#i want. a plane friend .......

[gongyussy]

j… jesus oppa ;____;

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[eyefocusing]

optimus trying to hug his stressed out sonboy who is way taller than him is one of those things that keeps bouncing around in my head. i dont think either of them would be quite sure what to do

[diamondzart]

I’ve seen the Jayvik nation blowing up today because Christian said that Viktor is ace solely because he keeps trying to establish that Jayvik is not canon so bad. And it kinda made it more confusing to headcanon Jayvik being asexual because the dude probably forgot that not having sex doesn’t mean the same people can’t be in romantic relationship. Because they absolutely fuckin can, okay? I was headcanoning them as an ace ship before Christian decided to use asexuality as a tool for his borderline homophobia regarding this ship. I don’t agree with him in any way, I will keep seeing them as a romantic couple and I have absolutely nothing against people who see them as active sexual partners and draw and write smut, it’s completely fine, and I headcanon them as ace solely because I myself am an ace and this is simply my comfort zone. I hate to see it suddenly being used as an argument like that. I send love to all Jayvik shippers out there!

[littlelightfish]

Something I loved from the anime adaptation on episode 5:

They made a summary about Mick's and Kuro's characters and relationship from what they saw in this two panels on the few seconds this scene taked place.

Just this. Kuro and Mick both surprised on the first. Kuro looking at Mick like he's worried about something, and Mick eating bread in silence, looking in distrust at the guy.

The anime makes it so rich on subtle expressions, I'm in love here. They're just on the background of the scene. But what they do says really a lot about them.

When the guy first comes to scene, Mick looks a bit confused but nothing else. "Who tf this guy?" They're not planing on paying him any mind.

When he sits besides him, he gets uncomfortable, you can see it on his face he doesn't want to sit beside a stranger. He wants to get up and change places. "What's with this guy? What does he want? Why is he so close?" Kuro notices this and looks at him. He saw him flinch (off camera because guy is covering him). Mick is scared of this guy.

Mickbell is a naturally untrusty person because of his backstory. He gets uncomfortable when new people starts acting friends because "well that can't mean good, can it?" Kuro knows this because they share a life together and proceeds to try and calm him the best he can in this situation.

Kuro puts his hands on Mick's back. He already has them there when the camera changes angles. "I got you. I'm here. Nothing is going to happen to you. Calm down." Mick now looks confused at the guy, but it's still clear he's very uncomfortable there. He leans towards Kuro a bit "I feel safer by your side and this guy is wierd".

In seconds, as soon as he sees him grab food from their table, he changes his mood. He jumps in surprise at the audacity. He's now annoyed and pissed. That's their food! How dares he... But he isn't the one to say anything, and from this alone you could tell he's quite introverted outside of their friends group (or that he didn't pay for the food idk). Kuro keeps his hands in there, knowing he's nervous.

Mick just looks at him eat, annoyed, maybe angry, and silent. He isn't probably paying any mind to what this guy is saying. He is stealing food. He should go get food somewhere else. Kuro seems to think something alike, but he is a bit surprised this guy has the balls to steal food so openly (he isn't paying atention either ot he doesn't understand)

He thinks a lot of thinks but says none, eating in silence. Kuro is staring with no good intentions behind those eyes. Only murder. Food robber. Mick disturber. Deserves death.

[deerest-deer]

lottie + hugs

[moonchild-in-blue]

The Group Photo feat. Sam and Adam 🥹💙

All of my fav boys in one place 🥹

[petitepatateuwu]

It's way too hot and I am way too tired to do any more efforts, so excuse the critical lack of quality here.

If you didn't know, Cole is my favourite Power Ranger :D

And while I was binge watching Ninjago I had the pleasant surprise to see him physically and mentally traumatized in season 5 😈

And since I'm a huge sucker for angst, my brain immediately thought of developing that idea in order to hurt my beautiful baby boy some more. That and also the fact that my brain immediately looks for logic in the laws of cartoon physics (I really shouldn't do that...)

So I bring you the "Cole is a Ghost Kind-of-Saga". I still have a few more ideas to exploit, notably adressing the ways the other ninjas will help him cope with his new condition :3

And maaaaybeeeee a small comic too 😇

Anyways, I will let my brain rest a bit for now and sleep.

[royaldollybox]

Good day, I bring ye more The heart killer text posts

This time featuring Kant and Style becuase I am facinated by their friendship

I have yet to recover from my madness

Post 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

[buckevantommy]

when they bring tommy back for eventual bucktommy endgame, i would love to see them be friends for a while first.

it's been a year or so and they cross paths on a call or something. buck has dated a few people, maybe someone semi-serious, none of them stuck. or maybe he's currently dating someone. but so is tommy. buck voices how much he misses just spending time with him and floats the idea of them being friends. tommy is hesitant but ultimately that's what happens: tentative at first, but they become friends.

and in being friends, they get to know each other better than if they were dating. even though tommy knew buck pretty well already, with friendship he lets himself be known better, not so afraid of being imperfect or less than or broken or not enough; he's still self conscious about it, doesn't want to be a burden, but there's no fear of getting his heart broken by evan leaving him, and no guilt of breaking evan's heart, so it's mostly just him wanting to be a good friend so he tries to hide his shit for a bit and not hang out for a week when he's having a rough time.

except: buck notices he's having a rough time and isn't interested in only spending time with tommy when he's happy - he wants to be there for his friend! he wants to help and comfort like he does with all his friends. buck discovers that either tommy pushed his boyfriend away (for now), maybe lied to him so the guy is clueless about how tommy is really doing, or he simply broke things off because tommy is 'too much'. in any case, buck would be livid because 1) this guy doesn't deserve tommy and 2) tommy is hiding himself away during a bad time and that's not okay, buck can't let him isolate himself and think that if he's not perfect he's not wanted therefore no one wants to deal with him.

buck shows up at his house, or maybe finds tommy at a campsite or something. tommy looks rough - it's been an emotionally trying time with family issues or ptsd or a rough work call. in any case: buck gets it, and he's not going to let tommy go through this alone. friends don't abandon each other in their time of need, and no matter how tommy tries to push him away, buck is staying.

buck says all this, earnest and caring and desperate to help, and eventually tommy cracks. he gives in to the need for connection, lets evan in, lets him stay, lets himself be comforted through hugs and letting evan see him breakdown and cry.

and it's not the end of the world. it's actually the start of a new chapter: it marks a turning point in their friendship where tommy is more open about things (with evan, and maybe howie) and buck gets to know him better.

there might be another partner or two for each of them going forward, but their friendship strengthens and inevitably leads them back to love, eventually getting back together and knowing they're both seen and loved in all their dark and ugly beauty.

[cy-fi-theansweris42]

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire spoilers ahead

I've seen some criticism over Phoebe's actions in Frozen Empire, more specifically over the point when she separates her spirit from her body, calling it "a dumb decision", that "she's smarter than that", that it's "out of character for her", and just like.

First of all, remember she's 15??? She's a teenager??

But also I want to argue that it does make sense for her character, especially after everything that happened in Frozen Empire leading up to that moment.

Before we talk about Frozen Empire, we have to remember her story arc from Afterlife.

In Afterlife, Phoebe is uprooted from where they were previously living, and we know she has trouble making friends. Trevor tells her to tell him some of the jokes she's been practicing, her mom tells her to "not be herself" (jokingly/affectionately, but it's still said), and we know that Phoebe struggles to make friends. She struggles to connect with people.

Then she finds out her grandfather was a scientist, like her. He was a Ghostbuster, something that she connects to. She compares herself to Egon and is upset when she finds out her mom didn't tell her that her grandfather was a scientist like her. Then, most importantly here, her mom says that Phoebe "found herself" at the farm.

During Afterlife, Phoebe's story is about finding herself and connecting to who her grandfather was, a scientist, a Ghostbuster.

Flashforward to Frozen Empire.

Now they're in New York, and from what we see even though it's been 3 years since the events of Afterlife, it doesn't seem like Phoebe has really made any new friends in New York, she's still friends with Podcast, but he still lives in Summerville and is only there for the summer. She has her family, but she doesn't have any friends there. Her focus seems to be on being a Ghostbuster because that's where she found herself, that's what she wants to do.

And then it's being taken away from her.

She's suddenly told that she can't be a Ghostbuster because she's too young, and all the while the rest of her family is continuing to go out on busts and leaving her behind. There's things going on, and she's told she can't help, which just throws the fact that the thing she loves, the thing she wants to do, has been taken away from her.

And then, while upset from this, she makes a friend, Melody. It's someone she can talk to, that she seems to enjoy being around. She doesn't know that Melody has an agenda, that Melody is going to use her (not hating on Melody, that's just literally what happens). To her, Melody is a friend and someone she can talk to that distracts her from how another part of her life has been taken away.

Now I don't know if anything has been confirmed, but Phoebe comes off as neurodivergent (honestly I would not be surprised if she was intentionally written that way). One thing when you're neurodivergent and struggle to make friends is like, when someone acts like they want to be around you, to be your friend, you might not catch any signs that something's up.

So with that in mind, remember that Phoebe had no reason to suspect anything was going on with Melody. Before separating her soul from her body, Phoebe just thought she was finding a way to exist on the same plane as her friend. It was a way to just be with her friend for just a couple of minutes. Remember, it was just for two minutes.

So, during a time when Phoebe had something important to her taken away, a part of her identity taken away, she made a connection with someone she trusted and believed to be her friend. Of course she'd trust her, of course she'd try to essentially hang out with her friend for just a couple minutes.

She didn't know what was going to happen next.

[tinytimism]

next person who even jokingly says that rosemary’s lobotomy is what triggered the kennedy curse is getting their entire bloodline cursed

[fox--5]

AMAZING NEWS EVERYPONY

I FINALLY HAVE A PHYSICAL COPY OF HALF-LIFE 2!!!!! Half-Life 1 is next.... evils face........

@gordonsgottasleep

[haunted-planes]

Quitting the dream

[boeingboingboing]

OCs are so fun to make in WoC but i swear the annoying part is the immense research that has to go behind choosing their model and making a backstory accordingly to the history of that model sometimes too.

[lalalaugenbrot]

Attempt at a Comprehensive List of

Alexander von Humboldtʼs Potential Boyfriends

When if not now that Alex came 2nd in the @napoleonic-sexyman-tournament (what a time to be alive) would be the perfect time to finally thoroughly pick his private life apart. Strangely it has always been a mystery even to me (and of course overall it will remain a mystery until the end of times), but I still thought it was about time to at least get some order in the few things that we do know – mainly for myself but also, I dare say, for the public. You (the public!) will find a short text for every friend under the cut ￬.

disclaimers:

a) I tried to pick the most appropriate picture of everyone but please imagine especially the first ones a lot younger than they are in the pictures

b) it’s a potential boyfriends list, meaning: I’m not saying Alex definitely had romantic and/or sexual relationships with any let alone all of these men, it’s just a list of men where it seems at least possible; but ultimately, of course, we do not know and will never know

c) Alex lived for almost 90 years, and even though his textual remains can seem infinite, there is a lot we don’t know about him, especially his private life, not least because he habitually destroyed almost all of his private letters (which is also why for all of his correspondences we only know the letters he wrote but almost never the ones he received) − so I don’t think there’s any way this list is exhaustive (let me know if you think anyone is missing?)

d) Bonpland is not in this because Alex went out of his way to specifically state that his relationship with Bonpland was purely scientific

e) the point of this post isn’t to determine his sexuality, but since it has already come up, just a couple of words on him being on the asexual spectrum: that is perfectly possible and maybe not even unlikely, he said things about himself that could be interpreted as such (not wanting to marry, not having sensual needs); but I think it’s good to keep two things in mind about that: 1. not wanting to get married was a big thing in 1800, something you had to explain yourself for and not wanting to get married as a man also obviously meant not wanting a wife, it was by no means a question on whether or not wanting a significant other and/or sex; 2. the narrative of his sex-less life at least partly derives from the (mainly 19th/20th century) wish for him not to have been (actively) homosexual

f) I hate to be that person, but it has to be said: language and culture back then were much more emotional and expressive than we are used to today, so not everything that sounds super intimate or even romantic to us (language-wise) has to actually have been meant that way; of course this doesn’t rule out anything either but it’s a thing to keep in mind

g) if anyone is interested in sources or further reading on anything particular, do not hesitate to hit me up! But i’m not adding any of that to this post because 1. it’s already 2 km long and 2. this is tumblr dot com

Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener (1767-1837)

18-year-old Alex met Wilhelm in 1787 during the one semester he studied at the University of Frankfurt (Oder). Wilhelm was a (protestant) theology student and on 13 February 1788 they made a “holy” oath to “eternal brotherly love”. They wrote each other very cheesy letters, very much in the Empfindsamkeit fashion of the time, proclaiming their eternal and ever-growing love for each other. There was no one on earth, Alex wrote to him once (and in Italian no less), whom he loved as ardently as him (“Non vi è uomo sopra la terra ch'io amì così ardammente che lei…”). He also told him that, ever since he had met him, it seemed to him that God had created people only in pairs, because no one else could ever compare to what he meant to him. In his letters Alex also repeatedly refers to the many hours spent together (“chatting”) in a certain armchair in Frankfurt and proclaims that he has never been happier than in that very chair.

They kept contact for a couple of years after their time in Frankfurt, but at some point their friendship faded out.

Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812)

Willdenow (a published botanist) and Alex met in 1788 in Berlin, when Alex had one day decided to just call at his house to ask him to teach him botany. Willdenow agreed and they became friends quickly, spent a lot of time together, and when Alex wandered through Berlin on his own to collect plants, he would afterwards bring them to Willdenow who would then identify them for him.

We do not know a lot about their friendship during that time (and maybe I only included him in this because I needed 9 tiles) but at least one phrase in Alex’s autobiography fragment calls our attention, not least because it’s highlighted by what I like to call a Streisand strike-through: “I became enthusiastically fond of him” or “I grew to love him enthusiastically” (“Ich gewann ihn enthusiatisch lieb”, written in 1801 and crossed out roughly 50 years later).

They stayed in contact even after Alex had left Berlin a couple of months later: in 1795 Alex became godfather of Willdenow’s son and in 1810 he convinced him to come to Paris to work on his botanical collections from the South America trip. Sadly, Willdenow fell ill in 1811 and died in 1812 in Berlin.

Karl Freiesleben (1774-1846)

Alex met Karl in 1791 in Freiberg, where both studied geology and mining at the renowned Bergakademie. Karl was the son of a local mining family and Alex learnt a lot from him about his new profession. They both were nerdy about stones and minerals in ways you couldn’t even begin to imagine. They gifted each other minerals, went down into the mines together, and in August 1791 they made a 200 km long geological expedition through the mountains of Bohemia on foot. But aside from pages-long enthusiastic rants about geology, Alex’s letters to Karl are also full of sentimental love declarations. He called him Herzens-Freisesleben, Herzens-Karl or Herzensjunge (roughly “my heart’s Freiesleben/Karl/boy”) and once finished a letter with: “going to bed now and I’ll be happy when I dream of you” — a passage Karl thoroughly struck through later, probably so no one else could read it, but someone deciphered almost all the struck through passages anyway (not all heroes wear capes!).

Karl and Alex stayed (sporadic and long-distance) friends for the rest of Karl’s life.

Reinhard von Haeften (1772-1803)

The above picture shows a snippet from one of Alex’s travel journals where he noted Reinhard’s birthday (“14 Mai R.”) because sadly we don’t have a picture of Reinhard. But let’s hear how Alex described him:

“This Reinhard v. Haeften has been my only and hourly company for a year now. I live with him, he visits me in the mountains. [...] I have already ridden 8 miles [60 km] just to see him for a couple of hours. He is very tall, taller than most men and he’s only 22 years old but looks more mature than me [at 25]. He has a very remarkable face and everyone finds him to be one of the most beautiful men, and I too think he’s beautiful, but most importantly I have never seen purity of the soul, kindness and courtesy being reflected in anyone’s features as much as in his.”

Alex and Reinhard met in 1793 in Bayreuth (where Alex now worked as a mining official) and they quickly moved in together. However, shortly before meeting Alex, Reinhard had also managed to make a baby with a married woman 4 years older than him. Alex was friendly with Christiane, the child’s mother and helped to keep the birth a secret. The boy (named Friedrich Gustav Alexander, Alex’s godson and surely named after him) had to spend the first years away from his parents. In the meantime, Reinhard continued to live with Alex, accompanied him on business trips and mineralogical expeditions and in 1795 they went on a two-month trip through Northern Italy and Switzerland. It was only with and through him, Alex wrote to Reinhard once, that he could live, only close to him that he could be fully happy.

Later, after Reinhard and Christiane had finally gotten married (and reunited with their son), Alex wrote him a very long letter, proposing for the three of them to (continue to?) live together with Reinhard as head of the family and to settle for quiet life in Switzerland, Italy, or some small town in the west of Germany. That plan never worked out, but “Rein” (as Alex called him), Christiane, their by now two children and Alex lived and travelled together for another two years while Alex was already preparing for his big journey.

After he had sailed for the Americas in 1799, he tried his best to stay in contact with them. In his letters, he called them his “Herzensmenschen” (again, roughly: “his heart’s humans”), wrote them that he was dreaming about them day and night and how much he wished that his – their – Rein could be with him to see all the marvels, too. But cross-atlantic communication was bad during that time and in both directions most letters never arrived.

Sadly, Reinhard unexpectedly died in 1803 while Alex was still in America, meaning they never got to meet again. Alex stayed in contact with Christiane and the children − the only survivors of the shipwreck, as he put it − and wrote Christiane how he still remembered their time together, along with all the hopes and dreams that they had had and that despite the “all-robbing fate”, there was something unalterable in the depth of their love, that could only die with them. When Christiane remarried and had another son in 1806, she named him Gustave Louis Reinhard Alexandre. Alex continued to financially support Christiane and the children and in 1813, Reinhard’s son Fritz (Alex’s godson) visited Alex in Paris for three months.

Carlos Montúfar (1780-1816)

Alex met Carlos in 1802 in Quito and despite him having no scientific qualifications whatsoever, Alex chose Carlos to accompany him on his further journey. This decision offended botanist, geographer and astronomer Francisco José de Caldas (who himself had hoped to join the expedition) so much that he, in a letter to botanist José Celestino Mutis, famously called Carlos “[señor Barón de Humboldt’s] Adonis”, probably insinuating that Alex had picked Carlos purely for his looks, or even more.

Together with the rest of the party, Alex and his supposed “Adonis” travelled what today is Ecuador (where they climbed the Chimborazo), Peru, Mexico, Cuba and the USA. At least once during that journey (but perhaps regularly?) they shared a bed (as in some kind of temporary/mobile  accomodation) which we know because Alex explicitly says so in his travel journal when he describes a night in which Carlos had very bad stomach cramps which Alex tried to ease by heating handkerchiefs over the fire for him in the middle of the night.

Carlos accompanied Alex back to Europe in 1804 and stayed with him in Paris for a couple of months (where they most likely both attended Napoleon’s coronation) until he ultimately left to go to Madrid. But since Carlos had trouble getting money from South America, he still had to rely on Alex’s support. However, over time his contact to Alex seems to have broken off, because in a letter from 1806, Carlos complained about Alex not answering him anymore (“¡Qué largo silencio!”) and then told him, quite dramatically, that he was running out of money, and that he, Alex, was his only friend, his only hope, and the only person he knew in Europe who could tell him what to do. Whether all of Alex’s letters had gotten lost in the mail and whether Alex ended up helping him out or not, I think we don’t know. (But knowing him as I do and since he after all kept that letter, I’m sure that he did.)

Later, Carlos went back to South America, where he (alongside Símon Bolívar) fought to liberate the continent from the Spanish Crown − a fight he unfortunately didn’t survive: he was captured and executed by the Spanish in 1816.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850)

Alex and Gay (that’s what Alex called him, no pun intended) first met in 1804 in Paris, just after Alex’s return from America. Before, Gay had done two things: 1. contributed to a harsh critique on one of Alex’s papers, 2. ascended 7016 m in a hot-air balloon to investigate the air up there − a world record at the time and more than 1000 m higher than Alex had been on the Chimborazo, which had then also been a world record (in recorded European history).

Evidently, these were the best conditions for them to totally hit it off: they almost immediately started to work on the evaluation of Gay’s balloon ascent and often spent entire days working together in Gay’s room, from 9 am until after midnight. In a letter to his father, Gay wrote that Alex was the man with the best heart he had ever known, that their tastes and sentiments were absolutely the same − and that their hearts felt a great need to see each other very often.

After the publication of their paper (in which they, without fully realising it, also first identified the chemical composition of water: H2O), they (and another friend) went on a six-month field trip through Switzerland and Italy − where they were lucky enough to witness both an earthquake and a resulting Vesuvius eruption. They ended their journey in Berlin where Gay stayed at Alex’s for a couple of months and even started to learn German until he unexpectedly had to leave for Paris. His absence, Alex wrote after Gay had left, pained him a lot.

When Alex finally returned to Paris as well, they shared a single room at the École Polytechnique and even after Gay became a father in 1808 and married in 1809, Alex continued to (at least occasionaly) live with his family for many years. Gay’s first son (born in 1810) was named Jules Alexandre and while I have no proof that he was named after Alex, I think it’s safe to assume. Alex seems to have also been very intimately integrated into the family life, because he once wrote to Willdenow (with a humorous undertone of course): “We are always pregnant and just had a girl again. Right now we’re not feeling anything though.” Alex was also there to help when an explosion in a laboratory accident injured Gay’s eyes so badly that Alex and another friend had to take him home in a blindfold.

No letters between the two have survived (that we know of), but we do know that in the years after they first met, Alex considered Gay his best friend and “one of the kindest beings in the world”, that he named an American plant genus after him (Gaylussacia), and that they used “tu” with each other (which was very uncommon in France at the time except for childhood friends and family). They stayed friends for the rest of their lives and formed a kind of trio with Arago (see below).

Karl von Steuben (1788-1856)

We don’t know when exactly they first met but according to Alex they started to see each other daily in 1812 at the studio of painter François Gérard, where Alex had then started to take drawing lessons. Steuben, a young aspiring artist, lived and worked at Gérard’s studio. According to Alex, they “drew and painted” together “daily” for at least one or two years. Withdrawn from all other society, he wrote, this was now his “only joy” (interestingly almost the exact same wording he had used to describe his relationship with Reinhard 20 years earlier). However, it had perhaps been one of Alex’s exaggerations because he at least seems to have attended the famous salons Gérard held at his studio, where all the cool Paris people came to hang out. Alex reportedly talked incessantly, stayed late into the night (the main thing usually didn’t get going until midnight) and was found there again, freshly dressed and shaved, already at 7 in the morning.

In the meantime, Alex had started to torment basically everyone around him to commission Steuben to paint them, their sons, daughters, fiancés etc. to help Steuben support his poor mother in St. Petersburg. In 1814, even Alex’s brother noted that Alex had suddenly become strangely interested in art. In the same year, Alex became godfather to Steuben’s newborn son Alexander.

However, the biggest commission Alex got Steuben was a life-sized full-body painting of himself, which he intended to gift to his sister-in-law. It took 7 years to finish and in the end Alex’s brother had to pay for transport and framing because Alex had run out of money. Neither his brother nor his sister-in-law were overly enthusiastic about the likeness of the painting or Steuben’s talent in general but they still put it up in their home because after all, as his brother put it, they loved Alex and always liked a picture of him around.

Alex and Steuben stayed in at least loose contact for many years and Alex occasionally even still tried to get him commissions. Steuben’s painting of Alex hung in the Humboldt residence in Tegel for over a century before it was ultimately destroyed in WWII. Apparently though, another Alex portrait by Steuben from 1815 still exists in a private collection somewhere.

François Arago (1786-1853)

Arago, a young astronomer, was on a scientific expedition through Spain when he got entangled in the Peninsular War: mistaken for a French spy, he got arrested and incarcerated, managed to flee, was captured again, transferred, released, drifted off at sea to Algeria, all the while managing to hold on to his most valuable possession: his scientific records, which he kept hidden under his shirt at all times. When Alex heard about this (the two had never met before), he was so impressed by his courage and determination that he sent a letter to congratulate him — and to offer him his friendship. And in fact, one of the first things Arago did when he finally returned to Paris in 1809 was to go and meet Alex. It was the beginning of a 44-year-long friendship. They saw each other almost daily, worked together at the observatory, planned an expedition to Tibet (which never happened), and actually travelled at least to London in 1817 to visit Alex’s brother, who commented to his wife: “Alexander has arrived yesterday. But he isn't staying with me, even though his room had already been prepared. You know his passion to always be with one person who is his favourite at that time. Now he has the astronomer Arago who he doesn't want to part with (...) So they're staying at a nearby inn.” Just as with Gay, Alex and Arago used “tu” with each other and after Arago had gotten married in 1811, Alex was close with his wife and children as well as with his siblings, nieces and nephews — in some letters he even considered himself part of the Arago family.

When Alex was forced to move back to Berlin in 1827 to work for the king, he wrote Arago desperate letters on how much their separation pained him, how much he missed him every hour of every day. In the following 26 years, Alex’s letters to him were full of yearning pleas for just a couple of lines of his hand, which, as he wrote, always made his heart flutter. However, Arago often didn’t respond for months, but when he did, he at least knew to reassure Alex, writing things like: “Outside my family, you are, without any comparison, the person I love most tenderly in this world.” Alex kept a portrait and a large Arago bust in his study in Berlin, and until his late seventies, he travelled to Paris regularly (that is, every few years), first and foremost to see Arago. (Actual quote from 78-year-old Alex in a letter to his niece: “Every morning at half past eight without interruption, I’ve been at Arago’s in the observatory, today for the 62nd time.”) According to Arago, he and Alex have only been angry with each other one single time in all those decades and even that went over in an instant.

They saw each other for the last time in January 1848, on the last night of Alex’s last stay in Paris. When Arago fell ill five years later, his family informed Alex of his worsening condition — but Alex couldn’t travel to Paris to see him one last time. Even over a year after Arago’s death, Alex wrote that the memory of those last moments in January 1848 vividly came back to him during the night at least once a week. He outlived his friend by 6 years.