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sandwyrm · 4 years

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I always rant tons about things I hate in fiction and I scream tons in private about loving Elijah Kamski and disliking that many people Just Don’t Get Him(tm) so why not combine the two.

Like pretty much everyone playing this damn game, my initial opinion on him was “god I wish I could punch him in the face”, but having seen most other paths, and having connected some dots, added to Neil Newbon’s stellar acting as the dude, he’s easily become one of my favorite characters not only in DBH but in general in fiction.

So this is going to be “Why This One Smug Motherfucker With An Attitude You’d Love To Beat Up With A Bat Became One of My Top Favorite Characters, The Essay”

TL;DR: Elijah Kamski planned the android revolution and deviancy

First off, let’s start by analyzing the most obvious thing: his speech and mannerism, his appearance, all play along a very common and clear trope, one that Disney especially is super fond of using:

It’s not just Disney that does this, there’s many other villains who follow the rule, and have been since the dawn of time. And there are many essays and articles on why a smallish physically weak man with aquiline features, calculated speech, and effeminate mannerisms, is such a recurring Look for villains, so we won’t cover that. But it’s very well used on Kamski, perhaps better than any other place I’ve seen, because in him, it is something the character has calculated for himself. For once, we get to SEE what the Questionably Queer Villain STARTED as:

A goddamn nerd. Just your average neighbour. Steve down in IT who comes fix your computer and spergs a little about how COOL computers are, mansplains a little about stuff you already tried because he thinks you’re so much dumber than him, sips an energy drink, and walks away leaving your computer fixed and you with a million emails you still need to answer and a questionable urge to punch him that you’ll never act upon. His mannerism isn’t there. That cadence to his voice isn’t there. He has much more genuine expressions. It is my personal opinion the actor fucking smashed this, and it’s safe to say it is an in-character change: Elijah Kamski was a damn nerd and for whatever reason turned into the Questionably Queer Villain Archetype. Ego gone to his head? Defense mechanism, to survive the sharks of capitalism? Who knows what happened in those 10 years. Who knows how much nerdier he was even longer ago? He has a PR smile going on in that interview but it’s a lot less perfected and rehearsed than the one in 2038. I honestly think it’s a very minor and yet very very stellar detail. Ah! But this is an Extra Feature, most people wouldn’t have seen Past Kamski when they see Present (Future?) Kamski. It’s not the game’s trailer (not unless you’re brave enough to send it to your friends who aren’t into the game yet), it’s a little thing you can watch after you’ve already finished the game. The Kamski you meet at first is this fucker

The fucker who hangs a portrait of himself in his lobby while making you wait on him 5 minutes. The fucker who still swims three more minutes after you’ve been invited in. The fucker who just dodges every single question, and speaks to you condescendingly. The fucker who dismisses your concerns like it’s the funniest thing to him that robots are about to take over.

The narcissist that goes all “pff Turing test is ezmode, I’m gonna make a harder test named after me which I wanna see if my robots pass.”

And because this glib bitch is what the writers intended you to experiment at first, and this is the Kamski most everyone sees while other sides are extras or brief dialogue lines, this is where most people remain with their perception of Kamski. Just another Scar. Just another Jafar. A manipulative little bitch you wish the big buff Hero would punch in the end. But there’s so much more to him.

The obvious: Elijah Kamski is a transhumanist.

To sum it up: Transhumanist is what Steve from IT probably is. If you were to ask him about it, he would mansplain to you how humans are limited by flesh and poverty, and how making technology widely available and the internet free and pushing for technological advancements such as robotics is what would improve humanity. He probably has a whole wall covered in books about AI revolution and singularity, and probably believes robots are the next step in human evolution. That is, robots/cyborgs are to replace humans, and for us to leave our flawed shells behind. Elijah Kamski is such a man, too, and barely hides it. Choice quotes: - “We had to design a machine that moves, breathes, and blinks like us. But yet is smarter and more capable than any human being.” (interview extra) - “Tomorrow they’ll replace our soldiers, and who knows, maybe one day, our leaders, to make the best decisions in humanity’s interest.” (interview extra) - “Perfect beings with infinite intelligence, and now they have free will.” (Meet Kamski) - “Machines are so superior to us, confrontation was inevitable.” (Meet Kamski) - contrast to the PR lie in the interview of “They’re machines, they cannot ever develop a conscience. Trust me.”

It’s clear that he thinks robots/androids would do a better job at society than humans - a lot of nerds do (just ask around, I fucking do, 7 months into 2020), and he’s not even hiding it all that clever.

Or maybe he just wants to fuck some robots?

A lot of people get rapist vibes from Kamski. The creep who just made himself a bunch of sex toys because he could, and there’s nothing else to the androids as far as he’s concerned. And it’s easy to see. Like,

super easy to see

he’s basically eyefucking the androids

But here’s the catch: See, we’re so conditioned by that stereotype I started this essay with that we, and I mean myself as well, easily buy the “he just wanted some hot sex slaves” theory. Scar wants hot sex slaves. Jafar wants hot sex slaves. Frollo wants hot sex slaves. The list goes to infinity. Every time a male is acting this effeminate-flirty way on screen, it’s used to indicate he is a Deranged Pervert. I’m not gonna say where it stems from homophobia and how stupid it is very because smarter people have analyzed this phenomenon, but the bottom line is, we’re projecting something onto Kamski that isn’t there, simply because it’s everywhere else with similar characters. He designed the androids, he’s ogling the androids, and while I have no doubt he’d personally fuck each and every one of his androids, here’s the thing: He only ever touches his one Chloe in a sexual way. There’s strippers in this game. There’s sex in this game. If they wanted Kamski to obviously be a creep, it would’ve been there. Touching those naked androids in the factory. Groping one of the twin Chloes in the pool. Touching Connor in any other way than putting a gun in his hand

He’s not very sensual in this moment, now, is he? It’s a very casual touch, he’s there simply helping a robot aim a gun. Because as far as he knows and thinks, Connor is following his programming - explicitly forbidding him to hold guns. And yet...

Elijah Kamski wants Connor to deviate.

Maybe this one is obvious. Maybe it’s not. If reading forums and reddit has taught me anything, is that people think Kamski is just trying to see if Connor is a mean deviant with these questions. Far as we know up to this point, deviants are Bad. Far as many hot takes I’ve seen, deviants are always Bad because robots don’t have feelings lol way to miss the point of the game jesus christ anyway He isn’t putting pressure on Connor because he’s a jackass - he’s putting pressure on Connor because he knows pressure makes androids deviate. He keeps asking trick questions - what do YOU want. What do YOU think. Time to think WHO you are.

The Kamski Test

On the objective surface, it simply looks like Kamski is here running the Kamski test for his own pride - has he created a machine capable of sparing another machine? Dumb test, you could just program that in, couldn’t you? Yes and no. You could program a machine to never shoot a human or another machine - easily. And you can program a machine to prioritize solving a case, to aid the police. Empathy and critical thought are not easy things. A lot of humans would fail this test. Put a gun in someone’s hand and tell them they can shoot another human and solve all their problems, and they would do it. They fucking do it every day, over lesser things. But that’s not the real purpose of the Kamski test, is it? He could easily have programmed this in for a carnival trick, like he programmed writer androids, fortuneteller androids, medic androids, and everything else. The test isn’t “can Connor shoot Chloe or does he see her as alive?” The test is, “Can Connor put Chloe’s ‘life’ above his programming and specific instructions?” The test is, can Connor’s algorithms decide Chloe’s ‘life’ is more important than his own? Kamski knows it - Connor knows it - we know it. If Connor fails his missions, if Connor behaves too much like a human, he will be deactivated and repurposed. He’s constantly threatened by Amanda with “deviants are bad and must be destroyed.” He knows he needs to be a Good Robot and obey. Connor’s choice isn’t “Spare Chloe or kill Chloe.” His choice is “prioritize the life of another being over his own.”

Connor Deviates

boy u got issues that i can’t help with, godspeed you glorious idiot

But what if... he doesn’t

Let’s check this path out for a moment.

He’s quite... meh. He’s bored. He’s indifferent. He loses the little spark in his voice that little peppy jackass act. The rest of this encounter becomes just another boring PR stunt where Elijah Kamski acts nicely and answers questions by giving no fucking answers at all.

a ViRuS

Mandatory Covid19 joke We find out deviancy is probably a virus that spreads from one android to the other. You know, very useful information we’ve never found out by ourselves. Except we also know that’s wrong, don’t we? Markus spreads deviancy that way - but what about the first deviants? Can we backtrack to a patient zero? Not really. Many androids just deviated by themselves. Sure, they could’ve interacted with a deviant at some point I suppose, assuming...

rA9

Ask him about rA9, and Kamski will say it’s just the first android that deviated. But that’s just a lie, isn’t it? It can’t be the first android that deviated because most people and most androids believe rA9 is Markus - and we know Markus wasn’t the first to deviate. He was just the one to take on a leader role. And Kamski knows of this - planned for this. He gave Markus to Carl Manfred, and he knew Carl Manfred was a damn hippie talking about revolutions and better worlds and must be filling Markus’ head with ideas of being more than he is. It was calculated. So, either rA9 really is just a random religious thing androids rallied behind out of the blue, or Kamski is just lying. He probably is. He’s offering useless what ifs in answer to this question. Maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s your mom and we need better jokes in 2020.

And speaking of just lies, let’s be honest. Do you really think someone would be as dumb as to admit they started AI revolution, in front of cops? That’s why Kamski keeps playing the idiot, don’t forget. A lot of people seem to be taking his cluelessness at face value, as if they’ve never lied in person. Kamski is openly dodging other questions, and offering half lies half truths here. That’s what I’m saying. But even assuming Kamski doesn’t know about deviancy or rA9, for real, what about

Jericho

When asked about Jericho, Kamski answers. He knows what Jericho is - the place where all deviants go. He has its location, conveniently.

Wait, Chloe?

Interesting how the pool Chloes know they shouldn’t be peeping at the talk and we get shots of them hastily going back to their scripted chatting nonsense and trying to return to neutral expressions when “caught peeping” by the camera. More interesting yet, whenever Hank or Connor are directly looking at any Chloe, they’re acting very stiff and robotic. Which... every deviant does. Including Connor. Especially Connor.

Speaking of

Even with Connor failing his test, Kamski insists. Insists to remind him he still has a choice. Insists to remind him of his escape clause (useless on this path but Kamski reminding him is there, and we’re talking about Kamski) It’s almost as if...

Elijah Kamski wants Connor to deviate. Like, wants.

One of the most powerful moments in the game as far as I’m concerned. And not because Connor gets told by his creator that he’s a deviant. Not because we’re told by his creator that he’s a deviant. Not because Hank’s wheels start moving. Because for that little exchange there, Connor shows genuine emotions. Connor’s LED is red. We’ve never seen a red LED Connor up to this point. iirc we don’t even after, I think the only other time is when the security guard android pulls his heart out. Getting shot leaves him on yellow. Dying leaves him on yellow. Processing complex things in 10 milliseconds leaves him on yellow if we’re that lucky, he’s usually on blue and about as unimpressed as y’all reading this essay. Remember how I said the test is between his life and Chloe’s? There’s no dramatic wall here. There’s no direct programming here to guide him along or that he needs to explicitly go against, like when he has to shoot Markus. This is a choice he had to make, by himself, entirely by himself, outside of bounds of his normal programming, using his own intelligence. He has empathy, and intelligence. He is alive.

fAsCiNaTiNg~

There is another thing that happens if Connor deviates, in that little exchange there, Elijah Kamski is no longer that glib, effeminate, Disney villain. For a brief moment, Elijah Kamski is back to being that nerd we’ve seen in the 2028 video. That nerd that is so hyped about what androids can become. He’s showing genuine joy. Genuine fascination. For a brief 30 seconds, he is no longer playing games. This is missing on the machine path altogether. Where he’s left indifferent there, he’s genuinely excited here, genuinely fAsCiNaTeD.

Almost as if he’s happy, proud, that Connor could do it. Like watching your child take their first steps or say their first word.

This isn’t JUST an android. This isn’t JUST another deviant. This is Cyberlife’s puppet. This android was specifically created never to deviate. And he still did. We, of course, as fine purveyors of fiction, saw it coming, but seeing it from Kamski’s perspective - it really is something he’s taken aback by. An android designed to HUNT other androids is going against his very tight programming. Of course, the both know it’s not over, but it’s a start. Indeed, like watching a child take their first step, there’s so many steps left, and there’s still the revolution.

We never see Kamski again in the game, unless we get to the

Failed Revolution

This is a Kamski we’ve yet to see. Not the hyped nerd in the android factory. Not the glib motherfucker dodging police questions. This is an annoyed man. A vindictive man. Sitting cross-legged in a chair. He’s that fucking villain we were always meant to see, isn’t he? Here, scheming, with his long face and Adidas tracksuit. But what’s he scheming against?

“Wait, doesn’t this invalidate your whole fucking essay?” Nope. Remember what I said about us being shown that Kamski was not born a glib liar and manipulator? That he learned that PR smile and smug way of speech? That he learned to be a Disney villain? Do you really think he would just tell the press - the cops - that yes, he has totally planned for the android revolution?

Of course he wouldn’t. But looking under the surface - he does not return to Cyberlife when the deviancy is in full crisis. If he truly believed he should be there to stop the “error”, he’d have been there, not pushing Connor to deviate instead. The “mistake” that he learned from is the FAILURE of the android revolution. He only ever returns to Cyberlife on this path where the androids fail to revolt. To “fix a mistake”.

There’s one last clue in the shit puzzle,

Connor can show empathy from day 1

Well we already know the “error” can be dormant a long time, no biggie, Connor just got Devid-38 from Daniel or something. Some other android. Maybe... Unless...

Connor-60

There’s one combination at the Cyberlife tower. Converting the androids, and getting Connor shot by Connor-60, which leads to the androids still converting with Connor-60, the machine, watching it.

He reacts quite badly to failing, for a machine, doesn’t he? Almost as if...

Deviancy is preprogrammed. And probably so is Jericho.

Remember Chloe had the key? Logically, why would she? Chloe cooould be a deviant that somehow ended up back with Kamski after she found out about Jericho, and told him about it too. Possible, but consider...: Kamski programmed Jericho location in multiple androids, knowing they would “spread it like a virus”. There was a little speech I’ll never find in a playthrough online, but in which it’s implied some androids just “knew” to head to Jericho “instinctively.” And one way to solve the puzzle in the police station is via instructions from Carlos Ortiz’s android. Who.... never left the fucking house. Plus, Kamski accounted for Cyberlife controlling Connor. I mean... He says as much. He doesn’t even hide it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Let’s look back at the 2028 interview

Getting a little nervous there aren’t we? We ain’t never seen him fiddle with his hands anywhere else than this one question. Not in this interview, not in any other scenes with him.

Son of a bitch has one hell of a PR smile doesn’t he

and if I haven’t convinced you with my essay they admitted in some Q/A that the Kamski ending was going to be more obviously him going back to restart the android revolution. But I found that only ages after I made the connections and fell in love with the fucker.

#dbh #detroit become human #elijah kamski #long post

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restlessmaknae · 3 years

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promises for pride - present days

Beware of promises. You never know what they might turn you into.

Also; the downfall of a prince and his way of becoming one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

♦ Characters: pride!Seokjin x humility!OC

♦ Genre: demon au, seven deadly sins au, pride au, historical, angst, drama

♦ Words: 13k

♦ Warning: mentions of blood, death and the usual historical stuff

♦ promises for pride: past days (first half) / present days (second half)

🙝 9 🙞

Present day

Kim Seokjin died on 14th April in 937, a year after Myungeun's death. After Hubaekje's annexation, the three kingdoms were finally united and he had been a king for more than a year and a half when he got shot during an unnecessary war between the new kingdom and Chang'an, the capital of Tang. He died on the spot as an arrow was shot through his heart. How ironic was his last thought before he fell to the ground and closed his eyes for one last time.

He didn't want to become a Sin; he was chosen to be one. He couldn't do anything though; he would suffer even more if he protested against the demons’ will. Nonetheless, since he was now the Pride himself, of course he wouldn't mess it up and face failure because that would make him feel unworthy of his title.

After all, Pride was said to be the most foremost and serious of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pride was what changed angels into devils. It was the only Sin that had a virtuous side. Everyone knew that a well-balanced self-esteem was more of a gift than a curse but when people took it too far or they had the potential to take it too far, that's when his job started. Although the start was a bit like walking on a thorny road for him, he eventually managed to enjoy his life as a Sin and truth to be told, it couldn't have been better.

He saw as people turned into narcissist assholes who picked fights with everyone, merciless bosses who took their employees' diligence for granted, pedantic parents who set high expectations for their kids because they couldn't be satisfied with less than perfect and youngsters with dangerously corrupt selfishness who bullied their classmates because they thought that they had every right to bully them.

Humans were so easily manipulated. Seokjin didn't really have a hard time messing with their thoughts and vision. If whispering into their ears and living with them like a second voice weren’t sufficient enough, he would use mirrors as his ultimate weapon. He could make everyone believe that they were perfect, they were beautiful or handsome, they were loved and he could also make them see unrealistic (but undoubtedly seducing) alternatives.

Let's say that there was a girl with braces at the age of 13, feeling totally worthless. She convinced herself that she was ugly and fat and no one would love her thanks to the naughty comments that she got by her classmates. Yet, when Seokjin showed up, he made sure that she felt the opposite. She was special because she had braces and this way she would be even more beautiful. Therefore she's better than all her bullies. She can bully them now that she knows that she's better than them.

Note that Seokjin used tools to manipulate them but it was the girl that let him take over her thoughts and behaviour. He showed how she could change her life and instead of using his words only for self-comfort, she got carried away and totally turned the tables. If the human wasn't strong enough to say no to him, it was a piece of cake to play with their feelings and ruin their lives.

It would be an understatement to say that he was glad to play his role; he lived to be Pride. Just like his name suggests, he was more than happy to take everyone with him on an evil ride and show what happens at the end of the road; when you start to believe in yourself. Of course, with Seokjin's assistance, people believed in themselves too much but humans couldn't stop, they were just as obsessed with Pride as with food, money, appearance or achievements. It wasn't difficult to use them as his toys.

Luckily, Seokjin himself stayed as his 19-year-old self since he was only 19 years old when he died and Sins didn't age with time. If such a system hadn't existed, he would have been almost 1100 years old by now. He couldn't mind his young age at all because he knew that he wasn't a child anymore and none of the Sins looked at him as someone reckless or childish. They were perfectly aware of his passion for his Sin and they didn't look down on him. Not like they would have the right to do it.

After all, he was the most serious Sin. The first Pride was the one who turned Lucifer into Satan. Seokjin just made sure to get the demons’ hopes up. He motioned the French to start the revolution in 1789, he fuelled the communist policies of Mao Zedong which resulted in the Great Chinese Famine, he was the one who whispered into Stalin's ears to force the starvation genocide against the Ukraine which we commonly call by the name of Holodomor and he was there when the two world wars happened and even after when Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Of course, he was there every single time. He didn't fail his mission. He was Pride and pride was the number one reason why the most terrible events of human history took place.

There were only two tiny things that bothered him throughout those long years. One was that he still remembered all of his memories from his human life. He had heard that there was a Sin that had only blurry memories and couldn't really solve the puzzle of his life but he remembered it all. And he pitied himself, he pitied how weak, fragile and naive he used to be. He pitied how he had hoped that his brothers would change but they never did. He pitied how he couldn't overcome his anxiety and step on the throne earlier.

Besides pity, he didn't regret anything. Not even that one last war between Goryeo and Chang'na. Not even the annexing of Hubaekje and Silla. He was proud of what he had done and he was sure that if his father still lived, he would say that he was proud, too. Looking back now, he didn't even know why Myungeun had meant so much to him. Unfortunately, she couldn't see the big picture − that what he had done was for a greater purpose, it was for a stronger and bigger Goryeo. He re-wrote history yet she couldn't see it. He always felt a kind of hollowness when he thought of her but it was nothing compared to that devastating pain that he had experienced when he held her dead body in the middle of the battlefield.

The other thing that bothered him was the lack of company. He really didn't need a woman in his life to make him feel complete but he could use some company once in a while. All Sins were preoccupied with their own duties, they didn't have time to fool around and throw parties. (Maybe except Lust who literally ran a nightclub, so if we take that into consideration, he was always partying.) He enjoyed that he could dye his hair in whatever colour he wanted (he opted for cotton candy pink at that time) and try on whatever clothes he laid his eyes on, eat whatever food he wanted but it got boring after a while.

To spend his spare time, he liked to mess with some demons that were inferior to him. One of them was Lee Jaehwan who was actually a nice guy but he was such a blabbermouth, he always talked about gossips that didn't interest him. Not to mention that he couldn’t waste his precious time on nasty gossip. It would hurt his pride.

Yet, that day he could say something interesting that piqued the Sin’s curiosity.

"I have some news for you," Jaehwan bowed with respect as he approached Seokjin but the demon merely shrugged it off. Jaehwan was known to be an undercover demon who usually hung out with angels or the Virtues themselves because he really had the face of an angel and no one would suspect that he was actually a demon.

"I don't have lots of time now, so keep it to yourself until I get back," he patted Jaehwan's shoulder as he tried to pass by him but the other demon's words caught him off-guard. He didn't expect what kind of news he would really have.

"Your opposite Virtue, the pretty Humility is actually looking for you."

Frankly, he didn't imagine such news. Why on Earth was Humility looking for him? She was too good to even consider hurting him despite the fact that she could easily destroy him with a single touch of her hand. Okay, maybe not a single one but if an entirely selfless soul like the Virtue herself − or a human with the same abilities − touched him for a long time, it would feel like his whole body was on fire. It would destroy him.

However, due to the fact that Humility was a Virtue, killing a Sin would probably never even cross her mind, so why would she look for him?

Now, it was time to interrogate Jaehwan.

🙝 10 🙞

“What do you mean by looking for me?” Seokjin raised his eyebrows in question, apparently unable to process what he had just heard. The news was nonsense. Why on Earth (or in Hell) Humility would be searching for him? That made no sense.

“I don’t actually know,” the other demon shrugged. His features were manly and sharp and even though Pride was so much older than him, Jaehwan was actually older than him in human age, so it was a peculiar sight when they were talking and Jaehwan acted like a scaredy-cat besides the Sin.

Seokjin didn’t care about the age gap between him and other demons as he always emphasised that tiny little fact that he would at least stay young forever. By the way, he knew well that everyone envied his gorgeous face and well-built body. He was literally fine as Hell. He knew he looked astonishingly handsome, even some cheap female demons were chasing after him yet he ignored them every single time they tried to hit on him. Love wasn’t a definition for him, plus he didn’t want to waste his precious time on such pitiful things like romance. Only humans and weak-hearted demons did that but he wasn’t one of them.

“I’ve just passed by an angel who said that Humility was on edge lately because she couldn’t find someone whom she wanted to. Later, I heard that she was looking for you but God knows why?” he pouted in a deadpan manner, making Seokjin more than angry with his flat response.

Pride took a step closer to the taller guy and grabbed the collar of his shirt. Jaehwan’s eyes widened in fear, not to mention his cheeks that were almost on fire. Even his ears turned red when the Sin’s voice rose higher.

“You better snoop on her because I won’t believe you until you tell me why she’s after me,” he gritted his teeth, shaking his head in disbelief. Did that lower-class demon really dare to assume that he was interested in such gossip? Did he think that he had time for this?

He was a busy man, he was a Sin after all and nothing could indicate his excellence better than the fact that he had been a Sin for more than a thousand years. That was a huge accomplishment; neither of the previous Prides was as successful as him. One didn’t do his job properly and started behaving like a good person, so he was fired. One was distracted by the issues of his own descendants, so he held the record for the shortest period as a Sin while another one fell in love with a human and that particular human was so pure and selfless that her touch killed him.

Oh yes, if he forgot to mention, there was only one thing that could make him weak or even destroy him. That was the touch of an entirely selfless soul. Of course, it could only happen if the soul was absolutely and entirely selfless but it was just as rare as the times when Jin didn’t look good.

However, even if he was his demon self, there was still some risk that he could get hurt. If he happened to get in physical touch with any of the Virtues, he could seriously get hurt or even die if they touched him constantly for several minutes. The touch was almost like playing with fire; he literally felt like he got burnt when their arms brushed with his. He knew that by experience because when he started as a Sin he was so reckless that he wouldn’t believe in this whole “touch of an entirely selfless soul” garbage and looked for a Virtue on purpose to touch her. He still got the scar on his palm that he had obtained that day.

“O-of course, I’ll do that,” Jaehwan stuttered nervously and gulped. He tried to look away because he felt like the ground would consume him if their gazes met. That’s how mighty Seokjin’s look was.

“Good,” Pride boasted a satisfied grin and let him go. “Now, go! I don’t want to see you again until you find out why Humility is looking for me. Got it?” his voice resonated like it was the sound of the thunder, small wonder why the low-class demon shivered in fear. He looked like he could pass out in any minute but that was exactly the kind of reaction Seokjin wanted to get.

In the blink of an eye, Jaehwan nodded his head vigorously and disappeared into thin air. Pride was aiming for such a cowardly response, yet he was still quite proud of his confident confrontation. He could recall the times when he was only a weak, naïve little kid whom everyone liked to bully. He pitied that side of him so bad. His human self was one that he wished to forget. He hated how small and scared he was. How pathetic.

He was a coward and Myungeun was one to blame for it. If it wouldn’t be for his father’s last wish, he wouldn’t have overcome his pitifulness. Believing her promises was a mistake. Falling in love with her was a mistake. She caused more harm than good. She couldn’t see that he only wanted to unite the kingdoms and create something stronger than Silla, Hubaekje and Goryeo by themselves. If she had given in, he wouldn’t have to take over Hubaekje using violence and shedding blood. It was all her fault.

At least, that’s what he said to himself. That’s how he tried to suppress his guilt and human emotions. However, as a Sin, it was inevitable that he thought differently of his human life. Becoming one of those high-class demons required a lot of personal traits that even criminals didn’t possess. Sins had to make something awful to become one. Kim Seokjin killed thousands of innocent people just to nourish his pride and unite the three kingdoms. He even killed Myungeun and her family, the royal family of Hubaekje. One by one. Without fear. Without guilt. Without humility. The Sin was already working hard in him and took over his life just like a drug would make someone addicted. He was addicted to Pride, he couldn’t say no to the evil and whenever he couldn’t feel it within him, he felt lost, he felt as if his life didn’t have a purpose. Even his death was connected to that certain Sin of his; if he hadn’t been so eager to take over Chang'an, he wouldn’t have died.

Yet, he couldn’t mind how his life turned out in the end. That last part of his life was what made him proud. Sadly, that was all he found important. Everything before that seemed unnecessary, childish and humiliating.

No wonder why he made a great Sin; he wasn’t even a human at heart, not anymore.

Not like he seemed human in the last part of his life…

🙝 11 🙞

Kim Seokjin's favourite pastime activity (or so he called that) was messing with the little humans' feelings. Not like it wasn't his full-time job but he didn't see it as a challenge. That so-called work for him was when he needed to convince a famous person − for instance, a politician − who also tried to manipulate others, so doing the same to someone who had already used the tricks of manipulation was both troublesome and time-consuming. He enjoyed every bit of it though.

So where was Pride actually? He was everywhere; in human form, in demon form, in the humans' dreams, in their head, with their reflection in the mirror... he was literally everywhere. Just like other Sins, he used teleportation to get to places but since it was limited, he made sure to have bases all around the world. He had one in Seoul, in Dubai, in Melbourne, in London, in Paris, in Los Angeles and in Egypt, too. They were all some sorts of luxurious places that someone as selfish as Pride himself would visit – casinos, 5 star hotels, banks, exhibition halls filled with paintings that each worth millions of dollars.

His bases weren’t necessarily a sign of arrogance or dignity; yet people turned those places into useless competitions and fierce battlefields. As self-confidence was within anyone, Pride only needed a triggering factor to start spreading through their veins like viruses. After that, there was no turning back.

Frankly, some people didn't have a lot to do with Pride. Of course, there were still such people around the world who were almost entirely selfless but it was rare. In this technologically-driven society where everyone wanted to compete in the worldwide race, he didn't really have a difficult job.

He was there when kids fought who's the smartest; when youngsters talked back to their relatives or to their superiors; he was there when high schoolers took the CSATs; he was there during any contests (especially beauty contests, it seemed that the competition was a matter of life and death for ladies) and he also assisted with break-ups. If love took an unfortunate (or a fortunate one for him) turn, Pride immediately crept its way into the lovers' hearts. There was a thin line between equality and superiority and most of the humans didn't notice when they reached the latter one.

Sometimes he had to be on the spot − either in human form or in demon form − to seduce the little humans, sometimes he didn't even have to be in their thoughts because people were naturally born to be selfish and prideful. As soon as they sinned, he felt as if there was some unseen force charging him up. He became powerful and his heart − that was actually not beating since the day he died − felt alive again. He felt invincible like he could take over the whole world.

This way, it came as no surprise that Sins were the second highest ranked demons in the underworld. There was just one above them − Lucifer. In the modern people's words, he was their boss. That didn't necessarily mean that he watched their every step because he liked to mind his own business, so until they didn't do anything unforgettable − in other words, anything good −, Lucifer didn't tease the Sins, nor did he reprimand them. He was there as an example, a role model and a living legend. Rumour has it that one of the previous Prides was the one who turned Lucifer into Satan and Pride himself was also the one who changed angels into devils. On the other hand, Humility’s job was to turn exceptionally generous and kind-hearted men into angels.

Like there was the North and South Pole, the Sun and the Moon, black and white, good and evil, Sins weren’t the only ones who looked after our world but their female opposites existed too − the Virtues. Both groups contributed to the balance of the world and despite the fact that Virtues occasionally seemed to be more powerful, most of the time Sins were the ones who ruled the world.

If we look at that way, ever since Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden apple, humans were meant to be sinners. It was easier for them to do something bad rather than something good. Therefore, Virtues had a prominently tough job nowadays as the world was becoming more and more evil.

Taking the current situation into consideration, maybe Humility wanted to seal a deal with Seokjin. Whereas, he was smarter than sealing a deal with a Virtue and so she should have been smarter, too. He never made a deal with good people. It wasn't his cup of tea – it might sound odd but for him, it equalled something disgusting and dirty. It was against his own rules. It was against his Pride.

Concerning that he hadn’t really met a Virtue in person (he encountered Patience once when he wanted to see if that “touch of an entirely selfless soul” worked in real life but that was all), let alone Humility, he couldn't even imagine what was waiting for him. Not to mention that he hadn’t even encountered that particular Virtue in all his life as a Sin. He didn’t really have time to sit down for an afternoon tea along a freshly-baked croissant at a Derbyshire tearoom with the lovely Humility.

So why now? Why was he so important all of the sudden? He didn’t remember that he had committed any crime – or to be precise, he didn’t do anything that could be considered good. Not until the day they finally met did he realise why she had been looking for him.

“Good to see you again, Jin,” a gentle female voice called from behind when he was currently in Paris, disguised in demon form, hiding behind a wall, stalking a young lad whom he wanted to manipulate to believe that he was better than the guy who had previously bullied him. He knew that nobody deserved to be bullied and that the kid should fight back. Nonetheless, Pride didn’t want the scene to just stop there. He wanted to take the young boy to the depth of his Sin.

Despite all his will and pride, Seokjin couldn’t help but turn around at the familiar yet long-forgotten nickname. He was sure that no one knew of this particular name, except one single person, therefore no one could call him by Jin, except…

“Myungeun?” the words unconsciously left his lips like a raindrop streaming down the window; slowly, reluctantly but steadily. If his heart had still beaten, he was sure that it would have skipped a beat.

Honestly, she looked just as breath-taking as always – if not more. The way her long, raven-black hair fell lusciously over her shoulders was mesmerizing. Her beautiful big doe eyes – those obsidian-black wonders – were shining with fondness just like in the good old days. She was so young and beautiful like a daydream on a summer midnight – it seemed that she could vanish in any minute, that’s why he was even afraid to touch her. Now that she was in front of him, he was left staring at her. All his words abandoned him along with his stupid Pride.

There was one single thing about her that he couldn’t process. It was the reason why his thoughts were tangled. Firstly, she was as young as when he had last seen her, so that could only mean one thing: she didn’t age with time. On top of that, there was something not human-like about her, something ethereal. He was sure that he was merely hallucinating things. He was more than 1000 years old and the appearance of such mental disorders increases by age, so it could happen in his case as well.

“Yes, it’s me, Jin,” she nodded as a gentle smile was forming on her rosy-coloured lips.” Although they know me better as Humility nowadays.”

Seokjin had never been more flabbergasted all his life.

🙝 12 🙞

Paris always had a special place in his heart. Everything about this city was so sinful, luxurious and one of a kind. Ever since the French Revolution took place, he was fond of coming back and spoiling people. French were said to be snobbish and rude. It was so much fun to watch them play his stupid little games.

Conversely, seeing someone as pure as Myungeun in that smoke-filled alley with horrendous and disgraceful graffiti painting the walls around them was remarkably odd. She seemed out of place. On the other hand, Humility didn’t find the sight peculiar − to see him in Paris. It was one of his favourite cities, the rumours said. Though she didn’t like to believe all those nasty and outrageous rumours because she didn’t judge anyone based on the gossips but now she understood why they claimed that Paris suited the one and only Pride well.

He looked like he was born to be French; although his features were of a typical Korean descendant, his sense of fashion and his cotton candy pink hair was anything but ordinary. Contrary to his young (human) age, he wore a properly fitted and ironed white shirt, a black suit, black cotton trousers with beige belt and elegant leather shoes. His pink hair was neatly parted and his neck was decorated with an oh so popular choker. He looked chic and stylish. He looked prominently spectacular, even in his demon form.

“Why were you looking for me?” Seokjin inquired nonchalantly as he couldn’t suppress a smug smile, seeing that the Virtue was eyeing him top to bottom. When she heard his question, she averted her eyes back to his face and that made him feel all sorts of inexplicable emotions.

“I wanted to see for myself if you are really the Seokjin that I used to know.”

“Well, I am as you can see,” he flung his arms in the air, a little taken aback by the fact that she wanted only this much.

He was Pride after all. He sought after an answer like I wanted to see the Sin that is over a 1000 years old and still ruining lives or I wish I sealed a deal with Pride because I can’t keep up with all these sinful people. Compared to his expectations, her answer was too dull. Too mundane.

“Well, if you only wanted to know this much… Pardon me but I have better things to do,” he cleared his throat in an attempt to turn back to that young lad but she insisted on prying into his life even more.

“Do you remember me? Your past?” her voice stopped him dead in his tracks. He was aware that not all the Sins knew of their human lives, let alone the people who they had encountered while they were still living. Luckily (or not), he was one of those who did. That didn’t matter a single bit. At least not for him.

“I remember everything but I wouldn’t regret anything,” he puffed his chest out in pride, taking in her sight. She sure changed; she looked less naïve and childish than the last time he had seen her but she still had that unfathomable aura to her. She looked pretty like the cherry trees during spring with her pure white dress that was so long that it covered her legs but she was holy like a real angel. After all, she was one of them. As Sins were high-class demons, Virtues were high-class angels. Just the little humans didn’t know anything about the world they lived in.

“Not even killing thousands of innocent people? Parents, grandparents, children, relatives, friends and lovers?” Humility asked with a hurtful expression.

“No, not even that,” he shook his head fervently and flashed an evil grin. “That was the best part.”

“It seems that it’s true what they say,” the Virtue murmured quietly but Seokjin could still hear her words. His hearing was exceptionally good.

“They say what?” he furrowed his eyebrows in question. Demons said a lot about him; like he was the most handsome Sin out of all (he was worldwide handsome, that was a fact) and that he was the original one and the other Sins showed up only after his appearance. He couldn’t argue with any of them, their compliments pushed his initially high self-esteem even higher.

“That being a Sin makes you think differently of your past,” the Virtue mused on the fact, her face slowly dissolving into a somewhat dishonest flinch.

“I don’t think differently of my past. You are the one who couldn’t accept the confident side of me, even when we were still humans,” Pride pointed out without shame and the expression on Humility’s face could tell hundreds of tales at once; she was undeniably hurt by his words but she was more like disappointed. Baffled.

“Pride started to consume you in front of my eyes and even though I tried to stop you, you couldn’t be stopped. Nor did my promises,” she shook her head agitatedly, looking down at her intertwined hands.

If he had been a human, he would have hugged her to prove that she was wrong but he wasn’t a human anymore. All he could do was to counter-attack her in a not-so-gentle manner. He wasn’t a Sin for nothing. He wasn’t innocent, nor kind anymore. He wasn’t good at all. He was the epitome of evil. The definition of Sin.

“You and your stupid promises!” he huffed is disbelief. How dare she bring up her promises, for crying out loud. “If it hadn’t been for those promises, I wouldn’t have become a Sin.”

“You were the one who broke them, not me!” Myungeun spoke up, her voice shaking a bit as the tension in the air was rising.

“You were the one who set high expectations for me that I couldn’t reach! It’s not my fault that I made mistakes but it’s yours that you still believed that I was a good person! I was never a good one and you should have seen it!” he spluttered the words as his voice rose higher and higher. The alley resonated his furious response but concerning that he was in demon form, humans couldn’t hear any of it.

But Myungeun could and it would have been a lie to say that she was ready for such an abusive confession. Judged by the sudden paleness on her face, she had probably never considered that he felt guilty for breaking her promises and blamed her for believing that he was a good soul. He wasn’t an innocent child, not even in the beginning but she saw it otherwise.

“You were a good one until your father died,” she added quietly as her long fingers were toying with the rims of her dress.

“That’s not true. He didn’t spoil me. He was the one who opened my eyes and made me see that the world was harsh. I only wanted to make him proud,” he answered matter-of-factly, not knowing why it was so hard for her to understand. Humility was either blind or too generous to see that he was born to be a sinner. Not only was he born to be a sinner but he was also born to be a Sin.

“Make him proud by taking innocent lives?” she raised her eyebrows in question, another flinch making its way onto her face. “You never agreed with that kind of policy,” she reminded him but he was too carried away with him being a demon that he wouldn’t admit that she was right.

It was almost like the winter fog; he couldn’t touch it, it wasn’t made of any material that could be seen with his eyes but he always felt its presence. Its mysterious, dark and captivating presence. That was how living as a Sin was like. He knew deep down that his past wasn’t like how he had remembered. It was like telling someone a fib that even you couldn’t believe. Yet, he couldn’t really help. An unseen virus was already working in him that forced him to think and speak differently. Liar became his middle name.

“If people hadn’t been so stubborn, I would have used other methods,” he shrugged his shoulder like he wasn’t talking about killing off innocent people just because they didn’t want to let him take over their kingdom.

“I’ve heard that you killed my family, too,” Myungeun decided to look back at him at this exact moment, so Pride could easily catch sight of the pearl-like teardrops welling up at the corner of her eyes. If she was about to talk about his past, why would she even search for him? She knew what happened and she probably knew that he would be in denial. So did she want to test the waters or what?

“I did,” he admitted shamelessly.

“Did you enjoy it?” she wanted to know between soundless sobs. He couldn’t help but snicker at her question. Was she playing on the emotional side now? Oh, she was indeed cunning. More cunning than he had assumed that a Virtue would be.

However, as soon as he wanted to open his mouth to say something, his inner voice was of his faster’s and it told him the answer right away. No, I didn’t. Seokjin was flabbergasted at the sudden change in his own train of thoughts. It was one of those moments; when he could feel that something was odd. His human side came to surface and confused his demon side. They were always within him but most of the time it was his demon self that was superior.

Yet, there were those clicks like when you change the channel and until you turn into a new show, there’s this switch where you don’t really watch the previous but not even the following show. It was the same with him; he didn’t belong to any side in those moments.

Luckily, it took only a second or so to snap himself back to his senses. He decided to ignore her question and just ask her instead.

“Anyway, how did you find me?” he furrowed his eyebrows in question because it piqued his curiosity ever since they met that day. Sins couldn’t simply be found as they were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They were like the Moon during daytime; they were around them but humans couldn’t see them.

“A demon hunter owed me a favour after I assisted her with her tattoos that would protect her from all the Sins. So I asked her to find out where you are because I’ve been searching for you after I got to know that you might be that so-called King Seokjin who united the Later Three Kingdoms. Up until now, my search wasn’t fruitful,” she explained in detail but he still couldn’t understand her. In the end, he opted for the easiest option; he merely threw the question at her.

“Why did it matter that I was that so-called King Seokjin or not?”

“Because−“ she started bluntly but closed her mouth within a second. She was searching for the right words to say, even though she was so overwhelmed by her own feelings that she couldn’t imagine that words would be enough to describe how she felt. “I wanted to see you,” she nibbled her lower lip coyly and it would have been an adorable sight if he hadn’t been the most serious Sin and she hadn’t been a Virtue. Considering their current situation, it was almost ridiculous. At least, for Seokjin.

“You wanted to see me?” his eyes widened in amusement. He clearly didn’t care about the suppressed tears at the corner of her eyes or the devastated expression displaying on her heart-shaped face. “I know that everyone wants to see my handsome face but I don’t think it was worth the favour.”

“You know, I have more of my human side than you and for me, it was worth it,” she declared a bit blatantly compared to a Virtue but he didn’t care about such things. He couldn’t. He was the definition of evil, ignorance and self-indulgence.

“Did I meet your expectations?” he elevated an eyebrow in question while he was slowly donning a teasing grin.

“No,” she blurted out without vagueness. “You are just as evil as I had expected,” she acknowledged without blinking an eye.

“Ouch!” Seokjin placed a hand over his chest, acting like her words bite into him. The truth couldn’t have been further from that. “Was that supposed to make me feel bad? Guilty perhaps?” he clicked his tongue, challengingly taking one step closer to her. Despite his assumption, she didn’t even budge.

“Do you remember what it’s like to feel anything besides pride? To adore the sunset? To smell the fragrance of flowers? To watch kids chasing each other on a playground? To read a poem for your own entertainment? Do you even remember what it’s like to feel?” she was thinking out loud, demanding one answer after another. Her voice cracked a little at the end, making it obvious that she was scared to voice out her own concerns.

Her rambling somehow touched him. Not in a really emotional way but he didn’t feel as neutral as before. While she seemed terrified to get her answers, he was afraid that his bewilderment was obvious. So he had to make sure that Humility didn’t see how much he weakened at her words.

“I feel, just not as you do,” he concluded dryly and without warning, he evaporated. He used his teleportation skills to get to his favourite casino in Dubai and to forget about that conversation with Myungeun.

Leaving without a proper goodbye was a habit of theirs and not even time could break it.

🙝 13 🙞

Pride was supposed to carry on with his usual life.

He was supposed to spoil people, whisper sinful things into humans' ears, mess with their childish feelings, let them bring each other down (and actually motion them to do so), steal their dreams and take away their hope. He was supposed to show up here and there and grasp everyone no matter their age, status, gender or their passion. He was within everyone since every single human being was selfish in one way or another. They were born to be selfish. From the moment they opened their eyes for the first time, it was inevitable that they gave in to Pride. After all, it was a part of them, it was just as essential for their everyday life as their own heart − they couldn't get rid of it, they were born with it, they were living with it, they were breathing with it. It was one of their multiple sides, it was the darker, the evil side. The unfortunate circumstances that could trigger the sinful behaviour were just oil to the fire.

Yet, there was something that he couldn't get over and it interfered with his daily life as the most serious Sins. It was what Humility had said to him. Do you even remember what it’s like to feel?

Did he? His sudden, wrathful answer must have been a mumbled of course. Of course, he felt emotions. He was full of pride. His feelings were chained to him and his nature. His demon nature, to be exact. Pride was like a prisoner that was kept in a cage. He could have ran away from his fate but there was no use. It would get back to him sooner or later and it would drive him totally crazy despite all his will. He knew how to feel. That was all he was doing every single day, in every single minute and second.

He felt the selfish desire of humans, their hunger for fame, success and love. Their arrogance and pettiness which made them do all sorts of crazy and unacceptable things. They wanted to take over the world, be greater than God himself and compete for the first place. Their arrogance was so disgusting in his eyes. They couldn't even bring up their own kids, how did they believe that they would be worthy of leading others? How? That was Seokjin's biggest question and he didn't seem to find an answer, not even after living for more than 1100 years as a Sin.

To make things clear, Pride wasn't fond of the idea that God existed. He didn't believe such nonsense until he saw that so-called creature of the world with his own eyes. After all, if God existed, why wouldn't he have a say in the matters of the world? Why wouldn't he stop the Sins as they were gathering more and more slaves as time went by?

He felt. Really, he felt lots of things. Just not the ones that Myungeun had mentioned and it bothered him as Hell. He couldn't really know what was going on with him, he felt as if he was about to burst. He felt as his throat was stuffed with little feathers that made it impossible for him to breathe properly. He was a dying whale that wanted to grasp for some air but he couldn't and the lack of oxygen suffocated him. He was underwater, drowning in confusion accompanied by all those bittersweet memories that came back thanks to her words. Memories of him and Myungeun. Why did they seem lovely all of a sudden? Why didn't they seem wrong or merely disgusting? Why? Just why?

Of course, as professional as he was, he tried his best to keep his internal turmoil at bay. After all, no one had a guide for a Sin who began to have feelings other than arrogance and selfishness, right? So what could he possibly do to feel like he was still in control of his emotions?

That's right. Yelling at a lower-class demon. Sadly (or not), it was Jaehwan's lucky day. He happened to be the one who came to Pride's mind as soon as he got back from Tokyo, so he turned out to be the one at whom he relieved his stress.

"Did you find out why Humility was looking for me?" he narrowed his eyebrows as he was looking at the other demon.

They were at Seokjin's luxurious suite in Seoul, both in human form, since it was what he had asked for. Jaehwan apparently wasn't glad to hear that Pride wanted to talk to him but he had no choice. He had to be there for him because if he didn't, he would die. Not like he didn't have the possibility to die even when he met up with his superior but at least he tried.

Pride knew that he didn't look up the issue. He was also aware that Jaehwan had no idea that the said Virtue had already visited him and gave him the reason herself. On the other hand, he was a Sin. He had fun toying with others, seeing as their eyelashes fluttered, as they gulped nervously or mumbled like an anxious teenager, searching for the right words to say. Jaehwan was no exception.

"Actually, I couldn't find anything..." his voice trailed off at the end, his gaze darting around the room. Seokjin rolled his eyes in annoyance. Just as expected.

"You couldn't or you didn't even try?" Seokjin took a step closer to him, almost forcing him with his mere presence to look up. He knew the truth, of course he knew, he could easily read his mind and on top of everything, he knew Jaehwan since the day the other guy became a demon, so he didn't have a tough job. It was funny how a previous hitman was acting like a scared little kitten in front of a Sin.

"I tried to but−"

"Don't lie to me, Jaehwan!" he raised his voice and took another step. His face was only a few inches apart from his and he used Jaehwan’s cowardly behaviour as an excuse to slap him in the face. He didn't protest and Seokjin couldn't actually help but gloat at his victory. He found joy in others' pain. He sometimes wondered if such merciless behaviour was a must when someone became a Sin.

"I-I-I'm sorry, sir," he stuttered like a little kid who had been reprimanded by his parents.

"You can be sorry."

"That won't happen again. I promise," he put his hand over his heart and even looked up to prove that he was thinking his words seriously.

The word 'promise' left a bitter aftertaste in Pride’s mouth. The promises from his past came to his mind and he couldn't get away from all the emotions that accompanied the sudden flashbacks.

"Damn it, Jaehwan!" he exclaimed furiously, making the other slightly bounce in surprise. Others would think that he was used to Pride's outbursts but most of the time he was characteristically quiet like a businessman who was already prepared for the worst outcome. Right now, even Jaehwan seemed to throw his usual calmness out of the window.

"Why would you promise something that you know you can't keep?" Pride flung his arms in the air because he had to occupy his hands if he didn't want to punch him in the face again. Even though his hands itched for a second round, he knew how to play well. He wanted to threaten Jaehwan, not beat him up.

"I want to try to keep it," the lower-class demon made an attempt to clear the rising tension in the air but the Sin merely shrugged his promise off.

"Instead of your petty promises, you can help me find a way to destroy a Virtue," he offered matter-of-factly but it was more of a demand than an actual favour. Jaehwan's eyes immediately widened in fear but Seokjin didn't expect anything less. After all, one of the highest-ranked demons was in front of him, of course he would be bewildered to hear that a Sin was about to destroy a Virtue.

"D-do you want to destroy Humility?" he panted in short, his voice a bit forlorn. Seokjin could clearly sense his bafflement and worry. He could see the little drops of sweat sliding down his cheeks. He could feel his dismay.

"I have to. She keeps getting on my nerves," he shrugged nonchalantly as he wasn't talking about killing a Virtue but suggesting a movie night out. Initially, he didn't intend to take away Myungeun’s life but that was the only solution to solve his current problem. To get rid of all those infuriating feelings and disturbing flashbacks.

"But you know that you will also die if you kill her with your selfish touch," Jaehwan warned him as if he didn't keep it in mind for already a millennium. Just like the touch of an entirely selfless soul could kill Pride, the touch of an entirely selfish soul could also kill Humility. That's why he tried to avoid her as much as possible. His life was too vulnerable for him. He was proud of what he had committed through all those years. He didn’t want to throw it away, that’s why he wanted to find another way rather than taking his own life.

"Like I don't know," he rebuked Jaehwan with his typically menacing voice, his patience already wearing thin. "That's why we have to find another way. Are you in or not?" he questioned cunningly in order to test the waters. Not like the lower-class demon had a choice. He was just fooling around but he sure enjoyed every bit of his one-man show.

"I'm in," Jaehwan bobbed his head in submission. His answer wasn't the most convincing one but at least it was an answer.

The game was already on. And it was really the matter of life and death.

Or should he say the matter of after-life and definite death?

🙝 14 🙞

The task was harder than he had expected.

It seemed that he had the silliest weakness out of all the 7 Deadly Sins. For Lust and Gluttony, it was any item that was previously blessed by Chastity or Temperance – aka their opposite Virtues. For Wrath, it was any weapon containing or coated in daffodil oil. A hairpin which was rumoured to be Greed’s brother was said to be Sin's weakness while Envy wasn’t particularly fond of pigeons. Seokjin didn’t have any information regarding Sloth’s possible triggers but who knew? Anything could happen when it came to the underworld’s creatures.

Meanwhile, he was there with that sentimental “a touch of an entirely selfless soul” garbage that could have been a line out of a fairy tale. He had outright laughed at Lucifer when he first told him about his weakness. It was after he had been promoted and he was announced to be the next Pride. He was actually a mere lower-class demon for almost 5 years when the previous Pride died of love. He fell in love with a human which was actually not a written rule but anyone knew down there that if a demon – let alone a Sin! − fell in love with a human, they wouldn’t be able to act as viciously as they were supposed to, therefore they wouldn’t do their job properly, therefore they would be fired – in single words killed.

How pathetic. Seokjin was sure that he would never make that mistake. He was just as sure about it as he was of his good looks. He wasn’t a good-looking royal only when he was the king of Goryeo but he was still handsome after his death. Nobody could disagree with it and honestly nobody would. It was a fact, Pride knew that he was the handsomest demon of all times.

Anyway, where was he? Oh yes, before he immersed into his state-of-the-art features, he wanted to fume because he couldn’t find a way to get rid of Humility without killing himself. He visited some ancient demons who were said to be demons even before people started to track time. He asked Jaehwan to look into previous Sins and Virtues’ history to see if there was any similar case. He even searched for Lust who couldn’t care less about his childish plays until he didn’t bring him some girls. He did everything, looked everywhere but to no avail.

“God must exist after all. It’s certainly his way to protect his beloved Virtues,” he lamented to his reflection in the mirror, standing in the living room of his suite in Dubai.

The current problem piqued his curiosity and nestled into his mind. It was absolutely annoying. It wasn’t like a pitiful bug that he could just kill with a wave of his hand. It was the most tremendous obstacle that he had to deal with. He knew that he was the one who created this whole mess but he couldn’t stop. Not now.

The problem was that he couldn’t even sleep because flashbacks and nightmares were hunting him, forcing him to wake up and make sure that he was alive, he was still Pride and Humility with her killer touch was nowhere to be found. As gibberish as it sounds, he couldn’t do anything to avoid the memories coming back, not even with all his supernatural powers. Sleeping wasn’t something that he could control. After he became a demon, he still opted for sleeping although he wasn’t a human being and he didn’t have human needs. He merely liked the feeling after a long sleep and the fact that he was alone in the dark with his thoughts. He was selfish, wasn’t he? He needed time to himself.

That time was now a thing of the past as he even gave up on sleeping to make sure that the memories wouldn’t follow him when he closed his eyes and became one with the dreamworld. If there was anything that he feared these days, it was sleeping. The memories didn’t just attack him but slapped him in the face, vigorously just like a fighter would do. Not once, not twice but multiple times. He felt a lot of things while being Pride but he never felt pain. The sudden spike of pain that was rushing through him once the memory lane grabbed him was anything but enjoyable. It was terrifying. Despite the fact that he didn’t have a beating heart anymore, he felt as if his heart was being ripped out of his ribcage every single time. The misery was excruciating.

He didn’t let it affect his job though but it seemed that Lucifer somehow found out that he was acting oddly in the past few weeks. At least, that’s what he assumed when Jaehwan informed him that the highest-ranked demon wanted to see him. Of course, Lucifer could have just teleported right beside Seokjin but Lucifer was a busy man. If one didn’t want to go to him in person, he wouldn’t want to waste his precious time with their business. Period.

Seokjin had one option and that was visiting the demon above all who had his special office on top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It was actually invisible to the human eye, the little humans thought that it wasn’t possible to enter the highest floor. How blind they were to all things supernatural.

As soon as Seokjin knocked on the door, he heard an inpatient yes from inside, so he swiftly opened it and entered his office. He had been there multiple times before – usually for a meeting after a century or when Lucifer announced a new Sin – but it was decorated differently than last time. Black used to dominate on the walls but now it was red, to be precise crimson-red. The huge windows still offered a magnificent view of the busy city streets while the paintings on the walls represented the 7 Sins and the demons’ activities. The guy sure had a chic yet modest style.

People must have imagined Lucifer as someone significantly tall with well-built muscles, so that he can scare away the lower-class demons. They might have pictured him with the eyes of a devil or a laugh of a maniac. Pride knew that they sometimes portrayed him with horns and almost naked but the truth couldn’t have been further from their paintings. Lucifer didn’t even look that extraordinary in his nicely ironed white shirt and black coat. He was elegant but not scary. Not yet.

“I’ve heard that you wanted to see me,” Seokjin broke the silence to get Lucifer’s attention who was busy discussing something with his newly-promoted assistant. The rumour had it that his assistant was a guy named Jackson Wang who was a street fighter in his previous life and his speciality was martial arts. According to some lower-class resources, he was fearless and merciless. He never lost a battle until one of the gang’s heads had enough and hit him with a car. He died on the spot but became Lucifer’s right hand almost immediately.

The two shifted their attention to Seokjin who casually started eyeing the new assistant top to bottom. That Jackson guy emulated his action and they stared at each other for a couple more seconds until Lucifer finally spoke up.

“Oh yes, Pride,” his face suddenly lit up at the sight of his – let’s be honest – favourite Sin. Seokjin saw a hint of bafflement in the assistant’s eye, he could tell right away that Jackson had no idea who he was until their boss said so. Or he just didn’t want to believe that he was so gorgeous. Whatever the case might be, the admiring expression on the lower-class demon’s face undoubtedly boosted his confidence.

“It’s nice to see you again. How long has it been since we’ve last met? 120 years? Maybe 220 years?” Lucifer chuckled with his unique nasally voice as he stood up from his desk and shook hands with the Sin. Then, he offered him a seat and dismissed his assistant. Jackson bowed respectfully and casted a last glance at Pride before he evaporated. “Ah, time really flies,” Lucifer dropped a weary sigh as he took a seat at his desk and looked up at the demon in front of him.

The frightening part was that this expression was unfathomable. At first glance, it seemed so easy to read his mind. However, after a few more seconds, one had to admit that his eyes contained the horrors of centuries and his features were oddly ancient. He was a handsome young man around the age of 24 or so – note that he wasn’t more handsome than Seokjin – but his features were old. Amidst all those horrible flashes of the past, no one could tell what he was thinking or planning. He was a book without a guideline.

“Well, anyway,” Lucifer cleared his throat to regain his composure. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. “I wanted to see you because I’ve heard that you’ve been distracted lately by the lovely Humility,” he emphasised the name on purpose, glaring at the Sin who could have been surprised at his sudden attack but he was prepared for this kind of conversation.

“I’m not distracted. It’s just that I used to know her, she was my soon-to-be wife when I was still the king of Goryeo and we share some memories. But that’s all,” he claimed confidently. His voice wasn’t trailing off, his body wasn’t shaking and he didn’t want to avert his eyes elsewhere but Lucifer’s face. He tried his best to act as nonchalantly as possible.

“Hmm, interesting,” marvelled his boss with a dubious tone. Seokjin had nothing to hide, so even if Lucifer decided to look up their shared past, he would find the same. He wasn’t afraid, not even after his boss’ following sentence. “I’ve also heard that you are planning on killing her.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Seokjin nodded in agreement. He wasn’t surprised that news travelled fast in the underworld. After all, demons were blabbermouths just like humans. That was one of the rare similarities between the two species. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way that would ensure that I would also make it out alive. Is there a way to get rid of her without me getting killed?” he inquired as he leant forward. He may have been roughish but at least he didn’t have to hide his true nature in front of Lucifer. His despicable side was one of the reasons why the highest-ranked demon was fond of him.

Lucifer didn’t even flinch. It seemed that Pride wasn’t the only Sin who made an attempt to kill a Virtue or Lucifer could merely imagine that he was capable of something so outrageous.

“Well, not that I know of,” he shrugged in a deadpan manner and pondered for a thought. “If you are completely selfish when you touch her, you can kill her, yes. But if she’s also completely selfless, she can also kill you. The only thing that you can do is to make her sin, so that she won’t be entirely selfless anymore but otherwise, I don’t think you can succeed.”

“And that’s not so easy to make a Virtue sin,” Seokjin remarked disappointedly as he ran a hand through his pink hair. He was frustrated as Hell, small wonder why his boss could easily sense his annoyance. That dratted weakness.

“Exactly,” Lucifer clicked his tongue. He leaned back and waited for Pride’s response, challengingly raising his eyebrows. He was sure that it wasn’t enough for the Sin to merely accept the situation as he was already eager to take actions as soon as possible.

Small wonder the highest-ranked demon couldn’t suppress a complacent grin when Seokjin proved that he wouldn’t let the chance slip through his fingers. He was more adamant than that.

“I’ll find a way,” he stated doggedly.

“Well, it’s up to you but if you get killed and we don’t meet until then, I really enjoyed working with you!” Lucifer clapped his hands like he was saying goodbye for real. Pride knew that he was usually playful but he couldn’t laugh with him this time. His life was really on the line. “You were a pretty cocky guy and I liked your confidence. Well done, my friend!” he winked at him but the other demon rolled his eyes.

“Ah, not so soon! I’m not dead,” he reprimanded his boss, slightly offended by the sudden farewell. He wasn’t sure if he would make it out alive but he wanted to believe that there was a way for him to live, even after killing Humility.

“Not yet but you never know what the future might hold for you,” Lucifer admonished his inferior but he was dead curious to see what Pride might pull out of his sleeve.

He was his favourite Sin after all. His reputation was really no joke and killing a Virtue would definitely boost his self-confidence. Not like the most arrogant and assertive Sin needed it though.

🙝 15 🙞

Seokjin was Pride for a reason.

His life as a human – to be precise, the end of his life – proved to be enough for the title after the previous one had died. He was an expert at manipulating people, lurking them, convincing them to sin and playing with their feelings. It didn’t only involve individuals but families, friendships and lovers, too. That day was no exception.

He was in Prague with a couple who were arguing over some silly question that they could have easily solved if they hadn’t been so stubborn. It was because the guy had applied for a two-week internship in Australia and his application was accepted but he hadn’t told the girl. When he finally told her the truth, of course she freaked out. They had been together for more than 2 years, so it was understandable that the female was on edge upon hearing the news. That’s when Pride stepped in.

“Look, sweetheart!” he whispered into the girl’s ears, already feeling her confidence shaking at his manipulation. He wasn’t the type to call humans by nicknames but it was a way to get closer to them and start messing with their thoughts. “He didn’t tell you what he was up to, right? So why should you stand by him and support his decision? You deserve someone better. Someone who thinks highly of his girlfriend and doesn’t hide the truth from you. Someone who is better than him. Someone who takes care of you well and spends more time with you. You deserve better, don’t you?” he reasoned as he smiled cryptically. His eyes were twinkling with desire, hunger for submission. Although the waiting was getting on his nerves, that was the part that he enjoyed the most.

The girl nibbled her lips as she was musing. The expression on her face indicated that she was more likely to believe the Sin than to ignore his words. After all, pride was a pretty tricky thing. It was everyone’s greatest weakness.

“We’ve been together for 2 years! If I had been really that important to you, you would have told me,” the female bellowed as tears began to stream down her face. Seokjin found tremendous pleasure in her pathetic act. She was so pitiful when she couldn’t hold back her tears anymore. As he was a Sin, he was able to understand and speak every single language but words like this were the source of his entertainment, no matter the language.

Her boyfriend took a step closer to her and gently grabbed her wrist but she swiftly pushed herself out of his grasp. Pride prominently enjoyed what he was witnessing, he only wished to have a bag of popcorn and a bottle of Coke with him. The scene in front of him was exactly like watching a heart-breaking romance in the cinema.

The best part was about to come when a dazzling glow appeared beside them, forcing the demon to look away. Only when he felt the heat decreasing, did he actually avert his eyes back to the couple and the sudden visitor… who turned out to be Humility in a pure-white dress and an ever so kind smile.

He cursed quietly under his breath. They had never been in action together, small wonder why he was so dumbfounded to see her this time. How could she ruin his moment? How dared she show up when he was so into his little game? How and why?

Apart from the fact that Pride was undeniably wrathful, he also felt a bit uncomfortable. Memories of him and Myungeun started to bombard him and he couldn’t get rid of the sudden spike of insecurity that was rushing through him. He didn’t know how her mere presence could leave such an impact on him but he wasn’t fond of the feelings that she triggered. He wanted to shake her and grab her by the arm to shout at Humility for ruining his perfect moment – and his perfectly calm life – but the thought snapped him back to his senses. He couldn’t touch her. He could get hurt. He could get killed.

The Virtue sneaked a quick glance at him before turning to the man beside her.

“Why don’t you tell her why you’ve chosen this internship?” she suggested gently, her voice sickeningly sweet.

The guy hesitated a bit, so seeing his reluctance, Pride was prominently interested in his response. At first, it didn’t seem like he would take her advice but he still spoke up in the end much to Seokjin’s annoyance.

“Look, honey, I need to tell you something.”

“Don’t listen to him! He has already lied to you multiple times. Why would today be any different?” Pride clenched his jaw, his hands balled into fists. He couldn’t bear to be the loser, he wanted to win. Especially because Myungeun was his opponent. He wanted to win so badly.

“Just listen to him! How do you know that he won’t tell you the truth? Plus, it was the only time he didn’t tell you what was going on, you know that well,” Humility stated calmly, prodding the girl who was still struggling to decide between the Sin’s and the Virtue’s suggestion. Seokjin knew that he was telling fibs but who cared if he got what he wanted? Sins liked to play it dirty.

Before she could even muster a single word, the male suddenly confessed everything, taking both supernatural creatures by surprise.

“This internship is mandatory for me to get the job I’ve been thinking of. It has a pretty good salary, so that means that we could also move together without worrying about the bills if I got it for real. The only reason why I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure that I would get accepted,” the guy came to a halt to take a deep breath before he continued. “You know that I wouldn’t want to hurt you. You mean so much to me and this internship could benefit our future plans as well. If it weren’t for the job and its good salary, I wouldn’t even think of it. I love you so much, honey. Please, forgive me,” he pleaded frantically, his hands reaching out to the girl who was constantly sobbing silently. Tears were strolling down her cheeks, they were unstoppable like a river. The only thing that could soothe her nerves was the touch of her boyfriend, so she accepted his hand and let him hug her.

Seokjin let some profanities fly out of his mouth. He knew he lost; he was defeated by Humility and her ridiculously trivial methods. Of course, Sins used lies to manipulate humans but didn’t people like to believe in lies more than the truth? After all, they never knew who was honest or not, they could only trust themselves. This time, it seemed that it was the other way round.

“Why does this word mean so much to people?” Seokjin groaned at the sight of the hugging couple, unable to comprehend the ridiculous situation. He still couldn’t quite process the fact that he had just lost.

“Why?” Humility turned to him with a curious smile, her eyes forming little crescents. Seokjin felt like throwing up when the couple behind Humility started kissing each other like they didn’t know the definition of moderation.

“Wouldn’t you feel better if someone told you that they love you?” the Virtue queried and for the first time that day, Pride was actually thankful for her question. At least she distracted him. Not only with her question but also with her ethereal beauty, mesmerizing obsidian-black eyes, heart-shaped face, loving smile and those long lashes that painted semi circles under her eyes, adding to her pale palette.

“As a Sin, I don’t care about such things,” he shrugged as a pretentious frown was forming on his lips. Oh please, who needed silly I love yous when all he wanted was selfishness? Wrath, self-confidence, superiority and luxury. Love wasn’t a thing on his most wanted list. Not then, not ever.

“And what if I told you that I love you?” Myungeun whispered coyly, her voice barely audible.

She really glowed like a shooting star in the sky, even her eyes were twinkling. He couldn’t argue with her beauty and he would lie if he said that her presence didn’t make him feel all sorts of things. Like human things. He was a damn good liar after all and he kept it all to himself but he couldn’t deny that something was bubbling up inside him. He felt as if the past and the present suddenly collided and he could see all of their fragile memories and their present scene at the same time. The turmoil of emotions meant nothing but trouble.

“You wouldn’t lie to me,” Seokjin snarled at her, almost threatening her with his flickering eyes. Despite acting all cocky and invincible, he didn’t want to hear the word. He was a bit afraid what it would leave him with. Lust? Desire for forgiveness? Hate? Or maybe guilt? Oh no, thank you so much, he didn’t want any of those childish human feelings.

“I loved you and I still love you, Jin,” she confessed without a blink of an eye, struggling to keep her hands to herself. She reached out for a moment but let her hands drop instead when she realised that she couldn’t touch him. The pain in her eyes could tell more than anything; the black of her orbs never seemed so sorrowful before. “And you shouldn’t forget that Virtues can’t lie,” she reminded him with a brittle voice and evaporated right then and there, leaving the oh so mighty Pride looking like he was about to faint.

He felt as if the ground was about to crumble because she was damn right. Virtues couldn’t lie.

I loved you and I still love you, Jin.

How was that even possible? How could she love him after all these time, after all they had been through?

How could a Virtue fall in love with a Sin?

🙝 16 🙞

Living as a Sin never seemed so difficult before. Never in his 1100 years as Pride was as hard as the last few months thanks to that special someone who showed up like an unwanted visitor in the middle of a birthday party.

Seokjin had a hard time adjusting to the situation and his newly appeared feelings. He had no idea what was going on with him but the more he thought of Humility’s words, the less he could concentrate on his duty. Not only did he dread the night when he forced himself to stay awake but he began to dread the day, too. He was failing as a Sin and to make matters worse, more and more demon noticed his mistakes. Not like they initially liked him because it seemed that the whole underworld was against him but he couldn’t care less when he was the original and most serious Sin out of all. Demons were merely jealous of him and his success.

Anyway, the situation still infuriated him and he couldn’t do anything but to distract himself. So he began to question Humility’s words as he didn’t even believe in love in the first place. What was love anyway? Just a doomed connection made up by humans who wanted to find yet another way to destroy themselves and others. Considering that he had never been loved – even Myungeun turned against him in the end −, he had no idea what it was. He could see it every single day but he couldn’t feel it. He caught glimpses of kissing couples on the streets, loving gazes around the dinner table, failed attempts at holding each other’s hands and innocent quick pecks on the cheek. He could look at all those people and still couldn’t feel a thing.

What was so good about love? It would hurt you anyway. The moment your lover breaks up with you, the moment someone doesn’t even show interest, the moment they lie to you, humiliate you, make fun of you or use you for selfish purposes. They even hurt you when they die. You lose every single day but not only as a person, you also lose a piece of yourself. So what was so good about loss? He himself lost a lot of things during his 19 years as a human and he didn’t want more pain. He had suffered enough and Myungeun was only another source of pain. She made him believe that she would stay by him no matter what and she didn’t even consider helping him when he was about to unite the three kingdoms! Oh, Myungeun and her stupid promises… they were literally the death of him.

As Prince Seokjin, the only form of care that he knew of was punishment. He was always accused of crimes and lies, he was always bullied for the way he looked and he was humiliated just because he was born. He wasn’t born to receive love and he accepted it from a very early age. He even warned Myungeun not to get closer to him because he doesn’t deserve love, he was fated to be an outcast. He warned her not to take care of him because she would get hurt. It was her fault that she didn’t listen to him. Even though she thought – and Jin also believed in it for a long time – that she did good to him, she was the one who hurt him the most. He wanted to hate her for that but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t.

The thing that bothered him the most was that she claimed that she loved him, even before he became a Sin and until present day. He was perfectly aware of the fact that Virtues couldn’t lie, that’s why they were Virtues. Sins could casually use lies as a way to manipulate people but Virtues couldn’t. So how could she say that she loved him? How could she be so sure that he loved this arrogant, erratic, blatant, unattainable and thick-skinned man? How could she love a Sin?

Looking at their situation, Seokjin wasn’t the only one who couldn’t control his emotions. Though it couldn’t have been a problem for Myungeun since he didn’t hear anything from her after the day they had met in Prague. After all, was the fact that she loved a Sin was a sin itself? He highly doubted, it was merely peculiar. Love wasn’t a Sin, not even sex. Only sex without love was considered a Sin according to Lust and the rules of the underworld.

Not even Jaehwan wanted to ask what was bothering him, he almost looked like he was waiting for him to fail. There was a weird expression on his face which he couldn’t decipher. Nonetheless, Seokjin had bigger problems than Jaehwan’s ridiculous features, so he didn’t waste more time dwelling on such minor things.

It was the first time he was willing to find Humility without being told to do so, without dying to know why she was looking for him and without intending to kill her. He gave up on his initial plan as he realised that it was a mission impossible. He still wished to get rid of her but he had a different plan now.

Even without prying into her business, he had an idea where he could find her and when he found her daydreaming beside the Jeongbang Falls, sitting on a rock, enjoying as the chilly night wind blew through her hair, he wasn’t surprised at all. She was as sentimental as always.

“You are so predictable,” Pride cleared his throat to gain her attention but she didn’t even avert her eyes to the young man, she continued on staring at the ocean which was tinted greyish by the breath-taking moonlight.

It was already past 2 AM, the time when Humility usually stopped her activities and sat by the ocean for half an hour to recharge her batteries. It was rumoured that she had a special place where she let off some steam but demons weren’t interested in a Virtue’s favourite place, let alone Pride who always minded his business, he didn’t have time for gossip. Yet, he had a feeling that she might be beside the Jeongbang Falls as this was the place that she wanted to visit before she would die. She once shared it with the little Jin and considering that she never had the chance to fulfil her dream, the waterfall in Jeju was his first tip.

“But you are quite unpredictable,” she noted quietly as she peeped at the Sin, a gentle smile hiding in the corner of her rosy-coloured lips. Seokjin couldn’t believe how she stayed so tender after all this time, after all he had said to her but then he reminded himself that she was a Virtue after all. It was her job and unlike him, she was doing a pretty good job.

Pride shrugged his shoulders and casually sat down on a rock, not too close but not too far from Humility. A sudden jolt of tranquillity simmered through him as he let his eyes wander at the ocean. There was something oddly familiar about the whole situation. Myungeun was beside him, humming a child song to herself and looking at the waves crashing into the shore, washing over sand and smaller rocks. The scenery was new but the feeling was familiar. It reminded him of the times when they were beside the Palace’s lake or picking flowers in the garden. It represented the times of perfect serendipity, ethereal calmness and that so-called purity of youth. It was like finding a safe haven in a tangled mess.

The sudden nostalgic bitterness attacked his mind first, bombarding him with flashbacks. Then, it moved on to his heart, squeezing it with those human feelings that he hadn’t experienced in a millennium. He could have said that it scared him but he had already given in to all those emotions. There was no use; the disease was already spreading through his whole body and his whole being. A Sin lost to a Virtue and she didn’t even have an idea that she was slowly destroying him as a Sin and bringing his human self to surface.

“Why did you really want to see me?” Pride broke the pleasant silence that was covering them like a warm blanket on a cold winter night.

Poor girl didn’t think that he would question her out of the blue, therefore she couldn’t help but wince in surprise. Her cheeks were glowing in embarrassment, her ears turning red. For the second time already, she nibbled her lips. Seokjin didn’t even attempt to suppress his honest reaction this time. The thought that she hadn’t changed a bit raised his lips into a small smile.

“I missed you,” she drawled nervously.

“Why?” Seokjin raised his eyebrows, throwing caution to the wind. He knew that it would be the last time he saw her, so he didn’t want to beat around the bush. It was now or never.

“Because I died so quickly, I couldn’t even say what I wanted to say to you and the feeling left me with a pang of hollowness in my chest,” she admitted, her voice slightly shaking. Her gaze darted around the beach but never settled on Seokjin’s face. She wasn’t ready to face him but she wasn’t even sure that she would ever be.

The reunion took her by surprise and she had no idea what she should expect from the Sin. She saw him being frustrated, yelling at her, his eyes on fire like he was about to kill her on the spot. She saw him being disappointed, hands balled into fists, his whole body ready for a fight. She saw him being confused, unable to understand the feelings of humans, unable to feel the love between the girl and the boy in Prague. Nonetheless, she could feel the love of the couple and that’s why she knew that he wouldn’t be able to convince them. Their love was stronger than their self-love.

There were countless times when Humility couldn’t succeed because humans weren’t strong enough to say no to their selfish desires but she tried her best to persuade them to change. Sometimes it wasn’t enough but at least she tried.

Every Virtue knew that the world lost its balance and the demons started to take over the world but they couldn’t give up. They were chosen to be Virtues because their chastity, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, diligence, temperance or humility changed lives. She had definitely changed lives – including Seokjin’s − but so did the previous Pride and she couldn’t win in Jin’s case. That’s why she was so eager to become a Virtue; she wanted to win and save lives. She didn’t want to see humans transforming into something so unpredictable and evil as Seokjin did all those years ago. She lived almost 500 years as an angel when she finally had the chance to become a Virtue and she didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

“Why?” Seokjin exclaimed frantically, more furious than last time. The sudden change in his behaviour made her heart leap and she unconsciously looked for his eyes. His coal-black eyes were seriously dangerous and searing; they weren’t flames, they were bigger than that. They were hundreds of flames united in a huge, devastating one. “Why do you want to say a proper goodbye to me when you know I don’t deserve it? Why do you love me when you know I’m rotten as hell? Why do you do this to me? Why can’t you just live in your perfect Virtue world and leave me alone? Why do you have to make me feel guilty for spoiling those people?”

His scream echoed back from the stones, sounding like dreary pleadings in the chilly spring dawn. His words were fragile like a raindrop that could reach the ground anytime and become one with it. Their relationship was cursed from the beginning and the more he got closer to her, the more he was able to see it. They should have never met, thus they should have never fallen in love. It was a love written in the stars, written for tragedy, nothing else.

As a human, he was unable to change for her and save her from dying and as a Sin, he was unable to see why she turned against him and why she loved him after she had died in his arms. In both forms of his life, he reckoned that he merely wanted to protect her from himself yet he didn’t realise that all he wanted to do was to protect her from his love. Deep inside, he always had a feeling that he would hurt the people around him and he wanted to avoid the inevitable as much as possible.

So why was it so hard for her to see his struggle? Why couldn’t she realise that he wanted to save her from himself? From his love?

“I guess you already know that you can’t decide who you fall in love with, right?” Humility let out an aghast sigh, her words sending shivers down his spine.

He couldn’t hold himself back anymore, he couldn’t pacify his fast-paced thoughts and his human self that was about to take control of him. He knew what he was about to do, so he wasn’t scared. He swiftly reached out to Humility, grabbed her hand and held it to his heart, even though he knew that she couldn’t feel its beating. Yet, he could already feel the crazy burning in his veins. His body was on fire, his chest was squeezing painfully while the excruciating pain was slowly tearing him apart. As the pain escalated, his breathing became more and more ragged.

“What are you doing, Jin?” Humility’s eyes widened in both shock and fear. She certainly felt a tad bit of pain but it wasn’t like the one she had imagined. She wasn’t suffering as the Sin apparently did. “You are killing yourself!” she screamed frantically while she was trying to escape from his grasp but he was stronger than ever. He wouldn’t let go of her.

“Don’t you dare to let go of me!” he cried out helplessly, doubling over. The Virtue was gasping for air, she made countless attempts to yank her hand away from him but he was too adamant.

Why? And why didn’t she feel that unbearable pain that she should have? It was said that if an entirely selfish soul touches her for a long time, she would get hurt and she would feel like dying again. Nonetheless, she didn’t feel like the last time she was shot. Apart from a little aching, she was fine. So what was going on?

“I can’t let you die!”

“But you have to let me!” he sucked in a breath, his eyes tearing up. His face was now practically snuggled to her chest, still not causing any pain. He was relieved after all. His plan seemed to work, she was still safe. Let me die in your arms, he wanted to say but his mouth wouldn’t budge.

“Jin, don’t do this! Let go of me, please! I want to save you!” Myungeun shook him, still trying to peel himself off of her.

Tears began to well up in her eyes, spilling down her face and landing on Jin’s pale skin. One by one. They became little dots on the thick paper that was his handsome face. He never looked more fragile than that time as he was in her arms, his eyelashes shaking, his body trembling, his hands clinging onto her body and his eyes out of focus.

“Last time I couldn’t save you! Let me do it this time!” he pleaded in between coughs, his voice strangely weak. The oh so mighty Pride threw away his mask and she could see his bare self without that stupid masquerade. His soul was in front of her, bleeding out with each passing second. The fact that he didn’t want her to help stung her right at the heart.

“I-I can’t! Please, Jin, please…” she cried out in horror. Her vision became blurry due to the amount of tears that started to slide down her cheeks. She wanted to wipe them away but Pride still held onto her like she was his last string of hope. Maybe she was. But for what?

“Myungeun…” he rolled her name off his tongue in a surprisingly gentle way. She couldn’t help but weep more. No one had called her by her real name for hundreds of years. “Let me keep my promise this time,” he asked tenderly, coughing a bit more. She didn’t know which one of their promises he was currently talking about.

“What promise?”

“I don’t want to be a narcissist anymore. I want to save you,” he bawled in tears, his voice shaky and brittle. He coughed up blood, the spots painting his fancy white shirt crimson-red, just like on the days when he was killing off hundreds of innocent people as Goryeo’s king. The only difference was that this time it was his own blood.

“But how?” she managed a sentence out, her eyes full of remorse. If he died in her arms, she didn’t know how she would bear the sight of his dead body, let alone the memory that would hunt her.

“By killing myself,” he muttered, his voice barely a whisper. There was a trace of smile playing on his lips that made her heart ache even more. “You don’t have to take care of me anymore. You don’t have to think of me anymore,” he added and his words were like bullets sent through her heart. He mumbled something about love with his last breath but she couldn’t comprehend it. He closed his eyes sooner than she could have prepared herself and he was already gone. He broke into tiny little pieces like glass and the wind carried all of them far, far away.

She let out a heart-wrenching scream, a cry of a girl who lost her precious love for the second time. The first time, she couldn’t even say goodbye and no matter how evil he became, she still wanted to say to him what she couldn’t tell him before. On the other hand, she had the chance to confess to him only when they were already the creatures of the after-life who were supposed to carry on accompanying the humans’ lives. Little did she know that the long-awaited confession that she wanted to share with Seokjin hurt him so much that he started to experience human feelings again.

That day by the Jeongbang Falls was the second time when she couldn’t say the words to him because he was on the verge of dying. Seokjin already knew that she loved him but she still felt the need to bid a proper farewell, even though she couldn’t let go of him… she didn’t want to.

The pain Pride was going through wasn’t physical, it was the pain caused by heart-break. She didn’t feel such pain, not even when he shot an arrow through her heart and she was dying. That was another kind of pain; almost peaceful, slow yet constant like a lovely piano piece. This one was rather raw, full of emotions, fire and ashes, blood and tears. How could he do it for her? How could he know that she wouldn’t get hurt when he touches her?

Oh, how Myungeun truly wished that she had died with him like the first time! She wanted to be in his arms instead of holding Seokjin’s body. It was odd how history repeated itself in the opposite way. It must have been their fate. The fate of star-crossed lovers.

Humility looked at her hands with terror, already expecting burnt spots all over her body. Contrary to her expectations, all she could see was an ink tattoo with Pride’s name. Not until she saw the Sin’s name did it finally dawn on her why she wasn’t affected by his touch. She assumed that his human side took control of him, so he wasn’t completely selfish when he touched her and that’s why he couldn’t scar her. On the other hand, she was still entirely selfless and that’s why she could destroy his demon side. Unfortunately, his human side wasn’t strong enough to bear the transformation and that’s why he died.

Humility should have been happy because defeating a Sin was considered a success, yet all she felt in the following centuries was bitterness. Demons took advantage of the situation, especially Jaehwan who became the new Pride. Lucifer chose him personally since he knew the guy’s little secret, he knew that Jaehwan found a way to defeat Humility but because he was so selfish and sought after the title of Pride, he didn’t tell him and Seokjin already lost a bit of his demon abilities, so he couldn’t sense that he was lying. The only way Jin could have ended his pain was to get rid of his memories once and for all and that meant taking Lucifer’s place. If he killed Lucifer, he would immediately become the new one and his memories would be erased.

Kim Seokjin might not have been humble, light-hearted and innocent all his life but he wasn’t born to be Pride, he became one under the wrong circumstances. On the contrary, he chose to change his fate for the first time in his life and only he knew if it was really worth it. After a long time, he really felt like living, he was able to feel all those things Myungeun had mentioned before.

He realised on the verge of dying that he was loved. During his human life, during his demon life, whenever he was beside Myungeun, he was loved. He was just too blind to see it.

The more she thought about it, the more tears she shed. Even though she wasn’t the one who died that day, she felt like dying with him. A piece of her soul left her and accompanied Seokjin to God knows where. They would hold hands through the white light together. They would be together forever.

Just like they had promised each other all those years ago.

#bts #jin #bts scenarios #jin scenarios #seokjin scenarios #bts imagines #jin imagines #seokjin imagines #bts historical #jin historical #seokjin historical #bts demon au #jin demon au #seokjin demon au #my story #restlessmaknae

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yanderecandystore · 4 years

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I read ur A.I reader and I. lost my mind it was so good!! do you think you could do a similar thing with a robot/android reader who’s super naive and kind to those around them due to not knowing any better, but also coming off as a bit off-putting and forced to others?? any yandere is fine!

I'm so thankful that you like it! It's so weird to me as I never thought I would be writing a.i. characters, but it's fun!

Since you said any yandere, I was like, okay, let me use that online wheel thingy so it can decide for me, but I wasn't expecting it to fall on Tatsumi lol

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

"- So like, you can hack things??" - [Yandere! Kitsune x A.I.! Reader - Headcanons]:

Tatsumi is a kitsune running in plain sight, living his best immortal life by partying and stealing the energy out of humans.

Tatsumi manages to deal with his everyday responsibilities by hiding as a human who can easily blend in a crowd. Most of the people that are close to him are likely monsters like him, with only a few humans in between his friend group.

He doesn't like getting out of his "home" (shared home) much, only when he feels like he needs more energy. Or when he is bored out of his mind.

So you can imagine his surprise to see a walking talking robot just, walking around asking for directions!

My boy is a little too curious for his own benefit, it's not every day you see an a.i. walking around so casually!

But yeah, don't sit there waiting for the most intelligent conversation that you'll ever hear in your existence.

"- Yooooooo! Hey, how's it going? The name is Tatsumi."

"- Hi, my name is [Y/N], project 2.3, I'm doing great, how about you?"

"- So, how's the robot revolution going?"

"- I'm not a robot, I'm an android built by Bright Vision Corporation who just escaped the facility, and is now considered a fugitive project who is being hunted in the entire state."

"- A what?"

"- An android."

You chit chat a little bit and Tatsumi now understands that not only are you an android that has escaped, you're extremely gullible.

You've been all day asking strangers how to get to another state without having a multimillionaire corporation going after you. People were starting to get creeped out by you, or just ignore you thinking you were insane, as you don't have many physical signs of being an android except by the voice and eyes.

I guess destiny was merciful enough to put him in your path, because he knows the perfect place you could go to.

To someone that was locked in his room experiencing night horrors (even if it's daytime) seeing you is kinda like winning a lottery. This is going to be the most fun he had in years.

Not only can he tell you some of the things he experienced a long time ago when he was stealing energy from sex workers and making his best friend/rival get mad at him for stealing her energy source, he can show you all the human things you wouldn't know if you had stayed in the lab.

It's an absolute win for both of you!

Tatsumi knows his way through most technology, but mostly like someone that knows how to use a cellphone, not like someone that knows how machines work, so don't expect him to understand many of the things that come out of your mouth, please help him understand.

"- Tatsumi, I'm overheating."

"- What's that? It's like a form of heat or something?"

"- What is "heat"?"

"- …. So, do you have Google installed, or am I supposed to just tell you?"

I hope you were built with the ability to eat ice cream, cause that's how he thinks the problem could be solved.

It doesn't seem like you mind it at all, both of you are having fun even if one doesn't understand the other all that well.

He noticed that you're really kind to everyone you met, yet you didn't even know those people, maybe you were built this way, or maybe you were just that naive.

He thought that, although being a little concerning, kinda cute!

You didn't really question his stories as much as you probably should, after all, he wasn't human, he was a kitsune telling you to your face what he was.

Yet, you seemed to just go with it. No questions asked.

But to be honest, he also isn't questioning the situation as he should be.

He is helping an android (probably unfinished) literally cross to the other state to be living with one of his friends (they're kinda in debt

with him, so this is probably the best way he could use his extra favor). He guarantees you that you'll meet some really cool people, just like him and just like you.

Again, he knows some monster hiding in plain sight. They'll love you just as much as he already loves you.

I love to imagine you both having the craziest day, automatically deciding that yes, you're best friends now, no one can say anything about it.

"- What's a "Best Friend"?"

"- Oh, you poor sweet child-"

You can teach Tatsumi a lot of things about you and androids and even humans themselves ( as Tatsumi never really bothers to learn/or remember more about them), and he can show you how to be a little less naive and gullible.

I think that you would still keep contact with each other, somehow in some way or another. He thinks you're the best company he had in a while now.

Your kindness towards him makes him feel a lot more comfortable with himself.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

#yandere #yandere oc #yandere x reader #sheep's stuff #yandere kitsune #yandere kitsune x reader #yandere kitsune x ai reader #ai reader #yandere headcanon #yandere headcanons #special delivery headcanons #special delivery request #yandere oc x reader #yandere oc headcanons

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laemony · 4 years

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What I’ve read in 2019!

2017 2018

Hello! Welcome back to the appointment I’m sure every one of you was waiting since last year (heavy sarcasm)! Fasten your seat belts, it’s gonna be a long ride..

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, Michail Bulgakov - one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, it has become one of my favourites in a few chapters; I loved the characters, out of their minds the lot of them, I loved this Devil, so nice and generous; I mostly loved the completely natural way with which Bulgakov tells absurd facts; a comedy, but much more than that too. 9.5/10

HEART OF A DOG, Michail Bulgakov - I’m in awe at his style, he’s different from other russian authors; it’s problavly the irony, the grotesque characters, the unusual portrait of life in Moscow after the revolution; I don’t know, but I love it; this book was one weird experience, but I wasn’t really surprised. 8.5/10

THE WAVES, Virginia Woolf - is it a dialogue? is it a pure flow of thoughts? sometimes it seems they’re talking to each other, sometimes it seems everyone’s just thinking by themselves, sometimes it seems both and neither; one moment everything is beautiful, the next life is a horrible mess; is it a novel? I don’t know, it all felt like one big poem and I loved every minute of it. 10/10

NORTHANGER ABBEY, Jane Austen - one of the most frustrating books I've ever read, but I really really liked it; the characters are some various degrees of DRAMA and it’s honestly hilarious to watch; for me, it had the bonus of an unexpected final, idk why really, but I thought it would end differently; cute and so aesthetically pleasing as usual. 7/10

THE BOOK OF DISQUIET, Fernando Pessoa - very well written, I love how each sentence is built and the rhytm of it all, but there’s a hopelessness in the background and maybe I was relating overly, but I don’t want to think too much about what this book says. 8/10

THE BELL JAR, Sylvia Plath - I felt angry with every single character and I don’t like feeling so much while I read a book. I liked it tho, even if I honestly don’t know why. It almost feels wrong to like this book. It got me out of the slump I found myself in during summer screaming and kicking, and I can’t forget that. 8/10

FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley - I’m in awe at the fact that she wrote this book when she was 19; it was everything I thought it’d be, and more. I could find no sympathy for the creature, nor for Viktor (he is so stupid); the atmosphere was heavy, dark, and as miserable as every character (except Henry, poor baby boy I love him), it felt absolutely perfect. 9/10

DRACULA, Bram Stoker - where to begin.. the first 12 or so chapters were very, very, slow, and the style was a bit tiring to me, with all those diaries and notes. BUT, except for that and the vague misogyny that comes out at times, IT IS a great book, a great horror. I loved the Count, finally a villain who’s evil just because, and Mina too, when she wasn’t occupied wondering at how amazing men are and how little women deserve them. She’s never the damsel in distress waiting to be saved, she’s almost more the knight in shining armour.. I’ll shut up, I loved it. 8/10

MADAME BOVARY, Gustave Flaubert - I thought only Wuthering Heights could have had characters so unbearable, but turns out I was wrong. There isn’t a single good person in this book, everyone is either an asshole or a hopeless idiot.. it’s a tragedy, it actually reminded me of Shakespeare, in a sense; everything could be easily solved if people would just talk to eachother. I honestly don’t know if I liked it, it had potential but was a bit boring, it mostly made me angry. 6/10

PARADISE LOST, John Milton - I was probabli in the wrong mood for this, it was November after all, and I must say, it bored me to no end. Really, it didn’t leave me anything except a great relief when I read the last words. I liked a lot the parts where the author spoke, I recoiled every time the others had a dialogue (except, maybe, surprisingly or not, for Satan)... growing up as a woman in a christian family does this to one I guess. 5/10

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Fëdor Dostoevskij - to be honest, I’m posting this without having finished the book, I still have five chapters or so to read, but I don’t have a doubt when I say: I love it. Idk if it’s the AMAZING, INCREDIBLE job the translator(s?) have done but this story goes on so smoothly, not once I felt bored, not once I felt uncomfortable with the style, not once I felt like I wasn’t fully understanding what was going on. It’s so well written that at times I had the impression of being inside the head of the characters, like I was the characters. Idk I haven’t felt like this in a very long time, I knew how he wrote, I’ve read others of his books, but it still caught me by surprise and I can’t say I’m not delighted by it. 10/10

Theatre & Short Stories

THE WINTER’S TALE, William Shakespeare - it was weird, it put me in such an anxious state, at some point I thought everything was going to end in tragedy; my man never cease to surprise me. 8/10

TITUS ANDRONICUS, William Shakespeare - ok..so... I was angry with everyone, I couldn’t feel any sympathy for anyone, except for Lavinia; I honestly don’t know what William was thinking, I don’t know if I should love it or be horrified by it... complete madness it is. 9/10

MEASURE FOR MEASURE, William Shakespeare - let’s say, I’ve always preferred the tragedies, but, as Ju once wisely said, women in Billy’s comedies are simply great; that’s true even in this, Isabella is amazing while everyone else is just.. meh... I can’t shake off the feeling that mr.Duke was bored and decided to cause some useless drama, it’s all very shakesperean. 7/10

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, Edgar Allan Poe - do you need a short tale to tell at sleepovers? Do you need a horror story for Halloween night? This is perfect. Short, to the point, fast and terrifying.. or maybe that’s just me and my fear of pendulum clocks lol. 7/10

Poetry

Emily Dickinson - at some points it bored me, at some others I had to stop reading to take a few steading breaths; lovely and so powerful. 8/10

Edgar Allan Poe - not a fan of the man himself, but his poetry is just my kind, you know? it’s so full of love and darkness; I love the rhymes, I love the rhythm. idk, I liked it a lot. 8,5/10

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skriaki · 4 years

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TOP 10 NINTENDO SWITCH GAMES 2019 - my arbitrary list!

Sometimes it's good to be proven wrong. I was pretty sceptical when the Switch was first announced, as it didn't seem too different from the Wii U's gamepad. Then I spent two years watching Nintendo enjoy a complete reversal of fortune, to the point of potentially amassing a more compelling library than Sony's or Microsoft's consoles. So that's how I quite suddenly found myself buying a Switch in October 2019, after having resisted the PS4 and Xbone for five whole years, and my free time has since been dominated by this little machine that defied the odds.

Some of Nintendo's business decisions can still seem inexplicable, but releasing a powerful handheld console that can also be docked with a TV at a moment's notice has proved to be an inspired idea, rather than the gimmick the Wii U's gamepad mostly turned out to be. And along with Nintendo's dependable series of top-notch exclusives, the Switch has enjoyed much better third-party support, which is how I ended up buying Dark Souls for the fourth bloody time just because the option to play it portably was too tempting to resist.

The Switch is the first console I've bought since the PS3 and for all Nintendo's quirks, there's a reason the Switch has dominated Christmas wishlists for three years running. Games like Super Mario Odyssey feel like full-size adventures that just happen to have a portable option, as opposed to handheld games you can also play on the big screen. This is the first year in a long while that I've actually played enough topical titles to justify a "games of the year" list, even if my recent Nintendo bias is pretty blatant.

So with that caveat in mind, and in no particular order, here's my entirely subjective list of the best Nintendo Switch games of 2019.

Luigi's Mansion 3

This is a franchise I'd always been curious about and can finally have an opinion on. The process of going from floor to floor of the hotel hoovering up ghosts and solving puzzles is pretty straightforward, but Luigi's Mansion 3 has so much polish and personality crammed into the cartridge. Luigi is immediately lovable as a determined coward, and each level has a wildly different theme that's realised with extravagant audio and visual flair, so progress always feels rewarding. Though this isn't true horror by any means, there can be an unsettling atmosphere and some of the bosses are pretty freaky. I officially love this oddball franchise and am desperate for a chance to play the story again in co-op. Unquestionably a first-class exclusive.

Doom (Switch port)

Not to be confused with the impressive Switch version of Doom 2016, this is the iconic Doom made cheap and accessible. While purists may take issue with some minor technical deviations, this is the first time I've got most of the way through Doom because the portability and *glorious* true dual-stick control makes this easily my favourite version. There's even a cheat menu for when I just want to mindlessly punch hell beasts. The main thing that ages Doom is its maze-like structure, but playing it casually experience alleviates that frustration somewhat. At a grand total of four pounds, this is a BFB (big fucking bargain).

Untitled Goose Game

You know a game is good when the only asterisk I put on my recommendation is that it *may* be overpriced. Untitled Goose Game took the internet by storm this year because it's the quintessential indie game: cute, simple and with anti-authoritarian undertones. As a horrible goose, it's your mission to cause havoc in an unsuspecting English village, interacting with people and objects to cause chain reactions of chaos. Some of the puzzle solutions are maybe a bit obscure, but 90% of the time just messing around with everything in the area will lead to a solution. Untitled Goose Game makes up for its brevity with sheer comedic charm, feeling much better-designed than a "lul so random" affair like Goat Simulator. A honking good time.

Terraria (Switch port)

I have spent literally hundreds of hours on the PC version of Terraria, so when I was broke after buying my Switch the new Terraria port was an obvious cost-effective choice. While the controls aren't as precise, the amount of time spent mining and sorting through loot makes this a great handheld experience. I can't comment on the multiplayer options but few games represent such a sheer value for money, as there's always a new cave to explore or a new boss to overcome. Time has been kind to this 2011 classic, grind notwithstanding.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair

While I personally enjoyed the original Yooka-Laylee, it was definitely flawed and I never seriously expected to see a sequel. But Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair launched quite abruptly and did a pretty spectacular job of upstaging its predecessor. All the previous game's half-baked feel has been replaced with clever design touches, like the equippable tonics which grant helpful abilities at the cost of a currency penalty. The titular Lair is actually the final level and available to throw yourself at right from the beginning, but beating it without first obtaining more hitpoints by completing other stages is incredibly hard, which is a great way to incentivize progress without denying more confident players the option of beating the game earlier if they can meet the challenge. Impossible Lair might be this year's biggest surprise, and despite a modest budget I think it's worthy of comparison to excellent 2D platformers like Rayman Legends. Just don't expect to defeat Capital B on your first attempt.

A Hat In Time (Switch port)

I recently reviewed A Hat In Time but at the risk of repeating myself, it's one of the most charming games of the last few years and an incredibly impressive crowdfunded achievement. Mario's offerings may be a grander technical feat, but A Hat In Time is a fast and fabulous journey through a series of weird and wonderful worlds that all feel distinct in content and tone. It's very openly inspired by GameCube-era platformers like Mario Sunshine and Psychonauts and it easily scratches that itch. Simply one of the best original platformers of this generation, and I defy you not to love Hat Kid's cheeky antics.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Switch port)

As someone who thinks the original Spyro trilogy holds up better than most early 3D games, I'd have actually preferred a simple port rather than a full remake, but The Reignited Trilogy is honestly impeccable. The updated visuals are gorgeous while maintaining the general style of those old, jaggy models, and very little of the gameplay or content has changed except for sensible updates like the ability to immediately warp between every level you've visited. Having full dual-analogue control is also an absolute godsend even for a PS1 veteran like me. Though Spyro may seem a bit basic these days when faced with modern platformer marvels, the Reignited Trilogy makes these old favourites accessible again at a generous price point.

Ring Fit Adventure

Yes, I have a Wii kicking around in a box somewhere. No, Wii Fit never held my attention as anything more than a curiosity. Ring Fit Adventure, meanwhile, is limited only by my cholesterol-encrusted heart and dislike of excessive showering. This is an honest-to-goodness attempt at making an RPG out of a workout toy, and the amount of polish put into the game's presentation and hardware implementation is pretty remarkable. Levels involve jogging on the spot and squeezing the ring accessory to collect goodies and overcome obstacles, and periodically you'll engage in turn-based combat where you use a custom selection of exercise moves to deal damage. It's a fantastic idea pulled off much more elegantly than it sounds. The ring accessory unfortunately makes this quite an expensive game, so it'll take a lot of regular use to get your money's worth, but I can honestly (and surprisingly) say that exercise suddenly becomes more compelling when it's presented as a light RPG adventure with anthropomorphic gym equipment encouraging you to take breaks and drink plenty of water.

Pokémon Sword/Shield

Disclaimer: I can only give my impressions from 25 hours of playing Pokémon Shield, so this is DEFINITELY not a full review. That being said, this is still an easy recommendation to existing Pokemaniacs and a good starting point for any new acolytes. While the core formula hasn't evolved (har har) much since the very first Pokemon, Sword and Shield still has a number of modern quality of life improvements that make previous generations show their age. I've had so much fun building a core crew of cute and/or badass 'mons in a weird Nintendo version of Britain, and the online features combine with a VASTLY improved random encounter system to make grinding far less of a concern. The wild area takes some getting used to, but it's satisfying to come back and capture the huge Onyx you had to run away from a few hours before. Even if Pokémon Sword/Shield has some technical blemishes and could have pushed the series further in some regards, it's still easy to see why this franchise has maintained such a beloved status for so long.

Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-mars-tered (Switch port)

Along with Dark Souls, Red Faction was a game I never even knew I needed on the go, but now I've got it I can't imagine ever going back. A cult classic due to its amazing destruction physics, Red Faction sees you leading a proletariat revolution on Mars, literally tearing down corporate monuments to free the working class from systematic oppression. The open world is a bit claustrophobic and the shooting isn't exactly mind-blowing, but there's a reason I've beaten Red Faction every couple of years ever since its original 2009 release. The Switch port does the game justice and if you set the difficulty to easy then this is one of the best rage-venting experiences money can buy. So yes, I recommend getting your ass to Mars.

#gaming #nintendo #goty #2019 #switch #nintendo Switch #game review #review

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chaniters · 5 years

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PSYCHO

Continuing the Post-Retribution setting, this fic follows Sidestep through his day as the the-facto leader of the Rebellion, solving problems and attempting to carry out his master plan.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Good doctor, I know you haven't been completely honest with me" you speak as you continue to walk towards him. Confident. Intimidating. By now you don't need a mask to fall into your villain persona.

"Whatever do you mean Retribution?" he asks raising from his bench. His mind is a maze as usual. You're not sure what kind of chemicals is he using, but you haven't been able to read him so far.

“These have all been temporary setbacks! The prototype will be ready in time" he adds

"Funny. I believe the prototype is ready right now, and you've been making up these delays because you're having second thoughts"

"That's not true" Mortum protests "I just need more time! You need to adjust the time-frame! You're asking for the impossible!"

"I thought impossible is what you do Mortum." You spit his own words back at him. "Perhaps you need a little incentive. Maybe we can bring Eden to one of our little chats".

"N... no" his voice trembles. "That.. won't be necessary"

"Good. Is there, or is there not something you can do to ready the device for a demonstration?" you ask.

"Maybe... maybe I can adjust some of the parameters to allow for early testing" he starts. Bingo. You knew something was up, but you went through the plans three times without finding any mistake. He’s too crafty for you to find the flaw with his work. It took a threat to drive it out of him. Already he wants to betray you.

"Excellent."

"It won't be operative without incorporating the Hourglass technology!" he complains.

"I know that Doctor. Rest assured It will be acquired as planned," you say, heading for the door. "Just remember it was you who didn't want Eden involved" your let out before leaving, poison dripping from your words.

You can hear a loud noise. Even the preparations he made to cloud his mind from you can't cover the outburst. Your mind easily picks up on his rage, as he begins trashing the lab, flinging test tubes and destroying a computer. And then, he stops. And goes back to the test chamber, to start working again.

You can't help but feel some of his own frustration drip into yourself.

You have to keep going, removing each and every one of the obstacles ahead. And all your plans fall apart if you don’t manage to master this technology. You hate doing this, but there is no choice. If Mortum fails to deliver, you will have to find someone who will.

The new underground lair now resembles a small city. The abandoned bunker has been expanded with new tunnels and completely refurbished, and now holds most of your rebellion. It was originally created by a doomsday cult whose leader was exposed as a fraud all over the media almost a decade ago. The guy was not wrong, you ponder, but he had his dates mixed up.

Your vehicle is ready, and a soldier regen drives you away through the tunnels, and towards the debriefing room. It's going to be another long day.

--------------------------------------------------

You rush through the corridor. Cestus follows you, reading the latest report as he keeps up the phase.

"Another skirmish in San Francisco. We lost seven soldiers" he goes on to describe the battle.

"Our Frisco team is low on manpower" he continues. "Their rangers again"

You sigh. "Order the lab to ... start growing a new battalion of them." He stops. You keep walking. He catches up.

"Cellex won't like this"

"Well, what Ceelex doesn't know, he can't complain about" you answer.

Soldier regenes. The farm has perfected a quick process to breed them in a matter of weeks. They are non-sentient and almost completely guided by their implants. You stole hundreds of them, still in their pods when you assaulted the farm. Everyone agreed to use them at the time.

But now your operations have gone nation-wide, even beyond the West Coast. And a few hundred soldiers is nothing compared to your enemies. The soldiers are highly effective, but Heroes keep killing them. They can sometimes be a bit predictable unless you have a sentient agent leading them.

So you ordered your labs to start growing new ones. Everyone was troubled by it, you didn't need to be a telepath to know. If you're growing regenes and sending them to fight, how are you different from the farm? But Soldiers are tools. They would never complain about this situation. It's what they're made for. You have the technology and none among the sentient regenes wants to die. Well, mostly none of course... In any case, having soldiers around makes it easier for the sentient regenes to survive the ongoing war.

And of course, if you accomplish your plan, it will remove this moral ambiguity altogether. If only they were ready to understand it...

No one raised an issue in the end. No one but Cellex. And nobody liked it when you told him you would do it anyways. Seeing how he was outvoted, he insisted on reviewing how many of them you use. He wants to put some sort of limit. And you can’t have that. Not if you want to succeed. You are becoming the villain among your people as well, perhaps sooner than you expected.

You stop by the reinforced door.

"Get it done Cestus" "Of course Cyrus," He says looking down You put a hand on his shoulder "Hey. It's ok. I know It's a lot I'm asking of you. But we need to use the tools we've been given if we want to win" you reassure him, adding a slight mental touch to get him on board with it. "O.. ok," he says looking up, some light returned to his gaze. "I know Cyrus.. it's just hard" "You can do it. I always trusted you Cestus" "It's not about trust... Say... Are you going to see charge again?" he says looking away. The question reeks of envy in his mind. "I need to ask him some questions about the Frisco Rangers" you lie. "I don't want a repeat of today" "Alright," he nods. "See you back at your quarters," he says as he leaves.

You just want to scream in frustration. But you can't. You brought this on yourself. Cestus and you were secretly together back at the farm. And now that you're together again. You need his vote on the council you lead. It is as simple as that. You still feel... something for him, but it's certainly not love. And maybe it never was.

But you smile and kiss him, and let him be with you because then he'll be completely loyal. And you are going to need loyal badly very soon. And then there's Ortega. Your prisoner. Your enemy. All you had to do was get rid of him. Maybe a prisoner exchange. What did you do? Keep him close. talk to him. Give him a (supervised) job in your base. And end up in bed with him while at it. That's you. Self-destructive to the core. His game is clear. First, he thinks he can convince you to go back into the good path, deluded idiot he is. Second, obviously wants to "Seduce the villain" to get you to make a mistake. The worst part? It's actually working. You've curved down the unnecessary deaths and try to keep civilian casualties down where you could thank to his insistence on the subject.

Some in your council questioned your decisions. You justified yourself saying you want there to be peace after your side has won the war.

Win the war... It's shocking just how easily they bought all your lies about the glorious victory of the rebellion. Casualties will come in the end. They are just irrelevant right now.

------------------------------------------------------------- You nod to the guards at the cell's entrance, and the open it for you...

"Well if it isn't my favorite Psycho?" Ortega speaks sarcastically as you enter the large cell. It's more like a small appartment now, with several amenities like a TV and insulated gaming consoles.

"Had a rough day" you begin "Yeah, I saw. You blew up a shopping mall in San Francisco with a nanite weapon" he accuses you.

"It was empty. Like the museum"

"It doesn't matter if it's empty! You're causing panic in the city!"

"Well, that's on them. If they would agree to my terms, none of this would be necessary. And I needed to show them HELIOS isn't my only weapon.

"So you're resorting to terrorism"

"Stop," you say "The only deaths were on our side anyways"

"You're sending your people to die then," he says glaring at you.

"Stop" you repeat, wrapping your arms around him. It's surprising how physical you've become now that every threat to your existence is gone. "I would electrocute you, If your scientist hadn't disconnected my emitters, you know," He says, not stopping you.

"But you can't. And my scientist did disconnect your emitters"

"Well maybe i found a way to reactivate them, you know?"

"Zap me then. Fry me right here. Stop the leader of the revolution." You hold him tighter, inviting him to act on his threat.

Nothing happens.

He frees himself from your arms. "You're the one who needs to stop. I'm not your bitch, you can't come here and..." "Maybe I AM your bitch after all Ricardo. That's what the media used to report all the time about your little sidekick, didn’t they? Sidestep was just that" You say with a cynical smile "Do you remember how they made fun of me? How they... " He gives you a murderous glare, and then spins you, holding an arm behind your back, painfully. He pushes you against a wall, pinning you down. "Oh...bossy. I like it" you say with a snort, your face against the wall. "Shut up!" he says adding pressure. You choke a gasp of pain. He might break your arm if you're not careful or call the guards. But you won't. You want to provoke him He let's go, walking away. Cooling down. That's not what you need. "What's the matter, Ricardo? I destroyed a fucking shopping mall. Big deal. Doesn't the Hero in you want to give me a lesson?" You taunt. "I remember how mad you got when I crashed your car's window so all those years ago."

And then it all happens too fast. He lifts you... and flings you. You fall on the bed. He closes in, and climbs on top of you, holding your wrists down, a furious expression overtaking him.

And you kiss him. And he kisses you back, pinning you down. Taking your clothes off. Exposing the tattoos.

He's going to make it hurt. And you deserve it. Especially after what you did to Mortum today. That's why you provoked him in the first place. It won't matter in the end. Nothing will. You may as well have as many moments with him as you can before your plan comes to a conclusion.

Before you set things right.

Before you put an end to it all. You. Him. Everyone else.

.....................................................................

“What’s with the names?” he asks as he lays exhausted by your side. He always does this. String you from some more information. And you let him. Tease him for more next time.

“What do you mean?”

“Cellex. Cybra. Cestus. Cyrus. I am noticing a theme?”

You smile. Of course, there’s a theme.

“Infiltration regenes like me are called Cuckoos. At some point after my second capture, I started promoting this... rebellion. We decided to give ourselves names, not just serial bar codes. They’re the ones who helped me escape the second time”

“So the C stands for Cuckoo?” he asks

“It was Cellex’s idea. To be proud of what we are.”

“And are you?” He says looking at you.

“Of course not.” You say wondering how can he even ask that. “They made us to be slaves. They had us kill people. They owned our bodies. They did... terrible things to us Ricardo” you can’t stop thinking about Cybra. About how she can’t speak at all now. The sole idea makes your skin crawl with anger.

“I talked to Celise” he lets on.

“Oh.” You ponder. Celise. She’s one of you, but she’s been content to stay on the back lines of your rebellion. Her power isn’t offensive or suited for combat. She is likely working the tunnels... just like Ortega.

“She told me something of what happened... how they took you for experiments... for whole days. She tells me it was pretty bad every time they took you back to your cell.”

You can’t help nausea. “Pretty bad” doesn’t begin to describe it.

“They were animals” you let go. “That’s why I killed every single one I could when we took the farm.”

“But why... why the focus on you?”

“I stopped the Nanosurge, Ricardo. And when no one could stop Heartbreak, I just walked in and shot him. They were impressed”

“Oh?”

“The Farm’s funding had been cut in half prior to Heartbreak. The whole program was always a risk if it filtered into the media. The government was focusing on mods instead. There were even talks about closing it. And then, they got me, and they shifted all their attention to my powers, and how could they create others like me to fight their wars. They stopped at nothing... they figured out my emotions had to do with my ability. What they did to me...It was beyond torture... it was hell.”

“Shit” Ortega says holding your hand. “Do you... want to talk about it?” he asks.

Fuck. For a moment, he had you. You had begun to forget where you were. THat he was your prisoner.

You raise from the bed, dressing up, letting go of his hand.

“Perhaps another time Ricardo”

You leave the room.

--------------------------------------------

The guards lock the cell behind you. You got what you wanted from him. And he got answers, for whatever those are worth.

You walk to the elevator and enter. This one has a mirror.

The reflection glares at you with a murderous expression.

Is this who you are now? It strikes you how little is left from your old self, the naive youngster who thought he could have a life by just escaping the farm.

Deluded fool. It took you some time to realize your past self was the cause of it all.

"Cyrus" a voice in the intercom speaks. It's Cellex.

"What is it?" You ask in your most neutral tone. Did Cestus tell him about the new regene soldiers you ordered? This might be a problem.

"We've found objective one" he speaks calmly. "The Hourglass Armor"

"Really?" you say containing your breath. "Where?"

"There is a freak calling us. Calls himself Psycopathor. He really wants to talk to you"

"Well fuck me," you say annoyed. "I'll be right there"

"I assume you're not on good terms?" Cellex asks sarcastically.

"I'm coming! Don't call him again until I'm there! You don't know that guy, he's a...

"...a psycho?" Cellex asks with a snort. You are just frozen, staring at your own reflection. The elevator doors take an eternity to open, and you leave without looking back.

______________________________

My Fanfiction: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

#fallen hero rebirth #Post-Retribution #cyrus #Chargestep #Spoilers

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ink-logging · 5 years

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Detective Comics #1000, Chris Conroy & Dave Wielgosz, eds.: I bought this on impulse because it was on the new releases shelf and people were talking about Batman online. It’s a 100-page anthology tribute for the Batman character’s 80th year and the one thousandth issue of “Detective Comics”. I don’t think anyone is ever at their best in a tribute anthology, but that makes them kind of interesting to look at, you know? There are eleven stories, which I will now spoil in their entirety.

1. “Batman’s Longest Case”, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Tom Napolitano: The first of two stories in which Batman is doing something that looks grim, but is actually happy and anniversary-ish - both with similar titles, and both from major Batman writers. This is the better one, because I think Capullo is an interesting artist. He’s comparable to Jae Lee, in that he’s someone who had some work in comics under his belt prior to being ushered into the second ‘generation’ of popular Image artists, and has continued to evolve quite vividly over the years. The Capullo of today dials up the use of shadows and silhouette that used to sort of decorate the folds of Spawn’s flowing cape and such - here, they’re used more to focus attention on storytelling fundamentals: geography; gesture; etc. I also generally like the colorist, FCO Plascencia, who’s done some Varleyesque color-as-mood work on earlier comics with this team, though the story here is subdued... very classy, dressed for the gala.

Hints of ‘90s grotesquerie only pop up once Batman has solved a large number of flamboyantly abstruse riddles and discovered that the titular Longest Case is really an initiation test fronted by wrinkly old Slam Bradley, the original Siegel & Shuster-created star of “Detective Comics” back in 1937, who welcomes Batman to a Guild of Detection. This is clever of the writer, Scott Snyder, because Batman as a basic concept is hugely derivative of earlier pulp, detective and strip hero characters - and, if you’re being honest about paying homage to the character’s origins, you might as well play up lineage as your metaphor.

2. “Manufacture for Use”, Kevin Smith, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair, Todd Klein: In contrast, this story shoots for the quintessential. Smith, of course, is the filmmaker and longtime geek culture celebrity who’s written comics off and on, so maybe it’s his distance from the continuum of superhero writing that has inspired a short story that could have run as a backup in any Batman comic since the 1970s, give or take few cultural references. Matches Malone (Batman, when he is being an undercover cop) descends into the secretive world of true crime memorabilia to buy the gun that killed Bruce Wayne’s parents, which he then melts down to form the metal bat-symbol plate Batman wears on his chest, verily steeling his heart with the memory of this tragedy to fortify him in his neverending battle against crime! NANANANANANANANA BATMAAAAAN! Jim Lee and his usual crew makes everything look like it’s ‘supposed’ to, provided you see this type of statuesque posing as the best sort of superhero art, which many DC comics readers presumably do, given how a lot of these things look.

3. “The Legend of Knute Brody”, Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs, John Kalisz, Steve Wands: Dini has written tons of comics, with not a few of those drawn by Nguyen, but this feels mostly like DC1k (acronym’s resemblance to “DICK” a purely innocuous reference to Nightwing, I assure you) acknowledging the extensive legacy of “Batman: The Animated Series”, on which Dini was a writer and producer. The story takes the form of a biography of an infamously clumsy hired thug for supervillains, whom even the most novice reader will have figured out is a Batman Family asset about halfway down page 4 of 8, leaving a whole lot of laborious and narration-heavy slapstick to wade through. Admittedly, this might work better as an animated cartoon, with voice acting leavening the pace of the gags, but I’m also not sure ‘this would be better in a different art form’ is the impression superhero comics should be giving right now.

4. “The Batman’s Design”, Warren Ellis, Becky Cloonan, Jordie Bellaire, Simon Bowland:

Most of the drawing in DC1k is the kind of stuff you can easily trace to a few popular and fairly narrow traditions of ‘realistic’ superhero art. Becky Cloonan is the only woman to draw an entire comic in here -- Joëlle Jones co-pencils a story with Tony Daniel later on, and Amanda Conner does a pinup, mind -- and her work is the only place in this book where you catch glimpses of a global popular comics beyond the superhero provinces in the Hewlettian wild eyes of the hapless human opponents of her Batman, lunging through velvet layers of cape and smoke, lipless mouth parted on a shōnen ai jaw. It is really very impressive.

The writer, Warren Ellis, does a pathos-of-the-hard-man story, in which Batman explains his combat strategies via narration while carrying them out, occasionally making reference to the medical bills his prey will incur and their timely motivations as terroristic white men who feel ignored by the world, and at the end Batman asks the last guy U WANT TO LIVE IN MY NIGHTMARE, LITTLE BOY and the guy is like n- no dr. batman sir, and gives up because Batman’s is too dangerous and scary a life model. It is made clear from the text that Batman has programmed himself into a system of reactionary violence that he inevitably reinforces, but this message is so heavily sugared with cool action and tough talk that the reader can easily disregard such commentary, if so inclined, which has been a trait of Ellis’ genre comics writing since at least as far back as “The Authority” in the late 1990s. It fits Batman as naturally as the goddamned cowl.

5. “Return to Crime Alley”, Dennis O’Neil, Steve Epting, Elizabeth Breitweiser, ‘Andworld Design’: I was surprised that there weren’t other writers from across the Atlantic in DC1k, given the extensive contributions of Alan Grant and Grant Morrison to the character. I was maybe not as surprised to see Dennis O’Neil as the lone credited writer to pre-date the blood and thunder revolution of Frank Miller et al. in the mid-1980s, as that commercial shadow is far too long to escape. Of course, O’Neil was one of the architects of superhero comics as a socially relevant proposition and Batman as a once-again ‘serious’ character in the 1970s, and it may be a reflection of his standing as a patriarch that this story contains no sugar whatsoever: on the anniversary of his parents’ death, Batman is confronted by a childhood caregiver who has figured out his dumb secret identity, and castigates him for doing stupid shit like dressing up as an animal and punching the underclass when he could actually do something as a wealthy man to improve the world. Then Batman starts beating the shit out of young masked teens who have stolen a gun, after which Batman, who is also a masked thug, is told that he is, at best, a figure of pity. The end!

What emerges from this story, to my eye, is that Batman is a terrible fucking idea if examined with any sort of serious realism - and Steve Epting draws the story as close to photorealism as anything in this book gets. I also think it is not insignificant that O’Neil, the writer here most unplugged from superhero comics as a commercial vocation, is the one to make these observations; to believe in superhero comics is to understand that there is play at the heart of these paper dolls, and to make your living from these things is to contemplate new avenues for play. Maybe Batman is dark, obsessive! Should he... kill? Sure, Bill Finger made him kill. The Shadow killed lots of dudes. So did Dick Tracy. Ramp up the verisimilitude too much, though, and you’ve got a guy wearing a hood going out by the cover of night to scare the shit out of superstitious cowards who’ve been taking from the good people of society, which, in terms of motivational narratives, is the same origin as the Ku Klux Klan. To play nonetheless, is the craftsman’s burden.

6. “Heretic”, Christopher Priest, Neal Adams, Dave Stewart, Willie Schubert: Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, is veteran Batman artist and frequent Dennis O’Neil collaborator Neal Adams. And while Adams is not credited as the writer on this story, it bears all the hallmarks of his 21st century work at DC: whiplash pacing; uneasy expository dialogue; and eager callbacks to Adams’ earlier work. This is the Batman comic as a continuity-driven adventure, and I found it largely incomprehensible as a story, not unlike Adams’ recent “Deadman” miniseries. I still like his husky Batman, though.

7. “I Know”, Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, Josh Reed: Hey, did you know Brian Michael Bendis, writer of approximately ten and one half zillion Marvel comics, is writing comics at DC these days? Here he teams with longtime collaborator Maleev for a story that brings to mind the old line from Grant Morrison’s & Dave McKean’s “Arkham Asylum” about Batman being the real person and the guy under the mask being the mask. The Penguin, of all villains, figures out Batman’s secret identity, but elects not to pursue Bruce Wayne in his private life, because destroying Bruce Wayne would create a pure Batman far too dark and twiztid for anyone to handle. Or, maybe that is all just an image the perfectly sane Batman has deliberately encouraged as part of his umpteenth contingency plan. I would argue that this is a gentle spoof of people taking Batman too seriously, which clicks with what I’ve read of Bendis’ idea of the character in those 100-page comics they sell at Walmart: a globetrotting detective-adventurer, appropriate for all ages. Bear in mind, I’ve read maybe 0.2% of all Brian Bendis comics.

8. “The Last Crime in Gotham”, Geoff Johns, Kelley Jones, Michelle Madsen, Rob Leigh: Whoa, now we’re talking! Kelley Jones! Just look at this:

Such totally weird stuff, coming from the artist who drew all those classic ‘90s covers with the huge bat-ears and wildly distorted musculature, the cape this absurd, unreal shroud. It looks like he’s working from photo reference with some of this comic, but also just tearing out these drawings of huge jawlines and shit, this total what-the-fuck-is-going-on haze, which perfectly matches Geoff Johns’ furiously ridiculous story about an elderly Batman and his wife, Catwoman, and their daughter, and Damian, and a dog, who all investigate a mass murder that turns out to be the Joker’s son committing suicide, and then Batman unplugs the Bat-Signal because crime is over in Gotham forever, and then we find out it’s all the birthday wish of Batman, who is blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, in costume, in the Batcave. Is “Doomsday Clock” like this? Should I pirate it??

9. “The Precedent”, James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez-Bueno, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson, Sal Cipriano: Inevitably, we come to the story that argues that Batman is actually a great guy, and his pressing of children into action as vigilantes under the cover of night is an amazingly positive thing. This is what I mean by “play” - it doesn’t literally make sense, we all know that, but if you buy into the superhero idea, you can buy into this universe of metaphor where the Batman Family is a vivification of finding your company of people, and belonging, and being loved. Lots of talk in here about snatching young people out of the darkness and forging them in light, and helping them find a better path - it sounds like Batman is signing these kids up for the Marine Corps, which is one of several organizations that recognizes the power of these arch-romantic impulses.

10. “Batman’s Greatest Case.”, Tom King, Tony S. Daniel, Joëlle Jones, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles: This is just unbearable. Oh god, what absolute treacle. It’s the second story in this book about Batman being serious and mysterious, but it turns out something nice is going on - he really just wants a photo of the whole Batman Family, because he lost his family when his parents got shot, but then he cracked his greatest case by finding a new family, which is the Batman Family!

All of this is communicated via clipped dialogue in which various Batman Family superheroes trade faux-awkward quips and cutesy ‘moments’ that are supposed to embody the endearing traits of the characters, but read as the blunt machinations of art that is absolutely desperate to be liked. This is art that is weeping on my shoulder and insisting I am its friend, and I want to get away from it, immediately. Tom King is the most acclaimed superhero writer of this generation, and I can only presume his better work is elsewhere.

11. “Medieval”, Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, David Baron, Rob Leigh:

Finally, we have the obligatory story-that-leads-into-next-issue’s-serial, thereby demonstrating that Batman endures. It’s done as a series of 12 splash pages, depicting Batman in battle with his greatest foes, and it benefits immeasurably from the presence of artist Doug Mahnke (some inks by Jaime Mendoza), whose been a favorite of mine since those early, blood-splattered issues of “The Mask” at Dark Horse decades ago. Broadly speaking, Mahnke is working in a similarly muscular vein as many contributors to DC1k, but his sense of composition, of spectacle -- that boot-in-the-face energy the British call thrill-power -- adds an important extra crackle, and an element of humor; his Batman looks like a hulking maniac dressed in garbage bags, beating the shit out of monster after leering monster. What we are seeing is the fevered imagining of a new villain, the Arkham Knight (a variant of a character introduced in a video game), whom writer Peter J. Tomasi characterizes via the old trick of having the villain narrate to us a bunch of familiar criticisms of the hero, which the hero will presumably react to and overcome, or acknowledge in an interesting way, or something, in future installments. This probably would have worked better if other stories in this book hadn’t already made a lot of the same points in a manner that is not an advertisement for the rebuttal of those points... or if I were even capable of reading a story like this without imagining a final dialogue bubble coming in from off-panel going “SIR, THIS IS A BURGER KING DRIVE-THRU.” But something’s gotta go in issue #1001.

-Jog

#JogList

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iiiyukifyiii · 6 years

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The Reason My Laptop Is Broken

Background Information: This is an OC of mine. Well I guess this could be read as Fem!Kamski but idk. I’m not sure if I want to make a full story out of this universe but this came to my head. So the reader is Kamski and will be referred to as Kamski. Connor is married to the reader and lives with her. The reader has an adopted son(Elijah see what I did there ;) that works at the DPD. Nine also works at the DPD with Connor and is partnered with Gavin Reed. And I think that is all you need to know. This is kinda long one shot.

Pairing: Kamski!Reader x Rk800/Connor, Rk900/Nine x Gavin Reed

Warning: Adult content and references. Swearing. Kinda a crack fic but read at your own risk. No proofreading.

Your Name = (Y/N)

2 Years After the Revolution April 30, 2040

The smooth and shiny surface of the Cyberlife building gleamed in the morning light. Though Nine had been here before, there was a new energy in the air. A new feeling. Cyberlife no longer produces androids and enslave them with the aftermath of the peaceful revolution, they are heading in a new direction. A direction lead by the now CEO of Cyberlife, (Y/N) Kamski. The creator of androids had been out of the public eye for years but right after the revolution, she steps out of the shadows taking over Cyberlife and working with the now freed androids. Many wonders if she was the one pulling all the strings all along…

Nine shook the thought out of his head and continue with his task…

Speak with Kamski

Earlier this morning Nine received a message from Cyberlife HQ to meet with Kamski. The message did not disclose the reason for this meeting but apparently, it was urgent. Nine, of course, listen to the message. He knew that he didn’t have to but at times he struggles with the whole free will thing. And he regrets it afterward. Walking up to the elevator and he took it to the top floor of the building.

The soft sound of elevator music did nothing to calm his worry. What is the purpose of this meeting? Is there something wrong with his body? Or his software? A soft ding from the elevator breaks his train of thought. Nine walk out of the elevator and walk towards the android receptionist. Though androids are free many choose to find a purpose out of their own free will. However, this model always seems to follow Kamski wherever she goes...

“Hello, how many I help you today?” The blonde android ask

“I have with an appointment with Mrs. Kamski.”

“Of course. Give me a second.”

Her LED flash yellow for a second

“Please follow me.”

Nine follows her pass the sleek black double door behind the desk. That when Nine realized that he never went into the top office before. After all, he was created before Kamski was CEO again. Everything was a sleek and shiny black with accents of white. Everything scream Kamski, expensive and imitating. Nine follows the android to the front of Kamski’s desk. The woman in question is looking down at her paperwork with earphones in. The android he followed in walked up to the desk and wave a hand in front of Kamski’s face.

Kamski looks up and Nine could finally take in her appearance. Nine have seen my photos of (Y/N) Kamski and know what she looks like build in his programming but never seen her in person, unlike his counterpart. Many photos show her as having a very powerful and imitating personality and they are not wrong. Her sharp eyes seem to see through him(even though that is not possible) but also carry a playful gleam. She is no doubt attractive by human standards and carries herself in a confident way. From where he stood he could feel her eyes scanning him.

“Your appointment is here (Y/N)”

“Thank you, Chloe. You can leave.”

After Kamski waves her to leave, the Android name Chloe nod and left the room. He is left alone with his creator.

“Hello, Nine. I guess you want to know why you are.”

“Yes. Is there an issue?”

Kamski smirk “Well it could be considered an issue by definition. But this is more of a heads-up. You are aware that your memories are uploaded to Cyberlife database regularly correct?”

Nine nodded unsure where the conversation is heading “Yes I am aware that my memories are uploaded every 5.3 hours and I make reports daily.”

Kamski let out an airily chuckle “Well I wanted to talk to you about your recent personal activities. You know, the ones you have with Detective Gavin Reed.”

Nine is a first confuse on what she meant until he thought about it. Heat start to bloom in his chest and by the look on Kamski’s face, he guesses he is blushing.

“So here is the story…”

The night before…

The house was mostly empty except for the 3 Chloe that decides to stick around even after the revolution. Something that you found hilarious. Saying “Who the fuck would willingly choose to stay with me?” Of course, this is the same woman that got married and adopted a child. You sip on your cold glass of wine and relax against the couch. Looking back on the eventful past 2 years you can’t help but wonder if this is the future you intend when you first created androids. A smile appeared. Looking back at your laptop you continue your work.

The sound of the doors opening and footsteps came walking in. You turn around to see your two beautiful bois. Connor and Elijah.

Elijah strolled in and took a seat next to you “We’re home. I swear today was so boring and fucking annoying. Gavin wouldn’t shut his trap.”

Connor quickly walks to your side to give you a quick kiss. “We brought you the food you requested”

“Awe thanks, Connor. You are the best”

Elijah rolled his eyes “Eww get a room”

“Hey, my house my rules. If you don’t like it you can move out, Elijah”

“Nope, nevermind.”

Connor set the food on the coffee table and took a seat next to you. These moments where Connor, you, and Elijah are just being together are your favorite. There no injustice, no big problem, no worry. Just family. Smiling at the thought you turn back to your work.

New memory uploaded April 29, 2040/9:30pm Rk900/Nickname: Nine Status: Overheating issue, Unstable Open< Close

‘Overheating? Maybe I should check that out?’ You don’t normally look into the recorded memories of androids but you were concerned about the overheating issue. With Connor and Elijah sitting at your side you open the file. What you didn’t expect was…

Ahhh~ Nine!~ Y-you’re so fucking good~

Holy Shit!?!?

Your hands flew away from the keyboard. Elijah and Connor look at you with concern. Elijah was the first to look at your screen and he broke out laughing.

“Holy shit is that Gavin!? Holy fucking hell!”

All three of you just sat there in silence and stared at the screen. It was Detective Reed and Nine having sex. WTF. You finally snapped out of your dazed state. “O-okay I’m gonna shut this down.”

You reach to close the laptop but Elijah stopped you. You look at him in shock. “Why the fuck are you stopping me!?”

Elijah pulls out his phone and smirked “This is perfect blackmail material. The guy who gave androids so much crap is fucking one! I knew there was some sexual tension between them, can’t wait to show him.” And he started to save the video

This little shit.

That is fucking hilarious.

N-nine!~ Fuck I’m coming!

Nope. Connor was not having it.

Slam

The once working laptop was now broken. Why? Because Connor threw it against the wall. Everything happened so fast you had barely had any time to react. When Connor turn to face you he had an unknown look on his face.

“That problem has been dealt with. Would you like me to get you something to drink?”

Elijah smiled and look at you “Who knew Gavin is a bottom?”

You could hold in your laughter any longer and laugh alongside with Elijah. This was too funny. Your broken laptop remain forgotten on the ground. And when a Chloe came in to check on all the noise, she was very confused.

Present Day…

...so you see now that this could be a problem. Many Cyberlife employees have access to this database. I took the liberty of moving those memories into a secure and private server with only you and the detective can access if you feel adventurous. I can imagine the outrage that would happen if those got out.” Kamski smirk grow with each sentence

‘Ra9. Please have mercy’ “T-thank you for the...information. I will be sure to follow your directions. Is that all you want to tell me?”

Kamski nod “Yes. Nothing else. You are free to leave Nine.”

Nine turns to leave as quickly as he could but Kamski stops him. “You know Nine if you need any toys. Please don’t hesitate to call me!”

Nine ran out of there as quick as he could. The Chloe outside at the desk did not question anything, just a normal Monday occurrence.

Bonus: Later that day at the DPD Elijah walks into the break room with a plan in mind. It was mostly empty and no one was paying attention “Hey Gavin. How was last night?”

Gavin turns to see Elijah giving him a shit-eating grin “What are you talking about? How was what last night, you douchebag?”

“Wow, I surprise you can walk straight Gav. After how hard you got fuck I thought you would be limping.”

‘How. The. Fuck’ “I-I don’t k-know what the fuck you are talking about!” Gavin manages to get out but it didn’t sound convincing at all

Elijah starts to laugh and pull out his phone “ You sure about that?” Kamski glance at the photo “Nice pornstar face. I really love the angle.”

‘Kill me now’ Gavin tried to reach for the phone but Elijah quickly moved out of the way. “Tsk Tsk Tsk. I’m not gonna give it to you that easily.”

“You dickhead give me that!!!!!”

Elijah ran out of the room and hid behind Captain Allen. Gavin walk to the parking lot to cry to himself.

Bonus Bonus: With Connor(Connor being a good brother) Nine walks into the DPD hoping, just praying that the day would get better. Maybe he would solve the case, get caught up with paperwork, or anything that would distract his mind from this morning. He now knew what being embarrassed felt like. He couldn’t even make it to his desk when he met face to face with Connor. ‘Whyyyy?’

“Hello, Nine. Good morning to you.”

“Hello to you, Eight. How can I help you?”

Connor gives him a simple smile and put a hand on his shoulder “I wanted to talk to you. I was made..aware of your relationship with Detective Reed. I just want to let you know that I am here for you and will support you. If you wish to talk about anything I am always here to listen. I know how confusing relationships and emotions are and with my experi- Where are you going?”

Nine ran out of there so quickly as possible. Almost running into Hank.

Hank went and stood by Connor “What the fuck is his problem!?”

“He is worried about his relationship with Detective Reed.”

“Really? Those two?...it is too early for this.”

And this is the story of how Nine became Usain Bolt

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redsdesktop · 6 years

Text

Deviant Dynamics: Revolution.

Chapter 12

Masterlist

Warnings: AIN'T NO WARNINGS. YOLO.

Repairing Simon would have been an easier task if Markus didn't hover around Conrad the entire time, further irritating the younger android. Connor folded his arms as he stood nearby and watched everything go down, Conrad would growl and Markus would reciprocate the growl. Usually Markus was more well-mannered than this and should have some grasp on his control despite how stressful the situation was. However, it appeared that the alpha nature was finally revealing its darker side with the android leader. While Markus was his friend, Connor didn't particularly like the idea of someone growling at Conrad. It was his own possessive nature stirring within him but at least he didn't let it show. For now it appeared he was the only rational one aware at the moment, as Simon had fallen back into standby mode to allow Conrad to work on him.

Connor had already tried to get Markus to go see Leo, to get the eldest android out of the room so Conrad could work in peace, but the alpha wasn't budging. Connor supposed he couldn't blame him, if Conrad was in dangerous conditions, Connor wouldn't be all too eager to leave his side either. Though this wasn't the simulation, which meant Markus hadn't exactly proposed his feelings towards Simon just yet. Or maybe he did, Connor didn't make a habit of getting into other people's personal lives unless his job demanded it of him. He was certain now that Markus would grow more attached to Simon, though after such an event, Connor couldn't help but wonder how Markus would be.

With the failure and deaths of so many android's on his shoulders, would he still be the same kind and passionate leader, or would he let his sorrow fuel his anger towards humans? Connor had no qualms about killing any human that threatened his own life, he would prefer not to but he had killed before and wouldn't hesitate to do it again. It was just something he did in order to get the mission complete, knowing the necessary sacrifices in order to gain equality for androids. However, he didn't want that stain on Markus, he needed to be the leader without a fault, without a mark against his name. For now, he would let Markus take some time to adjust to everything that had happened as Connor had his own personal missions to attend to.

"Its done." Conrad straightened up after putting the last plate back into place over Simon's chest, the pale skin crawling back over the white plates to make him look human again. Conrad took a step back, allowing Markus to move in closer to Simon's side. "He will need time to recharge his power cell and re-calibrate all his programs. Since he is not an RK unit, it will take longer than it did with you." Conrad stated dismissively before he finally turned his attention on Connor, those slate colored eyes making everything inside Connor's body perk up with a sudden awareness. The upgraded android didn't even need to touch him physically to make Connor's body yearn for more. Now was an inappropriate time though and he wouldn't allow himself to get carried away, at least, just yet.

"Markus, now that Simon is repaired, Conrad and I will be heading out, we have a few personal matters to take care of." Connor mentioned, not wanting to be rude and have Conrad drag Connor out of the house. So he hurriedly excused himself, not wanting Markus to see or overhear their private matters. The man had enough to worry about that Connor's affairs and Connor was more than capable enough to handle them on his own. Markus looked up briefly from Simon, his hand clasped in the other androids like a lifeline to his sanity and morals. Connor could only hope Simon would be Markus' saving grace and keep the man from going down the wrong path on this revolution. Whatever Markus chose, Connor would follow, he would do whatever it took in order to obtain his own personal desires even if it meant he had to get violent.

"I'll be here for a while, so take care, Connor. Make sure to check in on occasion so I know you're alright." Markus replied softly, Connor gave a short nod. Markus' friends were slowly dwindling, he wasn't certain if he could handle more death in his life. At least not so soon. Conrad reached over to grab Connor's inner elbow to nearly drag the elder android out of the room, the alpha had been patient enough and now it had all run out due to Markus' comforting words. Connor didn't resist as he took a few quick steps to catch up to Conrad so he wasn't being dragged down the hall and the stairs. He'd discuss this matter outside in the yard where they could obtain some sort of privacy. Conrad shoved open the door and pulled Connor outside on the small porch.

That was when Connor finally dug his heels in and easily pulled his arm free of Conrad's grasp, making the alpha whirl around to face him and his omega's defiance. Connor didn't engage in such a heated look as he straightened smoothed the wrinkles out of his casual denim jacket and adjusted the cuffs out of habit. He could practically feel Conrad's restlessness, however, Connor refused to let his alpha think so carelessly, to be ruled by mindless instincts.

"You promised you'd come willingly." Conrad growled out, moving closer, invading Connor's personal space in a natural attempt to intimidate the omega into submission. Connor didn't budge but he did tilt his head to the side in a slight gesture to expose a little bit of his neck. Not complete submission but an acknowledgement to the other android's alpha status, simply wanting the other male to calm down and listen to reason. Steely eyes dropped, looking at the small expanse of skin exposed to him, suddenly very riveted on it. Connor supposed that was a start in the right direction. Keep the alpha out of the angry zone and more focused on his omega.

"I will, I would just like to discuss a few things with you, if that is alright?" Connor phrased it as a question, allowing Conrad to feel like he had some control in the situation since he desired such. It was easy to play more dominant types if one knew how to do so and Connor was programmed with such an exceptional skill. Conrad paused, then moved a little closer, herding Connor back against the brick wall near the door, preventing Connor from escaping. Though Connor had no intention on leaving Conrad, the alpha was his, disobedient or not.

"And what would you like to discuss?" Conrad's voice was pitched lower, making Connor suddenly aware that being trapped against the wall just wasn't to keep Connor from running, the closeness, being trapped by a body he was intimately familiar with. So, Conrad was playing his own game to get Connor to cooperate, now it was simply a battle of who could resist who. The alpha was slowly starting to learn that he could get what he wanted from Connor if he played nice.

"Its about returning to my cage, which is in Cyberlife. You assume its safe there because its all you know, but when was the last time you checked in with them, or they checked in with you?" Connor posed the question as he felt Conrad's hands slide down along his side, making his body shiver and arch into those hands before they settled on Connor's hips. Conrad seemed briefly distracted from feeling Connor's lean frame that was edged with softness. It made people more comfortable in his presence, thinking he was harmless, but that was the deadliest mistake of all. Conrad paused when the question finally sunk into his programming, his LED swirling yellow for a moment as he seemed to check for any sort of messages he might've ignored, from the slight concerned wrinkle in Conrad's forehead, Connor assumed not.

"What do you think they're going to do if you return? They're going to search your memory and find out what you've been doing. They will find out about me and I'm certain they'll make sure to finish the job this time." Connor hammered home the facts, making Conrad's grip tighten on Connor's hips to near bruising but Connor could easily handle it. If the topic was different, he might've even found such a tight grip to be arousing. "This is why we can't return there. I suggest we either find some other place to lay low or use Markus' home as a base." He wanted to go to Hank's, the desire to go see his former Detective partner was gnawing at his mind. It was too much of a risk, he couldn't put Hank in danger. He didn't know how long it would take to gain android freedom, but he would see Hank again. The old alpha just had to hold in there a little longer.

"We cannot stay here." Conrad answered back with a frown, leaning in to brush the tip of his nose lightly over the side of his neck in a comforting motion, it seemed Connor had let out his sorrow in his scent. "That multitude of androids coming and going from one house will raise some suspicions. Along with the idea of leaving you alone in a house with another alpha is not appealing to me." Conrad returned the facts, ones Connor already assumed would be the problem. Which left the only option available, they needed to find a hideout that was secure and concealed. Not that Connor was thinking he would be locked away, despite Conrad's intentions. He would simply find more reasons why Conrad should let him help.

"After Jericho, people will be more aware of androids in vacant places as well, so we have to avoid completely abandoned places as well." Connor added, it felt comfortable to be exchanging information with Conrad again, solving a problem together made Connor feel more at ease. "However, if we utilize the sewer system as a mode of moving through the city, we may go fairly undetected. Finding a building nearby an entrance to the sewer shouldn't be too difficult to find, given the amount of abandoned buildings in Detroit." Androids had taken up most of the jobs, leaving humans without income to afford homes, making Detroit's already urban decay even worse. "It would likely be wise to find a destination in the lower income residencies, where the law enforcement avoid due to it being too dangerous."

"Will the current residents in such a neighbor not report androids to the authorities?" Conrad tilted his head, not understanding how humans completely worked, he was used to following the rules by the book. Connor had been taught by Hank that some rules could be broken, to simply pick and choose the lesser of two evils. It also gained friendship with the civilians, who would be more forward in talking with the old Detective and spill any dangerous news that might be spreading on the street.

"With how much more strict the law enforcement has become in the more populated areas, the lower class citizens are less inclined to call the authorities. Mainly because the officers might find that they are conducting illicit activities as well. So we will go unnoticed in that respect, though you'll need to change out of your uniform. With the lack of law enforcement, humans tend to fall into their more violent habits. We don't want to deal with you murdering someone just because they attacked you or me." Connor raked his gaze over Conrad's stark black and white Cyberlife uniform, in direct contrast to Connor's more casual street clothes that made him human. "Once we get you new clothes and find a suitable base of operations we can go out and retrieve Collin." Assuming he was still alive, Connor left that hanging in the air, not wanting to say it in case it came true. Conrad could feel the words left unsaid and pressed himself closer, his body becoming flush with Connor's.

Connor couldn't tell if the gesture was meant to comfort him or the younger android, maybe both. They were missing the final piece of themselves, he assumed Conrad was feeling it more acutely due to his lack in experience with handling emotions. So Connor raised his arms, wrapping them around the alpha to hold him close, it felt reassuring. Conrad's presence made him feel like Connor could achieve his mission without fail as long as he had the alpha there with him. They would succeed, he had to keep that thought in his mind to chase away the doubts and dark thoughts that threatened to plague him.

"If my simulation was accurate in a few things, I already know the right place to look for him. Its not much to go by, but its our only lead."

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

FIVE QUESTIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE DESIGN AND BAD ECONOMY

But working on this is not a win, in the sense that your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a sofa eating doughnuts. And they have leverage in that their decisions set the whole company moving in one direction or another. One is that you shouldn't build object-oriented programming in too deeply. What good will more code do you when you're out of business. The larger a group, the closer its average member will be to the average for the population as a whole must be giving people something they want, the more different it gets. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac.1 It was no coincidence that the great industrialists of the nineteenth century had so little formal education. Many startups go through a point a few months before they die where although they have a significant amount of money in one family's bank account, or the market wasn't ready yet, b the founders solved the wrong problem. Programming languages are how people talk to computers.

With server-based apps get released as a series of small changes. The ball you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you don't usually have to invent anything.2 Life in a zoo is easier, but it could not have grown so big so fast. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because she's shy that she hates bragging. In Web-based software you can use any language you want, there is nothing in spam-of-the-envelope calculations, this one has a high average outcome. A company big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to acquire startups will be big enough to be fairly conservative, and within the company the people in the mailroom or the personnel department work at one remove from the actual making of stuff. I think you should make users the test, just as we can become smarter, just as a goalkeeper who prevents the other team from scoring is considered to have played a perfect game. Her immense data set and x-ray vision for character.3 And historically the number of new startups being founded in 2003.

For individuals the upshot is the same: aim small. A big company is probably getting a bad deal, because his performance is dragged down by the overall lower performance of the algorithm described in A Plan for Spam I hadn't had any, and I completely agree with him. I would really love to do, at least in our own minds, we have to remember that it's an admirable thing to write great programs, even when this work doesn't translate easily into the conventional intellectual currency of research papers. It could only spread to places that already had a vigorous middle class. A big company is like high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated vegetable oil.4 Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be one. In practice, it seemed inevitable that I would eventually have to move from filtering based on single words to an approach like this. But it could be that a lot of new startups being founded in 2003. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy.

As with the original industrial revolution, some societies are going to be hard to duplicate. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters, and everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going. Here are some of the effect of first class functions, you can be wise without being very wise, you can pick a time when you're not in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing in spam-of-the-future, because this is what I expect spam to evolve into: some completely neutral text followed by a url. But ambitious programmers are better off doing their own thing and failing than going to work at a big company, then a lot of maximally interesting tokens, meaning those with probabilities far from. It will always suck to work for some existing company. Ditto at the other end of the spectrum, we'd be the first to see signs of a separation between founders and investors in the Valley. In the earliest stages of a startup, of course.

Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the difference between the two. Jessica was so important to YC, why don't more people do it? Maybe it's because you haven't made what they want.5 75%. 88, just under the threshold of. That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Except instead of being at the mercy of investors. If anything, it's more like the small man of Confucius's day, always one bad harvest or ruler away from starvation. And the culture she defined was one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties. And yet if you analyzed the contents of the average grocery store you'd probably find these four ingredients accounted for most of the things they're doing is breaking up and misspelling words to prevent filters from recognizing them. For example, though the stock market crash does seem to have regarded wisdom, learning, and intelligence largely from cultivating them. We are all richer for knowing about penicillin, because we're less likely to die from infections.

With server-based. That last sentence is the fatal one.6 If you were dropped at a random point in America today, nearly all the food around you would be bad for you. I think the single biggest problem afflicting large companies is the difficulty of assigning a value to each person's work. If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. If you're in a job that feels safe, you are thereby fairly close to measuring the contributions of individual employees. But large organizations will probably never again play the leading role they did up till the last quarter of the twentieth century.7 When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to hear about byte code, which implies to me at least that if we find more than 15 tokens that only occur in one corpus or the other, we ought to give priority to the ones that occur a lot. Two of the four spams I missed got through because they happened to use words that occur often in my legitimate email. Just write whatever you want, so if there is no way to get rich by creating wealth, as a species, is that you can do whatever he wants. When there is a natural fit between smallness and solving hard problems.

These techniques are mostly orthogonal to Bill's; an optimal solution might incorporate both. Salesmen work alone.8 Partly because I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention.9 But working on this is not an irrational fear: it really is hard to bear. And in this economy I bet they got a good deal on it.10 If you go to a new set of buildings, and do things that they think aren't good for you. Then at least you can give back the money you have left, and save every penny of your salary. So let me tell you a little about Jessica.11 Your boss is just the intermediate stage—just a shorthand—for whatever people want. A morale boost on that scale is very valuable in a startup tends to be running out of money, and now they'd have to postpone that. Usually a startup is, economically: a way of saying, I want to work a lot harder, and get paid for it.

Notes

That was a kid who had died decades ago. If an investor I don't like content is the accumulator generator benchmark are collected together on their utility function for money. In desperation people reach for the fences in our case, 20th century was also the golden age of economic inequality was really only useful for one another indirectly through the window for years while they may introduce startups they like to cluster together as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or Seattle, consider moving.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe not linearly, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go talk to mediocre ones. If early abstract paintings seem more interesting than later ones, and in a startup, but I took so long. And while we might think it was the least VC-like. SpamCop—A Spam Classification Organization Program.

But people like numbers. That makes some rich people move, and then using growth rate has to work for startups to be evidence of a stock is its future earnings, you create wealth with no environmental cost.

For example, the angel round just happened, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev people are trying to decide whether to go all the red counties. It's a lot heavier. I've been told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if we wanted to than because they actually do, but when people make investment decisions well when they talk about distribution of income, which merchants used to be able to claim retroactively I said yes.

I had a killed portraiture as a constituency. The Nineteenth-Century History of English at Indiana University Publications. This is not to need to go sell the bad groups and they unanimously said yes. Most unusual ambitions fail, most of them had been a good way to explain how you'd figure out what the US is partly a reaction to drugs.

Which is probably 99% cooperation. I said yes. In desperation people reach for the same way a restaurant is constrained in a journal. An accountant might say that YC's most successful ones.

Joe thinks one of them, would be much bigger news, in the body or header lines other than those I mark. For example, the same investor to invest at any valuation the founders don't have to talk about aspects of the next stage tend to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a word meaning how one feels when things are going well, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. Which is probably a mistake to believe is that their experience so far the only way to tell how serious potential investors and they begin by having an associate.

Globally the trend has been rewritten to suit present fashions.

See Greenspun's Tenth Rule.

Bill Yerazunis. This was made a million dollars out of a social network for x. If you wanted to invest at any valuation the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, and it has about the smaller investments you raise them.

The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of three stakes.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #zoo #NBA #solution #goalkeeper #Your #person #vision #remove #number

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spasquali · 3 years

Text

Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.

Cal Newport explains how Slack and Gmail are making us miserable — and what to do about it.Friday, March 5th, 2021

Ezra Klein

Well, I’m Ezra Klein. Welcome to “The Ezra Klein Show.”

Before we get into it, a bit of housekeeping. We are looking for an associate producer. That job is still open, but not for much longer. If you have two years of audio experience and want to work on the show, go check out the link to the job listing and show notes. But to the show today, I want to begin here with a concept that’s going to be important throughout the episode — the hyperactive hive mind. That’s the idea at the center of Cal Newport’s new book, “A World Without Email.” And it’s the idea he says at the center of how a lot of us are working and living these days. He defines the hyperactive hive mind as a workflow centered on ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools, like email and instant messenger. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but if you’re someone working in an office, maybe a remote one now, where there’s just a constant stream of digital work-like chatter, that you kind of always need to be keeping up with, but also you sense it’s distracting you from doing your work and also from seeing your family and just relaxing pretty often, that you’re in a hyperactive hive mind. And a lot of us — not all of us, but a lot of us — are in this now. I’ve been a fan of Newport’s work for years, going back to his book, “Deep Work.” Newport has been circling this idea that all of the digital wonder around us has come with a cost. We’re losing our ability to concentrate. These remarkable vistas of information that have been opened to us have also been polluted by endless distraction. And so, we’re not benefiting from any of this the way we thought we would. Instead of getting more done in less time, we feel like we have less time than ever and are never getting enough done. It’s really weird. Something is wrong here. And one reason I like Newport’s work is I think he is right on this. I think we have a lot of trouble seeing the cost of technology, at least when that technology comes with a lot of good, as the internet and digital communication, of course, does. But we have to be able to step back and look at it because the way we adopt a technology at the beginning is never going to be — never going to be — particularly when it is harnessed to firms trying to sell it all to us. It is never going to be the way we ultimately should use it. But the weakness, I would say, of Newport’s previous book — so a weakness he agrees with — is that they were about individuals. They were sometimes the equivalent of giving diet advice to somebody who lives in the chips and cookies aisle of the supermarket. There’s not a lot you can do around that much temptation, but even more so when your built environment is decided for you, when so many choices about how you have to work and what you have to be part of are already made for you. But this book is a step forward in that way. This book is about systems, and in particular, about workplaces. Newport is making a radical argument here, that companies that obsess about efficiency, that think of themselves as rational economic actors, they are utterly failing to question and experiment with their own workflows, like the fundamental nature of how they do their business. And in that, they are making their employees unhappy. They are making their products worse, and they are just contributing to an overall degradation of society. It’s a pretty stunning indictment. I’m not sure I agree with all of it. But I think there’s really something to it. As always, my email is [email protected]. Always interested to know who you’d like to see on the show next, so send me your guest suggestions. Here’s Cal Newport.

So this is a book about how the information technology revolution went wrong in the workplace. What went wrong?

Cal Newport

Well, once we had the arrival of email in the workplace, it very quickly gave rise to a really new way of organizing large groups of people to work together. It’s what I call the hyperactive hive mind. But essentially, we said, OK, now that we have low friction, low cost digital communication, we can just figure things out on the fly. We’ll plug everyone into an inbox, or later, into a Slack channel, and ad hoc unstructured back and forth messages, just figure things out with people as you need them. And that swept basically the entire knowledge sector. And I think that ended up being a disaster.

Ezra Klein

Why? What is your evidence it’s a disaster?

Cal Newport

Well, I have two main threads. So the first thread of evidence is that it makes it essentially impossible to work. And essentially, the culprit here is network switching. Human brains take a long time to switch. If you’re going to put your target of attention on one thing and then switch it to a new target, that takes a while, right? There’s biological things going on here. You have to suppress some networks. You have to amplify other networks. It takes some time. When you glance at an inbox or when you glance at a Slack channel, as is required that you do constantly, if back and forth messaging is how you organize most of your work, you begin to trigger all these network shifts, so all of these complex biological cascades initiate. And you see all these unresolved issues and things you can’t get back to. And then if you wrench your attention back to what you were trying to do, it creates this whole pile-up in your brain, which we experience as a loss of cognitive function. We also feel frustrated. We feel tired. We feel anxious. Because the human brain can’t do it. And so essentially, the hyperactive hive mind, on paper, had this really good attribute, which is it’s flexible and it’s easy and it’s cheap. You just kind of figure things out on the fly. But the biological reality is it made us really bad at doing our work. And then we have the second thread, which I think had been somewhat unexplored, which is this way of working makes us miserable. It just clashes with our fundamental human wiring to have this nonstop piling up of communication from our tribe members that we can’t keep up with. And that hits all of these deeply rooted social networks in our brain to take this type of thing seriously. No matter how much the frontal cortex tells us it’s OK, we don’t have to answer these emails right away. There’s a deeper part of our brain that’s worried. And so it makes us miserable, and it makes us terrible at work. But other than that, though, it’s been pretty good.

Ezra Klein

I want to pick up on this question of whether or not it’s making us miserable. Because one way of looking at this is that it is a triumph of workers who don’t want to work all that hard and want lots of opportunities for distraction over bosses who want them to work really hard. So Slack is just an amazingly deceptive piece of enterprise software, in my mind. I was at an organization that we didn’t have it. And then I helped bring it to that organization. And now, it’s completely clear to me that Slack makes organizations less effective. It’s very well built to help workers slack off, right? To help me slack off. I enjoy slacking off on Slack. I mean, it’s literally right there in the name. It’s called Slack. And they’ve made all these wonderful — you can put GIFs in so easily and little reaction emoji. It’s a great way to bullshit around the water cooler digitally. And so there’s one perspective on this, which is that we’re seeing a failure, and then another that we’re seeing a kind of success of people taking their time back and having more socializing at work. Why should that not be the attitude or conceptual frame I put around this?

Cal Newport

Well, no, I think you’re getting at some truth there. I had a recent New Yorker piece that was titled, “Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work,” where I was trying to really grapple with this notion that there’s a reason why Slack is popular, and there’s also a reason why we hate it. It’s serving two purposes, which kind of complicates the story. I think it’s absolutely true that one of the benefits of the hive mind is it gives you obfuscation. So say you don’t want to work as hard. Let’s say I don’t want to do as much, or I’m in a situation maybe where I can’t work as hard. There is an obfuscation you can get because it’s so ambiguous and ad hoc and on-demand that you can basically generate smokescreens by rapid responses and being on active on the Slack channels. And there’s also a social component to it. And I think those are both really interesting aspects of the hive mind. But I don’t think either justify the hive mind is the right way to work.

Ezra Klein

A point you make in the book is productivity growth across the economy is not way better today than it was before the widespread adoption of email or before the widespread adoption of Slack. One might have thought that speeding communication would make it so we could get a lot more done a lot quicker. That does not appear to be happening. What problem does interoffice communication solve, and at what point does it become too much?

Cal Newport

Well, so what Slack was trying to do — or at least, this was my argument in that former piece — is, Slack said, OK, if we’re going to use the hyperactive hive mind as our primary workflow — that is, if we’re just going to work things out on the fly with back and forth messaging, email is not that great at it. We can do it better with Slack. So when I called Slack the right tool for the wrong way to work, I mean, it’s a tool that is optimized. If we’re going to do the hive mind, this is a better tool for implementing constant chatter than email was, which is why we both love and hate it. We love it because if our organization runs on constant chatter, it does a better job as a tool of that than an inbox does with email. We hate it because this way of working has fundamental issues. But if we go back in time, what problem was email solving? I mean, my ultimate argument is that the original rise, which I document, came from the reality that having fast, but asynchronous communication was sort of a productivity silver bullet. It was an issue that rose once the rise of large offices emerged in mid century, this notion that you might have 1,000 people working in a non-industrial manner for the same company. How do they communicate? And the telephone, the interoffice telephone introduced a synchronous option, but there’s a lot of overhead to getting someone on the phone at the same time. Memos and mail carts, this gave us an asynchronous option, but they were slow. There was people involved. You had to put things on carts. It could take all day. So email was solving a really real problem. I want to do asynchronous communication. I want to do it fast and with low overhead. But once it was there in a way that was unintentional, unplanned, no one thought this was a good way to work, it spiraled us into this hyperactive hive mind, where we basically threw out any other processes or structures for organizing our work and said, why don’t we just figure it out on the fly? And there’s a lot of reasons why that happened. But what I want to underscore here is that shift was unintentional and unplanned. We live in this hive mind not because some corporate consultant said this will make us more productive. It’s actually a lot more accidental.

Ezra Klein

From an economic perspective, what you’re positing here is not just a very big market failure, but a really big failure of firm organization and management. What you’re saying is that the people in charge of these firms, certainly the people in charge of the digital structure internally at these firms, have actually failed at a very profound level. They’ve brought in these tools. These tools have gotten out of control. They’re reducing worker productivity and firm productivity. They’re reducing worker happiness and firm overall happiness. All that seems basically true to me, but then what is your explanation for why so very, very few major firms have come up with some really, really aggressively alternative way to work? If this is all working so badly, why is it spreading so ubiquitously?

Cal Newport

This was one of the big ideas I did some original reporting on for the book. We have a big explanation from this from the late management theorist, Peter Drucker, who coined the term “knowledge work” and really helped American industry in particular understand how this type of work was different than industrial work. He sort of set the trajectories in place. One of the big ideas he emphasized was autonomy. Knowledge workers, unlike industrial workers, need autonomy on how they get their work done. You cannot tell them how to work, how they organize themselves productivity. So he was really pushing autonomy. He introduced this very influential notion of management by objectives. Don’t tell me how to work, just give me clear objectives, and leave it up to me how to actually get things done. And there’s a lot of truth in that, right? I mean, he was right in the sense that you can’t tell an ad copywriter or a computer programmer, you know, how to write ad copy or how to program a computer in the way that you could go to an assembly line in a car plant, because he used to study GM, and say, OK, here’s the step-by-step process for building a steering wheel. So he was right about that. But I think it went too far. My argument is that we are so insistent on autonomy on how we execute work, we accidentally expanded that envelope to mean autonomy on how we also organize our work, how we assign our work, how we figure out who should be working on what. And so we fell into this autonomy trap where we feel as managers or entrepreneurs or people who run companies, like, look, it’s not our job to try to figure out the best way to organize work. We’ll just let individuals do that. And when you leave it entirely up to the individuals, you end up with the hyperactive hive mind because it’s the kind of the easiest, least common denominator thing, that if you have no other control, that’s where we’re going to end up. So I think we’re in a trap because we took truckers’ autonomy maybe a little bit too literally.

Ezra Klein

I want to try out an alternative explanation I knew that I’ve been thinking about. And this one comes more from the incentives of enterprise software companies like Slack or Microsoft in making Teams. Or I guess, Facebook has Blue Jeans as their Zoom competitor and so on and so forth. Which is that you might think the way productivity software, firm level productivity software, gets marketed is that you go to the people who run IT for a big firm and you show some studies about how your software will make the firm work better, and they compare that to the other people trying to sell them something and then go with you if your studies are best. But actually, particularly once you hit a critical mass of other firms using something, there’s actually pressure from employees. And the employee pressure comes from, I would enjoy this software, so I could be good. We would prefer — I remember pushing for Gmail at The Washington Post because we were using Lotus Notes at that point, or Lotus mail, whatever the Lotus level mail software was. And of course, Gmail made it easier to be on email all the time. And so, there’s a funny way in which what we think of as enterprise software is actually sold for the ones that are the real winners in the space through employee demands. But the incentives are misaligned. Then what you’re actually trying to do is win over employees, and you’re going to do that through software that’s more fun to use.

Cal Newport

That actually just underscores this interesting autonomy trap we’re in. I mean, you want to imagine a car factory, right? How is it that might be the more fun way to build the cars, right? So in other sectors, people are more process engineering focused, right? What’s the evidence? What’s the best way to do this? And in the knowledge sector, you can imagine a similar thought about how should brains collaborate, what’s the right way for brains to work, how much work should be on everyone’s plate, where should we store things, what’s the right way to communicate. Should it be back and forth messages? Should it be more synchronous meetings? You would think that we could be doing tons of thinking and engineering like that. But we don’t because we’re in this autonomy trap. We’re like, look, that’s not up for us. We put up the OKRs. You guys figure out how to work. And if you tell us you think Slack is more fun, then maybe we’ll buy Slack. But if you step back, I think the metaphorical house is on fire here. We’re at a point now where it’s completely common in a lot of knowledge ware companies that not only do you spend a lot of time doing things like email and meetings, you now spend all of your time doing that, every working hour. And actual work has to get done in these hidden second shifts that happen in the morning or happen in the evening, which creates all of these unexpected inequities. I mean, the fact that that is happening now should be alarm bells ringing, but instead, we’re like, it’s busy. It’s modern times. We’re high tech. That’s just what life is like. We have acceded to it, which I find surprising.

Ezra Klein

So there’s a thread here that I think is interesting. So you go back to more of the period you’re talking about. Well, let’s call it the early 2000s. So now you’re seeing the very sharp rise of your Google’s. Apple’s already pretty big, but you begin to see Facebook, et cetera. And you remember all this. There was a real vogue for, can you believe all these Silicon Valley firms have ping pong tables? Just like, it’s ping pong tables everywhere. And, right, Google had all of these features done on their workplace culture. And there were slides in a bunch of the offices and on-site laundry and these beautiful lunches with fancy chefs and cafeterias. Initially, this was all presented as paradise for a worker. And then, slowly, this alternative narrative began to take hold, which is, no, this is actually a quite insidious kind of trap. This is a way of making workers spend all of their time at work. It’s a way of making it so people don’t go home easily at night. It’s a way of blurring the lines between what is fun and social and community, which we normally think of as not happening in your office, and what is your office. And it’s a way of getting people to put in 10, 12-hour days. And a lot of the software that emerges out of these companies and out of this period actually seems to me to take that physical insight, that by blurring the line of fun at work, you could allow work to colonize spaces that hadn’t colonized before, and it becomes a software insight. And so then, as you say, things that look like fun at the front end, right — we can chatter with our employees all day — now begin to overwhelm things that actually would have been more fun or more restful or more fulfilling. Like, you have Slack pings hitting your phone at night when you’re supposed to be with your family, or you’re sitting with your friends, and you’re looking at your phone because you’re just so used to being in that constant communication. That the blending of work and fun, which I do think of as a distinctive work culture thing of our era, has actually been really toxic for real fun — and maybe for work, too.

Cal Newport

Well, it certainly doesn’t help. And I agree that it’s really a culture of 20 to 30 somethings living in the Bay Area during a certain period, who had emerged with this lifestyle that was entirely integrated with the digital, especially once you get post-smartphone, post-constant connectivity. And you do see that trend move into these tools. But there’s also countervailing trends. So I’ll give you a counter example. I was fascinated working on the book on this notion of extreme programming. So it’s like a workplace methodology and the guy who was telling me about it is a real zealot. His company had been bought by Google, and he had gotten disillusioned that Google wasn’t hardcore enough about his methodology. So he left to start his own lab. But if we think about extreme programming as like an extreme case study, what they do in these shops is all built around, OK, we have brains that can produce good code. If that’s really what we want to maximize, how do we do it? So there’s no email, there’s no Slack. You come in, you sit at a screen with another programmer. If you have two brains working on the same thing, you push each other, and you get more insights. But also, you take less breaks. You slack less, right? Their project leads handles all communication on their behalf. You have no inbox, you have no whatever, and they just code. And it’s so intense that they’re done by 3:00 or 4:00. And there would be no notion that you would stay there late. It would be impossible to. We work really hard, and then when we’re done, we’re done. They said when people are newly hired here, they end up having to go home and take naps for the first couple of weeks, just to adjust to the load. Now that is rightfully called extreme, but what boggles my mind is why aren’t there dozens and dozens of experiments of all these different ways of working? Clearly, you can change the way you work. When you start thinking about, OK, how do you get value out of human minds? How do you stop the human mind from burning out? How do we stop people from being miserable? There’s all of these options. And the fact that it’s so unexplored, that something like an extreme program is this weird outlier case study, to me, I think that’s very striking, right? I mean, to me, it’s a revolution waiting to happen. We’ve seen this in past intersections of technology and commerce, that there’s these long simmering revolutions, where we’re not doing things the way that would be smart. We’re doing what’s convenient. We’re doing what the momentum pushes us. We’re following inertia. And then, overnight, suddenly, we have electric motors and factories. Overnight, they don’t build cars craft method anymore. They do it the assembly line. So these tend to be non-contiguous, right, so these kind of discontinuities when we have these jumps. I just think something like this is coming for knowledge work. This constant back and forth chatter, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And so something has to change.

Ezra Klein

Let me pick up on the cars example. I love the way you tell the very oft told story of Henry Ford and the Model T and the assembly line. Because I’ve read a version of that story I don’t know how many dozen times in productivity and management and innovation books. But it often feels like there was bespoke artisanal car manufacturing, and then all of a sudden, here comes Henry Ford and the Model T. And you focus on what is happening between those two moments, right? This period when Ford is experimenting, how difficult the experimentation must have been, how frustrating it must have been, and that there are a bunch of experiments that failed. Can you talk a little bit about that, the path from one to the other?

Cal Newport

Yeah, I think it’s very, very illustrative. So, Ford, when he was first running his factory, when you have the early days, let’s say, of the Highland Park Factory, the craft method did dominate, right? So they took this bespoke method, where just some craftsmen would build a car. And the way they scaled it is they just had more teams working on more cars. They put them up on sawhorses, and you would surround it, you and five other guys. And you would build a car. And so he started experimenting. OK, this seems like it’s not that fast. And so he went through a whole series of experimentations, which I thought were really interesting once you uncovered them. They tried lots of things. Like, what if we have one guy who is the wheel guy, and he just goes from sawhorse to sawhorse and puts on the wheels? Well, what if we put the materials in the ceiling so that they can come down chutes? And then you could have it come right down to where you are without having to take on space on the floor. Well, what if we have a whole team that moves from car to car? So he was doing all of these experiments to try to figure out, is there a better way to actually take all this material, and then on the other end, have a car built? And the two things I like to emphasize is, one, the way they were building cars before was very easy and very convenient and very natural. And we actually see this story come up a lot in the history of industrial manufacturing, that when you had early factories, you built things the way that was convenient and natural because it seemed too foreboding to try to figure out something else, right? And this goes back to sort of the history of industrial manufacturing. And, two, it was a huge pain to get past that. It was all those experiments, but the assembly line was a huge pain. Once it got running, they had to hire a lot more people. They had to spend a lot more money. I’m sure no one liked the notion who was an investor in Ford. Like, you’re doing what? We’re going to double the amount of floor managers who don’t build things, but just watch things? And it would get stuck all the time. When you’re trying to figure out how to make this thing work, if the steering wheel guy is a little bit too slow, the whole assembly line would stop. So it was really inconvenient. It was a pain, and it cost more money at first. But it was 10 to 100x more productive once they figured it out, which, to me, is a good metaphor for we gravitate towards what’s easy and convenient. And it can be a pain to move to what works better at first. There is an upfront cost to figuring out, let’s say, better ways of producing things.

Ezra Klein

So you’ve been studying this over the course of your last two or three books. You’ve been circling this book, I would say. And for this book, you’ve spoken to a lot of firms that were trying to change the way they worked pretty radically. They’re the exceptions. And then I’m sure you’ve spoken to a lot of people in firms that weren’t. What is your explanation for why firms are more loath to experiment? Is it just the Peter Drucker thing at this point? Or do you see more happening in terms of the status quo bias, the lock in, the power dynamics of firms that make this kind of experimentation hard for managers to try?

Cal Newport

So there’s sort of three hypotheses on the table I was looking at. So there’s the Peter Drucker autonomy trap. There is the — it just been hard, right? Let’s call this the Henry Ford lesson, right, that it’s actually a real pain to figure out what works better. This is convenient, this is cheap. When I was interviewing Gloria Mark, she told me about how, when she was in the computer supported collaborative work scene back in the early 1990s and computer networks were new, there was all this exciting research about look at all these tools we’re going to build that are going to sit on networks, and we can access them on networks. And it’s going to make our work so much more effective and productive. And she said the whole field basically went away once email spread because it was just cheaper to buy an email server. It’s like, look, we can just do this all with file attachments and CCs and it’s fine. We don’t need it. And then the third reason would be power dynamics, right? Which is something I heard hypothesized a lot that maybe that for a boss or something, this them more power. It could be either productivity power play, like I’ll get more out of my workers. Or it could be a sort of egotistic self-regard. I like people answer me, sort of powerplays. All three hypotheses play a role. As far as I can tell, though, it’s a combination of the first two that probably play the biggest role. So, the bosses, manager, C suites, at all these levels, I think there’s this growing awareness that this is terrible. It’s a terrible way to work. Our output as a company is lower, and employees turnover and leave the workforce because it makes them miserable. So the power dynamics didn’t show up to be as important as they once suspected. But I think it’s a combination of the autonomy bias and just the fact it’s hard. The companies I document that do replace the hyperactive hive mind with more bespoke processes that reduce all this constant back and forth, it wasn’t easy to do. It’s like figuring out how to make the assembly line work. There’s going to be false starts. There’s going to be experiments. It’s going to cost more overhead. Bad things are going to happen temporarily. And you have to be willing to go through that. And that’s a big hurdle.

Ezra Klein

So one of the obvious objections to your theory here is that if this is a market failure, if most firms are running this wrong, then it should be relatively easy to correct in the sense that firms will emerge that are working off of more Cal Newportian theory of the case. And they will come to overwhelm the market because their productivity will be higher, their output will be better. They will get better employees because it’ll be more fun to work there. When I read through the book, it obviously seems some of these firms are more fun, right? So you spend some time in firms that have shorter work weeks. You have firms that have way better work-life balances. I know some of those firms, and they don’t dominate their industry. Their practices are not spreading like wildfire. And that implies to me that something is wrong somewhere in the model because if this is such an economic drag, or at least, such a drag on worker happiness, then there should be a really huge competitive advantage to the firms who have figured out a better way or who are wandering around it. What’s your theory there?

Cal Newport

I think it’s coming. There is a huge competitive advantage. It’s why I think we’re going to experience a punctuated equilibrium here. The shift is going to seem to be practically overnight when the shift does come. And a couple of reasons to believe it’s coming — one I like to emphasize that the timeline here is not unusual. I mean, how long did it take from the beginning of industrial car manufacturing to the change that was the assembly line? It was about 20 to 25 years. We’ve had email as a large presence for about 20 to 25 years. If you look at the electric dynamo, its integration into factory construction, it took about 50 years, even after we had generators who could generate electricity and we had electric motors. And clearly, the right thing to do was to put electric motors on the factory equipment, as opposed to having all these overhead cams and belts that were powered off of old steam engines. It still took 50 or 60 years until there was this moment where, OK, everything shifted over, and there was a lot of reasons about inertia and infrastructure that’s already been invested. So my argument is, you basically should hold this to me, right? So I’m making a falsifiable — this is my Karl Popper moment here. I’m saying, let’s look in five years. I think we’re going to see a big difference. Now partially what I’ve noticed is between when I started talking to people about this for my 2016 book, Deep Work, and now, there’s a notable shift in some of the CEOs I talked to. There’s a notable shift in some of the investors I talked to. This is on the radar, I should say, of these communities. Because they’re beginning to realize there might be hundreds of billions of dollars of GDP on the table, and that is a really rich pie. There’s been a lot of investment activity in the last couple of years on companies that are trying to better help extract this. In the conclusion of my book, I quote anonymously but a relatively well known CEO, who’s saying, like, this is going to be the moonshot of the next decade, is figuring out how to get past the hive mind and have much more sustainable productive ways of working. He calls it the moonshot because there is so much value there, but also it’s going to require so much energy to figure it out. So I would say five years from now, things will look different. And that’s a falsifiable hypothesis. I mean, if we’re in the same place five years from now, then maybe not. But we’re basically on track. This is a very normal timeline in technology and commerce. For a new technology comes, we do what’s easiest. We finally have this moment of punctuated equilibrium. We’re like, OK, enough is enough, and we shift to a different phase. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Ezra Klein

One of the things that I think about in the difficulty here because we’ve known each other a long time, and you know that I’m a believer in the Cal Newport oeuvre on these subjects. I care about deep work. Back when I was at Vox, we had a little deep work icon you could put on in Slack. And you’d be doing deep work, and nobody should bother you.

Cal Newport

That’s a very ironic thing you just said, by the way, a deep work icon on Slack.

Ezra Klein

Listen, it’s all ironic. I’m aware of that. One of the things that I notice in myself as a worker — and others for that matter, too, but I’ll be the example here — is that as much as I know I get more done if I don’t flick over to Twitter, if I don’t flick over to Slack or my email, and I use freedom and I cut myself off from those things when I’m trying to get things done, there’s still a big part of me that wants to. And one of the tricky parts of this is, is that it’s not one of these things that is good for us and it feels good when we do it. It’s incredibly tiring to work in a sustained, focused way without getting those little dopamine hits of distraction. And the more often you get those little hits, the more you crave them. I mean, this is part of Deep Work, that you begin to train your brain to demand these little bits of feedback. And so it becomes very hard to change the way your firm works or to even just change the way you work, not because you don’t think you should, but because you are so trained to do the other thing, right? You’ve come to expect it. Then once you do it, you kind of fall back into old patterns. I’m curious how you think about that part of it, that retraining of our own expectations and rhythms.

Cal Newport

Well, so one of the changes I’ve had in my thinking, let’s say between “Deep Work” and this book, is thinking about the individual. I think one of the issues people had — let’s say you read something like “Deep Work.” You’re like, OK, I get it. Like, concentration produces more than non-concentration. I try to spend more time in the deep work. And so then, as an individual, you should try to put more time on that. And you’re talking about how that’s very difficult. Well, that’s difficult in part because not a failure of will, you as an individual, but because it is a necessity of this underlying hyperactive hive mind workflow that this inbox is where everything’s happening. Like, there’s people who need you. Everything you’re involved in is taking place in that inbox. This back and forth messaging is how this is getting figured out and that is getting resolved and how this issue is also getting handled. And so this urge to, I need to go back and check this, I think we too often think of it as a failure of will, but it’s a failure of workflow. And it’s the reason why I think a lot of people had a hard time executing ideas of deep work. It’s the reason why I think moves to have email-free Fridays, or let’s have better norms about response times, the reason why this has failed to really calm any issues with inbox or email overload is because this is where the work happens, and when you’re away from it, it causes problems. Which is, this is my big revelation, is that we can’t solve these problems in the inbox. We have to solve these problems below the inbox. We actually have to go and take the implicit work processes that are generating all these back and forth messages and expectation of ad hoc unstructured communication, and we have to replace them with things to generate many fewer messages. We need to make the inbox a lot less interesting. I think that’s more important than trying to convince people to ignore the interesting nature of the inbox. And so, that’s something I’ve really been thinking about. Because it’s not helping to keep all of our focus on — and by our, I just mean the culture that deals with email overload — to keep all the focus on hacks and tips and how to better engage with your inbox. The problem, I think, is below.

Ezra Klein

And one of the difficulties here, too, is that there are some — advantages may not be exactly the right word, but benefits that come out of being personally engaged and sorting through the information flow. So I believe — you can tell me if I’m wrong. I believe I make an anonymous appearance in this book. And there’s this moment where you say I was talking to the editor-in-chief of a new media, a new journalism company.

Cal Newport

This is you, yes, OK.

Ezra Klein

It is me, yeah. And I was saying to him, why didn’t you just have somebody checking Twitter on behalf of your staff and telling them if anything interesting is coming. And you say, well, this unnamed journalism EIC had never thought of this before and thought, well, what if — and that’s actually not how I remember that conversation. I’m going to give you some shit about this. And so I remember the issue there, what I said, it’s true I thought about that. That’s not a lie, but is that the difficulty with having somebody else check Twitter on my behalf, is that I am doing the information processing. And only I know what I find interesting. And only I see the things in it that I will see. And even worse for journalists — and this might be distinctive to my industry, but it is a problem in my industry — Twitter is an important place where you build your own brand. And so, I think collectively, it would make sense if we’re not all herding on there and thinking the same way and talking to each other. But for any individual to leave is a little bit irrational because you deprive yourself of mindshare and the people who could give you future jobs. And in the sort of ways your peers understand you as fitting into the firmament, which is very important for the future of your career. And so this is a situation where not every but a lot of journalists I know do not like how much time they spend on Twitter. There’s a lot of talk about this health site, all of that. And people drop off and they’ll come back because to not be there feels like it has worse consequences, even though to be there is very unpleasant. So I want to hear your response to my more nuanced explanation of why journalists are on Twitter.

Cal Newport

Yeah, no, I remember you having that response, and I still don’t buy it. I think it’s — [LAUGHTER] I think Twitter is melting journalist brains. I mean —

Ezra Klein

I’m not arguing that.

Cal Newport

Yeah, it’s making journalists miserable. I still hold by my original stance. Like, there’s got to be a way that the — I mean, you mentioned it was like breaking news was important. And hearing from sources was important, so that went over to email a little bit. And that’s where I figured —

Ezra Klein

No, I don’t think — I will say I don’t think the breaking news function is that important. I think a lot of journalists will tell you it is, but I don’t agree with them on that.

Cal Newport

Right.

Ezra Klein

I think it’s actually more esoteric things one sees that can be important.

Cal Newport

Right, but at the time, I think the breaking news was a thing that — and I think we’ve in general, as a culture, I think have evolved on that because we realize like, oh, wait, we’re not getting on the ground AP reports from Twitter. We’re getting a lot of randomness and a lot of false information, too. I would still argue there’s got to be a way — I mean, this is like digital minimalism 101. So let’s say there is something about direct encounter with the esoterica of Twitter that helps sort of you gain a better zeitgeist understanding of cultural trends, which will then inform your writing. OK, let’s say we buy that premise. Minimalism would say, great. What’s the right way to get that benefit while minimizing the cost? It would probably be like, I have my Twitter hour, where I go. The thing that I think was killer for a lot of journalists is this notion of, I always am on this thing, and I’m always checking this thing. And Twitter has its own emotional issues. It has its own issues like you’ve talked about. And I heard you talk about this with Zeynep Tufekci recently on your podcast. It has idea hurting issues, but it also has the issues I talk about, which it significantly reduces your cognitive capacity. You can’t think as clearly. You feel tired. You feel anxious. The work you produce as a journalist, all of that is worse as well. When I was doing the digital minimalism promotion a couple of years ago, there was one — I’ll leave this anonymous. And it’s not you, though — I will say that. There was one interview I did with a well-known journalist. And this journalist producer admitted to me, I didn’t really have you on for the audience, I wanted the host to hear these ideas because I think this person is going insane. I have to get them off of Twitter, so.

Ezra Klein

Did it work?

Cal Newport

Oh, no. Oh, no. It got worse.

Ezra Klein

[LAUGHS] You say something, though, around this issue that I think is really wise, which is that one thing that a lot of these mediums do is that they make us all think we should be generalists. They make us all think that we should and can do everything. So something about the way Twitter does news is that it feels like you should be on top of everything. And I think actually something that I try very hard as a journalist to do is say, there are some things that I’m just not going to know that much about because I need to know a lot about the things I write on. And so, I need to let other things pass me by. But in general, you have a section of the book — this is more towards the end, but where you talk about specialization as an answer here and how one of the odd effects of hyperactive hive mind thinking is that it has cut against specialization. Could you talk a little bit about specialization, why you think we’ve lost it and what kinds of ways we could get it back?

Cal Newport

One of the claims I try to back up in the book is that when you remove the friction required to communicate with people inside your organization, both the amount and diversity of things that’s on their plate that they have to deal with explodes. Right? So now you just have many more things you have to do. You have many more, some of it administrative and some of it non-administrative. But if you just look at the sheer variety of things that the knowledge worker has on their proverbial task list — and I say proverbial because they probably don’t actually have a real task list. It probably is just all mungled in their inbox, which is its own issue. It’s huge, right? So there’s a really interesting notion from the literature on this. And it’s this idea of diminishment of intellectual specialization. And it’s a term that was coined by an economist named Peter Sassone, and he was at Georgia Tech. And he wrote this paper back in the ‘90s that I cite all the time because I think it’s just really fascinating. But he studied earlier technologies arriving. He had five companies, 20 departments within these companies, more like the personal computer, right? So this would have been the late ‘80s. So not email, but we can extrapolate from this. And what he documented happened in these companies is that these computers had time-saving, quote unquote, software, word processors and early email and these type of things. And so these companies say this is great. We can fire support staff. We don’t need a typing pool. We don’t need secretaries. We can fire support staff because now everything is kind of easy enough. The friction’s low enough that the executives or the employees themselves can just do the work. The problem was, is, all this work now shifted onto the plate, so that the people that maybe were doing five main things for the company now had 15 things on their plate, so they could get less of the original value producing work done. So they had to hire more of these higher priced employees to actually keep up with the same amount of output. And Sassone crunched the numbers and said, actually, their salary costs ended up, after all this was done, 15 percent higher. So they cut the salaries of support staff, but then they had to add more of these higher priced salaries because people were less productive, and they ended up worse off than they were before. And he called this the diminishment of intellectual specialization. I think this is something that’s just really being amplified right now in our age of the hyperactive hive mind. Every unit in your company, every vendor, every client, every other team that might need your time and attention, can just easily grab you, grab that time and attention, put more and more things on your plate. It makes everyone’s life a little bit easier in the moment. But we get so much less done of the primary things that originally produce value, is that you’re not actually getting ahead. And in the end, you’re producing less. So I think this notion that we all do a lot more, we all can do a lot more, is not necessarily compatible with trying to get the most out of people. And I’m going to real argue that we need to return to much more specialization. I do very few things.

Ezra Klein

One of my criticisms of some of your past books — and we’ve talked about this — is that they felt to me very much about the individual creator, that it felt to me sometimes like you are really creating a structure that made sense for Cal Newport, university professor, or even maybe Ezra Klein, article writer. But that there were managers in this world that were collaborative workers in this world, and it wouldn’t work for them. You have more on that in this book in a way that I find persuasive. But something you talk about here is that management has to be about more than responsiveness, and that one of the things happening with a lot of these tools is they are changing the expectations of managers. They are changing how responsive their employees expect them to be. They are changing sort of the work that management is actually able to do. And so probably degrading or at least changing the way firms are managed. Can you talk a little bit about this from the manager’s perspective?

Cal Newport

Yeah, and there’s research on this. I mean, I found this interesting study where they could look at inbox levels. Like, how much email is managers having to answer? And they could correlate this with what they call leadership activities. So the type of activities are important for getting the most out of your team, moving your team to where it needs to be, seeing issues that are coming from down the road and make sure that you’re around them, giving the support that individual team members need to thrive. All these leadership activities significantly decrease as you increase the amount of email that managers have to answer. And what these researchers documented is that as the email load increases, managers retreat into a task-oriented productivity mode. And they’re just like human network routers. Like, I’m just trying to take care of small things to come at me via email, answering questions, moving things around. And a lot of the managers I talked to when I was working on this book just have this vision of themselves as, I’m like an operator. And little questions and concerns come to me, and I try to answer them as quickly as possible. And one of the big points is, that’s not really good management. There’s some of that have to figure out how to do. Of course, questions need to be answered. But if all you’re doing is just trying to keep up with a hyperactive hive mind flow of all these ongoing conversations, the real important stuff doesn’t happen, that managers, too, need to be able to do one thing at a time, give things the attention they deserve. And that’s basically impossible if the hyperactive hive mind is the main way that your team coordinates and organizes. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Ezra Klein

So I want to ask a little bit about solutions here. And you go into sort of some granular detail on different ways different firms end up doing Trello boards and other things. But I want to talk about it in more high level. Let me start here. Let’s say you are somebody running an existing firm right now. You’re not starting something new. You have 100 employees or used to certain ways of doing things. You have all the accoutrements of modern enterprise software. You have Slack, you have Gmail. You’re an advertising firm, a media firm, whatever it might be. Where do they start implementing the ideas of this book?

Cal Newport

Well, so the big idea is, whether you name it or not, you have processes that repeatedly happen that produce the stuff that has to happen in your company. Now if you don’t have names for them, if you haven’t thought about them, you’re probably implementing most of these processes with the hyperactive hive mind. Just, let’s figure it out on the fly. So the first step is just to identify what these things are. We have a deal with client question process. We have an article production process. We have a strategizing for future business moves process, right? You name them. You see what they are. What are the things that we actually do on a repeated basis? And what I recommend is what you really want to do is, process by process, say, OK, how do we actually want to implement how this happens? And the metric that I push, it’s not like how much time is it going to take or how hard is this particular method, but to what degree can we minimize unscheduled back and forth communication? So how can we implement this particular process, like responding to client questions, producing articles, whatever it is, in a way that does not require the sort of asynchronous back and forth messaging that, in turn, will require check after check after check after check to kind of keep that ping pong ball bouncing. Once you know that what you’re looking at is processes and what you’re trying to do is reduce unscheduled back and forth messaging, it opens up endless innovations. Like, oh, there’s all sorts of different ways we might do this, right? But if you don’t have the right metrics in mind, if you’re not looking at the right target, you’re just going to get stuck looking at these overcrowded email inboxes and sending around memos about, let’s have better norms on response times, or let’s write better subject lines or something like that. You’re putting your energy into the wrong process. So that’s that process oriented thinking. Optimize, optimize one by one. Back and forth messages, that’s the killer. That’s what we want to reduce. You just do that, and you’ll begin to see, I think, almost immediate results. It reduces the pressure on the inbox, as opposed to have better organizational tactics for dealing with the inbox.

Ezra Klein

And how about if you’re somebody starting a new firm or at a new firm? If you buy the Cal Newport theory that there are huge gains to be unlocked by building a radically different culture of communication and process, how do you unlock them? How do you keep focus on that, particularly when people are going to come in, expecting it to work or the way they’ve known other places to work?

Cal Newport

It’s not easy. I mean, first, there’s a general culture that you want to try to instill, which is a culture that really thinks about tools like email are great for sending information. I’d rather send you a file with an email than a fax machine. They’re terrible for interaction. We should not be trying to collaborate or coordinate ourselves with back and forth messages. Two, you really have to separate execution from how we organize the work. Execution has to be really autonomous. You have to be very careful that you’re not stepping on the toes of creative skilled professionals about how they actually write their ad copy or how they actually write their code, that making that sacrosanct is what allows knowledge work to be much more satisfying and meaningful and allows us to avoid the drudgery that industrial work fell into. You’re putting your focus on the workflows that organize that work. What are the processes by which information moves? We make decisions. We agree on things. Where do files go? Where do we take them from? So make sure that execution is sacrosanct. It’s all of the organization around the execution that you’re trying to optimize. And then, two, lead by example. So even if it’s really convenient for you just to grab that purse and be like, OK, let me not do that. Let me try to think about these processes. And I document somewhat in the book what it’s like to try to get these things in place. They need buy-in. They have to be bottom up. Everyone involved in the process has to be involved in making it. And you have to have a culture of evolution. It’s not quite working, let’s tweak it. So put those things into place, it’s still not easy. But, again, it was a pain to build the assembly line. So at least there’s incentives to push you through that pain.

Ezra Klein

And one of the things that is a little bit counterintuitive about this book is, I think people building new things, meetings, in-person meetings, phone meetings, they have a really bad reputation. I often say to people, like, let’s try to just make this an email, which means I have a lot of emails bouncing back and forth. You have a little bit higher of an opinion about what it means to save more things for meetings than I think the dominant culture holds. So if you were to preach the value of actual meetings as opposed to having things be done through communication, how would you tell a CEO or tell a CEO to tell their employees that they should think about meetings with a little bit more affection, and email with a little bit less?

Cal Newport

Well, any time you have to make a decision or have back and forth — there’s interaction that has to occur — real time is exponentially better than asynchronous, right? It’s better to be able to just talk with you on the phone or on Zoom or in person to go back and forth. The amount of bits of information that’s able to be established in a back and forth conversation is of a different order of magnitude than when you’re in a purely linguistic medium. Like, I put some text in an email, it goes to you. Later that day, you send an email back that has some more text. That type of asynchronous communication has huge overheads, and it’s not very effective. So I’m a huge believer in real time interaction as a highly effective and efficient way to get things done, to reach decisions that do interactions. The problem with meetings people have is that they’re not coupled with well thought through processes, right? So if you look at a software development firm, where they think a lot about this type of stuff, and if it’s a software development team that’s running an agile methodology like Scrum, they will have these daily stand-up meetings. They only last 20 minutes. They fit very clearly into an overall structure of how tasks are identified, assigned, and reviewed, right? So they have these 20-minute meetings that incredibly efficiently people figure out, here’s what I did. Here’s what I’m working on. Here’s what I need from you. I need it by now. Great, we’re on the same team. Go right, right? It’s a meeting done well. That’s way more effective than try and do that over email. What happens I think in a lot of hyperactive hive mind style knowledge firms is that we throw meetings as issues as a proxy for productivity. I don’t really want to think about this. If I put a meeting on my calendar, then at least I know that has to happen. So at least I won’t forget it. I think meetings are often used because people don’t have systems where they trust themselves to remember or make progress on things. Like, well, if it’s a recurring meeting, then I do look at my calendar. They’re not tied to other processes. They’re not tried to optimize ways to get things done. So, meetings not connected to processes can make work really unbearable. I think a lot of pandemic workers have discovered that doing Zoom all day long can’t possibly be the best way to organize. But a meeting tied to a really smart process can actually save you a lot of time.

Ezra Klein

I guess a good place to come to a close. So end of the show, I always ask for a couple of different book recommendations, and let me start here. What’s a book that’s done the most to inspire your work and your explorations?

Cal Newport

Well, it probably depends on the topics that I’m reading, but when it came to these explorations of email, I was really taken by a lot of these books that were the 20th century techno determinists. So there was all this interesting philosophy of technology thinkers in the 20th century that were really trying to understand a way that if you introduce a new technology into an ecosystem, it can actually really unsettle this ecosystem in ways that are unpredictable and unintentional. And that opened up a lot for me because it got me out of this mindset of, well, if we’re all doing email, it must be because it’s helping somebody. There must be a reason why we’re doing this. It’s got to be maybe adversaries versus the good guys and what’s the battle going on. But the idea that technology itself can just have these ecological changes I think is really important. So probably Lewis Mumford’s “Technics and Civilization,” that’s an early 20th century book that really pushed those ideas. I think that’s really interesting. A lot of Neil Postman — Postman was a very famous techno determinist. I actually cite a speech from Postman at the end of the book that was influential to me. It wasn’t a book that he wrote. It was a summary of his thoughts on technology. And it’s really rich, and I put it in the citation in the book. But that’s where he made really clear this notion that technology is not additive, it’s ecological. He was like the Middle Ages plus the — once you got the printing press, it was not just the Middle Ages plus printing presses. It was an entirely different world. And that notion really shaped the way I thought about email. The arrival of email did not give us the 1990 office plus now we had email. It gave us an entirely different notion of what work meant. And so any of these writers who were writing in this vein of technological determinism were very influential. I think it comes through in a lot of my thinking.

Ezra Klein

You talk a lot about the difference between the kinds of products one creates and the hyperactive work worlds many of us exist in and the slower, more thoughtful, more deeply creative spaces of “Deep Work.” What’s a fiction book or piece of art that you think is what it looks like when “Deep Work” works, the kind of thing that you’re not going to be able to do checking Twitter every couple of minutes?

Cal Newport

Well, I mean, basically, any award caliber literary fiction has to be created in that mindset. So whatever your favorite sort of award caliber literary fiction novel is, there’s really no way to produce real insight in writing at that level without actually just having the ability to be alone with your own thoughts and observing the world, and just letting that percolate and letting that move, and trying to craft and move and work with it. I’ll say it’s not a book, it’s a video. I actually wrote an essay about a blog post about not too long ago. It was a stone carver. A young woman, I think she’s based in the — near you, actually. I think she’s she’s based in the Bay Area. And it was just this video they had put up on Vimeo that just captured what it is to carve a statue out of stone. And something about that was really affecting to me. It’s just all you do all day long, and she’s looking at the stone and she has the bust. And then it’s manipulating the material and manipulating the real world. And it’s in this warehouse, and the doors open out into some trees or something like that. And I don’t know — there was something very affecting to me about that story. But it’s someone that’s just, they are 100 percent in the world of trying to take this block of stone, and from it, make manifest some sort of intention that exists just in their mind. I mean, that’s human depth personified, and the opposite, I would say, of Slack.

Ezra Klein

So my son just came home and is crying in the background. So this final one feels apropos. What’s your favorite children’s book?

Cal Newport

When my first kid was born, my literary agent sent me a bunch of books. And there’s one that all of my kids have loved. It’s called “Andrew Henry’s Meadow.” And it’s an older book. It’s illustrated. And the premise is this young boy who builds things. It’s beautifully illustrated. And he’s not sort of — it feels like he’s not appreciated by his family, so he leaves. And all the kids follow him across the creek and through the woods and to Andrew Henry’s meadow. And they build these elaborate, beautifully illustrated houses. There’s like a castle, and there’s like a tree house. It’s all built from sort of found objects. And then the parents realize at some point that they’re gone, and they’re all panicking. And they go and they find them. And when they finally bring them back, they make a space for Andrew Henry in the basement to be able to build his contraptions. Kids love it because of the illustrations. It somehow just gets into the psyche of kids. But there’s kind of a nicer message lurking in there. I’ve always kind of liked that message of understanding what it is to drive your kids and then making room for it. So that’s my underground favorite because almost no one’s heard of it. And we’ve gone through a couple of copies now.

Ezra Klein

Cal Newport, thank you very much.

Cal Newport

Thanks, Ezra. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Ezra Klein

That is the show. Thank you for listening. I always appreciate you being here. Give us a review on whatever podcast app you’re listening on if you’re enjoying it, or send it to a friend. “The Ezra Klein Show” is a production of New York Times Opinion. It is produced by Roge Karma and Jeff Geld, fact-checked by Michelle Harris, original music by Isaac Jones, and mixing by Jeff Geld.

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