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myownwholewildworld · 1 month ago

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12. MORNING DEW

chapter 11 | ao3 | series masterlist | chapter 13

pairing: post-outbreak!joel x f!reader. summary: you and joel need to discuss what the future might look like for the both of you. whether that's together or on your own. a/n: HI! please accept my apologies, i know it's been like a month since i last updated this series. but fret not, here's chapter 12! hope you guys like it. as always, i appreciate comments, reblogs and likes, they keep us writers well fed and motivated! take care, lovelies <3 x warnings: 18+, mdni. fluff, some angsty hurt/comfort. smut because i got my period halfway through writing this. fingering. handjob. oral (m!receiving). edging. soft dom/sub dynamics. brief references to attempted suicide and attempted SA. reader is female, no other description given. reader is mid-late 20s, joel is 37. no use of y/n. joel’s and reader’s pov. and a special guest’s pov too 👀 dividers by @\saradika-graphics w/c: ~6.5k. taglist aka the drama wagon at the end of the chapter (let me know if you want to be added/removed from the list pls!)

It never seemed to be the proper time to speak to you, Joel thought. Ever since his fuckup last night, he had struggled to find the words, to explain what his thought process was. A few hours ago, he had talked himself into ripping off the plaster and apologise to you, but when he called your name and you turned around with a composed expression, he froze in place.

He didn’t want to lose you too. Joel was afraid he would say something wrong again that would push you even further away from him. And then he would truly be alone, all because of his own actions, his own words. That fear clamped around his throat, preventing him from saying anything. From reaching out.

It was stupid, really. He knew that. Knew you were expecting him to say something, anything. Your blank expression was just a façade, a wall you had built around your heart so he wouldn’t hurt you anymore.

Joel hated himself for it, for your concealed hurt. Hated he had broken that trust between you two and made you feel like he was no longer on your side. He was, always had been, always would be. But he had let fear come between you, an abyss so vast he didn’t think it was salvable. It had to be though ― couldn’t be any other way.

The possibility of being a father again laid in front of him like a path full of dangers. Joel understood how much he could lose, because he had already lost Sarah. How suffocating that experience had been ― still was, every single fucking day.

He was frightened to go through it all over again. Having to hug another dead child of his; having to witness the light flicker away from her eyes. Sarah had been his everything ― his hope, his pride, the love of his life, the reason he would wake up in the morning to go to work, counting his blessings. And it didn’t matter in the slightest how good she was ― she was taken regardless. This world was cruel and unjust and greedy.

But there was also a sliver of hope, of dull excitement, shimmering underneath. One he wouldn’t allow himself to feel.

He still felt like a failure of a father who could not protect his baby girl when she needed him most. That emotional baggage would forever be with him. And he wanted it that way, because it meant he still remembered. This grief he carried was a reminder of the love he held. And he hoped it stayed with him, that she would stay with him.

Joel could still vividly remember digging with bare nails the grave Tommy had prepared for her. Elbow’s deep in the dirt, his fingers reaching for her as thick tears blurred his vision. The wails ripping his lungs apart, leaving his throat raw and tender. And Tommy hugging him from the back, arms clamped around his shoulders ― crying, begging him to stop.

“Little Sarah is resting now.”

“Let her be, Joel.”

“Stop unburying her, dammit!”

“I’m sorry, truly sorry. God I can’t―”

“She’s at peace now, Joel. No more suffering.”

Tommy’s slurry voice still filled his ears. His little brother had tried his best to comfort him, but at that moment in time, Joel had been too blinded by the gut-wrenching pain, the unbearable loss. He never really thanked Tommy for that. Never thanked you for stopping him from killing himself either.

Being an ass to the people he loved, apparently, was his only strength. Just like he had been with you when you needed him most.

Joel watched you as you struggled to unzip your sleeping bag, the soft material catching on the serrated teeth. You yanked the pull, almost snapping it from the slider, mumbling something to yourself.

He covered your tiny hand with a broad one of his, lightly squeezing your fingers.

“Let me help,” he muttered as you leaned back away from him.

Your subtle physical rejection stung, but he knew he deserved it. His hurt was nothing in comparison to yours.

Letting go of the bag, you faked looking for something in your backpack, avoiding his eyes when they searched for yours. Joel felt that the void between you only grew and grew, like darkness gaining ground to the light outside.

Could he mend your relationship? Your trust? Your love?

With careful hands, Joel managed to release the pinch on the fabric and tested that the zipper worked how it should do. When he glanced up at you, handing over the sleeping bag, Joel caught the rawness in your eyes, the slight dampness clinging to your eyelashes like morning dew on a petal at dawn.

It was now or never. He was hurting from seeing you hurt. Couldn’t take it any longer, he just had to say something, apologise to you. Ask to start the conversation all over again. One more second of this and he would lose his goddamn mind.

“Sweetheart, I―,” he managed to say out loud.

“I’m tired, Joel,” you quickly interrupted him. “Just wanna go to bed now, if you don’t mind.”

Your words were like a sobering, cold shower after a few beers ― stopped him right in his tracks before he could even begin to express what he wanted to say. Slightly shocked, Joel watched you fiddling around with your sleeping bag before you got inside it and turned around, facing away from him.

His slack jaw was soon gritting. But that brief anger quickly shimmered away when reality started to set in.

Perhaps he had misread the whole situation; perhaps you were not waiting on him to talk.

Perhaps you were past that ― past him, his bullshit and his doubts.

Perhaps your relationship was truly beyond salvation.

He paled in the face of such possibility, his hands shaking as they gripped his own sleeping bag.

Joel was up almost all night, eyes transfixed on you as his brain worked out all scenarios.

You faked falling asleep, but rest evaded you for hours until you finally gave in to exhaustion. Didn’t last long though, because a couple of hours later, you were, once again, wide awake.

The whole situation with Joel was overwhelming. You had hoped he would come to the car as soon as you left him behind, but he didn’t. Then that night you waited for him to say something, anything, and yet again, he didn’t. Not a fucking word when you both woke up this morning either, except for your name falling from his lips like a regretted whisper. Then complete radio silence and nothing else.

The silence treatment he had given you today was unbearable. Even if your doubts had lingered, pushing you to postpone the inevitable, deep inside you had hoped his reaction would be different. Shocked, yes, but then he would be… perhaps not happy, but at least a bit more excited? And after the shock had worn off, he would have soothed you, calmed you, told you everything was gonna be alright.

Maybe you had expected too much of Joel, your little delusion blinding you. After all, he had already lost Sarah. So now, in retrospect, this announcement might have unearthed bad memories, but especially regrets.

Was that it? Had you unburied his most primal fear? You had been so focused on what laid ahead, you had not stopped to consider what laid behind ― what this would mean for Joel. You had briefly contemplated he could perhaps see this as a blessing or a curse, but didn’t dwell too long on the thought, preoccupied as you were with other pressing matters.

You felt sick and it had nothing to do with pregnancy.

And then, when he had tried talking to you before going to bed, you had shut him down. But you were so tired, so mentally drained, you didn’t have an ounce of energy left to deal with a conversation like that. Because you truly didn’t know what he would say ― he wore such an impassive expression on his face, it was really difficult to tell.

You turned on the hard, creaky, wooden floor and faced Joel. One of his arms was resting on the wooden planks, extended towards you, as if he was trying to reach for you in his sleep.

You were in an abandoned cabin just outside Oswego. It was bare and completely stripped of furniture, but at least had a roof that would protect you from the cold, wet weather outside. It also had a covered chimney, but being so close to civilisation, it had to stay put out. Sleeping in the bag was not ideal, but it kept you warm.

Taking a deep breath, you then felt some sort of cushion under your neck that had not been there before you fell asleep. By touch, you realised it was one of those inflatable travel neck pillows that you had seen people use in airplanes. Frowning, you gathered Joel must have found one and tucked it under your head in your sleep.

You carefully studied Joel’s handsome, weathered face from the safety of your sleeping bag. Even in his sleep, his eyebrows were bunched together, a deep wrinkle ploughing through his skin almost permanently, giving him a worried look. His aquiline nose was buried in the fabric of his sleepsack, his long eyelashes caressing the top of his cheeks.

He would roll his eyes at you every time you called him “gorgeous” or “handsome”, but he really was. You loved to tell him, to help him see through your eyes. You knew he sometimes needed to hear it, to remind him of his own humanity. It was normal to lose sight of it in the current world you lived in.

And you loved him, the whole of him and his ghosts, even though he was a tactless prick sometimes. You had come to learn that when cornered, Joel could react like a beaten dog ― crouched back and showing teeth, ready to bite at the slightest provocation. Couldn’t blame him, even if you tried.

Feeling restless, you carefully unzipped your sleeping bag, not wanting to wake Joel up, and put your boots on. God knew you both needed some rest. Silently you stood up and stretched your back and arms, then one hand mindlessly stroked your belly. It wasn’t swollen at all, but the idea of a life growing inside you sat snugly in the back of your mind.

“What are we going to do, little one?” you whispered to yourself before grabbing your coat.

Needing some fresh air, you walked outside in the middle of the freezing night. It had been snowing, because there were at least three inches of white fluff blanketing the ground. Which meant the car battery could quickly drain and leave you stranded, so you went to check on the hidden Jeep.

Joel’s body jerked uncontrollably, one leg shaking as if he was falling off a cliff. Instantly waking up, he nervously looked around him, trying to recall where he was.

His hand patted the wooden floor in the dark, and when he located your sleeping bag, his breathing hitched at finding it empty. Then he heard the front door creaking, a sliver of moonlight coming through.

Were you leaving him in the middle of the night? Had he completely broken your trust, your relationship? Had he no chance of mending his mistake? Were you so hurt you would go without a word, without saying goodbye?

God knew he deserved it. He wasn’t cut for a relationship; he always ruined it. Should have known better than falling for you and giving in, but you were so warm, so effortless to love, so natural… How the fuck could he not? He was only human after all.

With a deafening pulse in his eardrums, he kicked the sleeping bag off as he got up with jerky, edgy motions, running towards the door to stop you from leaving him. For you he would fight, he would give you a whole motherfucking speech of why he loved you and how sorry he was. He at least had to try.

Joel swung the door open, and a frosty breeze greeted him, his skin bristled almost painfully at the feeling of frostbite.

You were walking through the snow, wrapped in your coat and with the hood on ― you looked so ethereal, your side profile bathed by the moonlight like a night fairy. Your features glowed under the lunar lustre, and he couldn’t help but fall for you even more.

Barefoot he followed you, his soles numb after a few steps through the snowy mud.

“Babe, wait,” he muttered, one hand reaching for your elbow.

You startled at his touch, and Joel didn’t know if it was rejection or that he had surprised you.

Your big, beautiful eyes widened when you saw him there. You wore a tired expression, and he knew himself the culprit.

“Where are you going?” he questioned in a whisper, heart still and lungs empty.

“I―”

“Please don’t go, don’t leave. I can do better. I’m sorry,” Joel stumbled with his words.

Had never felt this exposed as he was about to split his core in half, to undress emotionally in front of someone, allowing himself to be hurt by the only person it mattered.

But it had to be done to keep you by his side. So he did.

“I panicked. I wasn’t expecting― it didn’t even cross my mind that you… well, could be pregnant. It caught me so off guard, the news didn’t sink in. I’m sorry I reacted like a fucking idiot; I know I’ve disappointed you because of it. It’s just… ‘s hard, you know?” Joel swallowed to dissolve the dense knot forming in his throat, “I already had a shot at fatherhood, and I fucking blew it. I couldn’t protect her despite loving Sarah with all my heart, so the possibility of having to go through all that heartache again… I just, I don’t―”

Joel took in a deep, trembling breath as he unconsciously palmed his broken wristwatch, trying to soothe himself. He attempted to read your expression ― your lips pursed and eyes teary. Was he breaking your heart even further? You were about to cry, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.

Anxiety was taking hold of his throat and gut, strangling him.

“Look, I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m fucking scared, so scared I don’t think words do it justice. But I’m also thrilled, baby, I swear I am. I owe it to you, to myself, to this baby of ours… I ain’t going nowhere. Wherever you go, I’ll follow you both,” he husked, almost breathless. “I’m sorry I said what I said. Neither of us have a choice, but even if we did… I wouldn’t change a thing. This baby is happening for a reason and whatever that is, I’m all in, come what may. I love you, I really do, and I hate myself for having hurt you like this. I just suck at expressing my feelings and―”

You placed a gentle hand on his naked forearm, which made him lose track of what he was saying. Your fingers gently squeezed his cold flesh as you took a step closer to him. Your free hand slid across his left hip, dipping under the tee shirt he was wearing, until it reached the small of his back and you pushed him towards your body.

His taut muscles visibly relaxed at your touch and hug, his lungs filling up as he drew in the deepest breath of his life. Wrapping his arms around you, he held you close to his chest, chin resting on the crown of your head.

“Joel, I wasn’t leaving,” you murmured, cheek nuzzling against him, a tentative smile lingering on your mouth.

Joel’s eyebrows knitted together. From his perspective, it was more than obvious that you were actually leaving.

“Oh? I thought―”

“I was just going to check on the car battery since it’s freezing out here,” you interrupted him, glancing up at him.

Joel pursed his lips together, then licked them nervously.

“Well, everything I said still stands. I am truly sorry, sweetheart,” he said, mouth lightly pressed on your forehead.

A deep sigh after, you took a step back, your hand travelling from his forearm to his fingers, intertwining them with yours. Your palm was so warm in comparison to his, he just realised how little clothing he had on.

“For being a man who “sucks” at expressing his feelings, dare I say you’ve just spoken like a professional orator?” you jested, a grin curling the corners of your lips. “And I am sorry for not being straightforward with you. I was afraid of how you would take the news, and, well…” you shrugged, “you can’t blame me, can you?”

Joel shook his head vehemently. He definitely couldn’t ― the proof was there for both of you to see.

“But I understand how frightening this is for you. I can’t even begin to comprehend how you must have felt when… when Sarah left us. I was so blinded by my own insecurities, I didn’t dwell for too long on how this would affect you emotionally. So I apologise and―”

“Don’t. Don’t apologise, please. That’s a pain for me to bear, you shouldn’t have to think about it.”

“But I do, Joel. I want to bear it with you, so you don’t have to do it alone. That’s the whole point of this, of us. After all, we are going to be a family now,” your voice dropped to a low hum.

A pang of nerves traversed his stomach. No, not a pang, more like… butterflies? Joel had not felt that―the purest form of ecstasy―in a long, long time. The idea of being a dad… it always called him, always felt like that was what he was meant to be, nothing else. Sarah had been the center of his world and while no one could ever change that for him, the possibility of having another child to shower with the love he had buried… it was so overwhelming it brought tears to his eyes, his breathing shallow.

“A family,” he repeated, voice raspy with emotion.

You nodded and laughed, teary eyes too.

“A family, Joel. You’re gonna be a dad,” you snickered, now sobbing.

He couldn’t help but join you, draping his arms around you to bring you against his chest.

He didn’t deserve you, your forgiveness. The second chance you were offering him, in all the senses. A second chance with you. A second chance to form a family. A second chance in life, really.

Joel cradled your flushed cheeks, tilting your face up so his mouth hovered over yours.

“I can’t believe my fucking luck, honestly. You, the mother of my child…” he didn’t finish the sentence because he would choke on his own words if so. Took a second to compose himself. “If I’m ever such a dick aga―”

“Are you planning on being a dick often, Joel Miller?” you said playfully with a cocked brow.

He laughed, feeling completely at ease.

“I hope not. But if I ever attempt to be, just kick me in the balls so I may come to my senses quicker, please,” he replied with a lopsided grin.

His thumbs caressed the apples of your cheeks before bowing down to kiss you. A slow, loving stroke of his tongue over yours and he felt everything was right again. Your sweet taste soothed him, his mind finally at ease. How you achieved that for him with the mere brush of your soft lips, he didn’t understand.

You were the one to break the kiss, pecking his lips a few times before finally taking a step back.

“Let’s go back inside, you must be freezing only with those sweatpants and a shirt.”

And with that, all the anxiety, the mental struggle, was forgotten.

Joel took your tiny hand in his broad one and led you back inside the cabin. Dried off his feet quickly before helping you out of your winterwear and settle back in in the sleeping bag ― his sleeping bag. Luckily it was big enough for the both of you.

You hugged each other, trying to get back to sleep, but both of your hearts were fluttering so hard, it was difficult to ignore the excitement.

“I’m so thrilled right now, I don’t think I can go to sleep just yet. I can’t believe this is happening,” you whispered with a beautiful grin.

Joel couldn’t help but notice how you were beaming now, how much worry you had carried the last couple of days because of him. He felt infinitely better now that the joyful spark had returned to your eyes.

Dragging his thumb across your jawline, tracing an invisible line on your soft skin, Joel tilted your face towards him, his heart swollen with love. He hadn’t felt this alive in ages.

“Neither can I,” he admitted in a rasp.

His right hand roamed your body under the sleeping bag until it found the perfect spot to rest: your belly. Joel splayed his fingers over your lower tummy protectively, wanting to shield you both from any harm.

You hovered one of your hands over his, your palm stroking the back of his hand in a light caress. It felt like such an intimate moment, a respite among all madness and darkness, that he knew he would treasure it forever. When days would become hard, he’d only have to think back to this exact moment in time ― both of you cocooned in a sleeping back, warm and loving, calm and happy.

Fuck, was he happy and grateful. It still felt like a dream, but this was real. You were real. Yes, he was fucking scared out of his mind too, but the joy he was feeling right now eclipsed everything else.

With rough lips, he coaxed yours apart, the tip of his tongue tentatively swiping your teeth so you would let him in ― the place where he felt most at home. And you happily complied with a subtle sigh. Your tongues curled around one another, your sultry taste and sweet scent overtaking all his senses.

Joel felt your hand dragging his downwards and only took him one second to catch on. Soon his fingers were buried under your panties, his hand cupping your mound possessively while his middle finger dipped in your slit ever so slightly to faintly stroke your hooded clit.

Just one stroke.

“Joel,” you cooed, and he inhaled your breathless plea.

“I know, baby,” he hummed back, gifting you with another light stroke.

Your thighs trembled around his hand, and you parted them involuntarily, your body telling him everything he needed to know.

So he obliged, his finger slipping from your clit to your crying hole, gathering the wetness on the tip to bring it back up to your sensitive nub. With languid touches, Joel paid precise attention to your bundle of nerves with his thumb, while his index and middle fingers rubbed your dripping furrow incessantly, his fingertips hitching in your entrance from time to time.

You gasped, chest heaving and back arched, when Joel finally dived those two fingers in your slick, warm entrance. He groaned at your responsiveness, your eagerness, always ready for him. He could never have enough of you; of that he was fucking sure.

Joel nipped your neck, his stubble tickling your skin, then lapped at it while the rhythm of his hand increased. He knew you loved it when he curled his fingers, stroking that heavenly spot that would drive you wild with lust.

Then he suddenly stilled and you grinded your wet pussy against his palm, desperate for release, your hips tilting underneath.

“Joel, please,” you begged in a whisper, your walls clenching around his digits.

“Please what, sweetheart?”

“I wanna come, please let me,” you pleaded with half-lidded, glassy eyes, melting under his touch.

“What a good girl, asking for permission,” he grazed your slack jaw with his bare teeth, then soothed the bite with a kiss. “No, not a good girl, a good momma, aren’t ya?” he corrected himself, his erection swelling at the thought. “Not yet, baby.”

He teased you a bit more, dragging the pleasure, letting it build and coil inside you the way he knew you liked it.

“F-fuck… Joel…” you moaned, his fingers still and deep buried inside you, your hole squeezing uncontrollably.

Your pleas worked, because soon enough Joel was fingering you relentlessly, pumping in and out of you fast ― your gushing cunt making obscene, squelching noises under the sleeping bag. Your moans grew louder as the pace between your thighs increased, your back so arched Joel feared you might break it.

“You can come now, baby,” he spoke softly, knowing you were holding back until you got his permission.

Then your walls furiously fluttered around his digits, choking and clamping and clutching. And Joel fucked you with his fingers through your orgasm, his thumb smothering your clit, applying the right amount of pressure. You keened, breathing heavy, as you came down from your climax, eyes shut and mouth agape.

Joel leaned to kiss you, his wet, pruney fingers still embedded in your leaking hole while your hand teasingly caressed his tummy, his muscles straining in anticipation.

“Feeling calmer?” he asked, the tip of his crooked nose nuzzling your ear as his fingers slid out with a pop.

“Mhmm, way calmer now,” you husked, tipping your face to trap his mouth with yours. “Let me help you relax too, gorgeous.”

A deep rumble coursed through his chest as your tiny fist dove and wrapped around his swollen girth, your thumb gently caressing the leaky head under his underwear.

He was ready just by working you, that was the power you held over him and Joel was fully aware of it. And he didn’t care one bit, he loved that you could get him hard just like that. It was lust, but it was love too; a deep, shared connection ― something he’d not felt before with anyone else.

You pumped him slow at first, your teeth scraping the skin over his Adam’s apple, then his jawline, until you hunted down his lips, swallowing his gruffy moans. Your playful hand stroked him faster, your fingers gripping harder, and he was close to losing his mind.

Then you licked his neck and nibbled his earlobe, and Joel had to summon all strength he could muster to not come there and then. You giggled at his intense reaction ― his muscles so tight he could snap at any moment, his breathing heavier and erratic.

Your hand imposed a devilish pace upon his throbbing cock, jerking him off fast and furious now, seeing how far you could take him before he broke. His balls felt tight and heavy, ready to spill his warm load on your hand.

Joel couldn’t stop groaning even if he fucking tried ― it had only been five days since the last time he fucked you, but those were too many days already. He pursed his lips together, eyebrows knitting in concentration to not come yet, while your mouth ghosted his. A few moans ended up slipping out and you breathed them in as you masturbated him with a tight grip.

And whatever cue he gave you, you knew he was close ― his orgasm imminent. Swiftly you dived your head under the sleeping bag and Joel lost sight of you. You freed his erection and a second later he felt your plump lips seal around his mushroom head.

His hands curled into tight fists, your little licks, taps and laps maddening. Then you suckled the swollen tip as if it was your personal pacifier.

“Holy fuck,” he huffed, shutting his eyes, as your wicked tongue commended him to come, your hand working his shaft dextrously.

Joel couldn’t hold it any longer. With a deep moan, he blew his sticky load in your mouth, and you drank eagerly from him. He felt your plush lips pecking his balls, then his column, and finally the tip, showing gratitude to his softening dick. Tucking his cock back into his underwear, you patted his bulge, gently, for a sweet second.

Then you popped your head out of the sleeping bag with a sinful grin, your thumb swiping across the corner of your mouth to gather a drop of his cum and guiding it back inside. Joel cupped your chin to bring your face closer to his.

“Thanks, baby. Always so thoughtful,” he joked before tasting himself on your tongue.

“Anytime,” you snickered.

You settled across his chest, warm bodies and calmer hearts, and a comfortable silence filled the room. Soon after that, you both fell into a peaceful slumber.

You woke up first, Joel’s arms draped around your shoulders in a solid hug, almost suffocating you. The first morning light filtered through the bare window, casting elongated shadows of the trees outside across the floorboards. Morning dew condensed on the windowpane, frozen like tiny, sparkly snowflakes. Some birds chirped, their melody pacifying. The whole scene was so tranquil, you didn’t want this moment to end.

Loafing about, you nuzzled Joel’s sternum, his thorax slowly rising, then coming down. His heart beat steadily too, so calming it almost lull you back to sleep. Something about Joel sleeping so profoundly made you feel at peace. Both of you had a very much needed rest after a tense couple of days.

You stroked the hairy trail down his belly button absentmindedly.

Joel grunted and stirred under you, his curved eyelashes fluttering a few times before his beautiful brown eyes stared at you. A boyish smile curled the corners of his lips before he closed his eyes again, hugging you closer. Joel buried his nose in your hair, then inhaled audibly.

“As much I’d love to stay here forever with you, I think we should get going,” you laughed, palming his chest.

He groaned, pinching the bridge of his aquiline nose. He wasn’t a morning person.

“Alright. I’ll get up just ‘cause you’re asking nicely,” he conceded, one hand reaching out of the sleeping bag to unzip it.

The cold air hit you both and you regretted your decisions, but if you wanted to find Tommy soon, you were not going to achieve that from this cabin, as idyllic as it felt to be here, in your bubble with Joel.

Half an hour later you were both up and fully awake. Joel was packing away the sleeping bags when he suddenly stopped.

“Fuck. You didn’t check on the battery last night, did you?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

You bit down your bottom lip and shook your head no.

“Shit. No, I didn’t. I, well― got distracted,” you replied apologetically, a nervous chuckle slipping.

“You mean I distracted you, right?” the teasing edge to his voice made you smile. “Don’t worry, love, ‘s alright. I’ll go check on it before we go into town.”

Joel brought you in for a hug, his hands lacing on the small of your back. He brushed his lips against yours in a chaste kiss and you wanted to laugh so badly, you sniggered. This man, pretending to be so decent now.

“What’s so funny?” he enquired, a cocked brow, not letting you go of his embrace just yet.

“You being so gentlemanly and proper now with your decorous kissing, as if you didn’t make me come with just your fingers last night. As if I didn’t eat yo―” you jested bluntly, butterflies filling your belly.

Joel growled at your provocation, interrupting you, his hips flush with yours.

“That nasty mouth of yours is gonna be my downfall one of these days,” he muttered. Then he kissed you, his tongue quick and ravishing. “Enough. Stop being so damn tempting.”

He let go of you, taking a step back and turning around. You took the opportunity to smack his ass before he walked off with a smirk on his lips.

You stayed inside, gathering all the bits and stuffing them back in your backpacks. You were going to venture into Oswego today again, stake out the town and the area where Joel thought Tommy and his group would most probably be.

Shuffling through your belongings, you found the pregnancy test you took a few days ago. The digital screen was still displaying the positive result ― one you dreaded, but then embraced.

In the span of forty-eight hours, you thought your relationship with Joel had crumbled down and reduced to nothingness, to then come back stronger like a phoenix rising from its ashes.

The look on his face when he thought you were leaving him still haunted you ― you hoped he would forget that feeling sooner rather than later. His confession had tugged at your heart so much, you had forgiven him after the first sentence. But you had let him keep on talking, because the self-indulgent part of yourself wanted to hear him say all those things. It wasn’t often that Joel Miller would make use of his mouth to verbally express his feelings.

You smiled to yourself, tremendously happy with how the situation had turned out in the end.

Throwing your backpack over your shoulders and Joel’s hanging from one arm, you walked outside with the pregnancy still on your hand, daydreaming ― your grin now permanently sculpted into your features.

Then you heard a voice you quickly recognised.

Tommy’s.

You froze halfway through the three steps on the porch, your gaze scanning the area until you found them.

Joel had a very schooled expression, almost blank, while Tommy frowned, gripping a shotgun close to his chest.

“You’ve been following me?” the younger Miller asked, visibly upset.

“Yes, we have, you dickhead,” Joel replied, his voice restrained. “You just left a―”

“We?” Tommy scoffed, taking a step back. “You’ve not ditched her body yet?”

Joel’s hazel eyes found yours, still glued to the steps. A silent plea for you to go back inside, sensing this would not end well. And you tried ― you took a step back to run back into the cabin, but Tommy was quicker.

Tommy turned around and almost jumped back as if he had seen a ghost. Probably because he thought he had.

You raised your hands up, showing him you were no threat.

“Hey, Tommy,” you greeted him with a feeble smile. “If you keep pointing that gun at me, I’m gonna start thinking it’s personal,” you joked to diffuse the situation.

“Tommy,” Joel’s firm voice made his brother looked at him askance, his pupils fixed right back on you. “Hey.”

Joel’s fingers wrapped around the barrel, pushing it down so it wouldn’t point at you anymore. You could see Tommy’s stiffness from the distance, ready to do whatever it was necessary.

When Joel yanked at the shotgun, Tommy broke eye contact with you to stare at his brother, not letting go of the shotgun.

“How’s she alive?”

“It’s a long story, bu―”

“She’s fucking infected. You’re fucking infected!” he screamed in a panic, stumbling back with his own feet and then directing the gun back at you.

Joel tried to approach him while you stayed as still as possible, your breathing hitching. Would he shoot? You hoped not, but he looked scared enough to do so.

“Tommy, listen to me―” Joel attempted to talk to him again.

“What’s that you’re holding?” Tommy snapped at you, ignoring his brother.

You paled. You had forgotten the pregnancy test was on your hand, lost as you were in your train of thought when you had walked out of the cabin.

No words left your mouth ― your orbs quickly found Joel’s. Both of you, frightened to death. Not for yourselves, but for your baby.

Tommy wouldn’t hurt you, would he? Unconsciously, your free hand dropped to your belly, wanting to protect this new life you were harbouring, growing.

Tommy’s façade fell, his jaw slack.

“You’re PREGNANT?!”

Joel reacted first, standing in the way, the barrel kissing the center of his chest. Then he pushed Tommy back, his composed expression gone. He was angry, you could tell. Really angry. You had only seen him that irate the night those two men almost raped you.

“If you ever point that gun at her again, I swear to fucking God, I’ll kill you myself with my bare hands, Tommy,” he growled.

Tommy blinked rapidly, his resolution coming back as he cocked the gun again.

“You both have lost your fucking minds,” Tommy scoffed, walking backwards towards the woods. “Don’t follow me anymore. Leave me the fuck alone.”

A minute after, the younger brother disappeared between the trees and Joel rushed to your side, his anger transforming into urgency.

“We gotta go.”

His words were impregnated with the same panic you were feeling.

Unbelievable, Tommy thought.

Had his brother gone mad? What the fuck was he thinking? And how were you alive? What kind of sinister magic was that?

He had so many unanswered questions, his head throbbed with an impending headache. Tommy needed the distance and the time to think this through. At first, he had been elated at seeing his brother after so long, but the excitement quickly shifted the moment he saw Joel accompanied by you. And fucking pregnant, by the looks of it.

Shaking his head, Tommy hooted like an owl, letting the people keeping watch know that he was approaching the two houses they all had been living in. The two buildings were on the forest boundary, far enough of other homes but close enough to town.

Bursting in through the doors, Laney met him in the corridor, hands on hips.

“So?”

“They are here. And what’s worst, she’s alive and pregnant,” Tommy almost spit the last word out.

Laney’s scowl deepened.

“Pregnant? Like, with a fucking zombie-like monster growing inside of her?”

The emphasis on that specific word made Tommy frown. He wouldn’t go as far as to say that. Laney could be a little dramatic sometimes.

“Well, I don’t know. No, I don’t think so? I mean, she looked fine, so I guess―” Laney walked past him, interrupting what he was saying. “Where are you going?”

“On patrol. Need to go into town for some supplies.”

“Need a hand?”

“No. Stay here, keep watch.”

And with that, she stepped out and closed the door behind her, leaving Tommy in the middle of the hallway with a nagging doubt picking at the back of his brain.

@yesjazzywazzylove-blog @pedrospurplerain @missladym1981 @fancyyoouu

@smolbeanzzz @guelyury @bishtrouille @harriedandharassed

@thepalaceofmelanie @eternallyvenus @theoraekenslover @vickie5446

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redgoldsparks · 11 days ago

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Podcasts I love and recommend

I spent a truly extraordinary amount of time listening to podcasts this year, including my perennial faves and some new discoveries! I wanted to write up a bit about each of the ones I recommend the most highly, and give them some of the same attention and love I put into my book reviews. Recs below the cut. (This post brought to you by my patreon).

MATERIAL GIRLS- This is, hands down, my favorite podcast of all time. Friends and scholars Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman take on a new pop culture subject in each episode and examine the material conditions and historical setting that made their subject of the week zeitgeisty. They bring an expansive feminist lens, different types of critical theory, and tons of humor to each topic. I feel like I am slowly getting a media studies degree one episode at a time as I listen to this show. Some of my favorite episodes tackled Jurassic Park, Dopamine, Twilight, Taylor Swift, Bridgerton, and Queer Eye. I have guested on this podcast and also support them on patreon so I can get all of that sweet sweet bonus content! (This show uploads full transcripts but they lag behind the audio episodes in updates).

GENDER REVEAL- Journalist, writer, and now small-press founder Tuck Woodstock interviews trans folks on a wide range of topics. A characteristic episode includes some deeply intimate or tender moments mixed with wild tangents, extreme silliness and irreverence. I listen to every single episode and also back them on patreon for the extra episodes; some recent conversations that have really stuck with me include Colby Gordon, a founder of Early Modern Trans Studies; trans historian Susan Stryker; Jewish anti-Zionist comic author Solomon J Brager; writer Lucy Sante; and multimedia artist (and friend of mine) Shing Yin Khor. This podcast gets a special award for recommending more books that I actually end up reading than any other podcast. This year alone I’ve read at least 6 books by authors Tuck has interviewed (I Heard Her Call My Name, Heavyweight, Hijab Butch Blues, Transgender History, Boys Weekend, Practical Anarchism, Falling Back in Love With Being Human) and I have more on my TBR (The Prospects, When Monsters Speak). (This show also uploads full transcripts).

PUBLISHING RODEO- This is a new fav! I discovered this podcast over the summer and binged all 44 available episodes in about a month. Hosts Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford are friends and fellow Tor authors. In 2022, they both released debut novels in the same genre, in the same year, with the same publisher, to very different results. They are remarkably candid about the nuts and bolts of their publishing deals, and in each episode interview another author, usually one early in their publishing career, on signing agents, selling books, the size of their advance, resulting royalties and more. I have learned so much about the publishing industry from this show- I’ve sold 3 books, and yet it turns out there’s still loads I don’t know. I’d recommend starting with the intro episode in which Sunyi and Scott introduce themselves and then you can jump around to any interview which interests you. Their recent conversation with Chuck Tingle was especially delightful. (This show also uploads full transcripts).

PRINT RUN PODCAST- Another new discovery, also about the publishing/writing industry. Hosts Laura Zats and Erik Hane are both literary agents at a small agency they founded together. They discuss current events in the book news world or focused single subjects, often for early career writers. Because this show is more focused on current events, I haven’t dived super far into their back catalog, but listened to a handful of episodes from the past two years and plan to continue listening as new episodes are released. Laura and Erik also have a very cool patreon special bonus offering- they will critique query letters and first pages submitted from listeners. I haven’t written a query letter since probably 2017, so the refresher course was extremely valuable! I’d recommend the episode The Books That Made Us as a good starting point in this show. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

FIC CLIQUE- This is an old favorite I have recommended before. In a standard episode, the three hosts Nic, Reid, and Brenna each bring one fanfiction to read and discuss book-club style. In the past year, I’ve been particularly enjoying some of the mini-episodes that break this format. If you want to give it a try but you’ve less interested in hearing people talk about a fandom you aren’t in, I’d suggest the episodes on Mapping Fannish Migration, Books and Fandom, and Genre and Subgenre in Fanfiction. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

FANSPLAINING- Tragically (for me), this beloved long-running show wrapped this summer with its final standard format episode after 9 years and 200+ episodes. However, there’s still more to look forward to! Fansplaining has shifted to become primarily a publisher of fandom related journalism, and they’ve been releasing audio versions of each article along with the text, generally recorded by the author. I find these so charming, almost like new mini episodes of the show. Find a full list of their articles here; I especially loved the recent ones on The Beatles RPF fandom (still going strong!) and Bringing Fanfiction into the Classroom. (This show has full transcripts).

SHELVED BY GENRE- In this show, the three hosts re-read popular sci-fi or fantasy book series and record long rambling episodes which both summarize and analyze their current texts. When I say they ramble… most episodes are over 2 hours, some pushing 3 hours. I started on this show when they began reading the Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin, which I have read multiple times in past years. I skipped their episodes on Gene Wolfe, who I haven’t read, as well as some movie and horror focused episodes. But I happily dived back in for the unit on Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald Mage Trilogy, which was perhaps the first book with an out queer character I ever read; the queer host on the show, Michael, similarly remembers this as a foundational queer text from his teen years. I am very happy that the next author the hosts plan to discuss is William Gibson, who I might re-read to keep pace with the show. I recommend checking out their 40+ back episodes to see if there’s something you are interested in! (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

STUFF THE BRITISH STOLE- I found this 3 season podcast sometime in the middle of the year, hosted by an Australian journalist following the trail of objects (or sometimes animals or people) the British stole during the height of their colonial reign. The episodes generally run 35-45 minutes and feature interviews, history, and usually live records of the host seeing the item, whether it’s currently in a museum, a private collection, a random high school, or the site of a foreign grave. You can jump around to whatever topic that interests you, but I can definitely recommend the episode Blood Art as one of very few in which an item is repatriated! (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

LIVE LIKE THE WORLD IS DYING- A Margaret Killjoy and a group of queer anarchist friends rotate the hosting of this show. Once a month they release a “This Month in the Apocalypse” update which I started listening to in November and plan to keep up with going forward, but probably won’t listen to back episodes of as it’s very current-events focused. However there are other conversations/interview style episodes released between the monthly updates. Two recent interviews that really stuck with me were Spencer Sunshine on his zine “40 Ways To Fight Fascists” (which I subsequently downloaded and read) and Henri Feola on their zine “The Veil Between Worlds is Plexiglass”, which chronicles some of their experience spending 96 days in jail after being arrested protesting Atlanta’s Cop City and the police murder of Tortuguita, a protester defending the Weelaunee People’s Forest. I have a friend in Atlanta who was arrested at the same protest so I’ve been following this case; this conversation felt important and needed, as I expect there will be even more arrests of protestors in the coming years. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

BORROWED AND BANNED- The Brooklyn Public Library released this 7 episode limited run podcast on book bans, book challenges, how it’s affecting teachers, students, librarians and authors. I was one of several authors interviewed for the show, and you can hear my interview as a separate bonus episode; but I highly recommend listening to the whole thing because it’s a very close and personal look at these national issues- which I expect to get worse under the Trump administration. (This show has full transcripts).

SOLD A STORY- This is a 10 episode limited run podcast about how a misinformed educational specialist’s incorrect idea of how children learn to read damaged the literacy of a whole generation of school children. This podcast explores different research on reading, how sweeping educational policies like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” impacted schools and how textbook companies pushing expensive reading-kit book sets have all negatively impacted schools. The later episodes contain messages and voicemails from parents, teachers, and students reacting to the show and some hope of change on better educational resources. I’ve probably made this sound dry but it’s genuinely a very emotional journey- as someone who really struggled to learn to read, I found this show riveting. (This show has full transcripts).

THE REDEMPTION OF JAR JAR BINKS- This 6 episode limited run show is hosted by Dylan Marron, better known as the host of Conversations with People Who Hate Me and for his role as Carlos on the podcast Welcome to Nightvale. Marron was the target of a fair amount of internet hate himself, which made him interested in how people express hate towards public figures online, and why. This led him to investigate what is possibly the first ever case of cancellation online: the rage directed at the character Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel series which began releasing in 1999, and how that hate destroyed the mental health of and nearly ended the acting career of the young Black actor who voiced and helped develop the character. Marron is a deeply compassionate interviewer, and a good researcher. He finds and talks to fans who built “kill Jar Jar Binks” websites in the days of the early web, he interviews the actor, Ahmed Best, he interviews folks involved with the production on the Star Wars prequels. I am a lukewarm Star Wars fan at best (lol) but I loved this podcast. (This show has full transcripts).

WIND OF CHANGE- I picked up this 8 episode limited run podcast because it was researched, written and hosted by Patrick Radden Keefe, the author of Say Nothing, one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. In this show, Keefe digs into rumors of the CIA using cultural productions, especially pop music, as propaganda weapons against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In particular, he’s interested in one song, “Winds of Change”, by German rock group The Scorpions which became an anthem of change shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the end of the Soviet Union. Keefe is friends with someone who does a lot of recruiting of ex-CIA folks and has also written a whole book on the CIA, so he’s not without background or connections on this subject; but the question he most wants an answer to might not be one he can ever answer. This was gripping and intriguing, and made me think a lot about soft power and propaganda more generally. (This show has full transcripts).

#podcasts #podcast recommendations #podcast recs

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archivecon · 11 months ago

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Statement begins...

Statement of ArCon staff, regarding the third annual ArchiveCon convention for fans of Rusty Quill’s The Magnus Archives/The Magnus Protocmagprool. Statement recorded 23/02/09 by the Official ArchiveCon Tumblr.

—

Hey archival assistants, avatars, and everyone in between!

Welcome to the official Tumblr for ArchiveCon 2024. We are proud to be hosting our THIRD (!!) ArchiveCon - a fan-lead, fan-run online mini convention for 18+ fans of the Rusty Quill horror podcast, The Magnus Archives (and now Protocol!)

Whether you are an old fan, a new fan, a deeply-rooted fandom denizen, or looking to make your first connections in our fan community, we hope you’ll join us. ArchiveCon may be online-only, but we’ve got all the energy and features of a traditional offline convention - everything from panels and special guests (voice actors, writers, and industry professionals!), to cosplay and games, streaming and discussion, and even an Artist’s Alley.

Here’s the quick rundown:

- June 21-23, 2023 (that’s three days, folks - Friday to Sunday!)

- 18+, online only (Most areas of the con will be SFW, but you still must be 18+ to attend)

- FREE TO ATTEND! (Registration is required and must be done so before the convention starts; you can register here!)

- All events scheduled in PST, but all international fans are welcome and most panels (at the discretion of individual panelists) will be recorded for post-convention, on-demand viewing.

- Primarily focused on The Magnus Archives/Protocol, but fans of all things horror, podcasting, and transformative works will find something to love. The Plain Old Curious are always welcome, too - we have to feed The Eye somehow, right? ;)

For more detailed information and FAQs, visit our website!

—

Are you an artist? A storyteller? A connoisseur of pulp fiction novels looking for an audience? ArchiveCon is here for you, beyond attendee registration. :)

Artists and artisans of all kinds are welcome (encouraged!) to apply for a slot in our Artists’ Alley. Do you take digital art commissions? Make soap? Knit hats? All of the above?? (Kudos to you, you must be using superhuman eldritch powers to get all that done.) We’d love to give you a place to showcase and sell your work, reach a like-minded audience, and network with fellow creatives.

Don’t have anything to sell, but want to share your passion for the world of The Magnus Archives and its fans? Then we’d love to chat with you about hosting a panel. ArchiveCon will host panels on a wide variety of subjects including (but not necessarily limited to!):

- deep dives and meta on TMA/TMP characters, plot points, history, and relationships (we love a detailed ship manifesto)

- queer identities in horror and fandom spaces

- the evolution/history of fandom culture

- fan creations and transformative works (such as zines, art, fic and fic-binding, cosplay - you name it)

- friendly discussions and debates

- technical tutorials and discussions on podcast production, streaming, sound editing, etc!

For more insight and ideas, check out last year’s program schedule!

Applications aren’t open quite yet, but we’ll update all our pages when they are. Hope to see you there!

[Statement Ends.]

#the magnus archives #the magnus protocol #tma #tmp #tmagp #magnuspod #magpod

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buggyboba · 8 months ago

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Surrender Your Mind

part one [ x ] part three [x] AO3 [ x ]

Part two | Fasten Her Tether Unto Me

A/N | Hello! Thank you everyone for your positive feedback on part one! I am a newish fan fiction writer, and I have zero clue what I am doing, but we are faking it until we make it! I will set up a masterlist (no pun intended) and a tag list. As of right now, I will try to update this story every Wednesday. In this chapter/part, I went for a different tone, so I hope you all still enjoy it. As always, Thank you, and if you have any prompts or questions please feel free to send them in, I would love to fulfill some prompts and drabble.

Also look at me pulling from book media…~ Buggy.

TW | A bit of choking, but not in a sexy way, but maybe…lots of pet names, Pet, Puppy, Kitten, descriptions of violence. Missy is still a dick.

Word count | 6315

━━━━━━»»•••««━━━━━━

The steady hum became a constant companion; the machine felt alive; even when you couldn’t hear the hum, you felt the low vibration. It felt like it was watching you; it could see your every movement, and you could have sworn it locked you out of certain places as you carefully explored them. The woman, The Mistress, as you still had yet to actually call her that in conversation, had so graciously, as she put it, allowed you to stay there to be safe. She had kidnapped you, and every time you had tried to leave over the past week, she was always there, stopping you, or her machine wouldn’t open the door. You had gotten decent at picking out her footsteps and would make yourself scarce. She hadn’t actively tried to interact with you, save for stopping you from leaving, and the one time you accidentally ran into her when you were exploring, that was a few days ago.

Tonight, however, You had thought it was clear. You hadn’t heard her in a while, so you had dared to slip into a room whose door had been locked prior. You couldn’t pass up the opportunity; maybe it was a way out; it wasn’t like the woman had actively threatened your life, but you weren’t a fan of being captive, especially with a stranger who refused to explain anything to you, one who you felt so strange around, your mind still foggy when you looked at her when you caught glimpses of her as she worked on something. The room you entered smelled of a fireplace, it looked like it could be a study, but you weren’t sure. The warmth of the fire in the brick fireplace warmed the area, it was a small comfort given that the rest of the ship was so bloody cold. There were books lining the shelves, there were mounted creature heads above the fireplace, and from what you could see, there seemed to be artifacts, weapons, and specific books in glass cases; this felt more like a hunter’s lounge than a study. There was a faint smell of cigars, but it was so faint that you figured no one had been smoking them recently.

As you walked into the room a little more, you looked at the chair facing the fireplace. On the side table, there was a small tumbler of amber liquid, a plate of half-eaten cucumber slices, some sort of orange-colored jam, and clotted cream. Oh, no, you had to leave. You turned and walked straight into her chest. She caught your arms so you wouldn’t fall back. She looked down at you with a smile that couldn’t quite make up its mind if it wanted to be a smile.

“So I have finally caught my little mouse.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, causing you to shiver. “Have you enjoyed poking around my private room?” She asked in a tone that was dangerous, almost daring you to answer. Her hands tightened a bit on your arms before she let you go, walking towards the chair. “I’ve had a long day,” she started.

You wondered what she did all day; you hadn’t seen her or heard her. You watched her unceremoniously flop into the large, high-backed armchair in front of the fireplace. You stood there silently, you could slip out of the room quietly. You could return to the guest room she had given you and stay hidden as long as you could.

“Go on, ask about it.” Her voice sounded from the chair as she grabbed the little tumbler, holding it between three delicate fingers and pulling it up to her lips. Her lipstick made a smudge on the glass as she took the liquid into her mouth, setting the cup back down. Her fingertips grazed the glass as she pulled her hand back and swallowed the sip she had taken before she turned her face slightly, watching you out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t be rude, and just stand there silently.” Her lips twitched into a half-smirk.

You awkwardly forced yourself to walk closer; you gave the chair a wide distance as you stepped around the right side of it. “Why was your day long?” you asked, watching her carefully.

She was silent as she picked up a slice of cucumber, putting a small dollop of the jam on it, and then another small dollop of the clotted cream. She popped the whole thing in her mouth, chewing, before letting her tongue dart to the corner of her lips, where some cream had escaped. You looked away and down, waiting for her to answer, your arms wrapped around yourself a bit, before you forced your gaze back onto her.

“Do you want some?” she asked, motioning to the treat she had been eating. You shook your head. “Have you eaten since you got here? Well, you must have; your body doesn’t seem to be deteriorating.” She said as she eyed you over. “Eat,” she said more firmly. You shifted again and moved to carefully take one of the cucumber slices, putting it in your mouth. You had been able to sneak to the kitchen and had been eating, but you weren’t going to make her mad by not taking what she offered.

“So, why was your day long?” You tried to ask again, taking another cucumber slice, this time adding a little bit of the jam, and you were surprised it was apricot jam. The surprised look you gave seemed to have prompted her.

“It’s from The Scoundrel’s Club, a very prestigious member’s club. Well, that was until they so rudely threw me out since I was no longer a man. Silly of them, really. I held a chair there for countless years. Shame what I had to do to them for their disrespect,” she muttered a bit.

“The Scoundrel’s Club?” you asked carefully. She nodded, but didn’t elaborate on it. You also had questions about her other statement, but really, you didn't have any reason to ask about it. You sighed and looked for a seat; there was only the stool to the armchair, so you sat on that in front of her. “Alright then, what did you do to them?” You asked, and your gut told you that was the wrong question because there was this sort of delighted, almost off-putting grin that took her lips. You immediately regretted your decision to ask.

There was a moment of silence as she seemed to be getting the details of her story in order. Taking another sip of the liquid in the tumbler, you could only guess it was some sort of sipping whiskey, which you weren’t expecting, but then again, you knew nothing about this woman.

“Well, you see, as one of the longest-standing members of the club, it was very rude of them to cast me out, so I ruined one’s life, then collapsed the bridge he was on; one had a nasty accident with a train; you should have seen the splatter.” She smirked softly, imitating a sort of splatter sound, flexing her hand to imitate a 'splatter’. You grimaced, not wanting to think about what she had said. “Little bitty bits of Bobo Braithwaite all over the English countryside, ironic because it was his railroad.” The woman giggled a bit. You shivered, trying not to vividly imagine it. You didn’t know whoever that man was, but you almost felt bad.

"Oh, don’t feel bad; these were all terrible people, so in a way, my revenge was for the better.” She made a face and then shook her head, continuing speaking before you could voice your opinion on it. “Then I —” She started to continue and looked back at you with a frown. “Are you not enjoying my story? You look pale, pet.” She let her face drop in expression as she watched you.

“I mean, is this why you had a long day?” You asked calmly, trying not to look at her, making it a point to look at your hands that sat in your lap as you listened to her. This woman spoke of murder like it was a normal Tuesday, as if it were a jaunty walk around the park. You were stressed and nervous, and yet the only thing she really had done to you was kidnap you and make vague threats.

“Oh, no, but it was a valuable lesson about being rude... and what I would do to people I know versus a stranger like you if you continue to be rude and keep avoiding me...in my own tardis...rather rude indeed.” She said, gauging your reaction.

“Tardis?” you asked.

"Oh, for...” she sounded annoyed. “Yes, the machine we are in... Tardis, Time and Relative Dimension in Space, you have figured out now that I am not of Earth, yes?” She raised an eyebrow, and you nodded. "I know you silly little apes are stupid, but I have to assume you are at least a little clever...or you would be dreadfully boring."

You made a face at her insult.

“You have two heartbeats and are like, so cold when you touch me, and all of this...” You motioned around yourself. “It is too insane to be worldly.” You sighed. “So, yes, I figured you weren’t human.” You said you were trying to sound calm, and you looked at her again. You weren't entirely set on aliens as the story, but everything was too weird to be just your run-of-the-mill normal human activities.

“You are correct; I am superior to you, little primitive apes….I am a Time Lady.” She said like that meant anything to you. You nodded a bit, waiting to see if she would explain, but given her piss-poor explanations so far, you didn’t expect it. “I am the most dangerous being in the universe.” She nodded and grinned a bit at you, You weren’t sure you liked that either. “And unfortunately for you, I still haven’t figured out why they targeted you to get to me.” She said her expression changed as her cold eyes bore into yours like she was searching for something—anything that would give her a clue as to who you were, why the assassin blew up your flat, and why she didn’t want to immediately kill you. Logically, she should kill you and take away whatever leverage these assassins thought they had on her. However, her curiosity about why they thought you were leveraged over her got the better of her. She decided if she didn't figure it out soon, she would just throw you into the time vortex or something and be done with you, but for now, the situation was intriguing enough to keep her attention. Well, keep the little spots between her plans interesting enough anyway.

“Delightful.” You muttered a bit and shifted on the stool. “So what is a Time Lady?” you tried; maybe if you asked specific questions, you might be able to get some sort of semblance of what is happening. “And why does that make you superior?” It was your turn to raise an eyebrow.

The woman scoffed and shook her head. “I don't have the time to explain the complexity of being the elite of Gallifreyan society, especially to you.” She waved you off.

"Okay, that sounds fake.” you shrugged. “Time Lady, ridiculous title, ‘elite of Galli...Gallif’..”

“Gallifreyan….” She repeated it calmly, like you were a child. “If you are going to try to be insulting, at least know the words you are saying.” She drawled.

You crossed your arms across your chest and sighed as you rolled your eyes. “Elites of Gallifreyan society... It sounds like you are trying to convince me that you are supposed to be important. You said your tone was trying to be teasing, but you weren’t sure how she would take it. “But it also holds the same gravity as a celebrity thinking they are important just because they are Hollywood elite.” You muttered. “Pretentious,” you sighed, but you felt the air shift before you saw her move.

You yelped as you were dragged off the footstool forward by your shirt collar. Her face was close to yours as she moved her fingers around your throat. “Did you not learn anything from my tale of being rude? Do I have to show you or teach you a lesson? You have been nothing but an annoying little mouse plaguing my tardis. I saved your life, and you are being an annoying little brat, speaking out of turn, with much more confidence than someone like you should have.” She said her fingers flexed around your throat as she spoke, your back against the footstool as she held you down with surprising strength.

You choked out, your hands going to her arm, one by her wrist and the other up on her forearm, trying to pry her fingers off your throat. There was a predatory glint in her blue eyes as she kept you pinned, ensuring you made eye contact with her as you struggled to breathe. Your cheeks turned red from how she held your throat; just enough air was able to get to your lungs to keep you conscious, though your body struggled and your lungs started to hurt. “I'm not going to let you go until you...” She seemed to pause in thought. “Say something nice.” She said it in a light tone, like she wasn't choking you.

Something nice? What sort of something nice did she want? Your mind was getting foggy; you were getting dizzy from the struggle of trying to intake air and panicking, and now she wanted you to say something nice.

“Come on, then, say something nice.” She said it more impatiently.

“You're scary and pretty.” You stammer out quickly, your fingers prying harder.

“Is that the best you've got—scary and pretty? That's not very nice, and you know what, pet, address me properly.” She said, pushing your back further over the footstool, your spine digging into the wood of it, sending pain through you. Your eyes darted around, looking for anything. Landing on the fire, you grimaced, and your jaw clenched a bit as you gritted your teeth. “You are like fire!” You started to panic. “Mistress, you are like fire—burning, intense, chaotic, but beautiful—a force to be reckoned with.”You tried to sound poetic; perhaps if you weren’t at the hands of a dangerous psychopath, you could string your words together better and maybe sound like you knew how to flatter someone. However, the word ‘Mistress’ still felt weird on your tongue.

Her hand pushed you hard before it was off your throat, leaving you a panting mess clinging to the footstool beneath you. Your hand held your throat, rubbing it as you took some heavy breaths in. "Better, I suppose; I'll expect something better next time,” she muttered, watching you as she crossed one leg over the other as she leaned back in the chair. “Now don't be rude again.” She warned. “Or I will end your pathetic little existence; really, you humans have such a short lifespan, and it would be a shame to cut yours shorter because you don't know your place.” She sighed and shook her head.

The only thing you could do was look at her with a mix of emotions before nodding. “You can make it up to me; you will join me for tea tomorrow, and we will talk more then. Go on off, you pop.” She waved you off. You scrambled to your feet and quickly raced to get out of the room.

Your hurried footfall caused the dark metal hallway to echo as you navigated it back to the room you were staying in. You closed the door behind you, slid down it, and let your hand rest on your throat, rubbing it still. Your mind was racing; there was so much happening, and you still didn't have any answers. After what felt like forever, you pulled yourself up and dragged yourself to the bed; it wasn't nearly as comfortable as your own bed, but being as you no longer had a bed and were trapped here with The Mistress, it would have to do. You lay down, burying yourself under the covers; your lower back stung, and you knew a bruise was forming. You curled into yourself, trying to relax, but your body was on high alert, listening for the sounds of her footsteps.

Eventually, your body ebbed into sleep, and you dreamt of many things—things you couldn't quite remember when you woke up—but your body was warm and flush, so it couldn't have been nothing, and she-- the thought of her brought you an even more confusing feeling. You had tea with her today, an invitation you were not allowed to break. You sat up from the bed and were startled when there was a neat pile of clean clothing sitting on the dresser with a note. She had been here. When you were sleeping? How did your body not wake you up?

You carefully got off the bed and went to check out the note and clothing. The note was in perfect script, black ink spelled out, ‘Get cleaned up and dressed; meet me in the study for tea. -M.’

Your fingers trailed over the soft material, it was black and looked formfitted—not exactly your style, but it was clean, and you weren’t about to pass up the opportunity to get cleaned up properly with a fresh set of clothing. You grabbed the clothing and slipped out of the bedroom. You knew the way to the restroom, you had found it the first night you were there. The bathroom was large and marble, and the shower portion of it had one of those waterfall-style showers. You moved to turn the water on, pushing it to hot but not scalding. You moved to take your clothing off by the sink, finding a bag of toiletries had been set out for you. You assumed she had done it last night. You grabbed it and looked through it, pulling the items you needed out and giving them a quick sniff. They were fancy and smelled so good, You were quickly excited for this shower. Slipping in, you let the warm water wash over you.

The warmth was a quick comfort as your body relaxed, You stood there for a few moments, silent and reflecting, This had been an absolutely bonkers experience. If you weren’t so sure you were actively alive, you would have assumed you died when the flat exploded, and this was whatever happened after you died. Aliens, Assassins, Time Lords, and Tardises—this was all so much to take in. You felt numb, how were you going to get out of this? You were a prisoner on an alien ship, one that felt like it only tolerated you, much like its owner.

You worked the shampoo into your hair, as you thought, the smell was nice and assaulted your senses in the best sort of way. The Mistress did know how to pick scents, it seemed, because you were in love with the smell of the soaps she had given you to bathe with. It could be worse; everything so far—what happened last night hadn’t been so bad. Scary and very much uncalled for, but from her stories, that had been nothing.

You just wished you could help figure out what these Assassins wanted with you, you had no idea why they had targeted you, honestly, you weren’t someone important—well, not in the grand scheme of the universe after all.

You got to thinking as you washed up, maybe the assassins were from the future; was it really a stretch? Maybe they had come back to the past; of course, you were sure the woman had already thought of this; you wished she would share just a little more with you, anything more to help you understand the situation rather than leaving you floundering and drowning in a situation where you were out of your element. Today at tea, you were going to demand answers—not rudely, but you were going to get the answers you wanted.

You finished getting cleaned up, dried off, and got dressed quickly. Your stomach gave a low rumble, and as you made your way back to that study you had found last night, your heart started to pound in your throat as you made your way there. The memories of her hand around your throat flashed in your mind—how terrified you had been at that moment.

The study door was open, and you took a breath while walking in. “Usually we would take tea in the sphere; it has a delightful garden, but you are safest in the Tardis.” She said as you entered, your eyes scanned the room quickly, and fell on her. She sat up on this little raised part by some bookshelves. A small tea set was set out on the small table in front of her, along with a few different fruits and cakes. It was a proper tea setup. You moved to sit in the armchair that was angled towards hers.

“I see.” You said lightly.

“I am glad the clothing fits; I couldn’t have you traipsing about in those old, gross clothes, now could I?” She said as she poured herself a cup of tea, then poured you one. “Sugar? Cream?” She asked. You watched her, her body language was sort of rigid, but she was trying to present herself as friendly. You shifted in the armchair. You nodded and told her the amount you liked before she gave you the cup. You held the saucer in your hand and then took the cup off of it, putting it down. You held the warm glass in your hands, staring down into the liquid.

“It’s not poison,” She spoke with a little grin that made you wonder if she was telling the truth. “I wouldn’t poison you, don’t be boring, I wouldn't ruin tea like that, not for you... Not after I’ve gone through great lengths to keep you safe….you are welcome.” She said expectantly.

Was she expecting you to say thank you for her kidnapping you? Was she kidding? You brought the cup to your lips, taking a small sip of the tea. It was a nice blend of lavender and black tea. You could feel those icy blue eyes that were so enchanting watching your every move, like she was studying you and analyzing everything about you.

“So have you found out anything about the…uh…assassins?” You asked after a moment of silence.

"Yes, that was my long day yesterday,” she said, taking a sip of her own tea. “They are time assassins, much like weeping angels...oh right, I suppose you wouldn’t know what those are...hm, simple terms for you, I think,” she said, stirring her tea with a little silver spoon that she brought up to her mouth and let the tip of it press against her lips in thought. You watched her calmly, and you noticed she was wearing black today; it was still in the same style as her plum outfit, and her hair was still up, but some pieces had fallen to rest against her temple, but she didn’t seem to pay attention to it.

“You don’t have to use simple terms, I do understand some things, I’m not stupid.” You protested after she took a few more minutes to think.

“Oh, alright then, weeping angels are a sort of quantum-locked species, the lonely assassins they call them, they can take the form of many things, statues are their main appearance; and they can only move about if no sentient life forms are watching them. Essentially, what they do is touch you and put you into the past—a mercy they call it—letting their victims live a full life; they can consume the remaining time and energy that way, and of course, when they are in a pinch, they will just snap your neck like a wee little twig,” she mused, taking another sip of her tea and licking the corner of her lip before she continued. “Now, Time Assassins have taken that theory but are much more murderous; their bullets act as a weeping angel’s powers do, sending their victim back in time. The theory is that they shoot them somewhere vital, send the body back in time, and the past now has a John or Jane Doe to deal with, and the present has a missing person,” she explained. “Surely they don’t think that will work on me; I’ll just regenerate,” she shrugged.

“Regenerate? ” You asked, shaking your head a bit.

“Yes, the perks of being me. You see, if I get wounded mortally, my body has a sort of defense where it will heal itself through regeneration. Of course, I won’t look like this anymore. Shame, because this one has been delightful so far. Of course it took some time to get used to, my first go as a woman,” she mused.

“So.” You paused, taking a minute to gather your thoughts and put some things together. “You can just change your gender?”

“Yes and no, I don’t quite get a choice in it; all a bit of luck of the draw sometimes... most times... doesn’t matter; we Time Lords and Ladies are eons above your human notions of gender and roles.” She waved it off and looked at you with a cat-like grin.

“Okay, so… If their methods wouldn’t work on you, why use that method? And why come after you in the first place, and me?” You asked, leaning back in the chair a bit. You didn’t want to seem so tense, but you were. You watched as she took a look around the room in thought before her eyes returned to yours.

“Well, it could work, but I’m not getting into that with you; you don’t need to know all the nasty little details.” She nodded. “What I am more interested in is why they think you are important enough to go after to lure me out.” She spoke, her fingers trailing over the lip of the teacup in thought.

“Well, maybe in the future...” you trailed off, not really wanting to continue the thought.

“Oh, you think you are somehow important to me in the future.” She gave a wicked little smirk. “Now now pet, I am highly doubtful; you are cute, but...” she trailed off as well. She didn’t do relationships unless you had something to offer her, she paused. Perhaps you were another Lucy, a means to an end, a loyal pet. She clicked her tongue against her teeth as she thought about it, leaving you in silence.

"No, that might make sense... Perhaps they misunderstood our relationship.” She spoke after a long while. You blinked and shifted again. “I don’t think they are trying to lure me; well, this me or their intel was wrong.” She mused, leaning back as she thought of all the scenarios and which one would be the most accurate. “Either way, they came to this time for a reason: to go after you. They had made an earlier attempt at me, but it didn’t work out for them, so they changed tactics. You were supposed to be in your apartment when it blew up, which they thought would bring me out in a rage.” She grinned as she put things together. “funny… I wonder what you did to catch my attention if this theory of mine is correct.” She looked at you more closely.

Her eyes glided over your features, you weren’t the most offensive thing to the eyes, you were attractive, she had seen your thoughts, she knew you were intelligent, at least for a human, you also had an attitude, she almost liked that about you. You could be useful, she just had to get you loyal, she could just hypnotize you again, but that could be broken, shaken, true genuine loyalty was something else that couldn’t be broken as easily, she knew that well, the Doctor and his little human pets were a testament to that.

You shrugged, you had no idea, you had thought she was beautiful when you saw her at the tea shop, and you still thought she was, but now there was a danger to her, she wasn’t just a stranger at the tea shop anymore, she was the alien that kidnapped you, the Mistress, or at least that was what she insisted you called her, but you really didn’t want to do that.

“You are still so scared of me; your heart hasn’t stopped racing since you walked in.” She smirked, leaning forward just a bit. You shook your head, but it was a lie; she did make you nervous. "Oh, puppy, is it because I got a little rough last night?” She said it in a flirty tone that took you by surprise; she made it sound like it was an intimate encounter, not a violent one, but from what you could gather about her, maybe they were one and the same.

“Don’t call me that.” You shook your head. “I am nervous because you are a stranger, a murderous one, a violent one, who kidnapped me.” You said your voice was strong at the beginning but wavered at the end.

“Would you prefer Kitten?” She said she watched you, not denying the rest. “And I kidnapped you because they would have killed you... At least that is the running theory. To get to me, you should be thanking me.” She mused, leaning back again and watching you.

“I would prefer my name,” you said exasperatedly, saying your name.

Missy paused and sighed. "Oh, alright, since we are going to be in this together for a bit longer than I anticipated, I suppose I could occasionally use your name, don’t get used to it…I won’t remember it.” A lie, she would remember it, but she would continue to use little pet names for you since they seemed to irritate you. “I suppose, as a sign of good faith, you can call me Missy,” she said after a moment.

“Missy,” you repeated. “Okay, I can do that one.” You nodded.

“You will still call me Mistress, but I suppose you can call me Missy occasionally.” She calmly spoke, putting her teacup down. “I think I will look up everything I need to know about you,” she mused, watching you for your reaction.

“Or you could ask me like a normal person.” You sighed, shaking your head.

“No….absolutely not….boring small talk… dreadful.” She shook her head.

"Well, then tell me more about you.” You sighed, carefully reaching for one of the tea cakes.

“Oh…sure–” She started, and you laughed, causing her to frown. “Why is that funny?”

“You’ll talk about you, but you don’t want to talk about me, calling it boring small talk.” You said taking a bite of the cake.

"Yes, well, because it is. You are a boring little human. I am The Mistress, a renegade Time Lady who has conquered planets.” She chuckled, making a grand gesture with her hand. “The greatest archenemy of the Doctor, and all around much more interesting.” She gave a smaller grin.

“Oh…The Doctor?” You asked, “Do all um-- Gallifreyan’s have silly titles?” You asked with a small grin of your own.

“Oh hush, The Mistress is a powerful title.” She raised an eyebrow. “So was my former moniker, The Master, bit cheeky, bit sexy, it strikes fear, is straight to the point, of who is in control and owns you.” She waved you off. You shook your head a bit but dropped it. You weren't interested in trying to tease her and have her get mad, thinking you were being rude about it. Your mind drifted back to last night, and you cleared your throat, pushing the thoughts away again. You were certainly going to say something later about the whole Mistress/Master motif.

“Who is the Doctor?” You questioned, and the energy shifted, and you felt you had made a mistake again.

“You won’t have to worry about him.” She said calmly, though her body language told you otherwise, you weren’t going to push it; you didn’t want her to be mad.

“Okay, so what is our plan about the time assassins?” You asked while trying to get back on track.

“Oh, yes, well, I figured I would dangle you as bait, don’t worry, pet, they won’t get close enough to kill you... But we are going to make them make another big mistake, which hopefully will give me time to catch one. We bring him to an undisclosed location and get our answers through a series of slow, painful tortures, though I do suppose torture doesn’t really work...but it will make me feel better.” She said her tone was light, like she was talking about the weather. “I’ll probably just get into their mind, poke around, take the information I want, and then kill them, and they will join my cyberdears,” she shrugged. "Oh, that’s a good one, you’ll love it,” she nodded.

You blinked “Cyberdears?” you asked, looking at her in confusion.

"Oh, I can’t spoil the surprise, pet, but it is going to go viral,” she nodded.

She confused you; sometimes she was so posh, and then other times she was silly with her words, like when you watched a person from an older generation try the slang of this generation. However, once that thought subsided, there was an undertone you hadn’t caught before, but her smirk told you there was certainly something much darker to these cyberdears, as she called them.

“Are those skeletons in the tanks?” You asked, but you were still uncomfortable with the idea of there being ninety-one of them, just right outside her tardis.

“Shh, spoilers pet,” she giggled like it was her own inside joke. You grimaced but nodded, finishing your cup of tea and the tea cake you had grabbed. “So it’s settled, you’ll play the delightful worm on a hook, and we will catch us a time assassin,” she grinned widely. “I bet you’ll squirm perfectly.” She nodded.

You frowned, you didn’t like this idea. “Was that a compliment? An insult?” you asked.

“Yes.” She nodded and took a large bite of tea cake herself.

“There has to be a safer way, you’ve gone through all this trouble of making sure I don’t leave your ship, and now the plan is to dangle me out in public, waiting for the Assassin to make their move? What if they, I dunno, are good snipers?” You sighed.

“Well, you see, we go somewhere where we have the advantage.” She watched you, giving you a look that told you she found you annoyingly amusing. “No multiple high ledges, and plus, I’ll be watching you, don’t you trust me?” She teased you, and you blinked at her. What did you say to that? If you said no, she might get angry. You didn’t trust her; trust was earned, and all she had done was kidnap you. Well, that wasn’t fair to say; she did technically keep you safe from harm, but that didn’t excuse the whole kidnapping thing.

You opened your mouth a few times, trying to find the words. This amused her because she called you a trout and took another big bite of her tea cake. “Well, my dear, do you trust me?” she pressed, feeling your apprehension and deciding to play with it a bit.

“N…w….” You stammered.

“Oh dear, was that an attempt at a no?" She grinned, putting the plate down and turning to face you full-on.

“No, I mean yes, I don’t trust you; I don’t know you. It’s been eggshells since you kidnapped.” Missy, cut you off.

“Saved.” Missy nodded, correcting you.

“No matter what you call it, you won’t let me go.” You firmly spoke.

She shook her head, like what you were saying was nonsense. “So you would rather walk out there, out of my little safe haven, and then get killed? All because I am so scary?” She watched your movements closely. You sighed and shook your head. That wasn’t what you wanted, you wanted freedom, but you wanted not to be killed by some assassins who were coming after you because of her.

“Maybe just a little freedom; I haven’t been outside of this.” You motioned around, talking about the ship. “In a week now, we barely know each other, and I don’t know, maybe I’m just having a hard time with everything right now!” You sighed and shook your head, looking away from her. You grimaced again. You didn’t want to be too emotional, but you hadn’t really had time to relax enough to work through things.

"Jeeze, you humans are touchy... emotional...” she muttered, crossing her arms and looking at you. There was a long silence. “You are going to be fine….you are as safe as you can be here. If I personally wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have survived this long; I would have released you into the tardis’s underlevels and hunted you for sport.” She said calmly, “Now, we are going to finish tea; you are going to go slink off, you will join me for dinner at seven p.m. sharp, and then we will discuss this plan further, no more gross emotions from you. Do you understand?” She said like there was no room to argue.

You nodded and looked back down at your hands. You could get through today, and once again you had more questions than answers, but it was fine, you had accepted that this woman wouldn’t give you a straight answer.

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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April 12, 2019, Updated at 12:22 a.m. ET on April 15, 2019.

In the end, the man who reportedly smeared feces on the walls of his lodgings, mistreated his kitten, and variously blamed the ills of the world on feminists and bespectacled Jewish writers was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy looking every inch like a powdered-sugar Saddam Hussein plucked straight from his spider hole. The only camera crew to record this pivotal event belonged to Ruptly, a Berlin-based streaming-online-video service, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of RT, the Russian government’s English-language news channel and the former distributor of Julian Assange’s short-lived chat show.

RT’s tagline is “Question more,” and indeed, one might inquire how it came to pass that the spin-off of a Kremlin propaganda organ and now registered foreign agent in the United States first arrived on the scene. Its camera recorded a team of London’s Metropolitan Police dragging Assange from his Knightsbridge cupboard as he burbled about resistance and toted a worn copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.

Vidal had the American national-security establishment in mind when he narrated that polemic, although I doubt even he would have contrived to portray the CIA as being in league with a Latin American socialist named for the founder of the Bolshevik Party. Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno announced Thursday that he had taken the singular decision to expel his country’s long-term foreign guest and revoke his asylum owing to Assange’s “discourteous and aggressive behavior.”

According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration.

We don’t yet know whether Romo’s allegation is true (Patiño denied it) or simply a pretext for booting a nuisance from state property. But Assange’s ties to Russian hackers and Russian intelligence organs are now beyond dispute.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 cyberoperatives for Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate for the General Staff (GRU) suggests that Assange was, at best, an unwitting accomplice to the GRU’s campaign to sway the U.S. presidential election in 2016, and allegedly even solicited the stolen Democratic correspondence from Russia’s military intelligence agency, which was masquerading as Guccifer 2.0. Assange repeatedly and viciously trafficked, on Twitter and on Fox News, in the thoroughly debunked claim that the correspondence might have been passed to him by the DNC staffer Seth Rich, who, Assange darkly suggested, was subsequently murdered by the Clintonistas as revenge for the presumed betrayal.

Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and, as an official in Donald Trump’s Cabinet, an indirect beneficiary of Assange’s meddling in American democracy, went so far as to describe WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” For those likening the outfit to legitimate news organizations, I’d submit that this is a shade more severe a description, especially coming from America’s former spymaster, than anything Trump has ever grumbled about The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Russian diplomats had concocted a plot, as recently as late 2017, to exfiltrate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, according to The Guardian. “Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the plan—including the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions.” The plan was scuttled only because it was deemed too dangerous.

In 2015, Focus Ecuador reported that Assange had aroused suspicion among Ecuador’s own intelligence service, SENAIN, which spied on him in the embassy in a years-long operation. “In some instances, [Assange] requested that he be able to choose his own Security Service inside the embassy, even proposing the use of operators of Russian nationality,” the Ecuadorian journal noted, adding that SENAIN looked on such a proposal with something less than unmixed delight.

All of which is to say that Ecuador had ample reasons of its own to show Assange the door and was well within its sovereign rights to do so. He first sought refuge in the embassy after he jumped bail more than seven years ago to evade extradition to Sweden on sexual-assault charges brought by two women. Swedish prosecutors suspended their investigation in 2017 into the most serious allegation of rape because they’d spent five years trying but failing to gain access to their suspect to question him. (That might now change, and so the lawyer for that claimant has filed to reopen the case.) But the British charges remained on the books throughout.

The Times of London leader writer Oliver Kamm has noted that quite apart from being a “victim of a suspension of due process,” Assange is “a fugitive from it.” Yet to hear many febrile commentators tell it, his extradition was simply a matter of one sinister prime minister cackling down the phone to another, with the CIA nodding approvingly in the background, as an international plot unfurled to silence a courageous speaker of truth to power. Worse than that, Assange and his ever-dwindling claque of apologists spent years in the pre-#MeToo era suggesting, without evidence, that the women who accused him of being a sex pest were actually American agents in disguise, and that Britain was simply doing its duty as a hireling of the American empire in staking out his diplomatic digs with a net.

As it happens, a rather lengthy series of U.K. court cases and Assange appeals, leading all the way up to the Supreme Court, determined Assange’s status in Britain.

The New Statesman’s legal correspondent, David Allen Green, expended quite a lot of energy back in 2012 swatting down every unfounded assertion and conspiracy theory for why Assange could not stand before his accusers in Scandinavia without being instantly rendered to Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, as Green noted, going to Stockholm would make it harder for Assange to be sent on to Washington because “any extradition from Sweden … would require the consent of both Sweden and the United Kingdom” instead of just the latter country. Nevertheless, Assange ran and hid and self-pityingly professed himself a “political prisoner.”

Everything about this Bakunin of bullshit and his self-constructed plight has belonged to the theater of the absurd. I suppose it’s only fair that absurdity dominates the discussion now about a newly unsealed U.S. indictment of Assange. According to Britain’s Home Office, the Metropolitan Police arrested Assange for skipping bail, and then, when he arrived at the police station, he was further arrested “in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States.”

The operative word here is provisional, because that request has yet to be wrung through the same domestic legal protocols as Sweden’s. Assange will have all the same rights he was accorded when he tried to beat his first extradition rap in 2010. At Assange’s hearing, the judge dismissed his claims of persecution by calling him “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.” Neither can his supporters.

A “dark moment for press freedom,” tweeted the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden from his security in press-friendly Moscow. “It’s the criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency,” intoned The Intercept’s founding editor Glenn Greenwald who, like Assange, has had that rare historical distinction of having once corresponded with the GRU for an exclusive.

These people make it seem as if Assange is being sought by the Eastern District of Virginia for publishing American state secrets rather than for allegedly conniving to steal them.

The indictment makes intelligible why a grand jury has charged him. Beginning in January 2010, Chelsea Manning began passing to WikiLeaks (and Assange personally) classified documents obtained from U.S. government servers. These included files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. State Department cables. But Manning grew hesitant to pilfer more documents.*

At this point, Assange allegedly morphed from being a recipient and publisher of classified documents into an agent of their illicit retrieval. “On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist [Chelsea] Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Networks, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications,” according to the indictment.

Assange allegedly attempted to help Manning do this using a username that was not hers in an effort to cover her virtual tracks. In other words, the U.S. accuses him of instructing her to hack the Pentagon, and offering to help. This is not an undertaking any working journalist should attempt without knowing that the immediate consequence will be the loss of his job, his reputation, and his freedom at the hands of the FBI.

I might further direct you to Assange’s own unique brand of journalism, when he could still be said to be practicing it. Releasing U.S. diplomatic communiqués that named foreigners living in conflict zones or authoritarian states and liaising with American officials was always going to require thorough vetting and redaction, lest those foreigners be put in harm’s way. Assange did not care—he wanted their names published, according to Luke Harding and David Leigh in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. As they recount the story, when Guardian journalists working with WikiLeaks to disseminate its tranche of U.S. secrets tried to explain to Assange why it was morally reprehensible to publish the names of Afghans working with American troops, Assange replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” (Assange denied the account; the names, in the end, were not published in The Guardian, although some were by WikiLeaks in its own dump of the files.)**

James Ball, a former staffer at WikiLeaks—who argues against Assange’s indictment in these pages—has also remarked on Assange’s curious relationship with a notorious Holocaust denier named Israel Shamir:

Shamir has a years-long friendship with Assange, and was privy to the contents of tens of thousands of US diplomatic cables months before WikiLeaks made public the full cache. Such was Shamir’s controversial nature that Assange introduced him to WikiLeaks staffers under a false name. Known for views held by many to be antisemitic, Shamir aroused the suspicion of several WikiLeaks staffers—myself included—when he asked for access to all cable material concerning ‘the Jews,’ a request which was refused.

Shamir soon turned up in Moscow where, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, he was offering to write articles based on these cables for $10,000 a pop. Then he traveled to Minsk, where he reportedly handed over a cache of unredacted cables on Belarus to functionaries for Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, whose dissident-torturing secret police is still conveniently known as the KGB.

Fish and guests might begin to stink after three days, but Assange has reeked from long before he stepped foot in his hideaway cubby across from Harrods. He has put innocent people’s lives in danger; he has defamed and tormented a poor family whose son was murdered; he has seemingly colluded with foreign regimes not simply to out American crimes but to help them carry off their own; and he otherwise made that honorable word transparency in as much of a need of delousing as he is.

Yet none of these vices has landed him in the dock. If he is innocent of hacking U.S. government systems—or can offer a valid public-interest defense for the hacking—then let him have his day in court, first in Britain and then in America. But don’t continue to fall for his phony pleas for sympathy, his megalomania, and his promiscuity with the facts. Julian Assange got what he deserved.

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lavendelhummel · 19 days ago

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20 Questions about writing 2.0

One year ago @lilolilyr tagged me in this ask game and I answered it. I thought it might be fun to take the questions again and see what has changed and what hasn’t (probably most of it), since this past year I have actually interacted with fandom and not just been shy in my corner. Here is what I said last year (it was a year and a week ago, okay, but this last week was interesting because I had something huge that kept me from writing the past few months happen the week before and I am now trying to recover and wrap my head about the fact that my life changed quite drastically), let’s see what I’m saying now:

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

16 ;) quite a few more than last years 7, but most of the new ones are one-shots, only one finished multichapter and one multichaptered WIP (Jump).

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

209,412 words. Last year it was 125k and seeing as there are quite a few WIPs waiting in my folders for a while I thought I’d actually end up writing 100k words of fic this year, but seeing as I moved 4 times during that time and kind of finished a degree (hi I am a doctor now, someone remind me to delete this, I don’t want to doxx myself but need to repeat it so I can actually believe it), I think it’s kind of okay to only have written what I have and I am a it vexed that I did let this self-set number stress me in addition to the pretty big stress I had anyway. I think I wrote some nice things and certainly developed as a writer! (As well as as a… ah best not say it twice in one paragraph)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Last year I said Moiraine and Siuan from The Wheel of time here, which I wrote less for this past year but I’d still count, I have 1 1/2 wips for them and updated one of my fics in that fandom last spring. I also have one fic in the WoT verse with different characters (exciting)! I also said that I once wrote for I Care A Lot, and well, it’s still true that that was my entry to posting fic, but also I’m not going back (nope, not happening). This past year I wrote mostly Bering and Wells from Warehouse 13! That was great fun! I am also playing with a few ideas for Star Trek: deep space 9 at the moment, but haven’t yet written anything.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The first three are the same as last year (the I care a lot - one shot collection, Siuaraine medical school AU, other AU for them). The other two are the the first door for last years B&W advent calendar (coolest project ever, see below), and my coolest fic: mermaid B&W AU (only Helena is a mermaid. She arrives in Myka’s apartment above her bookstore via her old-new washing machine from Pete’s laundromat. Bathtubes are not very comfortable to live in.)

I should add that neither of these two has many kudos, none of my fics apart from hat ical one has, which shows that it’s extremely fandom dependent because that one is by far worse than my newer ones - just in a fandom with very little fic.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

YES! Why?! Because I like talking to people! And getting a comment is the best so I want to tell people that they are the best! Also I like talking and talking and try to make me shut up, it’s harder than you think! (Last year I had a screenshot for the weirdest comment I ever got here, from a guest who named themself „weird ass“ and said nothing but „tea snob“, I still don’t know if they meant me or Moiraine, so I asked them. So yeah I reply. Even to the weird asses)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Most of what I write has a happy ending, yeah I am boring like that. But for Laundry Day, afore mentioned Mermaid AU, I left two possible endings, one in which Helena learns to live with what she’s lost, but it is clear that there is grief, that she is still a fish out of water and that while they make it work, it is not easy going. And then, because I wanted to wrap the mystery fantasy part up and needed the satisfaction of bundling up all loose threads I added an epilogue, a sugary, ‚happiest ending of them all’ epilogue… so yeah. Other than that I only have the one I mentioned last year about Helena dealing with her grief by reading Jacques Prévert’s poetry, which also ends on a soothing note but, I mean it’s Helena, and it’s Prévert. Let’s be honest, we all know why I absolutely adore Prévert, oh god, make me shut up now before I start (do you want to know which cool rare books of his I found?)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Well. Happ*iest*. I did just mention that the epilogue of Laundry Day is the happiest ending of them all, right? I also think Pretty Picture has a pretty fluffy cozy ending (winter, go read it now ;)) ending. Flower crowns is just pure fluff, so that doesn’t count as *ending*, it’s just happy in its entirety.

The medical school AU: would have been nice to get them all the way through it so they could celebrate at the end right? Though I had plans to make it go on after the ending of uni so Lan could come in and after a time jump the ef5 as well, so not the actual ending but a *moment*. Anyway that didn’t work out, and the ending they have is very nice and rather happy as well. Think about it, that is a much happier ending than I am feeling having actually finished medical school now (but let’s not talk about my inability to celebrate myself, nor my exhaustion).

8. Do you get hate on fic?

I did already mention "weird ass", right? Yeah also mentioned last year how the very first comment I got was pretty discouraging. But I wouldn’t call it hate, no. I mostly get very, very, little reaction to my fics anyway, so missing the positive kind but not the negative kind.

9. Do you write smut?

No. Not because I don’t like reading it, but because I am incapable of it. Sad, but it is what it is. I did get closer than ever, in Fly Me To The Moon! Everyone gasping, yes scandalous look how close I am alluding to it!!! But yeah, still nothing happening, if anyone ever wants to pick up where I left off, feel free, that’d be fun! (I also have a few other fade to black scenes, but this is *different*… kinkier? in a not on page happing way?)

10. Do you write crossovers?

Nope, also don’t read them. It’s simply something that doesn’t interest me.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. Or at least, not as far as I know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No. My fics are not very well known, so someone wanting to base a work on it/translate would be surprising.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! One with @lilolilyr , which was super cool, but mostly we did the advent calendar last year!!!! That was super duper duper duper fun! Seriously guys, I enjoyed it so much and wish it had worked out again (I did have a cool idea for it, as I laid out on discord, but in the end it was simply not possible for me to do anything writing/fandom related (or basically anything but survive) in November and even now in December I do not know yet if I’ll be able to. Depends on how well this resting thing I’m trying out works, because at the moment my brain is still fried. Even writing this is giving me a headache right *sad emoji*)

But yes, writing that together was amazing.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I’ll just name the same ones, Moiraine/Siuan, Myka/Helena and recently I’ve come to like Kiradax, but that’s obviously not all-time material yet, since, well 'recently'.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

Hmm, I do hope (and think!) I’ll finish all those that I once worked on seriously. Wait, the Helena reads Astrid Lindgren one, I’m not sure… There is also one super short Siuaine one, but that was never serious.

Hm, maybe I also won’t make the Nyneave&Semirhage one??! I do hope so, but it is a bit out of my league… HMMM

Mostly there are some fun ideas that I thought I’d write, a lot actually, but what I seriously wanted to do was Siuraine Mermaid AU, and B&W MRI AU, and I don’t think they’ll happen, alongside a few others. But that’s life!

Last year I mentioned the Uni-AU here, and I do consider that one finished now, not as I envisioned originally but it has an ending that makes sense and is an ending and I probably won’t write more (never say never).

16. What are your writing strengths?

Urghh that question. Someone important (professionally, not personally to me) said „Why not simply believe in yourself?“ To me the other day. Well I couldn’t very well tell him about my incessant selfdoubt across a conference table with 3 other very important, and three somewhat less important people, watching, could I? So I will try this again and also try to say something else here than last year.

…

@rinari7 said my dialogue feels alive! I think I am also able to get into the heads of people and write thought-strands pretty realistically.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I think those thought-strands sometimes can get too much, and I loose myself in them. In general my sentences are way too long, for that I blame Cicero, who was a very forming influence to twelve year old wannabe-writer me.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Haha. Yeah. Yeah. It’s good. We are talking other language than English right? I love making my characters speak French. I also love adding German puns. It’s what’s happening in my head! I’ve been thinking disturbingly much in English last year, but at the core that’s it, my brain is wired in Frallemand (Freutsch just doesn’t work, we all agree, right?) and I cut most of it out because I want other people to be able to read it but, speaking multiple languages is very normal for me. I have friends with whom I speak certain languages and others others, and who have yet others with each other. I am rather limited with only my three fluent ones, but only one? Yeah, no, that’s very unnatural to me. So I won’t overuse it in fic for the sake of readability but I do appreciate it when it comes my way.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

As I said I care a lot. You will notice that it was my first right away and… don’t maybe. I have nicer newer ones.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Ouhhhhh. Pretty picture? One of my most recent ones, so maybe I’m biased.

Laundry day!!! Yes, that was incredible fun!

I also want to mention the Prévert fic (The earth that spins and spins and spins) again because I still like it and not a lot of people did.

And I also have a Siuaraine Mermaid fic and it’s fun and weird and thus my fav for that fandom (not even AU, somehow?!)

I am just gonna go ahead and tag people even though I took this ask game out of its original setting: @lilolilyr if you want to reflect on the past year as well, @trollocks-in-my-bollocks @lakeofsilverpike @purlturtle @cozcat @onaperduamedee @anandabrat @thatordinaryoddity maybe you have fun with this, if not there obviously is no pressure to do it!

#tag game #fanfic #20 questions for writers

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