Authors: Arielle Archer
Comfort meant one thing. I felt that familiar rush of endorphins as I sat down at my computer. As I double clicked on the icon to log into Tales of Elassa. The familiar violin music washed over me and it felt as though I was immersing myself in a cold pool of water. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Typed in my username and password and then I was in.
I became Maia, high elf priestess of the Hokuten Order. A high elf priestess who was respected. A high elf priestess who was considered one of the best role-playing scenario writers on the server. Here was a place where my talent for genre fiction was definitely appreciated!
Fuck that asshole Ryan! And yet at the same time that voice was whispering that I was just trying to escape reality.
Whatever. I’d escape reality.
A beep. A ding. I looked up in curiosity. My message icon was blinking on my UI. Now that was interesting. Most people who I knew in game didn’t play during the day. Sure the server was online twenty-four hours a day unless it was down for maintenance, but at the same time I tended to only have friends who played at night because that was when I was on. My understanding was the place was pretty sparsely populated during the day when most of the US population was at work or at school or doing other things that people with normal lives did.
The only people on right now were mostly the unemployed, kids who didn’t have to be at school for whatever reason, or crazy girls who’d decided to cut out of their creative writing seminar a half hour early because they were upset about a bad comment they got on one of their stories.
I clicked the icon and a message popped up. Immediately I felt my pulse racing. Immediately I felt blood pumping through my body, coursing behind my ears. I felt my nipples harden and strain out towards the computer.
Him. Conlan. He was on, and he just sent me a message.
“How’s it going?”
Three simple words, and yet I found myself racking my brain trying to think of a way to respond to them. I desperately tried to think of something that would make me seem witty, clever, a sophisticated woman of the online gaming world, and yet my words failed me. I found myself simply responding honestly.
“Pretty fucking terrible actually. How about you?”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Want to talk about it?”
The words started flowing from my fingers before I had time to think about it. This was a complete stranger, and yet something about his concern touched me. Maybe it was because I was vulnerable in the moment, but I found myself explaining everything. My class. How they’d reacted to me. Some of my insecurities.
All that poured out onto the screen. It was the first time I’d ever talked to anybody about any of this. It was the first time I’d gotten any of this off of my chest. Samantha was usually the only person I had in-depth conversations about these sorts of things, and that was typically talking about whatever guy we were dating that week. Well, whatever guy she was dating that week. I didn’t do a lot of dating what with my busy schedule of playing video games and going to class.
The cursor blinked at me from the end of the chat window. And there was a long pause. So long that I started to worry that maybe I’d said too much. Maybe I downloaded too much right at the get-go. I’d just met this guy after all. I didn’t really know him all that well. Or at all.
Great. I meet a somewhat nice guy, a guy who can turn a phrase with the best of them, and already I’d chased him away venting about all of my problems and insecurities. Good job Jessica. Great fucking job!
“I know how you feel,” he said.
I blinked. “You do?”
“I don’t know if you can tell, but I do a little bit of writing myself,” he said.
I smiled. He didn’t know if I could tell? As though it wasn’t obvious he was good at this sort of thing from the way he spun that scenario last night. From the way he put words to the screen so effortlessly.
“Oh no, I had no idea!”
I made sure to put in an eye roll emoticon so he would know I wasn’t being completely serious. Meaning and tone could be difficult to convey in text.
“I do a lot of writing actually,” he said. “A lot of it for my job, and I always worry that it’s never going to be good enough. Everyone tells me it’s great, but as I’m writing I always have this little voice in the back of my head telling me that everything is crap. That everyone’s going to hate it this time. That this is going to be the one where everybody realizes that I just got lucky with the other stuff.”
I blinked. “You write professionally? Like novels or something?”
“Probably nothing you’ve ever heard of,” he said. “Technical writing and that sort of stuff, but still. I have that gnawing doubt. Heck, for awhile now it’s been hard for me to write anything. I’ve been coasting for awhile. Trust me. I know exactly what you feel like, and I get paid to do this stuff!”
I smiled and felt warmth spreading through my body. Here was a guy who understood me. Here was a guy who knew exactly what I was going through! And the admission that he was a writer, even if it was just technical writing which was something of a four letter word in creative writing circles even though most people I knew who graduated went on to do it because they quickly discovered they couldn’t pay the rent with their literary fiction.
“So you’re saying that feeling never goes away?” I asked.
“Nope. Never does in my experience. All you have to do is learn to take that voice and squash it. Listen to it from time to time to make sure you’re not actually turning out crap, but I figure if most people around you tell you that you’re doing a good job then that’s good enough,” he said.
“What about bad reviews?”
And then I realized I was probably being ridiculous. Like he would get a bad critique when he was doing technical writing!
“Everyone’s a critic,” he said. “You just have to learn how to let that roll off of you. I can get nine people out of ten telling me what a wonderful job I’m doing at my work, and the still that number ten who had a problem is going to get more attention than the nine people who told me how great I was!”
I smiled and actually laughed. I was amazed at how easily he could put me at ease. I was amazed at how quickly all of my worries from class washed away. I was actually starting to feel kind of foolish for walking out of class like that, for getting so emotional. And yet at the same time I was glad I’d gotten so emotional because it meant I came home to Conlan. It meant I had this pep talk to cheer me up.
“So you write fantasy stuff?” he asked.
I blushed again. “Mostly. Lately I’ve just been writing stuff in Elassa because that’s where I spend most of my time, but it’s always been my favorite genre. The Elassa books have been my favorite ever since the first one came out!”
“Oh? You’ve been reading them since the beginning?”
“Of course. I’m always on the lookout for a new good book, and as far as I’m concerned Sean Taylor has been a literary genius since the first word he put to paper ten years ago. Now if only he’d get out the next one...”
“It’s always nice to find someone who’s liked the books almost as long as I have! Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who knew about them back at the beginning,” he said. “Besides, I’m sure he has a good reason for making us wait!”
“I thought it was a revelation when I read the first book, so I really don’t care if he takes his time. I’m not like those rabid fanboys that seem to think he owes us something.”
My love for the books is probably why I spend so much of my time playing Tales of Elassa. Sometimes I wish I could be in that world! Other times I just wish I could craft something as amazing and original!”
“You never know,” he said. “Just look at that chick with those kinky sex books, and that started out as a fanfiction didn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like something like that would happen to me!”
“So you’re a huge fan, does that mean you’re going to Elassa Con?”
I sighed. “How I’d love to go to Elassa Con! I’ve been to a few regional cons, even have a stupid costume I wear to them, but I’m afraid Elassa Con is more than a poor grad student like me can afford though.”
“Pity, I was thinking of going. We could meet up,” he said. “I’d love to see that costume. ;)”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll go someday if I get rich off of my writing,” I said.
“I’d like to read some of your stuff,” he said.
I pulled away from the keyboard. I blinked a couple of times. I stared at the chat window. At those words burned onto my flat panel. Sure I shared my stuff in the critiques every day, sure I shared my stuff with the people I role-played with online, but there was something about this that seemed different. I was suddenly self-conscious about sharing my work with this man. Maybe it was the way he wrote. Maybe it was knowing that he did this professionally. But for whatever reason, I was hesitant.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure it would be boring for you…”
“No! I’m definitely interested! If you’re half as good as what you write in game then I have a feeling I’m going to be pleasantly surprised!”
I blushed and had to stop. I had to count to ten. It was like this guy was pressing all the right buttons, and I didn’t even know his real name. I had no idea what he looked like. For all I knew it could be some fifteen-year-old kid who was home from school today. For all I knew he could be some old man. He could even be a she!
Catfishing was an ever present danger online, but something was telling me I should take a chance.
“Fine, what’s your email address?”
I arched an eyebrow at that. I was surprised he was actually able to get that email address. It’s not like Conlan was a super famous character in the series or anything, but he was a driving force in the narrative for anybody who bothered to pay attention to that sort of thing. It was the kingdom he created that led to the catastrophe that created the world I was running around in right now. The world I loved reading about so much. The world that had taken the real world by storm over the past five years with its explosive popularity. And I figured a name like that would’ve been snapped up immediately. Only here he was. He had it.
Interesting. And it also made me respect him all the more. It was slightly cocky choosing that name, but at the same time it showed that he really knew his stuff. He really knew the story. A lot of people didn’t pay attention to it that deeply. They just enjoyed the action in the books or they enjoyed the boobs on the pay cable miniseries. No, that name told me this was a guy who really got the series. This was a guy who was definitely a fan.
And that made me both respect him more and want him more. It was ridiculous to fall for a guy over something silly like that, but there it was. I was an intellectual woman first and foremost, and he was definitely able to stimulate my brain in a way most guys had never been able to. That intrigued me. That turned me on if I was being perfectly honest.
“Fine, I’ll send you something I worked up for class,” I said.
“No, I want your novel,” he said.
I blinked. “How did you know about that?”
“You said you’re in a creative writing program and you just got in a fight about liking genre fiction. I know you have a novel you’ve been working on. I want to see it.”
Now this really was asking too much! He was absolutely right, but I’d never share that with anyone. I even turned the screen away when Samantha was in the room. Not that I’d actually worked on the thing in a while because I was so busy with the creative writing program and all the creative writing I’d been doing for the game. But still. Sharing something like that was so personal.
“Come on…” he said.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll send you the first few chapters, but that’s it!”
“Glad to hear it.”
He was so cocky. So arrogant. So sure he’d get his way! I wondered what kind of man he was in the real world, outside of the videogame, that he had that calm and confident demeanor. That he just assumed everyone was going to do what he asked.
I alt tabbed out of the game and opened up my email client. I had my own Elassa mail account. It was a whole giant social network for fans of the series. I typed in his email and attached the file, and as I did I got a good look at his profile picture. Not everybody bothered with the picture, but he had one. And I found myself staring, transfixed.
The character creator for the game meant you could pretty much write your own ticket in terms of looks. Most people chose a character who was muscular or slim in all the right places. Basically the perfect figure and the ultimate in wish fulfillment. What I’m trying to say is you didn’t see a lot of chubby characters walking around Tales of Elassa unless it was somebody who was doing it to make a point for a particular brand of role-playing.
Only as I looked at the picture attached to his profile, I wondered if he realized I was going to be able to see that picture when he gave me his email, I realized that in this case at least, assuming this was actually him and this wasn’t an elaborate catfishing expedition, there wasn’t much difference between the man behind the computer and the handsome character in game.
He wore a huge pair of sunglasses that obscured most of his face, but there was no obscuring his strong jaw line. The picture was also taken at a slightly odd angle that covered up some of his face, but I could see shaggy Brown hair that looked unkempt but was so sexy. And the rest of him. Broad shoulders and what looked like a well muscled frame under a tight fitting T-shirt that left no doubt he spent time in the gym. He looked like he was maybe anywhere from five to ten years older than me and he looked absolutely delicious.