#fandom interpretation

First of all, comparing Hank and Connor's dynamic to Joel and Ellie's doesn't make any sense from the start.

1. Joel and Ellie are explicitly written as family.

Their entire narrative in The Last of Us is built around a father-daughter arc. Ellie is a minor in a highly vulnerable position, and Joel is a grieving parent figure. Their story is about healing through a parental bond and it’s textual, not subtextual. They are emotionally and narratively coded as father and daughter from the beginning.

2. Hank and Connor are two grown men with no familial tie.

Connor is an android, yes, and he’s written as an adult detective, autonomous and highly intelligent. He isn’t “raised” by Hank, nor is he dependent on him. Even at his most "naive" or programmed, Connor:

Makes his own moral choices

Defies Hank when necessary

Evolves emotionally on his own terms

Their arc is one of gradual trust, conflict, and growth. It’s not paternal, it’s partnership. Any dynamic between them (mentorship, respect, love) is interpretation, not canon.

3. Ellie is a child. Connor is not.

Trying to equate Connor and Ellie based solely on “neurodivergence coding” is… honestly, insulting. Ellie is a literal 14yo who needs protection. Connor, while ND-coded (which is actually a headcanon that is never confirmed), is not a child. He is never portrayed as lacking autonomy, capacity for consent, or personal judgment.

Calling Hank a “father” to Connor because Connor is polite, curious, or emotionally inexperienced? That’s what’s infantilizing. Not shipping them.

4. Joel and Ellie as adopted family is canon.

Hank and Connor as such is just an interpretation. You may see Hank as a father figure. Others see mutual respect. Some see romance. That’s fandom. That’s normal. The problem arises when people like the author of the original post insist their reading is “valid,” and then shame others for seeing the dynamic differently.

The Joel & Ellie comparison only works if you’ve already decided Hank is a father and Connor is a son. But that’s not canon, that’s a personal lens.

And ironically, it’s this rigid insistence on reading them as family that erases the complexity of their actual arc and of fandom as a whole.

You don’t have to ship hankcon. But please stop equating it with a literal parent/child relationship. It’s not the same. It never was.

Also

Sometimes people go beyond “I don’t like this ship” and start psychoanalyzing strangers over fiction. Like:

“You’re an enmeshment shipper… You have serious problems. You don’t have a familial basis of your own… family love is abstract to you. You poor thing.”

Honestly? This kind of take doesn’t even pretend to be thoughtful, it’s just a lazy attempt at sounding deep while insulting someone.

Let’s be real:

You don’t know who people are.

You don’t know their family, their mental health, or their reasons for enjoying fiction.

And even if someone did relate to a dynamic because of trauma that’s not a flaw. That’s literally what fiction is for.

What’s not interpretation is trying to psychoanalyze strangers because you don’t like their ship. Acting like someone must be emotionally damaged or traumatized to enjoy a fictional dynamic doesn’t make you right, it just makes you petty.

Taichi is, for the most part, "the dominant one" - at least when it comes to the sexual part, he's the classic "seme", the initiator. On one hand, he is brash, needy and possessive, a smug tease and smut sweet talker who tends to be a bit too impatient and impulsive, rushing forward and appearing reckless, selfish and, dare I say it, even a bit "dumb" at times. On the other hand - he is caring, observant and kind. He may drive Koushirou a little insane with his short-sighted (and also horny) shenanigans, the risky and dangerous stuff - but he genuinely adores, admires and desires Koushirou. He may feel like he's lagging behind Koushirou, who, in his eyes, has grown up to be such a capable company CEO (minus his tendency to overwork and being unable to tidy up when he's in hyperfocus mode). But despite his own insecurities, Taichi is trying his best, he is aware of his own charms, appeal and strengths and of how good he looks in the pachinko parlour outfit. And if everything fails, Koushirou easily pulls him out of his darker thoughts, both intentionally or by accident.

Koushirou, who is, for the most part, "the responsible one" - even though he, by his own words, has "grown up to be more greedy than I used to be", displaying a tendency to be possessive and forward himself, he still always ends up as the "uke", the classic "receiver" (and/or powerbottom at times). On one hand, he easily gets in hyperfocus mode, prioritizes work and projects over the majority of basically everything else, thus he may become ignorant, lose his sense of time - and is unable to tell when exactly his boyfriend becomes too needy and impatient. However, as mentioned above, he has developed a sense of possessiveness and neediness too - even if he has a hard time expressing that. Sometimes, it may come through unintentionally by his words and actions - sometimes, he actually tries to initiate, to make time, to put his naturally grown authority to the test. Because he cherishes and desires Taichi just as much, if not more - despite often seeming in denial or reluctant (or even defensively annoyed) about it, he not only considers them to be equals. He's also prone to lose his composure completely once Taichi gets serious. And when he thinks that nobody is looking especially after having been apart for months and let's be real, even if he has to "save" Taichi from himself sometimes and remind him to be responsible, Koushirou is just as prone to get himself into weird situations as well. And apparently, that includes sexual shenanigans, preferably in his own office.

I love how they are depicted as each other's weak points - even IF they drive each other nuts, there is so much trust and... Showing each other sides of themselves that others do not ever get to witness.

A lot of people pointed out that Robert seemed docile and not himself, but I think he was just being awkward he didn’t want to act all lovey-dovey with kev in front of Aaron and his family and rub it in.

But yeah, people really convinced themselves that Kev was behind the beatings and he's some malicious monster, and it seems like they just can’t let that go.

Robert said something like "..if I'm still alive", but people say that all the time as a joke. That's how I understood it, partly joke, but partly also real fear that Kev wouldn't take it well, though I didn't really get the vibe that Kev would beat Robert up. I guess we will see how Kev reacts soon.

Or, Don’t Assume that Someone Sees a Character the Way You Do.

This post about Jack Kelly came up on my dash yesterday, and I found the discussion troubling on a lot of levels, partly because of what were clear miscommunications in the conversation, and partly just because of how much people were assuming. 

@jellyfishyishy, if I read the thread correctly, was saying that they have a hard time seeing stage show Jack as gay. I gather they saw the stage show first, and watched 92sies later, and so their primary conception of Jack is from the stage show. Later on in the thread, they also explicitly said that they view 92sies Jack as gay. (Feel free to correct me if you are reading this and I got anything wrong. :) )

However, a lot of people in the thread took the original comment to mean that 92sies Jack isn’t gay or bi, and took offense. I think this is primarily because Jack’s red bandana is a primary piece of his costume in 92sies, and there is that screenshot in the original post of the historical tidbit about red bandanas being queer coding. I was quite upset about the tone of a lot of the comments, because there are so many layers behind the reading of Jack as queer by the fandom, and not all of them are immediately accessible to every fan. 

Let me frame this a little bit. I am a Gransie in this fandom. I’ve been watching 92sies since it was released. I was 12. I grew up in a Midwestern town with absolutely no visible queer community, no activism, no pride parade, and in 1992 Will & Grace was six years away from airing. There was nothing to tell me that a queer life was even possible. I knew what the the words gay and lesbian meant, but that was all. There wasn’t anyone out at my schools, or anyone that I knew who I could clearly identify as queer, and I certainly didn’t see myself as queer then, or for quite a long time afterward.

So, did I grow up thinking 92sies Jack was any form of queer? Absolutely not. I shipped him with Sarah - I still ship him with Sarah, among other ships, and the conversation about why Sarah and Jack’s relationship is actually healthy on a lot of levels is a different discussion (which I wrote about here). That said, did even 12-year-old me realize that Jack and Davey were different? Absolutely. See this post that I wrote in response to Sarah Marshall’s article about Newsies and and female fear, and representations of caring, and masculinity. 

But let’s talk about the things you need to know to read 92sies Jack as queer, and how accessible those things are really, to people who aren’t totally immersed in fandom, theater, Hollywood, or all three.