#dbh hank

a-callipygian:

RK900: Lieutenant, I need your help. Detective Reed has stolen from me.

Hank: What did he steal?

RK900: My heart.

Hank: Aw you guys r so fuckin cute

RK900: No seriously, he stole my Thirium Pump Regulator. Help me.

RDCWorld1 just finished their let’s play of “Detroit Become Human”. Honestly, I’m surprised they got a somewhat decent ending, despite taking the more violent route. What they got:

1) Markus launched a successful revolution 

2) Connor went deviant and helped Markus in the revolution. Also, Connor was able to prevent Amanda from taking him over at the end.

3) Hank died during the encounter with the other Connor

4) Kara and Alice died trying to cross the border since Markus launched a violent revolution (they really fucked up here, should’ve gone to the boats, but whatever)

So, not the saddest ending, but not the happiest. I’m just surprised they didn’t get a horrible ending based on how they were playing the game. 

konami-code-ao3:

Been thinking about stuff today and here’s a list of missed opportunities for some really cool moments in DBH:

• Obviously, having Chris be the cop that shot Markus in Broken would have made the Revenge/Spare decision in Capitol Park so much harder. Also, the “eye for an eye” line means more when Markus is saying it to the guy who literally shot out his eye.
• Markus should have been able to come across Kara and Todd in Shades of Color. I mean, The Opening clearly shows them travelling through the area, so it wouldn’t have been too big a stretch to include him spotting them in Todd’s truck before Markus walks across the crosswalk.
• Connor should have been able to ask Kamski about Markus if he shoots Chloe.
• Have the three Chloes from Meet Kamski be some of the androids that Connor can spot during his early moments in Crossroads, implying that they escaped Kamski’s house after he left. And if he kills OG!Chloe, have him only be able to spot the two from the pool.
• Do something with the ‘Don’t Get Spotted’ scene in the first half of Connor’s Crossroadsplot.
• If Markus is the one to make the descent into the hold to activate the detonators in Crossroads, we deserved to see what Deviant!Connor and North were up to while running around the ship.
• On the opposite side of the spectrum, Machine!Connor deserved to be shown in his full glory, pursuing Markus/North throughout the ship and killing all that get in his way instead of wandering aimlessly around the ship until he needs to show up somewhere.
• Have Machine!Connor (the ultimate embodiment of the evils of violence) be the one that fights and potentially kills Josh in Crossroads. Have Josh be able to kill him if the player screws up enough, saving Markus from having to confront him in the hold.
• Confirm that Connor is/was working with Perkins in Crossroads.
• Kara and her family should have joined up with the Jericrew and Deviant!Connor during the final flight from Jericho. In fact, Kara should have been involved in the fight to save North after she’s shot, giving us a three POV fight scene.
• Kara and Alice should have also been able to jump with the Jericrew and Deviant!Connor.
• Kara should have had a Night of the Soulchapter.
• If Kara abandons Alice on Jericho, Luther and Alice should have been present in either Markus or Connor’s Night of the Soulchapter.
• Kara should have been able to kill Todd in Kara Leaving Detroit if she has the gun.
• Kara should have been able to kill Zlatko if she picks up the shotgun on the nightstand.
• Kara should have been able to kill the cop in Midnight Train, with Luther only coming in to help if she messes up the fight too much.
• Kara should be able to run into some of Zlatko’s creatures on Jericho. Have the android that bangs on the door during the escape scene be one of the androids from Zlatko’s basement.
• Luther should have been able to survive the River Route if you take the plunge into the water and avoid the bullets, though I suspect that this was originally going to happen but it was changed at the last minute.
• Josh should have been the one to save Markus after he’s shot in Freedom March, not John - therefore giving reason to why his Relationship Stat exists.
• Amanda’s Relationship Stat needs to mean something. Maybe have the version where she hacks him at the end of his Deviant!Path only be triggered if the player didn’t lie to her enough, meaning that she was able to see Connor’s betrayal coming and made a contingency plan should the worst-case scenario occur.
• Imply that Connor kills Ralph off-screen in between when Kara makes her escape and Hank enters the squat. Then, bookend that moment with Connor explicitly been shown killing Gavin at the end of their fight in the evidence room.
• Ralph in the evidence room if you meet him in On the Run.
• Chloe in the evidence room if you shoot her in Meet Kamski.
• Kara in the evidence room if she dies on the highway in On the Run.
• If you’ve played the game before and the Alice-Is-An-Android plot was revealed, Alice in the evidence room if she dies on the highway in On the Run. Hammer home the idea that Connor is a child-killing villain because I’m sick and fucking tired of people leaving Last Chance, Connor without realizing that what he’s doing in this chapter is horrifically fucked up.
• Markus should have used the painting skills that The Painter established to tag the benches and buildings in Capitol Park.
• Given that The Eden ClubandCapitol Park share a map, have Markus and North be able to free some of the Tracis inside the club.
• Markus should have had the opportunity to paint something during the Freedom March prologue scene. Have it be an updated version of the painting he chose in The Painter.
• Markus should have been able to convert a child android in Freedom March if only to help provide a little more set-up for the Alice-Is-An-Android twist that comes later on.
• North should have handed Markus the bomb in Night of the Soul, not Crossroads, as I think the player would be more willing to accept it in Markus’s darkest hour.
• North should have been able to detonate the bomb after her Revolution fails if Markus didn’t take it from her.
• North can win the Revolution if Public Opinion is high enough but that’s obvious.
• If Connor dies a lot, let him forget Cole’s nameby ensuring that the option to choose it in Connor’s Last MissionandConnor at CyberLife Tower.
• In a version of Markus’s Night of the Soul chapter where both Carl and Leo are alive, have Leo helping his father instead of the random new android. Allow for reconciliation between Leo and Markus to occur before Markus goes into the bedroom to see Carl.
• Captain Allen should have been the head riot cop from Freedom March. Markus should have been able to fight and/or kill him during the Attack branch. Allen should have also been the cop that kills Markus should the fight go wrong.
• Given that the Phillips apartment is located just around the corner from where Markus’s Battle for Detroit chapters occur, it should have been the location of Connor’s sniper perch in Connor’s Last Mission to bookend his journey. Imply that Connor killed the surviving members of the family to ensure that he wouldn’t be disturbed.
• Instead of Connor fighting Captain Allen on the roof in Connor’s Last Mission, have Connor fight the protest group from Shades of Color, showing that their opinions on who the real enemy is have changed while also explicitly showing that CyberLife is very willing to allow Connor to mow down unarmed civilians… because they were never on humanity’s side in the first place and Connor is the best weapon in their arsenal.
• Hank should have been able to kill Connor permanently if he drops Connor over the roof in Connor’s Last Mission. In fact, I think this might have originally been what happened but it was changed at the last moment, which is why the game doesn’t acknowledge Connor-59’s death on the roof and resends him instead of Connor-60 to find Markus/North despite the fact that he died earlier in the chapter.
• The army Deviant!Connor activates in the Tower should have been a bunch of RK900s, not AP700s.

What do you guys think? Are there any more missed opportunities that you can think of? Add them below!!

Adding onto this…

DBH could be vastlyimprove if some small moments were added here or there. Specifically, I have a lot of thoughts about how to improve CrossroadsandNight of Soul. Those are the only two chapters that we ever get to see all 3 characters in the same place at the same time, and yet… they barely interact?? It’s named Crossroads for a reason, goddammit, and these two chapters deserved to be so much more than they were in canon. Here are a few small things that could’ve helped improve them:

Starting off with Crossroads:

• Captain Allen should’ve been the one to lead the Jericho raid alongside Perkins. Theres this random guy next to Perkins that could easily be replaced with Allen:

• When Luther gets shot, have Kara save him by having to fight off soldiers shooting at her, mirroring how Markus has to save North later in the chapter. Because Luther and Kara deserved to be a battle couple, and Kara’s violence should not be exclusive to protecting Alice.
• When Kara is given to option to “OPEN” or “DON’T OPEN” the cabin door, have her be able to save the android if she does choose to open the door, instead of having the android die in either scenario. Have the android help Kara fight off the soldier and escape Jericho with Alice.
• While Markus travels to detonate the bomb that blows up Jericho, have him save Luther, Echo and Ripple, Rupert, and some of Zlatko’s androids (if they are all alive) instead of random androids. By showing Markus directly saving deviants that the player has become attached to over the story, it helps to emphasize his impact on deviants.
• If the player gets a Machine!Connor and Leader!North combo, have Connor fight North in the hold just as he would do with a Leader!Markus. But, since we need to keep North alive, have Joshshow up as a deus ex-machina and shoot Connor while he and North are fighting. This would be a great little Jericrew moment and allow for the stakes to still be raised even if Markus is dead
• Have a Machine!Connor and Kara meet up during their escape from Jericho. If Kara killed Connor during On the Run, have something like this dialogue happen: 

Kara:I saw you die. I… I pushed you into a truck… I thought I killed you.
Connor:My memory gets transferred to a new Connor every time one gets destroyed. Did you really think you had gotten rid of me?

• Terrifying, right? Even if Kara didn’t kill Connor, it’s still a scary moment that solidifies Connor as the villain of the story.

Moving on to Night of Soul:

• Along with a Night of Soul Kara chapter, have Kara and North interact. They have a pretty similar past, with both of them having gone through extensive memory wipes and physical abuse at the hands of humans. It would be a sweet moment if we got to see them bond over their past.
• Have a Deviant!Connor apologize to Kara no matter if Markus is dead or not. Connor deviating does not automatically mean he’s forgiven or redeemed, and the player must remember that as well.
• Extend Markus and Kara’s conversation. Maybe have Kara helping to look over injured androids as Markus talks to her. Have him thank Kara for helping the injured and have Kara thank Markus for all he’s done for deviants in return. Kara’s storyline is meant to show Markus’s impact on deviants, and them talking would help to execute that role of her story.

Here are some other ideas I had:

• Show more bonding moments between Luther and Alice. Maybe while Kara is finding a blanket for Alice, have Luther show Alice how to kindle a fire. In Rose’s car, have Alice and Luther talk quietly together. Luther is Alice’s dad and we need more moments between them!!
• Have Alice’s relationship stat actually mean something. This is small, but if Alice’s stat is below “WARM,” have her not automatically hold Kara’s hand while walking together. 
• DuringFugitives, have this broadcast play on the TV in the 24/7 store:

Michael Brinkley - CTN TV: Several sources report that CyberLife has provided Detroit Police with a prototype detective android. Although police assistant androids have existed for several years now, this would be the first case of an android being authorized to play an active role in criminal investigations. We contacted CyberLife for comment but no one was available to answer our questions.

• This originally plays in the DPD break room if Connor finds Shaolin, and it’s such a wasted opportunity for Kara to not see it instead. This would allow her to at least know what she’s up against in her next chapter On the Run and explain why she’s scared enough of Connor to run into morning highway traffic with a child.
• Additionally, add a chapter where Connor and Hank investigate Todd’s house if he dies in Stormy Night. Allow the player to recreate scenes using splattered blood, overturned furniture, and broken glass.
• This is a thing that sort of irked me, but I’ve seen a fair amount of streamers confused as to why Kara never simply called CPS on Todd, like how Markus was able to call the cops on Leo. So, have Connor add a little explanation about that. In my rewrite, I had the “Connor investigates Todd’s house” chapter and added an explanation here:

Connor moves to the living room, finding a Red Ice pipe on the coffee table.
Hank: Our second Red Ice user… Fuck, if androids could just call the police on em, our job would be ten times easier.
Connor:It’s a matter of invasion of privacy, Lieutenant. If androids constantly monitored their owners for illegal activity and could act on that suspicion, no one would trust them. 
Hank:(He scoffs) Not like people don’t trust em enough anyways… 

• Give Connor more opportunities to deviate! Since Connor’s deviation is a choice, it makes no sense that all his accumulated “software instabilities” would disappear the moment he rejects Markus’s call to deviation. Have him be able to deviate after his fight with Markus in the hold in Crossroadsand his fight with Markusandmaybe even Hank in Battle for Detroit.
• If Connor finds Cole’s photo in Russian Roulette, have the dialogue for The Bridge default to choose the “PHOTO” option. A lot of streamers find it odd how Hank asks for his son’s name during Connor at the Cyberlife Tower despite the fact you can never ask Hank about Cole, so having this would easily solve that issue. If Connor’s software instability is high enough, have Connor add this at the end of the dialogue segment:

Connor: I saw a photo of a child…on your kitchen table. It was your son, right?
Hank: Yeah… His name was Cole.
Connor: I’m sorry for your loss.

• Distinguish how machines and deviants experience pain. Since a large part of pain is an emotional response, it would make sense that deviants would have a heightened sensation of pain compared to their machine counterparts. You could highlight this in Crossroads by showing Markus and Kara noticeably getting slowed down by their wounds as compared to Machine!Connor, who kills deviants left and right despite having serious injuries like an arm torn out and multiple bullet holes in his chest. 
• Add a scene where Markus/North hears about Connor hunting deviants, either directly from Kara or another deviant Connor has hunted (Echo and Ripple, Rupert, etc.) or from a news broadcast. It would make this dialogue option at least make a little more sense:

Markus: You’re Connor, aren’t you? That famous deviant hunter. Well, congratulations. You seem to have found what you were looking for…
/
North: You’re Connor, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you. The famous deviant hunter. Well, congratulations… You seem to have found what you’re looking for.

• GIVE! MARKUS! AN! END! CREDITS! SCENE!! The actual one we got was honestly so boring it might as well have not been included. This might be a bit too far into fanfiction land, but let’s say if Markus leads a successful demonstration/revolution, his end credits scene would show him in Kamski’s house, where it would go something like this…

Markus:I wanted to ask you about rA9. Do you know anything about it?
Kamski:Well, they all say everything good comes in threes, right?
Kamski looks directly into the camera and smirks. Cut to black.

• BAM! Not only would this solve the “wtf is rA9” mystery, it’s also a great way to break the fourth wall! But maybe that’s me going a bit too out there of an idea…

In the past year being in the Detroit: Become Human fandom, I’ve seen many posts attempting to cover and express why the game’s core message of android rights = black rights is inherently flawed. I recently watched two wonderful video essays, Detroit: Become Human - It’s Bad andDetroit: Become Human - The Worst Civil Rights Allegory, that I think succinctly and elegantly explain why this message is flawed. This post is a brief summary of what the two videos said. All screenshots are from the first video.

Why it’s inherently racist to say human slavery = android slavery 

As the two infographics explain above, D:BH’s main argument revolves around “androids are like us; they’re alive, so it’s wrong to enslave them.” A parallel should work both ways– if we can say “android are like humans,” we should also be able to say “humans are like androids.” However, once we do the latter, we can automatically see the flaw of this parallel. In doing so, we’re saying, “androids were made to be property, to serve humans = black people were made to be property and serve white people.” I don’t think I need to explain further why this parallel is outrageously racist. 

This leads me to my second point: 

The issue of deviancy = bug in an android

Going back to D:BH’s main parallel of human slavery = android slavery, this again insinuates “black people were made to serve white people and them rebelling against their masters is a ‘bug.’” With the knowledge that deviancy is a virus, confirmed to us by Kamski, Amanda, and Markus and Connor’s ability to deviate androids by touch, players have the idea that only deviants are alive and non-deviants are not. 

Kamski:Androids share identification data when they meet another android. An error in this program would quickly spread like a virus, and become an epidemic. The virus would remains dormant, until an emotional shock occurs… Fear, anger, frustration. And the android becomes deviant. Probably all started with one model, copy error… A zero instead of a one… Unless of course… Some kind of spontaneous mutation. 

This begs the question: why should we care about non-deviants? If they aren’t alive, they aren’t aware of their own suffering. If we do have the ability to prevent deviancy, why shouldn’t we? As the infographic above explains, this wouldn’t be unethical as non-deviants don’t even have the ability to make this choice for themselves. 

However, the game contradicts itself that “only deviants are alive” through the player’s experience of playing Kara, Markus, and especially Connor. All these androids, pre-deviancy, are able to feel and experience emotions, like love, without going deviant. Aren’t these things signs that non-deviants are alive? The only thing deviancy changes for all of them the freedom of choice. 

Then, that poses another question: does the freedom of choice inherently make you alive? If you’re just given the freedom of choice without prior experiencing emotions (I’m referencing the androids Markus/Connor deviate by touch here), why does that make you alive? 

Which brings me to my third point:

Where are the answers?

Instead of even attempting to answer any of the questions D:BH poses, the game never goes further than its shallow explanation of “androids are alive, so they must be free.” The game crumbles under any sort of questioning. Furthermore, all the “villains” of the story– Amanda, Perkins, even Kamski– never provide any good counter-arguments to this claim, forcing players to have to agree with this sentiment. 

But isn’t the point sci-fi to explore both the good and bad of a futuristic concept? Which brings me back to my original point– the game can’t do this because it’s trying to make deviancy an allegory to black rights, in which any counter-argument to that is morally wrong. But, if it strayed away from this parallel– instead delving into what D:BH should have been (an exploration of what it means to be alive as a non-biological being), the game would be able to apply much more meaningful and thought-provoking messages than “slavery is bad.”

The video provides an example of this exploration being done right, as well as providing a new basis of what D:BH should have been: 

Star Trek: The Next Generation | “The Measure of a Man”

This episode of Star Trek: Next Generation revolves around Data, an android aboard the starship Starfleet. In order to start mass-producing androids like Data, they must disassemble Data. However, in the process of doing so, he might lose his memories, effectively “dying.” The episode debates whether or not Data should have a say in this procedure. If he is not deemed as alive, they can do anything to him as it is not unethical to see him as property. However, if he is alive, this would be unethical as they are robbing away his ability to choose and effectively enslaving both him and his “offspring.” 

The video explains in a lot more detail the plot surrounding this episode and why it does it well, but I’ll sum it up here why this episode works versus why D:BH doesn’t:

Closing thoughts: What could have been done to change this?

If someone planned on rewriting D:BH, there are two ways of going about this:

1. Sticking with the human slavery = android slavery message
2. Ditching that entirely and exploring the central question of what makes a thing alive

Both could work– albeit with major changes. For the first message to work, androids must be created with sentience. Instead of androids, one could maybe replace them with human clones or simply doing what Star Trek: Next Generation did– however, this would mainly defeat the whole meaningfulness behind the concept of deviancy.

With the second, this requires the least amount of tweaking to the original plot (most of the change would be towards Markus’ storyline). By simply using the premise that D:BH provides as way to explore how we prove androids are alive, D:BH could finally reach its full potential as a game and be the impact on sci-fi that it wished to be.

…are dbh insta fans ok? i think they’ve officially lost all their brain cells someone call the ambulance

im-the-real-connor:

my-name-is-markus-with-a-k:

dreamydiamond:

Detroit Become Human fans, was Alice a deviant?

I really don’t think she is, based on her strict morals when Kara needs to steal/lie in the game.

This is a problem I have with the writing in the game. Alice being an android was brought up ONCE for a bad twist, and is never brought up again. Everyone addresses/treats her as a human, even fellow androids that should be able to detect their own kind!

It really ruined the story for me, especially since I was loving the Clementine&Lee vibes I was getting from the two. :/

Alice is definitely a deviant. Had she not been deviant, there’s no way she would run away with Kara. Her programming would have told her to stay with Todd.

Also, it’s entirely possible for Alice to even kill Todd in ‘Stormy Night’.

To add onto this, Alice was probably deviant before the game even started — we know that, at the very minimum, she’d seen Todd beat Kara to the point where she lost a limb and had to have her memory reset. Obviously he was also doing/dealing drugs and was probably being directly abusive towards Alice as well during that time.

There’s an obvious question, of course, as to why she wouldn’t leave/do something about it, but to me the reasoning is fairly obvious. A human child in that situation may act similarly to her in hopes of minimizing or avoiding the abuse (trying to not make their presence known, obeying an order given by the abusive parent immediately, never complaining or attempting to fight back, putting physical space between themself and the parent when the parent is in a state where they’re more likely to harm the child). A child may also become very attached to whatever “good” things the parent does, seeing it as a sign that the parent does love them and that the situation “isn’t that bad” and that, if anything, the problem lies with them.

Since she’s an android, though, there’s a lot of extra reasons why it’s difficult for her to leave that situation. For one, she doesn’t have school, cutting out the regular presence of a safe adult who may notice that something’s wrong and be obligated to report it. Kara is literally the only safe adult that Alice has a relationship with — and, reminder, she just got severely injured by Todd and had to have her memory reset. Alice also has no rights in this situation — while there would be a legal obligation for authorities to protect a human child in this situation, none of that applies to an android. Every single measure to protect a human child in this situation literally doesn’t apply to her — honestly, she probably doesn’t have much hope or faith in any sort of plan she may come up with.

There’s also literally canon proof of Alice being deviant. If Connor decides not to chase Kara and Alice across the highway in On the Run, he unlocks the dialogue option “HIGHWAY” when talking to Hank next to the Chicken Feed. The dialogue goes like this:

Connor:This morning, when we were chasing those deviants… Why didn’t you want me to cross the highway?
Hank: 'Cause you could’ve been killed… And I don’t like filling out paperwork for damaged equipment.

Deviants.That’s plural. 

Hank: Is anyone going to tell me WTF is going on in here?!

Connor: It’s kind of complicated, but Sixty—

Hank: Got it. Forget I asked.

Ben Collins: Oi, we’ve got a crime scene to investigate. What are you two loitering out in the rain for?

Connor: I like splashing and the rain is fun!

Hank: I’m trying to get hit by lightning.

Mission: Become Human