The next morning around 10 a.m., Olivia introduced me to my assistant, a marketing coordinator named Devin, and left us to get acquainted. Devin was white, nonbinary preferring they/them, had bright red hair that was clipped quite short, and inhabited a very comfortable, high-end, slightly femme business-casual look. I guessed they were in their mid-twenties.
Devin had a metric fuckton of information to unload on me all at once. They’d taken the liberty of setting up conference calls with client representatives and a litany of vendors, concept reviews with art directors and graphic designers and copywriters, contract reviews with our legal department, oh, and at eleven thirty, they’d arranged a video call with Jordon Connelly. My mind flashed on a meme of a startled-looking doggo with the caption “WAT?” I mean, I’d handled some semi-famous indie bands back at the record label, but Jordon Connelly was next-level stardom and I had to admit, I was a little intimidated.
But first, at 11 a.m., we were expected to attend the daily fifteen-minute “stand-up” meeting with Olivia’s full team of ten people, where everyone went around in a circle and provided status on projects and tasks. This “stand-up” format was borrowed from the software development world, where apparently the idea was everyone stood up for the meeting so that it went faster because, literally, everyone on Earth just flat-out preferred sitting. Olivia somehow kept thirty different accounts in her mind at all times, understood the operational details of every campaign, and weighed in on every major design decision, while trusting her team to iterate across the finish line without micromanagement. Good to know the boss was an actual boss.
At eleven thirty, Devin took us into a video conference room, and we waited for Jordon Connelly to connect. Devin provided the backstory here: planning for Jordon’s upcoming video shoot was not going smoothly, and Jenning & Reece was expected to help fix the problem, even though the problem was likely Church interference with the creative process. Devin wanted to use this issue as a quick opportunity to introduce me to Jordon so I could start managing her expectations about options.
I said, “What are the options?”
Devin shrugged and said, “You’re the marketing specialist, you tell me.”
Ooh, zing.
Finally, the video call started.
Jordon Connelly was white, she/her according to her promotional material, a twenty-four-year-old genius. She was a virtuoso singer and a brainiac programmer, sold a patent to Apple when she was fourteen for a novel music recommendation algorithm that suggested artists to you based on how you deployed emojis on social media, graduated high school when she was fifteen, studied computer science at MIT and graduated with honors at nineteen, all while building a huge presence on music sites by giving away her excellent songs and making charming low-fi music videos for her followers over the years. She could’ve easily had a high-paying tech job, but she gambled on the life of an artist, and now her efforts were paying off—her last album went big with three singles on the radio. Expectations were high for her follow-up.
The media reported that she was the current pet project and love interest of Lonso Drake, the Exalted Scion (i.e. “Pope”) of the Church of Gorvod. The Church was financing this new video, as well as the entire marketing campaign around her new album. But although the Church was writing the checks to Jenning & Reece, Jordon had a lot of latitude when it came to creative decisions. For this call, she was relaxing in a sweatshirt, hanging out in what appeared to be her bedroom—popstar casual.
“All right, let’s talk about the first video,” she said. “I want to fire everybody and start over. The whole thing is turning into a remount of Grease. We need to just wipe the slate clean before this goes any further.”
The look of shock on Devin’s face was informative.
“What does Lonso think about that?” Devin asked.
“I haven’t told him yet,” Jordon replied.
“It took us months to get his approval on the choreographer,” Devin continued, mostly for my benefit. “If we have to go through that process again for the director, the production designer, the costumer … the video won’t be ready in time for the release of the album.”
“Lonso doesn’t get a vote this time. So we need people who are awesome and who are fast. Isobel, I hear you used to work for an indie record label. Does that mean you might know people we could tap?”
“I could make some calls,” I said. “What sort of story are you looking to tell?”
“I want to dramatize the Shedding of Gorvod’s Thousand Skins,” she said with an impressively straight face. “But it has to be sexy.”
We chatted for quite a while about all the various videos currently in stages of pre-production, getting me up to speed and seeing where I could help beyond simply writing press releases. Turns out I did have some ideas she thought were interesting. It was a fun conversation, lasting longer than our scheduled meeting time. Devin had to skip out for another meeting, which was cool; I didn’t mind taking notes myself for the rest of the call.
After Devin left, however, Jordon skipped to an unexpected topic.
“Have you ever played a game called Sparkle Dungeon?” she asked.
“Every now and then,” I said.
“I’m a huge fan,” she said. Not a giant coincidence; Sparkle Dungeon had a hundred million players.
“Interesting. I thought the Church only ponied up players for Gorvod’s Frenzy.”
“Ha, no. I don’t get involved in that business. That’s Lonso’s thing.”
“Not much of a thing.”
“Everybody’s got something they’re into. But I play my own character. I’ve been playing since before I joined the Church.”
“I’m surprised they let you keep it. Doesn’t the Church confiscate all your accounts when you join?”
“That’s what I hear, for most people anyway. But I’m a Devoted Scion.” She was trying to be nonchalant when she said it, but that gave way to disappointment when she realized I had no idea what she was talking about. “I’ve been reincarnated thousands of times.”
Oh. Just when you’re getting to know someone, turns out they’re immortal.
“Anyway, I would love to find a way to license one of my songs for their soundtracks,” she continued. “I hear they’re in development right now on Sparkle Dungeon 5. Maybe I could pitch them a new theme song?”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’m not sure I’m the right person to figure that out.”
“Oh, that’s funny, I could have sworn you did a bunch of ‘usability testing’ on that game.”
What?
Ohhhhhhh.
Jordon Connelly was also my mysterious raiding buddy, the Keeper of the Moonlight Prism. Small planet apparently.
“No,” I said, keeping it cool. “Turns out they were just feeding me a lot of drugs.”
“Ha,” she said. “You wish.”