#even-in-winter

[mathgirl24]

Happy birthday @even-in-winter !

(It's not yet your birthday here, but it is where you are).

I hope you have a great day with NO birthday hugs!

[nevada-b-1780]

This is a Tumblr hug, pass it on to your ten favorite followers and mutuals! 💞💝💖💘💗

Ah, thank you so much! Back at you 🥰

[mearcatsreturns]

4, 26, 27 and 34 😁

Thanks so much! <3

4.  3 topics you’d love to learn more about

Queer history

Russian folklore

Labor history 

(my grad student is showing)

26. 3 countries you’d love to visit

Spain

Croatia

Argentina

27.  3 things you wish you did more often

Traveling, sigh

Painting

Remembering to take care of my plants

34.  3 people in history that inspire you the most

Ada Lovelace

Jane Addams

Dolores Huerta

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

Number 11 from the prompt list, if you have not done it yet 😊

Ugh I had to wait to answer this one because SOME HELLSITE, not naming names here, deleted @qqueenofhades again and therefore @timeless-season-four and this is tied into the latest episode, Unsinkable. So uh probably go read that first.

This prompt comes from this list here, the quote chosen being, “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved.”

There’s no real light where they are. Only pinpricks of it, tricks of the light that seem to slide over the shapes around them, like looking for rainbows in oil slicks. But that’s all right. She doesn’t need to see. That’s what she has her fingertips for, and right now, those fingers are sliding over every curve of him that she can reach, the bridge of his nose, the sharp angle of his jaw, the broad slope of his shoulder.

Flynn barely stirs. He just survived a sinking ship, swimming in freezing water, and then (thoroughly) fucked her, so Lucy supposes he’s allowed to lie there like a log for a bit if he feels like it. She’s just scared. So, so scared, that he might not be real.

In the dark, she can breathe as raggedly as she wants, and let her hair fall across his chest, and press her forehead to his. Flynn reaches up, his fingers clumsily finding her hips, keeping her steady as she settles on top of him - not, this time, out of carnal pleasure but simply to press together, to feel how solid he is, to keep as close as she can. In the dark, she can let out her fears, silently, and hold him, tightly as she wants to.

“Are you warm enough?” Lucy asks. He must be warm. He has to be warm. She won’t lose him to hypothermia, after all this.

“I’m warm,” Flynn mumbles, his accent thick, his lips barely moving.

Lucy brushes her lips over his closed eyes. He was so cold when she first grabbed him. His clothes were freezing and weighed about as much as he did, they were so waterlogged. She kissed his fingers over and over until they were no longer tinged blue, but still, she fears, she fears...

I love you. It’s not something to say right now, although she’s sure Flynn knows it already. But they’re too tired for the conversation that’ll have to happen afterwards. So she just thinks it instead. She pushes his hair back out of his face, learns him by touch alone, and holds him until she feels like she is the darkness, wrapping around him, hiding him from the world, from pain, from danger.

This is far from the ideal spot. They’re in a random storage room of some kind. But she wouldn’t trade it for a palace right now. Lucy presses her forehead to his, feels Flynn’s breaths even out into sleep, and sinks her heart into his ocean.

_____________________________________________________________

Flynn wakes up and for a wild second is sure he’s gone blind.

Then he remembers - finding the tattered remains of a lifeboat (the irony is not lost on him), Lucy, kissing her like it was the only thing that could save him (maybe it was), finding a random, unoccupied space--

Lucy’s on top of him now, her breathing a bit ragged, but when he reaches up and pushes some of her hair out of her face, she doesn’t stir. Asleep, then. But not at rest.

He’s not sure he... Lucy has been walking a line, he knows, between being forthcoming and being respectful, when it comes to what they are to each other. And it’s not that he’s doubted her. But he’s not sure he actually understood how much she - for him - until he saw her face as he staggered out onto the deck. It was blazing. It was a campfire in the middle of the woods, it was a lighthouse in a storm, it was a candle in a haunted house. And she’d kissed him, like--like--

Part of him wants to shake her. To say, don’t you know? Don’t you know what measure of man you love? Why would you do that? Why would you let my ink stain your pages? Lucy means light, and he is the opposite of that, but God, Mother Mary, someone, give him the softness and courage to love her back the right way because for some reason despite all of it, Lucy loves him. He cannot deny the press of her lips against his skin, her sighs in his ear, her warmth taking him in. He can’t insult her by ignoring it or dismissing it. And all he wants is to be worthy of it.

All this time and he’s still looking for absolution.

Flynn’s fingers tangle in her hair as he gently combs it back, hampered by his lack of sight, and he secures his arm further across her waist so she doesn’t slip off him and fall. They need to find Rufus and Wyatt, they need to get off, get home... but maybe just a little longer, he’ll let her sleep. Because here, in the darkness, he feels he’s loving her as he’s meant to - and for better or for worse, the way Lucy seems to want to be loved.

__________________________________________________________

Wyatt likes to keep himself busy when he’s upset and right now is no exception. Lucky him, there’s plenty of help needed on a ship that’s taking in survivors from a horrific shipwreck, and he runs around fetching blankets, food, water, taking down names of survivors, reuniting people, comforting children, and drying the tears of newly-made widows. It’s great fun, oh yeah, puts him right back in the Alamo, right back in fucking Kuwait and Afghanistan, but at least it’s not leaving him alone with his thoughts.

And his thoughts are really... not great.

There’s really no doubt what Lucy and Flynn are up to. Um, well, maybe not that specifically. If Wyatt had just gone swimming in below zero temperatures he sure wouldn’t be able to get his dick up. But they’re kissing, and cuddling, and being fucking adorable and in love somewhere on this fucking ship and Wyatt really, really, really...

He inhales the stinging sea air. Grips the rails. Stares at the dark void where he thinks the horizon is until everything evens out again. It’s dark out here on the deck, and cold, but he needs it. Needs the chill. Needs a little... self-flagellation.

Because he’s not gonna make the same mistake a third time. Jess, then Lucy, now... he’s not gonna focus on what he wants and wallow in how much it hurts him. He’s going to love someone right, for once in his stupid life.

It’s not the kind of love that is sung about, or shown in films, or gets everyone screaming at a television show for five seasons. It’s the kind of love that’s hidden under a blanket fort at midnight during a sleepover. The love at the back of a movie theater. The love you can only think about when nobody else is around, the love you tuck very carefully in between the curve of your heart and that shadowy other thing that science can’t detect but everyone knows is there.

Wyatt tucks it there now, and warns it to stay. Sit. Quiet. Good boy.

The sky looks like spilled oil, colors at the corners of his eyes, and that, Wyatt thinks, that’s what this love looks like.

[scratchybeardsweetmouth]

Thanks for the tag @even-in-winter​ ! <3 i believe this is also the show-your-age game hahaha Post ten GIFs of movies you loved as a child, then tag ten people.  Optional: Tell us why you love(d) the films you picked. 1. Sidekicks (so there’s Jonathan Brandis in this, but I kinda fell for Chuck Norris. My brother has not stopped teasing me ever since.)

2. Beauty & the Beast (b.e.c.a.u.s.e.)

3. While You Were Sleeping (first romcom i adored)

4. Short Circuit (before Wall-E there was Johnny Five)

5. Babe (sweet story)

6. 10 Things I Hate About You (it’s great the way things turned out. also learned way way late that this was loosely based on Taming of the Shrew)

7. The Mighty Ducks franchise (fun and teamwork)

8. 3 Ninjas (more fun and teamwork)

9. Little Giants (more more fun and teamwork)

10. The Iron Giant (tugging the heartstrings like crazy)

tagging: @nevada-b-1780​  @dragcn-queen​  @what-the-crap-is-a-sharknado​ (at your discretion)

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, i have a question about politics! Since i am not from America, i am not familiar with everything about the politcal system and such, but i would like to learn more about it. I saw on websites that you can sponsor political campaigns? Is that something that is common? Do companies also sponsor political campaigns? Have a nice day!

Ah. Oh dear. If I remember in your original message to me, you were a little startled at the idea that both private individuals and massive corporations could give money to political candidates, and somewhat alarmed at the thought that this could lead to money effectively shaping and governing the entire American political system, at the expense (literally) of any kind of public or shared interest or civic welfare. Alas, this is… pretty much exactly what happens. The American federal government is organized from top down around the influence of money, who can spend it, and who wants to have to not spend it (i.e. tax breaks for the super-rich). Among other things, it’s why we can’t ever have even moderate and common-sense gun law reform, because the National Rifle Association, a pro-gun lobby, spends lavishly to ensure that senators will never vote for it. Once the ban against assault weapons expired in 2004, it has been framed as a violation of a fundamental constitutional right (the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, giving the controversial right to “keep and bear arms” since America was, you know, an 18th-century militia fighting against an imperialist army) to introduce any kind of limits at all. So we keep having mass shootings, and politicians offer “thoughts and prayers,” because they’ve been handsomely paid to do absolutely dick-all nothing else. Fun!

If you want an in-depth look at the subject of campaign financing in the United States, the eponymous Wiki article is a great place to start. It explains the byzantine levels of different funding organisations, including “PACs” (political action committees) and “super PACs” (the same thing with more money). There are a class of people in DC known as lobbyists, whose job it is to spend the right amount of money in the right places to see their preferred legislation advanced, or if they object to it, buried. The 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC also effectively ruled that setting any kind of limit on corporate spending or donating to campaigns unfairly abridges their First Amendment right to free speech (since you know, Corporations Are People Too!) All you really need to know about that decision is that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans (and also the incarnation of pure evil) loved it. So yes, mega-corporations and the super-rich can now spend as much money as they want on political campaigns, and it goes without saying that what mega-corporations and super-rich are interested in supporting are… not issues that benefit the average American. At all.

The issue of dirty money (and private money) in American politics is, at this point, endemic and terrifying. The political activities of Charles and David Koch, often known as the Koch brothers (though Charles recently died) are a major case in point. As the CEOs of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in America, they made decades-long contributions to Republican and libertarian (even more conservative, economically) candidates and causes, and reshaped the entire centre of gravity in right-wing politics around their influence. (You can also read Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard, which explains how Koch built itself and became a monolith.) Once again, all of this is perfectly legal to do.

As a result, we now have a political landscape where candidates from both parties just go schmooze with wealthy donors and get big checks, and accordingly craft their policies to benefit those people. This is why it is noteworthy that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the two progressive Democratic candidates for president, have both publicly pledged that they don’t take these kind of donations, and are running their campaigns entirely on the small-dollar amounts (i.e. $5, $25, $100) given at a time by ordinary people, rather than thousands or millions handed over by the super-rich and the mega-corporations that they have promised, if elected, to extensively tax and regulate (the two things the free market HATES). It obviously sucks that ordinary people have to pay out of their own pocket to help finance the only candidates who are remotely interested in helping them out if they get into power, because we as Americans should not be forced to do this. But this is the land of hyper-capitalism, and we basically have no choice, because all the laws that even kind of tried to limit the influence of oligarchic and hegemonic interests have been systematically destroyed and dismantled.

If you’re a free market aficionado (i.e. make as much money as possible, in any circumstances, without regard to any mitigating factors or ideas of morality or government regulation, social Darwinism where only the strong survive) then this is great. For the rest of us, it has left us with /waves hand/ All This.

It’s very depressing, in short. It is also why I, an ordinary and not-rich person, have donated repeatedly to Warren, and will give money to Amy McGrath, Mitch McConnell’s 2020 Senate opponent, when I can afford it. (Sidenote: Amy McGrath’s website is here. If you are a US citizen, go give her a few bucks. We need McConnell out almost as badly as we need a Democratic president.) Because this is how the rules of the game have been deliberately set up, and why American people have increasingly accepted this as normalised. It also means that it’s not too surprising who the current system almost exclusively benefits, when they have made sure for years and years that it does.

[extasiswings]

Lace, Please

lace: what is something in your life completely different from last year?

Oh gosh, everything.  But to pick just one, I am finally finished with school and have reached the point where I can look at my tiny collection of postgraduate degrees and say that’s good enough, I don’t need more.   

[mathgirl24]

12 and 63😎

12.what was the last thing that made you laugh?

YOU!  @even-in-winter.  With your frantic message that you really meant this question and not the sex question.  ROTFL!  (Does anyone still use that?  I don’t care.)

63.what’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

One of my former coworkers telling me “It’s just insurance”.  I tend to get too upset when I make mistakes at work.  I need to keep that in mind.

Thanks for the ask!!