#detroit: become human spoilers

[mataglap]

of all the plot holes in Detroit: Become Human, one bothers me the most. 

how did Simon escape Stratford Tower???

my imagination has thrown in the towel.

[enthyrea]

a jayvik dbh au that has been on my mind for a while, really interested with the idea of viktor being the one to pull the "reanimate ur partner from the dead" shtick

aka, oopsie the android you created because you couldn't get over the death of your partner actually possesses a will to live and shatters your view of the line between humanity and machinery!!

[starryeyedstray]

just a short fic heavily inspired by this post about hank causing connor to deviate (but not in the way you expect) by @goodoldfashionedengineer

The RK800 was built to withstand the pressures of high-stakes situations. From hostage negotiations to interrogations to gun fights. It was stress tested against any danger one could expect to encounter in police work (and hunting deviants). What it was not tested against was uncooperative and unprofessional alcoholics.

Apprehending them? Yes. Partnering with them for a full investigation? No.

But Connor was equipped with social programming meant to adapt to human unpredictability, and it needed access to crime scenes so it would adapt. If adapting meant going to five separate bars to find said human and buying him a drink to move him along, then so be it. It was the middle of the night. It was not outside expectation for a human to be out drinking at this time. Even if they were on call.

But Hank Anderson was an officer of the law and here he was breaking the law by driving under the influence. Connor was perfectly capable of driving, but the lieutenant insisted that he wasn't going to let plastic drive his car. A thoroughly irrational decision. But Connor wasn't a cop so it wasn't going to stop him from taking it to the crime scene it needed access to.

The investigation and capturing of the deviant went smoothly. Though the lieutenant calling Connor's evidence-based conclusion about what transpired at the crime scene a "theory" that was "not totally ridiculous" was… uncalled for. The ensuing interrogation went perfectly though the only credit Connor could afford to give to his "partner" was in permissing him to interrogate the deviant. Lieutenant Anderson had yet to proven his worth as anything more than an access pass to crime scenes.

And now, it was past noon the next day. The lieutenant was still nowhere to be seen at his supposed place of work. Connor wouldn't put it past the man to spend more time at bars than at the precinct. It was unsurprised to see the anti-android sentiments on Anderson's desk. Leave it to someone as ineffective and unpunctual as this particular human to not understand the benefits of employing an efficient machine. When Lieutenant Anderson finally arrived, Connor was also unsurprised when Captain Fowler assigned them as official partners for all deviant investigations (Cyberlife had debriefed it about this already). What did surprise Connor was how a lieutenant could speak to their police captain like that with virtually no repercussions. Humans were certainly emotional beings and that seemed to stunt their logical reasoning. But Connor said it would adapt, so it would adapt. Though it realized playing nice was getting nowhere when the lieutenant refused to do his job and investigate the deviant cases. Since being professional and understanding wasn't working, Connor decided that being aggressive might be a better approach...

Connor will admit that it may have made a slight miscalculation. Its solution for being a bit more forceful with its words only irritated the lieutenant more and caused him to threaten Connor before storming off to get lunch. Getting upset, Connor could grant him that. But going to lunch now? Literally less than 30 minutes have passed since the lieutenant had arrived at work, and he was taking a lunch break? Now?

The frankly displeased RK800 was now standing in front of a food truck with an expired health inspection score watching Lieutenant Anderson order a meal with an obscene amount of calories while placing illegal gambling bets with a man with a criminal record.

This was too much.

Connor was not going to waste time that could be spent investigating here. The android pivoted on its heel and began walking down the street. But Connor's operating system stopped it, helpfully reminding Connor in big red wall of text that its current mission was to RECONCILE WITH LT. ANDERSON.

Cyberlife wanted to it to reconcile? With this man? This shell of a lieutenant that can't be bothered to do his job unless an android was constantly prodding him in the right direction?

No.

Absolutely not.

Cyberlife told Connor what to do, but it was also a company ran by humans. If humans made the decision to keep "Lieutenant" Anderson employed despite his very obvious and obtrusive personal issues, then humans could certainly wrongly assume what the best approach to investigating deviants was. No, Connor knew it didn't need a human's help to accomplish its mission. If Cyberlife wanted results, it was going to get results doing things the efficient and sensible way. And that certainly didn't involve reconciling with Lieutenant Anderson.

*cue Connor deviating to get away from dealing with Hank*

[sorryiliketoscreenshot]

[stolen-wolfbread]

I need to see content of Harry du Bois and Hank Anderson interacting. Just two alcoholic, divorced suicidal loose cannon lieutenants drinking themselves into a stupor.

[harmonytre]

True Story: This found family story destroyed me in the best way possible. I didn't expect it, but the hug was the first time I ever happy ugly cried. My family was laughing at me because my face muscles couldn't make up their mind and I looked ridiculous. It was trying to grin ear to ear and sob like a little baby child at the same time. I've never felt so happy and it's funny to think about.

[happy74827]

So I haven’t watched the new boys episode yet, I’m currently working, but I saw a clip on tiktok and…

Spoilers ofc ↓

UHHHH?!? WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT FIRECRACKER AND HOMELANDER SCENE?!?

EXCUSE ME?!?

[shrub-rose]

!!!!!!!DETROIT BECOME HUMAN SPOILERS SCROLL IF YOU PLAN TO PLAY!!!!!!!

so my friend is playing DBH for the first time and

got me over here cackling like an evil mastermind

[woodchipp]

OMORI and Detroit: Become Human's Plot Twists - How A Bad Plot Twist Ruins The Story Instead Of Enhancing It

In the 2020 game OMORI, the story's plot twist is that the main protagonist's sister, Mari, didn't kill herself as the player was led to believe - instead, the main protagonist himself accidentally killed her in a fit of rage after an argument they had and his best friend subsequently covered that up by staging it as a suicide.

In the 2018 game Detroit: Become Human, the plot twist of Kara’s story is that Alice, the seemingly human child Kara took care of after the two broke free of Alice’s abusive father, was actually an android all along. 

What do they have in common? The answer’s simple - not only are they emblematic of their respective games’ shoddy writing, they detract from the story they’re supposed to elevate.

First things first - both twists don’t make sense upon scrutiny. OMORI’s plot twist in particular hinges on a huge contrivance - the fact Basil just so happened to be present in Sunny’s house (for reasons the game leaves unexplained) at exactly the right time to witness Sunny committing manslaughter and come up with a plan to absolve him of any blame. Furthermore, the twist’s insinuation that Mari overworked Sunny and didn’t tolerate his mistakes comes out of left field, as Mari was consistently portrayed as kind and flawless (both in Sunny’s dreams and in the real world via the photo album)  throughout the game up until that point.

Alice’s twist only works because the story lies to the player: Kara finds a magazine with a picture of Alice’s model at the beginning of the game, but it’s conveniently blurred. While there are some hints that Alice is an android, such as the fact that she refuses to eat even when food is presented to her, this clashes with one of the main levels of Kara’s story, which has her looking for food and shelter for Alice’s sake. This implies that Kara deliberately ignored Alice’s true nature, for reasons that will be elaborated on later.

Alice’s twist, however, does have some solid hints at the very least. That brings me to a problem exclusive to OMORI’s twist - the game spends most of its runtime hinting at the red herring of Mari having hanged herself as opposed to the twist of her having been shoved down the stairs. The only tangible clues to the twist are the prevalence of staircases in the brief cutscenes before Sunny fights his fears and the hands motif, but they are not enough. If the point of the reveal is that Mari didn’t kill herself, what’s the point in hinting she did?

Secondly, the twists’ linchpin characters are flat in terms of personality. Alice is the quintessential “little girl” in videogames: cute, small, withdrawn, barely cries (she doesn’t even go into hysterics at a concentration camp), constantly needs to be cared for and protected, at most steers you in the right moral direction if you do something “problematic”, even if for her sake. This, allegedly, is supposed to stem from her background, as she was abused by her father, but even the android that Kara spots and that makes her confront the truth has the same quiet, demure, sad demeanor, implying that it’s simply how Alice’s model is programmed to be. Alice is not a character: she is a pet you are supposed to find adorable. The twist that she was never a “real” human, therefore, falls flat on its face: she doesn’t prove anything about the depth of emotions androids can experience. For all intents and purposes, she is the doll racist humans see androids as.

Aside from a brief interaction with Hero in the first several minutes of the game (which is promptly forgotten as soon as it ends), Mari spends most of its runtime only as fuel for Sunny and his friends’ grief. She is given no personality beyond being the Team Mom, isn’t fleshed out in any objective flashbacks (as in, flashbacks not colored by Sunny’s perception of her), and if the vision Sunny experiences on Two Days Left is her ghost, she isn’t plussed in the slightest by her dear little brother profaning her memory by deciding to keep up Basil’s lie. The one flaw the game tries to give her - perfectionism - has no bearing on her character until the moment the game uses it to give Sunny a reason to lash out at her, and the negative impact said flaw had on her life before the argument is glossed over. OMORI’s point that her desire to be perfect was the reason for her downfall, therefore, falls flat on its face: for all intents and purposes, Mari is perfect. 

Finally, both twists are detrimental to the stories they are in.  Supposedly, the twist of android Alice is meant to make you question whether or not you, the player, are going to love her all the same even after learning that she’s not human (although the question should be moot since all three protagonists are androids and the most popular one in the fandom is the most machine-like one). What the game fails to answer, however, is why Kara refused to accept reality and deluded herself into thinking Alice was human to the point of endangering both of them for the sake of playing pretend (this, on top of everything else, makes replaying the game much more frustrating, as you no longer care to give Alice proper shelter as she doesn’t really need it). The implication is that she, herself, believes an android child is inherently less deserving of love as a human one, an interesting concept of internalized bigotry that is never explored. Even worse than this, what before could be seen as a touching relationship between an android and a human, who despite the hatred surrounding them can form a family out of natural love, is now nothing more than two androids following their programming: Kara keeps being a caretaker as she’s supposed to do, and Alice keeps being the perfect little child as she’s supposed to be. While they both rebelled against their abusive master, it means that, at their core, they didn’t even deviate in the first place, and instead forced themselves back into their pre-programmed roles. This is the complete antithesis of the message of the game, which is that androids are more than their programming and they are, instead, people.

Similarly, OMORI’s plot twist turns what could’ve been an interesting story about such topics as teenage suicide and suicide bereavement into a farce. It’s one thing to play this game under the impression Sunny and co. are struggling to live a life their beloved sister and friend unexpectedly removed herself from, but it’s very different to replay it with the knowledge that all the pain Kel, Hero and Aubrey went through was pointless since Mari never killed herself in the first place and stemmed from one of their friends desecrating her corpse. Without warning, the story turns from being about overcoming the grief of losing a loved one to suicide into being about grappling with the guilt of a manslaughter and a huge lie that destroyed multiple friendships - a lie Sunny directly facilitated by lying to his friends by omission to save his own skin. The only character in the game to call Sunny out on this is his suicidal depression (!!!), and its arguments are framed as irrational self-loathing so they’d be easier to dismiss; the game’s best ending, meanwhile, has him conveniently avoid the consequences of his confession by moving town, not caring anymore about the feelings of his friends (or the well-being of Basil, whom he leaves to bear the brunt of the consequences). None of this would’ve been a problem if the game simply focused on Sunny moving on from blaming himself for his sister’s suicide instead.

So, this brings me back to the post's title - not only should a good plot twist be properly foreshadowed, but it should enhance the plot when experienced multiple times. The twists in OMORI and DBH fail to do so, and create the impression they were haphazardly inserted into the plot for the sake of subverting the audience's expectations, with little thought given to how they retroactively affect said plot.

Unfortunately, the only expectation they manage to subvert is the expectation of a completent story.

[mataglap]

@lacrimalis replied to your post “I may have to write this ship just to offset the...”:

oh??? i love when people buck longstanding fic conventions in fandom... i would like to see it/would love to hear ur thoughts 👀✨

the desire to give favorite characters some domestic comfort transcends fandoms and I get it, I do -- but it bothers me that people seem to forget that Connor is a literal murder machine housing a freshly unshackled AI. if you neglect to disable the camera in the elevator in CyberLife Tower, he kills five armed, armored and prepared guards without a scratch. his original programming is focused on investigation, forensics, negotiation/interrogation and pursuit. his contribution may have tipped the scales of the revolution, and in the wake of it I sincerely doubt he would abandon his people or his skillset to focus on performing housekeeper duties for a friend.

I love Hank like everyone else and I do want to explore their relationship, but Connor is just too much to be reduced to a domestic bliss facilitator.

[stiwfssr]

Detroit: Become Human

[navysealt4t]

oh my gosh i’m finally making a post about this because. it’s so annoying to me. i don’t think it’s been *explicitly* said in jrwi, but it’s very heavily implied (mostly in the episodes where gillion was missing in the pearl) that jay was scared of losing gill because she lost ayva. that was very heavily implied. that does NOT MEAN she sees gill the same way she saw ayva, as a sibling. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT. you can relate ur relationship with two people together and those relationships aren’t automatically the same

i’ve seen that used so many times when ppl r like ‘gill and jay are sibling coded’ THEY ARENT. THEY ARENT. STOP TRYING TO NUCLEAR FAMILY EVERYTHING. they can be close in ways except familial and romantic oh my goodness. like i guarantee you jay is just as scared to lose chip and queen and ollie etc etc as she is to lose gill, mainly in LARGE PART to her trauma from losing ayva

[lioniheart]

No but I just started playing Detroit Become Human for the first time (I know nothing abt this game, I'm playing in my sibling's console) and the fact there are actual female droids in the hands of male owners definitely scared me lmao

Like the whole concept of human like servants in general is definitely fucking insane to me, I rlly don't trust humanity

Am I too traumatized by the world or is this a fair anxiety to have? Who knows

[indigoire]

OKAY one last thing about Companion, I really want a Detroit Become Human crossover. I really do. It would be perfect. Conner is the companion robot sent by Empathix!

Though to be real the main storyline reminded me way too much of Kara and Todd towards the end 😬

[thatwolfnamednyla]

A character with issues regarding his humanity pairs up with a grizzled old cop still grieving the loss of someone important to them and they end up forming a father-son relationship...hmmm...

[kamari2038]

Now that I've *mostly* cleared my head, A FEW THOUGHTS:

(1) Hank is really frickin’ passionate about the deviant cause. When Connor LETS HIM DIE to try and save the deviants, he’s mildly pissed but they’re still friends. But when my man is just DOING HIS JOB AND TRYING TO SAVE HUMANITY, Hank is not only aggressive, but so hostile that Connor can BEG FOR HIS LIFE, try to reason with him, point out the irony of believing all androids are alive yet still denying Connor’s personhood, but if Connor doesn’t have the heart to murder Hank first, then Hank will DANGLE AND THEN DROP HIM OFF THE EDGE OF A BUILDING EVEN IF HE LITERALLY SAVED HANK’S LIFE MULTIPLE TIMES EARLIER IN THE GAME (which is that much more traumatizing for my head canon of this Connor, which is that it took him an unusually long time to die after falling from the rooftop in hostage)

(2) Hank must fully expect that Connor is secretly a deviant and send him to Jericho with the full expectation that Connor will join the deviants, because otherwise this scene makes no dang sense.

Y’all, I still love Hank, but I am PISSED OFF about this. Just a reminder that he’s still only human and kind of messed up, I guess. Clancy Brown scares the SHIT out of me now. That look of helplessness and betrayal on Connor's face as he's held on by his coat above the ledge will haunt me forever.