Michelle: I’d have to read the books again. I don’t remember them in such close detail anymore.
Aditi: But Elli, why would J. K. Rowling hide such a love story so deep in the work? Harry and Ginny are a thing. Their relationship is set up from the very first time Ginny lays eyes on him.
Elli: Ruby says she’s a *beard.* That’s a woman that a gay man pretends to date.
Christina: We know what a beard is
Elli: Point is, Ginny is a cover story. Her existence pretty much proves my theory. And Rowling had to hide it because YA.
Aditi: That’s no excuse. You can write gay characters in YA. It doesn’t have to be a secret. Why would she do that? J. K. Rowling wouldn’t do that.
Elli: She did it with Dumbledore
Taneesha: Elli has a point there.
Christina: I’ll still never get why we can’t have gay characters in Harry Potter but we can have stalking in Twilight? Which was YA too right?
Michelle: Well, technically the early Potter books were middle grade, not young adult.
Christina: *eyeroll*
Aditi: You’re right about that, C. Thank goodness the pernicious effects of Twilight are starting to fade from YA, though.
Taneesha: Which pernicious effects?
Aditi: For a while you couldn’t turn around without bumping into another rapey stalker boyfriend in YA, there were so many of them. Books like Hush, Hush really bothered me.
Michelle: You know, that’s a great topic for a guest blog. If you can write it without putting down any other authors or books by name, that is. I wouldn’t want some other author declaring a vendetta against you. Maybe just keep it focused on why YOU didn’t want to write a rapey book.
Aditi: You mean like “YA isn’t immune to rape culture, and popular books sometimes even perpetuate it”?
Michelle: Yes, perfect.
Aditi: It’ll mean putting this work on the sequel on the back burner for another day…
Michelle: Hate to sound like a broken record, but the blogs are due, too, A.
Christina: YA’s got nothing on Hollywood for pushing rape culture, though, srsly
Michelle: No kidding.
Christina: At least most YA editors aren’t actively telling their authors to add rape scenes to their books to make them “sexier.” I told you about the bullshit with them changing a consensual sex scene to a rape scene in Sucker Punch, right? Bc the movie would have gotten an X rating with a consensual scene, but only an R with a rape in it. Fucked. Up.
Aditi: You did tell us. It’s why I didn’t see the movie.
Christina: Hollywood is rapetastic all around
Michelle: Neesh, is the job situation smoothing out for you yet?
Taneesha: Not really. But I am chill since the pwnage I heaped on that asshat.
Michelle: Which asshat, again?
Taneesha: When I was in WoW this other player kept following me around and harassing me. Figured out it was someone from Starwisp so I turned the tables on him and killed all his alts. Probably didn’t change his opinion of female gamers, but damn it felt good to put him in his place.
Michelle: He’s a coworker?
Taneesha: Yep.
Christina: What I wouldn’t give to be able to deliver smackdowns to some of the guys I work with
Michelle: There’s got to be something we can strategize for your real-world office life, though.
Taneesha: Doesn’t matter how great a strategy we cook up if they don’t even invite me to team meetings.
Christina: Cold! Seriously?
Taneesha: An email went around this morning for a meeting and they “forgot” to include me. Idiots. I only know because I heard one of the other guys bitching and moaning about having to go to it.
Christina: Got any solutions for that Miche? Oh right make yourself the boss so no one can ever forget you.
Aditi: Give your sister a break, C.
Michelle: Actually, work kinds of sucks right now. I’ve got one author who keeps sending me rewritten scenes for the manuscript I’m in the middle of working on, and two who haven’t turned in their rewrites and appear to have fucked off to Tahiti—possibly together.
Aditi: I’m so sorry to be adding to your stress.
Michelle: It’ll be fine, A. Just get the work done. How’s your muse?
Aditi: Cuddlebug? If only. He’s not a muse. He’s trying to latch on like a leech.
Christina: Why do you keep seeing him then?
Aditi: He’s fantastic in bed. I just want to gag him afterward, though.
Christina: That is an option…
Taneesha: Gotta run, gals. I’m off to crash that meeting I was accidentally not informed of.
TANEESHA
Okay, now, where the fuck was Key West again?
Taneesha looked at the doorway label that read Aruba. The conference rooms in this wing of the building were all named for tropical vacation getaways. This led to statements like Go to Maui if you want free pizza and emails with the subject Celebrating April birthdays today in Cancun. Her phone buzzed in her hand and she glanced at it, wondering if it was a last-minute invitation to the meeting after all.
Nope, a Twitter DM from @GamezillaGrrl, coming through as a text: Babe I’m here for you. Ping if you need help with the shit storm.
Taneesha blinked. She didn’t know @GamezillaGrrl very well but liked her blog about women in gaming. What was she talking about? Had she heard some rumor about Starwisp?
Have to ping her back after this meeting.
Steven’s unmistakable, annoying laugh was coming from across the hall. Key West, there it was. She hurried into the conference room and quickly circled the table to sit as far from the door as possible—a not-so-subtle reminder to the team that she wasn’t leaving.
Her phone vibrated again as she set it on the table. She moved it to her lap and pulled out her tablet to take notes.
Bruce took the seat at the head of the table, with Steven to one side. Bruce had been working for Starwisp since almost the beginning, and proudly had an “Employee #29” plaque hanging on his cubicle wall. He was in perpetual need of a haircut, but at least hadn’t given in to the hipster beard trend. He rubbed his eyes, put his glasses on, and then looked around the table. “All here? Okay, let’s get started. Pretty short agenda today but there are a couple of things I wanted to brainstorm in person instead of in email or chat.”
Taneesha perked up. Good that it was brainstorming, an opportunity to show how creative and fast-thinking she was on her feet. She held back her frustration that this, of all things, was the meeting they’d decided to leave her out of. She pulled up her note-taking app and swatted away a notification.
Another one took its place almost immediately. What the hell?
Her Twitter mentions were apparently blowing up.
That photo of Bobby with the armadillo wasn’t that funny.
She shook off the thought and tuned back in to Bruce. “One of the data points to come out of the new analytics is that increasing the variety of character generation options correlates with increased engagement measured both by length of session and total length of player retention.”
“In English for us peons in the back,” said Mike, who was apparently cosplaying a hungover rock star, complete with sunglasses, uncombed hair, tie-dyed shirt, and a series of I’m-barely-awake poses—currently with his forehead pressed against the table.
Steven jumped in. “It means if you give people more options when they’re creating their avatar, they’ll play more. Be more invested in the characters.”
“Sounds like diversity is good for the bottom line,” Taneesha said evenly. She tried to keep her face neutral, but she couldn’t not say it. “We pioneered that at Maniac, you know.” She probably even had a demo of it. “I wrote a module to give people a skin tone slider instead of just three or four options to step through.”
“That must be a bitch to implement on the server side, though,” Bruce said. “We can’t green-light
anything that would increase load right now.”
“It wouldn’t—”
“What about adding in blue, green, and purple hair colors?” Mike cut in. “My girlfriend loves that shit. I mean literally, she’s done her hair in those three colors this year.”
“Love it,” Steven said with a nod. “Hey. We could make it a premium feature if you want to change it more often than every six months.”
“Yeah! Exactly!” Mike lifted his head but propped his face on his hand. “She would be just the type to pay ninety-nine cents to change her avatar’s hair color when she changes her dye job.”
That’s if anyone would play this shitty game for more than six months, Taneesha thought to herself. “Okay, but skin tone—”
“For peak monetization then, actually…” Bruce trailed off, nodding slowly before picking up steam again. “We should keep the startup avatar options the same and only add the other features as premium.”
Taneesha held in a sigh. Of course I have to be the one to make this point. Of course. “Can I point out that right now we only have three skin tones in the beta test and they are white, whiter, and whitest?”
“No problem,” Bruce said, patting the table in front of him. “We just agreed we’re going to add more in, at the premium tier. In fact, maybe we’ll even use your idea for a slider.”
Taneesha tried not to grind her teeth. Oh, you condescending asshat. “You don’t see a problem with that? With making non-white people the only ones who have to pay a premium to get an avatar that looks like them?”
“My idea is the one that’s the most fair,” Mike said. “It’s race-blind. Anyone can have purple hair. Hey! Let’s add purple, blue, and green as skin tones, too. That’s fair to everyone.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
The debate moved on to which exact hexadecimal representations of purple, blue, and green were best rendered on mobile devices, and Taneesha glanced down at her notifications again. Still blowing up. She’d have to see what the fuss was about later. She needed to concentrate on trying to salvage something out of this meeting.
If that was even possible.
The brainstorming had devolved into the guys talking about their favorite games from when they were kids, ostensibly to think about what elements to try to recapture, but mostly it was just a nostalgia-fest. But when she spoke up with “I played that first generation of Doom,” they brushed her off like she hadn’t even spoken. “And Quake.” Mike gave her a disbelieving look over the tops of his fucking sunglasses at that one.
I did, at the university where my mother teaches. She fumed silently. So much for making herself “one of the guys.”
“Oh, Teesha!” Bruce said as the meeting was breaking up and most of the guys had left the table already, headed for some kind of ping-pong grudge match between Mike and a sysadmin Taneesha didn’t know. “You know what you could do for me right now? Write up a white paper on the avatar customization slider. Something that’ll really help me sell it to the server team.”
“The way I wrote it at Maniac, it didn’t significantly increase server load.”
“Sure. Include that.” He sounded upbeat, but something about a how quick the words fell out of his mouth made her think he hadn’t actually listened to what she’d said. He patted her on the shoulder and slipped out of the room.
No doubt about it. Condescending as fuck.
She paused in the hall to type her frustrations directly into the #rebelscum Slack chat on her phone and was surprised when Steven paused with her. She stuffed the phone into her bag.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “Everyone has a right to complain, you know?”
Well, this is a surprise.
She didn’t feel she had been “complaining” in the meeting, exactly, but he seemed genuinely sympathetic. “I’m sure it’ll get better,” she said, unable to think of anything to say.
“I hope so,” he said. “I didn’t mean to target you specifically.”
No, that was Bruce and Mike who took the premium idea and turned it into systemic racism, but whatever.
“Um, thanks,” she said.
Is this how bad it’s gotten? That when a guy actually does try to apologize, it’s completely mystifying?
“You’re welcome,” he said, and then hurried away, clearly uncomfortable with the whole exchange.
Yeah, well, welcome to my life.
MICHELLE
Michelle hit send on her latest email to Phil Geunther and picked up the Kindle on her desk feeling slightly guilty—but only slightly. Self-care is important, she reminded herself, and then tried to find where she had left off reading. Right, the chapter on master/slave role play. She felt a thrill in her bones every time she read about D/s relationships. Whole relationships where the participants had a shared fantasy life! That was an intimacy she could barely imagine—barely dared imagine.
The master/slave dynamic is the most popular D/s relationship pairing, but power exchange expresses itself through many styles of play and protocols, including Daddy/boy, Daddy/girl, owner/pet, and trainer/pony.
Trainer/pony? What could—
“Michelle?” Jamie rapped on the frame of her office door. “Production really needs that new cover blurb. They’re having a conniption.”
Michelle put the Kindle down quickly, blanking the screen. Reading a BDSM how-to manual wasn’t exactly like getting caught reading porn at work, but it was close. She was running out of time before the party she’d been invited to.
But she was running out of time on Geunther’s production schedule, too.
It’s not my fault he flipped out about the previous cover blurb but waited until the last second to say something.
“I literally just emailed Geunther the revised wording and am waiting to hear back,” she said. “Would you leave him a voicemail reminding him we need it back before the end of the day? And that the end of our day is five o’clock, not midnight?”
“What should I say if he answers and wants to talk to you?”
“Tell him I’m not available. And I’m not here tomorrow either, because I’m going to edit from home.”
“Right. On it.”
Michelle waited a moment, expecting Jamie to go directly back to her desk, but she stood there another moment. “What else?”
“The other fire that needs putting out is Callendra Bard’s question about the schedule. Her voicemail said she needed until the end of the month to turn her first draft in.”
“Oh, goodness, right. I’ll call her while you call Geunther.” Michelle picked up the phone on her desk with a sigh. She was used to the fact that some writers were prone to missing their deadlines. But right now it seemed like every one of her writers was missing their deadlines. She pulled up the production schedule while the phone rang. It wasn’t her imagination. She sorted the spreadsheet so that all her projects were grouped together; every one was flagged red, pink, or yellow, depending on the severity of the delay, except for two: Aditi’s sequel, which was technically on time since the due date hadn’t come up yet, and Callendra Bard’s, which was due this week.
It’s not your fault, Michelle told herself. You’re handling the most literary and award-winning authors. Of course a lot of them need extra time. All those on-time books farther down the schedule are media tie-ins being written work-for-hire.
Still, it didn’t look good. She sighed as Callendra’s voicemail picked up. “Hi, Cal, it’s Michelle, returning your message. I totally understand, but do you think you could get me the first half of the manuscript this week and I’ll give you until the end of the month for the rest? That way we can keep things rolling. I can get started on it while you’re finishing the rest?” That would let me keep it “on time” …
There. All the fires were out, or at least burning on someone else’s desk for a few minutes. Michelle picked up her Kindle again and flipped to the table of contents. Maybe she should just skip to the part about play parties. The way things were going
, that might be all she’d be able to cram in before the party itself arrived tomorrow night.
The two green boxes on the schedule seemed to be staring at her like a pair of watchful eyes, though, as she looked for the information she was sure she’d need to know. Michelle hadn’t told any of the girls about the play party invitation. They were all pretty open about their sex lives with each other—it was one of the best things about having a gal posse. But Michelle had been holding this back from them. She felt shy bringing her interest in BDSM experimentation up to the group. Aditi was the only one with an inkling of it, because she’d been there to see Michelle’s curiosity bloom at Booklovers Con.
The ideas were so heady and intoxicating. Which maybe was all the more reason to get a reality check from someone.
I sure as hell am not going to ask my own sister for kinky sex advice. Aditi was the obvious choice.
Michelle sighed and picked up the phone. Aditi wasn’t in the BDSM community, but she knew a lot more about it than Michelle did, and she was honest. She’d tell Michelle if going to a party organized through Fetlife was the equivalent of going to an axe murderers’ convention.
Aditi picked up right away. Good sign. “Hey, Miche.” But she sounded guarded. Bad sign.
Michelle decided she had better ease into the sex talk. “Hey, just calling to see if you want to hash out that blog idea I tossed at you in chat. About rape culture in YA.”
“I like it. Right in my wheelhouse, don’t you think?” Aditi said. “But where can you place it?”
“I’m sure we’ll find a taker. The Mary Sue, maybe, or HuffPo Books? One of the ones you’re not already slated to give a piece to. I know Pam’s got a list.”
“That’s good.”
There was an awkward silence as Michelle knew it was her turn to speak but all she could think about were the sex questions in her head. “I’ve been wanting to ask your advice about something,” she blurted.
“Oh?”
“I got an invitation to a party. One of those parties.”
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