#unintentionally maybe but he still took advantage of a power dynamic

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

X-men 97 is frustrating bc I'm really enjoying the dramatic emotional subplots right up to the point I am INFURIATED by them bc it feels like they're arguing over nothing when the clear and obvious solution is RIGHT THERE

[seiin-translations]

2.43 S1 Chapter 2.4 - Dracula and Princess Briar Rose

4. BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Previous || Index || Next

“Suemori-san.”

I was startled when my name was called. It was a calm voice that was humble but not excessively servile.

Kanno stood at a distance of about three meters from me. I was holding the net at the center line, and Kanno’s feet were above the attack line, so he was actually three-meters away. There was a clear difference in height now without even having to stand side by side to compare. I think it was a difference of six or seven centimeters. I didn’t think…it was past ten centimeters, but… When I was picturing myself next to Kanno in my head, even though he squirmed a bit uncomfortably, he didn’t apologize fearfully and meaninglessly like in our first year.

Suemori-san. I pondered the voice that called me. The last time he called me “Ibara-chan” was last September. And I feel like this was the first time he called me “Suemori-san”—we hadn’t called each other’s names once during these nine months. I wondered at what point during those blank nine months did I change from “Ibara-chan” to “Suemori-san” within Kanno.

“About the ballgame tournament, I received the list of who’s in each event for our club, so I have been told by my senpais to consult with Suemori-san and decide the allocation of duties, but…”

He’s still speaking with formal language mixed in, even to someone in his own grade, I thought, and while feeling something that was like nostalgia and sadness, I said, “It’s fine. If that’s the case, let’s do it on our way home today.”

I tried my best to respond in a natural manner, trying to be somewhat distant for the three meters of space Kanno had opened between us, but also not too blunt. I’ll be in your care, Kanno said, bending his long back and quickly bowing his head.

I watched his back as he left, him who was dressed unseasonably as ever with his long T-shirt and long pants, even though it was June. Kanno still participated in the girls’ team practice for half of the week, but ever since they witnessed his seizure on the outside court, no members made fun of him anymore. On the contrary, there was a mood of “Kanno-kun is working so hard even though it’s hard on his body,” and everyone became weirdly nice to him. Even now, when he ran over to the girl who was drawing the net strings to the side of the pole and said “I will do it” as he reached out his hand, he was politely refused with “It’s fine. Akiton should sit down” and ended up having nothing to do. Akiton was Kanno’s new nickname. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard Dracky at all lately.

From where I was looking, I thought that seemed pretty awkward, but anyways, my role as Kanno’s (unwilling) knight was no longer necessary.

I noticed that there was a girl looking at us from the entrance of the gym. It was Ayano, holding a basket lined with drink bottles.

“…I feel like I haven’t seen Ibara-chan and Akiton talking in a long time.”

“Oh, we’re just getting in touch about clerical work, for the ballgame tournament. I’m helping the boys this year.”

I felt like I was being glared at, so I unintentionally made an excuse. It wasn’t even an excuse, it really was nothing more than talk about work. “You don’t have to worry about that,” Ayano said, her lips tapering into a pout and she turned away.

“No, no, I’m not worrying about it at all…”

Nonetheless, my behavior towards Ayano was still mostly filled with a sense of guilt. Ayano might like Kanno…looking at her actions during that incident last year, even I, who was completely unfamiliar with matters of love, could tell that. I wondered if she confessed to him…I didn’t know what happened after that incident, since my conversations with Ayano had decreased considerably since then. I did the worst possible thing—disparaging a girl’s body in front of the boy she liked.

“It’s thanks to Ibara-chan that I lost weight, so I’m really not thinking anything right now…”

Ayano muttered in a slightly soft voice while still turning away.

That’s right. Ayano, who had been chubby, had slimmed down quite a lot since then and, taking advantage of her bust and hips which had been ample by nature, now attained well-balanced proportions. It seemed that my words triggered her to go on a diet. I was surprised at the unexpected willpower that lay sleeping within Ayano. That wasn’t at all. Maybe because her body was lighter, her play became agile and nimble, and she became a bench member in her second year. Since she didn’t have the stature, her spike power was inferior, but she was praised for her thorough and careful defense. What I hated so much and concluded that a strong player didn’t need, Ayano became stronger without throwing it away.

On the other hand, as for me—as evidenced by the fact that I was dispatched as a coordinator with the boys’ team for the ballgame tournament, I had been languishing without being selected for the bench. In middle school, if I worked hard, the results of my hard work came naturally to me, but since I became a high schooler, I kept getting betrayed by myself.

I loved volleyball. I wanted to be better than everyone else. I was willing to cut away anything that would hinder me from that. As a result, I ended up losing my friendship with Ayano, the reverence from Kanno, and my pride as a volleyball ace that should have been everything to me.

“Yeah…now I’ve become the most shameful and useless thing.”

I let out a weak self-deprecatory remark. “Ibara-chan…” Ayano turned her face towards me. The top of her nose was wrinkled, and she looked she was about to cry.

“Ibara-chan, you’re not going to quit the team, are you…?”

I didn’t answer her, only giving a forced smile.

I had actually received a club withdrawal form. The coordinator thing this time made it doubly sure for me, and I had made up my mind. I intended to write my name on it and hand it in after the ballgame tournament work was done, and leave volleyball. I intended to seriously quit it.

——Until the day before yesterday.

The day before yesterday, when I saw the boys’ practice on the outside court——.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

The ball that rose high up into the blue sky shone in the afternoon sunlight, burning my eyes. The one who took off from behind the attack line and rushed in like a bullet was that first-year, Kuroba Yuni.

That was a back-row attack? That jump distance was unbelievable. He jumped in with his whole body all the way to the net, as though he was attacking from the front row. His figure, arched in midair, seemed stationary, as though it was a photo. Such a long flight duration. His arm flexed like a spring that had stored up energy and returned it all at once, and he punched in the ball.

However, in the next moment there was a cloud of dust rising on Kuroba’s side of the court. “Daaah—” Kuroba groaned in frustration as he sank down and landed. Even I, who should have been calmly watching on the courtside, lost sight of the ball’s trajectory for an instant, but Aoki-senpai, who had jumped for a commit block, covered it with his long arms and shot down the bullet spike.

Amazing…just amazing. That was so cool. I couldn’t suppress the long-forgotten thumping of my heart. Each moment of that play was bold and so fast that I almost couldn’t follow it with my eyes. Just when I thought the ball had disappeared from my view, a dust cloud leapt up from the ground with a dynamic sound, like something exploding. I squinted many times at the dazzling aerial battle that unfolded while causing grains of light to burst into the air.

For me, the most beautiful sport on Earth was there.

There was a world that I couldn’t stop longing for, so much that it was painful.

For the first time since I reaped what I sow and lost many things, I thought that I did love volleyball after all, and I didn’t want to quit. Perhaps now, I could say this with the purest feelings I had since I met this sport.

I loved volleyball.

***

It took twenty-five minutes riding on a local line that was only composed of two cars to go from Nanafu to Monshiro. Bench seats against the windows were only placed on both sides of each door, and the rest were box seats with seats for two facing each other. Kanno and I occupied one of those seats, and we sat shallowly on them with our knees facing each other.

“…Even assuming we can manage with the staff for the first and second games, the problem starts from the third game and after. When Team C’s match starts, the team members will pack the court, and we’ll have to get the members who went out to basketball and futsal back immediately…”

“I think we’ll definitely not have enough staff at some point.”

“We’ll have to adjust the games so we’ll have enough. We’ll move the fourth game of Team E versus Team F over here, and the sixth game with Team D versus Team F…”

“Oda-senpai is in Team F, so I think it’ll work out well.”

“Oh, I see.”

While we were humming and hawing, at a loss, the two of us wrote on both sides of the notebook that was spread out on our laps. The notes were becoming unreadable due to the flood of arrows, boxes, strikethroughs, and desperate-looking messy lines.  

The boys’ volleyball team had just eight members. From that, we would send out four people as staff members for each game, and there were those who took part in each event as competitors apart from that, so it would be impossible to run the boys’ volleyball division without the full rotation of eight people on a meticulously calculated time schedule. A lunch break was out of the question, and we might not even be able to give them a bathroom break. I mean, even if you rotate them at full speed, it was bound to break down somewhere, right?

Looking down at the messy notebook, I got a headache. Ah, I wanted to open the window and just throw it outside.

Around seven p.m., there was still a thin light outside the window. Come to think of it, summer solstice was approaching, so this was the time of the year with the longest daylight. After passing through the cities of Nanafu and Suzumu, the two-carriage train was moving a slow pace through the countryside wrapped in a warm, dim light. Since the rice planting was just finished in May, there were still only green seedlings planted in the fields. The water surface limitlessly reflected the distant mountains.

Every time the car swayed a little too much, I felt ticklish from the rubbing of my kneecap against Kanno’s kneecap beneath his spread-out notebook. I was tempted to retract my leg, but it felt somewhat like a waste of time to do so.

“We both got some irritating work forced on us, huh.”

Though I was grumbling, that was why we didn’t have to finish talking about work for the time being. However, Monshiro Station was already coming up soon. Usually, I slept for the twenty-five-minute ride when I could sit down, but each minute and second felt strangely precious today.

I curled my back and dropped my gaze to the notebook. Kanno also looked down at the same notebook from above my head. I had my toes standing up, and Kanno’s heels were on the floor. The fact that the notebook was kept level meant that the length below our knees was that much different. He just kept shooting up.

He’s got an awfully big lead on me, I thought once again, but strangely, the jealousy and hatred and uneasiness and chaotic feelings I had in my first year that made my heart hopelessly ugly, did not appear anymore. I wonder if I matured a step…that also felt wrong, and I was quite confused about myself.

“I don’t really think it’s irritating. I’m having fun right now.”

I heard a whisper above my head. My heart leapt at the word “fun,” but,

“I only play with the guys half of the time, and I can’t help much with setting up or cleanup, so…I’m glad I’m able to help out with this kind of work, because it makes me feel like I’m doing club activities with everyone else. The senpais didn’t say anything about that, but I think they knew that and gave me this job.”

“I guess you’re more comfortable in the boys’ team, huh?”

I didn’t mean that sarcastically, but it must have sounded like I was, because Kanno flinched and his face tightened. It seemed that he still hadn’t fixed his habit of peeking at my expression.

“The senpais on the boys’ team seem like good people. The girls’ team has a strange atmosphere, and you can’t always go all out, can you? I know you’re holding back in the intra-team games.”

“Well…if I go all out, I’ll blow the girls away.”

In the past, he might have put himself down and immediately apologized with a “I’m sorry,” but he pouted slightly as he plainly affirmed that. It was as if something like the core of self-confidence had taken root within Kanno, and I felt relieved, but at the same time, I felt somewhat sad for some reason.

Even before I realized it, Kanno himself must have been aware that he was starting to outstrip the girls in terms of strength and was out of place among them. And that wasn’t something that could be obtained “without much effort, just by the good luck of being born a boy,” like I had accused him of before.

I happened to see Kanno in his training wear in my neighborhood last year on an early autumn night. He was jogging and entered the park near the middle school, and unconsciously concealing my presence, I watched him do strength training on the bars and seesaw until the end.

Kanno somewhat looked like a normal athletic boy during the night, not wearing his hood completely over his head and frightened by the threat of the sun like he was during the day. It was then that I learned about the side of Kanno who worked harder than others because of his physical disability. No, I was supposed to know that a long time ago. He was the target of unreasonable teasing, and there was no reason for him to go out of his way to stay in the girls’ team to the point of feeling uncomfortable, but he worked harder than anyone even in basic training that was nothing but painful, and never missed a day of practice.

Because, like me, he loved volleyball—he told me that I was the one who taught him the fun of volleyball. Maybe that was the only thing I could be proud of.

He was probably still training at night on his own. He looked stronger, with another faint layer of muscle on his neck and arms. The nails on his fingers gripping his mechanical pencil were deeply trimmed. His fingertips were a bit chapped, but it was an indoor sport, so the underside of his nails wouldn’t be darkened with dirt. His protruding joints was due to the repeated spraining of his fingers. His long fingers were for catching the ball and accurately handling it, and his large palms were for powerfully driving in spikes. The hands that I thought were beautiful were characteristic of male volleyball players.

Kanno had become independent of the “shadows” that had been clinging to my back and only stirred up my frustration and impatience, and after taking some distance and time where I was able to calm down, I was feeling a bit nervous right now, coming in contact with him like this again.

I knew what I was saying was too convenient at this point. There was no way the selfishness of trying to get back something you pushed away but wanted later could be allowed unchallenged. You had to take responsibility for what you have done.

We were approaching Monshiro Station. I closed the notebook and put it in my bag.

“Aaah, we didn’t finish it. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

I secretly cherished the feeling of our kneecaps brushing up against each other, but I quickly stood up and carried my schoolbag and enamel bag with me. It was a one-man operation train, so if you were too slow, it was easy to miss your stop.

“…Kanno?”

Right when I stepped into the aisle, I looked back suspiciously. Kanno hadn’t even attempted to stand up, his behind still stuck to his seat.

“I’m riding to the next station, don’t worry. I can’t walk you home, but be careful.”

“Hah? Why?”

“Um…well…I can’t get up. My knees have no strength…”

“Huh…what’s that about, did you get hurt? You want me to escort you home?”

Worried, I brought my face closer. “N-no, you’re mistaken,” Kanno pulled down the hood of his hoodie and turned his face to the window.

“When I was talking to Iba-Suemori-san today, I was actually really nervous… I summoned up all of my strength to call out to you, and once I did, I surprisingly felt like I could talk to you normally as a friend, so I was so relieved that my muscles went limp…Oh, I know that I already got rejected, so I’m really not thinking about anything more than that now, but it’s hard not being able to talk to each other at all during practice…”

Kanno’s pale face, hidden by the hood, turned red like the old days, and he talked quickly like he was feeling restless. While I was standing stock-still in the middle of the aisle, Monshiro Station’s platform slowly slid into the train window. The scenery stopped along with the vibration of being pulled sideways, and there was the sound of the doors whooshing open. There weren’t a lot of passengers, but some still passed by here and there. No new passengers got on from the platform. The departure bell immediately started ringing. “You have to get off,” Kanno urged, his face still hidden.

My toes hesitated for an instant over whether to go or not, but ultimately I placed my bags on the seats again and sat back down in front of Kanno.

“Wait, Iba…Suemori-san?”

Kanno raised his panicked face.

“It’s perfect. We still haven’t finished the arrangements, so let’s just do it now.”

“Yes, but…”

“And it’s a bit fun to go all the way to the final stop and loop back, so how about it?”

I spread the notebook on top of our laps without giving Kanno a chance to object. Looking like he found it hard to accept, Kanno chewed on the tip of his lip, but…

“Thank you…”

In the end, he gave in and said in a limp voice.

I was slightly discouraged to find out that Kanno had already finished drawing a line between us within him, but I was glad he said it clearly. I shouldn’t be forgiven by Kanno, and I didn’t want to be forgiven by him. I was sure that I would live with this regret for the rest of my life.

The bell stopped ringing, and the train started to move. The view of the platform fell out of sight.

I wasn’t saying to whom, but…if I had to say it, I made a promise with myself. When we got off this train and went our own ways home, I would put a lid on these feelings once and for all. So, just a little bit more. I was ready to carry a lifetime’s worth of regret, so wasn’t it okay for me to draw this out…for just a few more minutes?

***

“Um, it’s hard to say this, but…if we take this train to the end of the line, there are no more trains available to take us back…to Monshiro.”

Kanno brought that up when the curtain of night had completely fallen outside the window.

“What, why didn’t you say that earlier!? What’re we gonna do!”

“We can walk home or something. But it’ll be the middle of the night by the time we get there. I’m fine with nights so I don’t mind it at all. Suemori-san, I’ll carry you on my back if you’re tired.”

Considering that he said it was hard to say it, Kanno had a slightly happy expression on his face as he said that, and my resolve immediately wavered.

Previous || Index || Next

[script-a-world]

(1/3) Do you have any resources or advice for writing about a ruler who has multiple wives? I have an idea for a book where the MCs father married the daughters of the kings of three neighboring kingdoms with the idea that while the heir might not be of the blood of all of them if they are raised together with their half blood siblings and by their step-mothers they will view all four kingdoms as being home. In addition, the first three children besides the main heir will, regardless of gender

(2/3) will either be heir to their mother's respective kingdoms if there isn't already one or will be added to the line of succession and given advisory roles to their oldest sibling. Basically, regardless of which child sits on the main throne their will have strong ties to the neighboring kingdoms creating a coalition through blood as well as treaties. The wives will have equal power to the king but, I'm more than a bit concerned that no matter how I right them the very act of making the three(3/3) queens sister wives will make the whole thing extremely misogynistic or at the very least I will be accused of insulting middle eastern/Indian culture by either unintentionally using racist/bigoted tropes or just being plain ignorant about the subject. I have tried looking for information of the subject but, I've had a hard time finding information that isn't written with a western bias or isn't flat out porn so any help you guys can give me would be much appreciated.

Werew

I’m sorry it took so long you get to your question, nonnie! As it’s a delicate subject, I wanted to attempt to do it justice, and it took a little longer than most!

Disclaimer: I am not polyamorous, Have only some background knowledge about this, and I am in no way an authority. Nonetheless, here are some thoughts that I have about this situation. Though the arrangement sounds like a great idea to promote peace and prosperity between the kingdoms, it also, at face value, dings all my 'implausible' alarms. In order for this situation to have arisen peacefully, it seems like the kingdoms will need to be such close friends/neighbors/allies that they are all chill with this arrangement and its ability to bring them closer together politically... and even the possibility that this single, highly powerful family that has been formed will one day just straight up decide to amalgamate the kingdoms. Most nations are separate from their neighbors because there are inherent cultural, ideological, etc differences between them, and even if they like their neighbors, most sovereign nations are not going to be chill with the possibility of one day being dissolved into another nation. I'm not saying that the situation is impossible, but I do think that you need to answer the following questions in order to make it seem plausible:What event or events have made these nations so friendly? Were they once part of a singular entity, and if so, do they still share most of the same culture? If they're culturally close enough to potentially tolerate a merger, why aren't they already one nation? If they were ever one, why did they split? Is there an outside force for them to unite against that makes their differences seem minor? Do they still have quibbles in spite of their friendly status?Or, if the above questions don't seem like the situation that you want:What events lead to the king with the three wives being in his position of greater power? Were the other kingdoms forced to cooperate with this arrangement? Are there forces threatening to tear it apart, or forces threatening them all if they don't somehow force themselves to work together? What are the opinions about this among the other three nations' courts, and how do they differ from one another?Basically, what I'm getting at is this: I don't see this marital situation as being entirely impossible, but it doesn't sound to me like something that a bunch of kingdoms are just going to arbitrarily agree to unless there are some major forces at play that make this alliance more appealing than the alternatives. Though simply marrying off some daughters to the same guy won't immediately grant him a significant amount of power, because of the potential for his children to inherit other thrones, there's a chance down the road that one or more of these kingdoms could essentially forfeit their sovereignty by agreeing to this. Generally, different nations have their own interests to look after, and even if none of those interests are cruel, or corrupt, or overly greedy, they are still going to conflict in some ways just because each kingdom's situation (resources, population, requirements, etc) is going to be different. It is normally in a nation's interest to keep sovereignty so that nothing in their borders can be controlled by an outside force and they cannot be forced into a disadvantageous situation.For this reason, if I were to read this book, I would be disappointed if there wasn't any tension created by this marital situation, or by the reasons for it in the first place.Now, on to the more personal situation of the royal family: again, I don't think it's impossible for this to be a happy, advantageous marriage for all of them, I just think that it's implausible and that, like with the political situation, you're going to have to do a little work in order to make it believable.

This is definitely a political marriage, and it’s up to you whether you want it to remain strictly political or include some degree of romance between the king and the wives.

Having multiple people involved in a romantic relationship, in a political marriage, or in a marriage that is some of both is going to require a lot of careful thought, and there are going to be a lot of dynamics at play--and this complexity will only increase as the number of children increases. First of all, it seems unlikely that the king and all of his wives consider this to be the best possible situation for them personally and romantically. Maybe one or more of them is happiest in a polya relationship, but maybe one or more of them would 100% prefer a monogamous relationship. Maybe they don't all love each other romantically, but cooperate in a friendly manner for the sake of the children and their various kingdoms.

Also, think about how they solve conflicts between themselves, whether personal or political. Having a ruling duo can result in the rulers being on opposite sides of a political issue, or even just at odds because of a fight they’ve had recently. The opportunities for conflict multiply when there are four people involved.

What I'm getting at is something like this: if I read this book and all three wives saw each other as friends/sisters, each loved the king, he loved them all back, and they all lived happy, carefree lives... I would probably throw the book across the room. I think that it is unlikely that all of the wives will be in this for the romance, definitely not above all. Maybe they all get along, all live pretty happily, and all see each other as family... but keep in mind that their different personalities (reinforced by different cultural backgrounds) will mean that between any two members of this marriage, there will be a completely unique dynamic. I would be much happier if, instead of the above example, any number of these situations was the case:

The king had a favorite or at least a certain amount of preference between his wives.

Two or more of the wives had romantic and/or sexual attachments to each other

At least one dynamic between them is purely political; maybe one wife has no romantic feelings for the husband but agreed to the marriage for other reasons

One or more of these people are unhappy about some aspect of their lives pertaining to the marriage.

This is not to say that I don't think that happiness is possible among these four people; I just don't think that it will be easy and natural, I don’t think they will all have the same views about their relationship, and I don't think it's likely that they were all 100% down for this marriage before it happened. Because of the political nature of this marriage, one or more of them might not have had a choice. One or more of them might have had a choice, but their decision was based entirely on political factors or some other logical reason rather than an emotional one.Keep in mind that different people will want different things in life. One wife might be uninterested in being in power, but is happy when she and her children are well taken care of. One wife might be interested in nothing other than running the country, and her main reason for having children is to further her own position. One might be in love with the king. One might be in love with one of the other wives. One might be aromantic or asexual or both, and is happy in a loveless marriage because it provides other things in life. Any of the things I just listed could also apply to the king instead.

As for whether this is inherently misogynistic... my honest answer would have to be “I’m not sure.” With your situation as it stands, there is no getting around the fact that the king holds more power than his wives, but I think that with some context, you can reduce the implications of this. If you mention a historical example of a queen having power and having multiple spouses/consorts (male or female) to show that this situation is not purely patriarchal, that might have the effect that you’re wanting. I would suggest changing one or more of the wives into a husband instead--but if that person is cis, that would remove their ability to have biological children and might get in the way of the point of the marriage in the first place. Having a trans man as one of the king’s spouses might have the effect you’re looking for, but I am honestly not sure whether having a trans character in that situation would be invalidating of that person’s identity; I suspect it would depend heavily on how you present it.

I highly recommend going to @scriptlgbt with your question and further questions you may have about representation; even if you choose not to make any of the possible changes that I have listed, your original situation at least has things in common with polyamorous relationships, which they are able to discuss with a lot more knowledge than I am.

Also, keep in mind that there’s nothing wrong with having misogynistic elements and situations in your story, as long as you address them as such. Having a perfect situation can make your story less interesting than some good conflict and tension over inherent issues present in the system. There is a difference between having the characters hold certain beliefs, and condoning them as the author. Depending on what POV you write from and your style, it can be fairly easy to make it clear that the characters’ views are not correct.

@scripttorture had some more background knowledge on this subject than I did, and had the following suggestions: “I think that jumping just to modern polya relationships might not........cover it exactly. I know that multiple partners was a big thing in Western Africa, China and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire would probably be easiest to find stuff on and the West African stuff I know most about is errrrrrrrr complicated in that the King could have several thousand 'wives' most of whom were basically just the female branch of the army. Reading through the question in its entirety it actually screams 'Ghana' to me, which had both polygamy and matrilineal inheritance. I can't think of a book title off the top of my head but Yaa Asantewaa the Queen Mother who led the Ashanti army against the British might be a good person to look up.”

I'm sorry for the length of this reply and the rambliness of it, but I hope that my reasoning makes sense and helps you to write your story a little better!

[wolfliving]

Jeff Bezos being Jeff Bezos

*He’s the Duke of the Stacks at the moment, so maybe it’s good to hear him out.

EX-99.1 2 d373368dex991.htm EX-99.1

Exhibit 99.1

“Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?”

That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

To be sure, this kind of decline would happen in extreme slow motion. An established company might harvest Day 2 for decades, but the final result would still come.

I’m interested in the question, how do you fend off Day 2? What are the techniques and tactics? How do you keep the vitality of Day 1, even inside a large organization?

Such a question can’t have a simple answer. There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don’t know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here’s a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making.

True Customer Obsession

There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.

Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

Resist Proxies

As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.

A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second.

Another example: market research and customer surveys can become proxies for customers – something that’s especially dangerous when you’re inventing and designing products. “Fifty-five percent of beta testers report being satisfied with this feature. That is up from 47% in the first survey.” That’s hard to interpret and could unintentionally mislead.

Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.

I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. Then, beta testing and research can help you find your blind spots. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey.

Embrace External Trends

The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.

These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organizations to embrace. We’re in the middle of an obvious one right now: machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Over the past decades computers have broadly automated tasks that programmers could describe with clear rules and algorithms. Modern machine learning techniques now allow us to do the same for tasks where describing the precise rules is much harder.

At Amazon, we’ve been engaged in the practical application of machine learning for many years now. Some of this work is highly visible: our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones; the Amazon Go convenience store that uses machine vision to eliminate checkout lines; and Alexa,1 our cloud-based AI assistant. (We still struggle to keep Echo in stock, despite our best efforts. A high-quality problem, but a problem. We’re working on it.)

But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface. Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type – quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.

Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques.

Using our pre-packaged versions of popular deep learning frameworks running on P2 compute instances (optimized for this workload), customers are already developing powerful systems ranging everywhere from early disease detection to increasing crop yields. And we’ve also made Amazon’s higher level services available in a convenient form. Amazon Lex (what’s inside Alexa), Amazon Polly, and Amazon Rekognition remove the heavy lifting from natural language understanding, speech generation, and image analysis. They can be accessed with simple API calls – no machine learning expertise required. Watch this space. Much more to come.

High-Velocity Decision Making

Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations. The senior team at Amazon is determined to keep our decision-making velocity high. Speed matters in business – plus a high-velocity decision making environment is more fun too. We don’t know all the answers, but here are some thoughts.

First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more detail in last year’s letter.

1  For something amusing, try asking, “Alexa, what is sixty factorial?”

Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.

Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!

Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.

I’ve seen many examples of sincere misalignment at Amazon over the years. When we decided to invite third party sellers to compete directly against us on our own product detail pages – that was a big one. Many smart, well-intentioned Amazonians were simply not at all aligned with the direction. The big decision set up hundreds of smaller decisions, many of which needed to be escalated to the senior team.

“You’ve worn me down” is an awful decision-making process. It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead – it’s better.

So, have you settled only for decision quality, or are you mindful of decision velocity too? Are the world’s trends tailwinds for you? Are you falling prey to proxies, or do they serve you? And most important of all, are you delighting customers? We can have the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one. But we have to choose it.

A huge thank you to each and every customer for allowing us to serve you, to our shareowners for your support, and to Amazonians everywhere for your hard work, your ingenuity, and your passion.

As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. It remains Day 1.

Sincerely,

Jeff

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.