#tried to keep my salt level low and i can't guarantee that this is sodium free emotions do run high but we're all grown ups here

[dirty-droid]

So I believe you asked this in good faith and I want to answer in good faith, and write a bit of a long form essay. I don't quite speak for every shipper or even each of my own friends in this fandom, some are a bit more open than I am but I digress. You've posed a much shorter list of more abstract questions, but I've seen other questions and speculations throughout my time in this fandom and I will answer those as well to build my point. It's also just been a while since I've gone on a rant publicly, especially since I had to remake my account recently, and I've always wanted to go on a point by point rant both about this discourse and my own love for this ship, so this might be overkill but less is not more when it comes to having fun analyzing fandom.

First and most important point being that we don't believe that we're denying or bypassing any canonical familial relationship between Hank and Connor. I don't believe it exists in the first place. I do not see it in the text or the subtext of the story, I believe such an interpretation runs counter to the storyline and the characterization within it. Simply stated, it's not obvious to us because it's not there.

Canonically, Hank and Connor begin as strangers, become acquainted with one another through sharing a workspace, become coworkers, and maybe they develop a friendship, and maybe they cause each other to die.

There's a few intertwined reasons that I think the father-son interpretation falls flat, so in no particular order, this is where it gets messy: the storyline only takes place over the course of a week and I can't realistically buy that a familial bond could be forged that fast when- Hank spends half, if not most, of the game questioning if he even believes Connor to be a person and Connor doesn't believe himself to be a person and is still juggling how much he prioritizes Hank's approval of his actions. On top of that, I buy into the meta analysis that Connor is manipulating Hank throughout the story in order to achieve his mission, as he can even state that he's being friendly with Hank in order to make this mission run smoother and achieve success.

In regards to those points, I don't believe the storyline has room for a paternal type relationship arc, by the time the Eden club arc is over, Hank has explicitly threatened Connor's life at least twice, the threat to burn Connor in a dumpster and the threat of pointing a gun at Connor at the bridge are both unavoidable, and Connor's had the chance to threaten to report Hank, presumably to get him fired, about three times. They're warming up to one another, they've had some warm moments, but they're still butting heads, arguing, and not treating each other very well at the halfway point of the week and the story. Personally I feel like this is unacceptable in a familial dynamic, parents shouldn't be threatening the lives of their children, and while that happens all the time in real life and in fiction, I don't tend to enjoy those parents as parents, I don't want those people around their children, whether it happens in real life or is being depicted in fiction. So, if Hank were truly meant to be, or be acting or feeling as though he was Connor's father, I wouldn't like him very much anymore, I wouldn't want their relationship to continue, and I wouldn't be invested.

So because they canonically aren't considered family members, I see no reason to think of them as being parent and child when their canonical relationship is full of so much violence, plausible hatred, and lack of communication. If I were to be thinking of them as family members, this would be a very dark situation, one that holds fear and trauma and possible resentment. If I'm going to enjoy a familial relationship in my fiction, bitch should either be acknowledging how painful that relationship is, or it should be actually, truly wholesome. I hold much higher standards for character analysis then I do shipping. And I put my money where my mouth is on that one, I adore the relationship between Markus and Carl, I find it to be very realistic, I find it to be very relatable, the relationship holds real genuine affection, but it also acknowledges and leaves room for the pain that Carl has caused Markus in his pseudo upbringing, as well as the pain that was caused with Carl replacing Leo with Markus in his life. They don't ignore it and they don't brush over it, Carl loves Markus and has put time and effort into guiding him but he's also a bit of a blundering asshole who doesn't know what he's doing, and I love it. Their feelings toward one another are explicitly stated, it's well written, and it feels real to me. I have rarely, if ever seen the same energy given to Hank and Connor's relationship by father-sonners.

So I don't think it's a great found family dynamic, I think it's a very flawed one, if I would even acknowledge it as a family dynamic in the first place. Hank's affection for Connor is very conditional, though he is naturally protective, he does not hold back on being aggressive when Connor has pushed him or disobeyed his orders prioritize the Cyberlife mission over Hank's personal priorities and preferences. He certainly wants to care, but that goes out the window when Connor disappoints him enough. He'll go as far as to kill Connor. I don't buy that as fatherly behavior. Regardless of what David Cage says, Cage has also been reported saying that all the women in his games are whores, and that he doesn't make games for fags, so I'll take his opinion with a grain of salt, and I think it's relevant that he stated that he thinks of Hank and Connor as being father and son after he'd caught wind that people were shipping them, and didn't explicitly write it into the game as it was done for Markus and Kara, It's very easy for me to believe that he's taken that stance as a homophobe upset that the internet is doing gay things, and not as a writer who wants his work viewed a certain way.

So we're starting to get into the Hankcon support, and I will make the point that found family also isn't strictly familial dynamics, and is often simply platonic, which I'm sure you already know but is becoming a bit of a rampant problem in fandom I'm finding. The things we're typically replacing in a found family when we are young adults that we're not getting from our relatives is support, so the relationships themselves don't have to be strictly platonic. I do think of Hankcon, as a romantic and/or sexual relationship, as a found family situation, as I understand that our romantic partnerships, long-term serious relationships and marriages, are typically the first things we think of when we think of the family that we've found and made ourselves. My fiance is the first on my list. Friends, and friends with benefits is typically next, I've been intimate with the friends I hold the most dear in my life, these people are my family, and this is what I think of as being realistic in speculative fiction, this is what feels normal to me. One can fuck one's friends and still call them family, ex-partners can stay in one's life and still be called family. Family in this sense is best defined as Who Shows Up when you call for help, and the people that you show up for, the individual relationships and how they function emotionally aren't what's important. Just because I love you, need you, doesn't mean you're my brother or my sister or any other relation now.

I did see in your tags that you didn't mean the 'kid' comment literally, but I do think it is worth saying that shippers tend to only view Connor as young in comparison to Hank, and otherwise see them as equals in regard to their partnership, and typically the light in the balance of their power. While there is undeniably an age gap, which is a valid reason to not enjoy a ship though I don't think that makes it problematic, we typically fervently believe that they're quite well matched in power, there isn't an imbalanced power dynamic, where Hank might be experienced, Connor is programmed with the experience of others and has the world's knowledge at his fingertips, they are both incredibly strong, they're strong willed, stubborn, they both carry some aggression, neither would be able to easily take advantage. Connor is just as mature as Hank is, sometimes it even feels like more so, and he drags Hank through the game, he's not a rookie and he's not in need of guidance.

Which actually leads me to another point, I actually think the father son dynamic is a misinterpretation of a mentor/student dynamic between Hank and Connor that, while usually present in buddy cop stories, doesn't actually exist in Detroit become human, it's not a part of the plot. Connor is not technically a rookie, he comes in with his own mission that has nothing to do with whatever Hank was doing in homicide, he's using Hank to get into crime scenes he should have no clearance into, and Hank is not teaching Connor the ropes, he's typically watching Connor excell from the sidelines because he's curious about how well Connor was built. And Hank doesn't act as a mentor to Connor, Hank has his own priorities and morals and ideas about how their job should be done, and he does not teach Connor what these are, he expects Connor to meet them without guidance. He values life, both their own and that of others, and expects Connor to do the same, and they can bond when Connor does align with Hank and it causes a rift between them when he doesn't. This isn't typically how mentor/student relationships work, the mentor is typically invested in the student's learning in a way that Hank isn't, he's accepting of the fact that Connor might fail and leave, if their relationship progresses to friendship, he won't want that to happen, but he certainly thinks of it as being out of his hands and accepts that there's only so much he can do.

Now comes the real Hankcon textual support, and while I don't believe that shipping requires canonical, textual support, the nature of shipping is that it's merely a thought experiment for the purpose of fun and games, shipping is not an interpretation of a story or of a relationship between certain characters, shipping simply IS, I do think that there's some good subtext for Hankcon in particular that guides us in that direction of thought, that it's a little more than just them being friends and looking good together, and I think it's pretty juicy stuff. Shipping is also a bit different than an interpretation in that the basis of, "what if this character was attracted to this other character? What if those feelings were reciprocated?" comes with the understanding that people and characters can be sexually attracted to one another without doing anything about it, sexual attraction can fly under the radar of a story because it doesn't need to be acted upon, there are other things that are more important emotionally and logically for a character. It's part of why I think Hankcon undertones work so well throughout Detroit become human, because it doesn't matter if Hank and Connor are attracted to each other, there's no conflict of interest when it comes to throwing a man you think is handsome off a roof because you're busy fighting him to the death, him being handsome or sexy doesn't interfere with being on opposite sides of a war, (in short, the shipping goggles don't interfere with the machine path the way I think the father-son goggles do, not a lot of folks seem down for patricide and filicide, although I'd love to hear more about that arc from that perspective, but as a shipper... Characters fighting to the death is hot, characters being violent towards each other is hot, even if it is a tragic situation that they're killing each other instead of coming together)

Ultimately, I put a lot of stock in the Eden Club arc as a whole. Because it's more than just the one chapter, I'd say it really starts at Russian roulette, but there's foreshadowing for it as early as Partners. I think that whether the player has interest in it or not, Hank is actually being pressured by his society to view Connor as a sex object or a romantic companion, without agency. I'd go as far as to joke that Hank is being sexually harassed by the narrative.

It starts with the set dressing of the magazine on Hank's bedroom floor that Connor can find, the first article is about companionship androids, in-home sex bots that will pretend to be your spouse and do anything you ask. And we see twice that he's got companion androids on the brain, first he gets teased by Ben for showing up with an android in Partners, which is obviously less explicit, but I don't think it should go unstated, and then there's one of my favorite things in the game, Hank's monologue about companion androids in the back room of the Eden club.

I LOVE this monologue. It's loaded with subtext, a lot can be implied from what Hank isn't saying, as he rants and raves about how disgusting he thinks it is that humans use androids for sex, that they would rather buy an android to play house with instead of investing their hearts into another human being that has needs and is imperfect. The thing that I love about this, is that the flip side to these statements looks like it ought to be Hank expressing disgust with androids and a preference for humans when it comes to being in a relationship, but the longer he goes on the more you can sense that that's not what he's really saying. It's not necessarily a human being that he wants, it's a Person. And as the game goes on he understands deviants to be people more and more, especially after seeing the Tracis express their love, romantic love, for one another not five minutes later, and it weighs heavily on his mind in the next chapter. So what he's really expressing isn't a species preference, it's a need to be in a relationship of equals, he's inadvertently describing a marriage, caring for someone else's needs, being asked to show up as a man and have something to offer a potential mate, He wants to worry about how someone else feels, he wants to cater to an extent to have someone else feels, he says that pretty explicitly, "-they cook when you want, they screw when you want, and you don't have to worry about how they feel." Having an android sex slave is disgusting to him because he WANTS someone to make room for themselves in his life, he wants the hard realities of loving someone, true intimacy. As it stands in that moment, he believes that only a human could fulfill that, but as time goes on, deviant androids, with their own feelings and their own opinions, wants and needs, start to look like they could feel that role.

And then he asks Connor if he's a man or a machine. And it's hard for me not to feel like he's also asking if Connor could ever love him, if Hank were to love him first.

Because they're not in love at this time, Hank isn't falling that fast, Connor hasn't quite unlocked that ability yet, that we know he has it in him, but Connor answers that he's whatever Hank wants him to be, and it's hard for me to believe that doesn't or couldn't have a sexual tilt to it, after Connor teases him about going to a brothel together, after we hear the club owner heavily imply that Hank should fuck an android, after we learn that Hank is thinking about being in some fake relationship with an Android, after learning that deviants can feel romantic love, Hank demands to know if Connor can feel, and Connor replies that he could choose to fake it for Hank if he wanted.

Now I understand Hank being pressured by his society and the people around him (specifically that sleazy club owner) to view Connor not as a romantic interest, but as a sex object, can be distasteful, but I think it's just as important as Hank's initial insistence that he hates androids and wants them all destroyed. He's only adopted these beliefs, they aren't how he truly feels deep down, and he grows throughout the game to accept deviants and see them as his equals, and he lets those beliefs and pressures go when they stop making any lick of sense. In the world of D:BH, androids are not viewed as human, and because this game is directed at adults, it touches quite heavily on the concept of humans using androids for sex, and a possible counter to that as the setting evolves is androids occasionally choosing to consent to romantic and sexual entanglements with humans, with informed consent. So maybe Hank starts off knowing that he could use Connor sexually, that it would be socially acceptable, and as the relationship evolves he could either completely do away with that thought, or put it in his back pocket because once Connor's a deviant, with his consent, intimacy could be on the table. We start to get into the what if's of speculative fiction and shipping.

But moving on, maybe Connor keeps impressing Hank. Maybe he keeps saving his life. Maybe he keeps choosing to prioritize Hank's morals, and saves and preserve lives the way Hank wants him to, and he keeps finding out that Hank is easier to please than Amanda and freer with his praise, more accepting of failure, Maybe he understands that he'd be safer fighting for a chance to be free than by completing a mission for cyberlife, who doesn't care if he lives or dies. Maybe he deviates.

But I think Connor pushes Hank to want to live again not because he's deciding on his morality and deciding that it aligns with Hank's values, I think it's because Connor's, well he's kind of an asshole to Hank. Connor demands Hank be as mature and focused as he is, Connor's asking Hank to act as his partner, and not be dragged like dead weight. He's not walking on eggshells in regards to Hank's grief, he's asking questions and not making excuses and worming his way in closer to Hank by doing so. He's not letting Hank slack off, he drags him out of his drunken stupor, Hank gets no breaks from Connor barging into his life for a week straight... And I think he likes it. He likes it when Connor disobeys him a little, he likes it when Connor thinks for himself, he likes it when Connor kicks ass, but I think he mostly likes how Connor refuses to leave him alone.

It reminds me of this story my dad told me about when he was in basic training for the army, he writes home to my grandfather, complaining and bitching about how rough the training is, how awful the Sargents are, how bad the food is, how strict the standards are, how tired he is from all the PT, bitching and moaning about how he fucking hates it, and my grandfather writes back, "Well, it sounds to me like you're having fun!".... And it pissed him off at first, of course it's not fun to get pushed around like this, bossed around... But ultimately he realized he did kind of fucking like it, that he enjoy the challenge of having his ass kicked.

Maybe it seems like a silly comparison, but I think that's Hank's vibe. He likes his job... But he LOVES a challenge, and he hasn't had one in a long time, He hasn't had anyone to fight for or anyone to fight with. Connor walks in with these interesting cases that he's never seen before, makes him rethink his entire worldview, the adrenaline is running high because Connor thrusts them into dangerous situations, and saves his life over and over, and sure, Connor's annoying Hank, he's poking and prodding at Hank until he snaps, but fuck, he's having *fun* for the first time in a long time. He has a partner who gives a shit about him getting off his ass and putting some effort in.

By the end of it, they've grown to admire each other for their strengths and they're covering each other's weaknesses, they've learned to work together, as partners, they've seen each other at their best and at their worst. Hank's opened himself up to the mortifying ordeal of being known so he can receive the rewards of being loved, and Connor's finally figured out what that means. He's found his personhood, learned to put himself first and stop asking cyberlife to protect him, those strings are cut and they can come together as equals. They can be grateful to one another while also learning or relearning how to live.

I think also ultimately I think with them being equals, with them having gone through this journey together and found themselves in the places that they have, with Hank and Connor both kind of apologizing for their actions, now that they understand each other, It's a lot more reasonable that they would be able to sort of forgive and forget, live and let live about what assholes they were to each other. They were both dicks, so now they're square, they're even, and they've got shit to do.

And because I can't leave well enough alone, I do also enjoy the positive authority figure vibes that Hank gives off, I just think it's sexy.

If folks wanna judge me for being a kinky, perverted shipper, I get it, I dabble in the taboo from time to time, but honestly I've found solace in the world of kink, I've found solace and friendships on the sexy side of things, and I'd rather live in a world of romantic bliss. Please don't fall into the trap of believing that just because someone sees two characters and thinks they have chemistry, with not valuing or respecting platonic or familial relationships. Preferences are ever evolving, they're not static, and we don't see the reasons behind everyone's sense of taste.

I guess the thing that confuses me most about hankcon shippers is why y'all would pass up a great found family dynamic? Or why romantic love is better to you than familial? Personally, I find great joy in the idea that Connor has a positive authority figure in his life who actually cares about him, and that Hank has this kid android following him around who reminds him what it's like to find meaning in life again. That's what they mean to each other in game. I don't understand why that's lesser to some of you, or why you'd over look obvious signs of it in the game for the sake of a ship.