#the concept of personal transparency in writing reaches down to try and pick me up like a cat

[paradife-loft]

assignment: write about yourself. things you've experienced. aspects of your life and how they've impacted your perspective.

✔ write about how I intellectually approach things, with occasional sprinkled non-direct allusions to how those approaches relate to my identity and life experiences

[renaerys]

Prompt 50. But Berserk & Boomer😔👉👈💕

50. “I thought you left.”

We’re calling this one Unfortunately, She Impressed Him. This is a pair of characters I love with all my heart in any flavor of relationship and can’t wait to write more of in my ongoing multi-chapter fic Trinity House over on AO3.

This fic is part of a prompt challenge that is now closed to new requests, but you can read all the completed submissions here. Reminder that the challenge is to make everything SFW, so we’re getting creative here.

xxx

Boomer was halfway across the deserted lobby of Faust Keating Rogers, LLP when he realized he’d forgotten his keys at his desk. He groaned aloud because it was 8 p.m. and no one was around to hear him because they had all gone home to their families hours ago like normal people. Boomer didn’t have two to three kids and a house in the suburbs, though, and neither did his boss. The three hour lull reserved for dinner, baths, and bedtimes before the evening work-from-home grind offered him no alternative but to power through. He fully planned to grab take out on his way home and enjoy an episode of whatever was on HBOMax before getting back to the tedious work of reviewing the draft prospectus statement his boss had sent him to proof by tomorrow morning.

Except, his keys were forty floors up and he now had to risk running into her again when he’d managed to slip away so neatly. He’d even removed his tie on the elevator ride down, and now he rubbed his exposed neck, flushed with anxiety over what might happen if she saw him and asked him to stick around to finish the work here.

“Nice going, dumbass,” he lamented as he stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for the fortieth floor.

It wasn’t that Boomer disliked his job. In fact, he didn’t mind it at all. It was better than slinging drinks or waiting tables. He had health insurance, a steady paycheck, and a resumé that could proudly display the name of one of the most elite accounting firms in the country. He could pivot his career if he wanted to, as Brick would say. Boomer wasn’t thinking about his next job right now, though. Right now, he was thinking about this one and how his boss was a hard-ass and a workaholic even if she was brilliant, and how there was a one hundred percent chance she would detect him coming back to his desk (which was annoyingly set up right in front of her office so that he could answer her calls, manage her meetings, and deal with whoever passed close enough to her event horizon to get suckered into the latest heinous audit in need of staffing).

There were his traitorous keys sitting on the desk next to the framed picture of his brothers. He glared at them, as if they were a forgotten household item that had developed a supernatural grudge like in those old Japanese folktales he liked to read online. He half expected them to jingle and alert his boss to his presence, just to spite him.

They didn’t, and he slipped them into his pocket as quietly as could be. He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and took a beat. It was quiet. Most of the offices were dark, save for a few poor souls in the large conference room stuck on the ongoing year-end audit for one of the firm’s most important clients: Unicorn, Inc. His boss’s office was also lit up behind her closed door, but she hadn’t called out to him like she would during the day when he got back from his lunch break hoping for a few minutes to catch up on emails in peace before she dumped more work on him.

This, of course, was odd. The small legion of assistants who had come before Boomer were notorious for their short-term employment working this specific desk. The work was demanding and so was the boss, but there was something else that set her apart from other senior associates in the International Tax Services division, something that seemed to intimidate away any support the higher ups sent her way. Denise a couple desks down had warned Boomer not to bring too many personal effects to the office; chances were he wasn’t going to last long. Boomer had smiled thinly and thanked Denise for her advice, and brought the picture of his brothers in the next morning because he had his pride and Brick told him it was healthy to indulge that once in a while. Brick would certainly know.

So here he was, uncertain. Anxiety over having to sit here for another two hours finishing work and having tepid Doordash delivered pulled him toward the elevator and escape, while that annoying, rare pride demanded he check on his boss and make sure she knew he was here to support her, lest she get the idea that he needed to be fired.

The longer he stood there, indecisive, the greater his curiosity grew. What was she doing in there? It was quiet, even when he strained his Super hearing. He could hear Dean Matheson pouring whiskey a few offices down (that guy had a drinking problem and everyone knew they only kept him around because he had the Unicorn, Inc. account), Adebayo Hansou on a conference call with Dubai that was escalating to profanity, Shelly Kim with her head down and typing away at an Excel spreadsheet like a pro. Their assistants were long gone for the night, but here was Boomer, loitering and indecisive and what is she doing in there not yelling at me when she definitely knows I’m here?

He couldn’t take it anymore. He knocked on the closed door—rap, rap, rap—and called out softly, “Berserk?”

A beat, then: “Come in.”

Finding his boss in upward facing dog while still in her pencil skirt was not a sight Boomer was prepared for. Berserk had her eyes closed as she stretched at a near ninety degree angle and listened to music on her Airpods. Boomer had never seen her with her heels off and her mane of red hair thrown together in a messy bun; it was so casual that it was almost obscene.

“You’re staring.”

Fuck, he was staring and now she was looking right at him down her nose, even though she was the one on the floor. He stood up straighter, unable to help himself when she took that tone that reminded him so much of Brick’s when he was about to criticize, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “Sorry.”

She breathed in deeply through her nose and hoisted herself up into downward dog position. “Why are you here?”

Forgot my keys seemed like a really lame excuse that she’d probably laugh at him for, but he also was not in the habit of making shit up on the spot if he hoped to make people believe him. “I forgot my keys.” He took them from his pocket to show her, as if she might not know what keys are, as a concept.

“Smart locks.” Berserk exhaled and slowly walked her hands back on the yoga mat until she reached her feet and began to swing slowly left and right.

Huh? he almost said like an idiot, until he caught himself. “Don’t think my landlord would approve of me installing that.” Also, those things were like $200 a pop, which was not worth the occasional inconvenience and shame of forgetting his keys and then catching his boss doing yoga in her office after hours.

Berserk made some noncommittal sound like whatever, peasant and slowly uncurled upward one vertebra at a time. Boomer realized he was back to staring again, literally lingering in her door watching her and trying to equate this subdued, casual version of Berserk with the terse, no-nonsense businesswoman he was used to dealing with on a daily basis.

When she finally achieved her full height, she popped her neck. The hair that was too short for her bun fell in around her narrow face in a stylish, athleisure sort of way. The top buttons on her blouse were undone. She wore a small, golden necklace he’d never noticed before because he wasn’t in the habit of checking out his boss. “I thought you left.”

The accusatory nature of her words were totally at odds with her flat tone, only the barest hint of curiosity dangling there at the end, like she expected him to respond.

Oh, she expected him to respond.

Boomer took another step into her office because he was full of poor judgment today. “I forgot my keys.”

At which point he showed her his keys again and also had a mild stroke, because what the fuck are you doing, mate?

Berserk smiled. “Yeah, I got that part.”

Was she laughing at him? He had never heard her laugh before, unless it was at Dean Matheson, that comb-over in denial who, in addition to being a high functioning alcoholic, also had a reputation for throwing associates under the bus when a client wasn’t happy.

Boomer smiled back, because that was what he did when people smiled at him, and ‘people’ now included Berserk, apparently.

“Well, since you’re here,” she said as she padded around to her desk.

Crap, there was the work he was afraid of soliciting from her by remaining in the building. He debated an excuse to give her: picking up dry cleaning? Plausible, but transparent. Meeting up with his brothers? No, she’d probably make him stay all night for the chance to ruin Brick’s plans.

“Thai or Mexican?”

Boomer stared dumbly. He was becoming quite good at that (10,000 hours and you can become an expert at anything, they say). “Huh?”

The yoga must have put Berserk in an exceedingly gracious mood, because she actually repeated her question without getting that look on her face like she was picturing him getting trampled by stampeding monsters. “Thai or Mexican? I don’t have a preference.”

Oh.

Oh.

Boomer’s stomach picked that time to snarl at him—8 p.m. and still no dinner, the fiend.

Berserk snorted in laughter and fanned herself with her phone. “Jesus. Mexican it is.”

Which was how Boomer found himself on the small sofa tucked in the corner of Berserk’s office, shoes off and belt loosened, with enough tacos, tamales, and rice and beans to feed a small family. He even had a beer from the mini fridge Berserk kept under her desk.

She hadn’t stayed late to work. Well, she had, but only because she didn’t have a reason to go home.

“I just hate getting home to a dark apartment sometimes,” she said in between bites of food. She had her legs tucked up under her on the sofa close enough to brush Boomer’s thigh if he reached to grab the salsa.

“I thought you lived with your sister?”

“Brute got her own place a few months ago. The arrangement was only temporary while she was in between jobs.”

It was weird knowing so little about a person whose whole family had been in Boomer’s inner orbit since childhood. As far as he knew, Berserk wasn’t close to any of her cousins, not even Blossom. Boomer himself had never been more eager to leave a room than when Brat walked into it. Only Butch, Brute, and Buttercup had ever found common ground among each other once the sworn rivalries and blood feuds of their youth gave way to teenage rebellion against their respective overlord fathers and then the slog of adulthood that was inescapable even for a bunch of Supers flying high on Chemical X.

The fact that Boomer had gotten this job surprised him more than anyone. After drifting from restaurant jobs to office temp placements over the last six years, he’d never thought he would dust off his economics degree and land a temp-to-permanent position that seemed way above his qualifications. And he never thought it would be working for a woman he’d most definitely electrocuted in battle at least a dozen times before puberty.

“What?”

Boomer blinked. He’d been staring again, Jesus Christ. “Sorry, I was just thinking… I didn't know that. I’ve been working here for five months and I don’t actually know much about you at all.”

“Hm.”

Her magenta eyes were wine-dark against the murky sky beyond the window forty stories up. Boomer did avert his gaze this time to reach for the salsa, but he didn’t use it.

“I don’t even know why you invited me to stay for dinner in the office if we’re not going to do any work.”

“Why did you stay?”

“For the free food.”

Berserk grinned—the third time she had smiled at him tonight (or ever). He needed to stop counting; he’d be disappointed when it stopped happening tomorrow.

“Don’t get used to it. Much as I appreciate the company now and again, there’s no need for both of us to be stuck here while Matheson’s breathing down the associates’ necks. Can’t have him poaching you out from under me.”

“Well, I don’t work for him; I work for you.”

“It’s sweet how you don’t understand office politics.” She ate a lone slice of avocado with a fork. “He landed Unicorn back when they were early stage, and back when he was still putting in the work to earn his reputation. But since they IPO’d three years ago and make up twenty percent of our revenue now, he’s just another big name coasting by on associate work. You know he regularly schedules client calls and just doesn’t bother to show up? He forgets half the time, and the other half he’s busy playing golf or buying a yacht or whatever the fuck rich, white Boomers do.”

“Well, as a Boomer myself, I can say I’ve spent exactly zero hours buying yachts.”

She chuckled. Fourth time. “Oh, really.”

“Never even thought of yachts. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even real.”

“Thanks for your expert opinion.”

“Any time.” Boomer turned his body to face her and draped his arm over the back of the sofa. With only the soft light from the floor lamp in the corner, he imagined himself adrift in the darkness, the sky scraper lights nearby stars. It was a lonely thought, one made romantic in the knowledge that she was here too, and he wasn’t actually alone.

“Matheson almost did poach you, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Boomer couldn’t recall exchanging more than a few words with the man.

“When we were filling support positions. Someone recognized you from the news a few years back, when the Cyclops Monster attacked the marina district and you and your brothers took it out. Matheson got it in his head that you’d be able to work at Super speed and help lower his billables.”

“Wow. Maybe you should’ve let him. What do you think the net savings would be in yacht units of measurement?”

Berserk rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. “I claimed you before he could get the paperwork in.”

Boomer hyper-focused on that word: claimed. He also pointedly ignored it entirely, much in the same way he ignored the new count of five smiles tonight. “Showed him your bending powers, did you?”

Berserk’s Corona bottle turned frosty under her hand in a totally unnecessary, big dick energy display of said powers, and she took another sip. “No. Sharon from HR likes me. And I promised her I wouldn’t fire you after three months like your predecessors.”

Flattered was not how Boomer would describe the feeling of being claimed by Berserk and eluding Matheson’s vampiric clutches. But he was a bit tickled all the same. This was the woman Butch had once described as essentially Brick, if he were constipated all the time.

And then he realized what she was doing. “Hey, you’re sharing things about yourself.”

She clinked her bottle to his, and Boomer shivered at the frosty chill she transferred on contact. “Aw, you figured it out all by yourself.”

“Ha ha.”

She didn’t quite smile, but she did look kind of serene then, content even, as she lay back against the arm of the sofa and yawned. Her gold necklace—just a simple disk with an engraving Boomer could not make out—reflected the lamp light when she moved. It rested just beneath her collarbone, which had suddenly become the single-most interesting part of Berserk, and oh no, was he interested—

“You’re staring again.”

Son of a bitch.

“Sorry,” he said automatically. “I didn’t mean to.”

Hard no. He was not allowed to be any percent attracted to Berserk. First, she was his boss, and there was a cliché here that, while subverted on the gender role spectrum, was still very risky for both of them. Second, she was Berserk, a fellow Super, cousin to his best friend Bubbles and a shrewd, stiletto bitch in Brick’s estimation, which sounded bad. Not that she was bad, or even evil, unless you counted helping rich corporations accurately report their taxes while taking advantage of the many egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. Which, okay, point taken, but he also worked here and anyway, people should not be deemed good or evil so much as their choices ought to be—

“Are you thinking about fucking me?”

You shrewd, stiletto bitch!

She was smiling again, and Boomer pathetically logged that as the sixth time, although he wasn’t sure he should count it given the overt malice behind it.

Unfortunately, Boomer was, as had been previously established, very bad at making shit up on the fly. So he miserably said, “Yeah.”

“Hm.”

She sipped her beer slowly, and of course he watched. If it was out in the open, as fleeting a bout of insanity as it may have been, at least he could wallow in it without worrying about appearances.

It was the yoga. That fucking upward facing dog, Jesus Christ.

It was more than that too. Over the last few months, he had worked closely with her, watched her navigate the cutthroat halls full of piranhas like Matheson and other account managers, getting herself work on the best clients while managing her juniors with efficiency and professionalism. She was excellent and sharp, and she demanded excellency and sharpness in kind. After years of going it alone or temping for bosses who didn’t care enough even to learn his name, much less provide him with guidance and mentorship, it was an unspeakable relief to work under someone who knew how to rally the troops. Someone who knew how to lead, how to motivate, and how to reward loyalty with loyalty in return. It didn’t hurt that she looked amazing in her daily stilettos, either.

Unfortunately, she impressed him.

“I have some work to get done tonight.” Berserk stood up and smoothed her skirt.

Boomer scrambled to his feet. “Of course! Um.” He began closing food containers and repackaging them in the bags they’d come in, because he was panicking. “I’ll get rid of the trash. Do you want the leftovers in the fridge?”

“You take them. Otherwise my office will smell like a burrito for a week.”

“Okay.” Numbly, Boomer finished packing everything up, while Berserk made her way back to her desk and logged into her computer to check her emails.

Boomer lingered at the door. “I’ll have the prospectus back to you later tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Wow, way to go, stud.

He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

“Boomer?”

“Yeah?”

“Friday is good.”

He stared back at her in expert mode. “Huh?”

Berserk poked her head around the side of her large, external monitor. She was smiling again. Lucky number seven. “For fucking.”

“Okay,” Boomer said.

Okay?!

She pulled back behind her monitor. “I was going to get a cat, but you’ll do much better.”

Because she didn’t like going home to a dark, empty apartment alone. With no one to fuck.

“That was a joke.”

“Yeah, I got that,” he croaked.

Friday is for fucking, he thought, which was delightful alliteration and also completely insane and one hundred percent something he was getting more on board with by the nanosecond.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

Boomer clutched the leftover Mexican food in his fist. “Okay. Goodnight.”

It took him the time to fly home and put the food away in his small fridge to realize that he had a sort-of date with Berserk lined up for two days from now.

He Y-posed at the window and whooped, “Hell yes!!”

Loud pounding in the floor followed by old Mrs. Cruikshank’s muffled Keep it down! couldn’t bring down his mood.

Boomer leaped onto his threadbare, living room sofa with his work laptop and took to the prospectus with alacrity. He’d send over superior work product and make Berserk’s job just that much easier tomorrow morning.

xxx

If you enjoy my writing, check out more of my fics on AO3, link in my profile. I’m currently updating Trinity House (which has a lot more Berserk and Boomer content, btw!) and The Alchemy of Us. Thanks for reading!

[tlbodine]

Things That Do (And Don’t) Sell Books (in my experience)

I’ve just finished reading this book:

I am both amused and a bit disheartened to have read the whole thing and discovered that I knew pretty much everything in it. Amused, because I guess I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge over the years. Disheartened, because it clearly has not led to me becoming the break-away success I always dreamed of. Ah well. Live and learn. 

I’m all about transparency in this business, so I wanted to talk honestly for a while about book marketing and what I’ve experienced in terms of what does and does not seem to work. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so chime in with your own experiences! 

Branding and Audience 

The first third of Burke’s book is dedicated to this aspect, and it’s an important marketing step that’s easy to overlook. The idea is basically that you can’t market a product unless it has a brand identity. To create your brand, you need to do the following: 

Identify the audience who you are trying to reach with your work, or who would be most receptive to what you’re writing

Identify your dreams and goals so you have a clear picture in mind of what you want to accomplish 

Figure out how to position yourself in such a way that you a.) stand out from the competition but b.) people can still relate to and understand at a glance

Find a way to communicate your brand consistently in terms of the language used, your aesthetic, the way you act online, and so forth. 

When it comes to brand-building as an author, I think I’ve got a bit of a corner nailed down. I at least hope to be perceived as someone level-headed, thoughtful, generally positive/empathetic and humanist, but also critical and looking deeper into the meanings of things -- all of which are traits I personally possess and which are baked in to the work I do. In support of that branding, I curate my activity online as best I can: I post things that are of a certain horror aesthetic that I feel overlaps with my own interests/style; I give writing advice and boost people in the community where I can; I wade into discourse selectively and thoughtfully; I give media reviews and analysis that I think would be interesting to like-minded people. 

The “identify the audience” part is much harder for me. I’m still honestly not sure who my ideal reader is, or where exactly to go to find my audience. At this point I’m kind of scattering crumbs of myself out into the wind and hoping it will attract people who will, in turn, be interested in the work that I do (and both willing and able to support it financially). 

Things I’ve Done With Varying Degrees of Success: 

Aforementioned blogging activities. I have slowly but steadily grown my following her on tumblr and other social media sites as well as my author newsletter on substack, but it’s not clear to what extent that following translates into book sales. My writing advice posts vastly out-perform all of my other content, but I haven’t seen compelling evidence that the people interested in my writing advice are especially interested in my fiction -- it seems to be two separate groups, with maybe a sliver of overlap. 

Content marketing with more short fiction. This seems like it should be the safest, surest way to find more readers, but it’s time-consuming and discouraging because of the discoverability cycle. My horror flash fiction posts don’t get nearly as many notes as my advice posts. My attempts to get into the big anthologies that pop up have so far amounted to little, although I do need to write more. It’s just that coming up with new ideas and writing them all the time is a lot of work, and if it’s not paying off maybe I’m still better off dedicating that work to my novels. 

Sending ARCs to book bloggers/reviewers/booktube etc. I sent out dozens, if not hundreds, of these and got next to no response. I do think part of the problem is that, at the time, I had no Twitter presence, and -- like it or not -- there seems to be a bit of cliqueishness to this aspect of the book world. Now that I’ve spent more time on Twitter ingratiating myself with the horror community, I suspect I’ll have a somewhat easier job securing blurbs and reviews at least from the people in my extended social circle. But I won’t know until I try it again. *I also know I would have greater success with this if I’d been sending paperback ARCs instead of digital. I didn’t, because the cost of buying more author copies + shipping was prohibitive. 

Author Newsletter. I maintain mine in conjunction with my Patreon account. I send a monthly news round-up, making a point of shouting out both industry news and the milestones/achievements of others in the community as well as providing what I hope to be value-added or interesting content (in the form of blog posts my patrons vote on). It does OK. I average a couple of new sign-ups per month this way and tend to hover around a 25% open rate, which isn’t terrible. But it’s not great, either, and I won’t know for sure whether any of those opens will actually yield sales at any point. 

Interpersonal relationships/community building. Hands down the most successful “marketing” thing I’ve ever done is make friends with people. My writing discord group is small but very close-knit and interacting with them is one of the genuine highlights of my day. I didn’t really make it with mercenary intentions of selling books, but it has directly resulted in sales. Similarly, there are a handful of authors from Twitter and Wattpad that I’ve developed genuine friendships with, and we buy each other’s books and support one another. This whole community aspect is extremely rewarding and I’d do it whether or not it sold books, but it’s also not exactly easy to scale. I can only maintain genuine friendships with so many people. 

Posting in reading groups. The books that allow self-promo are so saturated with it that nobody pays any attention. The good groups do not allow self-promo, unless it’s in the form of getting down in the comments and recommending a book on a per-person basis to people looking for a specific thing, and only then if you’re not being spammy. Again, this is time-consuming. You could spend your entire life in these groups, hand-selling books to these people, and maybe picking up a few sales. They do seem like a good place to identify trends, though, so they’re good for market research if not direct selling. 

Things I Have Not Done, But Which I Suspect Would Sell Books 

Paid promotions. The golden ticket for book sales still seems to be landing a BookBub promo. If you’re unfamiliar, this is where you price your book at 99 cents or free and then pay bookbub to include it in their deals newsletter. Bookbub is very popular and moves a lot of copies. Ideally, you want to set it up so that your cheap book is the first in a series, and people snap that up and then come back to read the rest. This requires you to have written a series. Also bookbub is expensive because these are premium ads. We’re talking hundreds of dollars for one ad. There are other book promos that are cheaper but don’t have the same buy-through rate. 

Ads on facebook/amazon. I’m only dimly familiar with the ins and outs of these ads. They can be relatively cheap, but the amount of visibility they have is tied to your budget -- so the more you can spend on a campaign, the better your performance will be. 

Calling bookstores/libraries and asking them to order. I should do this. I have not done this purely because I am a coward. 

I am not certain what more I can do to promote my books without spending money. 

I understand the “spend money to make money” concept, but I also understand the “I have a limited budget and cannot spend it willy nilly on things that still might not actually pay off, especially considering how expensive self-publishing is when you want to do it right.��� 

...This post ended up in a much more bitter place than I meant for it to. Sorry. I’ll check in if I remember additional points that could be successful strategies. 

[reversemoon255]

(From September 2020 to February 2021, I worked on a Pokémon themed Dungeons and Dragons campaign for a few friends. We didn’t get very far, but I put a significant amount of work into the world, story, and several Pokémon that would appear throughout, including an original set of starters. I want to to leave some record of my work, so I thought I’d write a few summary posts. And while I designed these Pokémon, their fantastic art was done by @extyrannomon on Twitter. I highly recommend you check them out.)

Dungeons 'n' Dragonites - Phase 1: Hello Stelopy City

Our story starts in Stelopy City, located in the Wellou Region. We get a brief introduction from DJ Tomomitsu, a radio host, before each player got their own brief story segments. Our first player was Ethan, as aspiring chef, who lived on campus at his high school. Ethan was approached by one of his dorm mates with a favor (to get him out of the building), as well as having an attractive girl meandering around the kitchen (if he wished to try flaunting his culinary skills). He would then get to choose to either finish up his side-quest or go to the local fisher's market, with him transitioning between those locations taking him to the area where he would meet his starter Pokémon:

"As you enter the alleyway, the walls are covered floor-to-ceiling in moss that seem to appear as soon as the shadows overtake the sunlight. The farther you walk, the more weeds you see popping through the cracks. Once you reach the half-way point, you come to a small open space. With the sunlight now flickering down through the plants brave enough to venture off the verdant walls, the entire area shines a bright, emerald green. In the center of this area is a decently sized fountain. It's no longer flowing, but there's a decent amount of rain water filling it up close to the brim. As you approach it, even through the murky iridescent waters, you can see a thick, fuzzy amount of lichen growing all throughout the inside of the basin. As you pass by the fountain, you hear an audible sploosh. Do you turn around? (Y/N)"

There he would meet the first of our new Starter, the Grass-Type Flymph. I kept it secret that I was doing original Starters. Part of my personal excitement in planning everything was the eventual reveal of these designs I had created. Kept me going when things started feeling like a grind.

Our second player, Johnny, started off at home, woken by his father asking him to run an errand. After being able to talk to his family a bit, he proceeded to a somewhat beaten-up house on the edge of the Pokémon-overrun abandoned district where he would receive some boat parts before leaving and the sidewalk underneath him collapses. Stumbling around the abandoned subway tunnels for a bit, he would run into our second Starter, the Fire-Type Calfyre.

Johnny's player wanted to become an entertainer, which didn't give me a lot to work session one, so a lot of his opener was focused on expanding the world and giving everyone an idea of areas they would be exploring later.

Third was Orion who had a quiet morning at home before being provoked via text messages from his siblings to chase down a mysterious "Wailord in a Top Hat." This pursuit would also lead him to the fisher's market and the nearby docks, where, after just catching sight of his quarry, he would encounter the Water-Starter Squisque.

Orion's player wanted a lot of his story to be based on his relationship with his father, so most of his opening was based on reinforcing his family dynamic. Not home, everyone’s busy, focus on work. This particular Saturday was strange in that Orion didn’t have anything going on.

Our last player was Arthur, who also lived on campus. While our other three players started their segments in bed, Arthur was playing lacrosse. After having an opportunity to show off (or fail), he would be told by a friend that he had upset his girlfriend that morning (kitchen girl from Ethan's story), and needed Arthur to pick up her favorite dessert while he attempted to woo her for the rest of the day. After doing so (while being given a chance to explore some of the local stores) he encountered a hungry Houndoom who proceeds to chase him up a fire escape. Once up there he encountered our final Starter, the Fairy-Type Utaw.

After each player met their Starters, they would have a brief tutorial battle against three Pokémon they were advantageous against before running into each other, and were subsequently arrested for "stealing" Pokémon, which would cap session one.

=====

Let's talk design. Stelopy City is loosely based on Chicago, is a portmanteau of "Steel Canopy," and Wellou is a joke on Illinois. The vast majority of the campaign was to take place in this location. Most of my players had very busy schedules (so busy it took us three sessions to get through the above opener), so DJ Tomomitsu was a way for me to easily start each session with a list of things to do (side-quests), and they as a group could decide which they were the most interested in based on time. Tomomitsu himself was based on DJ Sagara from Kamen Rider Gaim, with Tomomitsu being the name of the actor who played him.

As for the starters, I tried to stick to the reoccurring themes we’ve seen over the past 8 Generations. Flymph's name is a portmanteau of Dragonfly, Errol Flynn, and Nymph (the larval form of a Dragonfly). He's meant to be a special attacker, but, like an early DND Wizard, doesn't have access to a lot of them so he brandishes his sword-like arms to intimidate his foes instead. His diet consists entirely of lichens, algae, and similar flora, storing them in his transparent stomach pouches, and can be seen sunbathing in the water, belly up, feeding the plant matter the sunlight they need to grow. He also does not like Bug-Types, and isn’t Bug himself because of Grass/Bug’s myriad of weaknesses (for balancing), plus he changes Types after his first evolution. The theme of Grass Starters is extinction, which won’t become clear until his final evolution, but you may be able to guess how he relates.

Fire Starters are themed after the Chinese Zodiac, and of the remaining four yet to be used (including Snake, Ram, and Horse), I went with Ox. Calfyre's name is a play on Calf and Fire, and is meant to play like a Barbarian. When it comes to personality he's very timid and unsure of himself like a first-time DND player might be acting in a group. Unlike most Fire-Types, Calfyre lacks a Flame Sac. Instead, his spiral horns are filled with a freon-like liquid that, when swirled, rapidly absorbs energy from the air, which he uses for attacks. This chills the air around him, and makes him one of the few Fire-Types that are cold to the touch. Which sucks, because he’s a snugly sleeper.

Water Starters are usually themed after a weapon or character class. This usually shows in the later evolutions, but it's pretty obvious Squisque (a portmanteau of Squirt, Squire, and Bisque) is themed off a lance and shield. He's a paladin in both role and personality, charging in at the slightest sign of trouble, even if there isn't any real danger. It's the typical non-nuanced idea of what people think when they hear "Paladin." He was to a degree supposed to play a catalyst role, charging into situations the players may not want to in order to force them into helping people or combat if need be. He was also the first design I settled on, being based on an old Kaijin idea I had of a lobster-knight using its asymmetrical claws as different medieval weapons.

Utaw is unique, not just in that he was a fourth or Fairy Starter, but in conception. I was only supposed to have three players, but ended up with four. As such, his design is responsive to the others. Why a dinosaur? Because I had a mammal, crustacean, and bug, was unsure if I wanted a bird or reptile, and decided to meet half-way. Why is he Fairy? Because it has very little interaction with Fire, Water, and Grass, while still having defined weaknesses and resistances to certain types. (Also, this player wanted a Dragon-Type.) He’s based on a Utahraptor, hence the name, and is misspelled to include “Claw” or “Caw.” He’s meant to play team Bard, and uses sound moves. As for personality, he's a bit of a birdbrain who enjoys fighting. Not maliciously; it’s just fun, again acting like a new DND player who’s more interested in combat than role playing.

The idea with the personalities was that each Pokémon was supposed to start out like a rookie DND player on their first campaign. Not knowing how to play their class, being uncomfortable acting in front of a group, leaning too hard into your role without bending, or just fighting everything you see without diplomacy. It felt like a fun extra layer to each of these Pokémon that tied them just as much into the DND side of things as the Pokémon.

=====

Back to our story, after being briefly detained (mostly as an excuse to give the players time to introduce themselves to each other, something my DMs have struggled with), they meet Professor(-in-training) Bianca. The four Pokémon had been found by Silph Co., and had decided to donate them to the Unovan Pokémon Research Lab. However, after seeing the Pokémon interacting with these people, Bianca decides to give them up instead. "Pokémon should be with people," after all.

I had three side quests set up following this (after they all go to the DMV to get their Trainer's licenses). The first was a general "there's wild Pokémon here" quest where they could train and catch things. There was a sale at the mall where they could get some cheap held items and have their first trainer battle, and an event at the fisher's market where they could win some free items and would lead into their first dungeon.

The dungeon was what I was hoping they would pick, and would have them chase a group of Poipole through a warehouse, with them having different battles if they chose to enter from the front or the back. After defeating them, the Poipole would be sucked through a spontaneously generating Ultra Wormhole, with a high enough perception check revealing a strange laugh, or on a 20 have them catch a glimpse of a grey Charizard O_O

From there it was a matter of coming up with (or possibly recycling unused) side-quests until we reached the point where the Starters were about to evolve. I had a few things planned; introductions to a few reoccurring NPCs, a field trip to the local museum where they would be able to catch a Yamask (and possibly learn something about the origins of their Starters), and a raid battle against a group of Onix who would recur through the campaign.

The end of Phase 1 would come about with another dungeon. In the middle of the night, Ethan and Arthur would be awoken by their Pokémon to a group of Durant having busted through the floor of the dorm and raiding their kitchen. Easily driving them off, their Pokémon would encourage them to pursue. Later, full party in toe, the four of them would explore the Duranthill. There would be a number of possible encounters, but only one mandatory fight before reaching the depths. In said encounter, while being surrounded by a group of Durant, they would receive unexpected help from this Pokémon:

With some interpretation, they would discover that this Princess Durant was afraid for the sake of her colony. A new queen had taken up residence there, and was commanding the Durant to attack the surface and steal food for her. With additional party member in toe, they would descend further with better direction, eventually discovering the lair of the Queen Durant...

[reinepadova]

To Be Seen

[←Previous]  | Chapter 7 |  [ Next → ]

To see once is preferable compared to hearing a hundred times – I wonder. Will you accept my truth as you see it?

“So. A consultant,” Stella stated mildly after a period of silence, a gentle breeze brushing back her hair, and rolling clouds made her glance at the horizon. She felt the chill of the stone beneath her contrast with the warmth of her hand – her fingers smoothed over the intricate carvings at its edges.

“That is correct,” came the calm reply, a careful distance away from her left.

Stella hummed. “Is this your true form then?” She specified, minutely looked over at the seated man before looking away.

“I adapt to many forms,” he clarified, voice vibrating in a soothing timbre. “But I am not born from a mortal life.”

Stella saw in her periphery the gentleman angling his shoulders to face her, and narrow eyes observing her form. She closed her eyes, trying to keep still and polite, but the urge to slap him to make him look away crossed her mind several times. Why won't he stop? It's one thing to enter a staring contest with a little snake creature – which in some ways resemble an exotic, cuddly pet – but its another thing to hold gazes with this structure. This... man.

She's still undecided on how to settle her feelings about it.

“I see,” she replied, eyes turning to follow the reflection of the moon on the moving water. “And, you work with a funeral parlor? Isn't that an ironic occupation for a not-mortal?”

“Perhaps. I see it as fitting – for the times,” he hummed in low gravitas, expression turning distant. “In Liyue, there is a saying, 'the best time to plant a tree, was twenty years ago. The second best time, is today. I wish to honor they whom made this land prosperous – no matter how great or small the contribution.”

Stella glanced at the hand near her on the bench, the gleam of the amber stone shone dully in the night. 'This' land? Does he mean the harbor? Or...Liyue in general?

But that means –

“You're not just a little guardian in Qingce Village, are you? Why would you be here, if you were its sole protector? Why did we have to say good bye then, at the edge of the harbor? And you, in this form? A job? For a... spirit? Entity? I just – I don't – this world is so – ” Stella cut-off her words with a muffled sigh, head bowed into her hands. She belatedly realized what she almost blurted out.

If this keeps up, I'll be exposed as even more of a foreigner.

But... this is Mr. Guardian. Will it be bad to tell him?

There was a beat of surprise before he answered, sounding oddly apologetic. “I should have placed more consideration on your insight. It was not my intent to distress you, but I shall not justify my shortcomings. Know that I am still he who found you at the rockface,” he reassured gently, his presence growing closer at her bent form.

Found me... Yes. I suppose he did.

Like a stray, aren't I?

Stella remained quiet, lowering her hands to trace her life lines as she thought.

Wasn't that her intention awhile ago? To find a stray to be her companion? When the nights grow cold and Mei tucked safely in bed. When memories come to haunt her in the dark – of things she could not control – of things she wished she could control – while choking on her screams to prevent disturbing anyo –

“What is this?” A warm presence was suddenly before her, fingers brushing against her cheek. The man pulled away to show them stained in shining red.

“Oh,” she noted dully, mechanically drawing a cloth from a pocket to wipe quickly at her face. She then gingerly took the man's hand and dabbed at them next. “I'm sorry for dirtying them. I'll have them replaced. It's not good to use only one pair in a matched set.”

He stared, brows low, before slowly shaking his head – Stella idly noted the lighter hues of brown at the tips of his hair – his composed expression turning serious. She could feel the burn of his gaze trying to check around her face while she stubbornly tried to avoid meeting them. “That does not matter. Where is your injury?”

“I have no injury,” Stella uttered reflexively, accustomed to such inquiries.

This is so awkward. Why did he have to kneel down? Why does he have to be pushy even in this form?

At the feel of burning in her eyes again, Stella twisted her upper body, and dabbed at the inner corner of her eyes as discreetly as she could. Unfortunately, he picked up on the implication right away. “Why does your lifeblood flow so?” he whispered, sounding unusually disconcerted. His fingers rested on the edge of the bench next to her hip – a thin streak of red left on it.

Even after three days, she knew him enough to know he never not knows anything – if his long tales of the giant vase at the lounge, the history of tea, or the gossip about his expertise was any indication. Even Ferrylady defers to him when he speaks with a sureness of someone with a quick understanding of any matter put before him – even a topic as mundane as the hair used in a writing brush.

Surely such an all-knowing person – being – is unsettled with the unknown – despite being shrouded in mystery himself – and not because she crying... like this.

But she couldn't refute, or comfort him. Not right now. Not when she couldn't speak properly – her feelings, a jumbled mess. This was the most out of control she's felt after dropping to this world –

Stella gritted her teeth, waiting for her running emotions to pass – willing them all to sink back into the deep.

She was inattentive of the figure quietly watching the transparent changes to her face, a concern slant to his brow.

When thunder rumbled, and darker clouds moved to cover the moon, she uttered her words in an even tone – a clarity and nonchalance she wished she had at the beginning of this conversation.

“Because I have no tears left to shed.”

Eerie silence followed her statement, the most uncomfortable she felt with the unnatural gentleman yet. Determined to salvage what's left of her dignity, Stella stood and dusted her skirt excessively. She moved to swerve around the bench to leave.

Even at the risk of being seen as rude, it's for the best she leave. She should get back to Mei's anyway and take shelter from the rain.

As she sped pass the stone bench, she heard long strides catching up to her easily. She slowed at the soft plea in his tone when he next spoke.

“Let me accompany you to your residence. Take it as an exchange for holding you back from doing so at an earlier hour.”

Pursing her lips – mostly out of guilt – Stella turned back to face him, with arms crossed.

Exchange? Figures. He would think that way. Liyue, the Land of Contracts indeed.

I just thought that was only for business...

“No, you did no wrong. It's alright. I can walk myself just fine. I would not obligate you to do this. You really don't have – w-what?” she sputtered, surprised at his nearing figure, before a large parasol shielded her from a sudden downpour. At the faint glow in the dark, she instinctly looked up, catching sight of his composed, amber eyes – like a moth to a lantern's light.

Their proximity in the umbrella was left unnoticed.

“Where on Liyue did this come from?” Stella asked, bewildered, gesturing to the canopy of their shelter. She didn't remember him carrying anything when they went out. He wouldn't have gotten a parasol from inside the parlor in such a short amount of time –

...can he?

She furrowed her brows when the corner of his eyes slowly wrinkled in amusement, despite the continued stoicism of his face. He adjusted his grip on the handle, which directed her gaze at the glowing cracks on the shaft, with angular shapes carved into its surface.

That...doesn't look like wood.

“Have you need of one yourself? I know of a reliable merchant down at the port who produces umbrellas from carefully sourced bamboo. They come in a variety of designs to choose from, depending on the occasion, or whim. I recommend a customization, and order at least four, to match each season of Liyue,” he suggested, a pleased smile growing on his face.

“I'll... keep that in mind,” she deadpanned, wondering if he has any idea how expensive customization is on anything.

Do spirits even understand the concept of money management?

When she huffed and started walking, heedless of the rain, he strode effortlessly to match her step, his elbow brushing her arm occasionally.

Curse his long legs. Why did he have to adapt to a form this tall?

She felt tiny compared to him – the top of her head barely reached his shoulder. In her irritation, she ignored the subtle movement of his arm – an offering to take it for her to rest on – and focused on her destination, not wanting to catch a cold.

“For the grandmother's memorial plaque, what design did you have in mind for it?” he asked out of the blue.

Startled, Stella answered without thought, “A Qingxin flower. Maybe three or five, grouped together.”

“Mm. None of the blooms at Yujing Terrace caught your eye?”

Having a new focus, her emotions calmed – the delicate thrum of water on stone centering her attention. She hummed in disagreement after a thought. “That would be typical, wouldn't it? The source of Liyue's famous silk, the go-to perfumes for women everywhere. The Lilies are nice too, when they don't shy away. But they don't seem... enough? They don't hold much meaning to me. To me personally.”

As Stella went deeper into her thoughts, she unconsciously walked closer to her companion, as if entrusting him to guide her path. The thought made his eyes soften, but otherwise, he stared straight ahead. She continued.

“But, more than a week ago, I saw in a book at Wanwen Bookhouse what the Qingxin flower looked like. A translucent white, found high up in the mountains, and blossoming in groups of four at a time. It's looks the most similar to – ah, from a place I... know? where I grew up. Yeah, that's it.”

“A flower from home?” he suggested graciously, the low tones enveloping her within the intimate space. Stella blinked, surprised at how stiff her shoulders were as she dragged them down, before looking up at gold orbs that glanced at encouragement.

Stella wonders why it puts her at ease.

“Yes. They're a very old species – or so I was taught. What it looks like today, is what it would have looked centuries ago. Like how Glaze Lilies are? How their form seems unchanged? So, the flowers I grew up seeing have different colors, and each have different meaning. The white one is said to be a perfect symbol for loyalty and strength and womanly beau – ”

When Stella became a little more animated, gesturing for emphasis, the gentleman leaned in, lowering his elbow enough for a stray hand to fall right into. She went on without skipping a beat, absentmindedly moving closer to the new source of warmth as a cold breeze sweeped through their coats.

“ – Mei's grandmother was very kind to take me in. And before I arrived, she single-handedly raised Mei when her parents passed. The Qingxin reminds me of how steadfast she was. How dedicated.”

She stopped walking, a stray thought crossing her mind. The gentleman turned to face her in a slow pivot – careful to not let her fingers fall as he waited.

“Mei reminds me of someone I knew.  There were many things I regret. Mei – she's my second chance. I want to do better for her. But there are just some days I wish I could do more,” Stella sighed, absently rubbing at her eyes before she strode forward again, pulling slightly at his arm to direct their way.

-{-}-

Morax stared with deep sympathy, understanding perfectly how heavy the weight of responsibility feels.

But. A wish...

“What do you desire for Young Meilin?” he probed – a proposal on the tip of his tongue, his eyes shone in a split second.

I may be off-duty but... for only this time...

She hummed and thought, before shrugging her shoulders. “Just for her to be happy. That's all,” the lady said simply, eyes shutting for a moment. “I want her to keep smiling. Its the only thing I wanted for myself growing up. She deserved the childhood I never had...” Her words trailed as her head pitched forward, shaking it briefly when her neck ached.

Morax could only watch for cues on where to go, following her lead as he contemplated. The rain poured harder in their wake.

To keep smiling... For myself...

To be happy...

What I deserve...

I am... content, of Liyue's prosperity. Of how far it grew since it's infancy.

It's what I've endeavored for many years. For the common folk to cease suffering from an age where gods and monsters rein in their conflict. Of war and infestations dominated the earth.

But...

Am I happy?

As they approached a quaint building of old wood and stone, Morax observed the nondescript door before him, taking note of the faint glow from the window next to it before it swiftly went out. He hummed, pleasantly diverted from his thoughts.

Seems like the little one has been vigilant in her wait.

He was about to announce their arrival but stopped at the feel of a weight on his side. He looked down and saw the charming sight of the lady dozing on his arm, hair falling artfully to frame her face.

It took him but a moment to etch this scene to his memory, but he selfishly waited for a few minutes before waking her with a light touch to her cheek. She woke in an instant.

“Well, this is me,” the lady declared, quickly pulling away when she realized their proximity. She glared at her hand as if it betrayed her.

“May I sleep with you tonight?” he asked, resting his parasol under the overhang of the apartment to let it dry.

The lady turned wide eyes at him, mouth opened in disbelief. She then scanned their surroundings, like weasel thief being hunted. Morax blinked at her unusual behavior.

At the sight of his confused face, she asked, “Do you not realize what you just said? Out loud?” Vexation colored her tone, brows furrowed low.

To sleep is to rest, is it not?

Let's see, 'sleeping' in this century mean –

Oh.

“Pardon my poor choice of words,” he chuckled quietly, a fist reaching up to cover his mouth. “But, you have not disagreed when I asked if you have not been resting well after we parted ways, yes?”

“Well, I suppose – ”

“Then if my presence has helped you sleep soundly, then I would like to aid you again.”

The lady stared at him for a long moment before frowning. “Please, don't speak of what you don't mean.”

“I beg your pardon?” Morax tilted his head, noting how defensive her posture is again.

“I appreciate your intention, Mr. Guardian. I really do. But my struggles are not yours to bear.”

“Zhongli.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, a lost look to her expression.

“As precious as I find your appellation to be. In this form, I am called Zhongli.”

“...precious? I don't – Ugh. Fine. Zhongli.” He smiled.

“And just as you do not feel obligated to care for Young Meilin,” he continued, eyes narrowing in earnest. “I too do not feel so. With you.”

Before Morax could understand the stir of emotion that swell in her gaze, the lady consented, with only a little bit of reluctance. “Okay. Alright. You won't give up until I agreed anyway.  But, answer me honestly please. It's the only thing still bothering me.”

“Yes?”

The lady took a deep breath, before gazing at him just as earnestly. “How do you benefit from you helping me?”

“Why must you think I want something in return?”

She scoffed, crossing her arms. “I am not naive. This place, this region – I am aware that people here are very fond of contracts. Of an equal exchange. Its expected.

So. What do you want? And don't answer my question with another question.”

The burn of a proposal was still at the tip of Morax' tongue. But right now –

“Nothing. Just knowing you are able to rest, is enough for me.”

– he resisted it strongly.

The lady widened her eyes before closing them, realizing the echo of her previous words.

Morax stood still, waiting for her to acknowledge his sincerity.

Eventually, her shoulders sagged in acceptance before she turned to unlock the door. She let him in first with a careless wave, offering to hang his coat as she went. When she walked over to the garment hanger after he conceded, his sharp senses heard a scamper of little feet approach.

“Lala? You're la – Oh. Who you, mister?”

Morax smiled at the girl, who took a few seconds to study his clothes before looking up into his eyes. She gasped at their glow.

“Bìxià!”

“We meet again, little one,” he greeted with a subdued smile after eyeing her white dress.

To have the strength to be cheerful despite the odds...

Stopping to lean forward around the privacy screen to check on her guardian – who was smoothing his coat at the hangar – the little girl ran excitedly to his side, the rain barely hiding the sound. She tugged at his vest, and bounced on her toes. She looked pointedly at his height. He chuckled, getting the message. He rested on one knee before her.

“Bìxià, Lala no sleep after you went away. Will you stay now? Please? I cook you super yummy, extra sauce-y food! And, and, I'll pick the shiniest berry in the garden. Or you like chili better? Do you want other stuff? Please tell me!” She uttered boldly, determination shining brightly in the dark. He patted her head warmly, amused at how much guardian and ward think alike – their care for each other is admirable.

“I have no need for an offering, sweet one. It is also my wish to help your... Lala... rest as well. But if you would still like to prepare a meal, I will be happy to accept.”

Biting her lips to keep from squealing, she hopped on the spot instead. “Thank you, thank you, Bìxià! Gran-gran was right. You're the best!”

But hearing the soft thud of approaching feet, she hurried to say, “I'll cook the best noodle dish ever! Uuhh – for lunch! Tomorrow! Please look forward to it. I'm going to bed now. I'm really sleepy. Niiiight!” She bid cheerfully after bowing low, beaming at him afterward. He indulged her with a nod before she scampered off, the pitter-patter of her feet did little to hide her presence as the lady drew close.

“Oh. Was that Mei? I should check up on her,” she said, moving to enter the sleeping quarters. She stopped as he shook his head.

“That would not be necessary. She is in want of sleep, she says, now that you're back safe,” Morax assured. He stood to take off his shoes before joining her at the doorway.

“Mm? If you say so,” she conceded, but she drew a brow as their gaze met. “By the way, she couldn't explain to me well the word she keeps calling you. Is it a title?”

“Ah. Its a respectful term in Liyue. It goes to show she is a well-mannered child.”

She chuckled, looking proud – a rare sight to behold.

“Yes. She really is. I'm glad she's not too mature for her age. She still gets to be carefee. I –”

When she brought a hand up to delicately cover a yawn, he intervened. “Shall we then?”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[←Previous]  | Chapter 7 |  [ Next → ]

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

A/N: I had to cut it. This chapter was getting too long.

If you’re curious, I thought Qingxin sort of look like Magnolia. It smells really good as a lotion.

I made a modified Almond Tofu for Xiao’s banner, but I don’t think I have the know-how, nor the ingredients for the Slow-cooked Bamboo Soup.

I offer this fic instead uwu

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Follower Tag:  @meladollsims

[musette22]

Title: Café Rouge

Pairing: Peggy Carter x Angie Martinelli (F/F)

Rating: E (18+)

Word count: 5k

Summary: AU meet-cute. Angie is a freelance journalist who also works night shifts at a bar in Queens. One evening, one of her customers turns out to be a stunning British woman who flirts with her and makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Will Angie throw caution to the wind and go home with a complete stranger? (spoiler alert: yeah, she will. Surprise.)

A/N: This is my contribution to the awesome concept of Femslash February! I actually started this story for a non-fandom related project, but naturally my head is in fandom mode always, and I secretly wrote it about Peggy and Angie anyway gna gna

I don’t really know many folks on here who would be interested in this, so I think this is going to go largely unnoticed, but that’s ok because I had a lot of fun writing it! But just in case there are any Cartinelli fans out here as well or people interested in F/F in general, give it a read and let me know what you think!

Tagging a few lovely people who might be interested (if not, I’m sorry and ignore me!!): @wintersoldier1989 @ravensonata @buckmesideways22 @supersoldiersruined-me @wildestdreamsimpossiblethings @itsthesummerof2001lily-ella @stanclub @murder-daddy-buckyy @captainrogerrsbeard

Let me know if you’d be interested in being added to my taglist, for future F/F or more generally!

Café Rouge

“Three beers, a white wine and a sparkling water, please.”

Angie gives the tall, lanky man who placed the order a nod and gets cracking. It’s a busy Friday night at Café Rouge, the bar where she’s been working for the past year or so, doing a couple of late shifts a week to supplement the income she has from working as a freelance journalist. She really does enjoy the work; it’s good to be among other humans every now and again instead of being locked away in her one bedroom flat in Queens day after day. Performing the familiar actions with a practiced ease, Angie holds up the card machine and takes the payment, then puts it back next to the cash register behind her.

She turns around again with a smile, ready to help another customer, only to have the wind knocked out of her when she locks eyes with the next person in line.

The woman, who is probably a few years older than Angie herself, has shoulder-length, dark brown hair; wavy and thick and framing a striking face with big, sparkling, brown eyes and amazing bone structure. Angie’s eyes drift downwards without her permission and linger on the woman’s generous bosom for a moment. After a few seconds, she checks herself and forces her gaze back up to look at the woman, whose lips, painted red, curve up into a knowing smile the longer Angie stares at her. She cocks her head just slightly in a silent challenge.

It takes Angie a moment to shake herself, but when she does, she stands up straighter and makes sure to smile extra brightly to compensate for her shameless gawking.  

“Hi,” she says, still a little breathless, despite her best efforts to appear professional. “What can I get you?”

The woman smiles. “Could I possibly get a bottle of red? With three glasses, please.”

Angie blinks. Oh my god. And she’s English. Instantly, the woman’s already considerable levels of hotness are bumped up a few more notches. And then, when she takes the change Angie hands her, the brunette has the audacity to thank her with a wink. A wink, goddammit. Angie has to try her damndest not to swoon on the spot.

She really does try to keep her mind on her job after that, tries to not let her attention stray from the customers that need serving, but it’s a lost cause. Every few seconds, her eyes flick to the table in the corner where the brunette is sat, chatting to a familiar looking man and a woman who are sitting close together. The man’s arm is draped over the back of the woman’s chair – a couple, then. Which means that the brunette is third wheeling. Which does not mean that she is single or even interested in women, but Angie will take what she can get.

She can’t decide whether it’s just her overactive imagination, or if the woman really does glance her way from time to time, too. The burning question is finally answered when the brunette makes her way over to the bar again after about half an hour, just when there’s a quiet spell at the bar. It could be a coincidence, but Angie really hopes it isn’t. As she saunters over, Angie admires the confident way her hips sway with every step.

“Hi, again,” the woman smiles, leaning her elbows on the counter. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“Of course,” Angie replies, returning her smile, left hand reaching up automatically to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “How can I help you?”

The woman looks almost embarrassed when she says, “Well, I was hoping you might be able to settle a minor disagreement between my friends and me.”

“Oh,” Angie says, surprised. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but this definitely wasn’t it. “Um, sure. I can try, at least.”

“Thank you,” the brunette replies, flashing her another brilliant smile. “That’s very kind of you. You see, my friends come here a lot, and they seem to think your name is Angela.” She tilts her head, regarding Angie thoughtfully for a moment. “But I don’t think you’re an Angela. Not quite.”

Angie can barely suppress a snort. Wow. Using a transparent excuse to find out her name – that’s definitely flirting.

She hums, deciding to play along. “Well,” she says, “I’d hate to disappoint you, but my given name actually is Angela. Although I usually go by Angie. So in a way you’re right, I guess.”

“Angie.” The woman seems to taste her name like she’s tasting a fine wine. “Yes, that suits you better,” she decides.

“Thank you, I think,” Angie replies, laughing quietly to herself. After a second’s hesitation, she ventures, “Since you now know my name, I think it’s only fair if I know yours, too, no?”

The woman fixes her with a calculating look, and Angie holds her breath, suddenly afraid she misjudged the situation after all. But then the woman's full, distinctly kissable lips turn upwards into a smirk.

“Peggy,” she volunteers, holding out her hand over the counter.

Angie exhales, taking the proffered hand and shaking it lightly. “Lovely to meet you, Peggy.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Angie,” Peggy says, a twinkle in her eye as they hold on to each other’s hands just a little bit too long. Eventually, Angie becomes aware of the fact that there is now someone else standing at the bar, waiting to be served, and she draws back her hand with a regretful smile.

“Was there anything else I could help you with?” she asks, gesturing towards the customer by way of explanation.

Peggy bites her lip, her eyes roaming Angie’s face. “You could tell me when your shift ends,” she says eventually, boldly holding her gaze.

Angie jaw drops. Is she really being propositioned? She debates for a moment whether she should play coy, but quickly dismisses the idea. Playing hard to get does not seem like a game Peggy would appreciate, and if she’s being honest, Angie thinks that Peggy knows full well that she isn’t actually hard to get at all. Not by Peggy, in any case. Angie thinks she’s probably sending out a pretty strong vibe of ‘please drag me to your woman cave at your earliest convenience.’

So she shakes herself and smirks at Peggy. “I'm off in about 45 minutes, as it happens. I can meet you out front?”

Peggy gives her a wide, pleased smile that lights up her entire face. “Sounds like plan.”

The rest of Angie’s shift passes in a blur. She goes through the motions, but her heart certainly isn’t in it. Instead, she keeps throwing glances Peggy’s way, checking whether she’s still there, and every time, she finds Peggy looking back at her. Whenever their eyes meet, Angie’s heart rate picks up and she feels a little frisson of excitement run down her spine.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity but at the same time could be only a couple of minutes, the clock strikes eleven, and Angie is free to go. She hastily runs upstairs to grab her bag, throwing a quick look in the bathroom mirror to check her appearance, before realizing that Peggy has been watching her all night so she probably liked what she saw – even if Angie knows she has looked better.

Huffing at her reflection, Angie quickly runs a hand through her wavy, light brown hair and makes her way downstairs again. A quick glance around the café learns that Peggy is no longer there, although her friends are. When Angie throws them a questioning look, the woman winks at her and tips her head towards the exit. Angie salutes her, then walks outside to find Peggy waiting for her near the entrance. She's leaning against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her overcoat, turning her head when Angie appears through the doorway.

“Hey, you.”

Angie gulps. It feels different, now they’re in the real world. Not her attraction to Peggy – that part’s still very much the same. But the situation feels somehow more real in the chilly night air and the silence. For about a second and a half, she wonders if she should even be doing this. Peggy may not look like an axe murderer, but she’s heard the stories…

Peggy must be able to read the hesitation on her face, because she gives her a rueful smile and asks, “Changed your mind?”

Before her brain can filter her reaction, Angie blurts out, “No.” She feels herself starting to blush immediately, the tips of her ears turning red. “I mean,” she stammers, “I don’t think so. I just… I don’t normally do this.”

“Neither do I,” Peggy admits, and although Angie knows she could just be spinning her a line, it seems genuine enough. “I’m not usually so… forward. But then again,” she shrugs, “I don’t usually feel this much instant attraction upon first meeting someone.”

Angie’s blush deepens further and she huffs a self-conscious laugh. “Are you sure it’s attraction, and not just a really good bottle of wine?”

Peggy’s smile turns lewd. “Oh, I’m sure,” she says, looking Angie slowly up and down.

Angie shivers under Peggy’s gaze, and nods. “Alright,” she says. “Your place, or mine?”

---

“Thanks,” Angie smiles, taking the glass Peggy offers her and lifting it to her mouth to take sip of her wine.

Peggy doesn’t reply, sitting down next to her on the comfy couch instead, tucking her feet under her. She leans one elbow on the backrest, supporting her head with a fist as she regards Angie in silence.

“Like what you see?” Angie asks, turning her head to give Peggy a slightly defiant look.

“Very much,” Peggy answers quietly. “You’re very beautiful, Angie.”

Angie shrugs. “I’m alright,” she says diffidently. “You, on the other hand, are stunning.” Peggy stays quiet, so Angie continues. “I’m not even kidding, Peggy. You might just be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.” She lets her eyes roam Peggy’s face, taking in the high forehead and cheekbones and lingering on her full, red lips.

When her eyes finally flick back up to Peggy’s, the intensity with which the other woman is looking back at her makes her unintentionally hold her breath. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Peggy starts to lean in, closing the distance between them inch by inch, until Angie has to close her eyes or go cross-eyed. Soft, plump lips press lightly against her own – more of a caress than a kiss. That is, until Angie surges forward and brings up a hand to tangle her fingers in Peggy’s hair. Instantly, the kiss deepens, Peggy parting her lips just enough for Angie to lick into her mouth.

Peggy responds with an appreciative hum. She lets her hands glide up Angie’s thighs, over her hips and up, until she can grab her by the waist and pull her closer. Angie goes willingly, pressing her body up against Peggy’s and feeling her own, more modest bosom press against Peggy’s considerably larger breasts. Next thing she knows, Peggy is pushing her down onto the couch, and she’s sinking into the pillows as Peggy lowers herself on top of her. Angie spreads her legs instinctively, cradling Peggy between her thighs to get her closer, one hand still in her dark hair while the other runs down her lower back and comes to rest on her firm, round ass.

Peggy is a curvy woman; not overweight by any standard, but not a skinny girl either. She has the ultimate hourglass figure, with large boobs, a tiny waist and a nice, round butt. Angie, by contrast, is slimmer. She’s happy with her c-cup, flat stomach and long, slim legs, but the women she’s usually attracted to are a little curvier. Peggy certainly fits that bill.

While this means that Angie is finding it difficult to keep her hands to herself, fortunately Peggy doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she’s currently untucking Angie’s shirt from her jeans, rucking it up so that she can slide her hands under it and caress the bare skin of her stomach. The naked desire with which Peggy is looking at her, combined with the sensation of her fingers trailing higher and higher until they’re brushing the underside of her boobs, causes Angie to shiver, a sound somewhere between a moan and a giggle escaping her.

“I don’t think you have any idea how much I want you right now,” Peggy whispers against her lips, and Angie whimpers, arching her back to push her body closer to Peggy. The latter takes this as permission to drag her up into a seated position so she can pull her shirt over her head. Once the shirt’s gone, she immediately runs her hands up Angie’s sides, groaning softly as she reaches her bosom and gently squeezes her breasts.

“A perfect handful, baby,” Peggy says affectionately, leaning in again to capture Angie’s lips in a sweet kiss. Before Angie even realizes what’s happening, Peggy’s unhooked Angie’s bra and is sliding it off her shoulders.

Smooth, Angie thinks. Distracting her with gentle smooches to get her naked. Not that she’s complaining. Especially not when, the next moment, Peggy scoots back on the couch and ducks her head to flick at Angie’s left nipple with her tongue. Angie sucks in a sharp breath, her hands flying up to slide into Peggy’s hair again, trying to keep her in place and make her keep doing what she’s doing.

Peggy takes the hint, gently scraping her teeth over the sensitive nub before suckling it to soothe the sting. Angie’s breathing goes shallow instantly, hitching every time Peggy’s teeth connect with her skin. By the time Peggy’s given her other breast the same treatment, Angie is a panting, writhing mess.

Seemingly satisfied, Peggy pushes her back down into the couch cushions again and starts to lick and nip her way down Angie’s naked torso. Angie feels this close to just surrendering and letting Peggy have her wicked way with her, but when she chances a look down and catches a glimpse of Peggy’s cleavage where her blouse has fallen open, she’s suddenly overcome with the desire to touch.

Angie scrambles upright again and grabs Peggy’s wrists, pushing her backwards as she slips off the couch and settles down on her knees in front of Peggy. Peggy looks down at her with wide eyes, and Angie shoots her a cheeky grin before reaching up and starting to unbutton Peggy’s blouse. With every button that comes undone, a tantalizing glimpse of Peggy’s creamy, pale skin is revealed that Angie is physically aching to get her mouth on – particularly her gorgeous breasts, full and firm and straining against the confines of her sexy, lace bra.

Angie groans, dropping her forehead to Peggy’s thigh. Peggy lets out a breathy laugh. “Think you can handle all this?”

She lifts her head again and trains her eyes on Peggy’s chest. “I don’t think that should be a problem,” Angie replies drily.

She proves her point by leaning forwards and mouthing at Peggy’s breasts through the fabric of her bra, leaving damp patches that make Peggy shiver when the cooler air of the room hits them, causing her nipples to harden fully. When she pushes up Peggy’s bra and finally gets to put her hands on them, Angie lets out a soft groan. They feel so good under her palms, firm, yet also soft and yielding. She decides to play with them a little while, running her tongue over the hard nubs that are peeking out from between her fingers, pinching them to make Peggy squirm.

When she eventually releases her breasts, Angie slides her hands down Peggy’s soft but flat stomach, pausing to squeeze her tiny waist, before reaching under her skirt to start pulling down Peggy’s flesh-colored tights. She eases them off her shapely legs, Peggy pointing her toes to make it easier for her. Once they’re off, she grabs the bottom of Peggy’s skirt and starts inching it up bit by bit. Peggy takes the hint and lifts her hips so that Angie can slip the skirt past her ass, bunching it up at her waist and revealing Peggy’s matching dark red, lacy panties.

“Fuck, baby,” Angie breathes. “Look at you. I can’t fucking wait to taste you.”

Peggy moans, her hips rocking upwards, and Angie takes the hint. She leans down and runs the tip of her tongue along the edge of Peggy’s panties, savoring the little hitch in Peggy’s breath it causes. She tugs at the fabric, straining it and pulling it aside just far enough to tease at Peggy’s clit with the tip of her tongue.

“Please,” Peggy pleads, her eyes heavy-lidded as she looks down at her, asking her without words to go the extra mile. Angie is happy to oblige, but they’ll need to get rid of the last items of clothing first. She urges Peggy to lift her hips so she can slide off her panties, while Peggy reaches back to unfasten her own bra. Standing up, Angie quickly shucks off her jeans and panties, too, and then they’re both fully, gloriously naked.

They take a moment to just look each other over with hungry eyes, eyes wandering over curves and dips and soft, bare skin.

When their eyes finally meet again, Peggy whispers, “Come here, sweetheart,” and Angie doesn’t need to be told a second time. She climbs onto the couch, straddling Peggy’s thighs and settling down in her lap. Peggy’s hands immediately stroke down Angie’s back, lingering on the curve of her hips before coming to rest on her butt, giving it a gentle squeeze. Angie arches her back at the touch and presses closer to Peggy, their breasts dragging against each other while she dips her head down again to capture Peggy’s lips in a deep, wet kiss. Peggy hums into it, pushing her tongue against Angie’s insistently while pushing Angie’s hips down onto her own. The action wrings a moan from the both of them and Angie cups Peggy’s breasts in her palms, mouthing along the graceful line of her neck. As she nips and sucks at the skin, she inhales the last hint of Peggy’s perfume – a scent that fits her perfectly and drives Angie a little wild.

“God, you smell so good,” she hums against Peggy’s skin. “You’re like one of my fantasies come to life, I swear to god.”

“Hmmm. I did see you, you know. Staring at me all evening,” Peggy says lowly. “Like you couldn’t wait to get me into bed.”

Angie chuckles breathlessly. “Well, can you blame me? A gorgeous woman, possibly the hottest woman I’ve ever seen, suddenly shows up at my bar and fucking winks at me. Can’t say that happens to me often.”

“Well, it should,” Peggy says seriously, while she trails the tip of her middle finger just along the top of the crease of Angie’s ass. It makes her shiver. “A girl like you should have everyone falling over themselves to win your attention.”

Angie lets out an incredulous huff. “I think you’re confusing me with you again.”

Fire flashes behind Peggy’s eyes, before she suddenly leans in and bites down on the junction between Angie’s shoulder and neck. Angie cries out and draws back to give Peggy a wounded look.

“That’s for talking nonsense,” Peggy says, a little smug. “You’re gorgeous, Angie, and I won’t have anyone say otherwise. Not even you.”

Angie softens, looking into Peggy’s big, brown eyes and finding only sincerity there. It makes her blush, and she bites her lip. “Thank you,” she says softly.

Peggy smiles. “You’re welcome, darling. Now kiss me.” She reaches up to slide her fingers into Angie’s hair and pull her towards her, their lips meeting again in a soft kiss – a gentle, slick slide of lips that somehow manages to rile Angie up even more than the passionate kiss of a few minutes ago.

Suddenly, it feels like she can’t get close enough. She shifts impatiently on Peggy’s lap, and Peggy slides down onto the couch on her back, pulling Angie with her so she ends up lying on top of her. Then she smiles up at her with a mischievous glint in her eyes as she pushes a soft, smooth thigh between both of Angie’s. Angie gasps at the friction, and already it feels so good that she can’t help but grind down onto Peggy’s thigh. A spark of pleasure shoots through her, the action also causing her own thigh to drag along Peggy’s core. She’s pleased to find that she’s not the only one who’s soaking wet by this point.

The discovery spurs Angie on to reach down between them and drag a single finger through Peggy’s wetness. Peggy’s breath hitches, and Angie teasingly strokes through the soft, neatly kempt hair, before tracing Peggy’s folds, first with one finger and then with two, reveling at the soft, smooth feeling and the little sounds Peggy’s started making underneath her.

“You like that, beautiful?” she asks quietly. “You’re so wet for me, aren’t you?”

Peggy can only nod, her eyes clenching shut when Angie finally touches her clit, a broken sound falling from her lush lips. Angie rubs it in little circles, fast and relentless, until Peggy starts to quiver, her abdomen beginning to tense. That’s Angie’s cue to suddenly slide a finger into her warm, wet heat, making her suck in a sharp breath.

Peggy’s hands fly up to Angie’s hips and squeeze down hard. “More,” she pleads, and Angie obliges, pushing her middle finger in alongside her index finger and starting to slide them in and out, slowly at first, then steadily increasing the tempo.

Angie bites back a groan. Peggy’s hot and she’s tight, and so responsive, and Angie realizes that she could definitely get used to this. She holds herself up with her left arm and leans down to mouth at Peggy’s breasts, flicking her tongue at the hard little nubs and laving it around the sensitive areola. Peggy keeps up a steady stream of moans, clearly not shy about being heard, and Angie adores it. She’s less vocal herself, but loves it when her partners show her how much they appreciate her efforts. The steady movement of her fingers causes deliciously wet little sounds which just serve to ramp up the fire in Angie’s lower belly. She’s aching to be touched, but in this moment, she’s completely focused on giving Peggy as much pleasure as she possibly can.

Peggy protests loudly when Angie eventually pulls back, the complaints dying down once she starts kissing a wet trail down her torso, nipping at the skin as she goes while glancing up at her through her eyelashes. Peggy has her head thrown back, her lips red and slightly parted, and Angie thinks she’s never seen a more enticing sight in her life. She ends up between Peggy’s spread legs and waits to get her attention. Only when she’s sure that Peggy’s eyes are on her, she leans down and buries her face between her legs.

Peggy gasps loudly, her fingers digging into Angie’s hair, trying to spur her on. But Angie takes her time, starting with slow, lavish strokes of her tongue, before closing her lips around her clit and suckling it softly. Peggy makes a wounded sound, and Angie steps up her game, licking with fervor now while never ceasing the movement of her hand. She goes slow sometimes, then faster, before slowing down again, not giving Peggy the chance to anticipate what’s coming next.

Peggy seems to love and hate in equal measure, loud moans and frustrated little huffs falling from her lips, and it doesn’t take long before she starts tensing up again. Her hands on Angie’s head become more insistent now, pushing her down, urging her to lick harder, faster. Angie finally gives in, all at once directing her focus solely to where Peggy wants her most.

“Yes,” Peggy breathes immediately, “yes, yes, yes, just like that, gorgeous, come on.”

Angie gives her all, moaning as her tongue traces quick little circles over Peggy’s clit. Her fingers are pumping in and out steadily now, setting a rhythm that has Peggy panting fast and shallow. A few more seconds, and then Peggy’s thighs close tight around Angie’s head. She arches her back, her moans going high and breathy before she finally stops breathing entirely and stills. She comes hard, clenching around Angie’s fingers and whining, high and wanton. It’s instantly Angie’s favorite sound.

As Peggy is coming down from her high, Angie eases out her fingers gently, kissing the inside of her smooth thigh. Up and up she goes, her lips caressing Peggy’s stomach, her breasts, until she’s hovering over her and dips her head down to catch her lips in a deep, sultry kiss. Peggy hums into it, tasting herself, her left hand coming up to stroke the side of Angie’s face. When Angie pulls back, the look in Peggy’s eye is soft, sated, but before long, a spark of something a little more predatory returns to her gaze. Angie suddenly finds herself being pushed back on her haunches, while Peggy shifts until she’s on her knees, leaning forward to brush a feather light kiss over Angie’s mouth.

“Why don’t you turn around, darling?” Peggy murmurs against her lips.

“Turn around?” Angie asks dazedly, a little intoxicated by Peggy’s nearness, her scent, her everything. Peggy just hums affirmatively, but when Angie doesn’t move, Peggy smirks and grabs her shoulders, pushing and pulling at her until she has Angie where she wants her. Peggy’s hands settle on Angie’s hips, tugging them upwards until she’s crouched forwards on the crouch, a few cushions under her chest to support her, her head resting on her forearms, and her ass up in the air.

Angie feels a little self-conscious like this but exhilarated at the same time. Had she not been so absorbed in the moment, she would have found it extraordinary how much she trusts Peggy already, after having only known her for what is really just a few hours. 

“Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Peggy murmurs reverently, smoothing her palms down Angie’s ass. Angie smiles into the pillow when she feels her press a soft kiss to her right cheek first, then her left, sparing a moment to be thankful that she always keeps things neat and tidy down there, even when she’s in between partners. She feels Peggy’s tongue snake out suddenly, wet and soft against her skin, as if tasting her. Slowly, she nips her way towards Angie’s center, making her shiver in anticipation. Angie moans, wriggling her ass to spur Peggy on.

Peggy just tuts and bites down lightly on her left cheek. “Patience, my love.”

Angie whimpers, a little pathetically but too far gone to care, and this time Peggy has mercy on her. She flicks out her tongue again, where she wants her, this time, a light caress over her clit and then a long stripe down, making Angie whine.

Peggy hums, “You’re so good, sweetheart. So good for me.”

After that, the time for talking is over. Peggy laps her tongue over Angie’s center, using her lips to create suction that drives Angie nearly out of her mind. Then, to make matters worse – or better, depending on how you look at it – Peggy suddenly slips two fingers into her without warning.

Angie jerks, breathing, “Oh my god,” pushing backwards against Peggy’s fingers.

Peggy takes the hint and starts pumping her fingers in and out, the slide slick and delicious, twisting her fingers from time to time to create maximum friction. Finally, she brings her other hand down from Angie’s hip to sneak it between her thighs, starting to stroke the pad of her thumb in little circles over her clit. She suddenly replaces her fingers with her tongue, pointing it and pushing in as deep as it will go, steadily fucking her with it. God, it’s so fucking good.

It doesn’t take long before Angie starts letting out little, broken noises, aborted swears interspersed with desperate huffs, and then, right before she loses control and goes over the edge, Peggy suddenly licks upwards over her perineum, just skirting her hole. Angie doesn’t have a clue how Peggy figured out her weak spot so quickly, but she did, and it does the trick. Angie’s face screws up in ecstasy, her entire body contracting, and she comes silently, pushing back against Peggy’s mouth, shaking until she finally collapses onto the pillows below her.

She’s breathing heavily as she trembles through the aftershocks. “Holy fuck,” she says eventually, breathless and a little stunned. She turns her head to look at Peggy sideways, giving a weak chuckle at the slightly smug expression on Peggy’s face. Fair enough, Angie thinks.

Peggy slides down onto the couch beside her, nudging her so that Angie makes space for her to lie down. With a deep, heartfelt sigh, Angie tucks her head under Peggy’s chin, snuggling up to her while her lover wraps an arms around her waist and pulls her close.

“So you’re a cuddler, hm?” Peggy asks, her words muffled in Angie’s wild hair.

“Depends,” Angie says, lifting her shoulder a little in a half shrug.

Peggy looks down at her, reading her face. “On what?” she asks curiously.

“On whether the person I’m with is cuddle-worthy,” Angie smiles, suppressing a yawn.

Chuckling, Peggy kisses the top of her head. “I’m honored that you deem me cuddle-worthy, my dear.”

They’re silent for a few minutes, their pleasantly tired, naked bodies entwined on the couch, until Angie gives a minute shiver.

“You know,” Peggy remarks nonchalantly, “it’s warmer in the bedroom.”

Angie smirks. “Is it now?”

When Peggy just hums, Angie tilts her head so she can press their lips together. For a close-mouthed kiss, it’s surprisingly sensual, their lips moving together softly, slowly. When she pulls back, she whispers against her mouth, “Well, you’d better take me to bed then, gorgeous.”

Peggy doesn’t need to be told a second time.

Read it on AO3 here

[bleederziine]

Reaching Out: An Interview w/Pool Holograph

The first time I saw Pool Holograph they were opening for The Walters at their famed (at least in my tiny Chicago/surrounding suburbs college student music scene) show at Lincoln Hall. As someone who was there specifically for The Walters, to give Luke a sweater that anyone who ever reads this tiny blog already knows about, I was surprised by what a great show they put on. It was artful, chaotic, immersive, and for a first band on a lineup of four, I thought it was quite impressive that they gave it their all, instead of phoning it in like many other openers I’ve seen who are too caught up in the construct of not being the “headliner.” Read more in the interview below and enjoy some of my favorite photos I’ve taken so far to hear about their often entertaining thoughts on art, music, and themselves.

Paul: How was the tall boy?

Zach: I chugged it down as fast as I could. It was not great.

Wyatt: I chugged mine really fast because I was really excited to come over but now I’m kinda drunk right now.

SUB/VERSE: You’ll be more honest!

Wyatt: Yeah, right…

Paul: Well Wyatt’s a compulsive liar

Wyatt: I’m more like a ridiculous liar. I accidentally tell the truth and overtly falsify everything else.

SUB/VERSE: So how did the band start?

Wyatt: We were just talking about this recently! I feel like us getting together was we had a good little start with me and Zach having a collaborative element, but now its this new band that has stemmed from this little stream that I think ended up flourishing through that kaleidoscope effect when you get more people in the room. Going from there it just elaborates on ideas. We were just saying that you can do your own thing, but you can’t possibly capture what everyone else is doing, I couldn’t manufacture what anyone else does in the band, and i think everyone else feels the same way about themselves in the band. Pool Holograph kind of started with the self titled “Pool Holograph” album I put out, in 2009-10. I just put it on the internet without any plans to perform. That as a project was the first songwriting project I did, which was something about openness and exploring. Its kind of how life goes, it comes in kind of unexpected ways that give you motivation. I like to look at it as the band started when we all decided to get in the same room. When I think about Pool Holograph now I think about all of us. I like to think about it as a state. This artist Philip Guston was asked why he made art, and he was like, I just want to stay in this state. He’s saying that state is about a moment, about getting back to that state, not thinking about all the shit you’ve been through. I don’t know if that’s too long an answer, but I just get really excited about this stuff. Music is crazy!

SUB/VERSE: What do you write most about in the band?

Zach: Thats all Wyatt really. I think the reasons we’re all interested in music, there’s sort of a movement in each release of music. We want to keep exploring different ideas and figuring out what it means to do that.

Wyatt: I think recently its been about more lucid authorship, being more tangible, more direct. I’ve seen songwriting in the past a lot like a diary, just venting and trying to get outside of your head. Being like, this is me! I totally relate! Its the same reason you make art as a kid, like a Avril Lavigne collage or something, like “yeah, sick! I totally get you and you get me!” The artists we really like are ones that are kind of reaching outside themselves, or what they know themselves to be. But more to answer you question, the kind of stuff this album is about is the outside world, and relating to the outside world, and things you don’t understand, and relating to others. With each song, its not a different struggle for each one, its not that concrete like a concept album, but Transparent World  is about being able to see through everything in a way, and being able to see into yourself and to… its really tough to describe. On a concrete level, you can be like, this one is about car rides, or a spooky dream, or an argument…

Paul: I feel like there’s a lot of anxiety in the songs, and your relationship with the outside world, and dealing with your inner self.

Wyatt: Anxiety is a word we see in a lot of reviews for the music. I hate the idea of being super cryptic. With this album, I tried to, like, pick a color, like how do you want to describe this? And make some sort of effort to be more specific so people can relate to you.

Jake: I feel like its a constant struggle to describe what  the music means to us. You think you have an idea about what it might be, but its not easy to just nail down. Playing wise I think its like an airplane, like you’re on the runway and you speed up and then you’re in the zone and you understand it or you don’t but you’re with all your friends and you know what each other’s doing.

Wyatt: You kind of have a feeling for the parameters and discussion of the song. Talking about a specific song, the first one, Codex Hammer,  the way that was written is it was supposed to be very thin and light and see through. Its kind of a precursor to the rest of the album, like here’s your debrief: you’re in this place right now where no one will be able to understand you and you can’t necessarily understand anyone else. Hammer codex, or Hammer lee caster is Leonardo da vinci’s diary. I thought by switching around the words, codex being a book, and hammer being like a forceful objector, a book as a forceful object. Thats kind of how you experience life, you’re constantly barraged. The part of the song where its like, “expecting a hand on your palace gates/ expecting physical contact on your palace gates/but you had a hammer coming” is like, the forces of the world have no regard for your intake. So what you do with it is up to you and within your faculties. Its important that as an individual, what you do is sacred.

Zach: Part of remaining active is staying malleable to whatever facets of your life are hitting you the hardest. Those are the things you have to deal with the fastest.

Wyatt: I think malleable is a good word, because we all like to have fun when we’re writing, and kind of mess with each other. I’m pointing to Jake because I mess with him a lot! I get in his face a lot and climb all over his drums. I don’t really see that as a rock n roll kind of thing anymore. I see myself as a mountain goat, just propping myself up and feeling good. I don’t know why! About two years ago, almost to the day, we played a Halloween show. We were a custoomed band, as the nihilists from the Big Lubowski, all in black, and I had a fake ferret. When I jumped on Jake’s drums, I jumped on him because my shoes were too slippery and while I was jumping I got scared and just jumped on him. Then I kicked out the drum set, and realized it wasn’t our drum set! I had to get on the mic and apologize, which is the most un- rock n roll thing ever! It was fun for other people though. I hate the idea that you have to listen back to this, I just keep rambling!

No its fine! When I called Alex from the Modern Vices the first thing he asked was whether the interview would be published as a podcast because he was nervous about how he’d sound! I was like you’re a singer but okay!

Paul: We had a really painful Chirp interview that I can’t listen back to…

Zach: We were so stressed out.

Wyatt: I started talking about Bob Dylan and i had no idea what I was saying.

SUB/VERSE: Well I hate listening back to these because I sound like a pre pubescent boy on recordings!

Wyatt: You gotta own that! I sound like Peter Pan’s dog, like the character no one wants to hear from.

Jake: I don’t hate my voice.

SUB/VERSE: So I read that some guys in the band went to Saic? When do you think music is art, what makes it not art…?

Wyatt: Thats a good question...its all in tandem, its all the same exact thing. Same process, although they have different limitations with the way society sees it. You can do really socially unacceptable things on stage, and you can do different socially unacceptable things on a page. I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, or sound like a quote or anything! (in gruff Keith Richards type voice) Whether its on a stage or a page, I rock the show! Make sure you include the stogie puff. Anyway I don’t think its dogmatic to say they have to be in the same place, because sometimes you’re in a really sweaty room and you’re coming up with something and coming up with ideas. I mean, the activities are different but their from the same well.

Paul: I think all music is art, whether its a perfectly constructed pop song or an experimental 20 minute track. It can all affect someone.

Wyatt: Thats not to say the trajectories aren’t different. Its really beautiful how music has its own place, like, I’m going to go to a record store and put it on this device and experience it. As a listener, the experiences aren’t the same, but the authorship comes from the same primal place. I think the way we as society antiqaute these things is beautiful. I think its cool that music in some ways is off limits because theres a pull to it. I think art and music have their own worlds and angular relationships, and there are crossovers. But the clarity of those crossovers isnt necessarily for enjoying them. What do you think?

SUB/VERSE: Well I definitely think music is art. I really like thinking about people who don’t write their own music but have an interesting way of performing.

Wyatt: Yeah… there are some Andy Warhol works that he never saw or touched, and I think that was a part of his art.

Zach: I think people like that can be the vehicle for the music, and I think thats an important part of the performance part of music. Music can contextualize a moment and explain how it felt, or the time period it was written. For each person you were doing very specific things when you heard certain songs. I think thats a big part of music as an art form, its community based, and a theatrical thing.   

Paul: Its crazy how some of these songs you wrote two years ago still feel weird or uncomfortable when we’re playing, or  feel new. Its great when you can get a crowd going, like that Walters show was awesome, because they got everyone going crazy. Being able to strike that emotion in people is the ultimate goal of performing.

SUB/VERSE: I think its crazy when you’re at a show and the performer is directing everything, like someone jumps off a stage at specific moments or whatever.

Wyatt: But the weird part is that the performer is also being provoked by the audience! You see performances fall apart because the crowd is dead. Its bigger than all of us. And i like that. For any performer, no one is a master of it. Its a sort of intangible, unstable…

Paul: Just reacting to everything around you, taking things as they come.

Wyatt: Yeah, I like looking at music all in that same sphere. Sometimes it strikes at the right moment, and thats really cool, but its like any chemical reaction. Like oh there’s a cloud, a group of molecules, and its in the shape of a rabbit, and thats really cool! Thats phenomenal I’m going to take a picture of it!

Paul: We just stand in the formation of a rabbit onstage.

Wyatt: Its basically just us looking like a rabbit for people on nights that it works. I like to look at it like its that surrendipitous. Like Pool Holograph is a mistaken name. Turns out a holograph is a body of text, which is a weird coincidence. But its like the top of the pool, basically, and its this sort of amorphous thing, and its this one thing to look at. And its never the same for everyone, and there’s a lot of depth underneath it that no one sees. Its striking, and its going away. Its about fleeting things and I want to keep in that zone. I never want to be like, nailed it, write it down, put it in the history books! We live in a really great time to play with other great live bands and be a part of this community, and thats all you can really ask for.

INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS BY CHLOE GRAHAM

[askpetethelibrarian]

Why Don’t Men Read Romance

This article is a lot better than the title would indicate, speaking also about why women don’t read WWII books and the like. As a “men” of sorts, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about why I don’t read romances. Keep in mind, I’m going to tell you why I, an individual, don’t get down with romances, not why men, as a whole, avoid them. But if you want to take what I say and assume there are kernels of truth in there in regards to a large segment of the male population...I’d say you’re probably right to consider it. 

By the way, blanket statement: This is my opinion, but I don’t necessarily recommend others live this way, and it’s not my opinion that romance is inferior or bad or whatever. I read books with titles like “Tumor Fruit,” so I’m the the transparent-est of glass houses. Just know that this is my opinion of the little bits of romance I’ve experienced, not a demand that anyone else change their reading habits.

1. They’re Boring

I find most romantic subplots in movies very boring. Creed? Terrible. Nobody should fall in love with their loud-ass neighbor. That person is rude and inconsiderate. Avengers? Why are Hulk and Black Widow in love all of a sudden? When did that happen? And is there not enough stuff going on that we really need that?

Usually, to me, the romance part of a movie is the most boring part, the piece I could do without, and I tend to like movies that have little to no romance. I just re-watched Beetlejuice for the 1000th time, and there’s very little romance. Army of Darkness? Not much romance. 

I also find sex scenes boring. What can I say? The 80′s are over, and I think the most common nudity in movies these days is male butts. I find male butts boring, I find it mostly awkward to watch people on a screen have pretend sex. Sue me.

And I’m not really a fan of “how we met” stories, either. In real life, when I know the people. Once in awhile you get a good one, but most of them are same-y. I know they’re very exciting for the people who lived them, but for me, meh.

Being boring is no great sin, it’s just something that keeps me away from romance. I’ve been bored by the majority of romantic plots and subplots I’ve experienced, so taking a deeper dive seems antithetical. 

2. Predictability

I hope I’m not saying something hurtful to people who like romances when I say they’re predictable. I mean, they’re sort of meant to be, right? The Happily Ever After and all. 

I don’t really like reading a book or watching a movie and trying to predict what happens. I think it’s a weird way to experience something, honestly, because...it’s a fictional story being presented to you. OF COURSE you can make predictions. Because you’re not really predicting what happens, you’re predicting how someone would tell a story of this type. You’re predicting fiction writing. It’s not a huge achievement.

I know I’m wrong about this, but this is how I experience stuff. Most people love uncovering a mystery, and as far as I’m concerned, go for it. 

That said, I find it hard not to read and predict with romance. I think you’re meant to think ahead of what you’re reading, wonder how the story goes from Point A to Point Happily Ever After. I feel similarly about mysteries, too. Predicting plot isn’t interesting to me, so plot contortions aren’t all that thrilling for me.

The things I like either tend to have very unusual, unpredictable plots, or tend to be less centered on plot, more on characters, writing style, and so on. 

3. There’s Just Other Stuff I’d Prefer

I don’t know who these people are that don’t have a thousand books that they would really like to read. I have such a long list of books that I’d LOVE to read, and romance isn’t on that list. I suppose it could be, given the right options, but I’m just not looking to add a genre, honestly. If my reading habits were a marriage, I’d say that we’ve been pretty steady for a good decade now, I’m very happy, and I’m not really looking for anything else. 

Point being, it’s not like I’m avoiding romance and reading nothing. I’m reading other things I’d prefer. 

When I finished library school, one of the things I was most excited about was reading whatever the hell I wanted without a sense of obligation. This hasn’t always worked out, but I try to read things I like anymore, avoiding things that I feel like I “should” read. 

Some might feel this makes me an inferior librarian, that I’m not able to make recommendations outside my taste, but I haven’t found that to be true. In 15 years, I don’t think I ever recommended books to anyone who I would say had remotely parallel tastes to my own (Tumor Fruit, remember?). Additionally, I think a better method, rather than trying to read everything out there, is to find go-to people you can rely on. Even if I read a couple romances a year, I’d never compare to my co-worker, who read these things by the dozens, spoke the lingo, and knew what was happening in the romance world. 

What I’m doing is giving myself permission to read stuff I like, which is what I’m always trying to instill in other readers anyway. 

Not a popular librarian opinion, but hey, I wasn’t blessed with a high tolerance for books I dislike, and I would be happy to test my skills against other random librarians in a random genre recommendation contest. I don’t think I’d be the champ, but I think I’d be comfortably in the middle. 

4. That Stuff is For Girls

While I’m on unpopular opinions...

While I understand that gender lines are being blurred, moved, and erased, you have to understand, I didn’t grow up that way. I’m a guy. I wouldn’t call myself manly, but I tend to like more traditionally masculine things. 

Hey, I have no problem with other people being wherever they find themselves on the gender spectrum, I’m happy to hang out and have a beer with whoever, and I certainly support efforts to make things like books more gender neutral in terms of their covers, marketing, and so on. If I had a dudebro friend who liked romances, I would probably be curious, but whatever!

But I’d be lying if I said romance doesn’t seem designed with a female audience in mind. 

Yes, I’m aware that romance is often at the forefront of developing new authors, storylines with non-traditional romances of all stripes, and basically mixing it up and experimenting with narratives. 

That said, most of the writers are women. Even of man/man romances. Most of the readers are women (between 85 and 90% it appears). So, most times, even a romance intended for a male reader (or, to move away from a binary, intended for anyone other than a traditional female reader), is very likely coming from a female writer working within a very female-influenced tradition. I don’t have a problem with women writing men, even straight women writing gay men. I just highly suspect these narratives aren’t created to please me and people like me.

We shouldn’t be surprised that men aren’t reading a ton of these. They’re not really intended for us. It’s the same way I feel about, I dunno, Frozen. That’s obviously not intended for me, so I don’t have much interest in it, and that’s fine. Would it expand my horizons to watch Frozen and sing along? Maybe. But most likely, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. Because that’s not the goal its creators had in mind. 

5. Rejection or Passivity? 

And keep in mind, this isn’t me refusing to watch Frozen. This is me, in a 2019 world of infinite streaming possibilities, choosing other things without Frozen even entering into the equation. As an adult man with no kids, I’m not really presented with the choice to watch Frozen or not. Likewise, I’m not really presented with the choice of a romance novel that I’m turning down. 

This really is a key concept. There’s a world of difference between, say, refusing to take my son to watch Frozen because “it’s for girls” and me not going out of my way to watch Frozen because it’s for girls. Turning down a romance novel as opposed to just never picking one up. 

I’d have to reach out to romance as opposed to romance reaching out to me, and that’s probably not going to happen. There are plenty of forms of entertainment designed with me in mind, and I’ll probably enjoy the (Tumor) Fruits of those labors. Because I have a higher chance of enjoying what I read. 

It’s always a numbers game with books, always a gamble. I’ll invest X time in hopes of getting either Y enjoyment or Y+B enjoyment plus information. Or B-Y, information minus enjoyment. There’s a lot of equations at play here. It turns out this is a bad metaphor because it makes things more complicated instead of less. 

Anyway, if a book isn’t designed to please me, it’s a lot less likely that it will. So, when I’m betting on a good return on my time investment, the likely winner is something that’s geared towards me. There, that was a lot simpler.

~

There ya go. That’s why I don’t read romance. Argue with me if you’d like, but you’re really arguing a matter of taste. Romance novels are not to my taste, and that’s why I don’t read them.

Whether you think what I’ve said applies to men in general, I’ll leave that to you.

[displacerghost]

M’ega marine life speculation

(Conversation pasted from this post, which includes relevant art)

displacerghost:

@setepenre-set I saw this and immediately thought, Oooo that looks like something I’d imagine in Ivri-roh’s home in the ocean, like a crystal or a deep sea life form, ya know? Especially that second picture. And then I got down and read the description and ohhh– Unless light shines on it, we can’t confirm the existence of it because it is transparent. But once the light shines on it, glass truly emanates a special presence. (the rest of the description is so lovely, as well, very alien and oceanic but this in particular–) Alte-re/Ivri-roh symbology much? And it’s called Singing Glass! Ocean creatures sing to communicate. Maybe it’s something Ivri-roh would make, for her? Or a living thing of some kind that grows in the ocean depths? (I dunno, everything about this just feels very M’ega to me)

setepenre-set:

Aaaahh YES definitely M’ega, and very Ivri-roh/Alte-re!

The first one actually looks a lot like brainbots to me, which makes the concept that they resemble something from M’ega even more interesting–that Megamind, either consciously or unconsciously, was inspired by something from his planet when he designed the brainbots.

Maybe Ivri-roh made these for Alte-re out of glass and then she brought them to life for them? That’s something I’m trying to bring into their mythology; in the story of creation of the world I’m trying to write, Ivri-roh designs physical things, but Alte-re is the one who brings them to life.

(Singing Glass! I love it, and that quote you picked out is gorgeous!)

displacerghost: (okay so obvious disclaimer, this is me kind of going off on an ocean nerd tangent here and not necessarily Set-endorsed canon for Set’s M’ega) !!! Megamind inspired by something on his planet in regard to the brainbots! Ooo, ooo, ooo, that makes so much sense-- The brainbots even look like deep sea creatures--those jaws, the way the spikes are often designed like fins, the electricity in the braincase would mimic bioluminescence and while the arm underneath isn’t typical of an Earth fish--look at Minion, he’s got those tendrils under his body and is the same blocky kind of shape, and shares the larger lower jaw. Evolution on M’ega could have favored that body type--to me it would make a lot of sense on a world with deeper oceans and maybe a more geologically diverse ocean floor. More rifts and trenches and maybe not as much open expanse of sand, so the streamlined torpedo shape of most of Earth’s ocean creatures wasn’t as singularly favored as this other form--the arms/tentacles/tendrils for manipulating the environment, going after food in deep crevices on an underwater cliffside, or for sifting through sand and silt for food. Probably with a degree of shark-style electrosensory. You’d get tool-using creatures, and light/sound/electricity as communication and for defensive purposes. With communities in places like  the rock walls in a deep-sea valley, with a hot vent running the length of it across the ocean floor below. High enough to be out of direct blast-range if the vent goes off, but still within range of the warmer waters and all the benefits of that. Tube worms, instead of plants. Lots of krill and crustaceans and other fish. You would still have torpedo shaped open ocean creatures--in addition to just your regular standard fish you’d still get big plankton/krill eaters (alien baleen whales, whale sharks, etc) and ‘smaller’ predatory creatures (alien sharks, orcas, etc) that would mostly either prey on other open ocean goers, or would focus around these rift communities and prey on the fish-with-arms (or tendrils or tentacles) types, these more settled communities which would be localized around food sources and heat sources--volcanic vents and hydrothermal vents. That’s a recipe for high intelligence. Community animals, highly social, language, problem solvers, ones which evolved to be adaptive to outside evolutionary pressures. So, Minion’s species. Minion himself is personally very social and friendly, a caretaker Hufflepuff of a henchfish.  (oh, and--if the mermaid ancestors of the M’ega were more sunlight/shallow water and the minion fish were more deep water/hot vents they wouldn’t be competing with each other for resources but would be more likely to cooperate socially) ((that’s where you get life, in the ocean--either in the warm shallows where sunlight reaches and corals etc can anchor or in areas of volcanic activity. Heat essentially means life, in the ocean--for a long time science believed life couldn’t evolve without the sun, and then they discovered hydrothermal vent ecosystems)) Set, I know you headcanon his species as being symbiotic with the M’ega, specifically for neurodivergent types. So that all flows together with this. I don’t really know anything about pheromones in marine animals but I personally headcanon that Minion’s species uses pheromones (along with sound and bioluminescence) for communication, which would be highly beneficial to a M’ega paired with a minion fish. Especially ones which are even more highly sensitive than usual for their species, ones which struggle with anxiety and depression like Megs, because pheromones can influence mood. (Speaking as someone who just can’t some days with social interactions, having a Minion to Deal With People for you would be so helpful, and the feeding thing and other caretaker stuff for days when the world is just...too much). So that’s a possible evolutionary reason for their symbiosis. Maybe the M’ega exchange technology and surface resources for voluntary minion pairing? (I imagine there’d be an actual pairing of some kind, a biochemical process, that way the minion fish is directly synced with their partner. A process which could be reversed so that way the minion fish and M’ega they pair with have full choice over the situation. And the minion fish would be a little older, there’s probably an age range for volunteers, to ensure that the fish is old enough to understand what they're signing up for). Also, Set, you mentioned once in a fandom discussion post which I of course can’t find now--you speculated that there must be a reason the big button says PANIC when their world is dying, that Megamind’s species is maybe more high-strung in general, and my personal headcanon for that is: if his homeworld had a greater amount of tectonic activity that means serious tsunamis. Earthquakes and volcanos as well but I think the tsunamis would be the bigger/more frequent threat, and the reason we have a PANIC button, specifically, and not a ‘General Emergency’ or whatever, and also that is one way you end up with an intelligent, adaptive species with a highly sensitive threat response. A world where the threat is consistent and unavoidable would require adaptability and intelligence and reliance on technology. (((This is all speculation and conjecture. I could very well be wrong about some of the science. I don’t have like a degree or any schooling for this, I’ve just always been a huge ocean nerd and learned about it on my own time))). ((also, Set, I wanna tell you how much I love Alte-re and Ivri-roh making things together. The image of Ivri-roh holding that telescope when Khel-tek finds them haunts me, it is such a sweet silver sadness kind of angst and sort of softly breaks my heart every time I think about it and the idea of them creating things with Alte-re soothes my soul and gives me hope for future fic about them...? :D))

[kadobeclothing]

5 Ways Working Remotely Changed the Way I Think About Teamwork

For the last three years I’ve been an architect on the Hipchat team working remotely, with the rest of my team working far, far away from me in San Francisco and Austin. People talk a lot about remote work these days, but as with most things, you never truly know until you’ve experienced it. I’ve learned quite a bit about remote teamwork along the way as an architect and developer. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Put people over product. In just over a year, my team went from a close, eight-person unit to over a hundred people. That’s a lot of growth in a little time. As more and more people were joining the team, I found myself focusing on the many features that needed to get out the door, instead of training and onboarding new developers (who were basically left to fend for themselves). As an architect, I should have realized how short-sighted that was. As an Atlassian, I should have realized that our values for teamwork were more important than our code.

Like bad first impressions, on-boarding done poorly can leave lasting damage that takes a long time to repair. On-boarding is about much more than teaching a developer where the source code is located, it is about communicating and living your company values, in our case, “Play as a team” or “Be the change you seek”. Personally sitting down and working shoulder-to-shoulder with a new team member imparts far more valuable information about your values than a hundred powerpoint presentations. When someone new joins a company, they come with a fairly blank slate for how things work and what is expected from them, so it is essential for them to see a team’s values in action and be given early opportunities to build relationships and contribute value. Lesson: Let that new feature release slip by a week. Sit down with a new team member and work on something together. Let them see rather than just read about your company’s values. Put aside the inconvenience of traveling for work and make that extra effort to connect with a new team member. The impression you give them, the relationships you build and the sense of purpose you instill will benefit the company far more than one week of coding. 2. Ownership is more important than perfection. During a particularly busy time at work, my team brought in a bunch of new developers who had a steep learning curve ahead of them. As a developer, I was concerned about the quality and consistency of the code, so I doubled down trying to review and be consulted on every change to the system. I might have been a tad bit overbearing. Looking back, I wish I realized the value of ownership, and how important it is for people to feel like what they’re working on is theirs. In my world, these types of extra duties might be fixing what’s broken, cleaning up unnecessary elements, taking time to improve the design, or writing documentation. These tasks often aren’t reflected Jira tickets or roadmap plans, but they’re part of the day-to-day work that keeps a codebase clean and flexible. Without ownership, developers do the absolute minimum required, causing the code base to become a dumping ground for different and often conflicting styles and patterns. And this can have a serious impact on morale when the language, frameworks, or code are unfamiliar. This isn’t about one architecture or another. It’s about onboarding and empowering developers. Lesson: Approach your code with a DevOps mindset, which encourages giving ownership to others. It is hard to trust someone new with your baby but find a way through onboarding, pairing, frequent trips, or even solving production failures together. Historically, Atlassian has given every developer write access to all products because that was the kind of open, trustworthy culture we wanted to create. If that’s not an option for you, find a non-critical part of the project they can dig into and feel like they own. 3. Define your role clearly. When I started at Atlassian in 2006, the engineering titles were developer, senior developer, and founder. That was it. Although we’ve grown a lot since then, I like to think of us all as just developers doing whatever is needed to make great products for our customers. But the reality is that as an organization grows, more specialized roles are needed to scale alongside the code and number of customers. A title is more than an ego boost, it is a way to communicate what you are (and are not) responsible for. Simply telling new folks your title isn’t enough, as it can be interpreted differently with every new person that hears it. Again, getting this wrong can cause long-term damage and be a factor in future disagreements or missed connections. Therefore, not defining your role isn’t about just you. It is about not hurting your team, your project, and ultimately, your customers. Architect is a title that has traditionally been a source of confusion not just at Atlassian but also in our industry. When I was the second person at Atlassian to receive this title, I figured it just meant a more senior developer, someone outside the normal planning process. When I became the integration architect, where I had to try to coordinate the activities of the different Atlassian architects, I realized the need to define the job description and I attempted to do so, with mixed results. Even today, that definition seems to be in flux. Regardless, it is especially important that your team is clear about what role you will play, and the sooner that is done, the easier things will be. Lesson: At the beginning of your tenure and with every onboarding, sit down with team members and talk about what you expect from them, what they should expect from you, and what shouldn’t be expected from either side. It is sometimes more important to discuss what aren’t your responsibilities than what are. 4. Tone matters online. As nearly all of us have experienced, in-person communication is much different than online communication. And there are even differences in how to communicate in different online contexts. For instance, what tone you take or what words you use in a personal chat or email may, in fact, not be appropriate for a large team chat room. In a large chat room, you may not have a solid personal relationship with each member, and their impression of you may come solely through chat communication. Chat is such an abbreviated form of human communication without all the nuances of facial expressions, body language, and tone, that the bits the reader fills in the gap may not match your intention. For example, what is meant as a joking, “wtf dude?” could be read by someone that can’t see you as an offensive attack.

To add another layer, what words may be appropriate in one culture aren’t necessarily appropriate in another. For example, from my time working with the US Navy and then later in Sydney, I picked up a habit of swearing like a sailor and telling it like it is. While these habits are well understood by my friends from these groups, another group could take them as wildly inappropriate. Lesson: Be careful how you communicate in a large chat room. Even if you know each member at the time of the chat, others could read it later and develop an unexpected impression of you that you might not find out until it’s too late. I once heard that remote communication is opt-in, whereas local is opt-out. Make sure they want to opt-in. 5. Remote-friendly is not necessarily remote-first. Hipchat being a chat application itself, we believe in the concept of remote office collaboration and we are remote-friendly. We operate in three major offices (Sydney, San Francisco, and Austin), and have local and remote workers spread out across at least eight different time zones. Even with the way we live and breathe remote collaboration, there are still gaps between this vision and a true remote-first culture. One particular perpetrator is the in-person side conversation that comes up between local people over lunch or in the hallway after a meeting. These are great and productive for the people involved, but since they are exclusively local, remote team members can’t voice and represent their views. If these hallway conversations aren’t communicated in a timely manner they can create a rift in team consensus, and sometimes create lasting hard feelings. Similarly, local people can feel threatened by unexpected or uncommunicated changes initiated by remote folks, and remote workers can be frustrated by decisions made in their absence or personal issues that aren’t communicated in a timely manner. It really is all about communication.

Remote-first teams adopt a structure both for communications and processes that allows each member, regardless of where they live, to be included in major and minor decision making, daily collaboration, and social interactions. The best example I can think of is from my time at theApache Software Foundation. In ASF projects, every single decision had to be proposed and approved on the single developer mailing list. This process took a lot longer than putting 10 people in a room for two hours, but it leveled the playing field for all team members. Lesson: Be very cognizant of the culture of the team you join as a remote employee. Find a way to create a remote-first team of remote or remote-friendly workers that can own a project and its execution independently. Failing that, ensure all decisions are made transparently and include remote workers as appropriate, leveraging time zone-friendly online tools and processes. Minimize the number of remote relationships that you need to create and maintain to do your job, and don’t think that knowing a few key folks in a remote office is enough. Be aggressive in identifying and reaching out one-on-one with remote team members that may disagree with your proposals; don’t wait to be told that there is dissension as it’ll be far too late. Final thoughts As my experience has shown me, being an architect is about so much more than code, frameworks, or system design—it’s about people and teams. If you are hired on a team, you are technically qualified to be there. What is less obvious, and admittedly more difficult to remember, is the importance of the non-technical bits. There seems to be a happy medium between getting shit done and singing kumbaya around the fire. While I’m still figuring out where the right balance is, I’ve learned that focusing on the long-term is much more impactful than getting bogged down in the details of the short-term. This article was originally published on The Atlassian blog and republished with permission.

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[dorothydelgadillo]

Striking Gold With Conversations: Your Future Success Metrics

In early 1848, gold was discovered in the United States’ Sacramento Valley sparking a mass migration of people that would forever change the country’s landscape.

Pursuing what looked like a shortcut to wealth, thousands of people took the treacherous journey from the civilized East to the uncharted West to mine the ground in search of precious specks of gold.

What transpired over the subsequent years is a significant piece of US History now known as the California Gold Rush.

Fast forward to today and in some ways, the Gold Rush reminds me of inbound marketing.

The Traffic Rush of 2005

The expression  “stake your claim” came from the Gold Rush.

As miners expanded into the West, they would literally place wooden stakes in the ground to mark, or more literally, stake their claim on land.

That claim would be the land miners would displace sifting through it in the search for gold.

Aside from some best practice and intuition, there wasn’t much telling these miners if their claim would be chock full or fully devoid of gold flecked wealth.

These claims are a lot like modern marketing tactics. Like stakes, marketers deploy them out to attract large volumes of traffic in hopes of it containing sales opportunities (the 21st century equivalent of marketing gold).

But here’s the thing, we need to start shifting how we define marketing success.

As any tale of the California Gold Rush would tell you, fortune isn’t measured in the number of stakes you lay.

What is Inbound Success?

This didn’t become clear to me until we started building out our Conversational Marketing strategy at IMPACT.

We tried applying the traditional measures of success to Conversational, but it felt a lot like putting a square peg into a round hole.

Something wasn’t adding up. Traffic and conversion rate didn’t correlate to the success we were seeing.

It was clear, we needed to find a new way of measuring success.

I chewed on this problem for a while and then it hit me, but in order to explain, we need to take a detour into the reason we’re taking Conversational so serious in the first place.

Conversational is the Future of How You’ll Do Business

You know, I chuckled to myself when writing that heading because while I do feel it’s true, the oldest way of doing business is conversationally.

Pause and think about that with me for a second.

Back in 1849, if you were arranging travel West in search of gold, how would you do it? Would you fill out a form? Of course, not!

You’d talk to someone who owned a horse and wagon. You’d ask them questions and ultimately, you’d strike a deal.

Business was done entirely through human conversation. Somewhere along the road, however, we got away from that.

Today, you can host a website, create a conversion path, and sell a product, all without ever interacting with your customer. Many people do.

Your website does the talking. It just doesn’t do it very well.

The entire marketing automation ecosystem is a response to this. HubSpot, “Send an email to people who visit these five pages.” We’re not talking to those people. We’re talking to a persona; a generalized representation of them.

We have this idea that everything we need to do needs to be volume-based, done at-scale, and people tend to optimize their funnels from the top down. I’ll take more traffic with a side of conversion rate, please.

In reality, all of that traffic is made up of people and each of those people is unique. Their problems are unique and how you solve for them are unique. I worry that we’ve lost sight of that in our marketing.

It’s no longer a conversation and consumers can taste it. That’s why inbound is changing. (Curious how? Join us at IMPACT Live 2018.)

Genuine Business Relationships

Today, we’re in the business of marketing at scale. Business communication went from one-to-one to one-to-many.

We ended up where we are today, talking one-to-many, because the digital age has made it possible and as marketers, we took the bait.

However, in an perfect world, aren’t the only people we need to optimized for the ones who end up buying? Are we neglecting those quality conversations in favor or driving more traffic or getting more conversions?

Conversational is all about the use of genuine conversations to foster real relationships. It is the return to businesses communicating organically.

It is the return to the way business had always been done.                                                   

Genuine Business Relationships, at Scale

As I’m writing this, I can hear people’s objections in my head.

Too bad this isn’t a conversation, right?

“Kyle, we can’t afford to talk to everyone who visits our website. If I knew who to talk to, of course we’d talk to them.”

The current thinking is that we can’t have genuine one-to-one conversations at scale.

Well, I’m here to convince you that’s no longer true and that’s why Conversational is likely the biggest opportunity for your business right now.

Stick with me. We’ve finally come full circle.

The Foundation of Your Conversational Strategy

As I’ve shared before, we made the mistake of overthinking conversational when we started making it a cornerstone of IMPACT’s strategy.

Learn from our mistakes. Keep it simple.

At the end of the day, focus on creating a path towards having a genuine conversation with your visitors.

This is all about building real relationships.

If you’ve already built out an inbound marketing program, this will be easy. Famous last words, right?

Allow your visitors to research and self-select.

Please don’t make the mistake of reading this blog article and interpreting it as me telling you traffic isn’t important or that you shouldn’t be producing remarkable educational content.

That couldn’t be farther from my intent.

I’m simply saying we may be robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s time we focus on creating genuine, human, experiences that compliment all the work we’ve put into attracting and educating the right people.

If you’ve spoken with Marcus Sheridan lately, you may have heard him talk about the concept of self-selection. You may have also heard the lobster analogy I’m about to make.

Self-selection is all about you, the marketer, giving your potential customers all the information they need in order to make a decision. It’s about being transparent and forthright.

I think this is best illustrated by using your website as an example. Deep breath.

Is your pricing on your website? Because, it should be.

Here’s why: Have you ever been to a restaurant, gone to order the lobster, and seen “Market Price” next to it?

When most people see this, a few things generally go through their minds: “It’s probably expensive. I better pick something else” or “I don’t dare ask the waiter the price and risk looking cheap.”

This is the same experience you’re creating for potential customers when you omit valuable details, like pricing, from your website.

Now, again, I can hear the objections to what I’m saying.

“Kyle, we can’t put pricing on our website. Our competitors will see it.”

“Kyle, we can’t put our pricing on our website. It’s custom to every customer.”

First of all, your competitors already know your pricing. Let’s get that off the table.

As for your custom pricing, this is exactly why your business needs to be taking advantage of Conversational.

You can still communicate one-to-many on your website, giving general ranges, while setting the expectation that your pricing is custom. This builds trust, but also opens the door for you to talk to the right people.

See, Conversational isn’t forcing your community to engage with you before they’re ready. It’s the opportunity for them to do so when it’s right for them.

Invite your visitors in.

Once everything is out in the open, there’s nothing to hold people back from reaching out to you.

Sometimes, though, you have to lay out the welcome mat.

The key here is reducing the perceived risk people have of communicating with you. This brings us right back to the market price example.

To name a few, nobody wants to feel:

Cheap

Uneducated

Like they’re wasting their time

On the hook to make a purchase

People need to know you know their time is valuable. They need to know that you’re there to help. They need to know that it’ll be a two-way conversation, not them getting pitched.

That’s why I recommend crafting your live chat invitation just like you were talking to a person in real life.

Here’s some things that we’ve found help drastically:

Let people know if you are or aren’t available.

Let them know what to expect when they chat in.

Let people know that you want to talk to them. Because you do, right?

In practice, it can be as simple as, “I’m here now to chat if you have any questions.” Just like it would be in person.

You need to experiment with your own conversational voice: How does your brand and its employees represent themselves on conversational?

At the end of the day, it’s all about letting people know that you want to have a real, human-to-human conversation with them.

Treat Your Visitors Like Humans, Not Metrics

I just had a lunch meeting (read: nerding out about inbound) where we got really deep into an interesting conversation: Have we, as marketers, favored things we can measure over things our gut tells us are the best experience?

My favorite example of this is: exit-intent. (If you’re not familiar, exit-intent are those little pop-ups that show-up when you try to leave the page.)

We know that exit-intent sucks. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people complain about it or that I’ve passed judgement on a website for using it. (Yes, even IMPACT’s.)

It’s pretty clear that we dislike exit-intent. However, all the data shows it works. It will increase the number of people who convert on your website.

The question is this: Because we cannot readily measure the negative effects of having exit-intent (i.e. pissed-off users, increased friction, decreased trust), do we favor what we know, that exit-intent increases conversion rate, even when our gut tells us that the negative effects are potential big?

Sadly, the answer is, most often, yes.

This article isn’t about swaying your decision to use or not use exit-intent, so why is this important?

Conversational is hedged in the idea that we need to return to creating genuine relationships with our community. Every experience with your company and conversation with a sales rep is part of that relationship.

You can’t build genuine relationships on a foundation of mistrust and poor user experience.

Even if you can’t easily measure it, pay close attention to the experience you’re delivering to your users. Your relationship with them may be hard to measure, but I assure you it’s valuable.

Your Future Success Metrics

I can’t write this blog article telling you to start leaning on Conversational Marketing, Sales, and Service and not give you a way to measure the success with it.

That’d just be uncool, and I’m cool, I promise.

I started this article by saying that we tried applying traditional metrics to conversational and they didn’t work. Well, luckily, we found metrics that did.

These metrics not only paint a clear picture of how our success is growing, they’re clearly representative of the relationships we’re building.

The best part about it, they’re simple. Real simple.

Volume of Conversations

This one is my favorite. It simply shows us, “this is how many people we’ve talked to.”

The reason it’s my favorite is as it grows, it shows we’ve created more relationships. It shows we’re creating comfort in the IMPACT community.

Some of the conversations are short while some of them turn into massive deals, but every single one of them is attributed to a real relationship we’ve developed with one of our visitors.

How cool is that?

Volume of Conversation-Attributed Deals

This is the one you’ll want to bring up at your next review, especially if your results are as good as I expect they’ll be.

Volume of Conversation-Attributed Deals shows you how many conversations transitioned into a sales conversation. This metric shows the sales readiness of the conversations you have which will help you optimize how you position chat. It’s also a great metric to track the effectiveness of your team on chat.

At the end of the day, this is the metric that made me realize that Conversational was the future.

People who want to work with IMPACT love using live chat as a way to start the sales process and I don’t blame them; It’s as easy as it is low commitment.

When Should You Start?

Rereading through this blog, I remembered, I promised to mention how businesses can do conversational at scale.

There are finally tools available that allow businesses to create genuine one-to-one relationships without hiring an entire team to staff live chat.

These tools leverage conversational bots to route conversations, fast-lane qualified leads, and manage offline hours. On-top of that, they enable reps to better manage conversations and handle higher volumes.

IMPACT is heavily involved with tools like Drift and HubSpot and they both enable us to field hundreds of conversations a month that we weren’t having before.

I’d be lying if I said we weren’t putting human resources into Conversational Marketing.

Of course, we are -- but the time we spend doing it is generating a lot evangelists and a lot of sales. So much so it’s clear it’s well-worth the investment.

Marketing automation and human-to-human business are finally colliding. It’s no longer a choice of one or the other. You can reap the benefits of both.

The time to start thinking conversationally is now.

~

Hey! I had a ton of fun writing that.

I hope I get to see you at IMPACT Live. I'm going to be sharing IMPACT's strategy and tactics we're using to crush it with Conversational.

Get your ticket to IMPACT Live!

As always, I hope this was helpful. Drop a comment below or shoot me a message on live chat!

  Talk then, 

Kyle

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/conversational-marketing-success-metrics