#management platform

[kazifatagar]

TRAPO Revs Up Digital Presence Through Impactful Partnership with impact.com

Malaysia’s top automotive accessories brand, TRAPO, collaborates with impact.com, a leading partnership management platform, to enhance its digital presence. Amid the pandemic-induced shift to online commerce, TRAPO focuses on affiliate marketing for car accessories. Read More News Grab Malaysia doubles down on #SavewithGrab for every Malaysian TRAPO and impact.com The partnership with…

[milanletsnurture]

Host your own Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt

He nicked it up the duff a load of old tosh bleeder butty bugger all mate cheeky bugger bodge tickety boo, mush well Richard geeza buggered haggle david you mug I, such a fibber my good sir knackered down the pub baking cakes chancer golly gosh. Car boot give us a bell bits and hanky panky me old mucker fantastic in my flat so I said nice one he lost his bottle.

[emossysolution]

https://www.emossy.com/

Why do We need to Use an Employee Management Platform for Small Business?  

Need of Having HR Management & Employee Management Platform for Small Businesses Emossy is here to help you. We are thriving very rapidly working with you and solving all your problems easily. 

[prodeasy]

5 Popular Prioritization Frameworks For Product Managers

Prioritization — narrowing the list of demands and feature requests is the most challenging responsibility for Product Managers. So you must make the most out of the opportunity and prioritize features solving real customer problems.

An efficient prioritization process solves a real problem for your customers, garners support from stakeholders, aligns your team’s vision to business objectives, and minimizes the risk of being just an innovative product team.

As a product manager, you know why it’s important to assess an initiative to save your company’s time and resources. But where do you even begin and how do you prioritize which features should be developed and which should stay in the backlog.

We have compiled 5 popular proven frameworks to help you prioritize.

Cost of Delay framework (P.S. We use it at Prodeasy!)

In the cost of delay framework, prioritization needs two things — the relative business value of a feature and the relative time required to deliver it. Divide the cost/time and it gives us a score. The higher the score the higher the priority. This framework helps you in answering questions like:

Will the worth of the product increase or decrease if we have this feature ready to use?

What would be the incurred cost if the product development of this feature is delayed?

Example of how to use “Cost of Delay framework”

If you have boiled down your feature choice to be built in the next quarter to two. Use Cost of Delay to choose which feature your team should focus on first.

If one feature costs you $27,000 when it’s delayed per month and it takes three months to build. On the other hand, the other costs $9,000 when delayed per month but takes the same amount of time. According to the framework, the first feature would be the one your team develops first.

MoSCoW framework

This method takes into account the wishes and interests of your stakeholders. As a product manager, you can divide the feature initiatives into four buckets:

Mo: Must-Have

This bucket contains all the feature initiatives without which the product will not be launched and hence the most time-sensitive.

S: Should-Have

This bucket contains all the features and initiatives which are important to deliver but products can be launched without them.

Co: Could-Have

This bucket contains nice to have feature initiatives. They are neither mandatory nor time-sensitive.

W: Won’t Have

This bucket contains feature initiatives for future development and releases.

Example of how to use “MoSCoW framework”

Consider Disney+ as an example when it was launched where:

Disney’s Must-Have: Users must sign up/ log in to access their account

Disney’s Should-have: Users should be able to reset their password and pay for their subscription

Disney’s Could-Have: Users could have a resume option for playing movies

Disney’s Won’t-Have: Disney+ did not include Save data mode & Log out of devices in their MVP

KANO Model Framework

Kano model framework plots feature implementation on the horizontal axis and customer satisfaction on the vertical axis.

You plot the features on the implementation axis using three points:

Basic features: It will not solve any of your customer problems

Performance features: Investment in these will result in a higher level of customer satisfaction

Delighters or excitement features: Exceed your customer’s expectation with these

Reverse features: Customers will have negative feedback, hence it will affect the brand negatively.

Plotting on the vertical axis is done using levels of customer satisfaction as plotting markers.

Extremely satisfied: Exceed your customer’s expectation with theseI

Somewhat Satisfied: Investment in these will result in a higher level of customer satisfaction

Not satisfied: It will not solve any of your customer problems

Example of how to use “KANO Model framework”

To plot on the KANO model graph, you need to gather insights by developing a Kano questionnaire where you ask your customers how they’d feel with or without any given feature.

Consider for example Playstation 5 console

Basic Features: ability to stream games

Performance features: Adaptive triggers, ultra-high speed SSD

Delighters or excitement features: Haptic feedback, 8K support

RICE Framework

Example of how to use “RICE Framework”

Calculate RICE score using the following formula:

[Reach * Impact * Confidence] / Effort = RICE Score

Product Tree Framework

In this framework, you prioritize customer ideas having the highest impact on the company’s revenue and value to the business. You can segment and plot the customer ideas on the branches of the tree. The branch with the maximum ideas is prioritized.

Example of how to use “Product Tree Framework”

For example, consider you have a lot of feature requests from different customers.

Draw a tree and consider the stem of the tree as your product.

The outer branch represents next release features

Rest of the branches represent the potential feature ideas

Leaves of the trees would represent the potential ideas from customers

Conclusion

The prioritization framework helps bring everyone from stakeholders to product team on the same page. As a product manager, you decide why an idea will be converted into a feature.

Prodeasyplatform empowers you as a product manager in end-to-end process from discovery to production all in one platform.

Original Source: This blog was taken from Prodeasy.

[strawberrycartt]

He's once again asking for financial support

Based on this post:

[nounaarts]

I seriously forget I have a tumblr when I’m really active on twitter most of the time! Sorry guys ..!

I did do a bunch of Trolls art over there so if you wanna see that you can go to my twitter @ nouna_arts . Note tho, I rambled bout Trolls. A LOT

But I will show some of my recents here! (I did a lot more)

JUST A BUNCH OF MY ART ⬇️⬇️

BUT THE BRAINROT HAS UNFORTUNATELY ROTTED AND NOW MY MIND IS ALL SONIC AGAIN. curse you sonic prime,…

Anyways here’s my sonic doodles :3

I couldn’t put anymore images. Damn .but you get it😭

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

So... listen. I'm almost out of my 30s. Really, genuinely almost out of my 30s. I am standing at the threshold of middle age, getting ready to knock on the fucking door. I self-label as queer. I'm masculine-leaning nonbinary of some variety or another. I am, as I generally put it, Extremely Divorced.

(I might have also said "MEGA-Divorced" at one point or another. Probably multiple points. Including last Friday.)

Shows like GO and OFMD feel so resonant and important for me because I'm objectively and unavoidably getting older and I need to see older queer folks developing relationships that are actually deep and good for them, even if they're also messy and imperfect and interrupted. You've got middle-aged men and man-shaped people(?) trying to figure their shit out and be together, and absolutely fucking it up along the way but in a way that's beautiful and genuine and ultimately survivable.

It makes people like me think that maybe we've still got time to get it right, actually. And I have to imagine that there are other people in the "older set" of the fandom(s) who feel like this as well.

[screecherofthenight]

Guys. GUYS. I was thinking about a Wolf 359 social media au and I came to an earth shattering realization. Kepler is a story time youtuber. he’s a fucking STORYTIME YOUTUBER. I’m having a moment.

[jstor]

hi jstor i’m an opinionated academic that would love to have the opportunity to be published one day but i have about -2 executive functions. can i have an honorary publication. no i don’t know what that means

[emotionaldisaster909]

second season is ruining me.

every day i think about how adorable xie lian and hua cheng are.

who allowed them.

why are they so precious.

why are they so tiny.

they are baby.

i want to wrap them in a blanket and hold closer to my heart

protect from the world and give them million kisses

they are my babies

u will not get them putin

[wishingly-mesh]

Figuring out how to draw this guy! Ignore the ugly looking heads on the side :3

[gotchibam]

I've made a bunch of pokemon mobile wallpapers and they're now available at my ko-fi shop! You can access them freely by joining my ko-fi membership ✨

Feel free to check them out here! :D

[prodeasy]

7 Product Management Metrics for every Product Team

Product metrics are quantitative insights into the health of a product. A product team can improve its decisions by tracking and analyzing these product metrics. Metrics can be used by stakeholders, marketers, and product managers to measure the impact of their decisions, identify problems, set goals, and track progress. There are different metrics based on the type of industry, stage of growth, and strategy of the business.

Why are Metrics Important

Metrics provides accurate measurements about how the process inside the organization is functioning and helps in driving improvement.

Metrics help in improving overall results and align your team and processes with your goals. Metrics determine the priorities of the company and provide a picture of the company’s performance, ethos, and goals.

Metrics are useful for a company in various different ways:

Metrics help in decision-making.

Metrics Drive strategy and direction of the company.

Metrics help in measuring performance and driving improvement.

Metrics help in surfacing unnoticed issues that are important for a company.

Metrics convert customer requirements as well as the company’s performance to numbers that can be easily compared. This helps in determining whether customer’s requirements are met or not.

Therefore it is important to choose the right metric for your business to build a strong product strategy and improve your sales. You need to know which one is suited for your business.

While it is true that there is no one silver bullet metric that serves all businesses, we have compiled a list of some most important metrics that every product person should be aware of.

1. Monthly Active Users (MAU) and Daily Active Users (DAU)

The Monthly Active Users (MAU) metric measures the number of users who open your product within a month. The Daily Active Users (DAU) metric provides that information daily.

MAU and DAU provide you with a clear idea of how many active users you have on a monthly and daily basis. An active user receives value from regular interactions with your product. MAU and DAU give insight into user engagement and adoption MAU and DAU provide you a clear idea of how long a user interacts with your product and shows you the accurate engagement. Knowing how well (or poorly) your product retains users is critical for long-term growth.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is the average satisfaction score of customers influenced by a particular experience.

While CSAT is important to gauge customer sentiment, it should be used alongside other product analytics to get a balanced view of user health and engagement. Another best practice to keep in mind is timing.

3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is how much it costs you to acquire one customer. There are so many factors that affect this. E.g. advertising costs, cost of the software you are using, employee salary, etc.

This metric primarily involvesSales and Marketing. Product teams can also affect CAC by providing product-led growth opportunities that cut down on Sales and Marketing costs. Free trials are a great example.

The lower the CPA, the better.

4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) measures how valuable a customer is to your company with an unlimited time span as opposed to just the first purchase. This metric helps you understand a reasonable cost per acquisition.

CLV is the total worth to a business of a customer over the whole period of his relationship with the company. It’s an important metric as it costs less to keep existing customers than it does to acquire new ones, so increasing the value of your existing customers is a great way to drive growth.

Knowing the CLV helps businesses develop strategies to acquire new customers and retain existing ones while maintaining profit margins.

The formula for measuring CLV is:

CLV = Customer revenue minus the costs of acquiring and serving the customer

Functions can be added to this simple formula to reflect multiple purchases, behavior patterns, and engagement to predict CLV.

5. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Monthly recurring revenue is the revenue generated by your product in a month.

MRR is calculated by considering the MRR at the beginning of the month and adding it to the revenue that you got from the new customers and then subtracting it from the churned revenue.

This is one of the best metrics for SaaS-based businesses.

MRR is calculated by multiplying the total number of paying customers by the Average Revenue per Account (ARPA).

MRR= Customers * ARPA

For example, if you have 1000 customers who spend an average of $50 per month, your MRR is $50,000.

1000x $50 = $50,000

6. Customer Churn rate (CCR)

The customer churn rate, also known as the rate of attrition or customer churn, is the rate at which customers stop using your service. It is most commonly expressed as the percentage of service subscribers who discontinue their subscription within a given time period. A high churn rate could adversely affect growth and profit. For an app to grow, the number of new users must be higher than the number of users who leave.

Customer churn rate = [users at the beginning of period- users at the end of period/users at the beginning of period] * 100

For example : You have 500 users at the beginning of the month, and at the end of the month, you have 400 users.

So customer churn rate: [(500–400)/500] * 100= 20%

7. Customer Retention rate (CRR)

Customer retention rate (CRR) is the percentage of customers your company has retained over a certain time period.

It is the reverse of the customer churn rate, which shows the percentage of customers a company has lost over a specific period. When measuring your customer retention rate, make sure that you choose a period that works for your business and the way your customers buy. For example, it makes no sense for a car manufacturer to measure the retention rate within a year, because hardly any new car buyers will buy another car after just 12 months.

Formula to calculate customer retention rate.

Customer Retention Rate = ((E-N)/S) *100

E = Number of customers at the end of the period.

N = Number of customers acquired during the period.

A product is not just only software, it is more about user satisfaction and the values it is providing. Therefore it is very important to choose metrics that reflect the user’s needs. Users should be the center while choosing the metrics. One should accentuate metrics and KPIs that impact long-term growth in revenue.

Original Source: This blog was taken from Prodeasy.

[whatsalewd]

Been having trouble drawing recently but this cat girl was really fun to draw, so maybe some interaction will help motivate me to draw more.

[alectoperdita]

admittedly this is "old man yells at clouds" energy, but I think it sucks that modern fandom often only conceives of community in the form of discord servers

[adelaidedrubman]

What if the strap could prematurely ejaculate? (Or, Jestiny gets knocked down a peg.) read on ao3.

notes: if i ever accidentally posted something good enough to trick you into following this account, i truly apologize. anyways here’s part two of the john/jestiny failstrap series. set hl&s adjacent and spiritual sequel to mine’s bigger. also new year’s eve themed, i meant to get it posted then but ironically didn’t finish in time. wordcount: 3.8k warnings: explicit sexual content, toxic relationships, emotional manipulation. (neg ’em and peg ’em, the jestiny rook method.) i feel like secondhand embarrassment and cringe dialogue is something of an implicit blanket warning for all my stuff, but. i feel the need to explicitly flag it in this one. that should tell you something. (please also see ao3 end notes or post tags for disclaimers.)

As with all holidays, Jestiny would ideally prefer to spend her New Year’s Eve outdoors. 

She would gladly take her midnight kisses whilst guzzling craft beer and watching fish leap from the water over sipping champagne and watching pixelated footage of a ball dropping — if only the temperatures of December bleeding into January in Montana would agree with her preferences. 

And sure, a sharp chisel and thick jacket could guarantee she would still be taking home her share of trout from a frozen solid pond. A good set of crampons strapped to her favorite hiking boots was all she needed to scale the highest mountain peaks, even covered in ice. A durable tent and well-insulated sleeping bag meant she could still feel wind-nipped cheeks warmed by the flames of a real campfire no matter the season, instead of settling for the store-bought logs currently crackling in the hearth behind her.

But even a rugged outdoorswoman the likes of Jestiny had to admit the blistering, unforgiving cold of Big Sky Country winter required some activities be strictly indoor-only until the first wildflowers of spring poked up from the hard, frozen earth. 

And even with all the proper equipment packed, when it came to the activities that required removing clothing… 

“God, I’ve needed this so fucking bad,” John whined against her jaw, pulling her along by the arm as his other hand impatiently finished her work of centering her strap-on properly in its harness. “I want you to fuck me all night long, right into the New Year. I want you to fuck me in every room of this house, until I can’t look anywhere without thinking of you.” 

What Jessie didn’t have to admit — at least not out loud — was that the spacious yet cozy faux rustic interior of Seed Ranch, with its pervasive scent of leather, pine, and woodsmoke wafting from the fireplace; the vista of sprawling snow covered mountains offered up by its grand far-stretching windows; the lurking presence of hoards of taxidermy animals around every corner, made it the best substitute she could imagine for the thrill of fucking outdoors. 

Yes, it was all blatantly, dreadfully fake — but fake was better than nothing.

“I want you to take me right here on my dining room table,” John continued to lustfully monologue to himself as his thighs hit the edge of the table on his path backward with Jessie in tow, turning from their embrace just long enough to sweep an arm along its length and knock all the stray clutter atop it to the floor. “Don’t hold back. Be rough enough to break it. Just give it to me and don’t stop.” He hopped atop the table to sit, then wrapped legs around Jestiny’s waist to pull her into place. “Then I want you to lay me down in front of the fireplace. Hold me close and take your time with me, give it to me slow until I’m fucking begging. Then drag me upstairs and bend me over the railing. Pound me until I can’t stand, until I cry. Then I want you to carry me into the model plane room and…”

“Yeah, yeah,” she shushed as she pushed him back to his elbows, popping the top off of the bottle of lube clenched in her fist. “I’ll fuck you on every tacky ass piece of furniture in this ugly fucking house.” She forced an extra grumble of irritation to hide the tremor of desire threatening to slip into her words from the sight of him laid back for her with legs spread, brow slick with sweat and the dew of melting snowflakes still clinging to his eyelashes. “I assume you want me to lube it up first, though…”

“Let me,” he cooed, grabbing the bottle from her just as it had begun to drip onto sleek silicone. “I want to do it…”

She shrugged in disinterested agreement, placing her hands behind her head and jutting her hips forward as he poured along the length, palm cradling its underside and sliding along to catch the excess. 

“Fuck,” he cursed, biting down on his lip as he began to pump his hand faster along the attachment. “Already so fucking hard for me.”

She crinkled her nose and cocked her head to the side. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she questioned. “It’s a fucking dildo, John — it’s always hard.”

“It’s — It’s a turn of phrase,” he huffed, tightening his grip and jerking towards him so that she near-stumbled into him. “Are you not familiar with the concept of dirty talk? Not everything has to be so damn literal. Use some imagina —”

“And why the hell are you jerking it off?” she demanded, thrusting a hand against his collarbone. “You know I can’t feel that, right?”

“Well, I’ll try to be more realistic, then,” he snapped as he leaned forward and shoved a hand between her legs. 

Fingers spring-loaded with lingering fury moved to roughly pull her harness to the side, barely stilling or softening their touch before sliding inside her. His other hand remained stubbornly wrapped around silicone to pump it at a now comically harsh pace, as if to prove just how aware he was there was no delicate flesh and blood to be concerned with suffering beneath his vice grip — beginning the spectacle with a rough shove forward of its base to press against her with a pressure that did incidentally send a rewarding flicker of pleasure through hungry nerve endings. 

“Fuck,” he ground out in repetitive correction, his tone wilting midway from a sarcastic hiss to a reverent whimper as he curled his fingers. “Already so fucking wet for me.”

Well, it wasn’t her fault he looked so good flushed and panting, even through the ridiculous theatrics. 

“Like you got room to fuckin’ talk,” she scoffed as she reached to quickly coat her fingers with lube, sliding inside him and finding right where they needed to be with a practiced ease that made her cheeks warm with satisfied pride at her own expertise. Her thumb traced a line up his cock to find and leisurely smear the precum dewing at his tip. “Fuckin’ dripping the second I get my fingers in you.”

The surrender in his next whimper was complete, paired with a bucking of his hips to beg for more as he mirrored her steady pumping in the pace of his own fingers, thumb tucking itself beneath her harness to find and stroke her clit properly — all while still uselessly jerking off the dildo resting atop it, of course. 

Well. Maybe it was useless, but she had to admit — privately — his hands did look nice doing that. 

Even if the curve of his spine restyled itself into a distinctly unnatural, exaggerated arch as he regrettably regained the faculty for words. “God, yes, do you — ah, do you like how it feels inside me?” 

Another stupid question. Reaching past the contrived, polished exterior to find the depths at which he was all warm silk fluttering to the touch? Delving inside him to feel the promise of all the power to reduce him to a stuttering, pleading mess pulse beneath a single fingertip?

How could she not be positively intoxicated by it? How could the rush of adrenaline it stirred be contained to anything less than electricity prickling along every inch of skin until the air itself felt charged with the intensity of her desire? 

“It feels like an asshole, John,” she deadpanned, dragging her finger to tease shallowly. “Felt one, you’ve pretty much felt them all — and until science finds a way to implant a g-spot in the human finger, I’ll be getting just as little out of it every time.” 

She gave a swift upward thrust for one last prod of his prostate in punctuation before she slipped fingers out entirely in the same fluid motion of her shoulders shrugging. “I’m more interested in finally getting to fuck you so good you can’t even talk to ask dumbass questions like that.”

She used the hand sticky with lube to smear a last glob onto the head of her strap as the other cradled his face, smoothing a thumb over his pouting lip as she added, “Just as soon as you ask nice.”

His pout deepened. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb now, baby. You know the drill.” She pushed him to lay with back flat on the table. “Beg me for it.”

“No,” he said testily, lifting his chin to give her a look of pure defiance. “You beg me.”

Her breath caught, for a moment — as if his words sank to snag in her chest before her mind even processed them, lunging back up as sharp barks of laughter the moment it did. 

“Alright,” she sighed, breathless, as she dropped her head to rest against his collarbone and reached down to line up her attachment. “That was funny enough I’ll let you get by without the begging, this time.”

Her hips barely canted a single centimeter forward before they were stopped by a rough fist grabbing at the base of her dildo to hold her in place. 

“It wasn’t a joke,” John hissed, eyes icing cold with determination, like a pond freezing over. “You’re going to beg to fuck me, or you won’t fuck me at all.”

She allowed her confused blinks to pick up pace into a sarcastic batting of her eyelashes paired with a sweet, dimple framed smile. “John, darling. My most cherished love. Light of my life, fire of my silicone sporting loins. Could you, kindly —” she scrunched her face into a scowl, “tell me what the fuck it is you’re talking about?” 

“You’ve done nothing all night but mock and belittle me, and act as if you’re somehow begrudgingly doing me a favor,” he snapped. “Now you’re going to admit you want it as badly as I do,” he said, allowing his tone to melt and soften as he circled a finger around delicate, rosy skin. “If you want this, you have to beg for it.” 

Oh, he was serious. 

Heat flared in the pit of her stomach at how serious he was. 

All the better. She loved a challenge. 

“Now is not the fucking time to be a brat, John,” she growled, threading fingers in his hair and tugging in the way that pulled a needy moan to the surface to tremble in his adam’s apple. “Now is the time to be a good boy and spread your legs.”

“Oh, and I will,” he moaned, craning his neck so the pull of his hair was tautened — a dare, a meet and raise of a bet. “I’ll be so good for you, as soon as I hear that magic word.” 

This time, the hand around her strap stayed still as he reached down to wrap one around his own cock. 

“Say ‘please’ for me, Jessie,” John begged with wide eyes as he began to stroke himself. “I’m already so close — don’t make me cum from touching myself alone. I want you to fuck it from me. I need your strap.”

That bastard. But two could play that game. 

“Are you begging me to beg you?” she scoffed as she began rolling her hips in steady rhythm, the tip of her strap just barely bumping against him as she fucked the grip of his hand in a promise of what she could do. “Why would I beg for something I won’t even feel?”

“Because you want to take me, don’t you, Jessie? Don’t you want this ass to be yours?” Fuck, he did not play fair — spreading his legs wider and pushing forward to rub the head against slickened, puckered skin, make it look so easy to slide home and fuck the attitude out of him. The sight alone made the friction of grinding against a held still strap-on swell to an unexpected thrum of ecstasy trickling through her veins. “God, I want it. I want to feel the way you move inside me. I want to belong to you, every part of me. I want to cum for you, only for my Jessie.”

Christ, when did the cheesy, unnatural porn lines start working on her?

“Must not want it t-too bad,” she grunted with a particularly harsh snap of her hips. The electricity in the air had heavied, absolutely saturated it. It fizzled with that strange feeling of being up high during a thunderstorm, everything so strongly charged that hair stood on end. “Since you won’t just let me —”

“Oh, I will, Jessie,” he panted, training his eyes on her impotent thrusts as he stroked himself faster. “I’ll let you do anything you want, as soon as you’re ready to —”

“Just —” She glared, thrust harder as if she could break right through his grip and end the standoff, only managing to increase pressure. “Move your fucking hand, and I’ll —”

“You’ll what?” he teased, squeezing the thighs wrapped around her waist. “Please tell me, won’t you? At least talk me off the way I like, since you’re not going to —” 

“You’re not going to get off at all, until I —” Fuck, how was this happening? How could she feel every fiber of authority she possessed suddenly unraveling to slip from her fingers? “Say you’re fucking allowed —”

“I’m so close,” he gasped, tossing his head back and arching towards her — the tip of her strap just barely disappearing as he did. “But feel so empty. Oh, Jessie, won’t you —”

“Can you just —” Her cheeks were scalding as she fumbled to grab his hips and grumbled, “For the — the fucking love of god, could you please just —”

She found herself falling forward before she’d even realized the damned word had fallen from her lips, his hand pulling away the second it was spoken and his legs flexing to pull her in, sliding inside him as her knees smacked against the table. 

And every volt of electricity hanging overhead came suddenly crashing down with her as she buried to the hilt as the coaxing of his eager rocking hips — as if lightning finally crackled through the air to ripple down her spine and spread through her body. Spread so forcefully she could taste it in her mouth, feel it tingle along her tongue and shoot down her jaw as the current seemed to hone on the place the base of the strap pressed just right against her clit — suddenly overloading from the sensation, short-circuiting into blissful oblivion. 

And it felt as if she really had been struck by lightning — the way her flesh crawled with searing heat, the way her insides turned and convulsed, the way every muscle twitched and trembled in pure surrender to its force. 

“Did you, um —” he shifted beneath her, pausing and clearing his throat as if for once in his life he realized what a ridiculous thing he was about to say and managed to think twice before saying it, “did you finish?”

“Did I —” she coughed weakly against his collarbone, wishing it had come out closer to a scoff than it did. “I’m genuinely fuckin’ curious — do you even bother to try to make the shit that comes out of your mouth make sense? Or do you just start flapping your jaws and see what happens?”

She did not wait for an answer before summoning her remaining wisps of strength to wind her hips back, forcing wobbly legs pleading to collapse beneath her to instead power a proper thrust forward. 

She yelped, a jolt of pain shooting up through sensitive, overstimulated nerves as the base of the strap pressed against her clit at the full extension of her stroke. 

John craned his neck, eyes scanning far too knowingly along the flush of pink sprawling along her cheeks and chest. “We can stop, if it’s —”

“I’m fuckin’ fine!” she barked. “I just —” She coughed, reaching down to slip a thumb beneath rubber ring and wedge under the dildo to put space between its base and her sore clit. “Gotta adjust a bit — you put this thing in at the wrong fuckin’ angle, fucked everything up.” She wriggled her hips back with a final grumble of, “Why you should never trust a man to do a woman’s job.”

She began rocking forward with hand still in place to lighten pressure against nerves pleading for rest — she could do this, she just needed to fake it through a few minutes of recovery period. She just needed to — 

“Shit!” she cursed, jittery thumb pressing too hard against the base to push it free from the ring with a taunting pop, staying lodged stubbornly inside her lover as she reeled back. She lurched forward, hurrying to retake her place, looking down to gauge position and hopefully reattach herself before he noticed. “Goddamn…” 

“Seriously, are you alright?” John questioned as he pushed himself up to his elbows. “Would you like ten minutes and a glass of orange —”

He was interrupted by a thud as he rose to sit fully upright and meet her face to face, Jestiny’s eyes barely catching to follow the shiny black blur that shot from between his legs to land heavy at her feet. 

“Fuck.” 

Her clumsy rush (since when was she clumsy? first saying ‘please’ and now this?) to turn and reach for the fallen dildo (was her sleight of hand good enough to reattach it without him noticing? what skills did she still have?) resulted in her kicking it with the heft of her combat boot (was it not a good idea to wear them during sex? who even was she?) before she’d even managed to bend down. 

She whipped around, finding hardwood bare save for a slight glistening streak. When she lifted her head to follow the snail trail of lube, she found the strap-on had rolled itself across the greater length of floor — losing little momentum as wood broke into granite. 

The slight rise of the granite platform barely impeded it at all, in fact, as it rolled right past the wrought-iron guard that had been haphazardly left ajar by Jestiny as she built the fire, tenderly welcomed into the roaring inferno of the fireplace. 

The dead lump of a scream in her throat seemed to creep down to spread its decay, making her insides shrivel into brittle rot. As the stench of burning plastic filled the air, her eyes began to water from the sting of chemical smoke. She wondered if she might actually cry for the first time in her adult life.

“Wha — ! Aah,” A confused, devastated noise caught in the back of Jestiny’s throat, withering there to die at the first crackle of silicone as her prized strap-on went up in flames before her eyes. 

The world swirled around her, buffeting at her senses like the cruelest of snowstorms.

Past the whistle and crackle of flame devouring silicone and the whoosh of her own pulse in her ears, Jestiny heard the muffled garble of a television set she hadn’t realized was on blare suddenly loud from the recesses of the ranch, cheers of ‘Happy New Year!‘ over discordant symphony of paper horns blown in celebration conjuring images of ceremonial ball reaching the denouement of its annual journey to the base of its pole into her mind unbidden.

On cue, somewhere in the background, a grandfather clock solemnly chimed to announce the turn of the hour.  

And there stood teary-eyed, gaping mouthed Jestiny — some bizarre sex toy Cinderella whose impressive phallus turned back into a puddle of cheap plastic polymer at the stroke of midnight. 

“Well,” John’s bemused hum pierced through the cacophony rattling around inside Jessie’s brain as he peered past her to the spectacle of silicone bubbling down to black ooze in his fireplace. “I guess it isn’t always hard.”

“Fuck!” Her shout crumpled back into a weak whimper as plain splintered through her knuckles before she even realized she’d swung to strike the table. 

She kept fist loosely clenched and eyes glued to the grain of the table as John turned back towards her. 

She caught in her periphery the falling of his sly smile. His brow pinched inward as he looked back and forth between Jessie’s flushed, scrunched face and the empty rubber ring at the front of her crotch, his eyes softening with the most genuine look of sympathy she thought she’d ever seen him wear, a level of earnest compassion she would have thought him incapable of even faking properly.  

The kind of condescending pity that made her stomach curdle, made her blood boil hot as a melting strap-on. That she would normally lash out to reject, were she not already so thoroughly defeated and stripped of pride. 

“It’s alright,” John whispered softly, reaching over to give a few comforting pats to Jessie’s curled fist before bringing his hand up to cup her jaw and lift her chin, guiding her to look into gentle blue eyes. “It happens to everyone, sometimes.”

“That —” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in gesture to the strap-on cremation still blazing strong behind her, drawing in a ragged breath, “has literally never happened to anyone before.”

“Well, it was... innovative,” John innovated the world’s first performatively horny purr that doubled as bland diplomacy to reply in, throwing his arms around her neck in embrace.

“We —” Her voice sounded so uncharacteristically small to her own ears as she stumbled over her words. “We can do other stuff. I can still finish you —”

“That’s alright. It was enough just to feel close to you,” John shushed, nuzzling against her neck. “All I want now is for you to carry me to the fireside and hold me.”

God, it was such obvious, manipulative fawning; such a poorly disguised consolation prize. She should storm out in offense. 

In no position to refuse consolation prizes, Jessie slid an arm beneath the bend of his knees, wrapping the other around his middle. She gave a slight grunt as she hoisted his weight, at this point truly just grateful she managed not to drop him on the short walk over to the bearskin rug she lowered him to sprawl atop. 

“You —” The impulse to counter with a comment that the firelight made him look much older from the shadows cast into the creases of his face extinguished itself as quickly as it sparked. “You would look even prettier by the light of a real campfire,” she muttered as she fell limp, allowing John to tangle their limbs as he saw fit. “That’s what we should do next New Year’s Eve. I hate being cooped up inside.”

“You always look so beautiful, bathed in firelight,” John sighed, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. 

“And do you envision our rugged adventures would begin with a first-class flight to the southern hemisphere?” he asked with a soft laugh, a hand smoothing along her sides. “I don’t have your outdoorsy expertise, of course, but I’d say it’s hardly pleasant camping weather around here.”

“It’s not so bad, actually,” she sighed pleasantly. “Pitching a tent in the dead of winter,” she continued, absentmindedly threading fingers through his hair. “So long as you —”

She coughed, clearing her throat and hiding her face and its burning cheeks against his chest as she finished the statement. “So long as you have the right equipment.”

She definitely should have just gone fishing.