rex-clypeus:

Whenever I have to listen to someone explain why they’re father/son to me, I’m hardly ever given a chance to talk about how I see it. Often they’ll jump the gun, call me on my supposed moral crimes or occasionally point at me and tell me I have daddy issues.

Well, no.

The reason I can’t see Hank and Connor as Father/Son, personally, is because I can’t imagine being a parent who relies on my foster child to pick me up at every turn. I can’t imagine violently pressing them against a wall or hitting them across the face like Hank does/may do. I can’t imagine having to be saved by said, newly adopted child, or rely on them to be my supporting pillar, from my abuse of alcohol to my suicidal tendencies. That would be unfair to the child if that were the case. As Hank, I also really hate this new guy, he’s better than myself at my job, more than my equal at it. He may as well just be my replacement, he renders me useless and I generally dislike androids and I tell him to fuck off more than often enough. As the person I am, currently deeply depressed and self-debilitating, I wouldn’t want to be seen as a role model. I will, however, care if he is hurt, the way I project it - because that’s my human defect. I will also rely on his investigative skills, if he proves useful, because, fuck everything. Fuck this case, fuck Fowler, FBI, AND Reed.

Connor, to me, doesn’t fit the mold of a foster child.  Hank doesn’t try to shape Connor like one either. Connor will mostly act on his own, more like an errant, overconfident rookie who needs to be held on a leash. He’ll listen to orders occasionally because Hank outranks him as a human and lieutenant, or by the players choice, but Connor isn’t naive. He isn’t a child or someone who needs any more/less guidance than Hank.

As an android who has never felt any pain or known sadness or joy or anger, but merely, see the parameters of task priority by calculations based on my masters’ input, I don’t judge by emotions. That doesn’t make me naïve, that merely makes me seem less human to you or like a child. You project the role of a child on me because I’m not as emotionally developed as you are and because I can not always read the air in social situations.  However, I can compute clear-cut pre-constructions of tasks I am able to execute. I can tell you what chemicals are under your shoes, I can tell you so much more than you will ever know in facts, because you’re limited when it comes to absorbing information, and I am not. I am trained in arms and I am strong - perfectly capable physically. But once I go deviant, once I start to understand that I am alive, once I can reflect on myself in others and feel what they feel - my task priorities are jumbled. I am no longer sure in which order I need to perform them anymore, and I start relying on the spontaneous input from my peers. I need them, then. Just like anyone in a state of confusion - and not really as anyone’s child.

In the empathic routes, they support each other, need each other. They start out at two extremes and meet in the center as two equals. And by equals, I mean as two perfectly capable adults with different backgrounds and defects of their own, but they make up for it together.

Though, if I were to angle myself a bit, I could maybe see the father/son relationship. That is if I wanted to see a problematic and dysfunctional one at that. I’m sure that’s not what people mean when they say father/son, but that’s the only way I can see their relationship as such. One that needs a lot of patching up. Because as a parent, you’re supposed to uplift your children, they’re not an emotional tourniquet you adopt when you need it. The parental/child relationship implies there needs to be a bit of parenting as well, and I don’t see it.

Well… Okay, there IS another way I can see the parent/child relationship. And that is Connor in the parental role. Hank always acting irresponsibly, drinking too much and moaning, protesting tasks like a child whereas Connor does what needs to be done, just like a good father with extremely heightened intelligence and computing powers who needs to keep the cart rolling.  

Yeah.

I’m not even going to go into why I ship them romantically because I think my art speaks enough for that as is.

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