#you literally made them parallels now watch us explore those parallels in bed

[olympiansally]

Why even make men enemies if not to turn them into lovers?

[whump-town]

Was Hotch Abused?

I offer you my 2,300+ worded thoughts on the matter with episodes included. There's going to be lots and lots of talk about abuse so you're going to want to steer clear of that if that's something you're not cool with but for those of you interested... I give you all the proof I could think of:

Natural Born Killer.

In the eighth episode of the first season, “Natural Born Killer”, we meet Vincent Perrotta. His father was abusive but from the outside looking in, no one knew a thing. Perrotta started drinking at fourteen and committed petty crimes, as well as assault, for pleasure. Going as far as to kill his own father not too long after. But Perrotta is a monster and a psychopath so it’s clear we’re not supposed to sympathize which makes his interaction with Hotch so peculiar.

Hotch is our “Captain America”. A true neutral with an infinity for doing what’s right so it’s inconceivable to compare him to Perrotta and yet Hotch gives us some rather conflicting lines to dissect.

Before Gideon hands the interview over to Hotch, he spends a moment talking with the others out in the bullpen. The whole time he’s leaned back and he’s watching Morgan and Hotch. Now, at this point, we don’t know about the sexual abuse Derek Morgan faced at the hands of Carl Buford but there’s something about the way that Gideon spends the entirety of the conversation only looking at the two of them. Waiting for them to put together what he clearly already has and when Hotch does…

Hotch jumps straight into Perrotta’s profile, asking: “You grew up in a house that looked normal and happy, didn’t you Vincent?”, “But your father beat you every chance he got”

Perrotta excuses it with a shrug, “he smacked me around some, didn’t everybody’s old man?”

Abuse is a complicated thing and, often, abused children just don’t know what their parents are doing to them is abuse. It can be a subtle and outright thing but there’s an element of normalcy to it. The parent’s abuse is as habitual, as minimal as biting your nails to the child. Adults often can’t identify their parent’s past abuse.

With Hotch you learn that his lack of expression is often as telling as his expressions and as Hotch looks back at Perrotta, there’s something so sad about his eyes. His voice goes from loud, assertive to his whispered answer to Perrotta’s question. “No.” As if, well, maybe that’s a question he’d raised once too.

Perrotta doesn’t care about that though and he taunts “well, maybe if yours had you would have learned to fight”. But is it not more telling that Hotch didn’t make a sound? Perrotta got in several hits and the only sound Hotch made was when the wind was literally punched out of him. Not even when Gideon called to him and at that point, Perrotta did not the garrote around Hotch’s throat. That’s another thing mentioned before in the profile and something Hotch mentions to Perrotta directly. You learn to take the beatings, smile even. So, it’s just a little odd how little Hotch responded…

But that’s all nothing, you can take that how you want

Which leads us to the fateful, not everyone comment.

"You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive and violent household... it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers"

That can’t mean NOTHING, there’s so much there but there’s something about Hotch’s subtle wording. The way he’s unconsciously slipped himself in there (a very real thing that people do) and he hasn’t even realized it. Doesn’t even know he’s done it until Perrotta pushes and he pauses, asks what Perrotta means. And the subtly of it, the way he doesn’t even mean to that says more than anything else.

“And some people grow up to catch them.”

It’s a super-specific comment to make. He can’t possibly be talking about Derek because he doesn’t even know about Carl Buford yet not to mention saying that about him would be incredibly rude if he were talking about Reid (and again, he doesn’t know about Reid’s childhood yet). So… that really only leaves him because JJ, Garcia, and Elle were not abused.

“P911”

In season two, episode two “P911” the team is hunting down a man trying to sell a young boy, Peter, on the black market. Kevin Rose is an underage boy “selling” himself on the internet while his abusive father has been in prison. I’ll let you just guess who it is that leads the team on finding out more about Kevin.

Your guess is more than likely right-- Morgan and Hotch. Now, we know about Morgan but come on. Nothing to say about it being Hotch who makes the emotional appeal?

The camera even follows his gaze, he’s crouched down (to appear non-threatening because he’s so close) and we watch his eyes take in the scars on Kevin’s chest. You can also note that while Gideon remarks that Kevin’s father was “always drunk, you never knew why he was hurting you, why he was so angry” both Kevin and Hotch look away from him.

AND FUCKING TRY AND TELL ME THE “some grow up to catch them” LINE WAS NOTHING TRY BECAUSE GUESS WHAT GIDEON SAYS? NO, NO GUESS--

Gideon: “At night you’d cry yourself to sleep hoping someone would come and save you”

And it’s HOTCH, HOTCH IS THE ONE TO SAY: “You have the chance to be the one who saves someone, Kevin. You can be the one who answers him, the one who stops his pain.”

PARALLELS PEOPLE THE PARALLELS

“Profiler, Profiled”

I bet you weren’t expecting this one, huh? But there’s something about people who faced trauma that makes it so perceptible to other traumatized people-- they sniff it out like coke to a drug hound. And, just guess, who it is that spends the majority of his time fighting with Morgan? Who knows (like I said about the bloodhound) immediately there is something Morgan’s hiding.

Hotch is angry, he’s upset that Morgan would hide anything. Mumbling about there being “larger implications” and how the team can’t have secrets. With the knowledge of exactly what that secret is it makes Gideon’s eye roll a little telling. Because it’s like they both know but neither will say. Driven home by Gideon turning the attention to Hotch, asking “would you want us profiling you?”

And again Hotch is the one to leap onto the abuse. The one to put the pieces together. Hotch’s anger makes no sense. He says he’s angry that Derek’s keeping a secret but the team has many, way too many. Over the years the team unwraps all kinds of secrets, he’s never angry then. So, it’s not about the implication of a secret at all. It’s what the secret is, like misplaced anger. Anger with himself may be leftover from his own abuse. But still…

Hotch lets Morgan escape. Knows exactly who and what Carl Buford is but all he tells the team is that “he won’t even speak about him”. He always knows how to find the abuse… like I said, a bloodhound.

George Foyet

I know you’re going to find this so fucking surprising but guess who also was abused? George Foyet was beaten by his biological father and his mother didn’t save him so he hates women (bleh, men are disgusting what’s knew).

Now, blah, blah, blah Hannah, I know you’re not about to say Foyet and Hotch are a lot alike-- no of course not. Don’t be silly. What I’m going to say is that they’re foil characters? They accent one another in an opposites sort of way. Foyet is a manipulative narcissist who doesn’t work well with others. Hotch is a guilt-ridden team leader who can’t let The Reaper’s case go. There are meant to be comparisons drawn between them. A good villain does that. George Foyet shows us that Hotch is not at all this removed, cool guy that we’ve previously assumed him to be. He cries in an alley because he blames himself when The Reaper kills a busload of people.

We see he has a rather compulsive nature. He never let The Reaper case go and has very personal ties in this case. Not even after Foyet attacks him, if anything it’s worse. He brings the case file home.

But it’s certainly interesting to see yet another “villain” with that same tragic abusive father and submissive mother come into play with Hotch. We’re nearing a point where it’s getting hard to call it coincidence (and according to David Rossi, there simply is not such thing).

Haunted.

In the second episode of the fifth season, “Haunted”, Hotch voice’s over a Dickinson quote: “One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing. Material place.” These quotes are often cheesy, if not a little cliché, but given the premise of this episode is in exploring the ways in which a man’s traumatic childhood has left him now grappling for a truth he can not define… well, maybe we can say the writers were onto something here.

Darrin Call, debatably the Unsub of “Haunted”, was abused by an alcoholic father. We see several signs of it throughout the episode-- Darrin’s delayed speech & severe neglect that leaves Darrin in dirty, hole-riddled clothing. If what we see is not enough, the reports that the team is given on Darrin explicitly state that he was extremely physically abused. It is this abuse that leads to the PTSD that he’s diagnosed with.

As sad and disheartening as Darrin Call’s life is, overall it’s the sort of episode that is forgotten over time. When it’s placed right after the episode that viewers have to watch Hotch say goodbye to Haley and Jack then, who is Darrin Call when compared to the agony of watching Hotch show genuine weakness? After watching Hotch lay in a hospital bed, tears in his eyes wondering if his son will remember him? His fears become our own and after watching George Foyet disarm and mutilate the one guy we’ve been led to believe for five seasons is infallibly, unflinchingly never going to break… well, Darrin Call has it bad but our focus is elsewhere.

It’s on Hotch, right?

The guy who is coming back to the job after only a month (and a day) off to recover. Who Morgan worries might have PTSD but he knows they can’t easily measure because Hotch wrote the questionnaire, he knows all the right answers. Who we see has had new locks installed since the attack and has Foyet’s file sitting open on a table for easy access. Who hears Darrin Call’s life (worked the same job without promotion for years before getting fired, no wife, no kids, a hermit) and bluntly asks why Darrin hasn’t just killed himself.

And let’s just take a moment to break down that comment. Hotch, who in the episode previously lost his wife and child, wants to know why a man who is steadily starting to sound a lot like him hasn’t just killed himself.

And I don’t say “sounds a lot like him” lightly.

Darrin Call has PTSD. Hotch, more than likely, has PTSD

Here are some signs just from that episode: hostility (he yelled at Garcia over something very small), self-destructive behavior (he ran into Darrin Call’s father’s house without a vest, back-up, or telling the other’s what he was doing), and guilt (blamed himself for missing the eye twitching Darrin exhibited because of his years of antipsychotic use)

Darrin Call was abused… this marks the second HEAVILY implied time that Hotch has been compared to another man abused by his father

Vincent Perrotta was the first with that hard to forget the exchange

George Foyet and his notably exactly the same past as Perrotta

“Haunted” feels like it’s supposed to prove to the audience that Hotch is losing it. He distances himself from Morgan, leaving every room that Morgan is in. He doesn’t pick up Garcia’s calls after Darrin Call attacks his therapist. The only glimpse we see of the old Hotch is with Emily, pulled to the side, but his guilt burns and he even brushes her off. Shaking his head and turning his back to her because somehow he should have seen something no one else did.

Throw in Reid’s comment about Call “victims are often drawn to the scene of their first trauma” and we’re painfully reminded of Hotch’s apartment. A place you’d think he’d want to escape but didn’t. The man was stabbed nine times in his own apartment and stayed in that same place. Almost sounds like that statement could be applied to Hotch too.

A dash of Hotch’s own comment about where Call would go to in his confusion and he says “to what he knows”, even the importance of how that orphanage is “where he became Darrin Call”. Where does Hotch go? What does Hotch know? The job.

So… we tally now three total Unsubs that Hotch has this direct relationship with. Three Unsubs with abusive fathers and mothers who couldn’t protect them. Hmm… coincidence?

Brothers Hotchner

Supervisor Special Agent Hotchner is a master of hiding, that is undeniable. It’s hard to see anything behind those furrowed brows and impersonal suits and that’s likely for a reason. However, anyone with a little sibling can tell you that no one on this Earth can and will annoy the ever-loving shit out of you like a sibling.

But that’s not really important. Sean and Hotch don’t talk about their parents. At all. Ever.

Hotch says that when Sean was in the first grade he got sent off to boarding school. “I was the screw-up making bad choices”. Interesting enough of a statement to make but you throw in the rough ages of Sean and Hotch at that time and it’s a little more than just “interesting”. You have Hotch at roughly 14-15 getting into trouble just like Morgan did at that same age (coincidence???).

(now you can certainly look at Hotch’s parentification vs. Sean’s immaturity doubled with substance abuse problems but we’d be stretching. “The Tribe” touches on the parentification but Sean just calls it “the big brother” thing and tells Hotch that he’s not Sean’s father and it’s fine it’s whatever. Hotch is a bit pushy. That’s not new. Substance abuse can just be a problem, it doesn’t have to be bc they were abused but again… a little coincidental)

So... was Aaron Hotchner abused as a child? I certainly think so

[adorablele]

@riothae ♡ to my darling table leg 💞 this is to push the doyoung dream boy agenda. and also i’m sorry for not releasing this on your birthday, please accept this belated birthday gift.

☍ pairing; kim doyoung x reader ☍ genre; fluff, romance, a little bit of angst but mostly fluffy // apocalypse!au, zombie apocalypse!au, strangers to lovers!au, soulmate!au, parallel world!au ☍ word count; 4, 210  ☍ summary; you have your very own dream boy, a literal man of your dreams and he goes by the name of Kim Doyoung ☍ a/n;  don’t be fooled by the beginning, 99.9% of this is just dialogue. also I tried my very best to avoid using the word zombies to describe the people who were affected by the virus because...yeah it has something to do with the characters mindset but i didn’t get to explore that because I wanted to focus on the romance lmao ANYWAYS PLEASE ENJOY AND FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS APPRECIATED since this is my first ever apocalypse!au and longest fic (in general and for doyoung)

trigger warning(s); mentions of weapons, use of weapons (doyoung uses a machete, mc also uses a weapon to kill the zombies), mention of blood 

This has got to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. 

“Hey!” you screamed, banging together two pots. 

The growling behind you started to multiply. 

You smirked, continuing to clash up more noise, “C’mere!” 

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw two rotted figures make their way towards you. The adrenaline in your veins pushed your legs to move faster. You heard the growling behind you grow louder, more shuffling of feet syncopated between your own. Out of either confidence or pure insanity―quite possibly both―you turned around to admire the hoard of creatures that you managed to gather.   

Disgust swirled in your stomach. They were ugly with skin so pale that you could see the infected black veins running through their body. They snapped at you with rotted teeth, blistered lips and blood-shot eyes. 

You laughed. “You’re so slow.”

Those vicious, viscera eating monsters didn’t seem to like your taunt. With inhumane twists of their bodies, they started to sprint towards you. This was, without a doubt, the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Still, you shouted at them and banged your pots. Your pace was already outmatched by theirs, but it didn’t help that you were walking backwards. 

“Just a little closer, I know you can do it!” you cheered. 

By now, more monsters have noticed the ruckus that you’ve caused and they decided they wanted to join in on the fun. That’s when you decided to continue running. You could hear their growls growing closer and closer. For a split second, there was a single drop of fear that touched your spine, or rather, a finger. Acting on instinct, you slammed the pan into the head of the intruder. 

You were done for. They were catching up to you. 

And yet, you kept running, faster than you’ve ever ran. Despite the fact that any one of the, probably, hundreds of virus-infected bodies were one step away from tearing you limb from limb, you laughed. 

This was it. This was the end. 

This was where you die.

The maniacal smirk on your face never ceased. You didn’t know how long you’d be able to run for, but you kept going. At least, you tried to until you were suddenly slammed by a body quite larger than your own. The wind was knocked out of your lungs, the buildings behind you a blur until you were pulled into an abandoned convenience store. 

“Are you insane?” the stranger scowled. 

One second, two, three before you gathered up your wits. 

“Let go of me,” you shouted, pushing off the stranger, “and yeah, I am.”

You aimed your gun at the stranger who held his arms up in surrender. 

“A thank you would be nice,” he frowned. 

The tall man was dressed in tattered jeans and a fitted black t-shirt. Around his wrists were newspapers bound by masking tape. He was covered in blood, dirt and grime; chapped lips and sharp eyes; black hair nestled messily on top of his head. Aside from all the cuts and bruises, you would deem him handsome. Although, that’s not of importance right now. 

“What would I be thanking you for?” 

“For saving you,” he replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“I didn’t need saving.”

He scoffed, “You were about to die.” 

“I’m already dead,” you muttered, “we all are.”

The stranger raised his brows, “Is that so?”

“There’s nothing to live for,” you replied.

He stared you in the eyes. “Then go back out there. Go say hello to your fanclub.”

A brief staredown occurred, his gaze challenging your own. Both of you knew that you wouldn’t walk back out there. At that moment, you wanted to see how close you could get to Death, but when it really came down to it, you didn’t want to die, not to those things anyways, and―as much as you’d like to say otherwise―most definitely not now.  You were on the brink of insanity, yes, but you weren’t completely diving in head first. You also knew that deep-down, you’re relieved that he saved you. 

And he knew that too. 

“Don’t move!” you shouted when he started to lower his arms.

He paused and looked over to the counter, “I’m just reaching for the candy.”

You eyed the counter where a bag of food laid and followed his movements closely as he reached for the opened bag of gummy bears on the counter.

“You’re human, just like me. We’re not like those...beasts out there, but if you really want to become like them, then go ahead.” He reached for the backpack lying on the floor by the counter and slung it over his back, “I already tried saving you once, though your actions aren’t in my controls.” 

He opened the back door of the grocery store and left. 

Your shoulders finally relaxed. You lowered your gun, then glanced out the window at the horde of monsters that roamed around aimlessly looking for the meal that had escaped them. Those soulless creatures were easy to read, easy to know what their intentions were. You turned back to the door where the stranger walked through. Who knows what his intentions were?

Yet, you decided to follow him.

For a block or two you followed him, watching as he slashed through the creatures with his machete. Occasionally, you too, killed the monsters that made their way towards you. Eventually, he entered a building and climbed all the way to the roof. 

You found him sitting at the edge, feet dangling as he stared ahead. His weapon lay next to him and his previous bag of opened gummy bears sat in his hand. You joined him by the edge, and this might be even stupider than attracting a mob of bloodthirsty fiends. 

Rather than shoving you off, he offered you some gummy bears which you accepted. He didn’t turn to look at you once. In silence, the two of you observed the abandoned city in front of you. Rubbled buildings weakly stood, streets filled with crashed cars, various monsters (who were once human) lingered on the sidewalks. The prettiest of all the ruins was the sky. A toxic mix of orange hues. Shapes of clouds filled the sky, providing no rain and no shade. The Sun was half over the horizon. It sent out constant waves of warmth. 

“I’m Doyoung,” he whispered, as if it were sacred to share his name. He turned to you, eyes vulnerable, a soft brown like the fresh soil used to plant a flower, “Kim Doyoung.”

You gasped out your name as you woke up. 

You sat up in your bed, dazed from the dream. Or, was it a dream? Panic slowly tickled your spine and you immediately turned on the news, phone dialing with numbers of your loved ones. 

After constant reassurances from your friends and family, you slumped on the couch. It was all just a dream. It was just a dream! You shook your head and went to wash your face in the bathroom. It was just a dream. A dream that you vividly remember. 

A dream with Kim Doyoung.

-

For the next few months―each month―you had one overly vivid dream that included Kim Doyoung and the apocalyptic, orange skied world. It mostly consisted of the two of you running around in empty fields, abandoned cities and hacking away at monsters. In many ways, it was you and Doyoung against the world. 

“Any updates on dream boy?” Kara, your best friend, smiled, sitting at the bar-counter of the diner you worked at. 

You placed her usual order of coffee in front of her. “You’re still calling him that?”

“Well, isn’t he?” she shrugged.

“Yeah…”

She smiled, “Any updates?”

Your heart thumped slightly at the question, the memory of the dream you had this morning resurfacing. 

The squelch of flesh echoed against the walls of the room as you and Doyoung explored the bakery. 

“Believe it or not, I was a baker,” he shared, slashing at a crazed waitress

“A baker?” you asked, raising your brows, quickly opening the door to the kitchen area. Running towards you was a murderous customer who, you assumed, didn’t receive the food they wanted. After taking care of the virused creature, you frowned at the disemboweled chef on the floor, “Should we bake in this kitchen?” 

“Do you want to?”

“Not with this on the floor,” you mumbled with a pout, “I thought we finally found a place!”

He shrugged, “Let’s just move the body.”

Together, the two of you, while trying not to gag, dragged away all the dead bodies in the kitchen and tossed them out. After another check around the bakery, the two of you barricaded the windows and doors, also checking through them to make sure no more rotted mouths were running towards you. 

Once all safety precautions were taken care of, Doyoung took out a container of sanitary wipes.

You snorted, “Are you really going to clean?”

“I told you, I was a baker, and in order to cook or bake, you need a clean area.”

You didn’t say anything, only smiling in amusement as he started to wipe the counter. 

“Aren’t you going to help me?” he asked.

Your smile turned upside down as you saw the dusty counter, bloodied floors and molded dishes. “Do I have to?” 

Doyoung threw the container of sanitary wipes at you. You caught it with a grumble. After a good three hours, the kitchen was finally clean enough for Doyoung’s standards. 

“I can’t believe you wanted to clean on your birthday. We could’ve just grabbed one of the pastries or gotten a cake from another place,” you sighed. 

“Well, if we did that, then you wouldn’t make me a cake.”

“Aren’t you the baker?” You countered. 

“Yep!” he leaned against the counter, “but you’re the one who promised to make me a cake.”

“Fine,” you grumbled, dragging your feet as you made your way over to the pantry. 

Somehow, you managed to follow the recipe that you tore from a cookbook and not burn down the entire building. You grabbed the cake from the counter, “Let’s hope you enjoy this, Mr. I’m-a-baker-so-I’m-going-to-give-your-novice-attempt-at-a-cake-a-rating-out-of-ten.” 

“Just an FYI, I had my own bakery,” he proudly added.

“Showing off now, I see,” you chuckled, placing a one tier cake with a very messily and unnecessarily large ‘Happy Birthday Doyou’ written on it. “I ran out of space for your name,” you explained as you added a candle, “but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“2 points off,” Doyoung called out, “didn’t complete your decorations, y/n? Not good.”

“No mercy, huh?” you tsked, lighting up the candle, “not even one point for the effort?”

He shrugged. 

“Guess I’ll just have to impress you with my singing skills,” you sighed. 

Doyoung watched with amused eyes, “You can try.”

“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Arden- ” 

“Minus another two points.” 

Your jaw dropped, “What, I totally was hitting that high note!”

Doyoung shook his head, “First off, no. Secondly, who even is Arden.”

“Don’t know, maybe it was a classmate of mine whose birthday just happens to be today,” you shrugged. 

He raised a brow.

”Look, I just wanted to say a random name other than yours.” 

“Another point off.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Insulting the judge,” he shook his head, holding back a smile, “another point.”

“Doyoung!” you whined.

He laughed, “Okay, okay. I’ll give back two points if it tastes good.”

“Four if it blows you away,” you bargained.

“Deal.” 

Although you watched with a confident smile, your heart pumped nervously in your chest. You weren’t the best cook, nor baker, so you knew that there was a chance that the cake wouldn’t taste that good. And you were right. 

Doyoung’s face twisted into a sour expression. 

“It’s…”

“Just say it,” you sighed, “don’t hold back.”

“Horrible.”

You sighed and sat down next to him. You took a piece of the cake to taste. Upon the abomination you called a cake landed on your tastebuds, you realized that you deserved a final rating of -54325/10. 

“This tastes like…very salty sand,” you gagged, “did I forget the sugar or something?”

Doyoung got up from his seat and analyzed your ingredients. “My love, I think you did.” He then placed the bag of what you thought was sugar in front of you. 

“It’s salt?!”

Needless to say, Doyoung saved his own birthday cake by making one himself. You insisted that you should help which, reflecting back on it, you weren’t sure was a good idea or not. Multiple times, you got distracted by the way the dim lights of the kitchen seemed to highlight his face, or the way it felt too comfortable with his hand over yours when he would teach you how to do something. It left your stomach flipping, palms a little sweaty, and your heart ready to burst out of your chest. 

“And it’s done!” he smiled, finding the last flower decoration on the cake. 

It was clear who decorated what. 

All the orderly placed strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, along with the prettily swirled flowers and legible font were obviously Doyoung’s expertise whereas the little random patches of unevenly placed blueberries and poorly attempted flowers that ended up looking like dots were your humbly added touches. 

“Wait, I want to add one last thing,” you told him.

You took the piping bag full of royal icing from him and started to shakily draw on the corner of the cake. 

“Is that...a bunny?”

You bit the inside of your cheek as you concentrated, “Yep.”

“Why a bunny?”

“You look like a bunny when you smile,” you nonchalantly confessed.

Doyoung didn’t say anything.

“Alright!” you smiled, proud of the animal that you drew. You turned to Doyoung who you were surprised to see already looking at you. “Doyoung?”

He looked towards the cake and cleared his throat, “You uhm, you ready to sing?”

“I thought we were just going to eat it?” 

“Oh…”

“Well, I mean, unless you want to hear my amazing vocal-”

“Let’s just eat,” he grimaced.

You laughed, taking a knife and slicing a piece. You offered for him to take the first bite. 

“No, no, you taste it.”

“You’re the birthday boy,” you countered.

“And as the birthday boy, I want you to take the first bite.”

You frowned, “Pulled that one on me, huh?”

He only gave you the bunny smile that made your knees weak. 

“Fine,” you grumbled, taking a bite of the cake. It tasted a thousand times better than the cake that you made. “Oh my- This is really good! You need to try it.”

You didn’t get a chance to fully give Doyoung a piece of cake because he gently cupped your jaw, turning your chin to face him. 

“I think I’ll try it now.”

Before you could respond, he kissed you. It was quick, unexpected on both sides of the party. That didn’t stop him from kissing you a second time though. This time, it was less hesitant and a little longer. He pulled away, yet again. 

The two of you took time staring into each other’s eyes. His thumb rubbed against your cheek. 

“You’re absolutely breath-taking,” he confessed.

You smiled, “Doyoung…”

“Completely stunning,” he whispered, leaning closer. 

Your eyes started fluttering close as you muttered his name.

“Yeah?” 

“Kiss me.”

Kara’s smile widened, her eyes glinting with mischief, “Oooo someone did have a dream.”

Your face felt hot. 

“Someone had a dream?” Felix asked curiously. He took the seat next to Kara and placed a plate full of waffles in between the three of you. 

Kara stuffed a piece in her mouth, “Dream boy strikesh ahjain.”

“What?” you mused.

She swallowed her food. “I said, dream boy strikes again,” Kara smiled, “perhaps, a little something happened?”

“Maybe a little something.”

“Like…” Felix trailed off. 

“Like… a kiss.” 

“You kissed him?!” your friends both exclaimed. 

Luckily, at the early hour of 6 in the morning, the diner was always empty except for the three of you. You rolled your eyes. “So what, we kissed,” you shrugged, “it’s just a dream.”

“Y/N,” Felix sighed in an exasperated tone, “it’s not just any dream-”

“It’s a dream with your dream boy!” Kara finished. 

“He could be your soulmate!” Felix gasped, “What if he’s having dreams like this too!”

“C’mon,” you gave your best friend a look of disbelief, “he’s not even real.”

“You don’t know that,” Kara told you, “there are people out there named Kim Doyoung.”

Felix tilted his head and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “You know, his name does sound pretty familiar.”  

You shook your head, “You guys are crazy.”

They continued to converse about people named Doyoung and possible suitors for you which you ignored and, instead, focused on continuing to wipe down the counter. The door to the diner then jingled as a customer stepped in. 

“Welcome in!” you greeted, still not looking up from the counter. Not hearing a response from the customer, you looked up. The rag in your hand dropped onto the counter. At your reaction, your friends stopped talking. 

Doyoung.

The man dressed in all black that stood at the door, smiled slightly, “Hello.” 

You felt the eyes of your friends. 

Clearing your throat, you nodded, “Oh uh, hi. Sit where you want.”

He nodded before making his way towards a corner table. 

“Looks like someone likes-” Kara started, but you interrupted her. 

“It’s him,” you told them quietly. 

“He’s the man of your-” they both exclaimed.

“Shut up!” you hissed before they could finish their sentence. 

They both glanced over at the man looking out the window before turning back to you with wide grins.

“He’s the man of your dreams?” they both asked excitedly.

“You two are unbelievable,” you mumbled, taking a menu and walking over to the man.

“Here’s your menu. My name is y/n, I’ll be serving you today. Just let me know when you’re ready to order,” you smiled. 

When Doyoung, or the man that looked like Doyoung, heard your name, you could’ve sworn that his eyes widened slightly, but you shook off the thought and left when he mutely nodded his head at you. 

“It’s dream boy,” Kara immediately said once you returned back to the counter. 

You shook your head in disbelief, looking over at him before back to Kara. “No.”

“What do you mean no?” Felix quietly whispered.

“Just because it looks like him doesn’t mean it is him! He’s just a dream,” you nodded over at Doyoung, “that guy, he’s real.”

While you bickered quietly with your friends, Doyoung spared another glance your way. It was odd seeing you in normal clothing, ones that weren’t tattered or bloodied. You weren’t holding your usual weapon, and you most definitely weren’t bashing heads. Though, he couldn’t help but admire you in the same way he had in his dreams. 

“Completely stunning,” he mumbled. 

When you dropped the rag, he was sure that you recognized him; recognized him as the Kim Doyoung from NCT. When your friends kept whispering and looking back at him, he knew that, not only you, but also your friends knew who he was. Doyoung turned back to the menu.

He doubted you knew had the same dreams as him. He did feel a bit awkward considering the fact that he dreamt of kissing you without knowing that you were an actual person. Maybe he should leave? After all, he was hoping to come to this diner because it was relatively empty, and he just hoped that the people in here wouldn’t know him. 

He glanced once more over to the counter where your friends quickly turned their gaze away from him. 

“Guys, he’s looking over here,” you muttered, “you’re making him feel uncomfortable.”

“You’re right,” Felix mumbled, “we can’t destroy your chances at dating dream boy.”

Kara nodded, “Yes, we’ll leave.”

“What?” you exclaimed, a bit louder than intended. Lowering your voice, you sent a panicked glance at your friends who were packing up, “Where are you going?”

“Well, I have to go to work now,” Kara sighed loudly, slinging her bag over her shoulder, “I’m going to get going.”

Felix followed Kara’s lead and stood up, “Yeah, I have to go walk my cat.”

Before you could process that Felix doesn’t have a cat, they were out the door, leaving you alone, in the diner, at approximately 6:37 AM with a boy that―just this morning―you dreamt of kissing. Your face felt heated again. 

Shaking your head, you looked over at Doyoung who was analyzing the menu. 

For the first time, you could clearly see him. His hair matched the color of his black long-sleeve turtleneck that was tucked into some black jeans. No blood, no dirt, no machete, just him. Just him and the highlight of the Sun on his cheeks. That reminded you of the dream you had and you shook away the daze, turning your attention to the very interesting tile of the counter that looked like it needed some serious scrubbing (not really). 

“I’m ready to order,” Doyoung softly called out. 

You quickly walked over to him, jotted down his order, then ran away to hide in the kitchen. Your body worked on auto-pilot as you prepared his meal. With his drink and food in hand, you started to walk back towards his table. Doyoung was staring out the window and he was humming. 

As you got closer, you realized that you knew that song. 

“Do you remember what the stars looked like?”

In the middle of an empty grass field, you laid with Doyoung. Your head was rested on his chest, and you felt his voice vibrate throughout his chest. 

“Yeah,” you told him, “they look like your eyes.”

You could feel Doyoung roll his eyes, “I’m serious.”

“So am I!”

He chuckled and brushed his fingers through your hair. “Did you ever stare at the stars and see everything you wanted? Did you ever see your ambitions? Your achievements?”

“Getting deep here, aren’t we?”

Doyoung sat up, “Have you?”

You stared at him for a moment before turning to the endless orange sky. The Sun never seemed to move from its place over the horizon. 

“Yeah, I have.”

A pause of silence. 

“When I looked up at the stars, I saw my future. I saw the plans I had, the answers to my problems, I saw hope. However...” you smiled sadly at the orange hues, “they all went up in flames.”

Doyoung placed his hand on yours. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get that deep,” you crookedly smiled, but Doyoung only pulled you into a hug. And the two of you stayed like that for a while. 

“What did you see?” you asked when the two of you were back to laying on the floor. 

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Me on stage, singing.”

“Singing?”

He sighed, “Yep. It was nothing more than a hobby, but my grandmother would tell me that I was a singer in some other life. She told me that if I looked at the stars, they would show me.” 

You chuckled, “Kim Doyoung, a singer.”

“I’m sharing a heart-touching story and you’re laughing.”

“Sorry,” you gave his knuckle a kiss, “it’s my coping mechanism.”

He intertwined his hand with yours, “I’m just kidding, but is seeing me as a singer that funny?”

You shrugged, “A bit hard to believe.”

“Really?” he asked, sitting up, untangling your hands.

“A little,” you admitted. 

He stood up and lent you a hand. “C’mon.”

“Where are we going?” you asked, taking his offer. 

The two of you were back to traversing through empty fields and abandoned streets (fighting zombies along the way) until you stopped in front of a music store. Ripped posters hung from the window, a broken open sign dangled from the door, and a few savage creatures were lingering inside. Using the power of teamwork, you and Doyoung were finally able to do what you pleased.

“So why’d you bring me here?”

He sat a keyboard, “I’m going to play for you.”

“Doyoung, that’s going to attract a lot of noise,” you peeked through the boarded windows, “is this really a good idea?”

“Aren’t you five kills behind me?” Doyoung asked.

The competitive side of you perked at the mention of your kill counter. You were reminded of the little daily game that you and Doyoung decided to play. It was simply just to see who could kill the most virus-infected barbarians you could in a day. 

But, your smarter side still worried about safety. 

“I’ll sing you two lines,” he told you, “just two lines.”

“Fine,” you sighed.

“This is an original, by the way.”

“Wow, an original song,” you teased, “just for me.”

He winked, “Of course.”

“What’s it called?”

“Lost Souls,” you mumbled, “the song is called Lost Souls.”

“You’re actually my dream boy,” you blurted.

“What?” 

You awkwardly placed his food down on the table, along with his drink, “Uhm-”

Outside the window behind him, you could’ve sworn you saw the setting change and a creature run head first into the window. You gasped as Doyoung quickly turned towards the noise. “The apocalypse,” he mumbled. 

Slowly, the blue sky started to change. “Orange skies,” you announced.  

The tables were rusted, chairs torn, walls peeling. “Empty buildings,” he added. 

Doyoung turned to face you, the same warm eyes as in your dreams staring right into your own. A certain dream resurfaced. 

You looked at the familiar looking convenience store, “Is this the building where we met?”

Doyoung didn’t answer you, only saying, “I hope you like watermelon ring pops.”

“What?” you laughed, watching as he reappeared from between the aisles.

He stood in front of you, unwrapping the watermelon ring pop. He then bent down on one knee. 

“Just you and I?” he asked.

“Against the world.”

[howtosingit]

I haven't had a chance to fully dive into all the goodies last nights video has produced.. nor have I had a chance to read all your thoughts which you know I crave love . I was dumb and watched 3 911 episodes last night ignoring my ig notification that ronen had shared anything so then I had to go to bed bc of work and work has been crqzy. But anyways I just wanted to hear some of your thoughts and say Tarlos officially fried my brain and I really want to write in the spare time I don't have bc of work 🙈🙊 their soft smiles, kisses, possibly meeting the fam, their date (and let's be honest Carlos was hot as fuck sauntering up to the bar announcing he was tks boyfriend... you know someone got laid that night) sorry not sorry 🙈

Anyways hit me with your thoughts when you're free if you want ❤

LISTEN, LAUREN. I am always up to share my thoughts because they never end and they just keep coming and I have to unleash them somehow or I will definitely explode.

My brain was just like, ALL CAPS SCREAMING, for about 7 hours yesterday, so I’ll leave you to explore that hot mess on my blog if you want. 😅 But, in the time since, I’ve seen a lot of discourse and stuff about the moments that we’ve seen, so I’m going to use this ask as an opportunity to weigh in on everything under the cut...

FIRST, CAN I JUST SAY that at the moment that I am writing this post, we are still trending at #5 and we’ve been in the 4-7 range for at least the past, like, IDK, 18-20 hours maybe?! I LOVE THIS FANDOM AND HOW WE LOSE OUR SHIT AT THE SMALLEST THINGS

Okay, so let me go through this thing and comment on the parts, and then give some general thoughts below:

LOVE that this is a promo entirely about the LGBTQIA+ characters and characters of color. Not exactly surprised that they still tried to put as much Rob Lowe in it as possible (that’s Fox/the writers’ M.O. it seems - to squeeze Rob/Owen in whether he fits or not). Some of his comments were a little awkward, I thought (referring to Paul’s trans storyline as “stuff” makes me go 😬), but whatever. He’s not the point of all of this, so that’s the last I’m going to talk about him.

TOMMY VEGA. I AM READY TO STAN. I love Gina Torres, I already love how much heart and soul she is giving just in these quick peeks, I cannot wait to see her in action!

Also let me use this moment to say that while it’s obvious I’m not getting my Grace + Carlos friendship (that’s fine if it stays in fandom, I’ll live), I’m SO GLAD that her and Tommy are gonna be friends! One promo mentioned that Judd has known Tommy before, so it would not surprise me if they’ve been friends for awhile. LOVE THAT.

SPECULATION: This gives me a good time to just throw out a theory that I’ve been thinking about... We know Owen and Gwen are hosting Tommy at their place for a backyard dinner. I assume her husband may be there as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Judd and Grace are there too. 

I ALSO would not be surprised if this is when one of the nights at Carlos’s place happens, like a parallel of the two dinner parties. That at least keeps every main character involved in both locations. We shall see though.

So this gathering at the firehouse seems like it’s going to be a pretty big scene, probably for episode 1. I think everyone’s gathered so that Owen can announce he’s in remission (we’ll hear him tell TK first, which is the hug that they share earlier in the trailer, I think). 

But this gathering also includes a Tommy/Grace moment, a Tarlos moment, the others doing other things kind of moments. It’ll serve the same purpose as a lot of the season 1 bar scenes, and I’m so glad they’ve moved those to the firehouse. I want that place to really start feeling like a home this year. 

(I want all of the locations to feel a little more grounded and special, if I’m being honest. Like, I’m SO GLAD that Carlos’s place is going to be a key location this season.)

There are now two instances of Carlos being next to Gwen (standing next to her while Owen makes an announcement and now sitting next to her at the table), so we better get some dialogue between them or I WILL BE SO UPSET. I WANT GWEN TO STAN CARLOS AS MUCH AS I DO.

EVERYONE IS SO CUTE IN THIS SCENE OKAY

TARLOS TARLOS TARLOS TARLOS

Like, WTF is TK’s face in this moment?! He looks so shy and bashful but also so happy and mushy and soft and in love. And then the way that Carlos softens because of how soft TK look?!?! WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! WHY AM I CRYING.

Seriously, I have to know what they’re talking about though to make TK fucking melt like that. 

Emergency stuff blah blah blah

TARLOS KISS TARLOS KISS TARLOS KISS TARLOS KISS

IT’S SO FUCKING CASUAL AND PERFECT AND NATURAL AND LITERALLY JUST LIKE A “I came over to grab this food from you but since I’m here I might as well grab a kiss because I can’t help myself”

AND LIKE... Carlos just leans right into it?!?!?!? like it’s something that they do all the time?!?!?! WTF I LOVE THEM

Mateo watches this kiss and kind of looks like he was talking to Carlos, TK, or both of them, so I love that they’re like in the middle of conversation but still like “wait let me kiss my bf because he’s close by and so hot and I love him” SCREAMING

ALSO LET ME BE THIRSTY BUT CARLOS’S SHOULDERS AND BACK?!?!?! TK’S FUCKING ARMS?!?! I’M SO DAMN GAY

Speaking of arms: this rando bartender at the wrestling match (so Covid doesn’t last long on Lone Star, I’m assuming like 2 episodes maybe?) -- I love that they tried to put him in a tight shirt and make him look like a possible threat or something and I’m just like 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

IT’S LIKE THEY’VE NEVER SEEN CARLOS REYES BEFORE

AND THEN THE FUCKING GREEK GOD HIMSELF SAUNTERS UP WEARING A TIGHT FUCKING POLO - CHEST OUT, ARMS JACKED, HANDS IN HIS POCKETS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO HIS DICK AND I’M JUST SCREAMING AT THIS POINT

BOYFRIEND 

BOYFRIEND

BOYFRIEND

But, like, seriously, there is no comparison. Carlos is fucking Hercules over here and this no-name wannabe boyband member could be a sand-colored rock for all I care. 

YOU CANNOT COMPETE WITH CARLOS REYES, DON’T EVEN TRY IT

I do feel like these two clips (the calendar line and then Carlos’s line) are spliced together but they might not be back-to-back, and I would love to see how TK responds to the flirting before Carlos comes over

HIS FACE IS KILLING ME THOUGH WHEN CARLOS COMES UP

BLESS RONEN

I feel like I *think* I know what he’s thinking, but I also feel like I don’t. Certainly, the scene seems to end with them both smiling and happy, but I wonder if there will be a conversation about jealousy or something?! IDK BUT THEY’RE DEFINITELY GONNA TALK. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT THEY SAY.

Someone posted how happy TK is going to be to have a boyfriend who is committed enough to him to be jealous, unlike Alex who didn’t care and cheated on him. I certainly think this could be a great moment for them to establish what this new relationship means for them, and I’m excited to see what they writers have planned.

I JUST LOVE CARLOS REYES THOUGH OKAY I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

How many times is Fox gonna use that clip of him holding his gun though? We get it, he raises his gun. I’ve seen it like 7 times at this point. 

I’m not complaining, really. I’ll take his face where I can get it.

LOVING the Marjan clips

LOVING the Grace/Judd clips

LOVING the Paul clips

I LOVE ALL OF MY FAVES

CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THEM DEVELOP THIS YEAR

Hearing Rafa talk about using his voice and speaking for his community just slaughters my heart, I love this man so fucking much and I’m so happy to be discovering him at the start of his career because he is going to go on to do big things and make the world a better place with his positivity and light and love and I’m so excited to follow him on that journey I just love him okay

ALSO THE MAN LOOKS SO FUCKING GOOD WHAT ARE THOSE ARMS I WANT TO DIE

THE FARMER’S MARKET SCENE

Are they shopping for food for the dinner party they’re hosting?! Maybe!

WE MEET SOME OF CARLOS’S PEOPLE

There is so much speculation surrounding who these two people could be, and I’ve heard some super interesting theories about Carlos’s backstory.

I’m gonna be basic though and stick with the fact that I think they’re his parents.

AND IF THEY ARE HIS PARENTS, THEY SEEM SO HAPPY TO MEET TK.

His dad/the man, like, shakes TK’s hand with so much gusto, a giant smile on his face

And Carlos smiles as he hugs his mom/the woman, and she’s smiling too

THEY ALL JUST SEEM SO HAPPY

I CAN’T BELIEVE WE MIGHT ACTUALLY BE AVOIDING THE HOMOPHOBIC PARENTS STORYLINE COMPLETELY

Y’ALL DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW MUCH I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THAT TRAUMA

I mean, I don’t know for sure, we’re going to have to wait for the episode. But god, do I hope for it with every fiber of my being. I want their trauma, if they have to have it, to be separate from their sexuality. They’ve done so well with TK so far, I want the same for Carlos. Let the story be fresh, let it be different, LET US HAVE DIVERSE GAY STORYLINES.

Y’ALL THE TEAM HANGING OUT AT CARLOS’S PLACE

I CANNOT

I’LL NEVER BE OVER IT

HE’S PART OF THE CREW. HE’S PART OF THE FAMILY.

IT’S EVERYTHING THAT I COULD EVER WANT FOR HIM OKAY

I’M SO FUCKING HAPPY

THEY ARE SO HAPPY

WE ARE ALL SO HAPPY

I’M CRYING

I’M DEAD

LOL that was a lot but so was this promo.

Now, some somewhat sobering thoughts...

We all know season 1 had a real diversity and inclusion problem, we’ve seen the numbers. We also know that during the promotion for season 1, we ALSO got a diversity promo focusing on the LGBTQIA+ characters and the characters of color. I love that Fox wants to highlight the incredibly talented actors and characters that they have, but all of it means nothing if they are still tokens on the show. 

I have full faith that season 2 will be better, that some of the justified anger and frustration made it back to the writers and they internalized it and then make some real changes. However, because we did get a diversity promo last year, I have to remain a little cautious. This promo doesn’t really mean anything and if, somehow, season 2 goes the way season 1 did, it will be another instance of Fox using the characters of color to draw people in without actually giving them screentime and development. Which is a HUGE PROBLEM. So... I’m very excited and very hopeful, but also slightly wary.

Similarly, I’ve seen people say that they’re worried that, while there is so much Tarlos in this promo, this might be all the Tarlos we get this season. I don’t share the same concern, but like the diversity issue, I understand where that comes from. There was a lot of Tarlos in season 1′s promos and, as we now know, they got screentime in episodes 1-3 and then virtually nothing until episode 10. 

I kind of lost track of the filming schedule, but I think before they went on the holiday/extended hiatus, they filmed the first 5-6 episodes? Maybe? And we know that we’re getting 14 total this season, which means it’s possible that they haven’t even filmed half of them. 

I think the footage that we got in this promo is from, like, 3 or 4 episodes max. Definitely episodes 1 and 2, maybe 4, possibly 5. The crossover is episode 3 and I am still expecting to barely see Carlos in it - I just think it’s going to be very fire heavy one, especially with the members of the 118 coming in to steal screentime. He could be in one scene, maybe? Idk, I’m just not expecting a lot from that episode. 

And sure, we could get a lot of Tarlos at the beginning and then nothing for a whole string of episodes, but that also just doesn’t seem possible with the way they’ve restructured the relationship dynamics. Like, it really does seem like Carlos is going to be a part of the family this year, so I think it will be easier to include him and harder to delete him entirely. (Please let him at least appear in every single episode, I don’t want to be so fucking angry like last year.)

Also, if all of these scenes stay in the episodes, we are getting AT LEAST 4 Tarlos conversations - the firehouse, the wrestling match, the farmer’s market, the flirting by the truck - and other scenes of them being in the same space as part of a group. I’m sure there will be even more that we’re just not seeing. I’m very optimistic for this season and for the Tarlos content, and I really don’t think we’ll see the front-loaded imbalance that we saw last season. I think when they get back to filming the later episodes, there will be a good amount of Tarlos content in those, too!

I will say, though, that I am worried we’ve just seen the only kiss that they’ll share in the first 5 or so episodes. I’m just so used to network TV placing a limit on gay kisses, and Idk how much that has really changed in recent years. I truly love this kiss, and I hope there are more, but I would not be surprised if we end the season having only gotten like 2-3. (PLEASE LET ME BE WRONG.)

ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS UNTIL WE FIND OUT FOR SURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[likealittleheartbeat]

The Queer Platonic Love of Aang & Zuko

Friend. What a weighty and intimate word in Avatar The Last Airbender. The series’ “found family” is iconic at this point, and is literally established as a “family” by Katara in the third episode. She pulls Aang back from the outrage of the Avatar state, saying “Monk Gyatso and the other monks may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I, we’re your family now.”

 As I’ve said before, establishing this central safety net of trusted people is essential to Aang’s healing. Still, it’s interesting to me that they insist on this group as a “family” rather than something that might emphasize “friendship.” Something along the lines of ‘we’re your friends and we’re here with you.’ I can think of several animated shows that have done as much successfully. The show withholds the word “friend” for another purpose. I’ll happily admit that Aang and the others describe each other as “friends” throughout the series, but rarely is the use of the word (through pacing, repetition, or emotional context) given a sense of gravity in those moments. 

However, three scenes in the series rely heavily on the word “friend,” and each scene connects Aang more and more profoundly with Zuko, eventually revealing that the show’s entire plot hinges on the friendship between these two boys. In a series so latent with symbolism, what do we make of these star-crossed friends? The relationship between Aang and Zuko, I want to suggest, is meant to explore Platonic Love in all its depth, especially within a masculine culture that not only devalues it, but views its queer implications as inherently dangerous to the dominant power structures of an empire.

Get ready zukaang fans for a long-ass atla meta analysis...

“If we knew each other back then, do you think we could’ve been friends, too?”

The first time the word “friend” is uttered between them, Aang is perched on a branch, waiting for Zuko (who is laid out on a bed of leaves the Avatar made for him) to wake up after his blue spirit rescue. “You know what the worst part about being born over a hundred years ago is?” Aang waxes, “I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started I used to always visit my friend Kuzon. The two of us, we'd get in and out of so much trouble together. He was one of the best friends I ever had...and he was from the Fire Nation, just like you. If we knew each other back then do you think we could have been friends too?” The scene stood out for me when I first watched it for the melancholy and stillness. We are not given a flashback like we did when Aang talked about Bumi or Gyatso in earlier episodes. We have to sit with Aang’s loss of a male friend. It echoes a veteran’s loss of a war buddy more than anything a western audience would expect in a children’s show about the power of friendship. Instead of simply mourning, Aang invites Zuko into the past with him. He invites Zuko to imagine a time before the war, a land of innocence, where they could live together. And between them there is a moment of reflection given to this invitation (...until Zuko shoots a fucking fire blast at Aang). 

The wistful mood returns when the two boys arrive back to their respective beds. Aang is asked by a loopy fevered Sokka if he made any “friends” on his trip, to which Aang sadly replies, “No, I don’t think I did” before tucking away to sleep. Aang’s mournful moments often stand out against his bubbly personality, but this moment stands out moreso because its the final moment for Aang in the episode. For the first time, he doesn’t receive comfort in his dejection. He doesn’t even confide in his peers. The solemnity and secrecy of this failed “friendship” is remarkable. 

It’s in the next symbolic gesture that I think Avatar reveals what’s at stake in the concept of “friendship.” Zuko, in the next scene, lays down to rest after his adventurous night, looks pensively at the fire nation flag in his room, and then turns his back on it. We realize, especially after the previous revelations in “The Storm,” that Aang’s gestures of “friendship” have caused Zuko to doubt the authority of the Fire Nation.

Now all three remaining nations have misogynistic tendencies, but the Fire Nation celebrates a specific brand of toxic masculinity, and Zuko longs to emulate it even after it has rejected and scarred him. In the episode, “The Storm,” which directly precedes “The Blue Spirit,” we see how Zuko failed to replicate masculinity’s demands. In a room of men, he disregards honorifics to speak out in the name of care and concern for people’s well-being over strategy. Though the war room was all men, we later see that The Fire Nation does not exclude women from participating in this form of toxic masculinity. (Shoutout to Azula, one of the best tragic villains of all time!) This gender parity prevents disgraced men, like Zuko, from retaining pride of place above women. So Zuko’s loving act and refusal to fight his father puts him at the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy of the Fire Nation, completely emasculated and unworthy of respect.

Since then, Zuko has been seeking to restore himself by imitating the unfeeling men of the war room and his unfeeling sister, barking orders and demands at his crew. The final redemptive act for this purpose, of course, is to capture the Avatar, who’s very being seems to counteract the violent masculinity at the heart of the Fire Nation. In most contemporary Euro-American understandings, Aang is by no means masculine. He’s openly affectionate, emotional, giggly, and supportive of everyone in his life, regardless of gender. He practices pacifism and vegetarianism, and his hobbies include dancing and jewelry-making. And, foremost, he has no interest in wielding power. (@rickthaniel has an awesome piece about Aang’s relationship to gender norms and feminism). 

In addition to the perceived femininity of Aang’s behavior, he’s equally aligned with immaturity. Aang’s childishness is emphasized in the title of the first episode, “The Boy in the Iceberg,” and then in the second episode when Zuko remarks, “you’re just a kid.” Aang, as a flying boy literally preserved against adulthood, also draws a comparison to another eternally boyish imp in the western canon: Peter Pan. This comparison becomes more explicit in “The Ember Island Players.” His theatrical parallel is a self-described “incurable trickster” played by a woman hoisted on wires mimicking theatrical productions of Peter Pan. The comparison draws together the conjunction of femininity and immaturity Aang represents to the Fire Nation.

When Zuko is offered friendship and affection by Aang, then, he faces a paradigm-shifting internal conflict. To choose this person, regardless of his spiritual status, as a “friend,” Zuko must relate himself to what he perceives as Aang’s femininity and immaturity, further demeaning himself in the eyes of his father and Fire Nation culture. The banished prince would need to submit to the softness for which he’s been abused and banished. This narrative of abuse and banishment for perceived effeminate qualities lends itself easily enough to parallels with a specific queer narrative, that of a young person kicked out of their house for their sexuality and/or gender deviance. 

I want to point out that Aang’s backstory, too, can be read through a queer lens. Although the genocide of the air nomads more explicitly parallels the experiences of victims to imperial and colonial violence, I can also see how the loss of culture, history, friends, and mentors for a young effiminate boy can evoke the experience of queer men after the AIDs pandemic and the government’s damning indifference. In fact, colonial violence and the enforcement of rigid gender roles have historically travelled hand-in-hand. Power structures at home echo the power structures of a government. Deviance from the dominant norms disrupt the rigid structures of the empire. Aang’s background highlights how cultures based in something besides hierarchy and dominance, whether they be queer cultures or indigenous societies, threaten the logic of imperialism, and thus become targets of reform, neglect, and aggression by the expanding empire and its citizens. Survivors are left, as Aang was, shuffling through the remnants, searching for some ravaged piece of history to cling to.

We begin the series, then, with two queer-coded boys, one a survivor of broad political violence, the other a survivor of more intimate domestic abuse, and both reeling from the ways the Fire Nation has stigmatized sensitivity. But the queer narrative extends beyond the tragic backstories toward possibility and hope. The concept of platonic love proposed here, though it does not manifest until later, is a prospect that will bring peace to the two boys' grief-stricken hearts and to the whole world.

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” Toph asks before the four members of the group hold hands. Since Toph previously mourned her friendless childhood, it’s easy to appreciate this line for its hopefulness regarding the four central members of the Gaang. They long to appreciate that they’re all connected. As touching as this is, the soul-mated ‘friendship’ concept is actually uniquely applicable to Aang and Zuko.

When does Toph ask the question specifically? It’s after hearing the story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin: how their once intimate friendship fell apart; how Fire Lord Sozin began, undaunted, the genocidal attack on Airbenders. After recounting the tale, Aang, the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, excitedly explains to the group the moral that every person is capable of great good and evil. While that moral could easily be ascribed to many people in the series, the connective tissue is stretched directly to Zuko in a parallel storyline. Reading a secret history composed by his grandfather Sozin, Zuko discovers that he is not only the grandson of the empirical firelord but of Avatar Roku, as well. We see how the rift between the Sozin and Roku echoed down across history to separate the airbending culture from the fire nation, and, on a more human level, to separate Aang from Zuko. The two boys find themselves divided by their ancestors’ choices— and connected by Avatar Roku’s legacy. 

This is what takes their “friendship” from simply a matter of the character’s preferences to something fated, something unique from the other friendships. The rest of the found family is positioned as circumstantial in their relationship to Aang and one another. Yeah, it’d be cool if they were all connected in past and future lives, but the audience receives no indicators in the series that it’s necessarily true. Only faith holds them together, which allows room for an appreciation that your “found family” friendships might simply be the trusted people you discovered along the way. 

Zuko’s friendship is characterized differently. Both his struggle to befriend Aang and his eventual “friendship” are explicitly destined by the story of Roku and Sozin. After this episode, the series depends upon Zuko’s ability to mend the divide inside himself, which can only be done by mending the divide between him and Aang. Their inheritance symbolizes this dynamic exactly. As the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, Aang can be understood as the beneficiary of Avatar Roku’s wisdom (he should not, as many jokingly suggest, be considered as any kind of biological relation of Roku or Zuko).  Zuko, on the other hand, has inherited Roku’s genealogy in the Fire Nation. These two pieces of Roku must be brought together in order to revive Roku’s legacy of firebending founded on something besides aggression. 

In addition to making the ideals of Roku whole again, the two boys must tend to the broken “friendship” between the two men. As the Avatar and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, Aang and Zuko parallel Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin precisely. The narrative of the latter pair places destiny precisely in the hands of the former. And since both Aang and Roku expressed the desire for “friendship,” it falls in the lap of the corresponding royal to give up their imperial dreams so they can gain something more peaceful and intimate. For Zuko, this now can only be accomplished when he heals the rift within himself. 

Importantly, both the previous friendship and the destined friendship between Zuko and Aang are between two men. The coming-of-age genre has proliferated the trope of homosociality (friendship between individuals of the same sex) and its eventual decline brought on by maturity and heterosexual romance. (Check out the beautiful and quick rundown of classic examples, from Anne of Green Gables to Dead Poet’s Society, made by @greetingsprophet ). The story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin replicates this established narrative. 

We see them playing, sparring, and joking intimately with one another. The two as young adults were intimately connected, the series explains, “sharing many things including a birthday.” Eventually their intimacy is interrupted by their worldly responsibilities and the spectre of heterosexual romance on Roku’s part.

Now, It’s not a huge leap for one to wonder if Sozin longed for something stronger in their “friendship.” We see no female romantic interests for Sozin. Instead, he continues to demonstrate his platonic allegiance to Roku. When Roku prepares to leave for his Avatar training, Sozin walks into his room and gives him his crown prince headpiece, a gesture of unique devotion that positions his friendship above his politics (which harkens to Plato and EM Forster’s ideas about platonic love that I’ll discuss in Part 3). 

One might note, too, how the wedding between Roku and his childhood sweetheart provides the setting for the escalation of Sozin’s violence. “On wedding days,” Sozin writes, “we look to the future with optimism and joy. I had my own vision for a brighter future...” He then pulls Roku away from his bride for a personal conversation, briefly recapturing the earlier homosocial dynamic with his friend. Sozin describes his affection for their intertwined lives. Then he links their shared happiness to the current prosperity of the Fire Nation. He imagines the expansion of the Fire Nation, which would also expand on the relationship between him and Roku. But the Avatar refuses the offer and returns to his wife, insisting on the value of traditional boundaries (both the pact of marriage and the strict division of the four nations). The abandonment of the homosocial relationship by Roku sets the site for the unmitigated empirical ambitions of Sozin. One wonders how history might’ve been altered had the two men’s relationship been sanctified and upheld. How might’ve Roku persuaded Sozin in his empirical ambitions if he had remained in a closer relationship to his friend? In their final encounter, Sozin reacts vengefully to his former platonic love: he lets Roku die protecting the home the Avatar shared with his wife. Sozin’s choice solidifies the divide between them, and makes the grief he’s experienced since Roku left him into actual death.

Instead of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin finding a resolution, Aang and Zuko are ordained to reverse their friendship’s disintegration. Yes, they must heal the rift in the world created by the Fire Nation’s aggression, but Aang and Zuko must also reverse the tradition of lost homosociality within a culture of unrelenting machismo. Despite Avatar: the Last Airbender’s ties to the coming-of-age genre, the arc of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship” counters one of its most prominent tropes. “Some friendships are so strong they can transcend lifetimes,” Roku says, and it’s precisely this platonic ideal that draws Zuko and Aang towards one another in ways that are revolutionary both in their world and in the traditions of our’s. To come together, as two matured boys, to form an adult platonic love that can persist into adulthood.

“And now we’re friends.”

Which brings us to the consummation of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship.” Having resolved their previous hostilities and having neutralized the outside forces that would rather them dead than together, Aang and Zuko can finally embrace and define their relationship as “friendship.” Now, if we look closely at Zuko’s expression, we’ll notice a pause, before he smiles and reiterates Aang’s comment. My initial response, with my zukaang shipping goggles on extra tightly, was that Zuko just got friend-zoned and was a little disappointed before accepting Aang’s friendship. When I took a step back, I considered that we are given this moment of reflection to recognize Zuko’s journey, his initial belligerent response to the idea of befriending the Avatar. When he accepts the term of ‘friend,’ he reveals the growth he’s undergone that’s brought peace to the world. With these two possibilities laid out, I want to offer that they might coexist. That the word ‘friend’ might feel to Zuko and the audience so small and limited and yet simultaneously powerful. The pause can hint at the importance of “friendship” and signal something more. This reading emboldens the queer concept of “friendship” that undergirds their relationship. That the hug that follows might be meant to define the depth of the platonic love that is at the very heart of the series.

Saving a hugging declaration of “friendship” for the announcement of peace in the series is quietly revolutionary. In the twentieth century, male characters could connect in battle, on competitive teams, and through crime. “In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy — as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh — as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege — as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover — as long as he is riddled with bullets,” writes Kent Brintnall. Aang and Zuko’s hug starkly contrasts this kind of masculine intimacy. The show suggests that environments shaped by dominance, conflict, coercion, or harm, though seemingly productive in drawing people and especially men together, actually desecrate “friendships.” Only in a climate of humility, diplomacy, and peace can one make a true ‘friend.’

In situating the’ “friendship” between two matured males in a time of peace, the writers hearken back to older concepts of homosocial relationships in our fiction. As Hanya Yanagihara has described the Romantic concepts of friendship that pervaded fiction before the 1900s. In her book, A Little Life, Yanagihara renews this concept for the twenty-first century with a special appreciation for the queerness that one must accept in order for platonic love to thrive into adulthood. She writes, “Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together day after day bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.” Aang and Zuko’s relationship, despite a history that would keep them apart, reclaims this kind of friendship. Their hearts, bound together by an empyrean platonic love, are protected from the political and familial loyalties that would otherwise embroil them. 

In addition to Yanagihara, another author that coats the word ‘friend’ with similar gravity and longing to Avatar is E.M. Forster, who braids platonic friendship in his writing with homoeroticism and political revolution. In Forster’s novel Maurice (originally written in 1914 but published posthumously in 1971 due to Britain’s criminalization of male homsexuality), the titular character asks a lower class male lover lying in bed with him,  “Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his? I suppose such a thing can’t happen outside of sleep.” The confession, tinged with grief and providence as it is, could easily reside in Aang’s first monologue to Zuko in “The Blue Spirit.”

 Platonic love as a topic is at the heart of Maurice. Plato’s “Symposium,” from which the term platonic love derives, is even directly referenced in the book and connected with “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”— slang for homosexual acts. For Forster, the sanction of platonic love, both the homosocial aspect and the latent homosexuality, reveals a culture’s liberation. “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,” Forster wrote in his essay “What I Believe,”, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” This echoes a sentiment of philial love described by Plato. 

Rather than revolutionary ideals, for Forster friendships, and specifically friendships that disregard homophobia, provide the foundation for peace, equality, and democratic proliferation. When Aang and Zuko embrace, they are embodying this ideal.  Platonic love and the word “friend” have a history intertwined with queer romantic love, and, while I won’t argue that Avatar attempts to directly evoke this, I will suggest that the series consciously leaves room for this association. Now, the show certainly makes no attempt to imply anything romantic between Zuko and Aang within the timeline we witness (nor any same sex characters, which reflects cultural expectations in the 2000s). And for good reason, the age gap would be notably icky, to use the technical term. (You might note, however, that the show actually allows for crushes to extend upwardly across the same age gap, when Toph accidentally reveals her affection for Sokka to Suki in “The Serpent’s Pass.”) Despite connecting queer friendships to the history of ‘platonic love,’ Avatar provides two critiques to platonic love for audiences to absorb. One is the pederasty with which Plato defined his ultimate form of love in his Symposium. Fans rightfully comment on the age gap between Aang and Zuko as something preventative to shipping them together. And beyond the fact of their ages, Aang’s youthfulness is emphatic, as I remarked earlier. Aang and Zuko are prevented from consummating their platonic love until both are deemed mature in the last moments of the series. And even then, their relationship is directed toward future development rather than conclusion. Instead of cutting away, they are allowed to exit their scene together toward a speech about hope and peace. This stands in stark opposition to the permanence of Aang and Katara’s kiss. The platonic love in Avatar, the kind EM Forster cherishes, is relegated to adulthood as opposed to other kinds of boyish friendships. The conclusion of Avatar, at least for me, actually feels especially satisfying because it settles our characters in the “new era of love and peace.” It is a beginning, and it feels more expansive than the actions the characters choose to take in the episode. Even as our characters conclude three seasons of narrative tension as the sun sets and “The End” appears on the screen, it feels instead as if their stories can finally begin. The characters are allowed to simply exist for the first time. Yes, Aang and Katara or Zuko and Mai are allowed to embrace and kiss, but it’s because the pressures of empiricism have finally been banished. They are now allowed to try things and fail and make mistakes and explore. Things don’t feel rigid or permanent, whether that be one’s identity or one’s relationships.

Ideally, within the morality of the series (at least as it appears to us with no regard for whatever limits or self-censorship occurred due to its era of production and child-friendly requirements), “friends'' are maintained alongside romantic partnerships. Both Zuko and Aang’s separate romantic relationships blossom within the same episode that they declare their “friendship.” In fact, a vital plotline is the development of Zuko’s relationship with Aang’s romantic interest. While anyone in the fandom is well aware of the popular interpretation of romantic affection between Zuko and Katara because of their shared narrative, I have to point out that romantic feelings across the series are made extremely explicit through statements, blushes, and kisses. Zuko’s relationship with Katara can be better understood in the light of the coming-of-age counternarrative. While the love interest often serves as a catalyst for separation for a homosocial relationship, the friendly relationship with Aang’s love interest—seeking her forgiveness, respecting her power, calling on her support, etc—is vital for Zuko to ultimately create an environment of peace in which he and Aang can fulfill their destined “friendship.” In fact, we can look at Katara’s femininity as the most important device for manifesting Aang and Zuko’s eventual union. It’s her rage against misogyny that frees Aang from his iceberg, midwifing him into the world again after his arrested development, the complete opposite of a Wendy figure. It’s her arms that hold Aang in the pieta after his death in the Crossroads of Destiny, positioning her as a divine God-bearer. Afterwards, its her hands that resurrect Aang so that they together can fulfill his destiny. It will be these same hands with this same holy water that resurrect Zuko in the finale. Only through Katara’s decided blessing could Aang and Zuko proceed toward the fated reunion of their souls.

The importance of this critical relationship to femininity becomes relevant to a scene in “Emerald Island Players” that one might note as an outstanding moment of gay panic. Zuko and Aang, watching their counterparts on stage, cringe and shrink when, upon being saved by The Blue Spirit character in the play, Aang’s performer declares “My hero!” Instead of the assumption of homophobia, I wonder whether we might read Aang and Zuko’s responses as discomfort with the misogynistic heterosexual dynamics the declaration represents. Across the board, Avatar subverted the damsel in distress trope. There’s a-whole-nother essay to be written on all the ways it goes about this work, but the events in “The Blue Spirit” certainly speak to this subversion. It’s quite explicit that Zuko, after breaking Aang’s chains, is equally dependent on Aang for their escape. And, by the end of the actual episode, the savior role is reversed as Aang drags an unconscious Zuko away from certain death. To depict these events within the simplistic “damsel in distress” scenario, as The Ember Island Players do, positions Aang as a subordinately feminized colonial subject, denies him his agency, and depicts the relationship as something merely romantic, devoid of the equalizing platonic force that actually empowers them. The moment in the play is uncomfortable for Aang and Zuko because it makes Zuko the hero and Aang the helpless object. Aang is explicit about his embarrassment over his feminized and infantilized depiction in the play. And Zuko, newly reformed, is embarrassed to see, on one hand, his villainy throughout the play and, on the other hand, see how his character is positioned as made out as a savior to the person who has actually saved him.

At the heart of the series is not the idea of a chosen one or savior. Instead, we are saved by the ability for one person to see themselves in another person and to feel that same person equally understands their own soul. This is the ideal of platonic love. Platonic love between two matured boys—two boys with whose memories and bodies bare the scars of their queer sensitivities—is an essential part of the future of peace. Many fans have a sense of this, labeling the relationship as “brotp” and “platonic soulmates.” I simply encourage people to acknowledge that platonic love, especially in this context, is not a limit. There is no “no homo” joke here. When we remark on the platonic love between Zuko and Aang (and across media more generally) we are precisely making room for friendship, romance, and whatever else it could mean, whatever else it might become. While I find Legend of Korra lacking and in some ways detrimental to appreciating the original series, it’s finale interestingly parallels and extends this reading of platonic love in a sapphic vein. And most recently, She ra Princess of Power was able to even more explicitly realize these dynamics in the relationship between Adora and Catra. Let’s simply acknowledge that Aang and Zuko’s relationship blazed the trail: that peace, happiness, hope, and freedom could all hinge on a “friendship,” because a “friend” was never supposed to be set apart from or less than other kinds of relationships. For the ways it disregards gender, disregards individualism, disregards dominion, platonic love is the foundation of any meaningful relationship. And a meaningful relationship is the foundation for a more peaceful world.  *Author’s note: I’m just tired of sitting on this and trying to edit it. It’s not perfect. I don’t touch on all the symbolism and nuances in the show and in the character’s relationships. And this is not meant to negate any ships. It’s actually, quite the opposite. This is a show about growth and change and mistakes and complexity. Hopefully you can at least appreciate this angle even if you don’t vibe with every piece of analysis here. I just have no chill and need to put this out there so I can let my obsession cool down a bit. Enjoy <3

[everythingsinred]

Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: The Anime (pt. 5)

The anime is a different species than the manga, something that frequently happens during the adaptation from page to screen. Since they’re so different, I’ll analyze them separately.

In the previous section, we discussed how a new element has joined the story: Ruka and Natsume's growing tensions and jealousy over liking the same girl, and the effect it could have on their friendship. This is done a little differently in the anime, and in this part, I'll discuss the ramifications for Natsume's feelings and the consequences it has on his friendship with Ruka as well as the approval of Persona. There is also an equally important aspect of Mikan's feelings, frequently neglected in a narrative sense, and how they are growing stronger for Natsume as well.

Episode 20 vs. Chapter 25 & 26

This carries onto episode twenty, the Dance episode. This episode combines two chapters to accommodate length. In general, the anime doesn’t really explore what it means for Natsume to be a principal student, like sitting on stage with the other principals. There’s a lot unsaid here that is more important in the manga.

Even more, the last episode tied up some loose ends, or at least attempted to, in regards to the tension of the musical. In the manga, those tensions are still an open wound that nobody in the love triangle wants to touch. The anime still has some of them, but to a much lesser extent. They’ve made up and had fun between then and now.

And Mikan is completely uninterested in the Last Dance, seemingly, but spends a lot of time wondering about why others care about it, almost as if she wants to care so she can fit in. Anna and Nonoko have their crushes, the fan club girls are as obsessed with Natsume and Ruka as ever, and even Hotaru has a horde of admirers, even if she’s uninterested in them. Mikan feels left out, just like she always does, just for the sake of being different.

(One of my favorite tropes is when Person A is talking about their love life or lack thereof and the next person that shows up next just so happens to be their soulmate.)

The tensions between Natsume, Ruka, and Mikan are focus in the manga. In the anime, they’re watered down. Mikan is interested in dancing with both of them, unlike in the manga, where she desperately wants to avoid them. Mikan is more oblivious in the anime than in the manga, as a result. Manga!Mikan can feel the tension, and knows things are different now, because they’re weird! She’s a very intuitive and emotional girl and she can sense shifts and changes better than anyone. In the anime, she’s not as uncomfortable; she just wants to have a good time with her friends.

Interestingly, even though it was Ruka he pushed, it’s Mikan who’s watching him leave in the frame…

Just like in the manga, Natsume literally pushes Ruka into dancing with Mikan and they have a lot of fun dancing together before Mikan starts dancing with others. Hotaru’s “blessing” (or whatever that scene is) is a lot more obvious in the anime, with her actually requesting a “Mikan cake”, and neglecting some of the demanding, blackmailing atmosphere of the chapter. In the anime, Mikan actually seeks out Natsume and asks him to dance. In the manga, she is upset with him, but in the anime Mikan doesn’t hold grudges. She’s not tense at all and is willing to be the one to break the coldness between them. He naturally responds in the negative and insults her and they fight again, culminating in the infamous “Mikan” and “don’t care about what I call you anymore; that’s my last wish.”

Natsume: *says 2 syllables* // Mikan: *falls in love with him*

Even the anime has to concede that Natsume won with that one, lol.

Anyway, the anime also includes Ruka meeting up with Natsume and them fighting over who’d get Mikan (“You can have her, bro.” “No, bro, she likes you.” “No, bro--”), even though it’s not their decision. Even if they somehow decided Ruka would win, or Natsume would win, it’s ultimately up to Mikan to figure out who she has feelings for.

And award for best friendship in the history of all media ever goes to--

This is where the tension from the previous episode takes center stage. There’s discord and insecurity here, but not any real malice or resentment. They’re just boys and this is the first girl either of them has ever liked, and it just so happens to be the same girl. They’re best friends and they love each other, but this is a complication neither of them anticipated. Naturally, they don’t know how to communicate it, but they both know how the other feels anyway because they know each other so well they don’t need to be told. They fight that Mikan will pick the other for the Last Dance and then a very cute moment follows when Hotaru reveals she picked Mikan for the Last Dance and both of the boys start laughing. It ends, focusing on Hotaru and Mikan’s friendship and Natsume and Ruka’s friendship. They’re kids after all, and should be focusing on having fun and being children whenever they have the chance. Romance and complicated love triangles can wait. I really like this addition.

Episode 21 vs. Chapter 27

Just like in the manga, Natsume is bad at sticking to his word and he still engages with Mikan in the next episode. He still helps others with studying because of her example, and goes along with the whole class in study mode, even if he is half-assing the actual exams.

Mikan and Sumire have a plot element added, to supplement their new friendship from the Reo Arc. Sumire can’t cook and has given up on exams. Even though Mikan desperately wants the honor student award so she can see her grandpa, she sacrifices her study time to spend the whole night helping Sumire with cooking, even though she herself isn’t so talented either. This further helps showcase that Mikan is helpful, and that she is willing to sacrifice what she wants so that other people can have happiness too. Just like she was willing to leave the school she fought so hard to keep open so she can see her best friend in the first episode, she’s willing to wait a little more to see Jii-chan if it means she can help Sumire.

“Nice girlfriend you have there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to her.”

However, despite all the sweetness of Mikan’s plot, someone is watching Natsume interact with the group and more specifically with Mikan (though in the anime, it’s Persona, not the ESP), and Natsume gets warned by Persona to stay away from Mikan.

Episode 22 & Chapter 28

He does just that in the next episode, staying away from and (as a result) bothering Mikan.

We are introduced to Kaname, Tsubasa’s sickly friend who has the life-shortening alice. He uses his alice anyway, because he likes making people happy, even if it comes at a cost. After all, he grew up lonely until he made Bear, so he wants others to not feel lonely.

But Kaname isn’t the only one with the life-shortening alice. Mikan is so distressed about her revelations that she acts out a little during her chores, hitting Natsume with her duster. He simply walks away, doing as he is told to keep her safe, because that dream he had in the Reo Arc is still relevant and because Persona’s warnings are fresh in his mind. Hanging out with her is bad for both of them. Mikan doesn’t know any of this, but thoughts about poisonous alices are all she can think about, and as he walks away from her, it occurs to her that he might be suffering just like Kaname. But whereas Kaname chooses to use his alice to make others happy, Natsume has no such choice. He is forced to use it, and his life is much shorter as a result.

Sadly, once Mikan starts really liking Natsume, he's always walking away from her.

In the manga, we do get a glance of Natsume’s suffering and reliance on pain meds to get through the night, but it’s a bit different in the anime. We see him lying on his bed, struggling with the pain. But why night? The truth is that Natsume feels like that almost all the time. It’s only when he’s alone in his room that he can be honest and really let himself feel it. He doesn’t have to hide it for someone else’s sake, or to give off the impression that he is totally fine.

Summary

In this section, we discussed the consequences for Natsume's growing feelings for Mikan, and the added complication that Ruka likes her too, as well as the fact that Mikan is starting to develop feelings for Natsume as well. His illness and status as child soldier are sadly all too present, and Natsume is paralleled with Kaname in Episode 22 and then is paralleled with the mistreated lion in the circus arc, which is what I'll be discussing next, in the final part of the anime analysis.

<- Previous Part Next Part ->

[welllpthisishappening]

Okay can we talk about ACOSF???? Bc on booktok all I’m seeing is so much negativity about how people don’t like feysand or don’t like nesta but?? I read this book, loved it, thought nesta grew SO much and we got to see feysand from a different POV which gave them depth! Plus a baby!!! I can talk about it forever

We can absolutely talk about ACOSF. I have thoughts, feelings, opinions and this is going to get long. And, uh, any of those super negative critiques:

Alright, alright, alright, so initial feelings? I enjoyed it a lot. Like, way more than I thought I would honestly because going in I was like eh, Nessian, but I loved Nesta’s character development and the flirt-to-roast ratio with her and Cassian and every single time Cassian called her Nes or God help me ARCHERON, my soul reached another plane of existence. Don’t even get me started on that one time she called him General. The noise I made was not audible to human ears. 

That said, there were some parts that I was like: oh ok, that’s happening. So, because I cannot function without organization, let’s break down some of the major things that happened into a LIST WITH OPINIONS ATTACHED

Sexual Tension Fucking fuck, these two idiots. Pining after each other while both desperately wanting someone, anyone, to be like — please stay in bed and cuddle me all night?!?! Idiots. Both of them flush with power and the ability to make people legit terror before them and they’re so goddamn soft with each other. Which is kind of hysterical because they are also able to rip each other to shreds? Oh my God, some of those fight scenes, I just—my heart was in my throat. And I do not want to hear a single word of how CASSIAN IS MEAN TO NESTA? Were we reading the same book, internet? Bro is In Love. From the G E T. 

Which leads us to—

S O L S T I C E  God, rip my romantic-loving heart out of my body. Learning what was in the box from the solstice before made me screech and then the music. THE MUSIC. Can we talk about Cassian, feared general, dude who has canonically lost track of how many people he has killed, cornering an ENTIRE ORCHESTRA to recreate music for Nesta? I just—f u c k. It was a lot. A lot. And then we circle back around to how soft they were and there’ll never be another and I am going to have to pace around a bit. I loved it. I love them. I nearly screamed when it took Nesta a few more chapters to realize it was a mating bond, and then Cassian just bolted because he also couldn’t quite deal with it, and I am still not super sold on the mating bond, like, as a thing, but I kind of went into this book pretty certain this was going to happen, so...good. Also them arguing by the Sidra, oof. 

There was a lot of sex in this book. I knew there was going to be a lot of sex in this book. I must have told my husband four different times, “God, there is a lot of sex in this book.” Some of it was good. Some of it was kind of cloying in its descriptions. I genuinely lol’ed at Nesta fantasizing about being straight up railed by both Cassian and Azriel. (Why was that in there? Still don’t really know, felt a lot like very obvious fan service, but it was also kind of hysterical.)

JEALOUSY DIDN’T MAKE ME WANT TO RIP MY EYES OUT I hate jealousy plots. HATE THEM. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves in relationship writing, but I was super into it here??? Cassian cutting in on the dance and TAKING DANCING LESSONS. It was good. I enjoyed it. 

Nesta’s Power Yo. YO. This was really cool. She was terrifying and out of control, while also learning how to be in control and intimidating and I was like YES, GET IT. When Rhys flew into the House and Nesta was just wrapped in silver flames, that was super cool. Also Rhys being freaked out by her? Kind of bad ass, honestly. But. But! I wish it was explored even more. I wish we got to learn what she could really do and the extent to which she could do it, because I thought it was a fascinating possibility to parallel Nesta to Feyre and I don’t really think we got that. Like, Feyre Cursebreaker — with power given from all the High Lords, this bringer of new life and a fresh start for all the courts. Then her sister — with power stolen from the Cauldron itself and death at her fingertips. With all the comparisons of Feyre and Nesta, I really figured we’d be gunning towards that eventually ESPECIALLY with Feyre being pregnant, and the idea of life in that capacity. Also, what was the point of Lucien saying “Gods help you all” or whatever he said when he was watching Nesta train if...nothing ever really came from that? We’ll circle back around to that in a second, during what will be my ending-based soliloquy, but first let’s talk about—

Feyre Being Pregnant, Why That Kind of Felt Like Twilight and Why I Get Why Rhys Was Being an Idiot Listen, part of the reason I wanted to read this book was for what I assumed would be the Feysand crumbs we’d get. Most of me was convinced that this book would not take place in Velaris and I was mentally prepared for that. Color me pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t and we got an IC feast. But. But! Part two! I’ve mentioned how I’m never really here for...pregnancy being like this ultimate endgame, and I understand why Feysand wanted a kid and I get it, I do. Just the whole thing with she’s going to DIE felt very Bella Swan, was kind of dramatic in mela-sort of way and I TOTALLY GET WHY RHYS KEPT THE WINGS A SECRET. Was it idiotic? Yeah, of course. But I don’t think we talk about his trauma enough, really. Those fifty years under the Mountain are not just gong to disappear, and I cannot really blame him for totally losing his mind at even the idea of Feyre dying. This is not a dude who is trying to control Feyre. I’ve never felt that way about Rhys. At all. This is a dude who has already lost ALL of HIS control and is desperately trying to hang on. He’s already had his entire world shattered six ways to Sunday, this was obviously going to destroy him. Aside from, y’know, straight up killing him too. (That was dumb, guys.) And I think telling Feyre would have made it REAL for Rhys, which he obviously could not cope with. Was I surprised that Feyre’s pregnancy was such a big plot point in a book that was supposed to be super Nessian focused? Yeah, for sure. But also—I like established relationships and Feyre and Rhys could not stop making eyes at each other. Not totally here for the deadly pregnancy trope, not totally here for using family as a trauma recovery, but sort of understand it. 

Training, Valkyries and Friendship Bracelets Like I said, I thought this book was gong to take place in the Illyrian camps way more than it did, but I L O V E D the training sessions. Adored Nesta, Emerie and Gwyn’s friendship and how often they teamed up to snark Cassian and Azriel. I was painfully here for all three of them together and the sleepover in the House warmed the cockles of my cold, dead heart. Especially when the bracelets proved so important during the Blood Rite. Which—let’s talk about the Blood Rite. Didn’t expect that!! Was pleasantly surprised by that!! Nesta drawing the literal line in the dirt made me fist pump the air. (And is another parallel to Feyre and her taking inspiration from old Fae legends, but that’s neither here nor there, whatever I’m not here to harp on missed opportunity.) I thought it was really important that all three of them got to showcase their own power too, and how they worked SO WELL together and I was just really glad that there was such focus on this sisterhood outside of literal sisterhood. I thought those relationships were so well done and it was just such a joy to read about their growth and strength and I loved them. Am I here for Gwyn and Azriel? Maybe. Possibly more here for Emerie and Mor? Maybe maybe. 

The House I thought it was Amren, for a very long time. Like secretly helping Nesta still and I was really into that idea and really into Amren not being able to totally let Nesta go and I wasn’t really into Nesta bowing to Amren. 

THE ENDING Oh my God, so much happened. So quickly. With some occasionally jarring scene cuts. The Blood Rite surprised me, but I was not surprised by Cassian getting ensnared by the crown. Fully expected something like that to happen, was still making ridiculous noises when he tried to turn the dagger on himself instead of killing Nesta. LOST MY MIND WHEN NESTA UNMADE THE QUEEN. I’m still sort of...confused about the Trove, though. I know there are a fair number of hanging plot threads that are gong to lead into other stories, but I just—I don’t know, when they were talking about the High King and everything I sort of thought they were leading towards Nessian being that. I know the whole IC was very into Rhys and thematically it made sense, but also let’s consider—I don’t want that? Rhys needs to get his shit in order and his own Court to calm the fuck down and again I think the potential for LORD OF THE BASTARDS and LADY DEATH to ascend to this position of power and lead the world into this new era was there and I just, I don’t know, I liked the idea of it. Particularly when so many people have referred to Nesta as a Queen. That whole thing in the prison happened, y’know? I’m not sure (read: I’m fairly positive) that won’t happen now, especially because Nesta gave up so much of her power to save Feyre. And I know that’s a TALKING POINT™ but also...I was pretty cool with that? Once it came out that Feyre was going to die, it made sense that Nesta would be the one to save her—to twist death again, and kind of seize control of it. Granted, I’m still a little confused by the Trove and what everyone’s going to do with all that power, but Nesta saving Feyre was this perfect sort of wrap up. For me, at least. I think they balance each other out in a lot of respects, and that was really the last step of Nesta’s growth. Also, uh, back on my Feysand ‘ish and Rhys screaming and crying and trying to get to Feyre? o o o f. Also, also, RHYS BOWING TO NESTA. I CANNOT TELL YOU THE LAST TIME I CRIED AT A BOOK, BUT I CRIED AT THIS BOOK. RHYS, BABY, I ADORE YOU. 

Nesta Finding Herself I just really—liked it. I think sometimes in these sorts of stories we get people who are so focused on characters being “the bitch” and having an edge and we have a tendency to think that’s what makes them STRONG. Nah, that ain’t it, son. I don’t want to read about someone being a dick just for sake of being a dick. Nesta was NOT IN A GOOD PLACE. She was self-imploding and destroying herself and getting her POV made it blatantly clear that she thought she deserved that. That she truly believed she didn’t deserve anyone else. And as much as the romance was good and the friendships were fantastic, the key to this story was Nesta (as cheesy as it sounds) learning to love herself. To find worth in her own self. Reading about Nesta simply learning to want to live again, for no one except herself, was really, really good and I think, for the most part, well done. Which is why it makes sense that Nesta gives up some of her power. This isn’t about being A BAD BITCH, PATENT PENDING. This is about love, and joy and embracing your own faults. I get the disappointment over Nesta losing her power. I do. But I’m not sure she totally did? Maybe that’s too positive, or too naive, or something, but...whatever. 

Other things that I really enjoyed, include but are not limited to: Cassian having allergies Nesta absolutely decimating Tamlin. And Tamlin’s just like...a lion all the time now, huh? And, uh, also is Tamlin Gwyn’s dad??? Like, is that a thing? Am I crazy?  Nesta telling Elain to fuck off (Also, Elain—darling, I wish you got more character development. Elain is to SJM what Belle is to me in CS fic. Sometimes I think she just forgets about her.) Azriel calling out Cassian for getting BLOWN at the dining room table Azriel getting Nesta a Solstice gift and then THEY HUGGED Nesta wanting an over the top mating ceremony. Get it, girl.  Feyre going full on Court of Nightmares in the Hewn City Nesta making it down the steps

Other things I thought we’d get more of and just...didn’t Whatever the fuck Lucien has been up to, and more on the continent with Vassa and Juran More stuff in Illyria Reaction to the trio in the Blood Rite Amren and Nesta reconciling. I know Nesta apologized, but Amren kind of got on my nerves.  Nesta understandably criticizing the IC and their tendency to get a little sanctimonious.  THREE SISTER PEAKS. THREE BAT BOYS. THREE VALKYRIE. WHAT IS IT SARAH? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? 

[onlyhereforangst]

WWR

Ok so maybe I shouldn’t call this Weekly Wednesday Reflections anymore since I’m terrible at writing it in time 🤷🏻‍♀️ granted it is Wednesday...just a week late 😅

I’m pretty sure this is my new favorite Ellick episode. After rewatching it, I’m just so- happy with it. From exploring Ellie’s range of emotions and character depth to the progress we saw in their relationship just 🥰

The opening scene already gives us SO MUCH. First, they jog as the cutest freaking married couple I’ve ever seen and this certainly is a routine because they knew to target him here. But Nick teasing her by sprinting, her struggling to keep up but giggling with each other because clearly it’s not the first time he does that little speed up thing & she’s working on getting faster because she used to hate training for marathons like- can you NOT. My heart can’t take the implications, ALSO Gibbs & McGee didn’t bat an eye that they just so happened to be jogging together in the early morning (everyone was only just leaving their house on their morning commute) so they know it’s their routine too and don’t even question it. GAH.

Flashforward to hospital scene with Ellie breaking my heart slowly. She’s clearly been crying by the red rimmed eyes, and yet also trying to hold it together to be strong for Nick & so she does the only thing she knows how to do since feelings scare her and the love of her life Nick just got hit. Ellie’s logical brain takes over as she does best (see 16x18 for reference) - when she’s dealing with emotions, all she can do is her job, it’s all that makes sense in the monsoon of feelings. She’s going to analyze every last bit of the hit & run and immediately parrot it back so that *something* can be done right away and she can find justice for Nick. She doesn’t care about her own health- just justice for Nick. And in that same vein, she doesn’t want to eat, she doesn’t want to rest, she doesn’t want to sit down until she knows Nick is okay (I’m sorry but to have a CODE NAME from the nurses because they feel the need to run from you- can you say “Crazy Worried Wife™️”??)

Kasie is our new captain, it has been decided. (I think this was already decided but I’m making an official decree) Her probing McGee to see his reaction because girl knows why Bishop is taking it harder, please. Then laughing it off for McGee, “we all gon need therapy if those two ever hook up” while thinking *boy you better stop denying because you KNOW they hooking up after this shit* is just 🙌🏼 the outright addressing of Ellick by the show- thank youuuuu.

Ok and now begins the Ellie show. Excuse me, the BADASS BISHOP SHOW. (Also why I’m partial to this being my fave ep). First- girl does not know how to holster her gun. Ellie: “you say there’s a tiny lead” *cocks gun* “let’s go” I’m herrrrrre for it. She’s blunt with everyone, she doesn’t care when Gibbs gives her the look, she don’t take no SHIT in interrogation. “You’d have to be [creative]” had me cry-ing 😭😭😭 AND THEN her equivalent of cursing out Vance over Nick, followed up by freaking out in the bullpen had me breaking on my couch. YES ELLIE GET IT is what I believe I chanted. The stare off, oh lordy. Y’all I was sweating I was pissed for her. Just the raw emotion in her eyes, the constant holding back tears and tears I just- 😭💔 and emojis don’t do it justice. I wanted soooo bad for her to land a sweet, sweet punch like she did with Victor, but knowing a second offense unprovoked wouldn’t go over too well, she held back. But aaaahh that scene was SO heartbreaking. And then, and THEN Ellie standing there gazing at his desk- oof. Her body language was key- her crossed arms, holding herself literally together so she doesn’t break?? She wants to break, y’all. She wants to break. Staying strong for Nick is the only thing getting her through.

When Gibbs sends her to be at the hospital because THE WHOLE DAMN TEAM KNOWS, I did a happy dance. McGee encouraging her but almost pulse-checking Gibbs after was very very intriguing. Gibbs’ “He’s a fighter” followed by McGee’s pulse-check, “so is Bishop...” and Gibbs’ exasperated look off towards the elevator and admission of agreement says SO MUCH. First- McGee is worried about not only Nick, but his sister, Ellie. He knows how much Qasim’s death hurt her, knows what she went through after- WHICH TIME OUT. For anyone saying this episode was OOC for Ellie? Sit the hell down and go watch 14x16. Then come back. Then continue reading. Ok resume WWR- McGee also knows how much more Torres means to her, he may try to deny it, but he knows. Implying Bishop is a fighter, obviously not about her health because *she’s fine* but more about what she’d do out of revenge. (And the man doesn’t even know Bishop is about to say she’s gonna kill him) Gibbs’ already sees himself a little in her, recognizing the same feeling he experienced with Shannon many years ago- hence the completive look on his face & heavy sigh. He knows he’ll have to revisit Rule 12 soon (but also in his mind he’s basically already burned it like Rule 10).

Speaking of Ellie saying she’s going to kill him, please see this excerpt from my notes during the ep: “FUCK YES BISHOP - the emotions!!!!!!!” That basically sums up how I felt the entire scene & commercial break afterward 🤷🏻‍♀️😂😂 My reaction when it came back? KILL HIM. But like in all seriousness, her face- holy shit going from on the verge of tears when they rolled Nick away to calculating her next move as McGee’s talking to her to making up her mind that she will be committing murder (please, girl already planned it & is just deciding which lipstick to wear during it at this point). Emily Wickersham is an amazing actress and I don’t care what you have to say. And yes, McGee trying to calm her down in a big brother way is adorable, but Ellie not having it is great. “Torres doesn’t get a say” is such a Nick thing to do of her 😭 Remember Luis going off on his own, yeah- this is Ellie’s version because she wants to & her husband is rubbing off on her. Oh also, the office she refers to? Totally means Ziva’s office at Odette’s - “if we missed something, I’ll find it there.” Hmmmm sounds eerily similar to *why* Ziva had that office in the first place, doesn’t it 🤔 also explains the lack of her on HQ’s logs and her “going home” excuse— which by the way, her shrugging them all off? Suspect Bishop, suspect. Her trying to play it all off with a wry laugh, not gonna lie, I love it. Her “too late” to Gibbs is quite interesting though- she sees herself going down that path any way, because she killed him? Or because she triggered a chain of events that will lead to it? Or because she may not have killed him, but lord knows she wanted to & planned it down to every last detail? Like I said, interesting.

Ok side note: Jack suggesting taking her off duty kinda pisses me off - with the spiraling comment too. She got to spiral when that guy from her past came & it screwed with her psyche, why the f can’t Bishop? It just rubbed me the wrong way, but I don’t hate Jack (don’t @ me, people.)

Back to Badass Bishop Show. She literally always has her gun out now. Just walking to the penthouse again where they didn’t try anything last time, *cocks gun.* When Gibbs comes up and tells her Nick is away 😩 Her relief though in the fact that he’s asking about her and he’s hungry (Ellie rubbing off on him, you can’t tell me I’m wrong) to go to the kicking down the door because that’s what her baby does so therefore she kicks down doors now- the parallels & the influence 😭😭

THE BATHROOM SCENE. McGee like seriously? You actually killed him?? And Gibbs like “oh fuck here we go again.” And then Jimmy had me dyinggggg. Theory alert: I really think Ellie (maybe Gibbs went with her & they’re helping each other with alibis/cover up??) went to kill him but got there after it had happened, that’s why she’s a little cagey about it- not that she *actually* killed the guy. BUT reference 14x16 again, I wouldn’t put it past her.

The final hospital bed scene has my heart. Ellie is so relieved and just so happy and open (but also a little nervous about what happens next so she hides a touch of her emotions, can’t let him see alllll of her heart now can we)- going back to their teasing ways, “worst pretend sleeper”, “next time jump out of the way” - UGH so cute. Side note, they use last names here almost similarly to the submarine episode. When shit gets scary real for them, it’s their way of grounding themselves almost, trying to hide just how much that incident actually affected them. They both do it & yes, it frustrates the hell out of me, but at the same time shows me just how much they care for the other 😭 BUT this time!! Nick made it take a serious turn, and I think Ziva finally got through to him- that sentence “cause you know I risked my life to save yours” is more him openly saying like oh shit I really did that 1. to himself and 2. to finally take that next baby step in their relationship. The emotion behind it showing her it wasn’t just because they’re partners- he wanted her to know that for sure, to make sure he didn’t just make light of it & glaze over it. He needed it out there in the universe that he Nicholas Torres, of sixteen different identities & no family, nothing to live for anymore, would rather DIE- than see Ellie in harms way. He needed it to be tangible for himself AND for her. Because this is growth, this is not what most people think of when they think of him.

And Ellie’s response: the look, hesitation building up courage, and making that first move of physical touch speaks VOLUMES about Ellie at this point. Not only does she take hold of his hand, but she rubs it in a soothing gesture. As if she needs to confirm for herself he’s really there, he’s really alive. The struggle she went through, the turmoil- wasn’t all for not. It’s her saying “I know” not just to the fact that she was joking earlier, she knows he risked his life & she’s grateful for that, but she knows it was more than because they’re just partners, more than just best friends even. That first move is her saying “I know” and “I might be ready to open up & let you in to the walls that surround my heart because the last time I was in a hospital staring at someone I loved, it didn’t turn out the same. Except this time, it took the hospital trip to really bring that into focus, and I know I can’t let that happen again.” Aaaaaaand catch me sobbing in the corner, it’s fine. I’m fine.

Nick’s reaction speaks volumes from him too, his slight shock to Ellie reciprocating & making that first move with his soft smile that is hinted at across his face to show he knows she’s letting him peak in, just a little, and that’s a start. A start people!!!

Last notes: Gibbs being such a dad and defending Nick liking his fireplace is the cutest. Vance was eager to get out of there at the end- his contacts are very very suspicious... And on that note, I really do not think it was Gibbs. I think Gibbs and Bishop may have gotten there after it happened with the purpose of doing something, so now they’re covering for each other, but I do not think it was either of them.

Pretty sure this is officially my longest review to date, WHOOPS. If you made it this far, congrats & thanks for staying with my inner ramblings 🙃 Like I said- my favorite episode so farrrrrr (now let’s see if we get anything AFTER this episode......lol I got jokes 😅).

[kpop-goestheweasel]

Can you please do a blurb reaction to monsta x finding/hearing you have a lisp and can't pronounce some words properly? XOXO

Fiiiiiiiiiinally got something written up. THEN realize that instead of rolling with the actual request, I wrote it as though they have knows for some time about this lisp. 🤦‍♀️Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. I’m sorry I suck. 

                                                        ———–

Shownu: Cute, adoring smile every time you come across one of those words.

As you took another step up the latter, the stupid, flimsy thing trembled benieth you. Letting out a little growl under your breath, you stepped back down, silently admitting your defeat. You were just too short to safely reach the top few inches of the wall you had spontaneously decided needed a color change and the latter refuse to be of any help. Hearing the bathroom door open, you perked up a bit. Sheepishly, you peaked your head out of the room you were working on to find your freshly showered boyfriend pacing down the hall, clad only in his fitted jeans and bearing his beautifully sculpted upper body to the world… or rather just you, which is clearly better. “Hun… could you possibly athist me real quick?” you questioned, your little slur making an appearance. Immediately, Shownu smiled adoringly at you before closing the distance between the both of you and pulling you against himself. You pouted, knowing exactly what he was smiling about. He, knowing very well you were scowling over his silent amusement, laid a kiss atop your head to remind you that he finds you nothing short of completely adorable.“Of course, Jagiya. I’d be happy to assist you.”

Wonho: Mocks you (only because he loves you, of course) with that cheese grin. Then cuddles to make up for it. 

Sitting across from him at the cafe, you couldn’t help but grin to yourself as you watched his face change along with whatever it was he was reading. It was so damn cute how he tagged along with you knowing you were going to the cafe just to get some writing done. Surely it couldn’t be too fun for him to sit and read while you worked, but he was very adamant about wanting to spend every bit of time with you that he could. “What’s that espression for?” You questioned, wincing to yourself at the lisp that escaped. Unfortunately, your prayers were not answered and from him you received a little mocking repeat of your question before he glanced up with a large grin. “You know you’re my favorite, right?” Shutting his book, he set it aside before standing up and leaning over the table for a kiss. Hesitating momentarily to tease him back, you couldn’t help but to let out a giggle before relenting and giving him a kiss. “I better be.”

Minhyuk: Fanboys. Straight up.

Did you seriously forget to pack one? You had spent the last ten minutes digging through your bag, only to pull every single item out and find you had indeed forgotten a stupid toothbrush. You managed to grab toothpaste, but not its counterpart. Just as you were pouting to yourself over your little bit of negligence, Minhyuk walks through the hotel door nearly skipping with excitement. “I got VR goggles that work with the TV. This place is so cool!” he told you, holding up the goggles with a huge grin on his face. He looked so much like a happy little puppy that your heart momentarily melted before you remembered your dilemma. “This is really cool, but right now what I need is a toofbrush. Do they have any downstairs?”Immediately, you watched his face shift from utmost excitement to almost schoolgirl giddiness. Dropping the goggles on the bed, he closed the distance between the both of you and wrapped his arms around you. “You are seriously the cutest thing in the world,” he gushed. “Say it again.”Laughing to yourself, you shook your head. “No, Love. You are.” Another laugh escaped you as you looked at his expectant expression. “Toofbrush,” you repeated much to his absolute glee.

Kihyun: Slight mock/asks you to repeat it multiple times for his own amusement 

Out-and-about days with Kihyun always proved to be an adventure. Today, you find yourself in a part of town you hadn’t explored before and you can’t help but ask yourself how you had managed to evade this beautiful little gem of a location for so long. The street ran beside a wide river and was lined on both sides with cute, small stores - most of which were small boutiques or cafes of different sorts - inside beautiful, historic buildings. It was like something out of a movie, really. “Should we get some ice cream?” Kihyun offered as you both walked in front of a small ice cream parlor, boasting of its handmade ice cream. Of course, you couldn’t resist. It was such an inviting looking place and it smelled wonderful, even from the outside… almost like fresh made waffles or something of the sort. Walking in, you quickly learned the alluring smell was the waffle cones they made themselves just behind the counter. You grew even more excited for a delicious treat. Looking over the flavors, you made your choice, but your bladder had other ideas before you could place your order. “Kihyun, could you order me the honey flavor in a waffle cone? I need to go to the bafroom.” Instantly, his lips pulled into a grin before he asked you to clarify where you needed to go… twice. By the third time you had repeated yourself, you knew it wasn’t because he didn’t hear you or misunderstood you. No, he was mocking you. With a little sigh, you gave him a glare and headed to the restrooms, leaving him to chuckle to himself at your poor misfortune. 

Hyungwon: Finds it cute, but doesn’t make a big deal over it - just smiles. But he’s also the only one allowed to find amusement. If anyone else says anything, he’ll be real quick to put them in their place.

You swore your eyes were about to rot right out of your head as you ready the same stupid sentance for about the 500th time. You hated studying. Before college, you never really needed to study; highschool was pretty easy for you without putting in much effort, so this was all new to you and you had a very hard time time it.A loud bout of cheering and yelling came from the adjacent living area, disturbing you even further. Growling under your breath, you looked up and shot a glare and the group of boys as Hyungwon hushed them, knowing you were struggling. Honestly, it wasn’t so much you were upset that they were making noise; it sucked that you weren’t a part of the videogame marathon. All because of a stupid test.“What class are you studying for?” Minhyuk questioned curiously.“Thtatithtics,” you answered with a grimace, wincing all the word as the word got wrapped around your tongue.Minhyuk gave a little chuckle before asking you to repeat because he didn’t quite understand which I.M snorted on a laugh.Hyungwon, whom had smiled lovingly at you with the little stumble of the word, lightly smacked I.M. on the back of his head. “Statistics. She has a test tomorrow that she’s all worried about even though she’s going to do just fine.” Looking up at you he shook his head slightly before flashing you a smile. “Come join us for a bit. You need a break; the books aren’t going anywhere and reading the same sentence for a million more times isn’t going to change it, either.” Your brows furrowed questioningly. How did he know? “You haven’t turned the page in about an hour,” he answered your unasked question, tilting his head to motion you over to join him and the others.

Jooheon: Tries to help you pronounce it properly a couple times before giving up and accepting that’s just another thing he finds adorable about you.

Looking at the grade on your report, you gave a little growl and tossed the eight pages of hard work across the table. You literally slaved over that paper and the teacher gave you a lousy grade because it did not run parallel to their opinion. It was literally an assignment to write an argument on your unpopular opinion and the teacher had no real basis for the grade other than he doesn’t ‘agree with your statement’. Glancing up, you catch Jooheon’s curious gaze. Giving a little sigh you offered “My teacher is a narthesistic asshole” as an answer. You’re boyfriend didn’t bat an eye as he corrected your mispronunciation to which you repeated, once again stumbling over the word. He tried once more only for your tongue to twist awkwardly around the word once more. Letting out a little chuckle under his breath, he let it go and closed to gap between the both of you, wrapping his arms around you.“Need me to beat him up for you?” He asked as he rocked you in his arms, receiving a laugh from you as you tried to 

I.M.: Grins at every slight mispronunciation. Sometimes gives you a sweet little tease about it

Licking your lips, you concentrated on remembering the hours worth of videos you watched earier, trying to get his dang tie to look presentable. Finally, you pulled the not to his throat before stepping back and giving a proud smile of satisfaction. “Perfect. You look so sospisticated.” Changkyun instantly grinned back at you, obviously holding back a laugh. “Sosposticated enough to meet your parents now?” He teased lightly. You shot him a glare and gave his shoulder a little smack. “Almost. As long as you keep your mouth closed,” you answered. Tapping your finger on the tip of his nose you gave him a little smile. “I think my father will give you a run for you money, though. Hopefully I’ll still have a boyfriend after tonight.” Taking his hand, you make your way to the door, dragging him behind yourself after shooting him your own evil, teasing grin.

[chill-that-ur-inmyhead]

stand by me

1 - Are you one of those people who can watch TV shows and movies over and over again without getting bored?                                                            yes!!! I prefer to water my favs over trying something new, I’d really have to be interested to watch something else

2 - If you drink coffee, do you like it plain or would you rather have something like a latte or something flavoured?                                              latte for sure, preferably a matcha latte (from pret :))))))

3 - How did you used to dress ten years ago? Do you dress in a similar way now?                                                                                                                so aged 11, a lot of stretchy jean jeggings and colourful tops, no elaborate accessorising, very simple and basic and most importantly comfortable 

4 - When you’re grocery shopping, do you buy known brands or are you happy to go with the generic store version?                                                      I can go both ways

5 - Do you have a close relationship with any of your cousins?                  not really

6 - Who was the last person to sleep over at your house? Does this person stay over often or was it more of a one-off?                                                      I had a one night stand last year

7 - Does bad weather put you off going out if you’ve got plans to do so? Have you ever cancelled plans due to the weather?                                  depends if the plans are spent outside but if we are going to a bar or restaurant then the weather wouldn’t stop me

8 - When you’re on vacation, do you prefer doing the typical tourist things, or would you rather explore somewhere off the beaten track?                  typical tourist things but once they’re done I could go off the beaten track

9 - Did your family travel a lot when you were younger?                              we went to places around Europe but never outside of it

10 - When was the last time you went shopping for clothes? Did you get anything decent or find any bargains?                                                          shopping online for clothes, literally had a delivery yesterday, I needed a raincoat

11 - Is it true that accessories can make or break an outfit?                          for sure, I wish 11 year old me knew a bit more about accessorising!!

12 - What is your worst memory from high school? What about the best? worst memories were probs fighting with my friends, it was an awful stressful feeling but the best memories is laughing around with those same friends!

13 - Is there any trait in a potential partner that would be a total deal breaker for you?                                                                                          different sense of humour probably

14 - Do you insist people use coasters if they’re putting drinks down in your house?                                                                                                    nope but I think they do automatically

15 - Have you ever been arrested? Were you guilty of whatever it is you were arrested for?                                                                                          nope never

16 - Name five items on the shelf nearest to you:                                            vinyl player, ben e king record, camera, camera bag, passport

17 - After meals, do you wash dishes up right away, or do you leave them in the sink and do a whole days worth at once?                                        leave them on the side for the dishwasher

18 - What websites do you find yourself spending the most time on? recently, netflix, asos, twitter, tumblr, redit, insta,

19 - Do you still download music and TV shows?                                         sure if I’m going on a long journey I download them to listen to offline 

20 - Does your phone have a good battery life? How long does it last before you need to charge it again?                                                          depending how much I use it but I can usually get through the whole day before I charge it at night

21 - When was the last time you hit snooze?                                                      this morning

22 - Did you ever play The Sims? Which expansion pack was your favourite, if you had any?                                                                                    I used to play Sims castaway but it was ages ago

23 - Are there any popular film series or TV shows that you just don’t get the appeal of?                                                                                                    cooking shows, I find them quite boring and they make me hungry!

24 - As a child, did you receive pocket money or an allowance? How much did you get? Was it dependent on you doing chores of some kind?            yes I think it was £10 a week or something, nope no chores I guess I was lucky

25 - Do you think your parents did a good job of raising you? Would you do anything differently with your own kids?                                                      I’d try and go outside of europe for holidays, but I guess that will depend on my finances and what my children are up for

26 - If something is bothering you, do you have to fix it right away?          my brother is talking to his friend and its really annoyingly loud                        

27 - Are there any household jobs you enjoy doing? If so, what’s the reason that you enjoy those things?                                                      hoovering my room and seeing my floor become cleaner

28 - Do you still live in the area you grew up in? Would you like to live somewhere else one day? Where would you go?                                              I had to move back home after uni but I really want to go back to London once everything resumes

29 - Do you smoke, drink or do drugs? How old were you the first time you tried those things? Do you want to quit?                                                  drinking happened at 15/ 16 and marijuana at 17

30 - What’s one thing that really grosses you out? Is it something you have to deal with anyway? How do you cope?                                                        hair in the shower drain GROSS or I guess anything in the shower drain just grosses me out 

31 - Have you ever grown your own fruits or veggies? Did it work out okay or was it a bit of a failure?                                                                                my padre does! tomatoes and blueberries, used to grow raspberries

32 - Could you ever raise animals only to kill and eat them later on, or would you struggle to kill a living thing you’d formed an attachment to?      If it is my last resort you gotta do what you gotta do

33 - When was the last time you painted your nails?                                        I got my nails done just before lockdown happened last week

34 - If you regularly sit in the same place (on your bed or the sofa, for example) do you have a cupboard or something to keep supplies in so you don’t have to keep moving all the time?                                                              I have a snack tin next to me and a jug of water, been thinking about moving my spare kettle into my room to make teas instead of having to go downstairs but that would be the height of my laziness

35 - Have you ever been a witness to a crime? Did you have to make a statement to the police?                                                                                  nope

36 - Do you prefer Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings?                          Harry Potter ofc

37 - Do you like to air your house or room out every day to stop it getting musty?                                                                                                                  in the summer yes

38 - Have you ever visited a landmark or place made famous by a TV show or film? Did you go there because it was featured on TV?                            not yet but I want to  

39 - Who taught you how to tie your shoe laces?                                        parents

40 - Do you have any pets? What are they all doing at the moment?              I don’t but wished I did

41 - Do you prefer sweet or savoury snacks?                                                    sweet

42 - What’s the most painful place you’ve ever had a spot? Was it a big relief when you finally managed to squeeze it?                                          forehead spots can hurt like a bitch

43 - Talking of spots, have you ever watched videos like those by Dr Pimple Popper? Do you think that kind of stuff is cool or gross?

44 - When was the last time you attended a bonfire?                                        literally last week, dad had a bonfire for 5th November to remember his mother

45 - Is there anything you wish you enjoyed, but you just struggle with for some reason? Maybe you hate the crowds or the noise?                                I wish I liked running

46 - What’s worse - someone constantly blowing their nose or someone who’s constantly sniffing?                                                                          sniffing

47 - Do you have any genuine phobias? What are they and have you ever done anything to address them?                                                                      nope

48 - Do you hate the feeling of being sweaty and dirty from exercise? Is this something that’s put you off working out in the past?                              I don’t like that it makes my hair gross and that sometimes prevents me from working out

49 - Is there anything “normal” that you have a real aversion to? Like a certain noise or smell or taste?                                                                        I’m not fond of fireworks, high risk low reward imo

50 - If you’ve made plans with someone and you really don’t want to go when the time comes, do you suck it up or make an excuse?                          I usually don’t make plans that I don’t wanna go to, I’ll make plans that I can be excited for

51 - What’s your favourite thing to do with each of your parents? Do you get a chance to do that regularly?                                                                Used to go for lunch with my mum most weekends but that doesn’t happen anymore

52 - If you were to adopt a pet, is there anything that would put you off, like a certain colour or breed?                                                                                    If I was to adapt a dog it would be a golden retriever otherwise I just wouldn’t get a dog, for a cat I’m less picky, just no completely white cats and no hairless ones.

53 - Would you ever like to give circus skills a go? What would you be most interested in trying?                                                                        trampolining looks like fun  

54 - What are your thoughts on circuses that allow animal performances? shame shame I know your name

55 - Are there any habits or traditions you’ve picked up from your parents what you’ve carried on in your own home?                                                        I don’t have my own home yet but I’m sure I will

56 - Are there any remakes that you think are better than the originals?    the shrek series and Ice series are strong contenders

57 - How about cover songs? Do you prefer any of those to the original versions?                                                                                                                I used to only listen to the glee version of songs, it was so weird hearing the original

58 - What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the cinema? What about the last?                                                                                                HSM 3 when I was 9 and Pixie at 21

59 - Do you listen to more music, or watch more TV? Is this something that’s changed over the years?                                                                      over lockdown I’ve been really into blasting my music but before then I deffo wated more tv

60 - Do you have any weird fears or worries? Like thinking you’ve forgotten to lock a door or blow out a candle? What do you do to reassure yourself you’ve not forgotten?                                                                            whenever I go somewhere I have to triple check I’ve not left anything - it almost happened to me a couple of weeks ago with my purse and thank god I triple check because I saw it and thought that would have been hell for parallel universe me

[vitalmindandbody]

Explorer, Eco-Warrior, Spy: The Battles of Jacques Cousteau

I wrote this long, intimate chart of Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the spring of 1993 and, for personal reasonableness, never publicized it. But at a time when deniers of scientific and of common sense are out to destroy the last better probability we have to slow climate change, it seemed an appropriate moment for this article to see the light of day. Cousteau had numerous flunks, but he changed the way we envision the natural world, and, unhappily, the world that he inserted us to is now in terrible hazard . — Christopher Dickey

PARIS, May 27, 1993 — After a long discussion about Antarctica, a continent he felt he had saved, and before the raspberries, which he anticipated with the greedy feeling of small children, one summertime Sunday afternoon in 1991 at the Brasserie Lorraine on the Place des Ternes, ogling out on Paris streets “thats been” warm and dark-green and pulsing with life, Jacques-Yves Cousteau talked about the death of his wife Simone a few months before. “For me it was terrible, ” he said. His look was reddened and the lower lids of his eyes were blood-red. At that time he gazed, uneasily, his 81 times. Chips of dandruff speckled the eyeglasses he used to read the menu. “For her the very best stuff was, I expended the last three days with her.”

Finishing the last of the Bordeaux, he went on. “The night she died, we had a exceedingly joyful dinner.” Simone was a minuscule woman, tough and reserved, who had wasted most of the last 40 times at sea on the research ship Calypso. She was known to the crew as “La Bergere, ” the shepherdess, and she dedicated herself to the ship she called “my best friend, ” to the fact-finding mission, its men and their Captain. “She is like a purser and a pastor, ” Cousteau liked to say. But in her seventy-first year she appeared as if beneath her skin skin there were bones of excruciating fragility. For the majority of members of the four months annually when “shes not” on the barge, she was in the Cousteaus &# x27; little suite in Monaco. She did not like Paris. Often alone, she left the radio and television turned on all the time to keep her company.

That night, however, her sister-in-law was there–and Cousteau. Simone was “gay, alert, joking, ” he remembered. They bided up late booze and talking before ultimately going to bed in their area overlooking the sea.

“At five o &# x27; clock in the morning she asked me to help her to the toilet. And I did. And”–he hesitated an instant–“she died in my arms.”

“I knew she was not well, but I had no idea “whats wrong” with her, ” read Cousteau. He told the doctor he pondered “she was drinking too much red wine.” But medical doctors, who had known the Cousteaus since the early 1950 s, and was the only physician Simone relied, said, “Jacques, it was either wine-colored or morphine.”

The old-fashioned explorer did not understand. Wine or morphine?

For the last five years, the doctor excused, Simone had had “a extrapolated cancer.” She had to have something to kill the pain.

“She made the doctor promise not to tell me, ” Cousteau supposed, “so as not to disturb my work.”

We ate the berries in silence.

Other patrons of the restaurants sector glanced our room sometimes. Undoubtedly they realise the “Commandant, ” as he is called in France. They were furtively inquisitive, but no beings oppress their curiosity with more neurotic strength than the Parisian bourgeoisie. They stood Cousteau his privacy and his secrets.

The rest of us think we know this old man of the sea because, of course, we grew up with him. From innumerable hours of television we &# x27; ve learned his accent and the rhythms of his speech and, in a general kind of path, we know how he changed the world. Can you remember a occasion when there were no scuba divers? When our imagination “of the worlds oceans” moved no deeper than the keel of a glass-bottom boat? That &# x27; s the direction it was before Cousteau. He fabricated the Aqua-Lung. He used it to explore oceans, creeks, caves in every corner the planet. And in the 50 times since World War II his cinemas, which always boasted his face and his expression, had two remarkable effects.

First, they communicated a wondrous excite about nature and–what is rare–a sense of good-natured intimacy with it. The spectacle beneath the seas was wildly alien when it was firstly revealed in the 1940 s, but through Cousteau it became unexpectedly and marvelously accessible. He and the members of his team seemed as fascinated as four-year-olds by just about everything they come across, whether sharks of Senegal or a skua sitting on its nest in Antarctica. Secondly, these scores of television curricula, programme and rebroadcast and translated into dozens of expressions, eventually obligated Cousteau himself the environmentalist emeritus of the global village. “He &# x27; s a educator, ” as Vice President Albert Gore said a couple of years ago. “He facilitates others to view “the worlds” and their relationship to it in a new way.”

In the last 15 years Cousteau has espoused the role of a visionary, even a revolutionary, preaching mainly to the young. As one generation would lose its fascination with him and move on from the world of true-blue adventure to the obligations of adulthood, the next generation would detect his undersea nature, sometimes at odd hours, often in reruns, and be hypnotized. There is no place he is not known. One biographer claims there are questionnaires that demo Cousteau grades second only to the Pope as “the worlds largest” familiar appearance on the planet. But that may banalize the skipper &# x27; s popularity, so singular and universal, so grandfatherly and benign is his image.

Which is one reason the narrative about Simone &# x27; s demise was so especially perturbing. Cousteau told it with plain candor, as if he was puzzled by what it intend. It &# x27; s not surprising for a genius to be filled with oblivious self-fascination. In France, at least since Diderot, the enlightened have rationalized comfortably the toll that the truly bright take over those close at hand.( “He is a tree which has stunted some others originating near by and extinguished flowers growing at its hoofs, but it has raised its heading to the heavens and its diverges have spread far and wide, ” as the philosophe would have it .) Still, ego alone did not quite show what Cousteau was alleging. There was something on his thinker that was missing from his account, and manifesting farther I pondered about Simone &# x27; s motivatings.

Bettmann/ Getty

Under The Sea

Before I congregated Cousteau for the first time five years ago, I retrieved from a long-unopened bundle box my yellowing transcript of The Silent World , a Scholastic Book Business publication decaying now with a smell of cheap mushy that accompanies back the perfervid daydream of junior high study halls. It was first are presented in 1953 and about certain parts of Cousteau &# x27; s firstly 40 years–the discoveries, the excitement–there is no better note. During and after World War II, Cousteau and Simone and their chums were experimenting in an utterly brand-new surrounding, using themselves as laboratory rats. They twiddled and investigated, desegregating discipline with pleasure, tribulation with mistake, almost at romp as they became, in Cousteau &# x27; s word, “menfish.”

Before the conflict a few oil machines had been developed to help divers move around freely without the aid of metal helmets, pressure suit and tubings tying them to compressors on the surface. But none was very effective. Simply inhaling bottled breeze wouldn &# x27; t drive. The question for a diver was to have an air quantity that recruited his lungs at the same pressing as the enclose water, which increased substantially the deeper he went. To do this manually was difficult, dangerous and impractical. What was required was a valve–a regulator, as it came to be called–that would respond automatically to the pressure around it. Cousteau and an designer named Emile Gagnan developed precisely such a machine, and it proved as vital to journey under the sea as the compass was to journey on the surface.

On the morning in 1943 when Cousteau ran a first full underwater exam of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, Simone floated on the surface of the Mediterranean with mask and snorkel, literally watching over him. If anything went wrong, she was his link to the known nature and existence. “I gazed up and understood the surface glittering like a defective mirror. In the center of the looking glass was the trim silhouette of Simone, reduced to a doll. I motioned. The doll curved at me.” Cousteau tried out the mechanism from every slant, swimming vertically, inverted, planing through the liquid at different degrees. It acted perfectly, and Cousteau was in a living fantasy, moving without wings in slow motion among strange beings. Then he paused to explore a bit cave and bring up lobsters for himself and his wife in “occupied, ill-fed France.”

There was something virtually matter of fact about stirring biography in those epoches. “The gadgets that I happen to have invented would have been invented anyway, ” he added. “They were invented because they are integrated into our adventure.” And there was always, in the most extensive feel, an epicurean facet to Cousteau &# x27; s explorations: a sensual delight in his detections that runs parallel to, and sometimes overcomes, his scientific observations. The bland note-takers of academia rarely criticize Cousteau &# x27; s the ways and sniff at his lack of formal credentials. Many realise him as a voyeur poking on their world-wide of carefully filed knowledge. But Cousteau knew “the power of beautiful, ” as one of France &# x27; s most prominent researchers introduced it, and in his prose that mingled “Outdoor Life” adventure with sumptuous description, he perfectly transmitted his infatuations in his work The Silent World .

Consider his descriptions of the course coloring changes as the light-footed fades-out beneath the surface of the high seas. The naval investigate squad he required in the late 1940 s utilized colour charts and technical gadgets to measure the changes in color at different depths as liquid filters away the spectrum of the sunbathe. But it was an accidental panorama in the middle of an undersea hunting that he used to tell the legend. His sidekick and long-time colleague Frederic Dumas had speared a large fish about 20 grasps down, and the damn stuff wouldn &# x27; t die. As Cousteau watched, “Dumas hauled in the last paws of cord, and got a traction on the harpoon gibe. He flashed his loop bayonet and immersed it into the heart of the big fish. A thick-skulled puff of blood discoloured the sea . … The blood was light-green. Stupefied by the batch, I swam close and stared at the mortal creek shooting from the heart. It was the color of emeralds . … Flourishing his astounding trophy on the spear, Didi guided the way to the surface. At 55 hoofs the blood passed dark dark-brown. At 20 feet it was pink. On the surface it flowed red.”

In the summer of 1947, Cousteau and his unit began experimenting with the purposes of nitrogen narcosis or “rapture of the magnitudes, ” and his accounts of those trials, the majority of members of which he foisted on himself, expose a great deal more about “the mens” than about the molecules and capillaries that were his scientific concern. Cousteau and my honourable colleagues knew from earlier ancestries that as they started deeper health risks of hallucination and disorientation proliferated dramatically. They gasped compressed breath, which includes nitrogen as well as oxygen, and the actual capacity of gas they were inhaling increased the lower down they disappeared. A person 100 paws below the surface was subsisting breath four times denser than at sea level. The nitrogen built up in the intelligence, and eventually began to alter its functions.

Often the condition struck unexpectedly, replenishing a diver with giddy euphoria, and different parties were hit by the superstar at different extents. The consequence was hazardous , not least, because it was so seductive. “I am personally quite receptive to nitrogen rapture. I like it and dread it like destiny, ” wrote Cousteau. “It destroys the inclination of life.” But he stopped going back for more, and the chapter of The Silent World that deals with his record-setting dives of the time is as much an journey of hallucination as Aldous Huxley &# x27; s contemporaneous “Doors of Perception, ” where mescaline and LSD were the mediums.

“At 200 feet I savoured the metal flavor of compressed nitrogen and was instantaneously and severely struck with rapture . … My mind was jammed with self-conceited thoughts and antic joyfulnes. I struggled to fix my brain on actuality, was trying to mention the color of the sea about me. A race took place between navy blue, aquamarine and Prussian off-color. The dialogue would not resolve. The sole knowledge I could comprehend was that there was no roof and no flooring in the blue room.” Cousteau reached 297 feet that day, a record for the time. Fifty fathoms deep, “in my bisected brain the satisfaction was balanced by sarcastic self-contempt.”

The fun stopped merely a few months later when Maurice Fargues, a longtime member of Cousteau &# x27; s crew, lost it, his air hose and their own lives somewhere around 400 feet.

Simone was almost always there in those days, whether moving like a guardian angel on the shimmering surface during Cousteau &# x27; s first aqualung dives, or waiting helpless near the entryway of a cave in the Vaucluse, know … … if her husband had died in his descent to the source of a mysterious spring.

Inevitably their children, more, were reaped into the undersea macrocosm by a parent uneasy to share his experiences with everyone around him. “During the summer of Liberation I came home from Paris with two miniature aqualungs for my sons, Jean-Michel, then seven, and Philippe, five. The older boy was memorizing to swimming but a very young had still not been wading. I was confident that they would take to diving, since one does not need to be a swimmer to go down with the apparatus.” But the excited infants, from the moment they firstly caught a glimpse of the undersea world, couldn &# x27; t stop chattering, giggling, and strangling on ocean. “I caused another lecture on the topic that the high seas was a silent macrocosm and that little boys were advised to shut the fuck up when inspecting it. It took various dives before they learned to hold their volleys of chatter until they had surfaced. Then I took them deeper. They did not hesitate to catch octopi with their hands. On seaside barbecues Jean-Michel would go down 30 hoofs with a kitchen forking and retrieve succulent ocean urchins. Their mom dives very, but without the same exuberance. For the purpose of their own, dames are suspicious of diving and frown on their menfolk going down.”

” Diving Was My Cover “

More than 40 times after those epoches of picnics by the sea, Simone was in the VIP lounge of Charles De Gaulle airport, where Jacques had gone to receive her on her return from yet another expedition aboard Calypso. “People ask me if I follow my husband, ” she said with a tired smile. “I announce, &# x27; No, he follows me .&# x27; ” With her was a fluffy white-hot pup, incorrigible on territory and, one would theorize, insufferable at sea. But it seemed to keep her amused and on her lap it obstructed her warm. I asked her to sign my deteriorating facsimile of The Silent World . All she wrote, in letters suggestive of the Phoenician write on Calypso &# x27; s emblem, was “S. Cousteau.” Her spouse &# x27; s inscription on the same sheet, in clean, bold handwriting, speaks to one “who has the spirit to share my planned … for a few daytimes! “

Jack Garofalo/ Paris Match via Getty

The Diving Saucer Of Commander Cousteau. Cote d’Azur, Marseilles- July 23, 1959 – The first assaults at the diving saucer designed by Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau: he sat before the plans of the saucer, inhaling a cigarette in his office.

Even in his early eighties Cousteau &# x27; s vigor appears inexhaustible, and he always seems a bit puzzled by those around him who were not sanctified with such vigour. He sounds unaware of the toll his boundless ebullience might take on others. His schedule is relentlessly kinetic. As I &# x27; ve tried to plumb his ideas and his personality we &# x27; ve wound up talking here about Paris eateries, in his Monaco apartment and driving along the Cote d &# x27; Azur; in Washington inns while he lobbied Congress, and in his little office off the Faubourg Saint-Honore. We &# x27; ve communicated by fax and by satellite phone.

One morning a summon came from the Calypso. Cousteau was off Palawan Island in the Philippines. If I could make it to the Paris airport by 3 p. m. there was a plane to Manila. He &# x27 ;d send a helicopter to pick me up and we could waste the week on the ship. “It is one of the exceedingly most beautiful places available in “the worlds”, ” he shouted over the Inmarsat line. “I ought to have diving in various caves … All of these islands are like Gruyere cheese … We have explored and filmed a river four kilometers inland … It &# x27; s like paradise.” Foolishly, because of other commitments I didn &# x27; t croak, and I never have been on the Calypso, never have find the old boy in the high seas. But, then, he invests less meter there now.

Since 1989 Cousteau has helped save Antarctica, explored the Danube and the Mekong, starred at the Earth Summit in Rio and become an “immortal” of the Academie francaise. Grandiose projects were inaugurated. Some persist, like his efforts to foster the teaching of “ecotechnique” at “the worlds” &# x27; s universities. Some disintegrated. Attempts to build Disneyesque delights foundered in bankruptcy and acrimony.

In December 1990, Simone croaked and in June of 1991, as it happens only a few periods after our lunch at the Brasserie Lorraine, Cousteau remarried Francine Triplet, the status of women in her 40 s, and introduced to the world their two young children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Cousteau &# x27; s older enduring son and long-time heir evident, 56 -year-old Jean-Michel, has since gone off to haunt other interests, starting the break-up of a non-profit territory he and his father have improved during the course of 20 times. “It has not detriment our tendernes, ” Jacques told me this spring. “There is nothing else to pronounce but Jean-Michel is gone.” This is not all that Jean-Michel has to say. But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. The old person of the high seas is full of secrets, and there are some basic ones to be learned near the surface before we move deeper.

“The drive when I was young was interest, ” Cousteau showed one morning in Monaco in 1990. “I was curious to see what was under the keel of our crafts, even when I was very, even younger, even under small boats.” We were up in his analyse, which is poised like a widow &# x27; s go on top of the little apartment pulley-block where he officially resides, with a glassed-in terrace gazing down on the confuse of Mediterranean buildings that is Monaco. Watching the scribbled thoughts going into my notebook, Cousteau amended: “The important date was 1920, when I dived in Vermont.”

He was 10 years old then and living in the United States, on New York &# x27; s Upper West Side near the angle of 95 th and Broadway. “His fathers”, Daniel Cousteau, seems to have had knacks evaluated by parvenu Americans anxious for a patina of French edification, and he spent his entire busines cultivating between Paris and Manhattan as the private secretary of first one, then another American millionaire. Jacques learned to play stickball and speak English in New York, and in the summer he was shipped off to camp near a lagoon in Vermont. He was readily accepted, clearly headstrong, and apparently a bit of a disciplinary question. When part of the program turned out to be horseback riding in the hills, Jacques refused to go. “I don &# x27; t like mountains. I don &# x27; t like horses.” The German rector told him, as sanction, to retrieve some divisions from the bottom of the pond. No concealment. No fins. No ocean. But by Cousteau &# x27; s computation, his undersea undertakings had begun.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX BROOK LYNN/ THE DAILY BEAST

Cousteau &# x27; s adolescence was wasted mainly in France and traveling around Europe. He changed academies frequently and was never extremely tireless about survey, but he was anxious to create. He tried poetry and paint.( On the wall up the aerie above his Monaco apartment there is one of his teenage oils: a morose depiction of Jesus which he called “Disappointed Christ.” The most interesting thing about the painting is that it is still on his walls and, for Cousteau, it still has a word. “How could He not be disillusioned, ” replies the chieftain .) But the majority of members of Cousteau &# x27; s teenage originality is entered into attaining home movies. Other parties prevented their publications on paper, he continued his on film. Using acquaintances as actors he rendered little melodramas. Most often he played the criminal himself.

At the age of 20, Cousteau enlisted in the French navy. He had thought about being a professional movie manufacturer. He considered a job in remedy. But the navy offered a chance to keep moving, to interpret “the worlds”, as it were, and explore at other people’s overhead( as he would continue to do for the rest of his life ). All the while he remained filming. Aboard the training ship Jeanne d &# x27; Arc he circumnavigated countries around the world: Bali, Japan, even Hollywood. By the time he was 24, Cousteau was serving in China and when he got an extended leave, he went back home overland, through the Soviet Union. Cousteau stirred his space by study through the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution from the Pacific port of Vladivostok to Moscow, where the smattering of Russian “hes having” studied in Shanghai helped him shake the secret police. “During 10 daytimes I was free–loose–with a lot of rubles, ” he recollects. “So I had a great time.” After that he made his way to Tbilisi and Yerevan in the Caucasus. From there to Ukraine and Poland, then back home to France. Among the mementoes in his apartment is a photograph of the young patrolman before leaving Shanghai. A pencil-thin moustache only accentuates the unformed freshness of his face.

Cousteau &# x27; s passion was to clear his occupation as a naval aviator. The dreamlike experience of flight ever mesmerized him. But on a brief leave after several months of flight school in 1936 he was trying to drive all night from one corner of France to another to fulfill some friends when he disintegrated his gondola on a dark country road. It was two o &# x27; clock in the morning. None was around and for several hours, until he made his style to a farmhouse, he thought that he was going to die. As he described the vistum years later he remembered looking at the stars and thinking, “My God, I &# x27; ve checked a lot of things in my life.” Jacques Cousteau was twenty-six.

The convalescence was long and agonizing and merely after months of care was the young policeman able to regain the use of both his arms. By then his job as a captain was over. But it was precisely at this time that he was introduced to another naval detective, slightly his senior, appointed Philippe Tailliez. Both were mesmerized by the idea of diving and spearfishing, and Tailliez, in turn, established Cousteau to another young admirer referred Frederic Dumas. The three became constant diving attendants, constructing their reputation together for the next 20 years.

It was also during this period that Cousteau converged Simone Melchior. In 1936 she was seventeen. While Cousteau came from a bourgeois lineage in Bordeaux, in Simone Melchior &# x27; s background there was money, renown and, as she said, “seawater in my blood.” She was from three generation of admirals. Her grandpas and uncles had all harboured the rank, and her father was a director of Air Liquide, one of the world &# x27; s passing producers of bottled gases for industrial purposes. It was one of her leader &# x27; s employes, Emile Gagnan, who co-invented the aqualung with Cousteau, and the company still holds the patent. When she was eighteen years old, Simone and Jacques were married. They had just begun to establish their lives together when the Second World War began.

Marka/ UIG via Getty

The Silent World and the movies and notebooks and essays that followed it during the 1950 s in Life or National Geographic give the impression that as campaign was building in Europe and Paris folded before the Nazi threat, as French Jews were being extradited to the death camps by their French Catholic neighbors and the fate of millions of people hung in the remaining balance, Cousteau and his attendants somehow managed to spend all their epoch exploring under liquid, far from the inhumanities of defeat and alliance. Maybe this notion was comforting in the years just after the conflict was over. To discover a dreamlike world-wide under the sea was, for Cousteau &# x27; s audience as much as for him, a reprieve from all the traumas that became before. But Cousteau was deeply and painfully involved in the the dramas of Vichy France. His only brother, Pierre-Antoine, was one of the country &# x27; s most notorious Nazi traitors. Jacques-Yves was a snoop who worked with the Resistance.

Cousteau seems back on his espionage acts, as so much else in his life, with a mixture of pride matched by sarcastic self-contempt. In the early days of the conflict, before Paris fell, he was at sea on a mission to track the German pocket battleship Graf Spey in South America. “When I came back from these stupid military actions I was designated for the secret service in Marseilles” and at first “refused to do that grimy job.” For a guy styling himself law enforcement officers and a gentleman it seemed an affair of “lies and vice.” But his commander induced it an tell and formerly Cousteau was caught up in historic events, he admitted, “I enjoyed it a lot.”

As the Germans progressively occupied France, firstly exacting franchises from the Vichy government, then intruding on ever more area with their Italian allies, Cousteau took part in scuttling the French fleet at Toulon to keep it out of Nazi hands. His most well documented exploit was on property, where reference is declined into an Italian military post and photographed critical reports helpful in bursting the Axis systems. As he figured it, he had “about one chance out of ten to come out” of that operation. For these employs Cousteau acquired two Croix de guerres and the Legion d &# x27; honneur.

His experimentations with the aqualung certainly placed him in a position to gather further intelligence in and around the sea. But it was only recently, one morning in Monaco, that he admitted “during that last part of the battle diving was my cover.” For obvious intellects it was not shrewd for a humanity prowling “the worlds” in a scientific research barrel to advertise the facts of the case he had been a spy.

Pierre-Antoine constituted his profession as a reporter while Jacques-Yves was operating his course up the grades in the Navy. Writing in the popular gazette “Je suis partout, ” Pierre proclaimed conciliation with the Germans as the war with Hitler approached and, once France had been demolished, he counseled partnership. Certainly, on any day in the streets of occupied Paris the French could speak tracts signed off by Pierre Cousteau that were openly sympathetic to the Nazis, implacably hostile to the Friends and the Jews: a people “with a delicacy for debauchery, for gyp, for verbal onanism, ” as Pierre introduced it. He was a hate-mongerer par excellence in a country that was, to its standing dishonor, viscerally anti-Semitic.

To this day the French loathe to be reminded about the working day of Vichy, but every so often a reporter muckraking through Cousteau &# x27; s past will delve into the history of Pierre-Antoine. The most recent was Bernard Violet, who dedicates much of the biography he wrote earlier this year to a tireles sought for practices in which the proceedings of the fucking brother might reflect on the younger. Violet managed to contact far-flung members of the family, pored through the sheets of “Je suis partout” and the records of later court proceedings, sifted through such private mail as he could obtain and finally discovered that Cousteau &# x27; s first public prevail with an underwater cinema was a indicate of “Par dix-huit metres de fond, ” a spearfishing narration with Dumas as booster, was indicated in dominated Paris during a Nazi-approved festival for films. Violet suggests that, aided by Pierre &# x27; s contacts, Jacques dived and filmed with the authorization of the occupiers. But Violet offers no evidence that Jacques Cousteau shared Pierre &# x27; s anti-semitic vistums or any of his other smutty minds. Jacques was loyal to his brother , not to his politics.

After the battle Pierre-Antoine Cousteau was captured by the Allies and sentenced to fatality for collaboration. Despite the obvious probability to his naval job, Jacques-Yves attended the test, witnessed on two brothers &# x27; s behalf, and tried to bolster his mettle once the convict was handed down. “You have to live. And the said he hoped that we have, you were supposed to share in it! ” he wrote the day after government decisions. Eventually Pierre &# x27; s sentence was commuted to life in prison, and after almost a decade behind prohibits, Pierre was released after 1956. Bitter and ended, he died two years later of cancer.

Throughout their youth, Pierre had been the more bright of the two brothers. But when he is evident from incarcerate it was Jacques the world knew. The Silent World had been an international best seller. The film based on the book, co-directed with young Louis Malle, had prevailed a Palme d &# x27; or at Cannes and an Oscar in Hollywood. As Jacques &# x27; popularity changed, the histories of Pierre passed into gloom, and then out of sight.

When Cousteau talks about those times today he chimes weary, but he is frankfurter. “My brother was persuaded that we should collaborate with the Germans, ” he said one afternoon. “He was urged of that before the campaign and he did not change his sentiment during the course of its crusade. I did not agree with him. We fought like puppies about these things together. Extremely gentle but very serious. And when I was in the Resistance and he was a writer writing in favor of the Germans we are continuing met and discussed”–Cousteau searched for a moment for the right word–“like brothers, but with radically different opinions. He was a rather brilliant, extremely likable, very warm person. Full of absurdity. And eventually, what happened? We do collaborate with the Germans. After all those things…

“I was a military officer. I was helping my own country. My country decided to fight. I was campaigning. Bon . And I may have had other opinions”–Cousteau shrugged–“but I did not. “

The Science of Joy

In the study in Monaco, on the wall above fax machines machine that spewed out a constant river of law articles and proposals for a long-planned investigate of the Yangtze, there hung a portrait of Simone covered by Jacques in the 1950 s. She had a kerchief tied around her whisker and her showing was skeptical. Cousteau &# x27; s technical skills as a portraitist, whether of Christ or of his wife, were no longer great. But the eyes in Simone &# x27; s scene did have that ruse, which some photographs have, of following you guys later. Framed on the wall, she softly reigned the room.

In life, she was down in the kitchen. Lunch was ready late in the day, a simple banquet with friends a la Provencale : raw fava beans, salami, pizza, steak.( The only fish on the table was a little boy rubber ones is available as knife respites .) Everyone drank red wine and talked about nutrient. Much as the skipper might snack, he never seems to gain weight. Cousteau had always been skinny, said Simone. When they used to make love, she chuckled, he was so boney she used to get bruised.

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

After dinner, with a bit encouragement, Cousteau continued the recount of his life. “Obviously it &# x27; s almost overwhelming the amount of things I &# x27; ve participate in. It &# x27; s nearly embarrassing, ” he read. “And the amount of luck I &# x27; ve had, compared to the life of a bank clerk.”

“Your luck, ” pronounced Simone, “was marrying me.”

“Evidemment, ” he remarked. Obviously.

But as Cousteau &# x27; s popularity continues to increase, Simone began to retreat.

It is easy enough to suspect the enervating effect of his constant exhilaration. Like an psychological dynamo he would fill you with energy in short outbursts, but over the long run he could take that power back. And then some. Seemed at closely, so much of what obligates Cousteau alluring boundaries on self-parody, and occasionally intersects the line. His manner is as quintessentially Gallic as the French accent he has prevented despite 75 years addressing American. He was ever and remains a “bon vivant” filled with “joie de vivre.” A favorite text in English is “enjoy.” Cousteau not only has fun–diving, traveling, sleuthing during World War II–he watches himself having fun, registers himself having fun. And the effect for those working around him can be a little like living in a movie. Examining for the key to the cellar of his Paris apartment so he can take a guest to visualized his wines, he narrates specific actions in the existing liberal like a scene from one of his movies: “Now I am opening the drawer, taking out this key…” In the cellar area, among old-time works by John Gunther and rollers of article for oceanographic examine equipment are cases of Chateau Belles Graves, numerous antiques, from a Bordeaux estate owned by relatives. He fusses about the &# x27; 89, which is wonderful, he reads, but is not able to age so well. Opening a bottle, he admires the Teflon-lubricated Screwpull. “The French attain great wine-coloureds, ” he responds, “the Americans stimulate great corkscrews.”

In the late afternoon in Monaco, while everyone still had a glass of Belles Graves in hand, Cousteau ransacked through the videos near the television. He searched the dominations of the tape player like a sailor looking at the range. “People become nomads at home, ” he answered. “I allow people who would never become nomads the possibility to dream they are.

“I become frenzied when they put one over my films the word &# x27 ;d ocumentary .&# x27; That would entail a lecture at home by a guy who knows better. There is a kind of solemnity. Our cinemas are not films. They are true adventure films.”

He procured the one he was looking for, a shorthand detail of his life called “The First 75 years.” Cousteau said he hadn &# x27; t “ve seen this” television adoration but once or twice since it was produced for his birthday in 1985, five years old before, and like small children he sat rapt, the silver-blue brightnes of the television screen crystallizing his features, watching the decades pass. Here are still photographs of a naughty schoolboy in the United States, there is Cousteau the mustached criminal in his primitive melodramas. He circumnavigates the globe on the Jeanne d &# x27; Arc, camera in hand, exploring the world of geishas, Balinese dancers, the cardboard deck of a Hollywood battleship. A impressive clip presents him with Douglas Fairbanks at Pickfair. The movie star ignites a cigarette for the 22 -year-old midshipman. Cousteau seems completely, elegantly at home.

A particular noblesse pressure combined with joie de vivre is a key to Cousteau &# x27; s environmental consciousness. “There is a way to conduct yourself that is aristrocratic, ” he said that evening in Monaco. “What I tried to do with my children–unfortunately half of them croaked — was to educate them simply that: the noble room of judging yourself. As long as you were not able to look at yourself in the reflect, satisfied with your action, you better shut up.”

From the early 1950 s, he sensed that what was happening to the natural world he explored was unconscionable. “The start was curiosity, the enthusiasm about allure. Then I realized that it was threatened, ” he spoke. ” Bon . Now after the period of interest and exploring succeeded the period of alarm, because we were looking at thoughts that were actually vanishing already. That began to turn us into environmentalists. And that began in 1950 when I procured the Calypso.”

The boat–the far-famed boat–was built in Seattle in the early days of the conflict, a wooden-hulled minesweeper dubbed simply J-8 26. By 1950 it had established its acces to private hands in Malta where it served as a shuttle and was open its refer, after the nymph who stopped Odysseus enraptured on her island for seven years. Cousteau bought the Calypso with fund donated by one of “his fathers” &# x27; s prosperous pals. He then plotted to have himself assigned to a special schism of the Navy and the Calypso proclaimed France &# x27; s first ship for oceanographic research. Cousteau had been 20 years in the military, and technically he still was. But as he and his crew sailed aboard the refitted Calypso on their maiden voyage to the Red Sea he realized “for the first time we were on our own. It was not &# x27; the &# x27; navy. It was &# x27; my &# x27; navy.”

Here on the video in Monaco is the opening vistum of the movie “The Silent World”: an escadrille of divers, flares in hand, descending to the lower fringes of a ridge. There is the Calypso prospecting for oil off Abu Dhabi. There are the inventions–Aqua-Lung, Diving Saucer, the habitats under the sea called Conshelf I, and II, and III. Here is Cousteau being received by Presidents of the United States. John Kennedy gifted him a medallion. Simone stands, ill at ease, in the background.

With the endorsement and future directions of David Wolper in the 1960 s Cousteau began his television series “The Undersea World of …, ” and his slightly folksy gumption of showmanship became Hollywoodized. In that late-1 960 s period of ersatz interplanetary escapades( this is only the time of “Star Trek,” the first generation ), Cousteau &# x27; s divers were outfitted in silver diving gear with creepy helmets suitable for encountering aliens. But the chieftain ever saved his sense of humor, and some of the costumes were absolutely ludicrous. For a program about African hippos, he had two of his guys don a fiberglass hippo dres. At a scene in the video of web-footed divers trundling past a stumped elephant, Cousteau appears with laughter.

The documentary continues to play out in the Monaco evening. There by the banks of the river among the hippos is a lanky young man, his look principally hidden by a thick whisker, but his suffer and his lean build suggestive of his father &# x27; s. As the story of Philippe Cousteau appears on the screen, the captain watches in silence.

Throughout the 1970 s, while Cousteau became a grandiose old person, his son Philippe appeared as the heir to his fame and his causes. Philippe was a very young of the two children Simone bore Cousteau. But his lyrical temper, his drive and ego and interests all pushed him to the prow in his father &# x27; s activities. He had a good sense of his generation &# x27; s environmental preoccupations and a infatuation with gadgetry like hot air bags and seaplanes. He pushed the edge of the envelope to keep in the Cousteau cinemas the feeling of excite and detection that ever mounted them apart.

At first they traveled together, in later years they divided up the employment. It was with Philippe that Cousteau firstly explored the leading edge of Antarctica. It was Philippe who hovered his seaplane to the upper reaches of the Nile. And when Philippe was killed in Portugal in 1979, crashing his airplane into the irrigates of the Tagus River, there was no supplanting him, really.

Jean-Michel, the fucking brother ,~ ATAGEND was by oppose slog and reserved. His chosen metier was architecture, the stuff of a static curiosity. Philippe was 39 when he died. Jean-Michel was 41 when he was called on to take his brother &# x27; s situate. “I assembled the Cousteau Society on the needs of the my dad, ” as he set it. More than a decade after Philippe &# x27; s demise, times after Jean-Michel began seeming regularly in all the publicity of the Cousteau Society and in most of the films, there was often an uncomfortable tension evident between the effusive, effulgent spirit of the parent and the taciturn, responsible feeling of the older–but second–son.

When privately I would expect Cousteau about the deaths among Philippe( “half” of “their childrens”) he would say it did not change the space he saw “the worlds”, but he was less than convincing. “It has hurt me for the rest of my daylights, personally, but it has had no force on my thinking . … It gave me more courage maybe. Because he was convinced, he attempted to promote the relevant recommendations that we developed together and his death is almost an encouragement.”

But Cousteau &# x27; s world-wide changed profoundly precisely then, in some manner publicly, in many ways unremarked or unspoken. The captain had met a young airline hostess identified Francine Triplet, and it was soon after Philippe croaked that his only daughter, Diane, was born to her. A couple of years later she tolerated him another son, Pierre-Yves, and gradually the fact that there is this second lineage initiated to assume a larger role in his life. Francine embarked writing the dialogues for his movies. Eventually the children started to appear in them, although their identities were not become clear until after Simone had died. Cousteau stopped their existence “not really a secret, ” he enunciated afterward. “It was part of “peoples lives”. A little aside, but not very much aside.”

Also about the time of Philippe &# x27; s demise, Cousteau wrote a work that his staff in Paris handle with attention verging on admiration. Now long out of book, The Cousteau Almanac: An Stock-take of Life on Our Water Planet , constructed little impact on “the worlds” &# x27; s consciousness. Much of it is a compendium of , now, more or less out of date papers by Cousteau staffers about breeder reactor, oil tankers and other the risk to human. But there are divisions that Cousteau refers to constantly. One is the bill of rights for benefit of future generations that the Cousteau feet now circulate as a petition. “Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged ground and to its amusement …, ” embarks this small manifesto. It concludes by advocating authorities, organizations and individuals to “take all appropriate measures” to protect the environmental issues “as if in the continuing presence of those benefit of future generations whose claim we seek to establish and perpetuate.”

There is, very, a brief essay designation “The Exploration of Happiness.” In it Cousteau proposes “a science of joy”.

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

Oracle of the Apocalypse

Through the 1950 s and 1960 s, Cousteau was predominantly content to take us under ocean, open those natural entrances of taste, and leave us to marvel at the the experience. But about the time of Philippe &# x27; s demise, his central preoccupation moved dramatically from disclosure to maintenance. Jacques Cousteau was 70 years old, and the Biblical milestone of three score years and ten had been bridged. Half his children were dead. And, perhaps coincidentally, he had glimpsed the apocalypse.

One of the last movies Jacques and Philippe made together was about Easter Island, and the Captain talks about it still. “In certain cases environmental ruins may contact the point of no return, ” he told the Rio Conference on Environment and Development last year. “In the seventh century A.D ., as told by petroglyphs, two large outriggers territory on a maiden, lush and uninhabited tropical island. Two hundred Polynesians–men, ladies, children–and swine and hens landed on the beautiful beaches of Easter Island . … For eight centuries after they set they nurtured, multiplied, developed a unique civilization, national societies fractioned in three status: boors, sculptors and pastors. Their population increased wildly. They loped short of resources, and when they reached the number of 70,000, dearth, blood insurrections and social chaos introduced into the full amounts of the breakdown of their society. When Dutch navigators territory at Easter Island in the seventeenth century, it was a barren, absolutely deforested portion of rock where a few hundred cannibals were hunting each other for survival. All that remained were undecipherable tablets and proud effigies, a stern warning to humankind of what will happen to Island Earth if humans do not exclusively control their demography.”

In the 1980 s Cousteau &# x27; s team was just going Haiti, another frightful little island, with “7. 5 million people on an exiguous and impoverished land.” They might be “beautiful, proud, smart, good-humored and hard-working, ” but “they have wearied the marine resources of their narrow continental shelf. They have deforested, without precaution, two one-thirds of their country and tropical rainfalls have thereafter wiped out the clay, laying bare the dirt boulder and impede agricultures for centuries to meet. To cook their scanty meals, they continue to deforest, and become timber into charcoal-grey. We asked: &# x27; What will you do when there is no timber left at all ?&# x27; &# x27; That will be the end of the world! Yes, the end of the world !&# x27; they refuted. Until then, the men of Haiti procreate, hoping that their male children will take care of their age-old father-gods, and women speak &# x27; I am not the one to decide how many children I will have .&# x27; “

Cousteau was in a unique position to put across virtually any message that concerned him. By the early 1980 s the nonprofit institutions that Jacques and Simone and their sons had created were taking on the proportions of an territory. From 1956 until about 1989 Monaco contributed Cousteau a virtual sinecure as head of its oceanographic organization. But after some of his most ambitious underwater jobs were cancelled by the French authority in 1972, the Captain increasingly moved his activities to the United States. First with the Cousteau Society, then in France with the Fondation Cousteau, the Captain/ Commandant cobbled together the tools to underwrite his life and hypothesis. Royalties from past cinemas provisioned some income, contributions from members plied much of the residual. To keep the cash coming for his new television projects–at a cost of $1.1 million a demonstrate, filming 50 hours of movie for every one that got used–Cousteau forged agreements with Ted Turner, then Banque Worms, employing stockpiles of past rights the mode geologists probe the mesozoic sediments of the Persian Gulf.

From the time the Captain bought the Calypso with a donor &# x27; s money and facilitated outfit it by selling some of Simone &# x27; s jewelry, he and his family were engaged in what he announced “our fiscal adventure.” The main objective was to continue his make, but on the side this most handsome of adventurers refined a mode of life in which “without personal ownership, I live like a prince. I have two boats[ the Calypso and the turbo-sail Alcyone ], an airplane, a helicopter. I tour all the time.”

He learned to play all sorts of inclinations to underwrite his activities. Today, for instance, Cousteau is one of seven surviving French beings allowed to live in Monaco tax free because they were there before DeGaulle pointed special privileges.( “We were several thousand, ” Cousteau supposes in passing. “Next time there will be six or five or four.”) But he has never accumulated much uppercase. Cousteau makes a fetish of traveling light and fast, carrying his rather oddly adapted rest suits and turtlenecks in a suitcase smaller than a gym pocket. If he can commute on the Concorde between Paris and New York, he does. His favorite briefcase is the one the stewardesses hand out to all their passengers.

Cousteau took a long time to realize the political capacity of his prominence, and longer still to decide what the hell is do with it. The antic activism of Greenpeace did not attention him, certainly. Cousteau didn &# x27; t need to draw attention to himself by hanging banners on warships or dumping goo on doorsteps. If he went down wall street he had been able to gather a audience. For times French canvas have graded him the most popular soldier in the country, and its term of office claimed it went 80,000 words asking him to run for president in 1988.

Still, it wasn &# x27; t until the struggle for Antarctica that Cousteau recognise just how much superpower he might have.

As he tells the story he was reading the International Herald Tribune one morning in 1988 where reference is noticed that several signatories of the Antarctic Treaty had given their initial admiration in Wellington, New Zealand, to a convention on mining and drilling in the frozen continent. It would place severe restrictions on prospecting, but by providing a legal framework for asserts, it could eventually open the door to exploitation. The United States and France fully supported the convention.

Cousteau knew this target, Antarctica. He and Philippe had gone there in 1972 and 1973 and been overwhelmed by its charm. The folly of mining there, of doing anything that applied this maiden continent at risk, was so manifest that he could not conceive why authorities would approve such undertakings. The rogues, he concluded, were bureaucrats who set their professions before the good of mankind. “The scribes are deciding and not the governmental forces, ” Cousteau swore. “The prime minister can say to his apparatchiks what he wants, when he is gone they do what they want.”

One Tucker Scully, the State Department official who treated immediately with the Antarctic Treaty, became the target of Cousteau &# x27; s special defiance. And after 15 times is currently working on the subject, the ever diplomatic Scully initially matched the chieftain &# x27; s reviews with polite defiance. “Maybe it &# x27; s hour for brand-new blood, ” he said in the hallways at a 1989 Paris conference on Antarctica. “But as of now 13 agencies of the U.S. government concur in its own position we &# x27; re taking.”

Cousteau decided to go to the top. He personally lobbied French President Francois Mitterrand, as well as the premier of Australia and New Zealand. And eventually Captain Cousteau went to Washington.

The fate of the frozen continent was not exactly a igniting problem on Capitol Hill. A few of environmental activists like Susan Sabella of Greenpeace and James Barnes of the Antarctica Project had followed the issue closely, be expected to overcome the Wellington Convention by working with congressional staffers, issuing reports, occasionally witnessing before such committees and laboring over every parole of pending legislation. They were, essentially, characters of the Hill, and when Cousteau hit town in his turtleneck and leisure clothing he seemed, to them, like someone from another planet. But there was no question he had an impact. “You have members of Congress that start ga-ga. They bring “their childrens” out for scenes with him, ” supposed Richard Munson, a congressional staffer and environmentalist who wrote a 1989 biography critical of Cousteau. “This is generally a reasonably contemptuous heap, ” remarked Munson, “but you visualize some of them plow him almost with reverence.”

Occasionally, wearisome from a relentless planned, Cousteau would muddle knowledge: 30,000 chicks affected by a recent petroleum shed in the Antarctic suddenly became 30,000 birds killed. Cousteau described the Wellington Convention as secretly negotiated, when in fact Barnes had been able to follow its growth for years. As the skipper spoke before members of the House Foreign Affairs committee Sabella and Barnes shifted in their sets, curbing giggles. “I retained wanting to say &# x27 ;p oint of information ,&# x27; ” articulated Barnes when it was over. “He doesn &# x27; t understand the politics of it at all.” But when Cousteau requested off on one question about Antarctica by saying “I am not a prophet, ” Congressman Wayne Owens of Utah gave as how “some think you are.” Nobody ever used to say about Barnes or Sabella.

Cousteau had access no other Antarctic lobbyists ever had. Republican senators opened their doors to him. Liberals cuddled him. At a breakfast in the Rayburn building, a dinner in the Capitol, they listened to him expound is not simply on the fate of Antarctica, but on the future of the world. “Since I was born, the population of the earth has tripled. And it goes on. Every two years there is another France. Every 10 times, another China.” There are, right now, more than 5 billion people in “the worlds”. “It &# x27; s a heavy, heavy threat. We weigh too much on the planet.” Some scientists guess the earth can feed three times its present person. “But is the goal to feed more beings and using them to induce a miserable life or is it better to have fewer beings conduct a full life? ” he expected. “If you have 12 or 15 billion people there will be no nightingales , no butterflies , no et cetera. And you will have only a few animals–cows, pigs, sheep–to feed those people. Everything else will be destroyed.”

Photo Illustration by the Daily Beast

Cousteau, inaugurated, in fact, to preach his revolution. “It is during this next hundred years that the future”–of mankind, of the et cetera–“will be decided.” Sure, the costs of preparing the record straight will be high: women around the developing world have to be educated so birth rates will go down, the poor have to be convinced that their own future protection does not depend on the proliferation of their descendants. Something like a world-wide welfare system needs to be created. “Urgency realise this possible, ” spoke Cousteau. “If the doctor tells you you have cancer you register research hospitals, even if you have to borrow money.”

People have to get over the idea that uptake and contentment go together. Cousteau modesties special disdain for the idea of having “sustained development” dear to most politically savvy environmentalists. If American-style consumerist fortune continues to be the framework for “the worlds” &# x27; s aspirations, in Cousteau &# x27; s belief all is lost. “Seven hundred million Americans, that &# x27; s all that the earth could subscribe: 700 million Americans, it symbolizes nobody else.” The positive side of the Third World &# x27; s underdevelopment is that “more than half the planet &# x27; s human being is still not consumers.”

All of which is consistent with respectful gestures among the photo opportunists of the Hill, and gleaned special attention from then-Senator Al Gore. For the future vice president, Cousteau was something special. The baby-boomer politician had grown up with him, just like the rest of us, then became a personal friend. “I first invited him to come and speak to the U.S. Congress 12 years ago, and I have expended a great deal of time with him, ” said the senator. “I was at his last-place birthday defendant in Paris.” They may have different accents, but two speak much the same eco-visionary language, clanging off fearing statistics, trying to drawing a nature that works quite differently from anything we &# x27; ve knowledge before. At the end of Gore &# x27; s best-selling volume he writes about the effect his son &# x27; s brush with death had on his opinion, and the importance of “inner ecology.” “We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirls blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no infants to acquire our bequest. The selection is ours; the earth is in the balance.” All this sounds singularly like Cousteau.

In the end, on Antarctica, the captain–and Barnes and Sabella, and Gore, and the rest of the environmentalists–won. A terminated moratorium was proclaimed on prospecting as well as mining for the next half-century, and that was good enough for Cousteau. “It is a victory of good sense, genuinely, ” he said later. “I have just been a soldier of good sense.” But Cousteau, while he still giggles at himself, spots it hard to be humble. “I carry on piling up information and I &# x27; ve done that all “peoples lives”, ” he announced. “I &# x27; m in a position, and I didn &# x27; t crave it, it happened to me, where I know more about the environment than anyone else alive.”

There are, of course, numerous environmentalists who would query this claim. Even Al Gore, who likes to mention permissions as varied as Aristotle, R.D. Laing and Carl Sagan, merely mentions Cousteau formerly in his book, and then merely in passing. He doesn &# x27; t include a single duty by the skipper in his bibliography. It is as if, after all he has done and learned, all the photo opportunities and homages, in the end Cousteau is not to be taken seriously. His information is too general, the best interests wander extremely widely, his endowments are too gone for the penchants of a macrocosm attuned to specialists. Perhaps “they dont have” residence for a Renaissance man in a post-modernist age. Perhaps the influence of beauty has waned, or, perhaps, he has lost his appreciation of it.

Undeterred, the old person of the sea remains lowering his lance and billing at the apocalypse, pursuing the all-important, all-consuming make that those closest to him are reluctant to disrupt. “Utopia or fatality, ” he likes to say. The fright has been sounded. “Theres only” 10 years left to save the world, he announced last year. That &# x27; s nine years , now, and clicking. The letter from “the organizations activities” is unrelenting. Every young member of the Cousteau Society in the United States or liter &# x27; Equipe Cousteau in France gets a regular dosage of Cousteau &# x27; s philosophy in “The Calypso Log.” “All society is organized to employ those who are not yet born, ” he tells his child-revolutionaries. “The future of the human species is in danger.”

With the zeal of a guy who has investigated the light-footed, Cousteau preaches the teaching of something he announces “ecotechnique, ” a neologism for the simple-minded, sensible notion of creating interdisciplinary those programmes and universities to commit economics, engineering and ecology equal weight in the curriculums, and in the decision-making process generally. A few of European universities have endorsed the program. The Vrije University in Brussels has even made a Cousteau chair. The notion in the end is to prevent projects like the mining of Antarctica from ever get off the dirt by realizing clearly what would otherwise be “unforeseen consequences.”

But there is another aspect to Cousteau &# x27; s doctrine that is even more elemental, more essential to understanding his opinion. “You know, ” he said one radiant morning at a coffeehouse in Cannes, “I is argued that delight is for this world-wide, and I believe that we could teach happiness.” It is a theme he comes back to again and again, a “crazy idea, ” as he quickly declares, but one of which he is deeply enamored. The “science of joy” is the standard against which everything else is weighed. As if glee had no potential for disaster.

Cousteau holds: If beings extend their realm of suffer by memorizing, adoration, sharing and creating, as he wrote in his Almanac at the beginning of the 1980 s, then they can escape sterile, pernicious measures of well-being like uptake, spend, and “efficiency.” If we know well what joyfulnes is, and engage it together, anything is possible. The thought neatly bridges his personal and world-wide operations. But somewhere along the way, some of the people closest to him were left out. “He &# x27; s a one-man depict, ” announces Jean-Michel, “because he doesn &# x27; t representative, because he doesn &# x27; t known better, because he &# x27; s got to go where he &# x27; s proceeding: in pursuit of happiness.”

Cousteau &# x27; s last-place major documentary, a massive four-part line on the Danube that cost millions to induce, was written by his new spouse, Francine Triplet. It boasts his two young children, Diane and Pierre-Yves, who appear as amazed and often obviously unpleasant eyewitness along for the ride on their parent &# x27; s peregrinations through Eastern Europe. Publicity for the programs in France included dreadfully awkward photographs of Cousteau, looking ancient in his diving gear as he stands beside his 13 -year-old daughter and 11 -year-old-son.

“Are we born on globe to be &# x27; efficient &# x27; or to be happy? ” Jacques Cousteau questioned one afternoon in Paris last-place descent. It was an interesting question, and central to the method he recollects. “We have to say, &# x27; what are the parts of their own lives that you like to remember ?&# x27; ” Maybe there was a moment when you were playing plays in high school, or an afternoon invest having a glass of wine-colored, talking to good friends. “You can lose times trying to find the passion of a wonderful woman[ before] you finally get it. That &# x27; s not efficient, ” said the old-time sailor. “The efficient situation to do is to go to a bordello.”

The day was almost over at the offices of Equipe Cousteau near the Place des Ternes, across the street from the Brasserie Lorraine. Francine, Cousteau &# x27; s n

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