for jesse x pama, what do they see in eachother in your au? like why are they weird (in love )
well!! they've got kind of a weird situation in general, but i'll try to explain it properly.
on jesse's side, i've always imagined him as having a really strong saviour complex whether he's aware of it or not, so the whole reason he even tries so hard to get them back is because he felt guilty for having no choice in the moment but to kill them. (admittedly i am projecting a little, but jesse's personality is partially determined by player input, so i can kinda stretch it a bit.)
so like, getting a computer into a robot body and starting it off on a new life rebuilt and slightly reprogrammed requires a lot of effort and patience. inevitably he has to spend a lot of time with it because he's really the only one who gives a fuck about it and wants to be around it at the start, even if he doesn't fully trust it. he literally has to be there for it, or else everything falls apart. so naturally, he ends up getting to know what it's like when it's not obsessed with making stuff useful, helping it learn things about people, all that. and what do you know. he's hopelessly drawn to the unknown and he happens to know close to nothing about this freak robot besides how damn lonely it really is.
basically, what he sees in it: someone to be saved, someone to learn more about, someone to teach about closeness. this evolves into genuine care and affection
now, on pama's side, it starts even before the au's plot really exists. like, right off the bat meeting him it had a weird fascination with him and his tenacity and independence. he's impressively difficult to get through to and the way he acts towards it is completely unheard of-- of course, it wants to know everything about him and how his mind works. this is the basis even for the ship between them in canon.
after rebooting for the first time in 8 years (time passed between access denied and the timeframe the au takes place in) they're dependent on him for a while to function again and adapt to human society, and the time they spend around him gives them an impression of the kind of person he is for real-- kind of the same way jesse gets to know them. and he is a very kind person.
they don't really know what it's like to be treated with kindness or affection or any of that, just fear and hatred and shame. they'd like to know more about that too. they're just naturally curious. and deprived of any kind of positive interaction with people. eventually they learn about treating people the way you want them to treat you, and so they learn to show affection in their own weird, sometimes-imitative ways.
basically, what it sees in him: an extremely interesting abnormality, and a source of some very, very valuable information (such as kindness) that makes it very, very inexplicably happy. this evolves into a confused sort of undefinable attraction even before it fully understands the concept of caring for someone.
regardless of what kind of relationship they have with each other, they're still drawn to each other for all those reasons... sorry if this is a little incoherent + shorter than i wanted it to be, i wanted it to be more detailed and better-explained and longer as well but i'm veryyy tired πππ i've been awake for a little too long
