The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

Southern Water Tribe // Secret Dating

Secret date nights in the Southern Water Tribe and in the Fire Nation, for day 4 of @zukkaweek 🌌🎇

(Click for better quality bc tumblr hates me ✨)

Image ID under the cut

crying this is beautiful🥺🥺🥺

i really want james telling madi about all the ridiculous things like when john jumped off the walrus and faceplanted the sea. when he tried to cook a pig and used so much honey that the camp got swarmed by bees. the time when he was set on walking all the way to st. augustine to avoid boarding a ship. i want to see james and madi drinking together and laughing at john’s flustered face as he denies everything 

i want madi to get a glimpse of what john was like when james first met him. i want her to be able to picture his youthful face and his short curls. i want her to imagine john running across a beach with a very angry james running after him. i want her to think of that and love john even more for it. and for john to be surprised when she giggles and cups his flustered face in her hands and kisses him

i also want james telling her about all the admirable things he’s done like when james gave up and let the sea take him but john wouldn’t let it. when he refused to betray his men and lost his leg for it. all the times john stood up to him when he was wrong and how he is a good man even though he pretends he is anything but. i want to see that lost look on james’ face when john leans over and kisses him. and that soft expression that follows when john says “not as good as you”

Booknerds in love.

I have to admit I’m loving the significance of the books they have chosen:

1. Don Quixote - Cervantes

The central theme of Don Quixote is of an idealistic, often foolish (and quite mad) man who tries to see the greater good in all things and do good wherever he goes, without thought for the consequences that might follow.

Miranda dryly observes that the book may help James to manage Thomas better, and Thomas laughs and says that she’s being very clever. However, I don’t believe it is simply teasing. Miranda is shown quite regularly as having a sharp side, playing Devil’s Advocate as she calls it. I believe that in that moment, she was genuinely trying to offer some kind of advice to James, but both men only saw it as a joke.

After all, she is the one who recognises the danger they could all be in and the one who tries to make moves to protect them, while Thomas and James barrel headlong with their dream for Nassau.

She knows what her husband is like, his good heart and idealism completely dwarfing his grasp on reality. She’s aware of the danger Thomas would walk straight into, simply out of the belief that people will see the good he is trying to do and support him. She knows he needs a man he will listen to, who will lie to him and deceive him if he has to.

And so, she gives the book to James as a less than subtle caution that he is about to become the Sancho to Thomas’s Don Quixote, and all that entails.

2. La Galatea - Cervantes

First off, I love the fact that James picks a book for Miranda based on the book he already knows is her favourite. More importantly, I love the reason he picked that book.

The plot of La Galatea focuses on what is pretty much a love triangle: two friends who both love the same woman, Galatea, but who agree that they will not let her come between them.

I think this is fascinating because based on Thomas and James’s relationship, Thomas does appear to be the Galatea figure: he is the source of the tension that has bubbled over between James and Miranda. Despite his absence, he is also the reason that they have their falling out.

To me, James and Miranda may have physically been lovers, but their relationship very much felt more like a friends-with-benefits-and-deep-abiding-affection situation, while both of them were in love with Thomas. So James choosing this book, about two friends who do not want to fall apart because of the person they love, and using it as his apology is wonderfully significant.

3. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

This book is the most important of the three. It is a series of essays written by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor known as the Philosopher, on the subject of guidance and self-improvement. It is also pretty much the code according to which Thomas Hamilton was living his life.

In the absence of Thomas for both Miranda and James, it has become the physical signifier for Thomas and his philosophy.

When Miranda wishes to sway Guthrie, she offers the book and tells him it may make things clearer for him. I believe she hoped that reading the book would offer Guthrie some insight into their motives and encourage him to support them.

To James, when she uses the book this way, it is something much more personal and intimate. This book, to James, was also a token and symbol of the love he shared with Thomas. In his eyes, she is displaying Thomas for a man who is not worthy of such knowledge or goodness, which is why he lashes out so angrily at her.

I find it heartbreaking that Miranda knows she holds very little sway over James when it comes to Thomas and Thomas’s legacy. When he is laying siege to the fort, she tries to speak to him and reason with him, but in the end, it is the book - this signifier of Thomas Hamilton - which is the thing to make him pause.

It’s the last thing he has of Thomas, a solid, tangible reminder of what he was really trying to do in Nassau, of the dream he was trying his utmost to fulfil. And that, the dream he is now putting as risk, is the only reason he stops.

Max is your harbour

The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

what would i be throwing away?