dismal yet precious cesium-chan

This is going to be a rant about the way people in this fandom talk about Henry from the novel trilogy. (None of this has anything to do with my opinions on his character in the games or movies and is just about what's in the books.)

In an attempt to explain how Henry was not a perfect father (I'm assuming in response to people who portray him as one since he's better than William), I see so many people describe what happened to Henry in the novels as "He ditched his wife and kid for a robot and then instead of going back to his family after he realized he was wrong his just killed himself lmao what a terrible father." This irks me for multiple reasons -

While Henry and his wife did split up due to Charlotte's death and likely Henry's mental breakdown following it, none of these people acknowledge the fact that the reason Henry chooses not to go back to his family despite his sister telling him he should is because he delusionally believes Charliebot is the real Charlotte. Going back to his wife and son means abandoning Charlie who he considers his real daughter because they would likely not accept her. I feel people simply try to portray him as a deadbeat dad who didn't care about his family at all without acknowledging the mental struggles and delusions he was dealing with. It is also mentioned he convinced himself everyone else around him was crazy at that time and shut them out for that reason.

The reason Henry kills himself is because he believes he has permanently damaged his mind with his illusions and will never truly be able to live in reality again. It's also probably partially due to the fact that William killed a bunch of children in his restaurant, since Charlie claims the guilt of his restaurant and creations being used for the murders is what lead him to kill himself. I think implying that committing suicide is selfish is generally a shitty thing to do including in this scenario. If he believes that he has ruined his own life/mind, why would he believe his wife and son who he hasn't seen in years need him enough for that to stop him from killing himself??

I also think the claim that Henry always loved Charlotte more than Sammy/he never cared about Sammy and that's the reason why he didn't care to go back to his family doesn't really have much to back it up. He was clearly obsessing over Charlotte because...she's the one who died.

I see people say sometimes that "Henry told Charlie that Sammy was the one who died instead" and I think that is a bit of a misrepresentation because in The Silver Eyes it says that after "Sammy" (actually Charlotte) died and Mrs. Emily left, Henry never talked about Sammy to Charlie again. At most, he could have given Charlie fake memories of Sammy going missing, which I do think would be messed up. However I feel like it's somewhat hard to distinguish what parts of Charlie's memories were purposefully altered memories, Henry's memories that she shared, or memories unintentionally influenced by Henry's own delusions or emotions. The thing we know for sure is that Henry didn't ever mention Sammy around Charlie, but I don't think that indicates he never cared about Sammy before the murder.

Another thing I want to address is the idea that Henry was intentionally abusive toward the Charliebots. The main examples of this I see thrown around are the panel from the graphic novel where he is making Elizabeth (the 4th Charliebot) that is often misinterpreted as him destroying her, and the scene where he tears apart the frog toy he made for Charlie and doesn't comfort her.

The panel from the graphic novel where Henry is using a hammer on Elizbeth while looking angry is meant to represent her being built, not her being destroyed. This is because he was angry while he was making her, and that rage ended up being the thing that brought her to life, causing him to abandon her when he realized he couldn't fix her rage. I don't think Henry should have left Elizabeth on in the corner all the time and don't fully know what the reason for that was, and I believe Elizabeth is completely valid for feeling as if Henry abandoned her. But I do think it's important to note that the only reason Elizabeth processes her feelings from that time in a human way is because she was later possessed by the soul of Elizabeth Afton. At the time she was just an agony possessed robot who could not comprehend emotions, and so I feel like treating what Henry did to her the same as if he'd done that to a human (or even to Charlie who had the ella doll) isn't really fair. (This was also at the time he began to realize the Charliebots were not actually Charlotte and he was lying to himself.)

As for the frog toy scene, a lot of people misinterpret what exactly is happening there. Henry's workshop is the main place we know he set up a camera to record memories for Charlie, and Elizabeth directly says that while she was in the corner watching Henry make toys for the younger Charlie, Charlie was not there and Henry was just recording everything on a camera for her. Even before this reveal there are moments in the books where Charlie recalls memories of being in her father's workshop and noting that it was like he couldn't see or hear her (because she was a camera). The frog scene is one of these moments, where it says Charlie felt like she physically could not speak when she was trying to talk to Henry. (because she was a camera.) This is not a scene of Henry actually neglecting Charlie when she's crying and yelling at him, because she was not actually doing that in the first place. I find it kind of pointless to debate over whether or not Henry intentionally made her memory this way afterwards because we have no way of knowing, but considering a moment before this Henry apologized for "startling" Charlie with the frog and that's the reason why he took it apart I'm not sure why he would purposefully make her upset.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say Charlie shouldn't have felt upset about this memory, because it was real to her. The point I'm trying to make is that there isn't any example in the books of Henry purposefully trying to hurt the Charliebots.

It is true that Henry wasn't exactly a good father in these books, but the important distinction to make is that it was not because he was a terrible person or did not care about his family, it was because of his mental instability and refusal to let go of his delusions. While Charlie should move on from her father's death in the normal way we all should after loved ones die, I think the idea that she should completely forget about him because he was a terrible father is ridiculous. I'm sure she had some complicated feelings about realizing some of her memories were fake or embellished, and I do think the concept of realizing that her father wasn't exactly who she thought when she was little is an important part of the story. However I don't see why any of the things she learned about him would make her want to forget him entirely. It seemed to me that while Henry was imperfect as a person and Elizabeth felt genuinely hurt by how he treated her, he was also supposed to be a sympathetic character.

I get that it's easy to forget the smaller details of these books but I really wish people wouldn't leave out so many details of his story when discussing him. Sometimes it truly does feel like people are just trying to make his actions out to be worse for the sake of proving he's "morally gray" or not the complete opposite of William when it comes to parenting. Which is kind of funny to me, because while he is not the opposite in the sense of being a wonderful normal parent, it seemed pretty clear to me that The Fourth Closet purposefully draws attention to the way Henry and William are on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to their children- when Henry loses his daughter he misses her so much he tries to recreate her and manages to bring his creation to life with his grief, while William doesn't care when the daughter he abused dies and continues to use her and put her down after her death which is fundamentally the reason why William would never be able to replicate what Henry did with Charlie.

That being said, the portrayals of Henry where he becomes Michael's replacement dad instead of William are still stupid. I don't think he would do that.

I'm going to put screenshots of parts of the books I referenced for this. under the cut.