#I read a really good paper about how masculinity is invisible

[chieftwitelon]

it’s literally so batshit how women can write complete male characters but it is immediately obvious when a female character was written by a man because their whole personality is essentially “I have boobs”

it’s almost like women think about the male perspective on a daily basis but there is apparently only a handful of men on the planet who have considered what it might be like to be a woman for more than 5 minutes….

#I read a really good paper about how masculinity is invisible #thoughts #personal #women writers #women written by men #men writing women

[delldarling]

the city is hoarding hearts | arroven

male dragon x gender/body neutral reader 9015 words lemon | mention of drinking alcohol, face riding, size difference, fairly submissive monster, penetrative sex, poetry, touch starved note: behold! my modern epic fantasy universe! this world first appeared back in August for my Patreon Story of the Month, and though I haven’t revisited Arroven again just yet, I did return to this universe for December’s Story of the Month as well. 👀

Magic, despite people's claim to the contrary, is beyond rare these days. No one really claims that it isn’t real, that it didn’t once run rampant with it’s existence. After all, it’s impossible to deny when people have things like the architecture of the North to reference. The towers built into their seaside cliffs, spiraling up like the serpents of old reaching for the sun? Without magic, without gravity spells, and an everlasting charm on those spells, thick enough to double as a coat of paint, the towers would have fallen into the sea by now, dashed against the dark stones jutting out from the deep green waters. Many people, though especially the elves, think that the towers will endure long after the cliffs have crumbled into the water. Floating relics, you’ve heard more than a few people murmur, wonder in their voices, wouldn’t that be something?

Even more common now, there are people the world over that claim they have a spark of magic left still, that they can feel the rhythms of the magical tide flooding back over the world.

She Wakes is written on street corners and thick posters, spray painted on the underside of the colossal Echo Bridge. No matter how often they have workers doing their best to clean the graffiti up, the giant letters are back in place a few days later.

Despite how much you’d like to believe them, as everyone dreams of the rumors, of magic returning, you’ve never put too much stock into the whispered words. Why would you? No matter how often you’ve spent watching wispy clouds streak by your window, no matter how often you’ve taken a moment to reflect on the thought, to nurse a seed of hope… Nothing has ever come of it.

It’s why you keep trying to ignore that heavy ache in the arch of your feet, or the way you keep noticing advertisements for Arroven.

History books and the elderly all say that this is how it starts when magic finally blooms in someone’s blood. There’s an itch. An ache. A constant irritant that starts in your extremities and wriggles into your veins, and then coincidences will start to pile up. Small things, like noticing whenever the clock strikes 11:11 on whatever clock you pass. Or maybe it’s having the luck to switch the radio station to your favorite song without fail, or—

“Stop it,” you mutter to yourself when you spot it. You breath puffs out into the chilly air, adding to the fog lingering in the streets. You kneel, brushing aside some of the fallen damask leaves, their velvety backs clinging to your touch even as you do your best to shake them off. Just barely hidden under their litter is a postcard. Without even glancing at it, you know what you’ll find on the back, but you’re drawn to pick it up anyway, turning it over. It depicts a sprawling city with green undertones, the word Arroven written in a sloping, beautiful script along the bottom of the image. The edges are creased, almost lovingly, and there’s a small puncture hole at the top left corner, as if someone had it pinned to a corkboard for no short amount of time. 

Until this moment, you haven’t picked up any of the advertisements for Arroven. The stories all say that you can ignore it, that the magic will go away and fade from you like an ebbing tide if you only will it hard enough, but… You don’t know that you really want it to leave. Those seeds have hope might not have fully sprouted, but their roots have run deep, snaking through your veins. You swallow past the dryness in your throat and turn the postcard over, wonder if you’re going to get an address, or if there are words of encouragement intended for the last owner.

The postcard is faintly yellowed at the edges, but it’s otherwise blank.

You wilt, disappointed, but you don’t throw it back down onto the stones. If you check the railway listings, you’re more than certain that you’ll find a one way trip to Arroven suddenly dirt cheap. The pathway that will lead you there is probably paved with strangely good fortune, more invisible hooks ready to find a secure hold in your heart. You might as well find out if there’s anything to these claims of magic. You have far too much hope shored up in your bones and pumping through your chest not to at least try. 

-

A month later, and you’re starting to believe that whatever magic that led you this far has all but fled. Of course, you’re more than content with where it’s left you, a word rattling around in the back of your brain and clamoring to spill from your lips: home. Arroven feels like home.

It’s not just the city though. It’s your place. It’s the stones that pave the streets and the people that fill them. It’s the smell of bakeries and the faint hint of exhaust. It’s the clean smell of paper and ink from the stationary shop you’d stumbled into on your first night in Arroven, and the proprietor’s barely-there smile. You’d made fast friends with her almost instantly, like it was fate.

Mora, despite her solemn stature, and the vast amount of spiraling tattoos disappearing under the neck of her cleanly pressed shirts, is beyond kind. She possesses a startling, sparkling wit that leaves a smile lingering on your lips whenever you think of her snappy little comments. She’d given you a job in her shop a few days after you’d first arrived, perking up as soon as you’d come back into her shop. She needed a cashier, so she could have more time to develop her own inks, and then a few days after that you literally stumbled onto a showing of a furnished apartment. It had fit all of your needs, and your shoes had sunk into the plush carpet of the bedroom, like a quiet voice in the place asking you to stay.

The ache in your feet had eased, that strange little irritant in the back of your mind fading with every passing day. You haven’t put too much thought into magic since then, as there hasn’t been a reason when you have a new job to keep you busy, and a city to explore on your days off. You love it here, the sea green patina on the copper statues, the swirling architecture that extends to every building in the city, no matter how large or small. Besides, you know if you go looking into magic again, at the message boards or if you go hunting down books, it’s likely that they’ll all say much the same thing: She Wakes, and her gift will blossom in you, but not Forever. She moves us like pawns, adjusting us Just So, no matter how small the slot She needs filled. 

You’ve read it all before, have heard debates shouted in the streets or argued about in the back corner of classrooms. Magic moves through people as it wills, and no amount of pleading will keep it in you unless you’re a mage, and even then, that takes years of study. If the magic that led you here only existed long enough for you to make your home? Then you’ll have to be satisfied with that.

And you are, until that ache in your feet starts up again.

Late one evening, as you’re locking the back door of Rumoura’s, it floods through you fast enough to steal your breath. There’s no voice, no heavy hand on your shoulder, just a fierce pain that wells, threatening to bring tears to your eyes, until you turn to the right. You blink, surprise at the sudden and complete lack of pain, and take a ragged breath as you pocket the key to the door. When you feel steady enough, when your lungs no longer ache, you turn to the right and start walking.It takes you about ten minutes to realize you’re headed towards the main park, the one with ancient ruins of a half finished serpent tower peppered throughout its boundaries. You’ve walked through once, one golden afternoon with Mora, and you’ve been meaning to come back sometime on your lunch break. The past few days have been busy though, with a flood of students coming back to Arroven, stocking up on both casual and serious supplies from Mora’s shop.

Besides, there’s always been time to explore at your leisure now that you’re living here. 

Two towering trees make a grand arch over the park entrance, and the slow swirl of damask leaves spiraling down from the branches make you laugh.

“Coincidence,” you murmur, a small smile curling your lips, and you walk into the park. The paths are well lit, even this late in the evening. This part of the city doesn’t boast about it’s lack of crime, but most people feel it. There always seems to be groups of people roaming: Elven tourists, hooking arms and laughing over cups of tea and coffee, Orcish artists and musicians, setting up on benches or street corners, busking for the simple sake of sharing their art with others. You wander through the park, expecting to simply take in the sights among the meandering attendees, but.. You haven’t seen anyone for the past few minutes. Your footsteps start to slow, wondering if you missed a sign somewhere and you have the nagging feeling that you just need to find someone.

Cautiously, you keep moving, the sudden bout of nervousness easing when you see someone up ahead. They’re sitting at the foot of one of the rather large blocks of toppled variscite, a dark hoodie hiding their face. Their shoulders are broad, and their clothes are a little more ragged than you see on people around here, but it gives off more of a well lived look than a dangerous one. They’re tapping the toes of their boots together, the tread of them worn smooth, and a low, masculine hum reaches your ears the closer you get. He stops as soon as you’re within speaking range though, crossing his legs and leaning his elbows on his knees. There’s a street lamp not too far behind him, and with the hood and the angle of the light, it casts most of his face in shadow. All you can spy is a pair of long, thorn-like ear gauges, curling out from the depths of his hood. They’re bigger around than a thimble and sharp looking from this far away. 

“Nice evening, hm?” You say in greeting, hoping that if he doesn’t want to speak, he’ll just bob his head and let you move along. You haven’t run into any trouble in Arroven yet, but even with that strange ache, you don’t know that you can see your good luck lasting forever.

“A lovely one,” he mumbles and he leans back, hands grabbing at his knees and squeezing like he’s the nervous one.

That thought makes you stop, your eyes focusing a bit more intensely on what you can see of his skin. At first glance, his knuckles are bruised and paint splattered, nails split and a little too long, skin rough in texture. You blink, realizing that his knuckles aren’t bruised, his skin just mirrors the strange patterns of the variscite he’s sitting on, ink black and sea green, and the rough texture to his skin has pointy, scalloped edges.

The noise he makes isn’t a sigh, not quite, but he turns his face away, as if he expects you to ignore him, or run, and his hood edges back, just a sliver. The arch of his nose is straight as an arrow, and his nostrils are thin things, slashing upwards. His face has so many angles that it’s hard to tear your gaze away. You wish you could see his eyes, but he has them closed, like he’s still bracing himself for a blow.

“Are you.. Are you alright?” You ask, because it seems like the thing to say, with how tense he is, with how he’s waiting.

His eyes flash open, reflective in the depths of his hood. His mouth curls into a frown when he turns to look at you again. His eyes are still the eerie glam of a reflected light. “You’re not frightened?”

“Are you?” You ask, ignoring the thundering of your own heart. You’ve seen Trolls before, and even a few half-elves or half-orcs of varying descent, with skin that just barely reminds you of his, but.. You’re willing to bet he isn’t any of those. 

“A bit?” He says, unsure, and the edge of a violet tongue flicks out to wet his lower lip. “It’s been a few centuries since any of you have made yourself so at home here that you stumbled across me.” He hunches his shoulders, looking away from you for the breadth of a second, before he can’t help himself. His eyes flick back to you, rove over you from head to toe, almost greedily. “You felt a call then, an itch?”

“An ache,” you correct, staring at him with wide eyes. Centuries? The long lived races don’t often mention the time they have over others. It’s rude at the best of times, and most of them are terrible sticklers for manners. 

“At home here, you said?” You ask, knowing that something about him seems terribly familiar. 

Your question makes him pause, brow lifting before he finally pushes himself to his feet. He unfolds, all long, heavy limbs, but doesn’t move from his spot on the variscite. “M-.. Arroven. You do think of the city as home?” He breathes in, hesitantly lifting his chin. “Not to be rude,” he says, a little awkwardly, “but you smell like Arroven.”

All at once, the old poem flickers back into your mind, the one about hearts and desires and winter. The oldest folktales of the first cities, those built around the serpent towers, all seemed to carry the poem with them. It was both a warning and a blessing to those that wished to stay. You’d have to hunt down the entirety of it, but the ending couplet?  

The city promises, you’ll be most adored So can you, will you, join the hoard?

You bite down fiercely on the desire to blurt out dragon, but he must sense it, might even see the aborted twist of your lips. 

“..you’ve figured it out, then?” He asks, and when his shoulders droop, you spy the barest edge of a wing, tucked in close to his back. “If being in my immediate vicinity is a problem, I quite understand, but please stay in the city. You-” He blows out a breath, large hands fussing about with his hoodie pocket. Everything about him reads awkward, almost shy. “You’re safe here, I promise.” He breathes in again, like he can’t resist, eyes falling closed when his violet tongue appears, there and gone before you can blink. “You belong,” he murmurs and tangles his fingers in the material of his hoodie, like he would reach out if he didn’t stop himself.

Inexplicably, you wonder if Mora knows about the city patron. If you should waltz into the shop tomorrow and announce: I’ve officially been welcomed to the hoard.  ...Sort of. Before you lose your nerve, before you can bite your tongue, you ask. “An official welcome involves more drinks though, doesn’t it?”

-Arroven, the dragon, the founder of the city, is sitting across the table from you, slouching in a barstool that has a difficult time encompassing his enormous body. Despite his height, and the way his hood shadows his face in a frankly ominous way, no one is paying him any attention. One of the bartender’s had slid a drink list your way as soon as you’d claimed the seats, but she hadn’t even glanced at Arroven. In fact, you think her eyes might have skipped right over his seat. It’s a little disconcerting, seeing as he’d claimed that Wink was one of the best bars around, but if they ignore him, if they can’t see him?

“What’ll it be?” A different bartender asks, a tall elf, with his hair plaited back in a complicated braid. He has pleasant features, though he looks a little flustered, a lock or two of dark hair escaping his braid. You think he might be on the newer end when he fumbles a bit with the card you slide his way, olive skin flushing when his fingers nearly touch yours.  

“Uh, the special,” you finally decide, expecting him to turn to Arroven so he can order as well. Your jaw drops when he whirls, not even bothering. “Ar- hey, wait!” 

The elf turns back, smiling vaguely, looking even more tense now that he can’t leave straight off, but he doesn’t seem to see Arroven when you gesture towards him. His gaze zips right through the neckline of Arroven's hoodie, straight on through to the next customer. 

Perturbed, you lean in close to Arroven, heart skipping a beat due to his proximity. He smells faintly of musty books, and stone, cooling in the early evening after baking in the sunshine of a warm day. "Didn’t you want something?” You force yourself to ask, unwilling to let the elf leave without at least checking with him first. He doesn’t have to get anything, but you’d hoped he would, if only so you can spend a while longer in his company. Maybe the flirtatious tone you’d struck had made him uncomfortable?

For a moment Arroven hunches further into his sweatshirt, and you think your fears might hold weight. You are a little close, and you still don’t know each other terribly well yet. You straighten, hoping you don’t look as embarrassed as you feel and Arroven heaves out a sigh. He finally tugs back his hood, though the elf behind the bar doesn’t even blink. “Just a.. a Beetle Wing," he mutters, large, sharp teeth catching the light. The elf nods, though his gaze is still on you when Arroven speaks, and turns away to go make the drinks. 

Without the darkness of night, without his hood shadowing his face, you see that his eyes aren’t permanently reflective. In the dim lights of the bar, they’re a lovely shade of blue-green that matches well with his skin. What you thought were ear gauges were actually his horns, thick and curving, and trailing after the clean arch of his jaw. His ears are heavy with plugs though, and they clink against his horns when he turns, noticing that you’re staring. The scent of hot stone grows stronger when you smile at him, and then he huffs, looking away and running a hand through his already tousled, short dark hair. You catch sight of scales on his scalp and then blink. It’s not hair on his head, it’s feathers. His eyebrows are much the same, in miniature. Fine, thin feathers, as ink dark as the scalloped edges of his scales. 

“So,” you tease, hoping your questions won’t come off as prying. “Can the rest of the people in here see you at all? You said that it’d been a while since anyone had felt at home enough here to stumble across you, but.. I don’t know exactly if that means Magicis is at work, or something else.”

Arroven breathes in, glancing up at the filigreed round sign hanging over the bar. There’s a single neon eye in the middle, opening and closing on loop under the word WINK. Even with the noise of people talking, and the music coming steadily from the small corner of a dance floor, you can still hear the faint buzz and click of the neon switching over. “Not many,” he finally confesses. “If the proprietor were here, she would see me, but she’s been here for a.. For a while.” She’s one of the long lived races then. Arroven turns, taking a quick look over the other patrons, tense, as if he expects one of them to approach. “The couple near the dance floor there,” he finally says, pointing out two women leaning into each other, stealing sips of each other’s drinks. “The orcish fellow on his phone. They can see me, though I doubt they’ll realize who I am. Just living here doesn’t make someone part of the hoard, though it’s always a step in the right direction.” For a second, he looks like he might let the subject drop, but then he cringes, glancing at your eyes before he looks away. “I don’t- I don’t steal from the people living here, whether they’re part of my hoard or not, even if they don’t realize I’m around. Even if they can’t see me.”

That’s reassuring, though you hadn’t planned on diving into that topic.

“What then,” you ask, leaning your chin in the palm of your hand, and your elbow on the bar, “makes someone part of your hoard?” 

Arroven’s rough looking scales don’t shine, but the neon light over the both of you shifts again from blue, to pink, and back. It was already hard for you to take your eyes off of him, knowing who he is, attracted to the nervous quirk of his lips, but now? The magic that you’ve only ever felt the after effects of, the strange aches and coincidences, it feels like more in this moment. More than a soft nudge in the correct direction. Arroven is sitting at your side, winking neon sign a spotlight over both your heads.

Hesitant, like he’s waiting for you to stop him, Arroven lifts his hand, reaching out, and taps once, softly, against your sternum. “It sounds esoteric, but the only explanation I have is that all of you feels like you should be here. From the way you smell, to the echoes of your voice or your footsteps along the pavement...” Arroven swallows, and then inhales, letting his hand fall away from your chest as his eyes close. He doesn’t pull his hand back completely though, just lets his hand hover over your thigh. “It’s always the desires of the heart that bring my hoard home,” he murmurs and starts to sway towards you.

There’s a soft clink on the bar, your drinks being set carefully in front of you and Arroven. When you look, the bartender still hasn’t noticed the city patron, the dragon, but the drink is still clearly set aside for him. Your card is placed very quickly next to your glass, the elf flashing you a much more jovial smile than earlier. 

“Your drink has been taken care of,” he explains, but doesn’t stay behind to point out who might have bought them. When you look, Arroven is sitting straight up in his seat, and his guilty expression is answer enough.

“I was supposed to be welcoming you to the city,” he murmurs, turning in his stool so he can take hold of his glass. The liquid inside is iridescent, shifting from what looks like violet, to a strange umber. You’re willing to bet that it’s more blue and green, but the neon light isn’t doing it too many favors. Arroven lifts his cup, patiently waiting for you to do the same and then quietly toasts your arrival. The clink of the glasses rings in your ears with the clarity of a bell, echoes lasting far longer than the noise itself.

“Goodness,” you say, coughing when you finish your swallow. Your drink is a little stronger than you thought it would be, heat already spiralling down into your chest and filling your belly. “So, uh, the city blessings seem to be true, I take it?” You don’t look at him as you speak, afraid he’ll cringe away from the mention of them.

“Blessings?” Arroven asks, and then you have to search up the poem. He sounds like he doesn't know, but they're supposed to be as old as the cities. Or near as.

“Sometimes they vary, from city to city. But most of the time they have almost the same structure. The same meaning,” you explain, pulling up the poem on your phone. “Hoarding hearts, keeping people safe in winter. The, uh-” You turn it his way, but he doesn’t take the phone from you, just reads the words out of the palm of your hand, brows raised by the time he gets to the end.

“‘Sinking talons into your thighs?’” Arroven’s slit pupils grow wide, nearly drowning his iris in darkness. He straightens, taking another hasty gulp of his drink. He laughs when he’s finished, nerves finally beginning to ease. “That’s how they’re translating it these days?” He asks, but you notice his eyes lingering on your hands, drifting down to your knees and the way you’re sitting. 

You pass a good portion of the evening, teetering back and forth with conversation about the city now, and how it was when Arroven had first settled. For all that he’s wearing modern clothes and walking on two feet, you can see him in a larger, more draconic figure, delving into the variscite mines and overseeing the people that had decided to settle under his watch.  

He’s just as enthralled with your stories though, hanging onto your every word, even though he’s still clearly a little anxious. He abandons his hunched and wary demeanor as soon as you start talking about the magic though. All the little aches and nudges and postcards that had led a clear path to his city. To him.

You insist on buying the next round when he makes to wave down the bartender, who is still completely oblivious to his presence, but Arroven stops you with a hand on your wrist. 

"Another time," he says, just loud enough for you to hear. "A welcome isn't a single round, is it?" He asks, a tentative smile revealing a small glimpse of those sharp teeth.

You could argue. You have the feeling that he would let it go if you pushed, but the smile sways you. It's the first time he's spoken without lowering his eyes mid sentence. You accept the drink, and try not to stare when his smile grows, shy and small and all the more endearing for it.

You both pretend not to notice each other grinning after that.

It’s just past 1 AM by the time the both of you leave the bar, only slightly unsteady after a few drinks and a few plates of bar food. Warmth floods you when Arroven’s hand finds your elbow, just barely keeping you from stumbling off the edge of the sidewalk and into the street. All it takes is a single stroke of his thumb over your arm for you to throw aside any worries you might have about flirting. 

He's reciprocated, in quiet ways, for the last hour or so. He’s leaned into you whenever you lowered your voice, had let his eyes linger on your hands and thighs after you brought up the poem.. The worst thing he can do is say no.

“Come to my place?” You blurt and Arroven stutters, hand spasming in his grip on your arm. For a heart wrenching moment, you think he might turn you down, but he finally bobs his head, gauges clicking against his horns with the motion. “...You said you’d been out of the loop with the people living here,” you start, mouth dry, wondering if he knows what you’re trying to ask, but still a little too sober to spell it out. “I’m asking, I’m not just asking you to come visit. I-” 

Arroven stops your worried speech with a slightly awkward smile. “I know what you’re getting at,” he finally says with a gentle huff of a laugh, hand sliding down your arm until he can twine his fingers about yours. His breath hitches, and for a moment you think he might stop, might pull away. “I- I would love to,” he says quietly, and squeezes until his fingernails gently prick the back of your hand.

Wordless with triumph, you flash another smile his way, heart pounding as you keep hold of his hand, ventral scales dry, but slick against your palm.

“The walk back to my place is a bit of a long one from here,” you confess, glancing at the handful of cabs loitering along the street. “Seeing as you got the drinks, I can—” You nearly trip over your own feet when Arroven tugs you back, keeping you from approaching any of the cabs. 

“I don’t.. Fit very well,” he says, apologetically. “If you would rather take one, I can, but if you aren’t opposed..” Arroven’s wings, still tucked in flat along his back, quirk and stretch, spreading wide enough that he nearly clips another leaving bar patron in the face. They don’t move, don’t see him, but they blink, as if a gust of wind just hit them, and shield their eyes until they’re well past you and Arroven.

His statement leaves you staring, jaw beginning to grow slack. “Are you saying you can fly us back to my place?” Your eyes trace his wings again, the fragile veins spider webbing across the membranes. It’s not that you thought they were ornamental, but it’s one thing to see them, and another to know you’ll get to witness their use first hand. 

Arroven’s shoulders start to hunch, but his eyes flick down to your hand, fingers still curled around his. He smiles instead. “Yes?” 

You glance at the cabs, and then back to Arroven’s tall figure and broad shoulders. As much as you’d like being pressed up against him, trapped in the backseat of an uncomfortable cab isn’t quite what you’d pictured, and he’s already nervous enough. That settles things. You nod, just the once and lift your chin to meet his eyes. “Flying it is then! We can’t have you getting stuck in one of those, can we?”

While Arroven walks you through how he’s going to pick you up, how he’s going to hold onto you, some of the people on the sidewalk start to watch you. You’re nodding readily at what they assume to be empty air. You spare a second to wonder if they’ll see you vanish, or if they’ll be able to see the equivalent of a magical wind carrying you away. That would cause quite a stir, wouldn't it? You forget to ask Arroven about it though when he holds out his arm, waiting patiently for you to step closer, fingers gentle in their continued grip on your hand. 

He’s still giving you the chance to turn away. 

You take a breath, thinking back to the nerves you’d felt, packing up a bag and deciding to visit somewhere based on coincidences and the hearsay of magic. You think of Mora, and the apartment that feels more like home to you than nearly anything else ever has. The way everything fits here, every piece of the city you've set foot in branded on your brain, clearer than any map. You step close, eagerly letting Arroven curl his arm around your back and then lift you up in a bridal carry. His forearms and biceps tense, bracing you as he prepares, and then the snap of his wings flaring open makes your heart jump before he leaps. His wings catch a sudden breeze swooping into the street, allowing it to lift the both of you well clear of the ground before he starts to flap. The slight dip in elevation as he finds his rhythm makes you clutch a little tighter, but Arroven doesn’t complain. In fact, when you glance at him, he seems to be holding back a smug little smile.  

It’s cold when he finally crests over the top of the nearest buildings. Between the chill, and the fast growing height between you and the ground, you have no issues absolutely clinging to Arroven’s neck. You don't feel like you're going to fall, but it's still safer than sitting meekly in his arms, isn't it? You try to twist your head about to see everything below you, but another rush of cold wind makes you squint. It takes a moment before you realize Arroven isn't moving though, he's simply keeping the both of you suspended in midair.

“Your address?” Arroven asks as soon as you start to frown, his voice rumbling against your ear.

“Ah.” You give it to him, laughing when you meet his still-shy gaze. “I suppose that’s a little important.”

While the walk would have left you both a little tired, the flight is a fairly short one. You have just enough time to relish all the places you’re pressed in close, to enjoy what little warmth you’ve managed to keep with the wind seeping through your clothes, when Arroven lands in front of your quiet building. There are no witnesses but the dim streetlights, the sound of his flapping wings muffled by the mist beginning to roll through the city. Arroven lowers you almost reluctantly, fingers slow to uncurl so you can step down onto the pavement. He takes a step back as soon as you do, like he needs the space between you to think.

“Still up for coming inside?” You ask, giving him the same chance he’d given you earlier. You jerk a thumb at the locked door, searching for your keys with your other hand. 

Arroven’s head jerks forward almost too fast, the dark feathers on his skull prickling upwards. His wings snap closed, tight against his back again as soon as you unlock your door. It’s only mildly nerve wracking, having him follow you up to your place, and you think it might be because of how nervous he’s acting. He flinches away from the wall when he barely brushes it, almost tripping over his own boots as he goes up the stairs. He’s been shy from the get-go, but this-

“Arroven,” you murmur, turning to look up at him, hand pausing on your door handle. “Is something wrong?”

He breathes out, turning his head so the plugs in his earlobes clack against his horns, blue-green eyes roving over the hall. “No,” he says slowly, forcing himself to stop hunching into his hoodie, to take his wringing hangs out of the front pocket. “I’ve just, it’s just that I keep-” He stays where he is, brow furrowing for all of five seconds before he’s huffing and stepping into your space. When Arroven leans down, his pupils are needle thin, that sunshine warm smell suffusing the air. He was summoning up courage, you realize, just in time to let your eyes fall closed as he cradles your jaw with both hands. They dwarf your human face, his fingertips easily reaching all the way to the back of your neck, but his touch may well be the softest thing you’ve ever known. His kiss is more the brush of his mouth over the shape of yours, a slip of a taste when his tongue follows the curve of your lower lip. He hums, softly, but when you kiss him back? When your tongue touches his and you try to stand on your tip-toes to deepen things, when you stumble a step closer—Arroven’s groan is gratifying. Achingly slowly, he draws his hands down the side of your neck, leaving you free to control the pace of the kiss. His thumbs trace your collarbone, slow, deep circles that make you wish you weren’t standing out here, fully clothed and too warm.

You pull away, licking your lips and glancing down the hall. There’s no one there, despite your pulse loud in your ears and your breath heaving, surely loud enough to wake even those in the very depths of sleep. Arroven’s breath hitches, and for a moment he sways, ready to chase you for another kiss. “Wait, wait,” you say softly, trying not to smile too wide when his eyes flicker open, dark pupils growing larger. He starts to straighten, embarrassment lifting his shoulders. “Maybe we should get in my house first?” You rush to say, not wanting to potentially scar one of your neighbors, but not wanting him to rush away either.

His mouth opens on reflex, and then closes, slipping into a gentle smile. “Yes,” he says, and then you have to swallow, watching his eyes slide down to your hands and then further down to your knees.  

You get your door open before he touches you again, but you’re only a few steps inside when Arroven reaches for you. He strokes the back of his knuckles down your forearm, fingertips only barely grazing your hips. “I’ve missed this,” he whispers, one of his fingers catching two of yours. “Touching,” he explains, the edge of his thumbnail stroking over your wrist and the base of your thumb and back. “Being close to, well…” He breathes in when you step into him, and grows as still as a statue when you balance against him, reaching around his middle to swing the front door shut. This close, Arroven still smells of sunshine, but there’s a sweeter, crisper undertone that makes you want to close your eyes to savor it, to breathe it in. He’s nearly vibrating with you pressed close though, hands hovering somewhere over the middle of your back, trying to keep himself still. He’s waiting for you to give him the go ahead, still caught up in his nerves... Or maybe just manners?

You grin, gently pushing yourself back a step before you smooth out your expression. “Part of your hoard?” You wonder aloud, but then you can’t keep yourself straight faced any longer, wanting him to recognize the words for the gentle teasing they are. You smile. “How about you touch me then?”

Arroven huffs, pleased, and then you quickly discover how needy he can be. He kisses you all the way down the hall, his wings nearly catching on picture frames, hands trembling in their stroking over your back. He keeps pausing at the top of your hips, like he wants to let his hands drift lower, but focuses on his mouth instead, mouth and teeth moving from your lips, to your jaw and down to your neck. You don’t think he’s willing to risk going further though, knowing that it would likely end up with both of you unbalanced and on the floor instead of the bed. 

“Distracted?” You ask, reaching blindly around your doorframe, searching for the lightswitch as Arroven’s tongue flickers over the pulse on the left side of your neck. Your own breathing stutters for a moment, heat building in your veins. “You keep-”

Arroven’s breath puffs over the damp patch he’s left on your skin as he lifts his head, violet tongue sliding along the sharp points of his teeth. “Hardly,” Arroven interrupts, and his wings tense when you hook your fingers into the neck of his hoodie, drawing him further into the room. Your fingers find the lightswitch, the soft ring of the bulb lighting strangely loud in the room. “You’re all I can see. All I can focus on. ..am I missing something? Cues?” He asks, voice gone lower when you give his hoodie a fierce tug. He follows, all too willingly, fingers flexing around your hips. 

“Hardly,” you say back, teasing as you back up towards the bed. You pull when you lean back, expecting him to let you fall, to fall with you, but his wings flare again. He catches himself on the blankets, hands to either side of your body, the blue-green of his eyes swallowed by his pupils as he takes the sight of you in. “Still good?” You ask after a moment, because he’s staring, because he hasn’t moved a muscle. 

“Tell me,” Arroven blurts, arms tensing as his fingers twist into the blankets. “Tell me what to do,” he pleads, gaze catching on every sliver of bared skin he can find. “I’m.. finding it a little difficult to think. All I want to do is make you happy, make you want to-” He stops, feathered brows drawing together as he considers his words.

You arch an eyebrow, your hands stilling just shy of his chest. The way he’d hesitated, his flighty touches? they all make a bit more sense now. He’d asked you to stay in the city, had mentioned your belonging here. If you wanted to leave, if you insisted on stopping, Arroven wouldn’t keep you. But he wants you to stay here.

  “Little to no thinking,” you muse, unable to keep from smiling as he hangs onto your every word. “Undress me,” you finally decide, and his nostrils flare before he sets to work. He’s terribly careful, every brush of his scaled knuckles whisper-soft and cool against your skin, but his breathing is ragged by the time he’s finished and your heart has sped in response. You’re tempted to make him undress himself too. In fact, he would probably do just as you asked, but you’re too impatient to get your hands back on him. “Hoodie off,” you declare, half amazed that he’s obeying your whims, “and lay down on the bed.”

Arroven listens immediately, tucking his wings in close before he’s pulling off the hoodie, careful around the curl of his horns and the arch of his wings. He isn’t wearing a shirt, but with his wings, you understand why. Most of those with wings don’t favor mass produced clothes or modern fashion. He’s on the bed before you can finish pushing yourself back up, jeans low on his hips, pale belly and chest all the brighter compared to the black and teal pattern of his scales. His legs spread reflexively when you stand, jeans growing taut when you reach for him. Your hands are steady, even if your pulse isn’t, but Arroven doesn’t seem to care. He looks blissed out from this much touch alone, jaw gone slack, eyelids heavy as you unbutton and unzip his jeans. He exhales when you pull at his jeans, eyes zeroed in on your face.

He’s thicker than he is long, and as pale as his abdomen, save for a violet tinge that makes you think of his tongue. Nestled as he is in the ‘v’ of his unzipped jeans, it’s all you can do to keep yourself from stroking him straight away, or even leaning down to-

“Maybe I can think,” Arroven says hoarsely. He lifts one of his hands, gentleman-like, offering it to you palm up. “Let me?” He asks, though you’re not entirely sure what he wants you to let him do.

Mannerly, you can’t help but think, lips twitching as you place your hand in his. The older races are, generally. It’s something to fall back on if they’re nervous or unsure. Not that most of them would ever admit to it.

“Are you thinking I should leave your boots on?” You get one knee on the bed before you pause, glancing back at his legs still hanging over the edge.

Arroven hums, but his grip on your fingers tightens for a second, not wanting to let go. “I’ll worry about those later,” he says, and then inhales sharply when you straddle his lap, cock pulsing as you settle against him. If he wants to let his jeans tangle around his boots, you’re not going to complain. It’s a bit of a thrill, knowing that he’s too impatient to fuss with them.

“Boots on, then. Now, what am I supposed to let you do?” You lean forward, drawing an aimless, spiraling pattern from his abdomen up to his ribcage. He’s much warmer now, with you astride his thighs and his wings trapped beneath him on the bed. It looks uncomfortable, but he hasn’t mentioned them once.

Hesitant, Arroven’s hold on you loosens, and then his hand drops to your thigh, eyebrows furrowing when he finally speaks. “Sit on my face?”

The brevity of it, the tone of uncertainty, makes your mouth twitch. “Jumping right in there, aren’t we? And here I thought you were kind of shy.”

“I am!” Arroven blurts and then covers his face with one hand, laughing quietly at himself. “I am,” he says, a bit more composed when he lets his hand fall away. “Though shyness has hardly ever been a factor in my favor. What is it humans say? Better to rip off the bandage?”

You crawl halfway up his body, smiling wider when he forgets to breathe. “Had to get the anxiety out of the way?” You brush a kiss over his chin, eyes catching on the curl of his horns. He’s moved so carefully that you’ve yet to feel the sharp points of them catching your skin, but if you sit on his face… You ignore Arroven’s disappointed sigh as you turn away to stroke the pad of your thumb over his right horn, wondering whether he has any feeling in them. They’re as ink dark as some of his scales and twisted in a lovely spiral that perfectly circles his pointed, gauged ears. Arroven isn’t reacting like he has sensation in them, though he reacts to every other little touch of you against his scales. “You’re going to have to help me balance,” you confess, sitting back against his middle. “Because even though they aren’t terribly sharp, I rather think I’ll be risking my thighs. Don’t you?”

Arroven stares, blinking, and then he looks horrified, which makes you wonder how long it’s been since he’s been close to a human, if ever. 

“I’m not against this,” you add, grinning, “just to be clear.”

For a moment, all he says in response is a strangled sounding “Ah,” before he blinks again, glancing up at the ceiling. “I can... I will help. I’ll be careful. More than careful.”

It takes a few moments, and some adjustment, before you’re finally able to settle over his face. Your heart starts to pound a little faster when Arroven opens his mouth, those dagger-like teeth flashing in the dim light. His hands are strong though, curling around your thigh and bracing your hip. He’s too tall for you to do more than help balance against his chest, though you can see that he’s still wonderfully hard, and his cock is starting to leak. You’d love nothing more than to take him in hand, to taste him, but then Arroven nips your inner thigh, and you stop paying attention to his cock and start focusing on sensation. Your fingers curl at the first hot swipe of his tongue, pressing a little hard into the ventral scales over his chest, and the next slow lick has your eyes falling closed. 

It’s not easy to stay steady, to keep your arms and legs from quivering the longer he licks and slurps. Arroven sucks small kisses over your thighs and the left cheek of your ass, his teeth only ever the barest pressure on your skin. His horns graze you, but he’s true to his word in keeping you balanced. The texture of them against your skin is just something more to feel, to enjoy as he tilts his head this way and that. Pleasure builds, faster by far than the magic that built in your veins, that left you aching with the need to come to the city. If that ache had been anything close to what you’re feeling now, warm, and slick, with the heady pressure of Arroven’s fingers on your skin, you would have picked up on the breadcrumb trail a lot sooner.

“You’re go- going to push me over the edge,” you warn with a gasp, legs starting to tremble. He moves you in response, starts to rock your hips so all he has to do is stick out his tongue, but your hands are shaking now too, cluing him into your urgency. Arroven shakes his head from side to side, a little wild, the plugs in his earlobes clattering against his horns with every shift. You bite down on your lower lip, orgasm rolling swiftly over you and nearly choke on the curse that wants to leave your mouth. He keeps you there, aching and weak, until you pat awkwardly at his chest, releasing you reluctantly with one last obscene noise of satisfaction. 

You sit next to him, still a little unsteady and grin down at his pleased, messy face. “Now, unless you have any other lovely thoughts to share - your turn?”  

His rough sounding “Please,” has your libido jumping back into overdrive, but it’s safety that has you slipping off the bed to dig out a bottle of lube from your things. He’s half pushed himself back up when you come back to the bed, resting on his elbows, fingers twisted gently into the blankets. His wings are partially stretched out now too, one of them reaching all the way to the end of your bed. 

“Are your wings alright?” You ask, wondering if you should throw away the idea of climbing back into his lap, lube already pooling in the palm of your hand.  

Arroven smiles again though, waving away your worry. “Tense,” he offers, as explanation. “I was more focused on you, but they’re good. I promise.” His cock bobs as you approach, and then he lays back down, irises vanishing into the ether of his pupils. 

“If you promise, I suppose I’ll let it go.” You close the lube, only a bit ungracefully, and toss it to the side, climbing back onto the bed and straddling his thighs.

  Your first wet squeeze of his cock has him whimpering, your hand barely fitting around him at his thinnest point. When you stroke, he bucks nearly unseating you until he claps his hands onto your thighs, muttering a hasty apology. Despite being tempted to laugh, you narrow your eyes, squeezing him just a little harder. “You don’t have to be still, but move a little slower for now, hm?”

“Of course,” he rushes to say, and then his jaw goes slack when you press him against you. “Oh,” he breathes, nails pricking your skin as you hold him in place. You rub yourself against his cock, up and back down, a slow undulation that makes you tense, still sensitive from your earlier orgasm. 

And then you straighten, pressing the head of his cock into you. The first slow stretch of him inside you echoes the steady ache of magic, has your breath rushing from your lungs in a gasp. “Fuck,” you breathe and then glance at Arroven’s face. His head is tilted back, mouth open to reveal all of those sharp teeth, and his eyes are closed tight. You think he might be keeping himself from looking at you, might be trying to stem the urge to buck again, to move at all. You tilt your hips and press yourself down though, wiggling, and then Arroven is cursing. You don’t recognize the language, but you understand the sentiment behind it, the pleading tone that softens the edges of the words. It’s hard to concentrate, to keep yourself from getting distracted when all you want to do is sink down every inch of him and then just lay on his chest, trying to catch your breath. “Too much?” You manage to ask, but all Arroven does is shake his head and then carefully ease his grip on your thighs, stroking down to your knees and back up. Your legs, among other things, are definitely going to ache after this.

You ride Arroven until he’s a shaking, breathless mess, until he can’t help but tense his thighs every time he bottoms out, and you can barely stay up. You reach up, fingers just barely brushing his chin to make him pay attention. “Fuck me,” you command and his wings stretch to either side with force. You nearly scream when he starts fucking into you with purpose, and as lovely as your neighbors have been, you have the feeling they’re going to complain at some point. Every thrust has you tightening up on reflex, still shaky from your earlier orgasm, and it’s all you can do to keep yourself upright. A few moments later and Arroven arches as he comes inside you, clutching tightly to you until he’s finished, breath deep and rasping. You don’t wait. Carefully you flop down next to him, smiling tiredly against the blankets. You’re not sure your legs will carry you for the next hour or so, but it’s hardly something to complain about. 

“Do you give all newcomers to the hoard such a.. Vigorous welcome?” You ask, laughing, your voice rough, not really expecting him to answer. Even though he’s clearly a little more comfortable, even though he’s been clinging to your skin and he looks wrecked by all the activity. Arroven nearly chokes.

“No,” he says immediately. “Moments like this,” he murmurs, reaching out for you, ventral scales on his palm smooth over the apple of your cheek, “moments like this are few and far between.” There’s a low rumble of noise from him when you roll close to brush another kiss over his lips, eyes fluttering closed. It’s all you can do not to laugh again, not to quote the poem at him or interrupt the soft moment. It still sits in the back of your mind though, sweet and lilting.

the city is hoarding hearts

it draws them in, with coin, with art

reflects their dreams on mirrored glass

sings siren songs to catch them fast

the lights?

they gleam, they glitter, bright

it steals a piece, with every sight

roots get worn

they split, they splinter

'but i'll keep you warm, in the depth of winter'

the city whispers, it cajoles, it cries

it'll sink it's talons into your thighs

it tears, it scrapes, it batters the unwary

but oh, the love it gifts, to those who tarry

the city promises, you'll be most adored

so can you, will you, join the hoard?

#exophilia #dragon boyfriend #dragon x reader #monster fucker #monster lover #d.darling writes

[mulletcal]

memento mori - an ashton irwin one shot

a/n: hi friends!! i’m reposting this bc the first time i completely didn’t give the proper credit and i wanted to correct that!  this whole thing was inspired by @sexgodashton​‘s answer to this ask. and while i could have just edited the original post to include the credit, it wouldn’t have sat right with me personally to do that and just pretend like it was there the whole time. lau’s brain blows my mind every day w her creativity and she inspires me so much, thank you lau. thank you also to @myloverboyash​ for reading this over for me i appreciate u sm! word count: 2.5k

warnings: talks about needles, ashton being tattooed, smut, there’s riding, voyeurism (sort of? i don’t know rly but i wanna put the warning there just in case), ashton having a pain kink, light dom ash, spanking, i reused two things in these that i’ve used in the past but you know what??????? i kind of love it

****

Ashton’s felt the pain of a tattoo before; he kind of enjoyed the sting, the drag of the needle. Ashton also enjoyed pain, but he never noticed how erotic the pain of a tattoo could be, the intimacy of being so close to someone’s skin, until he began to date a tattoo artist.

You met Ashton when he came into your shop one day, on the hunt for his typical tattoo artist. He was nothing short of a gentleman, something you weren’t used to when men came into the shop that you owned; Men didn’t take kindly to women being the boss of men they saw as the epitome of masculine, let alone the owner, the ultimate boss if you will. You would never forget the way his eyebrows shot up when you said you were the owner, a small grin on his lips as he asked if he could get his tattoo from you instead.

That was for his snake tattoo, and he was so excited at how it turned out that you did his rose tattoo as well. Ashton kept coming back to you, insisting on the rest of the guys coming to get tattoos from you; it wasn’t until you finished touching up Michael’s finger tattoos did he ask you out.

“I appreciate the boost in clientele, but if you wanted to take me out you could’ve asked sooner,” You had replied, slipping him your card with the business phone number crossed out and your personal written above it.

After that, the two of you had talked nearly every day while he wasn’t on tour, and he often slept over, leaving you being taunted from your employees the next day due to marks on your skin.

It wasn’t until the lockdown did you truly see how wild Ashton could be; he had chosen to quarantine with you, the most responsible option you felt because you would have tried to find a loophole to see him anyways. Ashton encouraged you to try new things with him you never thought were possible, and you were surprised at how much you loved it.

You were shocked to realize that he enjoyed not just the pain of being tattooed, but he had a little bit of a pain kink in general. He tried to shy away from it at first, but when the two of you seemingly had run out of exciting news hobbies to learn, Ashton brought up the idea of watching porn together, to get a feel of what the other person liked. You wish you had felt safe enough to record his reaction when you put on a favourite video of yours, watching him take an invisible pencil from behind his ear and pretending to jot it down.

A few moments after that, with Ashton and you definitely quite in the middle of something, your phone went off, alerting you that you would be allowed to reopen with a set list of guidelines. You’d tried to get as many of your clients in before the shutdown as possible, so you didn’t have too many to reschedule when you got back.

You and the rest of your team had decided to operate on a weekly basis, your employees being allowed to have the shop for the week, with the rules of you setting up additional cameras so you could check in to ensure they were following sanitary guidelines, and all transactions were cashless unless absolutely necessary.

The reopen was going well so far, from what you could tell. Your week had finally rolled around, and you made sure that you left yourself a free day so that you could deep clean the shop; however, that didn’t exactly go according to plan as Ashton asked if you could tattoo him, stating how it had been so long since he’d gotten one and he missed it. Of course, you immediately agreed, pulling up the list of ideas you both had brainstormed throughout the course of the lockdown.

When he got there, you enthusiastically unlocked the door, greeting him with a kiss. You were excited to use him as your canvas, even though it would likely only be something small.

“You ready love?” You asked him, scrolling through the list before looking back up at him.

“Mhm, I’ve been thinking about the list and I’ve really wanted that coin of mortality piece you drew, would you do that one on me?” Ashton had placed his hands on your thighs, tracing his thumbs in small circles against them.

“Well that makes it a bit easier for me, since it’s already drawn, let me just pull it up. Where do you want it?”

You cocked your head, your eyes slowly scanning down his body, checking him out in a way, but also curious where he would say to put it.

“M’thinking on my ribs, yeah?” He pulled back, eagerly lifting his shirt to show his left side.

You nodded, reaching out to gently trace your finger over where you thought the tattoo should go, “Like here, maybe?”

Ashton shivered at your touch, simply nodding before letting his shirt fall back down. With that, you went to print the stencil, definitely not unaware to Ashton’s eyes burning a hole into your skin.

When you turned to him with the freshly printed stencil, you grinned, “You know the drill, Irwin, hop on the chair.”

Rolling his eyes, he made a big show of stripping off his shirt and sitting in the chair. You decided it was probably the best option to have him lay on his right side with his arm just out of the way.  You prepped his skin, cleaning it and shaving it to make sure that no stray hairs would be in the way before you laid the stencil.  Ashton shivered once again, this time at the cool touch of the cleaning solution.

“Okay baby?” You asked gently, tattoo gun poised in your hand and ready to begin.

He hummed in acknowledgement, licking his lips though you couldn’t see.  You started with one small line, not missing the way Ashton sucked in a breath at the drag of the needle. Pausing to wipe at the ink, you briefly glanced up at him to see if he was alright.  Since you didn’t hear him oppose, you continued on with the outline.

Once the outline was completed, you wiped the area once more, sitting back to admire it so far, “Wanna see the outline or do you wanna wait till it’s done?”

Ashton’s breathing was slightly irregular, goosebumps raising on his skin as you cleaned off the area some more, looking for any spots in the outline that you may have missed, “I think I’ll wait til the end, thanks love.”

“Are you doing okay? We can pause you know, I know the ribs are a bit harder.”

“No, no.  It’s not that,” He was quick to say, glancing over his shoulder at you.  You could see something in his eyes, but it wasn’t pain or discomfort, instead his pupils were blown wide and he seemed aroused, maybe? “I’m just kinda enjoying the pain and I’m bracing myself for the shading.”

As you continued on, Ashton would occasionally, which would cause you to pause instantly to check on him.  He would wave you off, saying instead to keep going, that it felt good.  Had the two of you not been dating, Ashton may have felt a little embarrassed the way his cock was straining against his pants, but he knew that should you have free time afterwards, you could make complete use of the empty shop - or at least, he hoped you would.

With the shading completed, you wanted to finish off with some small white detailing.  Glancing up at Ashton, you sucked in a breath, “It’s time to do the white.  You gonna be alright or are you gonna cum in your pants if I do it?”

Ashton let out a laugh, swatting at your hand holding the paper towel, “Would rather cum in you, so hurry that ass up.”

You laughed, but the way he spoke made you press your thighs together as you changed the gun for the white detailing.  It took you a moment to get everything switched over, your mind continuously wandering to the very man whose back was facing you, lingering on the night before.  His bite marks on your breast and collarbone were still sore, but it made the anticipation of what was to come after you finished the tattoo even better.

Ashton let out quiet curses as you started the white detailing, the goosebumps returning to his skin.  He couldn’t believe how on edge he was, just from the sensation of the tattoo alone.  It was almost as if he understood now what Calum had meant when they discussed his chest tattoo, the vibrations sending chills up his spine.

He had to remember to keep breathing, that was the only way he was going to even be able to hold out long enough to make it through the tattoo, using your breaks in tattooing to take a deep breath, rolling his lower lip between his teeth.  Once you were done, you smiled brightly at the piece you had just finished, enjoying the fine detailing you were able to fit within the tattoo.

“Alright baby it’s done, go look in the mirror,” You spoke, touching his shoulder lightly so he could come down out of the daydream like state he seemed to put himself in.

Ashton stood, and you couldn’t help but chuckle at the very obvious bulging in his jeans, your eyes unable to look up from that as he headed to the mirror to check it out.  “Shit, baby, it looks amazing.  You did a really good job.”

“Don’t I always?”

Ashton chuckled, nodding his head and headed back over so that you could clean it one final time and put the protective bandage over it.  As soon as that had been completed, you looked up at him.

“Alright, Irwin, sit in the chair laying flat,” you demanded, standing to your full height and looking him in the eyes.

“Oh she wants to be in control, does she?” Ashton asked with a quirk of his brow, but sitting in the chair and doing as he was told to anyways.

“I mean, sure, but it just makes the most sense to ride you while we’re here.  Also it’s easier to clean this up than the floor.”

“How do you know all of this?” “You wanna ask dumb questions, or do you want to fuck me?” You asked, hands on your hips.

Ashton smirked, running his fingers through his black locks before he reached down to undo the button on his jeans, tugging them down.  By the looks of it, he had gone commando, almost as if he was anticipating this.

You shimmied your leggings and panties down, checking behind you to make sure that you had the curtain fully closed.  Though the door was locked, you didn’t want passersby on the street to see into the shop.  Taking Ashton’s hand, you straddled his waist, placing your hands behind his head on either side of the chair once you got your balance.

“Finally can check something off our list, hm? Fucking in my shop.” You spoke next to his ear, removing one hand from behind his head so you could line his cock up with your entrance, sinking down slowly.  Both of you moaned at the feeling, now all too familiar for you.

Ashton grabbed your hips, keeping you steady as you got adjusted.  He had only been in you 12 hours before, but the size of him made you take a moment to adjust almost every time.  It was something you weren’t sure you could handle the first time you and Ashton had slept together, but that was also one of the first times that you didn’t need to be afraid of sex if it was with the right person.

Rolling your hips as a test, you groaned at the pull of his length against your walls, clenching around him.

“Keep that up kitten I really am not gonna last long,” He purred, squeezing your hips as you began a slow and steady rhythm.

You pressed kisses to his lips, his neck, just below his ear, anywhere you could reach really; you also took to tangling your fingers in his hair, tugging gently at each delicious thrust.  The pace of slow and steady didn’t last too long though, Ashton usually the type for hard and fast, which anyone could have guessed just by looking at the drummer.

While you were on top, Ashton decided he needed to take control, so his hands slipped to your ass, gripping tighter as he started to meet your hips at a brutal pace.  Tossing your head back, you gasped, digging your nails into his scalp; this only seemed to drive Ashton more, an almost animalistic growl tearing from his throat.  

His right hand left you for a split second, only to come crashing down against your cheek in a harsh slap that brought you forward so you could bury your face in his neck.  

“So good for me kitten, you like being spanked, don’t you? You love the pain almost as much as I do.” Ashton’s words were low in your ear, causing you to shut your eyes and nod in response.

“Yes, fuck.  Please more,” You begged, fingers clutching at any expanse of skin you could, dragging your nails across.  You began to nip at his neck as he delivered more slaps to your ass, the sting bringing you closer and closer to the edge. “Ash, so close…”

“Yeah, baby? You gonna cum for me?” He moved lower in the chair, giving him a different angle so that his cock was dragging against your g-spot each time, “You wanna fuckin’ scream for me? Come on, who’s gonna hear you?”

His words drove you over the edge with you calling out his name, loudly at first, but then softly whispered like a prayer as he fucked you through it.  Ashton wasn’t far behind, his thrusts only growing more and more sloppy until he finally came with a low curse, your body shivering as he filled you.

When the two of you came down from your highs, you lifted off of him, whining at the loss of him, and also the warmth beginning to trail down your leg.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Ashton chuckled, still panting from the exertion.

“Please,” You laughed, bending down to pick up your pants when you had a thought.  “Hey Ash?”

“Yeah love?”

“Ever wanted to make a sex tape?” You asked, biting your lip to keep from laughing.

“Never really thought about it, why?” Ashton looked at you, confused before brought over a dry paper towel and a wet paper towel to clean up the mess.

“Because we’re on not so candid camera,” Motioning to the newer camera you installed, the two of you burst out in a fit of laughter at the idea that you almost didn’t need to watch porn together, as you could watch yourselves if you really wanted to.

tag list:  @haikucal @talkfastromance4 @calmlftv @canyon-moan @wildflowerirwin @irwindoll @notinthesameguey @heavenisapeach @ridingcthood @loveroflrh @mantlereid @irwinkitten @n-ctarinenga @g-l-pierce @thecurlsofgod @idontneedanyone​ @boomerash @clemmings @cthofficial​ @ashtonsos​ @yikesguys​ @blackbutterfliescal​ @mashlums​ @ohhoneyofmine​ @monimickell​ @petunias-pet​ @treatallwithkindness​ @castaway-cashton​ @tea4sykes​ @begluketostay​ @wheniminouterspace​ @another-lonely-heart​ @ghostofmashton​ @myfavfanficsever​ @xsongxbirdx​ @stardust-galaxies​ @karajaynetoday

#ashton irwin #ashton irwin one shot #ashton irwin smut #ashton irwin fanfic #ashton irwin blurb

[futurewriter2000]

The Cinderella Cliché

A/N: Took me a while to get started but I made it. And I dunno about the second part. I had a few idea sbut I dunno?? Also sorry for not posting much. My computer is at the fixing service thing and well... School.

REQUEST:I know this is a cinderella cliché but I really wanted to read a story where the reader can not find a partner for yule ball because she is quiet and invisible to others. Then when she becomes sad her parents to encourage her send dress, jewelry to the ball. She goes and ends up being the most beautiful girl in the ball. after the ball she has to deal with the popularity and attention of the boys, including Sirius Black, the boy she always avoided thinking about for fear of falling in love.

XX

The glimmer in their eyes and the brightness of their smile was all it ever took to change your mood. Jitter, giggles, excitement.. They were everywhere, iluminating the joy of the upcoming dance meanwhile you were sat behind your desk as another weekly routine.

You felt more and more disappointed sighs leave your lungs. Every breath felt heavier. To you that was just another great night you will have to miss. 

And then there was the Ravenclaw who always sat at the desk in front of you. The Ravenclaw, who you were so keen on asking to the Yule Ball. He was quet, mysterious, tall, masculine and he had a wonderful mix of green and blue eye colour. Everytime you looked at those two crystals it was like a moment the world went quiet and there was you and him. Though it seemed he didn't feel the same or else he would have asked you to be his date for the Ball.

You wanted him to ask you. Why didn’t he ask you? Why didn't anybody ask you?

“So?” he turned around in his seat, smiling. “What did you think?”

“About the book?” you smiled. “It was okay, not really my style.”

He rolled his eyes far back. “Not your style.” he scoffed mockingly.

“Well, I couldn’t quite understand the second chapter. Was she dreaming or was that real?” 

He gave you a teasing smile and shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Yes, you do!” you laughed.

“Guess you’ll have to read it again.” he turned around in his seat.

“Jonnah Marsiel, you turn back around right now!” you continued to laugh but he only looked over his shoulder and sent you a wink.

“Never, love.” 

You smiled at his reply. He has never called you that. Never in all three years of your friendship. And from his tongue the word rolled with such elegance to which you could listen to it on replay forever. But then again he asked someone else to the Yule Ball so that word- that nickname didn’t really mean anything to you, did it?

It was then a flop of a bag that shook you out of your thoughts and doubts. Someone, who was tall, masculine, dark haired and light-eyed as well, threw their bag on the desk beside you and started talking. 

“She’s going to be the most gorgeous girl in the whole Yule Ball.” he beamed at his friends. “And with me, we are-”

“You are nothing. Lily and I will be the best couple there. Head Boy and Head Girl, two beloved Gryffindors, a perfect, smart, popular girl and a Quidditch captain. Please. You don’t stand a chance.” James continued and you felt yourself snort. 

Of course, the typical stereotype. 

Sirius sat on the chair next to you, still facing his friends. “Sure but my date is smart, perfect, popular and a Quidditch captain of her own house, so that makes you and Lily noting compared to me and her.”

You tried not to listen. I think the whole class tried to ignore the conversation between those two friends and you noticed the teacher coming your way to who you knew he didn't have patience nor tolerance for your sitting buddy.

“Do you mind speaking even louder, Sirius Black, perhaps even come here and tell us all about you and your Yule Ball escort?” a stern voice spoke highly above the two of you. . 

Sirius' eyes travelled up professor's tall body and he replied. “No.” he shook his head and grinned. “I’m alright just here, professor.” 

 He didn’t even look at you. Not a single glance. He kept his nose burried in the paper, doodling someting down or looking around the class, stuck in his own thoughts. It was until the moment before the bell rang that he leaned on the desk, looking up at you with those big grey eyes. 

“Hey.” he whispered and your eyes flickered to him then back at the perfect cursive writing of your professor.

“Hey?” you looked back at him, the blackboard and scribbling down on the parchment.

His eyes glanced down at your tie. “You’re a Gryffindor?” he wondered, furrowing his own eyebrows.

That question squeezed your throat a bit but you managed to pull through. “Yes.”

“And you’re my year?” 

Again it squeezed and again you pulled through. “I am.” you now decided to stop writing down and put your full attention on him. 

“You always sit in the back, right?” 

“It is my usual spot, yes.” you started to get irratated a bit. Why was he asking you those questions?

“How come you’re sitting here then?”

“Because how else would I enjoy a great company like yours?” you blurted out, narrowing your eyes and seeing him smirk. 

“Do I sense some sarcasm in there? Didn’t know you could talk right about then, let alone be sarcastic.”

“Well then let us-”

“If you want to talk Miss (y/l/n) and Mister Black, than I recommend the two of you start a debate club out of class but until the two of you are in my class, mouths are shut and ears are open.” the professor was now standing in front of the two of you again, looking down meanwhile you both innocently looked up. You felt a blush creep on your cheeks meanwhile Sirius only smiled.

“Well, then professor-”

“We won’t do it again.” you cut in avoiding Sirius’ eye contact and looking straight up the professor.

The professor gave you and Sirius a suspicious, narrowed glare and nodded. "Very well." he began to walk away and you took that opportunity to look at a Sirius, who kept a confused yet interested look on you.

The bell rang and in all your mighty power, you threw the supplies in your bag, leaving the room. Sirius stayed behind, looking at the door where you disappeared and repeated your last name in his mind. ‘(y/l/n)’ 

---

It was until you were safe in your own dorm that you screamed into your pillow from embarassment. Why? Why does he alwas do that?! Embarass you!

You clawed the pillow but instead of letting out another scream, you put your head up to see what exactly did your fingers claw. It wasn't a pillow. It was a letter. A letter from your parents and until you read it to the bottom, you haven’t noticed the big, white box with a red bowtie in front of you. 

They want you to go. Period. 

You sighed as the letter dropped from your hand. “Going alone is stupid.” you burried your head in your palms and let it stay there. 

‘You won’t know until you go there and try it. Maybe you’ll have fun.’ your mother’s words repeated in your head. You took the letter in your hands again are re-read the same line. ‘Go. Be young. Be fearless, It's the only time you can be that and get away with it.’

You smiled. She was right. Of course, she was right. She was your mother. She was always right. 

---

It took you a while to get ready. Actually, it took you a lot since it was all last minute and your roommates were all at the Ball already to give you any help.

But you were not bad at makeup. Growing up with a Muggle cousin, who is a makeup artist since young age, always dressing yourselves up in tiny princesses and stealing makeup from both of your mothers actually paid off. 

You were now curling the last strand of your curls, when you were having second thoughts about this. Should you even go? I mean you already did all this work. You have to go.

You stared in the mirror, looking at what you have done with yourself and for the first time, you loved that person. You jumped over to the white box, pulled out the dress and put it on. 

Now, you were finally ready. 

---

The ball has started half an hour ago when you finally decided to walk in. Why exactly were you half an hour late? Because walking in heels takes time to get used to. 

You took a deep breath in, gathering all the courage that you had left and walked in.

It was so much to take in. The lights, the glimmering, the different colours of gowns and bowties. It was so... Marvelous.

Nobody quite payed attention to you as they were too busy intertaining themselves but as soon as their eyes glanced at you, even for a moment of second, the next time they landed fully on you, stayed there.

You couldn't even notice those eyes. You were busy looking at the sparkles and the dance floor. The view caused this anxious yet excited feeling in your heart and stomach. It felt new. It felt nothing like the you, you're used to.

When you noticed the different coloured pair of eyes on you, you felt a satisfied smirk curve on your lips. You lifted your gown and continued to the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t easy walking alone without anybody by your side but that independance was exactly what made the anxiety fly away from your heart. There was only room for excitment and good music.

It was the independnce, the courage that shone at those grey-like eyes. Until he followed James’ eyes to you, he didn't notice but when he did, his mouth parted yet his eyes could never. Not even if he tried. They were stuck on you like honey.

You haven’t really walked much until there was a boy standing next to you. Someone who you have never seen in all your Hogwarts year. He was leaning on the punch table, grinning and swallowing you with his dark eyes. “Hey there, princess.” 

“Hi.” you said as you poured some glittery punch in your glass. 

“I’m Avery.” he stretched out his hand and it wasn’t even three inches that your hand moved, he was already kissing the back of it. “What pleasure is meeting a Veela like you here.” he kept a wicked look on his face-a look you couldn’t trust. 

You backed away from him. “I wish I could say the same for you.” you frowned at him then put the punch down and started to walk away. “Now, excuse me, I have to find my friends.” you pushed through the crowd until you crashed into a boy- No. You crashed into a man. Tall, broad shouldered, handsome man. 

“(Y/N).” his eyes didn’t even bulge out as it did from the rest. They observed as if you were a gentle cloud, floating in front of him. There was this calmless in his voice. A nice, comfortable peace that setbyour heart rate back down.

“Jonah.” you smiled shyly.

“You look amazing.” he said, taking your hand in his and spinning you around. “Truly amazing.” 

A heat wave washed your cheeks and you could feel yourself grow redder. “You’re not bad yourself, Marsiel.” you teased and he chuckled. 

It all felt so wonderful, looking into his crystal eyes and feeling the tension between the two of you groe. It was as if the chemistry was so strong, you didn’t want to resist anymore..... Until his date jumped inbetween and cut all those ties. 

You felt yourself standing alone as Jonah was being dragged away, appologising to you with his eyes. Hugging your arms, you looked around the dancefloor where everybody was paired up and again another disappointed sigh left your lungs. You walked back to the tables and sat down, letting your head fall on your palm and your eyes on the pair in the far back.

That could be you dancing with him.

“Hey.” someone whispered beside you and your eyes glanced to him. 

He was leaning his head on the table, looking up at you with those big grey eyes, grinning and loving every second of it.

“Hey?” 

“Why are you sitting here?” he asked, the glimmer growing behind his eyes.

“This is my usual spot, yes.” you smiled. 

“How come a girl as beautiful as you is deserted here in the back?” he asked, this time straigthening his posture in his seat.

You snorted and crossed your arms. “Because how else would I be enjoying this smooth flirtation of Sirius Black.” 

“You wear sarcasm so good it makes my head spin, darling.” he leaned forward with his eyes now looking at yours and his teeth biting his lower lip.

The eye contact didn’t break. Not even for the slightest moment. It was just you and him and the stuffed music in the backround. 

“I can read your thoughts, you know?” his lips curved wider yet his eyes kept themselves on yours.

“Oh, really?” 

“Yes really. I can sense you want to dance with a wonderful lad. Black hair, grey eyes, tall, handsome- a Gryffindor nevertheless.” he continued and you rolled your eyes at him.

“-Persistant, careless, getting me into trouble.” 

“All the good qualities.” he winked and stood up. He walked behind you, firstly placing his hands on the chair behind you and sending a cold shiver down your spine. You could feel him lean over your shoulder, his breath gently hitting against the skin of your neck as he finally whispered in your ear. “So how about that dance?”

#Sirius Black #sirius black imagine #sirius black x reader #james potter x reader #james potter imagine #james potter #remus lupin imagine #remus #remus lupin #peter pettigrew imagine #peter pettigrew #marauders era #the marauders #marauder #modern marauders #marauders fanfiction

[angryhausfrau-writes]

I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 2: The Heist

Charles was, in fact, difficult to persuade of the plan. Sure, he wants money just about as much as any of the rest of the crew. But he's also pretty fucking pissed at Eleanor Guthrie.

Although the prospect of getting one over on her – and ruining another one of the people responsible for sending him to jail and getting filthy rich in the process – is a strong incentive. And Jack's always been good with words. Persuasive, one might say. Charles is stubbly, slightly recalcitrant putty in his hands.

So they all troop down to the nearest YMCA so Charles can take a shower. And Anne shoplifts him some slightly more upscale slutty clothes, because God forbid the man ever actually wear a shirt. But he looks like a halfway respectable stripogram by the time he shows up to Eleanor's little birthday party – a fashionable two hours late so the party's in full swing and he doesn't look desperate. Though Eleanor will probably still read him that way. A pathetic sad sack crawling back to her on bended knee, ready to beg forgiveness and willing to do anything to get back in her good graces now that his former crew is a wreck and Flint's run off to America.

Eleanor thinks she's got Charles right where she wants him – under her two-thousand dollar heels. But that doesn't mean it's not a scene worthy of the fucking Baftas when she sees him come through the door.

Jack and Anne and the new guy are posted up in the kitchen, dealing to all the posh little fucks looking for a bit of white gold to get the party started right. Just killing time until Charles makes his move and he and Eleanor head to the bedroom.

And minimalist open plan living being in fashion, even in these old Victorian piles, they can hear every fucking word of the happy little reunion from a whole half a house away.

“Why Charles,” Eleanor practically purrs – and it's the purr of a Jaguar, lethal and expensive. “Whatever are you doing here.”

It's not a question.

Charles forces himself to look down at his feet. As if he's weak. As if he's ashamed.

“Eleanor.” He makes it sound anguished instead of angry. “I had a lot of time to think while I was away.”

Because Eleanor and her lot threw him away. And who knew Chaz was such a good actor? There's none of the violent, simmering fury Jack knows he feels over the betrayal. His tone is contrite and he must look suitably groveling, because Eleanor lets him continue.

“I started thinking about what was important – what was good in my life.” Namely her. And what he'd do to get her back. Though that goes unsaid, because there's such a thing as laying it on too thick, even for Eleanor fucking Guthrie.

And they – Jack, mostly Jack, who'd coached Charles through the whole interaction - must have struck just the right balance of pathetic groveling and virile masculinity with that little performance, because Eleanor says, “Why don't we discuss this somewhere more private, Charles?”

A few minutes later, Jack gets a surreptitious eggplant emoji from Charles's burner phone – the prearranged signal that he's successfully convinced Eleanor to sleep with him and that they're free to comb the house. Jack sends a winky face in response and then he, Anne, and the new guy split up to search for the cash.

Knowing Charles – and Eleanor – they'll probably be tied up for a while. Charles almost definitely literally. But that doesn't mean they can dawdle.

Anne takes to rifling through the bedrooms, disturbing several couples – and more – in the throws of passion. But she's always been good at intimidating idiots to stay out of her way – and so obviously on a mission that they don't do more than voice a few token protests. Plus, she's good enough at what she does – and they're so wrapped up in their drugged out fucking – that she's in and out before some of the participants even notice she's there. But, as Jack learns from her regular updates of terse “NO” and red “X” texts, she has no luck finding the cash.

Jack hadn't really expected Eleanor or Woodes Rogers to keep the cash in a random bedroom, where any horny houseguest could stumble upon it. So that just leaves the master suite – empty, what with Eleanor having taken Charles to the room that apparently serves as her bedroom cum sex dungeon, if Max's deeply - horrifyingly deeply - detailed description is to be believed. (Privately, Jack thinks Eleanor may have gotten just a little bit too invested in the whole Fifty Shades trend. But bored horny women are bored horny women, regardless of bank account balance, apparently.)

And Woodes Rogers is otherwise occupied downstairs, courtesy of the new guy, who's apparently caught his eye and is being rather badly flirted at, if the increasingly frantic texts Jack keeps getting are any indication. Jack feels bad, he really does – ok, not that bad, he'd do the same thing on purpose if Woodes Rogers was into queens. But he likes a little bit of rough - not that Jack can blame him – and the new guy seems to be doing it for him, even if he's got a pretty boy face. And this is probably the best chance they're going to get of having the house to themselves for the search. So he tells New Guy to stick it out and if Woodes Rogers starts getting too sleezy to make a break for it. They'll all meet at the rendezvous point at the kebab shop in the West End anyway, it doesn't matter if they don't all go together.

Plus, it'll help take the heat off if they just look like regular party goers instead of co-conspirators in a heist.

But Jack doesn't have a lot of extra time or attention to spare for New Guy's plight. Because Anne's struck out in the master bedroom, except for some rather tasteless but presumably expensive jewelry. And Jack's searched the study - a big, stupidly imposing room that practically screams “compensating” - and he's come up with zilch. A fucking goose egg, outside of a moving bookcase that hides a humidor. Probably Eleanor's.

So he moves on to the library, the last place the cash could reasonably be without them having to try and search the fucking basement.

It's probably the least used room in the house. Because sure, Woodes Rogers is a lawyer of some description and Eleanor an accountant. But the paraphernalia for that kind of stuff gets kept in blinding glass and steel corporate offices. This room is for impressing the impressionable. And it's absolutely stuffed to the fucking rafters with first editions of classics and entire sets of encyclopedias that Jack would bet real money have never even been opened by their current owners.

There are also several oil paintings in heavy gilt frames – perfect for hiding a wall safe. And if that doesn't reveal anything, there's always the horrifically overbearing desk situated in pride of place in front of the enormous bay windows. Jack can just see Eleanor there, sitting in the high backed antique chair like it was a throne, dispensing her version of mercy on groveling penitents.

Jack wonders if she ever made Max fuck her in that chair. That feels like something she'd be into.

And with that lovely thought, Jack turns to search the nearest painting – a drab toned portrait of a man who is presumably one of Woodes Rogers's antecedents. Blugh. But, heinous crimes committed during his life or no, he isn't the final resting place for stolen goods.

Jack turns to the next painting and the next with no more success. The final painting – one of hounds on the hunt – doesn't reveal the cash, but it does reveal some rather racy photographs of Eleanor and one of her previous lovers (neither Max nor Charles, so Jack doesn't remove them) in what is apparently Woodes Rogers's pathetic attempts at a black mail collection on his wife. It's quite sad really, so Jack just takes a snap of it for Anne – who'll undoubtedly show it to Max, who'll get a kick out of it - and moves on to the desk.

There, he strikes gold. Or cash, really. There's a hidden compartment in the bottom of the desk drawer with a lock on it – as if that could stop Jack. Or anyone with better fine motor skills than a toddler. It only takes him a few minutes and an unbent paper clip to open the catch.

And there lays the cash.

Jack signals Anne and the new guy to come help, since there's approximately a metric fuckton of it. Someone who's not Jack is going to have to practically crawl inside the desk to get it all. But they've found it, finally.

Thank Christ.

Jack starts laying bundles of cash into the bottom of his traveling case – one of those hard-sided suitcases that businessmen so love to use. And he's honestly not sure if that's going to be enough. But fortunately, the new guy had the foresight to bring a ratty backpack along and between the two bags and the three of their pockets, they get it all stowed away.

Jack texts Charles a Jolly Roger to let him know he can wrap things up with Eleanor and all that's left now is to get away clean.

Which is almost easier done than said. They walk out the door, times staggered enough that it doesn't look like they're all leaving together, and no one notices a thing. It's all very anti-climactic, honestly. The movies always make this part seem so exciting – car chases and shoot outs and etcetera. But they just walk right out the front door, completely invisible to the partiers still inside the house.

Jack leaves last, so he's only about a half block away when Charles finishes their little distraction off with a bang. They'd planned it all out – how to make it look like Eleanor had the upper hand in the breakup this time, so she wouldn't look too hard at the evening and link the theft back to Jack or Anne. How to make sure that Eleanor was left physically and emotionally satisfied enough that she never seeks Charles out for another night of fun. How to make her feel in charge and in control and like she's throwing Charles over, instead of them conning her.

And frankly, the bits Jack can hear are a masterstroke. Charles is pathetic and groveling in a way that is genuinely unappealing – but that apparently gets Eleanor's rocks off, because she's got the most self-satisfied fucking smirk on face, the one he imagines she wore the entire time Charles was in her bed. And Eleanor stands at the top of the stairs, framed by the open doorway, lauding her everything about herself over Charles as he begs her to take him back. Which she does not deign to do at all.

All the other party goers have gathered around to witness the carnage and Eleanor's not even pretending to feel sorry about making such a scene. This – this is what she's been looking for ever since Charles gave her the boot – coincidentally right before he went away on that two stretch. And she's milking her ability to get one over him in that same way for all it's fucking worth.

“We're done, Charles.”

She says it with the cold finality of a vault door swinging shut. And she sweeps back into the house, surrounded by the ranks of simpering sycophants. Leaving Charles curled into himself on the cold pavement.

#black sails #max/anne #jack/charles #fanfic #chapter 2 #i travel troubled oceans

[hozukitofu]

More chillis please

Being the person who assumes the landscape of their environment upon entering the room and often designated as kin of the furniture, Yachi is very happy when people speak at her and not to her, so that unnecessary conversations do not occur and everyone can go back to ignoring her as they did before.

Acquiring a retail job runs something similar to that vein.

A retail job in a relatively functional business is great. People still try to be friendly - older people, and older men, which, no - but it's not too unbearable.

She gets a message, one day, while she's getting a one-on-one tutoring session by Yours Truly, Chameleon Expert Man Himself, Kinoshita, on calculus and tactics of evading eye contact. They're revising what she should know, she's confident that going to the job, with these new skills, will maximise her invisibility, when her phone vibrates and seeing as the team shares absolutely zero boundaries, she pores over the message with Kinoshita, who bites into a slice of orange.

"New shift?" He chews, eyebrow lifted.

She's noting that down as a skill that she needs to be taught. Kiyoko-san does it very often and it makes grown men cry on the spot. Yachi can weaponise that and turn it on the creeps at work. It can work for her.

"Hmm," she nods, mouth full of orange slices. Kinoshita slaps a napkin to her face, picks up her phone and types a response out. By the time she swallows the pieces of citrusy goods and wipes herself dry of unwanted orange spit, there is a hovering screen with the line I'm good to go on Saturday. Same time as usual? waiting for her approval from her upperclassman.

"All good, Kinoshita-san," she gives him two thumbs up, because he deserves it.

"I'm going inside to tell Chikara we're almost done. Send it and pack up. We're bullying Ryuu to buy us food," he rises, takes his books with him, and gives her a jaunty wave at the doorway.

She hits send. Working at the bakery in Miyagi central shopping district with the locals is great, but working in busy Tokyo where she will know nobody and the customers will assume she is a speaking brick wall?

Ideal.

She sweeps all her books into her tote bag and sprints after Kinoshita.

-.-

The nature of the bakery franchise she works at is that she rings in all the sales when customers approach her with the baked goods and she restocks when bread is running low. That's the official job description.

Recently the bakery, influenced a little by by multiculturalism and mostly by the owner being completely smitten with the Vietnamese literature teacher with the dimpled smile who passes by their bakery every second day, they also have a banh mi side gig.

According to Suga-san, what the workplace is doing is very similar to Subway, but more Asian. Regardless of the plagiarism of what had been done in food chain stores, this is her job and if she wants to save up for a nicer tablet for graphic design then she just has to suck it up princess and cry her way through the world of earning hard cold cash.

So now she makes bread. Per order of the customers who now have to interact with her, human to human.

It is just as uncomfortable for her as it is for the customers so - equivalent exchange?

Anyways. Now she has Stories. The team sets aside time to provide group therapy for Yachi and the Woes of Being a Slave to Capitalism. It is aptly named group therapy because it is a bunch of highschoolers sitting in a loose collection of volley playing brats and consoling a little blonde girl of her retail hardships.

Today's story, she muses as she runs nose first into Asahi's abruptly stopped back, must be the More Chillis Please episide.

It happens like this -

It is 10 o'clock, she had been there for two hours and made, to the worst of her memory and knowledge, at least twenty individual banh mi. She is righteously outraged by the smell of egg mayonnaise, and if somebody shows up in the store again she will Scream.

Anyways, once the moment of Mandatory Two Hour Fury manifested and dissipated, she settles back into greeting customers, offering her services, and registering sales.

She sees the two boys, clad in similar sports jackets, not a uniform, but it is close enough, on their very very tall and lanky frames.

She is immediately brought back to the sight of Kei and Asahi, except Asahi is twice as wide as one of these guys.

Yachi ties up the package for her current customer, bides them farewell and good luck on their date, and turns to the two boys, her Customer Service Voice already on its routine greeting and question.

"Hi, welcome to Dreamworks Bakery. How can I help you today?"

The slightly shorter boy, with bushy eyebrows and wow those really look like caterpillars, wait until the team hears about this, leans forward, friendly smile fixed across his crooked front teeth.

"Hi there, if you don't mind, can I have one pork roll please, that's cut in half."

Yachi sets to work, doesn't think too much or too hard at why there are two boys and only one bread. She picks up the tongs, considering the viable options -

They are sharing this tiny loaf of Vietnamese bread roll, which, is never going to be enough, even for her, and she eats roughly a sixth of the amount Kageyama eats, so that says Something. Maybe it's just a snack. Who knows

The grumpy boy with the face mask willingly walked his friend or walked with him to this busy bakery to wait for him to buy a small snack, which, Amazing Dedication

She finishes it up, takes the knife to cut the bread in half but wonkily, because she has a healthy fear of knives, you know, as a normal sensible human person would. The boys have been chattering between themselves, the one who ordered constantly bumping into his companion, grinning and tugging on his arm. While from the companion's end there is the long suffering Stop being annoying universal eye roll and sigh combo, it's done with the same degree of exasperated fondness Kei huffs at Tadashi, the unspoken but loud What am I going to do with you, you troublesome creature?

Yachi thinks that everything happening is meant to both be a private moment and a routine, and she shouldn't pry. She also thinks that she is reading too much into this, that toxic masculinity is slowly eroding away with her generation and boys can care for each other deeply without the gross gushing of others around them of Amazing, uwu, yaoi babies.

That had actually happened with Suga-san and Akiteru while they were running an errand so Ew. She's not going to become one of those people.

It's not really a big moment of deep euphoria when the shorter boy with the bushy caterpillar eyebrows slips a hand into the other's pocket, leaning right up into his side, under his retreated chin. It is a cuddle manifesting slowly in front of her eyes, and she pauses in her struggle with the paper bags and her two pieces of bread, to blink and the scene make an Ah sound in her lizard brain.

"Cool," she hums.

"Sorry again, but," Caterpillar Brow leans up against the glass, "would you mind adding chillis onto one half?"

Yachi is already stretching one nearest to her hand open. "Tell me when to stop."

He flashes her another winning smile. "You're so valid."

She grins, sprinkling chillis in the tiny half. After a good half of the bread is covered, and he asks her to stop.

Only for the masked friend to lean forward, tug down his face mask, and speak softly.

"Add more, please."

Because Yachi assumes things, as she does, like a presumptuous idiot, she goes on fulfilling the request and thinking that it's for the masked friend. The masked friend doesn't like ordering so his friend had taken up that responsibility for him and he has the taste bud of titanium which explains the excessive chilli situation.

"Is this," she is afraid to ask, "enough?"

She tries to make eye contact with both boys, but because the Presumptuous Moron Energy is on high visibility that day, the masked companion tugs his mask up and draws out his wallet, sighing softly.

"This one," he jerks his head to his companion, "likes his food to strip off skin when he eats. I hold no jurisdiction over his questionable tastes."

It's all kinds of a wonderful, wonderful plot twist. She accepts the payment and wishes them farewell in a rather mechanical manner, and spends a good half of the day just processing everything that transpired. Everything from the masked friend taking the bread from her and pulling the strap onto his wrist so he can hold the other boy's hand, to them knocking heads as they walk away, the excitable companion speaking onto his neck as they disappear into the throng of people.

Asahi apologises for almost running her over and into a medically induced concussion, but she reassures him that she's fine, I've been the victim of a spike before, Asahi-san, this is like a small shove next to that, oh no don't cry, please, I'll live.

Story time is going to be Lit.

#haikyuu! #yachi hitoka #karasuno team bonding #the couple is definitely komori and sakusa #sakukomo #sakusa kiyoomi #komori motoya #was sakusa wearing supreme? yes #this is inspired by 90% real events i did work at a banh mi bakery

[simplyshelbs16xoxo]

‘Life in Death’ Chapter 3: And We Just Go in Circles

               Several days had passed since I reluctantly agreed to help my ghostly roommate. As my new official partner in crime-solving—or perhaps I was his—I decided to carry the pocket watch with me to work. Where it went, Sherlock went, which turned out to be fortuitous given that another body showed up in the morgue with the same letters carved in her hand. And, so, it was here I found myself performing another autopsy with the less-than-corporeal Sherlock Holmes at my side.

               “Could you stop breathing down my neck?” I asked with annoyance.

               “I would if I had any,” he quipped. “Breath, that is.” I couldn’t help but giggle at his dead-pan humor. “You’re quite scrupulous with your autopsies, Miss Hooper. I’m impressed.”

               For a ghost, his beaming smile left me feeling warm and rather proud of his unsolicited approval. “I believe that’s the first compliment I’ve received from you,” I said, blushing. “Thank you.”

               His brow knitted with bemusement. “Have I really been that unbearable to be around?” he asked.

               “Well, let’s see,” I began, taking a brief pause from the chest spreader. “You constantly criticize my clothing, the cleanliness of my flat, and the fact I apparently put too much sugar in my coffee,” I listed, ticking them off on my fingers. “You’ve also taken to wander aimlessly about the flat at night, which tends to keep me awake. There might be a few things you’ve forgotten about being human, such as the importance of sleep. I think that’s a good start…although I anticipate the list to grow.”

               “Interesting,” he remarked.

               “What is?”

               “You haven’t mentioned my pipe smoke.”

               “It doesn’t bother me; I love the sweet cherry scent,” I answered, somewhat distracted with my hands in the dead woman’s chest. “What does this calling card have to do with Moriarty? He’s dead.”

               “I.O.U. referred to his promise to make me fall.” His eyes briefly glazed over with a faraway look, as though remembering something he’d rather forget. “I’m sure you’ve read the story.”

               “Yes, I have.” I removed some tissue samples, placing them in a dish for the lab. “I’m just wondering if this is really a random copycat, or could it be a descendant of Moriarty?”

               “Your powers of deduction are brilliant, Miss Hooper! I’ll make a fine detective of you yet.”

               There it was again, that radiant smile of his, and those beautiful blue eyes eagerly inviting me to join in his enthusiasm. It's hardly my fault that my heart was left pounding thunderously in chest, echoing so loudly in my ears I could barely hear myself think. He was magnetic, hard to resist, and I couldn't help but wonder what his hair might be like in its natural state, or how it might feel to run my fingers through those luscious, thick curls that fell carelessly along his forehead. 

               I silently chastised myself, grateful he wasn’t a mind reader. What the bloody hell was I doing anyway, falling for a ghost?! Granted, I was in a bit of a dry spell where my love life was concerned, but this…this was irrational; illogical, even. Still, the more time we spent together, the more my curiosity grew.

               “Wh-what about you?” I asked as nonchalant as possible. “Do you, um, have any descendants?” It seemed like a perfectly logical question, considering we were exploring ancestral links.

               “Nope.” He emphasized the ‘p’ as though the idea were distasteful. “Romantic entanglements, while fulfilling for others, Miss Hooper, held little interest, along with an unnecessary distraction from my work. The work was more important.” Sherlock disappeared from my side, and across the morgue. It was an unnerving habit of his. “If this really is a descendant of Moriarty, then, logically, our evil-doing fiend must be my unfinished business. Always remember, when you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

               “You really think so?”

               He winked. “I know so. Let’s catch ourselves a serial killer, shall we?”

                Once I concluded the autopsy, I left the watch in my locker to meet up with my friend, and co-worker, Meena at the canteen. The last thing I needed was a side conversation with an invisible person, in public, who would have no problem expressing his every opinion, insisting upon my attention.

               “So I heard you talking to someone when I passed by the morgue.” Of course Meena would begin a conversation like this.

               “He’s my, uh, roommate.” I anxiously bit my lip. “He called me.”

               Meena’s face lit up with curiosity. “You finally got a roommate!? What’s he like??”

               “He’s very…spirited.” I nearly laughed at my own humor.

After distracting Meena from asking too many questions about the roommate I would never be able to explain, we finished our tea, leaving only a few hours left on my shift. Grateful that Sherlock chose to remain in his mind palace, as well as my lab pocket, I was able to go through my paper work in record time. Then, a curious thing happened. While reaching for my cup of coffee, I dropped my pen on the floor, which isn't that curious at all. But, bending down to pick it up, I found an envelope with my name...the handwriting quite lovely. It was a short and sweet request from a co-worker that left me mildly astonished at its Victorian formality.

Molly,

               I know we’ve only worked together for a few months, but I’m afraid I can’t ignore this feeling any longer. If you’re up to it, perhaps we could have coffee sometime or maybe even dinner? I’d like to get to know you better.

Best regards,

               Thomas

               Of course I found his approach highly unusual. Having trained Thomas when he first started three months ago, he never struck me as the shy type. Why not just ask in person, or give a ring? Still, he was always very sweet to me, and we all do silly things once in a while. Maybe he was trying to impress me? And, sadly, I wasn't having a bit of a dry spell where dating was concerned. A one year, involuntary hiatus was beginning to feel like a seven year drought. Where's the harm in having coffee...or dinner? It's not like a commitment, or anything, and I do like to eat...

               But what if it was terribly boring? It was difficult for me to find anyone that held my interest. My mum always said I was fickle, and my standards were set too high. Perhaps she’s right, but is it such a crime to want the best for myself? I used to joke with her, saying that maybe I was just a woman out of her time. I wanted adventure, and was much too bored with mundane life.

               “You’re thinking too loudly,” Sherlock’s voice reverberated through me, making me jump and nearly fall off my chair.

               “Oh Christ! Don’t do that,” I gasped, my hand resting on my chest, whilst catching my breath. “I doubt you can hear me think.”

               “You’re right, I can’t,” he replied matter-of-factly. “But I can feel a certain amount of tension in the room.”

               “The only tension you’re feeling right now is you nearly causing me to jump out of my skin. No offense.”

               “None taken. However, I always trust my instincts, Miss—“

               “Then please trust this,” I interrupted, my impatience growing. “Instead of discussing ‘tension in the room’, maybe we should figure out if Moriarty had any children, and go from there.”

               “Balance of probability says no. Perhaps his brother did. He was a stationmaster, and relatively normal,” Sherlock informed me, cocking his head in my direction, a slight twinkle in his lovely blue eyes. “Did you know his name was James too? Colonel James Moriarty.”

               I didn’t know and was unable to hide my surprise by this information. “He and his brother shared the same name?”

               “Yes, very disappointing in its unoriginality,” he sighed. “Now, what are you going to say?”

               “About what?”

               “Not about; who. The man behind the letter.”

               “You…you read my letter?”

               “No need. It was obvious.”

               It had been a long day. I was tired, and his imperiousness was getting on my last nerve. “Obvious?”

                "Clearly. Your breathing was elevated from the moment you opened the envelope. As you read, and considered the words on the page, the pupils of your eyes dilated, your tongue slipped over your lips several times - no doubt an invitation to dinner - and you have a habit of twirling a strand of hair when interested in the attentions of the opposite sex. That should be enough to be getting on with, unless you'd like more?"

                 “It's none of your business," I snapped, grabbing my keys and ready to storm from the room. I had half a mind to leave the pocket watch, and him, in my locker for the night.

             “While it's been a year, perhaps longer," Sherlock continued, "since you've courted any gentleman worthy of your affections, Miss. Hooper, I suggest you postpone any further involvement from the dubious, masculine intention and keep your priorities on me. This is a mutually advantageous arrangement, if you recall. The sooner this unfinished business is over with, the sooner I can move on and you can return your attention to this boy."

             I was furious with him. "He is not a boy!"

             "While it is not in my nature to contradict a budding romance such as yours, no self-respecting man would dare approach a beautiful, young woman with impoverished meagerness."

             "Yes, you would, and you are. And, if you must know, I'm going to tell him 'yes.'"  Pride had gotten the better of me, as did the condescending attitude of a one hundred and fifty year old ghost. I had no intention of saying 'yes' to Thomas, but I refused to be bullied and needed to prove something...although I wasn't exactly sure what. Perhaps I was only infuriated that he seemed to think he knew everything about me.

             “Fine,” he muttered, then disappeared.

             “Fine.”

             I slipped the watch in my pocket, but couldn't shake the feeling of disappointment. Somewhere between his arrogance, and me needing to prove something, I wanted his argument to mean something more than unfinished business. Or, maybe, I was stalling for time? If we solved the case, what then? He'd leave and, as much as it pained me to admit this, I wasn't ready to say good-bye.

Author’s Note: a big thank you to @penelope1730 for helping me figure out what was missing from this chapter! Any theories? Or favorite parts/lines?

FFN | AO3 | Buy Me a Coffee?

#sherlolly #Life in Death #my fanfiction

[chocopalustre]

are U interested in reading my final paper for a course on Queer Literature and Theory? do u like lesbians? are u curious about lesbian sexuality in pornography? do u need a good sassy laugh?

look no further than right under this cut!!!

Content Warning: This essay contains sensitive content discussing sexually explicit material.

Tribadism: Lesbian Bump and Grinding. (Definition courtesy of Urban Dictionary)

“Hey, Kylee, how do lesbians have sex?” I pause for a moment, trying desperately not to roll my eyes. With a deadpan expression, I hold up two victory signs with my fingers and mash them together. “We scissor each other, of course.” I let a few seconds pass, taking in their look of bewilderment, before I crack a sardonic smile. I was joking of course. Every good lesbian knows that scissoring isn’t actually a real thing. Scissoring is what straight men think they see women doing in lesbian porn, opening their legs and criss-crossing them together in a cutting motion. Fake lesbians scissor. Sophisticated lesbians trib.

Of course, it took me a while to learn this. Like many other queer youth, I struggled to squeeze out any information in regard to lesbian sex out of the public sex education system. What choice did I have but to stumble across some poorly-made erotic content on the Internet? (Many choices, in fact, but I didn’t know that then.) Much of my knowledge about how two women have sex together without a man initially came from this exploration, shortsighted and misrepresented as it was. But now that I am a Real Adult Lesbian, I am interested in Real Adult Lesbian Sex. As such, I want to move beyond the question of what lesbian sex is and instead examine how pornographic sex represents the lesbian community. What better way to explore this idea than to return to my original Sapphic-inclined childhood investigation… porn on the Internet!

I was a naïve child, so of course I didn’t know that the lesbian porn I was viewing has a specific name: Ersatz porn. Ersatz porn is the term used to describe “girl-on-girl” pornography made by the straight man, for the straight man. And it is this porn that inflames the hearts of indignant female feminists everywhere, including my own. So imagine my surprise upon discovering that sometimes these fake lezzys fueled a fire in my loins as well. How was I supposed to reconcile this?

The 3 P’s: Penetration, Pleasure, and Pussy Shots

Everything I hate about lesbian porn made for men’s consumption comes to the tip of my tongue instantly- pun not intended. First, there are the fingernails. Every performer has an obscenely long, pointed, hot pink $40 set of acrylics. If you buy into the longstanding and dodgy myth of nail length indicating whether a woman is gay, then the 1-inch kitty claws on the screen in front of you are a dead giveaway: She isn’t a lesbian, and the girl she’s fucking isn’t enjoying it. I myself have a love-hate relationship with the nail clipper, often keeping my nails longer (a reasonable length, of course), but I can definitively say that the prospect of somebody scratching up my vulva with those talons, pretending it’s pleasurable… Needless to say, not my kind of thing. Unfortunately, these pricey manicures are least of our worries.

Ersatz porn has only one audience in mind: Men. And every straight man knows that women, lesbian or not, just want a dick. This isn’t about her pleasure, it’s about his. And by involving aggressive sucking and fucking with a strap-on, the male viewer can identify with the woman wearing it on screen. Her purpose is to simply act as a placeholder for a male body. For some odd reason, men still seem to think that women easily get off on penetration alone, so it’s not surprising that there is little clitoral stimulation in girl-on-girl porn. These poor guys don’t know any better. But us lesbians know the truth: The clit is the shit. Dildos and vibes all have their place in the bedroom for dykes, but the end-goal of it all is arousal and orgasm, not a penis. Unfortunately, the sole attention on penetration means that the best these pseudo-lesbians can get are pseudo-orgasms (not that many viewers would be able to tell the difference).

I was happy to discover that I am not the only one curious about other queer women’s take on “lesbian” porn; in an exploratory experiment performed by Todd Morrison and Dani Tallack, a small group of lesbian and bisexual women were interviewed after viewing scenes from both Ersatz porn and lesbian-created lesbian porn. They discussed what they saw the films representing in terms of lesbian identity. Viewers noted that the women having sex in the girl-on-girl scenes didn’t appear to enjoy it at all; there was no genuine emotion nor any interest in pleasing one another. One viewer remarked, “Yeah, this didn’t look very physical … She could have been reading the paper while the girl was banging her.” When one girl fingers or goes down on her partner, she rarely looks up to make eye contact. It’s all very detached, and the pained expressions on their faces accompanied by high pitched whines seem less like the result of a good fucking and more of a “God when the hell is this gonna be over” response.

The male gaze is all about those close-up shots of the genitalia, which is sort of confusing to me because as much as they want to see it, they don’t seem to worship our labia as much as their local dyke does. The objectification and exploitation of the female body is at work, a key instrument in the misogynistic toolbox designed specifically for mainstream heteronormative pornographic orgasms. Let’s pull out the hammer then, shall we? Our good friend penetration makes yet another appearance, often combining hardcore fucking with restraint practices—whether it’s steel handcuffs or a rough pair of hands clenched tightly around wrists. In and out, in and out, we see the pink dildo pounding into a pussy, and rarely does the camera stray from this scene to her face, essentially detaching female pleasure from the action of penetration. She is reduced to an object in which the only use is a hole to be fucked. The penetrator then forces the body below her to slobber and choke all over the dildo, hissing out abusive and demeaning remarks: “Your dirty little fucking pussy likes to take this big fucking cock, doesn’t it? Dirty little slut.”

Pornhub gratuitously offers up tons of content like this. Just look at “TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” (Don’t worry, I took the liberty of analyzing the scene to pull out its most ridiculous parts so you don’t have to.) Here we have a busty blonde TSA agent watching two naked women sixty-nine on a table with a bright light shining down on them… very reminiscent of a visit to the doctor’s office—minus the sex.[1] The blonde doesn’t engage in any physical contact while the other two are going at it and instead looks on with a forced smile of pleasure. Then we have the painfully slow zoom in on the JUICY WET PUSSY. There was also a gun involved, just in case you forgot this was porn made for men; nothing screams heterosexual masculinity like pointing an armed weapon at a woman’s head while you fuck her. And finally, how could we forget the infamous double dildo scene? It’s very important to show that every hole is filled by a phallus. If we zoom our male gaze out a bit to take in the whole body, I fear what we see is not much better than these money shots.

Being Butch and BDSM

Let me just lay this on the table now: I am a hyper-feminine queer woman. I am all too familiar with comments like, “But you’re so pretty?!” or “I never would have guessed…” when a straight person finds out that, yes, I am in fact queer as fuck. My love for glitter, killer eyeliner, and an overall hatred of pants puts me at the unwanted mercy of male attention. Even among the queer community, I feel the need to loudly announce my presence; I’m here, I’m queer, and you can shove your misguided compliments on my “straight” appearance right up your ass. One would think then that I enjoy the performers in mainstream porn, that I would laud them for actively combating femme invisibility. The problem is that a) because of this “representation” men think feminine-appearing lesbians are really just college chicks experimenting and having threesomes before running into the muscular arms of someone with a real penis and b) it simply doesn’t turn me on. Where are the butch ladies? Perhaps my biggest beef with Ersatz porn is that I feel it actually does a disservice to representing lesbians, even my fellow femmes. Representation is only good if it is appropriately and accurately diverse, and Ersatz porn is decidedly not. Sure, the hair color may change and maybe one of them has double Ds while the other has Cs, but other than that… Femmes aren’t flat and they’re certainly not fat.

Returning to the interviews, the participants noted that the bodies in Ersatz porn reflected society’s expectation for straight women, even if they were supposed to be lesbians. Even more unsettling, the performers look less like women and more like girls. Straight men seem to think that college freshmen have the time, energy, and money to maintain a perfectly hairless physique. To loosely quote the response of a previous professor of mine to a male partner who wanted her pubic hair shaved: “Why? Do you like to fuck little girls?” Proportionally, their appearances are reminiscent of the old school Barbie doll: slim waist, young face, and huge boobs. Women, lesbian or otherwise, come in all different shapes and sizes, but it seems that these straight male viewers have yet to catch on to that. Difficult enough is it to accept that two women can get sexual satisfaction without a man, they’ll be damned if she’s fat or has short cropped hair! The performers’ bodies appear to be the biggest difference between mainstream lesbian porn and porn produced and made specifically for queer women.

There is one specific butch body that comes to mind within the mainstream sphere, however: Lily Cade. Now, I have my own gripes with Cosmopolitan magazine. Their advice essentially boils down to “here’s why you’re single and sad, so let us show you how to be sexy in order to catch a man and fulfill your meaning in life!” Any articles that mention identities outside the normative are riddled with misinformation and operate only as a way to clickbait intersectional feminists into reading them. Needless to say, my initial reaction to their article titled “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star” was dismissive at best. However, upon looking at the photo of the petite, jean jacket-wearing woman with choppy ginger hair and heavily lined eyes underneath the title, I knew I recognized her and couldn’t resist giving the article a read. (Like I said, fucking clickbait.) Cosmo names Lily Cade the exception to the rule that most girl-on-girl porn stars are actually straight. Before her career really kicked off, Cade described herself as a butchy lesbian with a little bit of baby fat. She struggled to convince directors to give her a chance because her appearance didn’t fit what mainstream porn was selling. Cade then lost 40 pounds, got a tan, and revamped her sexy lingerie in order to break through the business. So how does a real dyke feel producing Ersatz porn?

Cade admits that sparking chemistry on set with the straight women she performs with is one of the most difficult parts of her job. Interestingly enough, Cade criticizes girl-on-girl porn because it’s not meant for female viewers, that the overall the performance is “fake on every level.” Although she weaseled her way into the business by adjusting her look, she doesn’t necessarily think that she performs the way that everybody else in Ersatz porn does. Cade strives for authenticity; she makes an effort to connect with the women so that they can perform a real sex scene. Cade comments, “You don’t have to make love to me, you don’t have to even touch me. Just let me fuck you, and I’ll get you off, and you’ll like it.” But how is it that a lesbian performer can engage in the content she criticizes? Indeed, this is a point of contention for many people involved in queer porn. Lily Cade has come to acquire the label of “sell-out” among the queer underbelly of the mainstream. The changes Cade made that brought her success in the mainstream industry only resulted in derision in the realm of queer pornography. Already a sort of niche business, Indie queer pornographers could have used another butch body to represent and pleasure us lesbians out here. To turn your back on your community and play pretend for the straight team? Unthinkable. Worse yet is the fact that, of all venues, her outlet for public exposure was Cosmo magazine.

But who are we to say that Cade isn’t having authentic sex? After all, she is still a lesbian. And her attitude toward her work certainly seems gay to me; she maintains a high level of enthusiasm and a devotion to performing sex with her female colleagues. For the lesbians that do stumble across her work within the mainstream sphere, Cade is putting out content that is more accessible and relatable for them. Her apparent conformity does not mean she is suddenly no longer a queer woman. In response to criticisms, Cade says that she’s “chosen to create a look that is accessible to a more mainstream audience, but is undeniably a lesbian look… I don’t see myself as a sell-out; I see myself as subversive.” And to all of the straight male viewers of her work, Lily Cade has a message: “I’m showing them how a real dyke does it.”

When the butches do come out to play, they star disproportionately in the BDSM genre, especially in mainstream porn. So even though I want to see the bodies I’m attracted to, I’m caught in a catch-22 situation: Yes, the butches exist, but often only in circumstances involving extreme violence and submission. That isn’t to say that BDSM isn’t arousing. In fact, BDSM relies on domination, bondage, sadism, and masochism as a turn-on for viewers. What I’ve found, though, is that in mainstream porn BDSM is performed in a male heterosexual context rather than a lesbian context. Another Pornhub gem, “Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5,” exemplifies this concept. The video is a thirty-minute compilation of strap-on fucking with butch women doing most of the labor. The content and title combined appear to give us lesbians the recognition we deserve. However, it opens with a quote: “By far, one of the most popular fantasies women have is being the man for one night, literally. That’s right, I’m referring to a strap on penis.” In wearing this sex toy, a lesbian is suddenly transformed into a heterosexual man; it’s clear that the butch body still acts less as a queer woman and more as the placeholder for the male viewer.

Abuse and objectification of the female body also is heightened to suit the male gaze. Hair is pulled violently back as she extends one of her legs straight in the air so that our view of the dick is not obscured. It does not matter that these inorganic, acrobatic positions are not pleasurable nor conducive to sex; penetration and the role of the penis is the primary focus. There is little clitoral stimulation involved, the scenes are rough and more demanding than pleasurable, and the strap-on is glorified as the Sub is made to perform a blowjob for the Dom.[2] Finally, one of my personal favorite scenes—a long-haired femme being pounded against a weight rack, her tennis shoes still on. How did she get her clothes off without taking those bulky sneakers off? It doesn’t matter, these women are making gains at the gym, appealing to the Frat boy’s favorite pasttime. In the end, it seems you have two options to choose from when it comes to Ersatz porn: Watch a threesome between Sorority girls experimenting with lesbian sex for the first time through a hazing ritual, or watch a (still pretty feminine) butch relentlessly subjugate a dubiously consenting hyper-feminine girl and not even pretend to enjoy it.

Advertising and Authentic Arousal

Obviously, then, queer porn is much better at depicting authentic lesbian relationships than Ersatz porn… Or is it? My knee-jerk response would be to let out a loud, defiant YES! OF COURSE IT IS! It’s far easier to find what you are into when perusing the realm of queer porn—even if getting access to it is much more difficult in the first place. Unlike mainstream lesbian porn, which you can find in abundance uploaded on sites like Pornhub or xHamster, queer-produced porn often does not find its way out beyond access to those who pay for it. But when you do find it, you’ve hit the Sapphic jackpot. Performers vary from the familiar femmes to chubby dykes, from chapsticks to stone butches and trans women. The scenes are often more believable because of the bodies in them; they are diverse and range in size, echoing many a lady-lover’s desire to appreciate all parts of all women. The women in Morrison’s study noted that the performers were often much older, “not like they had pubic hair a week ago,” and that “they had marks on their bodies, like stretch marks and stuff. They weren’t perfect.” Not only do the bodies reflect a diverse array of lesbians in terms of style and age, they are also more realistic because of their “imperfections.” These are the same flaws that are quickly airbrushed and implanted away in the mainstream sphere. However, nail length still seemed to be an issue, and what the women lacked in a perfect figure they made up for with the heavy use of makeup, accessories, and perfect hairdos. It seems that no matter who it’s for, pornography still has a certain aesthetic of ideal beauty to maintain.[3]

Bodies aside, what about content? When a butch straps on a dildo and fucks her hot femme girlfriend, are the underlying themes really so different from Ersatz porn? Even in queer porn, it appears that the strict gender binary has its place. Unfortunately, no matter how exclusive the lesbian club may be, societal expectations of gender roles and expression still exert themselves full force on our bodies. Yet somehow, as queer women, we proclaim that this is still what real lesbian sex is. Whether or not it resembles heterosexual sex is not the point or purpose; the fact of the matter is that these are queer bodies performing queer sex. Theoretically, it does not rely on misogyny the way that porn for heterosexual men does. The performers engage in a subversive and empowering scene where they reclaim their right to their bodies and their sex lives. They are performing with their fellow lesbians in mind, not acting for a male gaze.

When examining how porn produced by lesbian women is advertised for consumers, one thing becomes very clear: We want real sex. In order to draw in their demographic, many queer pornography sites capitalize on the idea of authenticity. A few catchphrases used by CyberDyke.net include: “We depict the sex the way people really have it.” “real fantasies / real orgasms / real lust / real butches / real bodies / real sex.” Well fuck, the site has me sold! I would take CyberDyke’s “porn aimed at real women and lesbians” over Lesbian Cheerleader Squad 2 any day. How do I know that those lesbians are fake? Well, I don’t, really, but I’ve never seen porn aimed at straight men claim that the women are Real Lesbians. Mainstream pornography doesn’t need to affirm the sexualities of their performers because men don’t really care about authentic representation. A title with “TWO HOT WOMEN” in it is just enough and the Kleenex are out. Women wouldn’t be watching their porn, anyways, so what does it matter? Perhaps queer porn is not showing us reality, but rather performing “a fantasy of authenticity.” Pornography is essentially a visual fantasy, and we lesbians dream about a world in which our identities are valid, every woman loves us back, and men aren’t around to fuck it up and exploit our desires. It is that illusion of authenticity which gives queer lesbian porn its allure.

It may come as a surprise to learn that not all lesbians necessarily agree that queer porn is the better porn. Authenticity, it seems, has to do with much more than just a body. In a different set of interviews conducted by Valerie Webber, non-heterosexual women who performed lesbian porn made for men were asked to discuss how their performance related to their sexual orientation. It turns out that many did not believe that they were performing “fake” sex, rather simply adjusting their actions to capture and create what the audience needed. Performing with a woman who was also lesbian-identified did not immediately make the scene the performer’s real sex life, and most agreed that the line between their work and authentic sex was not so clearly defined.

Despite the many quarrels we have with Ersatz porn, lesbian-created lesbian pornography cannot escape our critical eye either. Emotional intimacy makes sex appear authentic; when both women are clearly into each other (not giving weird sultry looks in the male viewer’s camera’s direction), I’m much more likely to be aroused. But intimacy quickly strays into mushy romance in lesbian-created porn. The stereotype that women are more sensual and emotive and thus lesbian relationships would maximize on romantic, loving sexual activity is a key point of criticism in queer porn. I, for one, resent the assumption that any sex I have will be vanilla by default. Some viewers admitted to preferring scenes from Ersatz porn; one remarked that the lesbian-created scene “was completely… boring in every way. The music was boring, the women were boring, the scene was boring, the colors were boring, the film was boring, the camera stayed stationary for Christ’s sake. It was boring.”[4] Another admitted, “Um, you guys are going to think I’m a bad lesbian, but I really like the penetration. It’s hot.” Bad Lesbian Club rejoice! Her guilt echoed my own anxiety at my arousal by certain girl-on-girl porn scenes. But clearly not every dyke is into the same thing, and even content produced by queer creators can fall prey to harmful stereotypes.

Not all lesbian porn is quite so corny, of course. Vanilla can be a pleasant no doubt, but as one viewer noted, “Let’s get it really raunchy sometime.” When some of us come out of the closet, we bring along some of our more hardcore desires—whips, sturdy ropes, ball gags, and leather collars. BDSM has long played a role in the lesbian community, and its prominence in lesbian-created pornography adds to the supposed authenticity of the performance. However, as Julie Levin Russo points out in her article, “’The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces,” it is the “mobilization of recognizable markers of dyke subculture (e.g. butch bodies, tattoos and piercings, fetish attire)” that feed into stereotypes about what being a lesbian is really like. Needless to say, not all queer women participate in or identify with these things. Although butch bodies help clue viewers into what porn is made for them, their representation is still almost exclusively present in the realm of BDSM. Themes of dominance are associated with masculinity, thus reflected in butch-heavy scenes of punishment and orgasm denial. After assessing my pleasure at certain penetration scenes in girl-on-girl porn, now I must question why I can so easily accept porn as made for my fellow lesbians through the mere presence of a butch body. It may seem more authentic to me, but for other queer women, perhaps the message they’re receiving is that certain characteristics—both in your relationship and your physical appearance—must be present in order to be real lesbian.

Reaching the Climax

Some would say that the question of authenticity is irrelevant because the purpose of pornography is to reflect viewers’ fantasies. How necessary is it to be real lesbians having sex? Why does it matter if most people can’t do the splits while they’re being eaten out? But without giving genuine thought to the performers and scenes you show, you run the risk of spreading misinformation about lesbians. Our existence cannot be denied, and failing to consider the impact of homogeneity in porn does a disservice to our very real livelihoods. The ruling is not decisive among women, queer or otherwise, as to which type of pornography is better or worse. My idea of what good porn is does not always match the reality of many queer women in the world; everybody has a different dynamic within their relationship, after all. Ultimately, though, there are definitely some things I could live without. (I’m glaring back at you, male gaze.)

[1] Doctor settings are actually quite a common scene in mainstream porn; straight men seem to have this idea that going to the gynecologist is hot. Because having my OBGYN shove a speculum up my vaginal canal is totally a turn-on, right?

[2] I’m still not sure how either party would get any personal pleasure out of choking on a silicone cock… but then again, butches are really just women who want to be men, remember?

[3] It’s not like we sweat during sex or accidentally choke on our girlfriend’s perfectly curled hair or anything.

[4] A 70-minute sex film set to classical music with zero dialogue wouldn’t be particular titillating for me, either.

Works Cited

Morrison, Todd G. and Dani Tallack. “Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Interpretations of Lesbian and Ersatz Lesbian Pornography.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Spring2005, pp. 3-30.

Russo, Julie Levin. “‘The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces.” In Jacobs, Katrien & Janssen, Marije & Pasquinelli, Matteo. “C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader.” Jan. 2007.

“Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5.” Pornhub, 2016, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph577e65b319a02.

“TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” Pornhub, October 2017, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph59ccece3078ca.

Webber, Valerie. “Shades of Gay: Performance of Girl-On-Girl Pornography and Mobile Authenticities.” Sexualities, vol. 16, no. 1/2, Jan. 2013, pp. 217-235.

Wischhover, Cheryl. “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star.” Cosmopolitan. 2 Mar. 2016.

#personal #i know like maybe 2 people will read this but thats ok #im really happy w how it turned out and if ur interested it is here for u to read!

[edwardlando]

The Perfect Painting

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally”

― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I think the most powerful thing an entrepreneur can do to move toward success is to improve his or herself.

Just like startups, we too have to be iterated on over and over. We have to throw away what doesn’t work and refine what is working. And in both cases this is very hard and requires consistent, unrelinquishing commitment.

Every year at this time people draft a list of “resolutions,” promises they make to themselves about how they will act differently in the coming year in the hopes of changing their lives.

Promises they almost inevitably end up breaking.

We all do this.

Why is it that we break promises to ourselves?

I think it comes from lack of self-awareness.

We have two selves: who we actually are and who we wish we were. The real self, and the ideal self. And ambition is the tension between these two.

When we think about who we will be tomorrow, 6 months or a year from now, our human imperfections are abstracted away. We’re not tired, or lazy, or impatient, or jealous or scared as we are today, right now. In this simulation it’s very easy to imagine that we’ll do all the right things. (And by the way, we often do know what the right thing is! The hard part is doing it when the time comes.)

Setting goals that only our ideal selves can reach is dangerous because by failing to live up to them we lose trust in ourselves and our ability to improve our condition.

If you’ve already tried 10 times to quit smoking, lose weight, wake up early, be more patient with your family, save more money, or whatever it is and always end up falling back into the pit, you disrespect yourself and your promise over and over to the point that you don’t believe in trying anymore.

To avoid this, we should set imperfect goals.

Well, goals that take in account who we really are and not who we wish we were. Hedge fund manager (and modern philosopher) Ray Dalio talks a lot about hyper-transparency and self-awareness in Principles, and he’s built his company and success around this modus operandi.

Self-awareness allows you to trick yourself into doing the right thing. By anticipating ahead of time what your weaknesses will have you fall for, you can set up a game or situation so that you will not be faced with that trap.

Yes, you are the architect of the game. And the game is your life.

Ulysses did that when he put wax in his men’s ears and asked them to tie him to his mast in approach of the Sirens.

No one can resist the Sirens. Not even Ray Dalio. But some people just become better at making sure they never have to fall into their trap.

So if eating ice cream in the middle of the night is your demon, don’t have ice cream in the house. I promise you will be too cold and tired to go outside into the cold and buy some (although the on-demand economy is your enemy here…)

Or in my case waking up early is still something I am fighting to do.

Well, to make it happen I can go to bed earlier. I can wake up and go to sleep at the same time at least during week days to get alter my circadian rhythm and start getting tired at 11pm.

I can also create things to look forward to in the morning, whether that be the thrill or reading or writing over steaming coffee while the world still sleeps, making a fresh, healthful breakfast, or maybe going on a run along the water at sunrise while listening to my favorite playlist.

Combining a “painful” task (or what feels like one today) with a reward (or a shower of rewards) has been incredibly effective for me. I have learned to crave my berry protein shake after each work out.

Another way to “trick” yourself is to become aware that the best way to get rid of a bad habit is to replace it with something else. Whenever you feel the impulse to do that thing you’re trying to do, it’s much harder to suppress that urge entirely than to quell it in some other fashion.

Or as illustrated in the graph below, it’s easier to go from A to B than it is to go from A to C. This graph was used by HBS Professor Alison Brooks to make a point about public speaking: many people who are nervous tell themselves to calm down while instead it would be much easier and more realistic for them to translate that nervousness into excitement.

From HBS Professor Alison Brooks’s paper: “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement”

So for example if you get hungry in the afternoons and have a bad snacking habit, you can indulge that habit but make healthy smoothies or eat another real meal instead of going for the chips.

Another very helpful trick in my case has been to re-frame my perception of certain tasks.

I used to absolutely despise any administrative matters: paying bills, doing taxes or dealing with the government in any way, returning an item, going to the doctor, checking my bank statements. I hated these things to the point that any physical letter I received elicited fear in me. Fear because I was afraid of what was inside them but also of what would happen as a consequence of my taking 2 months to deal with what should have taken 1 hour. Paying something, mailing something, check books. Who the hell still uses paper? Who the hell has a check book? Why do people keep bothering me and wasting my precious time?

Those were my thoughts and they harmed me. I paid late fees, forgot to renew things and in general wasted more time than I would have taking care of these things in the first place.

I learned my lesson.

Now when I get hit with these administrative tasks I deal with them on the spot no matter how much I wish I could do that other more interesting thing I was doing before I got interrupted.

The reason I used to ignore these is that I thought they were a waste of my time.

And that makes sense.

There are after all only two types of tasks: pleasure seeking and pain avoiding. We start off at neutral, or 0 on the thermometer indicator if you will, and pleasure seeking tasks can take us above that neutral level to those warmer temperatures: we focus on doing the work we love, we go for dinner with friends, we watch a movie.

In comparison, doing laundry, going to the DMV or applying for insurance is not going to take us above 0. These chores will just ensure that we won’t get to the negative numbers.

It’s much less exciting because the very best outcome is being back at 0. The upside is so boringly limited. It’s what we dreadfully call “being a grown up.”

If you’re a novelist lost in your beautiful world, would you rather write another few pages of your masterpiece or call AT&T about your excessive phone bill?

You get the point.

What has saved me has been to reconsider my perception of these tasks. These pain avoiding activities are not only about getting back to zero. They’re about making sure that we don’t lose all the positives. Quite literally, they allow us by completing to avoid what is otherwise certain pain. The rest of the skyscraper will collapse if we do not take care of these foundations even though they might be invisible, beneath the ground.

I have taken on the habit of listing daily goals as bullets, many of which are pain avoiding tasks. And I take just as much if not more pleasure and pride in getting those done than the things that come naturally to me. Tearing through the the boring, unpleasant stuff feels like a great accomplishment, a triumph over myself.

Consider two oversimplified types of people: the “creative” and the “operator.” These two actually come up quite often in the world of startup founders. (Using masculine pronoun here for convenience.)

The creative didn’t get good grades in all subjects, only those that he found interesting. He might have written brilliant stories but always made spelling mistakes and had messy handwriting. He was often late, lost his homework all the time, and continues to be a little messy today and still doesn’t check his bank account like his mom asks him to.

In contrast, the operator is the person who gets shit done. He never wrote “The Catcher in the Rye” but wrote high quality albeit slightly dry analyses of literary passages as required and did just as well in math and science classes. An all around excellent, balanced student without mad genius in any category.

The creative and the operator would not do as well working individually. The creative would end up broke, writing poems or drawing in an apartment with no heating because he forgot to pay the bill last month, and the operator would be doing fairly well in a corporate job and yet feeling that he could do more but not quite knowing where to start.

It would be silly for the creative to try to become the operator and vice versa. Because of nature and nurture, they are not wired the same way.

As Ray Dalio explains, being successful in your job and life is about focusing on your strengths and turning them into killer weapons and overcoming your limitations by surrounding yourself with people who will help you with those and make sure they don’t get in your way.

Finding complementary partners works in business, love, friendship and pretty much everywhere.

I do think that for our own personal esteem, it is still important to become competent even at those things we dread so that we stop fearing them and at least understand what is going on when someone else takes care of them.

In drafting goals for improvement, I try to keep both of these in mind: I can trick myself into becoming better at the things I don’t like by setting up the game in a way that doesn’t make me fall for usual temptations, and I can partner with people who are complementary to me and concentrate on sharpening what already comes naturally.

In both of these, becoming more self-aware by asking ourselves and our close ones what we are good and bad at is the key to making promises that we will keep.

Perhaps food for family dinner discussions.

Happy New Year :)

Thank you for reading.

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#Productivity #Life Lessons #New Year #New Year Resolutions #Goals

[josephkitchen0]

How to Get Rid of Rats

By Cynthia Smith (Veterinarian in Washington) – I hate rats. I hate the way they dig dirty holes in my nice clean barns. I hate the squishy way the floor feels when there’s a rat tunnel underneath it. I hate the sick feeling I get when I see a rat whisk past my feet as I open the barns in the morning. I hate their furry little brown disease-carrying bodies that make me feel like my backyard chickens are a menace to all the neighborhood and like, any minute, the next Black Death will descend upon the world and all because I just had to raise poultry. My hatred of rats and their presence on my property lead me to search for solutions on how to get rid of rats.

Act 1: The Discovery

I feel like rodents are the dirty little secret of the poultry world. The one thing we hate to discuss or admit to (like having fleas on your dog or cockroaches in your house); acknowledging that you have seen a rat in your barn is like saying you are a bad person — one with really crummy hygiene. My son, Rob, has been well-trained never to say the word in public. (The last thing I want the neighbors to know is that the cute little backyard farm next door might be less than perfect, let alone a potential reservoir of disease.)

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Indeed, when I told Rob I was going to write this article, his first words were: “I hope it’s going to be anonymous!” I didn’t always hate rats. I had the pet white variety as a child and saw them occasionally in my practice as a veterinarian. It was only after I acquired chickens (about eight years ago at the age of 43) that the loathing began.

Our first order of chickens on my son’s birthday arrived in a cheeping little cardboard box from the Murray McMurray hatchery. While they grew inside of a puppy pen in the house, my husband and 8-year-old son labored to build a raccoon-proof coop in the backyard. Feed was stored in the next-door shed (which had an elevated floor).

All went well, as far as we knew, until the following summer when my husband reached to the upper shelves of the shed and pulled down last year’s nylon swimming pool. The blue plastic came down in a heap, along with the rats that had been nesting in it. As furry bodies rained over my husband’s head and shoulders, an impossibly high-pitched shriek emerged from his masculine throat and my son was witness to a burst of profanity the likes of which he had never heard his Christian father utter. “Mommy, Daddy swore!”

After the gnawed plastic and gruesome tale were revealed to me on my arrival home, I began my first foray into the business of extermination and researching how to get rid of rats; not something a veterinarian is particularly well-trained in. My husband proudly brought home electric traps, a tip he’s received when researching how to get rid of rats. They were supposed to give a quick painless death to the rat when it stepped on the plate. Either they didn’t work, or the rats never touched them. Nary a body did we ever see from those expensive devices. Then there were the glue traps. Guess what, the glue isn’t sticky anymore if it gets anything on it, like dust or shavings. Strangely, my coops were not dust-free. Then there were the good old-fashioned oversized mouse traps designed for their rattish cousins. These at least got some action. We found them exploded six to 10 feet from where they were set, but again, both bait and rat-free. I need not even mention the “humane live catch” trap (it was sized for mice anyway, who seem to be a lot dumber than rats). The plan was that mice could get in but not out again, so one was supposed to check the trap daily and humanely release Mickey and Minnie back into the wild. My husband only tried this once. He forgot to check the trap for two weeks, after which there were multiple cannibalized mouse corpses in the trap; the aftermath of a rodent-style Hunger Games and clearly not a humane way to die.

At this point, I felt there was no option except to try poison as a means of how to get rid of rats. All my efforts to employ natural ways to kill mice and rats were unsuccessful. I never wanted to use rat poison. Goodness knows, we see enough dogs and cats poisoned either by the poison itself or by consuming the poisoned animal. Years before we ever had poultry or had thought of using poison, we lost a pet cat to DeCon poisoning.

An excellent mouser, she would bring back just the tails and line them up at night for our admiration. Twice, she must have eaten a poisoned animal. The first time, we pulled her through. The second time, we were too late. So I know the risk of poison to the animals nearby. Unfortunately, I also understand the risk of a rat incursion in a populated area, both to property and to health. Something had to be done.

Intermission: Safe Rat Control Options

A word here must be inserted about what is certainly the most natural and safe of rat-control options: the domestic or farm cat or, perhaps, a rat terrier. People swear by this option for how to get rid of mice. The terrier was right out as, in my experience, dogs that kill rats also really enjoy killing chickens. But what about a cat? I counted. We have had 12 cats in the past 29 years. Of those, three were excellent mousers. Two of three died before they attained late middle age (about eight years), presumably because of their outdoor lifestyle. We are responsible citizens and have our pets spayed and neutered, so frequent replacement was not an option. The two cats who currently reside on my bed would not dream of soiling their precious paws with a filthy rodent. If you have a healthy supply of competent barn cats and are reading this article thinking what a dangerous poison-wielding idiot I am, my hat is off to you.

Act 2: Back to the Rat Story

Let us return to the saga. I contacted our Washington State Poultry Vet at the lab that does necropsies on poultry. If you do not have the access to a brilliant poultry resource like Dr. Roccio Crespo in your state, you have my pity.

Dr. Crespo informed me that I needed to buy little locking plastic boxes that hold the poison tightly confined on stakes. In this way, the rat must eat the poison in the box and cannot carry a chunk away to possibly poison another animal. I bought Tomcat boxes and bait at the local feed store. They were easy to use. The poison disappeared, dead rat bodies appeared and were immediately disposed of. There was no collateral damage in birds or other animals. Whew!

Fast forward to our move from our little house on a small lot to our littler house on a large (1.3-acre lot) a few years later. In the classic reverse market savvy that runs in my unhappy family, the real estate market crashed mere weeks after the papers were signed. Our new house was immediately worth much less than we paid, the mortgage was underwater and our old house unsalable unless at a very great loss. Doggedly, we muscled on as have many ethical Americans in the same situation. Refusing to renege on our word because circumstances had changed, we paid for our now overpriced home and prepared to become landlords as our old house was now vacant. Another rat crisis worsened our situation. When we abruptly removed every bird to our new barn on the new property, the current invisible rats grew and hungered. They went looking for food. They found it in grass seed stored in the garage, in camping food locked away in the attic, in water and food stores stored in plastic 24-hour kits. Before we knew it, we had rats that had moved uptown: highfalutin rodents living high in the attic and sporting top hats and monocles. The traps were again a failure. Once again, we were forced to resort to the poison. It worked, but with a small side effect. These rats did not do us the courtesy of quietly dying in their holes underground.

Noooo, they went to the far reaches of the attic and vents to die. It was summer. Chanel Number Fur permeated the house in several unexpected areas: the master bedroom, the hall closet, and the pantry — open these doors and prepare to run. All searches for their desiccating bodies proved futile. The house was, most certainly, not fit to go on the market. Eight months later, in the depths of winter, eau de rodent being but an unpleasant memory, we could finally begin to make preparations to lease out our money pit.

Act 3: The Return to Chickens

We had by now narrowed our focus to breeding only show varieties of bantam Polish and Araucanas. Some of our old flock remained as pets, along with turkeys, geese, and ducks acquired variously as lawn candy. Most birds were free range on our 1.3 acres, with the show birds confined to covered pens. A locked poison box was kept in each pen and rarely needed emptying. All was well. There are several other people in our neighborhood who keep a few birds, including a lovely next-door family who acquired nice birds and joined our 4-H club.

Suddenly, the rat population swelled. Poison boxes were still full but the Tomcat poison seemed barely nibbled. An experienced friend recommended, “Just One Bite,” a tasty looking poison with embedded grains. The rats loved it. The poison disappeared again and so did the rats. I diplomatically (I hoped) donated poison to my chicken-keeping neighbor. Whew. Back on track.

In 2013, the situation changed yet again. My neighbor went back to school and I offered to place her birds for her. Once the birds were homed, hungry rat hordes moved to the nearest source of food: us. This was the worst ever! On one night I saw six — count ’em, six — rats running around like they owned the place. (And I was taught that, if you see one, there are 10 more you didn’t see.) Neighbors down the street also discovered rat damage under their houses. Exterminators were called. I felt like Typhoid Mary.

The poison boxes were once again loaded and distributed. Chicken feed and water disappeared, but the bait stayed pristine. My friend was again consulted. Take out the feed so they have to eat the poison, she advised. Laboriously, every night we lugged feed out of all six pens, refilled the bait boxes, and lugged feed back out in the early morning before work. Chicken chores were becoming less fun and my teenage son was far less enthralled with his feathered friends. It worked (sort of), as the bait disappeared.

Indeed, we went through 24 pounds of bait, both the Tomcat and the Just One Bite, in the following three months.

However, while the bait was gone, the rats seemed totally unaffected. Fat rats, baby rats, all cavorting with seeming impunity in and among our birds. Then it hit me. Every morning I had to refill, not only the feed, but all the water! Full waterers at night were empty in the morning. My two remaining tired neurons finally made the connection: what did I put in my water? Apple cider vinegar. What does the vinegar contain, among other things? Vitamin K. How does rat poison work? By destroying the body’s vitamin K stores, thus causing them to slowly bleed to death.

Excellent, I’d spent three months administering the antidote along with the toxin. Fine work indeed. The darn poison itself was getting a lot harder to acquire too. The FDA had decided to ban sales of most of the really effective products to regular consumers. My local Del’s feed store and local hardware store no longer carried them. I was forced to pick up the Just One Bite in 8-pound cases from a feed store 120 miles away. I had to sign for it too. This would be OK except that it still wasn’t working well. Now I was carrying birds’ water and feed out every night and every morning, a feat which required I give up an extra 45 minutes of sleep before the work day and stumble around in the dark loaded with water that poured all over my shoes. Oh, I was loving raising chickens, you betcha.

An example of a safety trap, that keeps the rats from dragging poison into places also shared by pets and poultry.

We found a few dead rats, to be sure, and the Just One Bite was disappearing nightly by the pound, but the influx of baby rats playing fearlessly in my show cages convinced me I was still fighting a losing battle. To make matters worse, I had a deadline approaching. Soon I would have abdominal surgery, which would necessitate me turning over all the care of the birds to my son Rob for a while. No way was he going to be able to spend that kind of time lugging feed and water before his 6 a.m. Bible Study and 7:30 a.m. school. What to do?

Several things came to light in my frenzied research on how to get rid of rats that did not involve going back to a life without birds.

1. Visits to the affected neighbors informed me that their exterminators had tracked their rats to a neighborhood sewage drain source. (I was so worried they’d target me!) These people paid premium prices for professional exterminators who did exactly what I’d been doing: Put bait boxes all around the areas and when finished, advise their clients to buy their own boxes and keep them full as further sewage incursions were a certainty. (Whew! I wasn’t going crazy: there were indeed plenty of rats coming in faster than I could kill them.)

2. I discovered that the United Kingdom is experiencing a serious outbreak of poison-resistant rats in their sewage system. While I found no such reference in the U.S., it does not seem a far reach to assume that we, too, have rats that have evolved to be able to eat the stuff with minimal damage.

3. I decided I was quite unwilling to try the newer poisons that do not antagonize vitamin K. These poisons have no antidote whereas, with a $9 bottle of vitamin K given daily for a month, a pet that one presumes may have been poisoned can be saved. (I found my own cat eating a single rat this summer, and considering her incompetence, felt that there was no way she would have caught it unless it was already dying. A pill a day for a month and she lives to purr on my pillow for years to come.

4. There are many variations on the vitamin K antagonizing poisons. The trick, I decided, was to find a poison these rats had never seen before and that was tasty enough to compete with the feed. (We continue to put away the vinegar-enriched water at night, though.)

I found that product in First Strike Soft Bait. These soft packets must be stuck tightly on the stakes so the rats cannot carry them away, but they must taste delicious and we’re finally seeing corpses everywhere, even though we’re leaving the feed in at night. I am confident that, for a while at least, the vermin are in retreat. First Strike uses an ingredient called Difethialone at a concentration of 0.0025 percent.

As I mentioned, a product that I have really liked in the past is Just One Bite, which has the active ingredient, Bromadilone.

The bait stations (locking boxes) that I use are made by Tomcat, the Tomcat poison sold with the trap contains bromethalin and has the added advantage of being waterproof if you need to keep bait stations outside. It does seem to be considerably less palatable than the other two, so rats with a choice of goodies may not go for it.

And that’s it. As you may understand, I have written this article with great trepidation, not wanting to be branded as the chicken breeder with the rat problem. Please be constantly aware that, if you do have to treat with poison boxes, animals may still be at risk if they eat poisoned rats. Keep a sharp watch and immediately dispose of dead or dying rodents. Consult your veterinarian immediately if you suspect your pet has been poisoned, and bring a copy of the package so the doctor may ascertain proper treatment.

A recent visit to two admired breeder’s facilities convinced me that I am not alone in having trials dealing with these pests. I hope that my information may prove helpful, or may at least make you feel smug that you don’t have that disgusting problem or that your cats are competent. (If so, you have my envy.) I have written this article in good faith, hoping to save others some of the trials we have been through. I would prefer not to receive a ton of hate mail from PETA members who adore their little rat friends or from naturalist believers who are sure Diatomaceous Earth and probiotics can cure rats, rickets, rabies and a rainy day.

My wish for you: May the words, “Oh, Rats!” come out of your mouth only when you drop the feed bag on your toe.

What other ideas for how to get rid of rats would you add to this list?

 Originally published in Backyard Poultry June/July 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

How to Get Rid of Rats was originally posted by All About Chickens

[thequeerme-blog1]

Andro? Femme? Butch?

The one about pigeon-holing in the Queer community.

According to the Cambridge dictionary a label is a piece of paper or other material that gives you info about the object it is attached to.

We all wear invisible labels all the time. What if they were real though? As in letters stamped on our wrists. Instead of being a UK 12, you’d have an A (for Andro), F (Femme), B (Butch), D (Dyke), SL (Sporty Lesbian), G (Geek)… Watch out Charlie Brooker, I see a Queer Mirror here!

Some people might think that a few we have pretty obvious ones, like wearing a wristband I must say; although others have semi-hidden labels on their neck, and some invisible ones at their back. I label, you label, they label. Active voice. I am labelled, you are labelled, they are labelled. Passive. Getting the grammar now, right?

I’m not having a Black Mirror vision or giving a grammar lesson though. I’ve just felt the urge to write about pigeonholing as since I’m single the question I’m asked the most is… WHAT-IS-YOUR-TYPE?, believe me I’ve heard it way more times than ARE-YOU-SPANISH? (which is worrying as I could be Sofia Vergara’s second cousin, sometimes my own close friends don’t get me).

What is surprising is that when I came out in London, as a femme, my lesbian mates would just assume that I was into masculine (or less feminine) types. They, obviously, would change their mind when getting to know my personality. Again, Chet Faker sings talk is cheap… and it is free, I’d add. We talk too much a listen too little!

Tell me how’s your haircut that I’ll tell you who you gotta fancy!

A few weeks ago, however, I had an interesting and yet short chat (blame the DJ!) with someone who defended labels as a way to introduce yourself to the world (hetero-normative world, especially). I am vegan, I am a lesbian, I am a designer, I am a cyclist, I am a dancer, I am a socialite, I am a geek, and so on… Sounds about right. Labels make us feel secure. It’s like the skills you’d highlight in a cover letter when applying for a job. I have sound understanding of Final Cut, I am bilingual, I am enthusiastic. You make people realise who you are and what you want. Hence, what they can expect from you. In my personal-slash-love life, it saves me a lot of time with guys. I don’t like being hit on by lads. Sorry (not sorry) to be blunt but I had to put up with it for years; and no, it’s not arrogance, it was annoyance. You don’t need to be hot, beautiful and young; with two boobs and a pussy you’re likeable/hittable enough (against your will). Nowadays, however, I must say they rarely harass me. I guess it’s not acceptable just yet for lads to be into andro-girls.

Back in late spring, I had a similar debate with a (now) good friend of mine, although applied to the Queer community. It was an epic convo on a night bus, more entertained than watching the US elections. I obviously like questioning everything, starting by myself, plus pushing boundaries to make people/myself think. Today I kinda get her point and must admit she’s one of the few lesbians l’ve known who’s truly labels-free and independent. She really falls for the gay person, aside from her look, role, tag, etc.

The real issue is not to label yourself but to label others and, therefore, patronise, judge and assume their behaviours/interactions. You can call yourself andro, as I definitely do again and again, I’m free to do so if that’s what I identify with. Although it does not imply I follow the andro user guide.

Shouldn’t a queer community be more open-minded and less judgemental? However, we stereotype each other and proclaim what we are/aren’t allowed to do/feel/think. You are ANDRO (stamp!). You are FEMME (stamp!). You two pair together.

Hello Andro. Hello Femme. Welcome to your new homo-normative world! Please help yourselves to some hetero-types available for you in that box. They are ordered by topics. What are your roles in bed is one of the hottest and most consulted. It’ll be quite useful in your relationship from now on. After a read, feel free to practise with this strap-on that you Andro will always use and you Femme never (presumably). It doesn’t matter what your likes are, this is how we function here. It’s time for you to play now. Femme always remember you ought to wait, whereas Andro you do all the manual labours. Enjoy your new life!

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Queer Mirror.

Hence, you can guess who’s the most invisible, forgotten and even ignored character, gay girls with feminine/straight looks. Whilst listening to a few, I came to the conclusion that, after the suffered bisexual woman, the less understood, respected, listened to, is the feminine lesbian. They/we talk about them as if they were the woman (took from the patriarchy), the weak, emotional and sweet one, the princess waiting to be picked from the self by the andro king. Again, not everyone thinks/acts like that, however I’ve heard enough comments and seen sufficient interactions. And thank Whoever that I’m surrounded by those feminine ones who don’t give a shit and are as strong, blunt, diverse, logical, funny, active as I am (or as I am supposed to be!).

Let’s stop judging and pigeon-holing the other queer types. As in the end, we’re just repeating archaic, toxic, damaging, narrow-minded behaviours picked from our straight-fellows. Hence, let us live, love and laugh as free as we are and as queer as we pray.

Don’t do types, do star signs! (sing and repeat)

[irony on]

From now on, will just ask hey, what’s your star sign? Kids, you can try this experiment next time you go out. Although bear in mind you’ll become addicted to the Broadly daily horoscope.

Lately I don’t hang out with femmes, butches, andros, dykes anymore, I’m more into centaurs, sheep, lions, scorpions… It’s way more fun and purely scientific. Don’t believe me?

How come then, that I always have a crush-slash-adventure with Geminis? Or that myself obsessively attracts Taurus?

Why I normally hate-love Cancers and Virgos and I are best buds? Capricorns though… I’ve just known two. One turned me on a lot, the other is my new deep friend. No clue.

Last but not least, isn’t it coincidental that with Scorpios I always have an X-files relationship and that I normally fall in love with Aries?

Do the Zodiac, 12 new labels for you to use! Isn’t it excited? 👌😏

See you next month, dear Sag!

[irony off]

[iamheretohelpyougrieveandda-blog]

after orlando and zac efron- a fugue

[written june 2016. thought i posted here but didn't. updating the archive] some raw words after first exposures to the news of the tragedies in orlando. a bit of a fugue- those of you who read my master's paper or saw my integrative seminar will understand a bit more what i mean when i say that. can think of the pieces that follows like a dream- lots of associated significances that could be unpacked, processed, and more clearly articulated later. but hell with it- i'm doing this for me anyway. (for our collective liberation, but my work on that project starts with me). 'after orlando and zac efron- a fugue' man. i'm sitting in my grandmother's house. mama's house. i'm sitting in mama's house. on a bed in the guestroom with a really nice comforter that she won in the christmas white elephant. it has a pattern like the shapes i see in the playa dust when i've taken mushrooms. shapes that are sacred to me. divine, beautiful, frightening. i have been reading, slowly, some of what's on the internet about the shooting in orlando at pulse night club. i spoke with tim about it. i read a couple facebook posts by finn and my cousin, justin, and others. i cried as i read it in a chair in the living room, a yard away from my grandmother, the tv blasting high school musical 2. i feel conflicted about high school musical 2. it's nostalgic for me, the styles, the feelings and ideas of high school, popularity, activities, gender, sexuality. it's evocative. it makes me sad. parts of me confused, scared, LONGING. parts of me in pain. such a candied drama and narrative. so much privilege that i longed for. freedom, joy. also the trappings and challenges of a gendered society, poor communication, poor emotional fluency of parents, frustrations, etc. class issues of money and college and access, though even those 'struggling' in the cast with so much privilege and access. heart feelings around the 'best friend' characters being people of color- a huge step forward from what was on tv when i was growing up. and the main character is still a conventionally 'pretty' white boy. so many confusing feelings. i like him. i like her. i like him because he has her attention and their attention. how do i like him? i want to be with him? i want him? i want to be him? i want to be her? i want to be with her? i'm a confused adolescent. never figured it out. people 'like that' would have been put off by me. i'm too much. i'm not calm and gentle like them. i wasn't calm and gentle. i was intense and urgent and my energy was pretty aggressive and violent in terms of intensity, even in my play and my longing. i was holding so much trauma and fear and terror and wanted connection so bad. didn't even know i was wanting to cry and scream because of how unsafe and confused i felt. learned to stuff it down so good. learned to cement it over. i wanted that fucking privilege. i got a fair amount. but i busted my ass off. i couldn't really enjoy it. i was still peddling so hard to earn what i was getting and to try to keep the flow coming. in such a trauma hole. such a frozen blindness. screaming, but not an organic, real grieving with my voice and body, to be seen and held by the earth and my community. a shut down, disembodied, masked grieving. the screaming was there but it done through the intensity of my shutdown and freeze. it found its way out through sports and the intensity of food. i screamed with the pace at which i devoured and ran and pushed. it supercharged my play, my longings, my attempts to connect. what's zac efron doing? am i that masculine? could i be like him some day? questions i could feel these young, longing parts of me asking today as i watched. a less young part: man if i could have been like that... why couldn't i have been like that? and the fuck. anger and grief at a society that told me that was the only avenue to what i needed. the connection and support i needed to grow and become. reading an article about the shooting, narrating a text exchange by a man in a bathroom at pulse texting his mother while the shooter was in the bathroom also, moments before his death. a scream started to find its way out of me. i'm starting to tear up some right now as i write. i was crying and a scream was starting to find its way awkwardly out. weak, through flattened, weak muscles. like something only half-inflated, not supplied with enough blood. coming out through a crack on the side. i've shut down for so long, so tight, my body doesn't know how to do it. even when i want to or feel like it's best. i know it's in there. but i can't force it. i want the real thing. and i feel awful that i can't find access to it. i've hidden it from myself so well. so well to survive. a stepdad who scoffed at gays. hated them, as far as i was concerned. judged. a mom who tried to get me to convince my stepdad that i was gay as a joke because it would be funny. a gay man dragged to death behind a pickup. tv shows hating on gays. hypermasculine, mysogynistic, heterosexist media, culture. don't you dare be gay. don't be feminine. shove that shit away. people on the screen 'i will beat that shit out of you.' 'you better back off, i'm not gay, i will fucking kill you.' my stepdad rolling his eyes. my parents judging and teasing the 'faggy' neighbor (who is also a bitter, unsavory person- maybe in part because of this shit). so much fear and shutdown i don't even know what i feel about him or her on the tv screen. binary sexism. bi'phobia'. 50 people killed in a nightclub. i used to dance for money in gay clubs. i wanted to meet a beautiful man. and a beautiful woman. i wanted to have it all. i wanted to have gay sex and a sweet girlfriend i could hold and the disney movie pretty picture of nice fashion. he was texting his mom. he was going to die. he was shot. he wanted to have fun. maybe he wanted to meat a pretty boy. someone he could feel vulnerable with and free to expand and feel pleasure and unbound and accelerated with. he died pleading with his mom to call the police. please help. i need help. please help. i didn't know how to say it. i didn't know i needed help. i didn't know what i needed help from. this is terrifying. something is wrong. nobody can see this. nobody knows. the scream started coming out. it creaked and was crackly. i put it into the pillow. i cried silently back on the chair, just a yard from my grandmother. i figured she could easily see me. she might not, but i imagine she'd notice. i figured a good chance she wouldn't say anything as i scrolled through my phone and cried. i figured she might not want to have a conversation about that level of emotion. i figured even if she did, she might not know how to have the conversation i'd set the stage with my honest replies. i did not have enough confidence i'd get what this part of me was wanting, so yielded to the intersubjective inertia of the moment. continuing our family's conditioned legacy of lack of emotional fluency, a rule to not talk about some of the hard stuff, some of the stuff we don't have clear language for, some of the stuff that might be related to bad stuff. leave that locked up. pray. spiritual bypass. we don't talk to mama about that kind of stuff. it's only recently we can talk to our parents about that kind of stuff. so what the fuck do we do with that stuff? what does a child do with that stuff? a man dragged to death behind a pickup for being gay. being gay is a sin. sex is a sin. if you have those thoughts, try not to. pray. ask for forgiveness. go to confession. you are bad, but you can work hard to gain forgiveness. you can work to not have the thoughts and feelings. to that 5-year-old that wanted to do gymnastics but his stepdad and mom wouldn't let him because there were only girls- there's no answer for why these things that aren't supposed to be coming up in your body and mind, these longings, why they're coming up. there's encouragement toward 'masculinity'- hypermasculinity. there's nudging away from femininity. you convinced your aunts to buy you the pink oshkosh when you were 5. they tried to convince you for the blue. you wanted the pink. mom took it away. they're nudging. later stronger nudges. a man dragged behind a truck. dead. bloody. parts of his body scraped away. tease the girly kids. tease the fags. 'mike is a little girly man' my neighbor would tease my dad. girly is bad. my fear of death is more than gender and sexuality-based. i'm brown. i've internalized so much racism. from my white stepdad. from all my parents. from disney channel programs. from school. black people, slavery. native americans- 'indians' killed. blood. blood. pain. blood. screams. burning. lynching. blood. bloodbaths. i can write pages eloquently describing the transgenerational transmission of trauma, the legacies of colonization, decimation, oppression; the institutionalization of attitudes and conventions that keep this trauma ungrieved and the violence and imbalance alive subtly, invisibly, under the skin, under the muscle, in the nerves. blocking my screams. shutting them down. pulling my emotions far far away. years of therapy. a master's degree in feelings and in context and intergenerational trauma. i can see it. i know it's there. i can feel it. i still can't scream. like a weak little newborn. pathetic. arching, extending, clumsy uncoordinated movements. a stretch, a gesture that won't happen. a longing incomplete, unarticulated. like lighting a really poorly made firework where the powder is leaking out so it kinda sputters and stops. not even like that. i could write pages about it. i have. dumb. numb. can't speak. can't feel. off. i started to scream and my hip started to open up. it had been gripping so tight. always so tight, especially noticable the last 5 years. associated with my fear. associated with my existential terror. i ran a training this weekend. so my shame and fear was up big time. it resonates with the parts of me that fear for my life if i'm seen. if my fraudulence is seen. if my unworthiness is seen. if my wrongness is seen. doing it wrong. hurting them. didn't hide my faults enough. don't belong. they'll attack me. i'll lose my job. access to my passion. access to money, to food, to housing. i could write pages breaking this down eloquently, the science of resonance, the organismic terror it reawakens, the reenactment of early trauma imprinting that plays out in the present. i could write pages, nailing it. i have. it helps. it helps bring some contact to that part of me. 'you're not alone,' this knowing part of me tells it. 'i see you. i'm showing other people, too.' it helps. it's making way for the screaming to be heard. not the actual screaming. people are scared of screaming in this culture. they tell you to shut up. they tell you to calm down. get a hold of yourself. focus on other things. you're so sensitive. you make a big deal out of every little thing. yes, because every little thing is a reminder of the big invisible thing, terrifying thing we never addressed because you told me to stuff my scream. black people from trees. black people on fire. people scalped. people shot. a man dragged behind a truck. the fuck. i learned to stuff my scream. and 'every little thing' reawakens the unvocalized scream. i cannot help it. we're not addressing this deeply social, deeply historical, deeply spiritual, deeply human problem, pain, grief, terror, trauma. i've written pages and pages. my professors want me to move toward publication and i will. but i'm still afraid. i'm still stuffing my voice, even when i don't want to. stuffing it before i notice it. my body has learned and does its job, even after the mind that wired it up has moved on and forgotten. like the story of colonization. poka laenui talks about colonization, like the colonization of the hawaiian people. where hula was allowed to happen in schools and in society again, only after colonization had sunk in its fangs and the poisoning and deadening was already complete- the language forgotten, the will to resist squelched, the adoption of western values celebrated and centralized. the colonizers left but the colony is now alive and propagating colonialism on its own. the brain has moved on but the body is already wired to keep doing 'its job.' my body does 'its job.' i still stay silent and away from publishing this radical stuff. i don't reach out to my grandmother as i'm crying with high school musical playing on the television. my body knows 'better' than to scream. and when it starts to come out into the pillow.-just a few clumsy limp sort of ones- my hip opens. feels better than i can remember for a long time in that moment. for a while, my hip opens and can breathe.

[josephkitchen0]

How to Get Rid of Rats

By Cynthia Smith (Veterinarian in Washington) – I hate rats. I hate the way they dig dirty holes in my nice clean barns. I hate the squishy way the floor feels when there’s a rat tunnel underneath it. I hate the sick feeling I get when I see a rat whisk past my feet as I open the barns in the morning. I hate their furry little brown disease-carrying bodies that make me feel like my backyard chickens are a menace to all the neighborhood and like, any minute, the next Black Death will descend upon the world and all because I just had to raise poultry. My hatred of rats and their presence on my property lead me to search for solutions on how to get rid of rats.

Act 1: The Discovery

I feel like rodents are the dirty little secret of the poultry world. The one thing we hate to discuss or admit to (like having fleas on your dog or cockroaches in your house); acknowledging that you have seen a rat in your barn is like saying you are a bad person — one with really crummy hygiene. My son, Rob, has been well-trained never to say the word in public. (The last thing I want the neighbors to know is that the cute little backyard farm next door might be less than perfect, let alone a potential reservoir of disease.)

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Indeed, when I told Rob I was going to write this article, his first words were: “I hope it’s going to be anonymous!” I didn’t always hate rats. I had the pet white variety as a child and saw them occasionally in my practice as a veterinarian. It was only after I acquired chickens (about eight years ago at the age of 43) that the loathing began.

Our first order of chickens on my son’s birthday arrived in a cheeping little cardboard box from the Murray McMurray hatchery. While they grew inside of a puppy pen in the house, my husband and 8-year-old son labored to build a raccoon-proof coop in the backyard. Feed was stored in the next-door shed (which had an elevated floor).

All went well, as far as we knew, until the following summer when my husband reached to the upper shelves of the shed and pulled down last year’s nylon swimming pool. The blue plastic came down in a heap, along with the rats that had been nesting in it. As furry bodies rained over my husband’s head and shoulders, an impossibly high-pitched shriek emerged from his masculine throat and my son was witness to a burst of profanity the likes of which he had never heard his Christian father utter. “Mommy, Daddy swore!”

After the gnawed plastic and gruesome tale were revealed to me on my arrival home, I began my first foray into the business of extermination and researching how to get rid of rats; not something a veterinarian is particularly well-trained in. My husband proudly brought home electric traps, a tip he’s received when researching how to get rid of rats. They were supposed to give a quick painless death to the rat when it stepped on the plate. Either they didn’t work, or the rats never touched them. Nary a body did we ever see from those expensive devices. Then there were the glue traps. Guess what, the glue isn’t sticky anymore if it gets anything on it, like dust or shavings. Strangely, my coops were not dust-free. Then there were the good old-fashioned oversized mouse traps designed for their rattish cousins. These at least got some action. We found them exploded six to 10 feet from where they were set, but again, both bait and rat-free. I need not even mention the “humane live catch” trap (it was sized for mice anyway, who seem to be a lot dumber than rats). The plan was that mice could get in but not out again, so one was supposed to check the trap daily and humanely release Mickey and Minnie back into the wild. My husband only tried this once. He forgot to check the trap for two weeks, after which there were multiple cannibalized mouse corpses in the trap; the aftermath of a rodent-style Hunger Games and clearly not a humane way to die.

At this point, I felt there was no option except to try poison as a means of how to get rid of rats. All my efforts to employ natural ways to kill mice and rats were unsuccessful. I never wanted to use rat poison. Goodness knows, we see enough dogs and cats poisoned either by the poison itself or by consuming the poisoned animal. Years before we ever had poultry or had thought of using poison, we lost a pet cat to DeCon poisoning.

An excellent mouser, she would bring back just the tails and line them up at night for our admiration. Twice, she must have eaten a poisoned animal. The first time, we pulled her through. The second time, we were too late. So I know the risk of poison to the animals nearby. Unfortunately, I also understand the risk of a rat incursion in a populated area, both to property and to health. Something had to be done.

Intermission: Safe Rat Control Options

A word here must be inserted about what is certainly the most natural and safe of rat-control options: the domestic or farm cat or, perhaps, a rat terrier. People swear by this option for how to get rid of mice. The terrier was right out as, in my experience, dogs that kill rats also really enjoy killing chickens. But what about a cat? I counted. We have had 12 cats in the past 29 years. Of those, three were excellent mousers. Two of three died before they attained late middle age (about eight years), presumably because of their outdoor lifestyle. We are responsible citizens and have our pets spayed and neutered, so frequent replacement was not an option. The two cats who currently reside on my bed would not dream of soiling their precious paws with a filthy rodent. If you have a healthy supply of competent barn cats and are reading this article thinking what a dangerous poison-wielding idiot I am, my hat is off to you.

Act 2: Back to the Rat Story

Let us return to the saga. I contacted our Washington State Poultry Vet at the lab that does necropsies on poultry. If you do not have the access to a brilliant poultry resource like Dr. Roccio Crespo in your state, you have my pity.

Dr. Crespo informed me that I needed to buy little locking plastic boxes that hold the poison tightly confined on stakes. In this way, the rat must eat the poison in the box and cannot carry a chunk away to possibly poison another animal. I bought Tomcat boxes and bait at the local feed store. They were easy to use. The poison disappeared, dead rat bodies appeared and were immediately disposed of. There was no collateral damage in birds or other animals. Whew!

Fast forward to our move from our little house on a small lot to our littler house on a large (1.3-acre lot) a few years later. In the classic reverse market savvy that runs in my unhappy family, the real estate market crashed mere weeks after the papers were signed. Our new house was immediately worth much less than we paid, the mortgage was underwater and our old house unsalable unless at a very great loss. Doggedly, we muscled on as have many ethical Americans in the same situation. Refusing to renege on our word because circumstances had changed, we paid for our now overpriced home and prepared to become landlords as our old house was now vacant. Another rat crisis worsened our situation. When we abruptly removed every bird to our new barn on the new property, the current invisible rats grew and hungered. They went looking for food. They found it in grass seed stored in the garage, in camping food locked away in the attic, in water and food stores stored in plastic 24-hour kits. Before we knew it, we had rats that had moved uptown: highfalutin rodents living high in the attic and sporting top hats and monocles. The traps were again a failure. Once again, we were forced to resort to the poison. It worked, but with a small side effect. These rats did not do us the courtesy of quietly dying in their holes underground.

Noooo, they went to the far reaches of the attic and vents to die. It was summer. Chanel Number Fur permeated the house in several unexpected areas: the master bedroom, the hall closet, and the pantry — open these doors and prepare to run. All searches for their desiccating bodies proved futile. The house was, most certainly, not fit to go on the market. Eight months later, in the depths of winter, eau de rodent being but an unpleasant memory, we could finally begin to make preparations to lease out our money pit.

Act 3: The Return to Chickens

We had by now narrowed our focus to breeding only show varieties of bantam Polish and Araucanas. Some of our old flock remained as pets, along with turkeys, geese, and ducks acquired variously as lawn candy. Most birds were free range on our 1.3 acres, with the show birds confined to covered pens. A locked poison box was kept in each pen and rarely needed emptying. All was well. There are several other people in our neighborhood who keep a few birds, including a lovely next-door family who acquired nice birds and joined our 4-H club.

Suddenly, the rat population swelled. Poison boxes were still full but the Tomcat poison seemed barely nibbled. An experienced friend recommended, “Just One Bite,” a tasty looking poison with embedded grains. The rats loved it. The poison disappeared again and so did the rats. I diplomatically (I hoped) donated poison to my chicken-keeping neighbor. Whew. Back on track.

In 2013, the situation changed yet again. My neighbor went back to school and I offered to place her birds for her. Once the birds were homed, hungry rat hordes moved to the nearest source of food: us. This was the worst ever! On one night I saw six — count ’em, six — rats running around like they owned the place. (And I was taught that, if you see one, there are 10 more you didn’t see.) Neighbors down the street also discovered rat damage under their houses. Exterminators were called. I felt like Typhoid Mary.

The poison boxes were once again loaded and distributed. Chicken feed and water disappeared, but the bait stayed pristine. My friend was again consulted. Take out the feed so they have to eat the poison, she advised. Laboriously, every night we lugged feed out of all six pens, refilled the bait boxes, and lugged feed back out in the early morning before work. Chicken chores were becoming less fun and my teenage son was far less enthralled with his feathered friends. It worked (sort of), as the bait disappeared.

Indeed, we went through 24 pounds of bait, both the Tomcat and the Just One Bite, in the following three months.

However, while the bait was gone, the rats seemed totally unaffected. Fat rats, baby rats, all cavorting with seeming impunity in and among our birds. Then it hit me. Every morning I had to refill, not only the feed, but all the water! Full waterers at night were empty in the morning. My two remaining tired neurons finally made the connection: what did I put in my water? Apple cider vinegar. What does the vinegar contain, among other things? Vitamin K. How does rat poison work? By destroying the body’s vitamin K stores, thus causing them to slowly bleed to death.

Excellent, I’d spent three months administering the antidote along with the toxin. Fine work indeed. The darn poison itself was getting a lot harder to acquire too. The FDA had decided to ban sales of most of the really effective products to regular consumers. My local Del’s feed store and local hardware store no longer carried them. I was forced to pick up the Just One Bite in 8-pound cases from a feed store 120 miles away. I had to sign for it too. This would be OK except that it still wasn’t working well. Now I was carrying birds’ water and feed out every night and every morning, a feat which required I give up an extra 45 minutes of sleep before the work day and stumble around in the dark loaded with water that poured all over my shoes. Oh, I was loving raising chickens, you betcha.

An example of a safety trap, that keeps the rats from dragging poison into places also shared by pets and poultry.

We found a few dead rats, to be sure, and the Just One Bite was disappearing nightly by the pound, but the influx of baby rats playing fearlessly in my show cages convinced me I was still fighting a losing battle. To make matters worse, I had a deadline approaching. Soon I would have abdominal surgery, which would necessitate me turning over all the care of the birds to my son Rob for a while. No way was he going to be able to spend that kind of time lugging feed and water before his 6 a.m. Bible Study and 7:30 a.m. school. What to do?

Several things came to light in my frenzied research on how to get rid of rats that did not involve going back to a life without birds.

1. Visits to the affected neighbors informed me that their exterminators had tracked their rats to a neighborhood sewage drain source. (I was so worried they’d target me!) These people paid premium prices for professional exterminators who did exactly what I’d been doing: Put bait boxes all around the areas and when finished, advise their clients to buy their own boxes and keep them full as further sewage incursions were a certainty. (Whew! I wasn’t going crazy: there were indeed plenty of rats coming in faster than I could kill them.)

2. I discovered that the United Kingdom is experiencing a serious outbreak of poison-resistant rats in their sewage system. While I found no such reference in the U.S., it does not seem a far reach to assume that we, too, have rats that have evolved to be able to eat the stuff with minimal damage.

3. I decided I was quite unwilling to try the newer poisons that do not antagonize vitamin K. These poisons have no antidote whereas, with a $9 bottle of vitamin K given daily for a month, a pet that one presumes may have been poisoned can be saved. (I found my own cat eating a single rat this summer, and considering her incompetence, felt that there was no way she would have caught it unless it was already dying. A pill a day for a month and she lives to purr on my pillow for years to come.

4. There are many variations on the vitamin K antagonizing poisons. The trick, I decided, was to find a poison these rats had never seen before and that was tasty enough to compete with the feed. (We continue to put away the vinegar-enriched water at night, though.)

I found that product in First Strike Soft Bait. These soft packets must be stuck tightly on the stakes so the rats cannot carry them away, but they must taste delicious and we’re finally seeing corpses everywhere, even though we’re leaving the feed in at night. I am confident that, for a while at least, the vermin are in retreat. First Strike uses an ingredient called Difethialone at a concentration of 0.0025 percent.

As I mentioned, a product that I have really liked in the past is Just One Bite, which has the active ingredient, Bromadilone.

The bait stations (locking boxes) that I use are made by Tomcat, the Tomcat poison sold with the trap contains bromethalin and has the added advantage of being waterproof if you need to keep bait stations outside. It does seem to be considerably less palatable than the other two, so rats with a choice of goodies may not go for it.

And that’s it. As you may understand, I have written this article with great trepidation, not wanting to be branded as the chicken breeder with the rat problem. Please be constantly aware that, if you do have to treat with poison boxes, animals may still be at risk if they eat poisoned rats. Keep a sharp watch and immediately dispose of dead or dying rodents. Consult your veterinarian immediately if you suspect your pet has been poisoned, and bring a copy of the package so the doctor may ascertain proper treatment.

A recent visit to two admired breeder’s facilities convinced me that I am not alone in having trials dealing with these pests. I hope that my information may prove helpful, or may at least make you feel smug that you don’t have that disgusting problem or that your cats are competent. (If so, you have my envy.) I have written this article in good faith, hoping to save others some of the trials we have been through. I would prefer not to receive a ton of hate mail from PETA members who adore their little rat friends or from naturalist believers who are sure Diatomaceous Earth and probiotics can cure rats, rickets, rabies and a rainy day.

My wish for you: May the words, “Oh, Rats!” come out of your mouth only when you drop the feed bag on your toe.

What other ideas for how to get rid of rats would you add to this list?

 Originally published in Backyard Poultry June/July 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

How to Get Rid of Rats was originally posted by All About Chickens

[iamheretohelpyougrieveandda-blog]

after orlando and zac efron- a fugue

some raw words after first exposures to the news of the tragedies in orlando. a bit of a fugue- those of you who read my master's paper or saw my integrative seminar will understand a bit more what i mean when i say that. can think of the pieces that follows like a dream- lots of associated significances that could be unpacked, processed, and more clearly articulated later. but hell with it- i'm doing this for me anyway. (for our collective liberation, but my work on that project starts with me). 'after orlando and zac efron- a fugue' man. i'm sitting in my grandmother's house. mama's house. i'm sitting in mama's house. on a bed in the guestroom with a really nice comforter that she won in the christmas white elephant. it has a pattern like the shapes i see in the playa dust when i've taken mushrooms. shapes that are sacred to me. divine, beautiful, frightening. i have been reading, slowly, some of what's on the internet about the shooting in orlando at pulse night club. i spoke with tim about it. i read a couple facebook posts by finn and my cousin, justin, and others. i cried as i read it in a chair in the living room, a yard away from my grandmother, the tv blasting high school musical 2. i feel conflicted about high school musical 2. it's nostalgic for me, the styles, the feelings and ideas of high school, popularity, activities, gender, sexuality. it's evocative. it makes me sad. parts of me confused, scared, LONGING. parts of me in pain. such a candied drama and narrative. so much privilege that i longed for. freedom, joy. also the trappings and challenges of a gendered society, poor communication, poor emotional fluency of parents, frustrations, etc. class issues of money and college and access, though even those 'struggling' in the cast with so much privilege and access. heart feelings around the 'best friend' characters being people of color- a huge step forward from what was on tv when i was growing up. and the main character is still a conventionally 'pretty' white boy. so many confusing feelings. i like him. i like her. i like him because he has her attention and their attention. how do i like him? i want to be with him? i want him? i want to be him? i want to be her? i want to be with her? i'm a confused adolescent. never figured it out. people 'like that' would have been put off by me. i'm too much. i'm not calm and gentle like them. i wasn't calm and gentle. i was intense and urgent and my energy was pretty aggressive and violent in terms of intensity, even in my play and my longing. i was holding so much trauma and fear and terror and wanted connection so bad. didn't even know i was wanting to cry and scream because of how unsafe and confused i felt. learned to stuff it down so good. learned to cement it over. i wanted that fucking privilege. i got a fair amount. but i busted my ass off. i couldn't really enjoy it. i was still peddling so hard to earn what i was getting and to try to keep the flow coming. in such a trauma hole. such a frozen blindness. screaming, but not an organic, real grieving with my voice and body, to be seen and held by the earth and my community. a shut down, disembodied, masked grieving. the screaming was there but it done through the intensity of my shutdown and freeze. it found its way out through sports and the intensity of food. i screamed with the pace at which i devoured and ran and pushed. it supercharged my play, my longings, my attempts to connect. what's zac efron doing? am i that masculine? could i be like him some day? questions i could feel these young, longing parts of me asking today as i watched. a less young part: man if i could have been like that... why couldn't i have been like that? and the fuck. anger and grief at a society that told me that was the only avenue to what i needed. the connection and support i needed to grow and become. reading an article about the shooting, narrating a text exchange by a man in a bathroom at pulse texting his mother while the shooter was in the bathroom also, moments before his death. a scream started to find its way out of me. i'm starting to tear up some right now as i write. i was crying and a scream was starting to find its way awkwardly out. weak, through flattened, weak muscles. like something only half-inflated, not supplied with enough blood. coming out through a crack on the side. i've shut down for so long, so tight, my body doesn't know how to do it. even when i want to or feel like it's best. i know it's in there. but i can't force it. i want the real thing. and i feel awful that i can't find access to it. i've hidden it from myself so well. so well to survive. a stepdad who scoffed at gays. hated them, as far as i was concerned. judged. a mom who tried to get me to convince my stepdad that i was gay as a joke because it would be funny. a gay man dragged to death behind a pickup. tv shows hating on gays. hypermasculine, mysogynistic, heterosexist media, culture. don't you dare be gay. don't be feminine. shove that shit away. people on the screen 'i will beat that shit out of you.' 'you better back off, i'm not gay, i will fucking kill you.' my stepdad rolling his eyes. my parents judging and teasing the 'faggy' neighbor (who is also a bitter, unsavory person- maybe in part because of this shit). so much fear and shutdown i don't even know what i feel about him or her on the tv screen. binary sexism. bi'phobia'. 50 people killed in a nightclub. i used to dance for money in gay clubs. i wanted to meet a beautiful man. and a beautiful woman. i wanted to have it all. i wanted to have gay sex and a sweet girlfriend i could hold and the disney movie pretty picture of nice fashion. he was texting his mom. he was going to die. he was shot. he wanted to have fun. maybe he wanted to meat a pretty boy. someone he could feel vulnerable with and free to expand and feel pleasure and unbound and accelerated with. he died pleading with his mom to call the police. please help. i need help. please help. i didn't know how to say it. i didn't know i needed help. i didn't know what i needed help from. this is terrifying. something is wrong. nobody can see this. nobody knows. the scream started coming out. it creaked and was crackly. i put it into the pillow. i cried silently back on the chair, just a yard from my grandmother. i figured she could easily see me. she might not, but i imagine she'd notice. i figured a good chance she wouldn't say anything as i scrolled through my phone and cried. i figured she might not want to have a conversation about that level of emotion. i figured even if she did, she might not know how to have the conversation i'd set the stage with my honest replies. i did not have enough confidence i'd get what this part of me was wanting, so yielded to the intersubjective inertia of the moment. continuing our family's conditioned legacy of lack of emotional fluency, a rule to not talk about some of the hard stuff, some of the stuff we don't have clear language for, some of the stuff that might be related to bad stuff. leave that locked up. pray. spiritual bypass. we don't talk to mama about that kind of stuff. it's only recently we can talk to our parents about that kind of stuff. so what the fuck do we do with that stuff? what does a child do with that stuff? a man dragged to death behind a pickup for being gay. being gay is a sin. sex is a sin. if you have those thoughts, try not to. pray. ask for forgiveness. go to confession. you are bad, but you can work hard to gain forgiveness. you can work to not have the thoughts and feelings. to that 5-year-old that wanted to do gymnastics but his stepdad and mom wouldn't let him because there were only girls- there's no answer for why these things that aren't supposed to be coming up in your body and mind, these longings, why they're coming up. there's encouragement toward 'masculinity'- hypermasculinity. there's nudging away from femininity. you convinced your aunts to buy you the pink oshkosh when you were 5. they tried to convince you for the blue. you wanted the pink. mom took it away. they're nudging. later stronger nudges. a man dragged behind a truck. dead. bloody. parts of his body scraped away. tease the girly kids. tease the fags. 'mike is a little girly man' my neighbor would tease my dad. girly is bad. my fear of death is more than gender and sexuality-based. i'm brown. i've internalized so much racism. from my white stepdad. from all my parents. from disney channel programs. from school. black people, slavery. native americans- 'indians' killed. blood. blood. pain. blood. screams. burning. lynching. blood. bloodbaths. i can write pages eloquently describing the transgenerational transmission of trauma, the legacies of colonization, decimation, oppression; the institutionalization of attitudes and conventions that keep this trauma ungrieved and the violence and imbalance alive subtly, invisibly, under the skin, under the muscle, in the nerves. blocking my screams. shutting them down. pulling my emotions far far away. years of therapy. a master's degree in feelings and in context and intergenerational trauma. i can see it. i know it's there. i can feel it. i still can't scream. like a weak little newborn. pathetic. arching, extending, clumsy uncoordinated movements. a stretch, a gesture that won't happen. a longing incomplete, unarticulated. like lighting a really poorly made firework where the powder is leaking out so it kinda sputters and stops. not even like that. i could write pages about it. i have. dumb. numb. can't speak. can't feel. off. i started to scream and my hip started to open up. it had been gripping so tight. always so tight, especially noticable the last 5 years. associated with my fear. associated with my existential terror. i ran a training this weekend. so my shame and fear was up big time. it resonates with the parts of me that fear for my life if i'm seen. if my fraudulence is seen. if my unworthiness is seen. if my wrongness is seen. doing it wrong. hurting them. didn't hide my faults enough. don't belong. they'll attack me. i'll lose my job. access to my passion. access to money, to food, to housing. i could write pages breaking this down eloquently, the science of resonance, the organismic terror it reawakens, the reenactment of early trauma imprinting that plays out in the present. i could write pages, nailing it. i have. it helps. it helps bring some contact to that part of me. 'you're not alone,' this knowing part of me tells it. 'i see you. i'm showing other people, too.' it helps. it's making way for the screaming to be heard. not the actual screaming. people are scared of screaming in this culture. they tell you to shut up. they tell you to calm down. get a hold of yourself. focus on other things. you're so sensitive. you make a big deal out of every little thing. yes, because every little thing is a reminder of the big invisible thing, terrifying thing we never addressed because you told me to stuff my scream. black people from trees. black people on fire. people scalped. people shot. a man dragged behind a truck. the fuck. i learned to stuff my scream. and 'every little thing' reawakens the unvocalized scream. i cannot help it. we're not addressing this deeply social, deeply historical, deeply spiritual, deeply human problem, pain, grief, terror, trauma. i've written pages and pages. my professors want me to move toward publication and i will. but i'm still afraid. i'm still stuffing my voice, even when i don't want to. stuffing it before i notice it. my body has learned and does its job, even after the mind that wired it up has moved on and forgotten. like the story of colonization. poka laenui talks about colonization, like the colonization of the hawaiian people. where hula was allowed to happen in schools and in society again, only after colonization had sunk in its fangs and the poisoning and deadening was already complete- the language forgotten, the will to resist squelched, the adoption of western values celebrated and centralized. the colonizers left but the colony is now alive and propagating colonialism on its own. the brain has moved on but the body is already wired to keep doing 'its job.' my body does 'its job.' i still stay silent and away from publishing this radical stuff. i don't reach out to my grandmother as i'm crying with high school musical playing on the television. my body knows 'better' than to scream. and when it starts to come out into the pillow.-just a few clumsy limp sort of ones- my hip opens. feels better than i can remember for a long time in that moment. for a while, my hip opens and can breathe.