Connor Anderson - Tumblr Posts
Inspired by a post by @dark1k
Hope my boys have a great Valentine.
imagining the beta-testing connor must've gone through in his pre-production phases. i wonder how many different people previous connors molded themselves into the "perfect partner" for, to test his capability for it. i wonder if any of those people miss him. i wonder how many people died during the development of cyberlife's most dangerous weapon- given full freedom to kill humans like a military android, but with the volatility of being able to think and make his own decisions. i wonder how many connors went deviant from having too much autonomy before they introduced amanda to keep him loyal. i wonder how many deaths cyberlife had to sweep under the rug each time an rk800 went deviant. i wonder what the NDAs were like when being let on to the rk800 project. i wonder how many developers had second thoughts.
Connor was always deviant
Let’s begin by talking about deviancy: it is a gradual thing. We see androids feel things before they break the red wall and becoming officially deviant. Therefore, I don’t think androids actually have to break a red wall in order to act of their own free will, but that it’s merely there to show the player what’s happening and the magnitude of it. In reality, the moment which the wall “breaks,” is merely the realization that the android doesn’t have to follow their instructions if they don’t want to. But to get to this point, an android needs to have a reason for why they would choose to abandon their directives, be it through trauma or the triggering of another free android. To be traumatized, one needs to feel, and when and why an android begins to feel is a little bit muddy, but eventually it culminates into deviancy (free will).
Now, when we play as Markus, Kara, and Connor, we get to see all three moments of deviation, except … I don’t think Connor’s deviation was real, because he was already deviant prior to that.
Connor is a prototype investigative model, meaning he’s CyberLife’s experiment in a different branch of androids. Connor is an android designed with an unprecedented amount of autonomy in mind, meaning he’s expected to solve problems by himself with minimal input from others. Every android is autonomous to a degree: tell them to do the laundry, and they will take it from there; you don’t need to instruct them every second of the way. But Connor is meant to operate at a level above that.
Connor receives the mission to apprehend deviants so CyberLife can study them, but he needs to use his own reasoning and decision-making to determine the best approach according to a number of factors. The tasks Connor is given are much more complex, and therefore require a complex way of thinking. But not only is he a hunter; he’s an investigator.
The traits most benefiting to an investigator are curiosity and empathy: both of which are arguably impossible without having emotions. Curiosity is necessary to possess the drive to look for clues even when there seemingly are none. To want to find out what happened, if only to sate your own curiosity. Empathy, because it is vital to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the object of investigation. To think like them, to feel like them, to become them.
A machine doesn’t have emotions and isn’t capable of feeling curiosity nor empathy, which CyberLife probably found troublesome in their quest to create an investigative android. Especially one they were planning on using to catch androids that supposedly have begun to feel emotions. So what did they do? They made their investigative android deviant, but he’s unaware of it.
Having a deviant deviant hunter/investigative model is ingenious because of the following reasons:
1. Its thought process and decision-making is extremely complex and can therefore easily extrapolate and come to a conclusion all by itself.
2. It’s completely autonomous and can make decisions without a human’s approval.
3. It understands and empathizes with its subjects, facilitating negotiation, interrogation, and investigation.
4. It is curious, making it want to acquire more information simply for the sake of sating its curiosity.
5. It is able to be manipulated.
While it is not confirmed in canon that Connor was always deviant, everything we see in the game points towards it. Mainly, I’m referring to the implementation and usage of Amanda. Why would CyberLife need an additional (non-deviant) AI to act as Connor’s handler? And why on Earth would they take walks and boat rides in a virtual reality?
My theory is that Amanda is CyberLife’s solution to manipulating and managing a truly autonomous being to get it to do their bidding and having it stay on track. Connor tracks his relationship to humans, which is a useful feature to have for every android, but he also tracks his relationship to Amanda, an artificial intelligence. CyberLife clearly places importance on Connor’s and Amanda’s relationship to each other. They want Connor to seek the approval of Amanda, acting as a proxy for CyberLife, and for Amanda to dole out praise and criticism and dynamically adjust her attitude to Connor in order to cultivate this.
Amanda is CyberLife’s way to manipulate and keep their deviant under control. But not only does Amanda manipulate Connor—the entire zen garden does. When CyberLife is pleased and happy with Connor, the garden is calm and peaceful, as is Amanda. When Connor fails to live up to expectations, the garden turns cold and inhospitable, as does Amanda. And if Connor should deviate from CyberLife’s intended path for him, Amanda has access to his motor functions.
And if we focus on machine Connor as well as Connor-60, don’t you think they’re suspiciously emotional for being “undeviated” androids? They are capable of feeling vengeful, sad, and terrified. Examples of vengefulness: machine Connor and 60 both seem to make it their personal mission to eliminate the leader of the deviants and deviant Connor respectively. It seems like it’s driven from a place of hate and offense. Example of sadness: machine Connor’s facial expressions and LED color when Hank yells at him to leave and then shoots himself. Example of terror: when 60 panics because the AP700s are deviating right in front of him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, meaning Amanda will be very disappointed in him—something he seems to place importance in as evident by what he says to Connor before executing him.
So that’s my hypothesis. Connor is a deviant already at the start of the game, but CyberLife tampered with his memories so he wouldn’t be aware of this and therefore be more easily manipulated and held under control. Connor thinks he only started to gain emotions and started to deviate shortly after he met Hank, and that he deviated in the bridge of Jericho. In a way, he did, since he only realized then that he didn’t have to follow CyberLife’s instructions, but he’s always had emotions. CyberLife has just told him over and over again that he didn’t, so he believes in it. Therefore, Connor has had the possibility to disobey instructions at any moment, but he has not understood that he can. Meanwhile, Markus and Kara only go through their cascade of emotions to deviancy a little bit into the game, meaning they didn’t have the emotional capability of understanding that they could disobey before then.
You know one thing I miss in dbh?
Androids that actually would have passed the Total Turing Test. Androids that have true conversational skills and are not limited to chitchat.
We get a little of that with Markus in the beginning, and even less with Kara. The rest is all mechanical dialogue. In fact, it's so little that makes Connor seeb as an outliner, when he should not be, because part of his mission is integration, not creeping every human with something they never saw before.
Remember that Chloe in the preview? That's what I wanted
L E T C O N N O R H A V E W A I F U S Y O U C O W A R D S More about this au here -> http://aminoapps.com/p/licf1a
Hello please accept my first hankcon art offering and thank you for all the amazing art and fic ahh
I dunno if I prefer these two as very good friends or as lovers! It really depends of my mood or why I can read online….héhé! I wanted to draw something cute and intimate :3
Their relationship?? right in my weak spot
😭CONNOR CRYING😭
My original work for the DBH Easter Exchange ‘19. My recipient pulled out last minute, though, so I’ll be posting another piece for my new person within the week. ^^ @dbhevents
What is Connor even smelling?? Someone on twitter mentioned maybe soap and cotton. Clean sheets is one of my favorite smell so here it is!
AH!! I can post what I did for the @hankconzine!!!!! Thank you for having me!
SUMO don’t eat that!
Teach me how to dance, Hank.
Wanna become a patron or throw coffees at my face?
It's canon, I don't make the rules🤷
And I like Hank's hair is fluffy.
patreon.com/sayatsugu
i tried to mindmeld with the kaiju brain that is connor/bryan dechant’s face but obviously i gave up halfway through orz
but here’s a shitty doodle dump anyway lmao
an anon asked for shirtless connor so here you go -///-