A Polished Little Jewel: Café Verführen

Last year, I served in the YaoiCon café. It was a lot of fun, but I think our guests deserved better, and I felt compelled to apologize. senshixdoukeshi linked it over on the YaoiCon forums, where some people thought I was being unreasonable, some were supportive, and more than a few mentioned Café Verführen. I’d heard about it, of course, but I hadn’t actually attended, and I made a point of going this year. I was lucky enough to secure a reservation for one of their Friday-evening sessions.

To visit, I had to leave the frantic, hurried energy of the con; it takes up an inconspicuous, well-furnished suite tucked away on the third floor of the hotel. There was a small line waiting by the door when I arrived, but Café Verführen seats only twenty-two at capacity, which kept the group small and patient. Everyone was seated in short order, more or less on time. I can’t imagine that the two cafés attract substantially different clientele, so I’m left crediting the room’s accoustics for keeping the background noise to a low murmur. The quiet was a very nice touch; even when the evening ran a little behind schedule, the atmosphere stayed relaxed and graciously unhurried.

Having experienced (and enjoyed) the (non-professional) host-café as both server and guest now, I have a hard time expressing how much I admire what Café Verführen has created. Details like that make the difference between a great event and a mediocre one, and the details are where they sweep the field. They’ve created something full of little refinements, tiny considerations of the nuances of their guest experience. Some of them are as simple as sheets of paper; the menus weren’t printed on plain white bond, and they weren’t stack-cut to quarter-sheet. The drinks are served in glass, not Styrofoam. Those sound small, almost inconsequential, and on one level they are, but on another they’re tactile, hardwired directly to the brain, and I felt the difference even through gloves. Those choices have weight, in a very literal way, and even if they weren’t made consciously, weight has meaning; it feels like a natural manifestation of a commitment to do things right.

I felt a sense of pride coming from the staff – not arrogance, just confident, fannish pride, a friendly sort of Look at this wonderful thing we’ve made to share with you – and I think it’s well-justified.

Links Have Changed!

We are all very sorry about this, but the latest version of the 1000Gears software has introduced a new numbering scheme. Unfortunately it makes the site links very ugly, so I took out my hammer and made the website make pretty links again (though they are still different from the old ones).

Unfortunately, the old links do not work anymore. Some of the most popular posts are linked below, but there are quite a lot of them and people link to them in strange ways sometimes. If you have been directed to this post because your link did not work, please excuse the inconvenience and find a working link below. Also, the person who sent you the broken link may not know it is broken. Please be kind and forward the information along, so that the Internet may get by without so many broken links.

Thank you!
~Catboy! =^.^=

Graveyard
Fake It
Sometimes, When You’re Sleeping
YaoiCon 2007: One Server’s Thoughts
If You Think Education Is Expensive…
Putting Money Where My Mouth Is
Lovers Die Together
The Tears of Anael
DreamFever
Intoxication
Wanting More
You Can’t Go Back to Eden
It Begins With A Kiss
Shut Up
Civilized Behavior: You’ve Heard of It, Yes?

If you are looking for a post not listed here, the search bar off to the left should be happy to help you.

I Survived YaoiCon 2008

YaoiCon 2008 is well and truly over; midnight has struck, the coach is a pumpkin, and all the celebrants have wandered home, watching the magic fade into memory for another year. My brain is still congealing from the experience, but you can expect my thoughts and pictures to come trickling through this site over the next week or so. I hope you’ll excuse my absence lately; I wanted to finish the latest story, First And Last And Always in time for the con. I came very close; there are only a few polishing edits left for me to make, and then I’ll put it to bed and see whether I want to post it or offer it to Anne for the Anthology. The YaoiCon Anthology has been dormant for two years now, but Tybalt stories have always been been tied to them; if the staff plans to resurrect it next year, I may hold the story for them. We’ll see.

Every year I start looking forward to the next convention almost before I finish recovering from the one just past. Every year I’ve made new friends and caught up with old ones; every year I’ve found a few special thoughts and memories to digest and make part of myself. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration that falling in with this particular crowd has actually helped me become a better person for all the experiences I’ve found with them. Obviously I have a tendency to overthink just a little bit, but it’s a tremendously inclusive event: some people go just to shop; some go to meet other fans; others still just enjoy the sheer exuberant energy that cons always seem to breed. I’m convinced that some people go because they are incredibly bad at masturbating, but this is another essay entirely.

I’ve attended five YaoiCons now, but this was the first time I didn’t have any specific, official involvement. Originally I was slated (tentatively) to work the Sunday Brunch, but when I called to check in that morning, Gothkitti told me not to worry about it. At first I was a bit worried about letting him down (he’s a good friend of mine and I do enjoy helping out with his events where I can), but after a good night’s sleep and some time to unwind I think he was being merciful. By that time I’d already worked ten hours as a regular volunteer, and I’m sure would have knocked myself out completely trying to bring my best game to the tables. If any of you out there attended, I would love to hear your impressions.

On the other hand, I did attend Café Veführen, the other café held at YaoiCon. I heard it mentioned several times after I posted about my serving experiences last year, and it felt important to see what others were doing with the concept. Later, after I’ve organized my pictures a little bit, I’ll post my thoughts about it in a separate review; right now, up front, I will say that I was thoroughly impressed and I would love to visit again.

Being such a long-time attendee does have one drawback, though; the con has grown enormously and I’m sometimes a bit unsure what people want to know or hear about. For the month of October, then, if you have any questions or you’d like to hear my thoughts on something in particular, please do feel free to speak up. I’ll try to cover as much as possible.

Edit: That was YaoiCon 2008, not 2009. Thanks, senshixdoukeshi.

Moo Harder!

LiveJournal entertains me, and not only because so many of users throw fits of hysteria at the drop of a hat. For a very long time, it survived entirely on selling subscriptions to about 5% of its users, upgrading their accounts for extra avatars, picture upload space, and a few spiffy (if rarely-used) extra features. Every so often, it sells permanent upgrades, typically for $150.

This five percent is, by definition, LiveJournal’s most profitable five percent of users. Out of these five percent, permanent accounts are, I suspect, the best deal… for LiveJournal’s coffers. $150 buys five years of upgraded service, not counting the interest earned by not paying up-front. I suspect that a Permanent account actually stays profitable more or less forever – on a commercial scale, a gigabyte of bandwidth costs about fifteen cents, a gigabyte of storage about the same – but they get less so if they’re active for more than five years. For comparison, LiveJournal has only existed at all for nine years this March, and as a paid service for eight this September.

Unfortunately, once a user buys a permanent upgrade, that user immediately and forever-after becomes deadweight to the company, an expense that has no hope of bringing in future revenue. Let me repeat that – permanent account holders are not LiveJournal’s customers. LiveJournal has precious little incentive to care what they think. Customers write checks. Once LiveJournal cashes the user’s check, a permament account is a liability, pure and simple.

In 2006, though, they found a way around this problem, which recently became the default for new users: the ad-supported upgrade. I think this was a brilliant decision, in this twirling-moustache, corporate-Machiavelli kind of way. The advertising program means that permament and basic accounts, which ordinarily generate no revenue, are still financially valuable – LiveJournalers (LiveJournalists?) maintain extensive lists of interests and associations in their profiles. This giant database can be mined, and the interests and demographic information mined to target advertising to their friends.

I suspect that people willing to pay $20/year or more for LiveJournal are probably pretty good at keeping their profiles up-to-date, people willing to pay $150 up-front even more so. That’s good, and very important in this business model. Targetting is money in advertising-land.

I have a point in this long and rather unwieldy setup, a reason for this little Gedankenexercise.

You Should Post Some More

“You should post some more,” she tells me, running her fingers through my hair. “People’ll start thinking you’re dead.” Y’should post s’more. People’ll staht thinkin’ ya dead. She lilts the words, just a little, her light Georgia accent not nearly strong enough to drawl.

I’m sleeping. I know it. She is the girl in my dreams, for a long time the only one and even now the only one who stayed. Not a muse, she is my friend and I suppose my sometime lover, a private blessing born somewhere deep in my subconscious mind. It’s been nearly eight years since I last heard her voice aloud. Really it belongs to Evette, to the girl I loved in high-school, to the girl who taught me to love myself, but my girl-dream kept it for me and made it her own.

I turn my head a little in her lap, kissing at the palm of her hand before I open my eyes again. The summer has tanned her since I saw her last, but only just a shade, and the light brings out the dark, ruby fire in her auburn hair. “Tybalt doesn’t want to play today,” I murmur.

“I think you’re just happy right here,” she laughs, slipping her hands away, and her warm, black jeans press against my cheek. I don’t deny it, don’t even try, just make happy meowling noises up at her. Writing something means waking up, at least, leaving her behind again. She comes and goes as it pleases her; it might be months before I see her again. Part of me always worries that, one day, she might not come back.

She knows what I’m thinking, though, and she lifts my head, bending over me to press a kiss against my lips. “How long’ve you known me?”

“Seven years.”

“And I’m always here for you.”