this years girl

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

clean/wholesome vs dirty - obviously this one is bullshit, we don't need to talk about why

smut/smutty - a classique. Pretty good, but feels like its falling out of favour.

steamy - as above, really. feels slightly more vague, makes me assume it's sexy but not explicit. More dated - been replaced by spicy.

erotic - erotica is a whole genre to itself, with different parameters to romance. Conflating the two weakens genre defninitions for both.

explicit - does what it says on the tin, but risks sounding a bit clinical. If steamy is make outs and fondling, explicit is genitals getting described up-close.

spicy - gets a lot of complaints, but lends itself well to a rating scale and is very popular

open/closed door - this is a good shorthand, but not very familiar to people who aren't reading romance. Again, doesn't rate very easily - a closed door is a closed door, but the open door could lead to either slow vanilla missionary or a full-on BDSM scene.

porn/pornography - comes with a lot of assumptions which makes it harder to use in certain spaces. Sits at the 5/5 end of the scale in my head. Similar to erotica in that its a distinct genre.

saucy - this is just a Carry On film. no one is aroused.

sexy - too vague. colin firth fully clothed in a pond is sexy. gwendoline christie in plate armour is sexy. that one fish from finding nemo is sexy. brushing hands described in the right way is sexy. could mean anything.

this book has sex in it - literally no

Then you've got the problem that websites like tiktok and instagram, which is where most marketing happens, can surpress content that's too sexy, especially if its queer, and authors are being forced to be over-cautious with the words they use.

i like to think she's echoing near lmao:

valentine's!

+

>look inside

Make her shorter if you must

Make them exactly the same size and shape but different colors

Give him a huge flock of babies following him around to show off what a great lay he is

Surprise mPreganté

Exactly the same but one of them has a cool hat (you decide which)

Give her a sensible haircut for successful hunting while he has a big dumb mullet so big and dumb the food can see him coming and book it

in the back fake kicked at the

gray horse took me OUT

Would Jigsaw have that sort of fanbase? Amanda Young photos get leaked out again and it’s over.