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just posted a dbh fanart on my main blog @divvariance so go check it out if you’re interested :)

i’m going to stop posting from this side blog and move there. i still have quite a few unfinished dbh pieces; these will be posted there when i’m ready. since it’s my main blog i will be posting other stuff too though.

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Connor's Mind Palace, CyberLife Tower, and Branding

The amazing @wake-up-lieutenant and I talk a lot about a lot of stuff, and once she said to me "hey, I think Connor's mind palace is actually a CyberLife server and it's not in his head".

And that shook me. But of course, that makes sense. No one else goes into the mind palace but Connor, who reports directly to them.

Then we started looking at more similarities. Both screenshots provided by @wake-up-lieutenant.

I was studying CyberLife's branding a little, and I noticed exactly what you see above. Both constructions are imitations of a carbon ring or Benzene. The obelisk on the top left of the Mind Palace (or CyberLife Server) is a representation of the elevator. The bottom bridge is different in both areas, the brokenness representing Connor's deviation as as walks into CyberLife. The top right bridge in the tower leads to where bought androids come out from. (That's if they're not shipped which is the role of the levels below, but I digress). Connor, when he dies and is put in a new body, essentially "respawning", most likely walks out from that exit and crosses that top right bridge. When he spawns in the garden, he spawns in the exact same area in the top right, and the player most-likely walks across that same bridge. Amanda is the statue in the middle, facing toward the rose lattice. (The patterns or paths in the tower garden don't have any meaning and is for aesthetic purposes.)

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fanart doesn’t have to mean anything sometimes it’s enough just to draw a character’s face at different angles and call it a day

refs: x x

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I wanna point out one thing. It appears that the general consensus is that manipulation is always the wrong and cold thing to do and by definition can't be motivated by genuine impulse. I often see this opinion in regards to how wrong it is for Connor to manipulate Hank there on the roof appealing to his son, as it is completely cold thing to do of him, but... it's not? Considering that the alternative is to fight him with an unfair advantage, I do believe that although manipulative this decision may not be completely selfish. Sure, fighting requires more energy, but he has no doubts about winning it otherwise. And even if he chooses to fight him and wins, he can still choose to spare him. CyberLife doesn't give a shit about whether Hank lives or not, so it's completely up to Connor to decide. And there's a part of him that doesn't want to kill him, even after fighting him he hesitates before deciding if he really should go as far as to kill him, potentially choosing to spare him. He'll explain that "it's not a part of his mission", which means that for CyberLife it's irrelevant. It's his decision.

So, considering the alternative

Is it really that wrong of Connor to utilise his friendship with Hank to manipulate him in order to make him leave unharmed instead of beating the shit out of him and potentially killing? Isn't manipulating Hank in this situation is in a way more humane and beneficial for both of them, not only Connor? Can't it be influenced by somehow genuine desire to keep this human from physical harm/potential death? I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, that's all I want to say.

Pls don't misread it as "emotional manipulation = good" that's not my point. My point is that there may be genuine underlying motivation that may or may not be pragmatic and/or selfish

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just ERRORS in your software

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this scene 🤌

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🤍

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[THREAT NEUTRALIZED]

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so i tried hankifying clancy brown…

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indulges

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mostly sketches from frames and learning connor’s face >)

  I haven’t played Detroit until now… and it was wow This game left me with deep satisfaction, emotions, and a lot of thoughts to think about.

everything will be alright

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power duo ⚡️

+ the humble origins of this painting

references are screenshots by the great @sunsetagain

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I wanna talk about Connor's HAIR

I was just rewatching The Matrix for the first time in about a decade and noticed some Very Clear style nods that Detroit: Become Human goes with for Connor.

I know fandom having become aware that Bryan Dechart has beautiful curly hair likes to project that on Connor (along with Bryan's more angular cheekbones). But I think there's was a clear and deliberate attempt to try to create in Connor a look that was somewhere midway between Neo and Agent Smith in The Matrix.

Which makes Such Thematic Sense, right? Connor functions like an Agent, hunting down aberrations in the machine world, but Cyberlife also wanted him to seem softer, more relatable, more empathic. And he becomes more human over time, so less agent-like.

It's understandable that they would look to an extremely stylish, massively iconic AI movie as one of their inspirations.

Just as Connor takes his name from both a machine and a human hero of the revolution in the Terminator movies (John Connor/Connor, T800/RK800), so we see a similar thing going on in his style references to the Matrix.

In The Matrix, style within the simulation is all sleek, and the more in tune you are with the system, the more slicked back your hair is. All the Agents have perfectly quaffed hair - to the point where they don't look real (except for Smith, as he becomes more human towards the end).

But it's not just the agents who are like this. Trinity's hair is practically dripping with product. And towards the end of the movie, as Neo starts to understand how to manipulate the Matrix, his hair is tamed, too:

But in the early parts of the movie, when he's still very much a ragged and confused human, he very noticeably has locks of hair hanging over his forehead.

And in the middle of the movie, while he's still on his journey, he's somewhere in between, and his hair basically looks almost exactly like Connor's:

It was hard to find a good shot from the side for completeness, but Connor it's really very similar, with the exception that Keanu's stray lock goes one way and Connor's the other.

And another note? The narrows ties and tie clips the Agent's wear?

Connor's tie reminds me of them a LOT. Especially given almost no one wears ties anymore even now, and most people don't in DBH either. This, and the suit jacket (even if updated) is a deliberate attempt to invoke the feel of a Matrix Agent in Connor.

And, as others have noted, he loses the tie at the end of the game, after he deviates - obviously it symbolises his freedom from bonds and literally not being 'tied' to Cyberlife anymore, but it also mirrors how Neo loses the suit and tie leaving the Matrix.

Speaking of... this outfit...

In which Connor goes to visit the deviants who are hiding out on the rusted out hulk of a ship, is not a million miles away from the outfit Neo wears on the Nebuchadnezzar:

Complete with Beanie. He only wears the beanie to lunch, so it was difficult to get a better shot as most of that is close-ups. But you can't tell me that Connor wearing a ratty grey jumper, and blue beanie and Neo wearing a ratting grey jumper and blue beanie, while each of them is in the process of visiting rebels and on a journey towards rejecting machines, is a random coincidence.

I also think they softened the angles of Connor's face (he doesn't look quite the same as Bryan Dechant in a way my brain finds a little confusing) in part to make him look a bit more like young Keanu Reeves as Neo. But that's by the by.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this very specific tour through the thematic codes of costume and hair design in Detroit: Become Human, and how it refers to The Matrix as a way of encoding meaning.

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once again mourning concept art Connor with his full suit and briefcase. it would’ve added so much to the sad pretentiousness surrounding his existence like all androids who are dressed up and allowed to play their pretend person roles but never afforded the dignity of the real thing. 

We could’ve had a really funny but heart-breaking scene where Hank, initially irritated by Connor’s blatant showing off, first develops sympathy for him because he looks inside the briefcase he’s always carrying around and it’s just. empty. 

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rk800 in action