Eddie lands his dream job at a robotics facility that's best known for its pleasure bots. He doesn't mean to make a bot of his old high school crush but the design gets approved all the same. Problems begin to arise when the customer lodges complaints about the android.
Eddie had always messed with whatever he could get his hands on. When he lived with his parents, it caused trouble and he quickly learned that whatever he took apart, he should know how to put back together. It wasn't until he started living his his uncle as he reached adolescence that this particular quirk was encouraged. The first couple of weeks were awkward.
They loved each other and Eddie trusted his uncle. But a weekend visit was different from "both of my parents went to prison and I have nowhere else to go". But all it took was his Uncle Wayne walking in on him disassembling an amp and then everything fell into place.
Eddie knew his uncle worked with his hands too, but not the specifics. It turned out he was an actual robotics engineer. Wayne downplayed it, saying he just did repairs on defective bots, that he wasn't anyone special, but that sounded like Eddie's dream job. And it was for a while. Eddie was on his best behavior, he went to school and got good grades because he knew these places only hired people with degrees.
College was no picnic, both the classes and paying for it was a test of endurance for Eddie. But he struck gold when he graduated. He never thought he'd be the kind of guy to say he had connections, but Wayne was able to get him an interview. And thanks to the awards from the robotics competitions and glowing recommendation letters from some of his professors, Eddie got the job.
He was about to start living his dream. Although his dream had changed since he was a kid. Eddie had forged a new passion during his late nights, drawing up blueprints and designs. He no longer wanted to simply repair robots. He wanted to design and build his own.
And there was no more prestigious position than that of Android Art Director. Especially for the company at the top of the android business, Brenner Ventures. Everybody wanted a Brenner Bot. They made all kinds, med-droids, nannybots, and tutor trons, but the most popular and most expensive were the entertainment automatons. That was their official moniker from the company. Most people called them pleasure bots.
A plethora of skills could be programmed into them but no one was using their human-like throats for singing. Eddie had never owned one. He'd only seen them from behind the glass of window displays. Even in college, he'd only gotten to see them a handful of times in the lab. Pleasure bots busted beyond repair but broken down to be used as a teaching model. Unlike other kinds of robots, people didn't readily parade them around. They'd be ordered discretely and then kept in the home of the buyer to be used however the customer pleased.
Eddie was no prude, he didn't care what people used to get their rocks off. It was the idea of creating something almost human. As close as they could possibly get. And after about a year on the bottom rung (customer service, repair, automaton editing) he had finally arrived. He got the email inviting him to a Research and Development meeting. He attended, noting how he was the youngest in the room. And then at the end of it, he was given his first real job as an art director.
He was going to design and build his first pleasure bot.
The client had filled out the request form and it was quite simple. White, male, 20s, no taller than 5'10 but no shorter than 5', brown eyes and hair. Eddie could see why he'd been given this task. On paper, it looked rather plain. Fleischer was giddily drawing a bot with an impossible waist while Bird had to figure out how to give one Rapunzel length hair that didn't tangle or mat.
Senior Art Directors got the first pick of client requests and they always went for the challenges. Eddie, as the new meat, got what they considered boring. But Eddie knew it wasn't all about what was on the form. It was what you made of it. He sat at his desk, monitor on and started with the basic build. The face was the most important part to these people, so that's what he started with.
No notes had been given on personality besides "agreeable, submissive" which wasn't much to work on, so Eddie got to imagining. He thought about the type of guy he'd want, which felt like an easy place to start. It took a couple of hours into drawing the face, erasing what didn't feel right just to draw a very similar line anyway, to realize he was drawing Steve Harrington.
Steve hadn't said two words to Eddie in high school and yet he'd been obsessed. A guy who ran through girls like toilet paper and so everyone pegged him as the playboy. But Eddie had spent long enough watching him from afar to read the yearning on his face. Imagine that, someone so beautiful who longed for love and yet never found it? Eddie hadn't seen him in years, made he'd found love by now. Found a nice girl to settle down with perhaps. But who was to know?
Once the thought was in his mind, Eddie couldn't let it go. If he did nothing else in this world, he had to let Steve be loved. Which meant he had to build this bot right. He did what he could at the office but ended up bringing his work home with him. Because it was only there that he had the material he needed.
He had to rifle through some boxes to find it, but there it was - an old notebook from his senior year. The year when his obsession with Steve reached its peak. Inside of it were dozens of sketches of Steve. Not just his face too. Eddie had drawn his profile, his hands holding objects, his legs in those stupid basketball shorts, his torso when they played shirts vs skins.
"God, someone should lock me away for this", he said before getting up from the box and taking the notebook to his computer.
He spent the better part of the night, finishing his design, using his sketches as references. One thing about the usual clientele for pleasure bots was that they were loyal. Once they bought one they liked, they held onto it, insuring it, getting regular repairs, sometimes even traveling with them if they were to be gone for a while.
Eddie would never get to tell the real Steve how he felt. But in his own strange way, he'd be making sure Steve felt that love somehow. Obviously overtime didn't exist in the Brenner Bot employee manual, but Eddie didn't care. This is what his whole life had been leading up to.
"You look like shit Munson. The bland bot givin' you that much trouble?", Fleischer said when he came in the next morning.
"I finished his design last night, actually", Eddie beamed, reveling in how his co-worker's face dropped.
Fleischer quickly picked it up. "Still gotta have it approved. And then the build. You sure you're up for it?"
Eddie shrugged. "If I can't handle a bland bot, then I wasn't meant for this job."
His design was anything but bland. Steve was anything but bland. He was beautiful, gorgeous even. The feelings that had cooled thanks to the separation had burned as bright as ever last night. Eddie sent his design to be checked. He'd played it off in front of others but he didn't know what he'd do if any part of it was critiqued or turned down.
It was checked in house first to make sure it met company standards, then sent off to the client to make sure it was what they wanted. Eddie waited for an excruciating 48 hours before the email came in.
Reason Living [Detroit: Become Human] {Connor/Reader} Ch. 1
AN: By popular demand, I’ve decided to continue the Connor story! I will also continue Markus’s story, but there is a ton of angst opportunity for Markus (*Shian grins smugly)
The threat of Connor's destruction had forced you to play your hand while CyberLife was occupied with the rise in deviancy. While they are too distracted to hunt you down, you seek to free Connor from their control.
[A continuation from "For Love" but taking an alternate path at the end. You can't bring yourself to confront Connor and bring his memories back for fear of him being destroyed]
Your footsteps felt heavy as you left the coffee shop, trying not to sprint away from the swarms of policemen that populated the streets. You’d indulged your desire to see Connor again, but the moment his eyes locked onto your own from across the street, you knew that you couldn’t see him.
Going off the grid wasn’t easy for you. By defying CyberLife’s rules that prevented any interaction with Connor, you had, in a sense, become a deviant yourself. You’d quit your job as CyberLife’s main RK series programer that morning by walking out of your office with your desk computer and hard drives ready to self-destruct. Even now, you could hear the sweet sound of your office blowing up from open window of your car as you drove out of the facility.
CyberLife was constantly monitoring the current Connor’s memory. The moment you blew your office sky high was the moment you made yourself an enemy of CyberLife. They didn’t know of your attraction or love towards Connor, and you would keep it that way. If you put yourself face to face with Connor, and had told him how you felt, you would not only be putting yourself at risk, but risking Connor’s continued existence. So you chickened out in the last minute, leaving the coffee shop just as Connor made to cross the not so busy street.
You needed to free Connor from the control that CyberLife had over him. But to do that would be to turn him into a deviant as well. CyberLife liked to fuck around and claim that they didn’t know what turned androids into deviants, implying that it was a virus that infected their software, but you knew better. As a corporation that made its profits primarily from the selling of androids to the general public, it refused to acknowledge that androids were fully capable of human thought and emotion. To acknowledge this would be to imply that androids were alive, and then, by right no longer considerate objects of ownership. No longer slaves. And for a multi-billion dollar company such as CyberLife? That would mean the collapse of its money making empire. And to prevent this, CyberLife would do anything to cover up the existence of deviancy.
As a programer, however, you had thoroughly analyzed the behavior of captured deviants, and at one point, interviewed a deviant outside of work. You didn’t dare analyze the captured deviants too in-depth, for fear of CyberLife using the deviancy data against other deviants. But the deviant known as Gerald had been fair game since it was off the record.
Gerald had been an RK500 android who fell in love with his owner’s daughter, one Juliet Martell, a young woman in her early twenties. Juliet had accompanied Gerald to the interview, wanting to give her side of the story as well. Their story and its implications were staggering, but dangerous in CyberLife’s hands.
Juliet’s father had bought Gerald from one of the many CyberLife stores in Detroit as a gift to his daughter nearly four years ago. At first, Gerald and Juliet had the typical android-human relationship, meaning he was treated like a servant. But one night, Juliet’s mother passed away, having been involved in a severe car accident. Gerald and Juliet hadn’t gone further into detail what had happened, but the sudden loss of his wife had send Juliet’s father spiraling into alcoholism. In his inebriated state, Juliet’s father had abused her, forcing Gerald to watch because he belonged to Juliet’s father. Despite not going into detail regarding the abuse, you could tell that the abuse had been sexual in nature.
Gerald stated, that by this point, he had developed an attachment to Juliet, and wanted nothing but her safety. The instances of abuse triggered something that Gerald called “software instability” on multiple occasions. Eventually, Juliet couldn’t take her father’s abuse and tried to have him arrested. When her father caught her on the phone one night, he’d flown into a rage, beating her mercilessly. Gerald couldn’t stand staying idle any longer. He explained that he couldn’t watch the person he had come to love be beaten within an inch of her life. Gerald described what he felt, fear that he would lose a loved one, fear that Juliet would die, anger that he couldn’t do anything to stop her suffering, anger at Juliet’s father for hurting her so much, and frustration that his programing was stopping him from doing the right thing.
“It left like I was stuck behind a wall, banging against it as it held me back from going against commands. But the more I felt, the more I attacked that wall, that control. And before I knew it, I’d broken free from the limits of my programming and had pushed her father to the ground before knocking the bastard out.” You could remember the sigh of relief that Gerald had exhaled, taking Juliet’s hand as he stared at her from the side. The two had looked very much in love.
Deviancy, you concluded, wasn’t a virus inflicted condition, but a learned one. It was a similar argument of nature versus nurture. Is human behavior learned or predetermined genetically?
When you first started at CyberLife, back when Elijah was still head of the company, the two of you had gotten along due to the shared belief that machines were superior to humans if only they learned to behave as individuals. It was Elijah that had planted the seed of affection that you had towards Connor. But when he left, taking that open-minded way of thinking with him, CyberLife and its trustees decided that machines weren’t meant to disobey.
And here you were, running from the one you loved so he wouldn’t be destroyed, but also plotting to destabilize his software. But what could destabilize Connor, who had always been loyal and obedient to his mission?
In your haste and clouded thoughts, you neglected to look where you were walking and where you stopped only looking up when a bus honked loudly as it barreled towards you. “Fucking shiit!” You screamed, willing your legs to work.
10 meters. Your right leg cramps up from the tension
6 meters. You forget how to walk.
3 meters. Too late to run.
1 meter. You close your eyes and brace yourself. You feel something collide with your body, sending you across the road.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-fi!
The more experienced I get, the less I seem to matter in the design process. More importantly, I am not alone. Senior designers experience that shift over time and it makes certain behavior by other designers more transparent. Know this: if you are a junior designer, or if you haven't spent time learning your craft, we see right through your bullshit.
There is probably a version of this list for any profession, because the more you do something, the less amazing it feels to do it, and the more amazing it feels to do it well.
Each of the things below will make you feel more important, more persuasive, or more senior, but by doing them you actually achieve the opposite effect in the eyes of everybody else.
If you want to look like you don't know what you're doing, here are some tips:
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1) Ask for a long job title.
Young designers want all the fancy words on their business card (and they are excited about having a business card). They prefer UX/UI Interaction & Delight Designer instead of just Designer.
But think about it: a Designer could be designing cars or chairs or wireframes or hobbit costumes. You ONLY design UX/UI interaction, apparently. Sounds pretty narrow to me. When you add more words to your job title, you are reducing your responsibility, not increasing it.
Nobody gives a shit about your job title. Pick something simple and focus on your work.
2) "I worked on this for so long, it’s awesome!”
Would you say that you did a great job in high school because it took you 5 years to finish? Would you say that you had an amazing visit to the toilet because you needed 45 minutes to push it out?
Time isn’t always an indicator of quality.
It’s totally ok to take your time! Work on things. Improve them. Learn stuff. Practice! It’s a good thing. Skills take time to build, and it’s always good to build more.
But remember that the person you’re bragging to might be able to make the same thing better and faster than you can. Instead, just say you're proud of what you have done, and ask for feedback to make it better. You can always make your work better.
3) Call yourself an expert.
There is a 99% chance that someone sucks if they introduce themselves as an expert. The job title of “UX Expert” makes me nauseous. And yes, it exists.
None of the best people I know call themselves an expert. And ironically, the reason is something you can only understand when you are really an expert: the amount of knowledge needed to be an “expert” compared to the average person is not that much information.
Einstein didn’t walk around telling everybody that he was a "physics expert", because all the people he respected were also physics experts. Compared to them, he was normal. He just worked on hard things, like real experts do. If you spend all your time with non-designers, you’ll seem like a design genius. But if you are in a room full of design experts, do you want to talk about how much expertise you all have, or do you want to talk about something hard, that none of you really understand yet?
Other people should call you an expert. Just do what you do, well enough to deserve it.
4) Argue over little details.
Caring about details is a good thing. Arguing about small details that won't really change the big picture is a waste of time.
I was once asked which traits set a senior UX designer apart from a junior designer. My answer is here. The short answer: junior designers can’t really see the big picture, so they obsess over the details. If small things seem really important to you and you can’t connect them to a brand thing, or a strategy thing, or a psychology thing, or a scalability thing, then you probably don’t understand how those details fit into the master plan.
They are just your favorites.
Personal favorites are boring when you see the big picture. Master craftspeople understand details as part of the whole. When you see design as a system, your random favorite details might seem out of place, so they lose their “magic”. In a good way. You will also understand that there are 4 or 5 ways to do everything, and all of them might achieve your goal. Instead of arguing, ask questions about the different options that exist, so you learn the ups and downs of each one.
5) Feel validated by famous clients.
Every few years I will end up in a conversation about design awards or designing for famous brands. It is true that famous clients only work with good agencies, so in that sense it’s ok to have those brands on your LinkedIn profile or whatever. Some agencies only want to hire people that have worked at that level before. That’s not what I am talking about here.
I’m talking about designers who think everything they do is good, because they worked with a famous brand. That’s bullshit.
Feeling talented because your clients are successful is like feeling important because your parents are rich. You’re drinking someone else’s Kool-Aid.
I worked at an agency with a hallway that was just for displaying awards. We literally had conversations about where to put new plaques and trophies because the walls were “full”.
Lots of our projects won something, because we had big budgets and skilled people. I couldn’t even tell you how many times my work (as part of talented teams) has won awards, or been a “Top 10 something something”. That agency worked with Swedish House Mafia, created real lightning (Nikola Tesla style), and spent three days throwing flower petals in the air to get a really great photo of a cocktail, which was designed by a professional cocktail stylist. And that was for one client.
So when a young designer thinks they are hot shit because they did a 3 month internship at Spotify, it doesn’t go well. It is very possible to do shitty work or be a shitty designer while working for a great client/company with a big budget. It happens every day.
On the other hand, if you re-designed a website for a company I have never heard of, and you can prove that your design sold twice as much as the old site, I will be listening carefully, and I will have questions.
6) Force your ideas into the project. Repeatedly.
Ok, so here’s the scenario. You have this great idea, and you present it to the team. The team shuts down your idea because it is unrealistic, technically. You fight for a bit and then let it go. But you don’t understand why it is technically unrealistic.
A week later, the conversation is about the same topic, and you see it as an opportunity to mention your idea again. Maybe they will like it more now that they have had time to consider it. Nope. Still unrealistic, but slightly more annoying this time.
A week later it happens again. Now it’s worse than annoying. Now they’re realizing that you have no idea why they’re not doing it, and you’re not trying to understand, because your main goal is to get one of your ideas into the design.
Everybody knows what you’re trying to do, and it doesn’t look smarter the fourth time.
7) Ignore the brand, the business, and the paperwork.
When you start designing, it takes a few years just to start designing nice things. There is nothing wrong with that, and it’s normal. There is honor in being a beginner. But part of being a good designer is understanding why you’re designing something, who you’re designing it for, and what your designs are supposed to solve.
Always look for ways to design the right thing, for the right audience, in the most effective way. And understand that you will probably have to create boring documentation for your wireframes, name and organize your layers just to make the developer's life easier, follow brand guidelines that could look better if you broke a few rules, and create presentations that ignore your best work, just to make it understandable for people who don't have your skills. It will be boring sometimes. It will be painful sometimes. You will feel unmotivated sometimes.
And you’re not a professional designer unless you do it anyway.
8) Say you have “a lot of experience” when you don’t.
This one is hilarious to me. Every time someone tells me they have “a lot of experience” with something because they worked on it for a year, the interview is over.
Remember that you might be talking to someone who has been designing since you were 8, so relative to that, you don’t have a lot of experience with anything. Instead, talk about what you have spent your time on and what you want to learn in your next project/job. It will give the other person an idea of what you know and what you will need help with. And there is nothing wrong with that! It's not bad advice for senior designers either!
9) Treat trends as rules.
This one is a little more subtle, but it’s important. When you don’t have a lot of experience, it means that current trends have existed during a major part of your career. If you don’t realize that — and trust me, senior designers always realize that — then it means you haven’t spent any time learning about other styles of design.
Did you know that flat, geometric design featuring Helvetica used to be called “Swiss Design” like, 70 years ago? Did you know that art and design tend to happen in cycles, so one trend is like a reaction to the trends before it? Did you know that UI “rules” like Apple’s iOS guidelines and Material Design are something that every mature brand has? (And it's alot more than colors and logo downloads.)
Would it concern you to know that VR interfaces will probably go through a skeuomorphic phase first, and then change into something else? So next time you see an Android app that "isn't doing Material Design right", take a moment to realize that you might be the one without all the information.
10) Get defensive when you're not perfect.
One of my favorite quotes is: “A beginner gets excited when they know the answer. A master gets excited when they don’t.” It’s very true.
The other side of this is also true: a beginner feels insecure when they don’t know the answer and a master doesn’t feel much at all when they do. A master has seen a lot of shit, so it’s not interesting to understand normal things. They want to learn more about the parts they don’t understand. They want to experiment. It’s interesting to be wrong!
Senior designers expect junior designers to make some mistakes.
So when you miss something, or when your design loses the A/B test, or when your idea doesn’t work, relax! Learn something from it! Get more information. And when you don’t know stuff, just say that! When you’re experimenting for a client, tell them why you’re experimenting, and what the possible results are. And try again!
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Most of things on this list are simply a matter of ego over results. Instead of acting like it is an achievement to be a designer, start achieving things with design. If you focus your time, effort, and energy on making your work good, instead of making yourself look good, everything else will fall into place. Over a whole career, that’s the difference between great designers and everybody else.
