has come to an end. I hope you enjoy the latest update even if I am afraid you would have preferred a different one but it seemed to me the most suitable for the story. Although being immortalised a rebours as an Edenic celebration of lesbian love, the truth about Sappho's thiasus is slightly different and a bit less sunshine and rainbows.

If you do happen to like this miniseries, please consider spreading the word!

Next week a new miniseries set in the Italian Renaissance will be posted, stay tuned...

Previous chapter: Underneath The Stars

------------------------------------------------------ As moons gone by, Kleanthis and I grew closer and closer. Our love didn't combust, burning away in lust and desire. If anything, the mutual hunger we felt for each other and made us languish when apart only fuelled a deepest connection of mind and souls. Kleanthis completed her journey as a student and started a new one as Sappho's protégé. She assisted her with the new students, teaching them the basics of dancing, and I couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy whenever I caught the way those girls looked at her. I couldn't blame them though: I had never seen a woman as beautiful as her. I'm sure even Helen of Troy couldn't hold a candle to the perfection of my love. Kleanthis always teased me about my jealousy: to be honest, never once I had to doubt her loyalty. She still had admirers but -she assured me- her heart belonged to me only.

The same could be said for me. I grew into one of the most promising student of the thiasus and my rising popularity and blossoming beauty provided me a fair share of girls constantly at my side, adoring. However, there was only one girl I would sneak away with to see the dawn by the sea. The tender look in Kleanthis's eyes as she strummed her lyre, her raven curls sprawled in my lap, was all I was willing to live for. Tasting the softness of her lips, hearing her laughter, holding her slender hand: I couldn't ask for more. There were others couples like us in the thiasus. Some girls weren't romantically interested in their companions, others just followed their hearts' desires without committing to one friend in particular, and a few of us felt that need after some time. I wanted to be hers and hers only and Kleanthis expressed her desire to make an oath to Aphrodite to be mine. The celebration of our promise and oath took place at the temple. Sappho herself recited a sacred blessing and we wore flower crowns. The girls played the lyre and sang songs for us to evoke the favour of the goddess on our union and I found myself wondering if the sparkle of joy I felt inside was what nana meant when talking about weddings. Is that how a bride feel on her wedding day? Kleanthis and I performed together for several moons, our voices and grace enchanting whoever stopped to listen. I heard that some students wrote poems about us: apparently, our loving communion and chemistry inspired them. We were Muses, we were lovers. We made offerings to the goddess and bathed naked and free in the sea before running into each other arms ever again as if pulled by a godly force. We never once missed a rose-fingered dawn. Until that morning when Kleanthis wasn't there. An uncomfortable tingle spread through my body as I start searching her. I looked everywhere, asked around but I couldn't find her anywhere. That night I went to sleep praying she would come find me, casting away the anguish tightening my chest. She didn't but I found her the morning after at the beach. I went there at dawn and there she was. She was looking out into the horizon, standing at the water's edge. She didn't see me as she was giving me her shoulders. I called her name. When she turned, I knew she had cried: her dark eyes were puffed and red. In her hands she was holding a note. Unable to see her suffering like that, I run towards her and cupped her face, begging her to tell what sorrow crossed her path. Bad news from the family? A vicious threat? "Speak to me, my love", I whispered, peppering her cheeks and forehead with kisses. When she spoke, her melodious voice cracking under her grief, I went pale. "Your father wrote. He found you a husband. You'll leave before the next moon" I vividly remember feeling a pain so intense as if a dagger pierced my chest. No, it can't be. Say it's not true. Laugh, Kleanthis, don't cry. You love teasing me and make fun of how easily I believe your witty jokes. You loved it, at least. Stop it now and laugh. Your sweet laughter that made my knees weak and filled my hear with the sweetest affection. Laugh, Kleanthis, I beg you, laugh and tell me it was a bad joke! But Kleanthis didn't laugh, she fell to her knees and hugged my waist. She cried, wetting my tunic with her tears. None of us paid attention to the rose-fingered dawn that morning. I demanded a private meeting with Sappho and asked her to help me. Desperate, I begged her on my knees to let me stay: I didn't want to sail back to Athens, Lesbos was my home now. I was an excellent student, I could have studied more and become a teacher or a priestess. Just like Kleanthis. There must be a way I can stay, I suggested. My teacher frowned. It wasn't that easy, she couldn't go against the will of my family and so couldn't I. The wedding had already been agreed and scheduled. My mind raced back to all her teachings about how love is the most important thing in this world and the love for other girls was equal to the love for a man. I believed her words, we all did and they set us free. Why now her hands were suddenly tied? "So what is this? Was it all...a fraud?" I heard myself asking, following my train of thoughts. No, it wasn't, it isn't, she said. But we weren't supposed to spend our whole life at the thiasus. Only few were picked to become acolytes, the majority of the girls who came to Lesbos's shores were sent back to their family and their new marital lives when their time came. Tears of rage and grief formed at the corner of my eyes when I asked what about love? Wasn't it a reason valid enough to stay? She presided a cult of Aphrodite, she taught us so. True, but it was different for her, she winced. And what we learned on the island would have helped us in our adult lives as women, no longer girls. We had secured the blessing of the goddess and that was her will. "Then your Aphrodite is a tyrant mistress I no longer wish to serve" I exclaimed before storming off, tears rimming my cheeks. --------- I reminisce only fragments of the old hymns and odes we used to sing at the thiasus. Only a few are stuck indelibly in my mind and will be till the time I cross the gates of the underworld. I will always remember the one I whispered, my cheeks wet with tears, when I was sitting on the boat dragging me away from the island where my heart laid. I knew Kleanthis  was watching me sailing away from her against my will on the shore. So I sang, I sang for her, hoping that my voice, albeit cracked, could find her surfing the winds. I claim I've always been a loyal companion You must know that And I beseech you, be sure I will love you until my very last breath

[albinohare]

Back to basics: Offshore sailing by celestial navigation alone

Navigating by sun and star in the electronic age is a big challenge. Andy Schell describes a voyage of discovery

Star sights need a visible horizon, which you only get at dawn and dusk. Photo: 59 North

I have tattoos of a rooster and a pig on my feet. They’re meant to protect me from sinking. I have a nautical star on my forearm, so I can always find my way home. I wear red pants at boat shows and lectures. I have a passion for the traditions of the sea.

Celestial navigation tops them, with its blend of romantic art and practical science. Since I first read Bernard Moitessier’s book The Long Way, long before ever going offshore myself, I’ve wanted to cross an ocean using only sun and stars as my guide.

In the spring of 2017, sailing north from the BVIs to Bermuda with the ARC Europe fleet, we raised the stakes – we’d sail the route on our Swan 48 Isbjörn navigating entirely by celestial means. We wanted to see if we could do it.

Isbjörn carries electronic equipment, but the crew revelled in navigating by the stars. Photo: 59 North

I first learned celestial navigation ten years ago from John Kretschmer at a workshop he hosted at his home in Fort Lauderdale. John is the reason I pursued a career on the ocean. He’s well known to most sailors in America and made history in 1984 when he sailed a Contessa 32 called Gigi from New York to San Francisco the ‘wrong way’ round Cape Horn, an adventure that is immortalised in his book Cape Horn to Starboard. The very day that Gigi rounded the Horn, 25 January 1984, was the day I was born.

During the weekend workshop I got to practise taking morning sun sights on the beach with the old Freiberger sextant that John had used to navigate around the Horn on that famous voyage.

John described celestial navigation in romantic terms, explaining it in a way that made it as inspiring as it was understandable. Here was someone who spoke my language, the language of the great sailing romantics like Moitessier and Sterling Hayden. John made celestial bigger than just navigating for, after all, the likelihood of a modern day sailor actually needing celestial is effectively nil.

Article continues below…

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Time is everything

“Has the boat motion really settled down a lot or am I just feeling better?” Tom, one of our crew, asked on the second morning of the passage north from Tortola.

He and Cheryl had the watch and were at the helm while the crew was gathered in the cockpit for the day’s noon sight. I led the process while eating a bag of corn chips in an effort to stave off the early-passage mal de mer. Thane had the sextant and Mike was note-taker and timekeeper.

“Is it the 8th? What’s today?” asked Cheryl. “It’s the 7th today, isn’t it? Or no, it is the 8th,” I replied, not so confidently.

Isbjörn is a particularly well-travelled S&S Swan 48. Photo: Tim Wright

Normally on an ocean passage the days really don’t matter. Not so when you’re using celestial navigation. A four-second error on the time you took the sight equates to a one-mile mistake in determining the sun’s geographic position. Time is everything.

Isbjörn had departed Tortola with the ARC Europe fleet and we’d initially sailed west down Sir Francis Drake channel, rounding Jost van Dyke to starboard and pointing the bow for Bermuda. The boat galloped north at first, carrying the easterly trades on a rhythmic swell under hazy skies. Our dead-reckoning plot was easy to keep track of as Isbjörn beam-reached up the rhumb line, full sail flying, at eight knots.

At just shy of 1,000 miles, the passage to Bermuda is long enough to find your sea legs, but short enough to forego that 5 o’clock cocktail without regret. The Gosling’s Family Reserve in Bermuda is worth waiting for anyway.

Photo: Isbjörn Sailing

But the Trades faltered sooner than we all wanted them to. Through the winter in the Caribbean, Mia and I had got so accustomed to sailing in 20 knots of breeze with small sails that it felt rather odd when we first sailed into an area off the coast of northern Florida more affected by continental weather than the tradewinds and lost the breeze for the first time in months. A weak cold front passed overhead and suddenly Isbjörn was on port tack.

Secret GPS positions

We had to eliminate the nearly-impossible-to-avoid GPS inputs while still maintaining some semblance of safety. The old Garmin chartplotter’s GPS antenna had given up the ghost, so we didn’t have to worry about that, or the VHF, which was integrated to it.

We had an AIS app on the iPad that allowed us to see targets around us and their CPAs, streamed wirelessly from the built-in Vesper XB8000 transceiver, but that would hide our own position. We had a paper passage chart, bound copies of the Nautical Almanac and the Sight Reduction Tables for Air Navigation.

Mia would keep a secret GPS record in a separate logbook in case of emergency. Ironically, friends and family following the rally from afar would know our position more accurately than we would through our YB tracker.

Thane had signed up for the passage in spite of the celestial navigation part of it, not because of it. He was an experienced offshore sailor, having sailed across the Atlantic westabout, double-handed with his wife, Brenda, on their Bavaria 37.

“Holy smokes, this is so cool!” he exclaimed the first time he managed to grab an evening twilight star sight.

Getting a reliable sight from the sun is tricky when it’s hazy or overcast. Photo: 59 North

The sun had only just sunk beneath the horizon to port. The western sky was painted an array of pinks, yellows and oranges, while overhead blue faded to black as night approached to starboard. If you looked hard enough, you could just make out the evening’s first stars. We were in that ethereal slice in time photographers call the magic hour and navigators call civil twilight.

Thane had used the ‘no scope, two eyes open’ approach on that first star sight that Moitessier had used on Joshua. ‘I felt that I was becoming an expert in taking star sights since I discovered that it can be done without the telescope, keeping both eyes open,’ Bernard Moitessier wrote in his book Cape Horn: The Logical Route.

‘In this way, a star can be brought down to the horizon because the latter can be seen quite clearly with both eyes open. It is impossible to do this properly while looking through the telescope where the horizon always looks hopelessly blurred. In my innocence, I thought I was the first to discover this method…’

During our one-day crash course in Tortola, I’d described to the crew this method in theory. With one sight that evening, on the rolling deck of a boat at sea where the accuracy of his sight had real-life consequences, Thane had instantly and enthusiastically bridged the gap to celestial in practice, experiencing the same joy of discovery that Moitessier had uncovered and written about some 50 years earlier. ‘Even the best navigators are not quite sure where they’re going until they get there, and then they’re still not sure!’

Sextant sights provide the raw data – you then have to try to work out where you are. Photo: 59 North

Breadcrumbs in the wood

Traditionally, navigation was about keeping a detailed record of where you’d been in order to plot a course to where you’d like to go. Hansel and Gretel knew how to navigate – the breadcrumbs-in-the-forest trick was the fairytale version of dead reckoning.

Navigation was rooted in superstition. Never did a sailor tempt fate by arrogantly declaring they were sailing ‘to’ a faraway port; it was always ‘towards’. This thinking contained equal doses of humility and flexibility that the modern navigator ignores at their peril.

Teaching celestial navigation in a modern context, then, involves filtering fundamental concepts through a particular lens. Take latitude, for example. It’s derived by taking a north-south cross-section of the earth and extending lines from the centre outwards, like spokes on a bicycle wheel.

AIS app on an iPad provides information on other vessels. Photo: 59 North

Where those spokes intersect the surface of the earth creates a given line of latitude, which is drawn on the earth’s surface around the world horizontally. The degrees between lines of latitude on the surface are actually the angle between those bicycle spokes.

Nautical miles on the surface of the earth, then, correspond to those angles. Everyone knows that one minute of latitude is equal to one nautical mile, and that 60 of these make one degree of latitude. But have you ever stopped to think how far a nautical mile is on the moon? Or on Jupiter?

A nautical mile on another planet is still derived in exactly the same way, but it’s the body’s circumference that determines the actual geographic distance of it on the surface of that body. A statute, or land mile, is contrived. A nautical mile is an elegant expression of geometry.

Dive a little deeper. The distance on the surface of the earth from 0° to 231⁄2° North, for example, is 60×23.5 or 1,410 nautical miles. It’s also 1,410 nautical miles from the moon’s equator to 231⁄2° north on the moon, but the distance as measured in feet or metres is much shorter because the moon isn’t nearly as big.

That 23 1⁄2° North, by the way, is the Tropic of Cancer. The Tropic of Capricorn, conversely, lies at 23 1⁄2° South. Those aren’t just made-up boundaries: the geographic tropics are de fined naturally by the limits of the movement north and south of the sun’s declination throughout the year as it traces a sine curve from season to season, due to the tilt of the earth.

The other half of the sun’s geographic position (GP) – longitude, or Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA) in celestial parlance – is directly convertible with time and changes by the second. The sun’s GP travels westabout through 360°, right around the earth, in 24 hours, or 15° per hour.

Logically, then, I can predict the sun’s GHA in my head if I know the time in Greenwich, 1400 UT, for example, would put the sun about 030°. GHA, unlike longitude, is measured through 360°; the sun can never travel east, after all.

In simplified terms, when we take a sextant altitude of the sun we’re creating a right angle triangle between it, the earth’s surface at the GP, and ourselves. Grade school geometry tells us that the two angles in a right-angled triangle must equal 90°.

Celestial navigation is very much a team effort – one crew member takes a noonsight while another notes the figures

So, the complement to the altitude projects an angle from the sun onto the surface of the earth which, just like in the latitude example above, can be converted to nautical miles. After accounting for the sun’s declination north or south, depending on the season, this is precisely how we get our latitude from a noon sight.

A single sextant sight produces a giant circle of position, with the complement to our sextant altitude describing the radius of the circle, the GP at its centre. If we had a large enough chart, and an accurate way to take a compass bearing towards the GP, you could plot this using the simplest of fixes, bearing and range, to pinpoint a position on that circle. Alas, we have neither.

So, in a nutshell, modern celestial using the Sight Reduction Tables for Air Navigation (Pub. 249 in the US), allows us to compare the sextant reading from our unknown location at a known moment in time, with a sextant reading from a known location that’s somewhere in our neck of the woods, called the ‘assumed position’, and plot the difference on a chart, producing a single line of position that just so happens to be a tangent to that larger circle of position… Deep breath!

In reality, none of this is important to the modern GPS navigator. But – and here’s why I love teaching celestial navigation so much – these Eureka moments about geography and geometry and the basic understanding the fundamentals of celestial makes everyone a better navigator, whether you actually ever pickup a sextant or not.

The ocean felt deserted. There were no other boats to be seen, and no more flying fish. No dolphins. Nothing but the routine.

I don’t stand a watch on our Isbjörn passages, instead maintaining a more traditional captain’s role, overseeing the big picture and forever on-call should the crew need me on deck. Again, I’m modelling Moitessier.

He wrote once that when the weather is nice and things are going well, the captain can sleep for 36 hours if he wants. On the other hand, when the weather is bad, and stress high, the captain must remain at the helm indefinitely.

When things are good, I’ll often take half of Mia’s nighttime watch. There’s something about being alone in the cockpit at night. It’s precisely why I go ocean sailing.

Sunrise and moonset

I relieved Mia pre-dawn at 0400 and settled in for my two hours outside while the crew slept. Firmly into the mid-latitudes, and after another clearing frontal passage, the sky had lost all its Caribbean moisture and haze, replaced by a clarity in the air rarely seen ashore.

The glimmer in the east came early that morning. In opposition, the full moon casually and simultaneously sank lower on the horizon. I couldn’t decide where to focus my attention; I wanted to witness that first glimpse of the sun piercing the eastern horizon, but didn’t want to miss Mr Moon dipping ever lower in the west.

Isbjörn sailed on a northerly zephyr and an oily sea, forcing me to concentrate on the helm in order to maintain her momentum, but distracting me from that beautiful sunrise and moonset. It was very fine light-air sailing, but there were troubles with celestial. Where were we?

We’d forgotten to account for the apparent altitude when taking the noon sight the day before, a correction to the sextant angle that’s applied to account for the refraction of the sun’s ray’s in the atmosphere. The log read 581 miles sailed since leaving Tortola when I wrote in the logbook on the morning of 10 May, our fourth day at sea. It had been overcast the day before, so difficult to take any sun sights, and the ones we did get were off.

Photo: Isbjörn Sailing

To boot, we’d gone 12 hours overnight, sailing well east of the rhumb line, close-hauled on a light northerly, which didn’t allow us to lay the course.

Non-sailors assume celestial is about navigating by the stars, at night. It’s not, of course – star sights do the job, but you need a visible horizon, which only happens at dusk and dawn. So it’s down to Mr Sun, who guides you most of the way, and on cloudy days Mr Sun is hard to find. You’re always sailing blind at night.

No matter. At 0300 on the morning of 12 May, just before the dawn of our sixth day at sea, Gibb’s Hill Light on the south-west corner of Bermuda hove into view right where we expected it to. The log read 838 miles sailed.

Accurate enough

Celestial navigation had gotten Isbjörn to Bermuda, legitimately, and with a crew of amateur sailors, two of whom had only just learned the methods literally the day before departure. I’d always wondered if we could do it, and now I know.

It’s certainly not a practical, efficient means, by anyone’s reckoning. They say that ‘close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades’. And in celestial navigation.

Andy’s tattoos reflect his love of nautical tradition

The interesting part is that, without a GPS, we never really knew how accurate our sights were, and we still don’t. In the end Gibb’s Hill Light appeared where we expected it to. Our sextant sights, DR plots and LOP reductions were accurate enough to get us there successfully.

Nobody cared whether our individual LOPs throughout the trip were within two miles of our GPS position or ten, and the crew enjoyed stargazing at night, quickly forgetting the chartplotter gazing we’re all so used to.

Not unlike Heisenberg’s famous principle, perhaps the most profound irony of modern navigation is that the closer we get to perfect GPS accuracy, the farther we get from ever knowing where we truly are.

About the author

Andy Schell and his wife, Mia Karlsson, sail 10,000 miles per year on their S&S Swan 48 Isbjörn, taking paying crew on ocean passages in the Atlantic, Arctic and worldwide. Andy also hosts the On the Wind sailing podcast on his website (59-north.com) featuring interviews with well-known sailors from around the world.

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