u/Outrageous_Money_633

It will be a very long text... So. Before anything else: this is not an argument that people are wrong for personally seeing Hank and Connor as father and son. If that interpretation means something to you, that is completely fine.

What I am questioning is the way this particular interpretation is so often presented as the obvious, default, almost-canonical reading of their relationship to the point where people who see friendship or romantic potential are treated as though they have somehow misunderstood the game.

I'm writing this because I keep running into the same claims under Hank/Connor content: "they're obviously father and son," "the game pretty much portrays them that way," "Hank sees Connor as a replacement for Cole," "Connor needs Hank to teach him how to be human," etc.

And the more I think about those arguments, the less convincing that reading becomes to me, especially when I look at Connor's side of the relationship. One thing that stands out to me is how much of the father-son argument depends on Hank's grief, rather than on anything Connor is actually written to seek, need or recognize.

Hank lost his son. Obviously that loss profoundly affects him, and naturally it influences the way viewers interpret his later attachments. But there is a big difference between Hank's history making a parental interpretation emotionally appealing to some fans and the game actually constructing a mutual father-son relationship between Hank and Connor. Hank having lost a child doesn't automatically make the next younger person he becomes attached to his substitute son.

And it certainly doesn't explain why Connor would begin to see Hank as a father in return. That second part often seems to get skipped entirely.

So, lets talk about the Cole argument. Probably the most common piece of "evidence" I see is that Connor's deaths make Hank think about Cole. But I think the context of that scene matters enormously. Hank doesn't spend the game repeatedly looking at Connor and thinking, "he reminds me of my son." The explicit comparison between Connor's deaths and Cole appears on a very specific negative route, when their relationship has deteriorated badly and Hank is already at an extremely low point.

What Connor's repeated deaths force Hank to confront is the difference between them: Connor keeps coming back. Cole never could. Connor can die and appear again in another body. Cole was human. Hank lost him once, permanently. That is an incredibly cruel contrast for someone consumed by grief, but it is not the same statement as "Connor reminds Hank of Cole because Hank sees Connor as his son."

If anything, that scene relies on the fact that Connor's relationship with death is something profoundly alien to Hank. Connor's return makes the permanence of Cole's death even harder to bear. Turning that into simple replacement-child symbolism strips away a lot of what actually makes the scene painful.

Another argument is that Hank becomes protective of Connor and is afraid of losing him. But... protectiveness doesn't automatically mean parenthood. Like... why is protection automatically parental? Friends protect each other. Partners protect each other. Lovers protect each other. Connor protects Hank too. Losing someone once can also make a person terrified of losing other people they love or become attached to. That doesn't mean every later attachment has to reproduce the exact role of the person who died.

Care is not a paternity test, ma gods!

And then there is Connor. This is where the father-son interpretation becomes much less convincing to me, because nothing in Connor's own characterization suggests that he is looking for a parent or needs Hank to fill that role. He just... never expresses a desire for parental guidance, never frames Hank in those terms, and never behaves as though he needs to be raised or emotionally parented. That role is largely assigned to him from the outside. Also, Connor was not designed as a child, a dependent, or a companion who needs to be raised. He enters the story as an adult-presenting investigative prototype specifically designed to function in an extremely demanding professional environment.

He analyzes crime scenes, interrogates suspects, negotiates hostage situations, manipulates people when it serves his mission. He carries a weapon, makes tactical judgments, and he can lie. He can disobey, kill and challenge Hank directly and repeatedly. He is not presented as an adult body containing the mind of a little boy. Yet something strange often happens when people place Connor next to Hank: Connor suddenly becomes much younger than the story otherwise treats him.

Suddenly his recent manufacture is used to undermine the adult competence and autonomy the game otherwise gives him.

Suddenly he is "only a few months old."

Suddenly he needs Hank to guide him through life.

Suddenly Hank is "teaching him how to be human."

Suddenly Connor needs someone to raise him emotionally after deviancy.

And I think this is one of the biggest unexamined assumptions behind the father-son reading. Being inexperienced with something is not the same as being a child. Connor can be new to emotion without having a child's mind. He can be confused by his own developing identity without needing a parent. He can require emotional support without requiring a father. Adults learn from other adults constantly. A person who changes your worldview can be your friend, partner, colleague, mentor, rival, lover... any number of things. Influence is not inherently parental.

And Connor's development toward deviancy is not simply a story in which Hank patiently teaches him humanity. Connor's software instability develops through many interactions, decisions and encounters with both humans and androids. Hank can have an enormous influence on him, but Connor ultimately has to make his own choices. In fact, Hank cannot make Connor deviant for him. Connor has to choose.

Also, there's that strange need to make Connor dependent. This is probably the part of the interpretation that bothers me most. Connor is one of CyberLife's most sophisticated investigative models, yet fandom discussions can turn him into the android who apparently cannot navigate personhood without being assigned a human father. Other deviants wake up to autonomy, fear, uncertainty and completely unfamiliar emotions too. They have to build identities and relationships after breaking away from the roles they were created for. Yet Connor in particular is very often imagined as needing someone to explain life to him, guide him, protect him from adulthood, teach him emotions and essentially finish raising him.

Why?

Nothing in his characterization requires that. He can need Hank without needing Hank as a father. He can love Hank without becoming his son. He can trust him, learn from him, depend on him emotionally at times and still remain an autonomous adult equal. And I think the constant insistence on the son role has another consequence that rarely gets acknowledged: it removes Connor from an adult relational position.

Once Connor has been framed as "Hank’s boy," his autonomy becomes less visible. His uncertainty becomes childishness. His learning becomes dependence. Hank's influence becomes parenting. And once that transformation has been made, a romantic interpretation can conveniently be dismissed as disturbing because Connor has already been rhetorically turned into Hank’s child. Gods, even friendship is dismissed as disturbing!

That can become circular reasoning: Connor cannot be viewed romantically because he is basically Hank’s son and he is basically Hank’s son because everything about him has already been interpreted through the role of a son. And that's the reason why he can't be Hank's friend either.

This becomes much clearer to me when I compare Hank and Connor with relationships where Detroit genuinely builds parenthood into the narrative.

Kara and Alice are the most obvious example.

Alice occupies the role of a child. Kara's entire relationship with her develops around caring for her, protecting her, providing safety and finding a home. The parent-child framework is not something viewers have to reconstruct from an age difference and a few protective gestures. It is fundamental to their storyline.

Carl and Markus also have a completely different foundation.

Markus lives with Carl for years. He takes care of him. They share a home and an established daily life. Carl teaches him, encourages his independence, exposes him to art and ideas and has had years to shape him emotionally and intellectually. And there is another layer there that I personally find interesting: Carl already has a deeply strained relationship with his biological son, Leo. I sometimes read Carl's relationship with Markus partly through that failure. There is something poignant about Carl being able to give Markus patience, encouragement and emotional attention in ways he clearly struggles to give Leo. To me, it can feel as though Markus gives Carl another opportunity to occupy the role of a father differently, perhaps even to become the kind of father he wishes he had been.

That part is my interpretation, not something I would present as an objective fact. But the important distinction is that it grows out of an actual familial structure already present in Carl's story.

That is very different from starting with Hank's dead child and working backwards until Connor has been assigned the vacant role.

The same distinction applies when people compare Hank and Connor to Joel and Ellie.

Ellie is a minor placed in Joel's care. Their story deliberately uses guardianship, dependency and Joel's previous loss of a daughter as part of its emotional architecture. The parental parallel is built into the narrative itself.

Hank and Connor are introduced as professional partners. Adult professional partners who initially cannot stand each other, in fact. Their relationship grows through conflict, cooperation, disagreement, trust and choice. They influence each other enormously. They can become deeply emotionally important to one another. But none of those things inherently constitutes parenthood.

I also think appearance does more work here than people admit. Hank is visibly much older than Connor, and I think that visual contrast primes a lot of viewers to reach for a parental framework before the relationship itself has even been examined. Put a gray-haired man beside a younger-looking adult and suddenly ordinary things like concern, arguments, protectiveness, emotional influence become "dad behavior."

I’m not convinced the same scenes would be interpreted as automatically parental nearly as often if the age contrast between them were less pronounced. Which is revealing, because if the relationship itself were unmistakably written as parent-child, gray hair would not need to do quite so much of the storytelling. The contrast between Hank and Connor may invite people to place them into a familiar "older man/younger man" father-son template, but that template comes from the viewer, not from any actual parallel with Cole. Cole was six when he died and would still have been a child during the events of the game. Connor, meanwhile, is presented as an adult professional. So even the age-based argument depends on turning Connor into a generic "young enough to be someone's son" figure rather than looking at the specific son Hank actually lost.

Also that "but Hank calls Connor son" argument I'm so tired of. Yes. Hank uses "son."

Once.

If this line were intended as narrative proof of a father/son connection, it would be repeated or reinforced elsewhere. It isn't. Older dudes call younger guys "son" all the time especially if they're superiors at work, and none of them think of their subordinates as family. Just because he called Connor, his younger co worker, "son" one time does not mean he views Connor as family or his son.

The existence of that word can certainly contribute to someone's father-son headcanon, but treating one colloquial use as though Hank literally declares Connor his child is a stretch. Especially when the game never follows it with an explicit mutual parent-child framing. Connor never starts calling Hank his father. He never describes Hank as filling that role. There is no storyline about Connor searching for parental attachment. And the game's own positive relationship label for them can become Friend.

That matters to me. Not because "Friend" somehow proves romance (obviously it doesn't) but because it shows that the game is perfectly comfortable framing their intense emotional bond as a relationship between peers without needing to classify it as family.

And yeah, we have these "But Bryan Dechart said..." arguments too. And comments from actors or writers can absolutely be interesting when discussing how they personally understood the relationship or what they had in mind while working on it. But external commentary is still not the same thing as the game explicitly establishing something in the text. If Bryan Dechart or Adam Williams describes Hank and Connor through a father-son lens, that can support that interpretation. It doesn't retroactively turn every ambiguous interaction between them into objective proof of parenthood, nor does it make every other reading invalid.

This is especially important with a choice-based game built around players interpreting and shaping relationships for themselves. But people forget that Bryan himself emphasized how Detroit allows players to project their own experiences onto the characters and "build your own story." And there's Clancy who sees Hank and Connor differently. So "Bryan sees it that way" and "the game canonically establishes them as father and son" are simply two different statements.

The same applies to commentary from writers. Authorial intent can add context, but if the argument is that the relationship is obviously and explicitly father-son in the finished game, then the finished game still has to carry that claim on its own.

And that is really my problem with "obviously father and son." If someone tells me, "I personally see them as father and son," I have absolutely nothing to argue with. Fine. Enjoy it. What I push back against is:

"They are obviously father and son."

"The game pretty much portrays them as father and son."

"You’re ignoring the story if you see romance."

Those are different claims. Detroit is perfectly capable of writing familial relationships when it wants to emphasize them. Kara and Alice do not require viewers to infer motherhood from Kara being protective. Carl and Markus do not require people to infer their history from Carl being older. With Hank and Connor, the parental reading requires considerably more interpretation: Hank's grief has to be mapped onto Connor, Connor's inexperience has to become childishness, Hank’s influence has to become fatherly guidance, protectiveness has to become parental, and the difference in their apparent ages has to carry a lot of weight.

That doesn't make the interpretation bad.

It makes it an interpretation.

And I probably wouldn't have spent this much time thinking about any of this if that interpretation were simply allowed to coexist with the others. What has made it exhausting is how often it gets inserted into practically every kind of Hank/Connor content.

Romantic edit? "They’re father and son."

Friendship edit? "Look at Hank and his son."

Someone jokes that they should kiss? Immediate correction.

Someone says they see chemistry? "But Connor reminds him of Cole."

It starts to feel as though fandom has appointed one interpretation as something everyone else must constantly be reminded of. And after seeing the same two pieces of "proof" repeated again and again, I wanted to actually look at what those arguments are based on.

I don't think either one establishes what people claim it establishes. Nor do I think Connor needs to be reduced to a son-shaped role in order for his relationship with Hank to be emotionally meaningful. Their canon relationship gives us partnership, mutual influence, attachment and friendship. That is already a lot.

Some people can build a found-family interpretation from that. Some can simply enjoy the friendship. And some can see romantic potential between two unrelated adult-presenting characters whose relationship becomes deeply important to both of them.

What I reject is the idea that the father-son reading is somehow the game's default conclusion and that everyone who sees something else has failed to understand the story. If anything, that reading requires a substantial amount of interpretation of its own, particularly when it comes to turning Connor into a son figure in the first place.

A widely shared headcanon doesn't stop being a headcanon simply because it is widely shared.

One of my favorite little details in dbh appears right at the beginning of Hank and Connor's relationship. When Ben sees them together, he jokingly says to Hank:

"So… you got yourself an android, huh?"

Not simply, "They assigned you an android."

More like: "So, you DID get yourself an android?"

And Hank's reaction is very interesting.

We have only just been introduced to him as someone who supposedly cannot stand androids. Yet Hank doesn't react to the implication at all. He doesn't say, "He's not mine," "I would never buy an android," or even, "What the hell are you talking about?"

He only answers, "Oh, very funny," and turns to look at Connor. Almost as though the joke landed a little closer to home than Hank would have liked. And the joke gets even better later, because Hank eventually starts using almost the exact same language himself. After Connor drags him into the shower, he complains that he's being "assaulted in his own home by his own fuckin' android." So apparently "you got yourself an android" stopped being quite so funny somewhere along the way.

Later, the game gives us another interesting detail. In Hank's bedroom, there is a magazine containing the article Tainted Love. It describes androids designed not only for sex, but for companionship: androids who can live with a person, take care of the home, and satisfy their emotional needs. These models were originally marketed mainly toward lonely people.

Of course, this doesn't prove that Hank was already standing outside a CyberLife store with his credit card ready. But the magazine is lying in the bedroom of an extremely lonely man. So the theory that Hank may at least have considered the possibility didn't come from nowhere.

Then we reach the Eden Club, and we begin to understand why he might have rejected the idea. Hank doesn't despise intimacy between humans and androids. What he despises is the way people use androids as convenient objects, as substitutes for real relationships in which they would have to respect another person’s desires, emotions, and boundaries.

The clients at the Eden Club are not looking for partners. They want objects that cannot say no, demand respect, or walk away.

And Hank cannot stand that. Because despite his loneliness, he does not want a toy. He wants someone who can genuinely return his feelings. This becomes especially clear after the encounter with the two Tracis. When Hank hears that one of them killed a man while trying to return to the person she loved, he doesn't mock the idea that androids can love each other. He accepts it almost immediately. Later, he says himself that they only wanted to be together and that they genuinely seemed to be in love.

So Hank's problem was never that an android could not be a real partner.

The problem was the absence of choice and mutuality.

Which makes Ben's joke even funnier in retrospect.

Because Hank really did, in a way, "get himself an android."

He just didn't buy him.

Connor was there because he wanted to be.

And I think there's one more thing worth mentioning here.

I don't really believe that an otherwise normal, empathetic person would suddenly become cruel to an android just because they knew it was technically a machine. If something looks human, talks to you, reacts to you, and seems vulnerable, empathy doesn't just switch off because you know there are components under the skin. Especially when you know that this being can't really fight back or protect itself from you.

You might know, rationally, that it's an android. But hurting something that looks and behaves like a person still requires you to ignore a very basic human response: I don't want to hurt this.

And I think that matters when we talk about people buying androids because they were lonely. Someone looking for companionship probably isn't looking for a target. They're looking for someone to have around. So to me, the disturbing part was never that humans could do whatever they wanted to androids.

It's that some of them wanted to.

Just to be clear, I’m looking at all of this partly through a HankCon lens. If that interpretation isn't your thing, that's completely fine, this post probably just isn't for you.

Saw a video saying that if you’re against AI but still dislike Gavin, then you’re a hypocrite, because his hostility toward androids is supposedly understandable and therefore justified.

(It also said that some people only hate Gavin because they like Connor and Gavin hates Connor. And sure... of course that affects how people see him. That’s just how character dynamics work. But it doesn’t make their reaction irrational)

I mean... the bigger argument still falls apart for me. Like... why stop at androids then? Why not apply that same logic to technology in general?

People have been pushed out by new technology forever. Switchboard operators got replaced by automated systems. Computers wiped out or shrank a lot of older office jobs. Self-checkout cut into cashier work. Automation replaced or reduced entire kinds of labor long before the world ever imagined androids. This is not some unique sci-fi dilemma. Technological progress has always displaced people. What makes Detroit different is that androids are not just faceless machines. They look human, sound human, work next to humans, and outperform them. They are a much easier thing to hate because they make the threat feel personal. Connor is standing right in front of Gavin as a walking reminder that a corporation would replace people in a heartbeat if it could.

So yes, I understand why someone like Gavin would direct his anger at Connor instead of at CyberLife, the economy, or the whole structure behind android labor. But that still doesn't make him right.

"There is a reason he feels this way" and "therefore his behavior is justified" are two completely different claims. People take their frustration out on the easiest target all the time instead of on the actual source of the problem. In Detroit, androids are that target.

So no, disliking Gavin doesn't make someone a hypocrite. It just means not everyone is interested in excusing cruelty because its source is easy to understand.

One thing that genuinely fascinates me in fandom is how far people will go to make a headcanon feel canon even when the scenes, audio, or comparisons they’re using very obviously do not fit the dynamic they’re trying to push. And I don’t just mean "I disagree with their interpretation." I mean cases where people take material that was clearly built around one kind of relationship or emotional context, slap it onto completely different characters, and then act like the original meaning somehow no longer matters.

Sorry for bringing up my own ship again, but Hank/Connor is the example I keep coming back to because this is exactly where I see it happen all the time, and honestly I’ve gotten really tired of it. Sometimes people get so determined to force a specific reading onto Hank and Connor that they start using scenes, edits, and outside parallels that do not actually support what they’re claiming.

One example that keeps driving me up the wall is those edits that use the Silent Hill 2 "Mary? / I’m not your Mary" audio on Hank and Connor and then label it "Cole" ( who is Hank's dead 6yo son). In the original context, that scene is not about a child, and it is not about a father recognizing his son. It is built around a man confronting the image of his dead wife and another woman tied to that image, with very obvious romantic and sexual undertones. So seeing that dragged onto Hank and Connor as supposed evidence for a completely different dynamic does not feel clever or deep to me... it feels wildly mismatched.

Like... this is why it gets me so much... not even just the ship discourse itself, but how absurd the mismatch can be. Sometimes the original material being referenced is very clearly built around romance, sexual tension, grief tied to a spouse or lover, or some other very specific emotional setup and people will still drag it over to Hank and Connor, or use it to "prove" some completely different dynamic, even when the tone and meaning do not line up at all.

And the same goes for outside comparisons. One of the ones that especially annoys me is when people compare Hank and Connor to Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us, as if that settles the discussion. To me, those dynamics are not the same at all. Joel and Ellie are very explicitly written through a parental framework: he becomes her protector, she becomes a surrogate daughter figure, and the emotional structure of their story is built around that bond. Hank and Connor, meanwhile, are written through partnership. They work together, clash with each other and influence each other as two adults in a professional and emotional dynamic. That is not the same thing, and an older man caring about a younger character does not automatically make every relationship Joel-and-Ellie-coded.

So, like... People will grab any superficially similar pair (older gruff man, younger partner, emotional bond, grief, whatever) and act like that automatically makes the dynamic identical. But emotional closeness is not the same thing as familial coding, and age difference alone doesn't turn every duo into a parent-child relationship. And honestly, the fact that an older character once lost a child doesn't mean every younger person in their life becomes a surrogate for that child. Especially when the child who died was 6 years old, and the person fandom is trying to force into that role is a fully grown adult man from the start. That is not the same relationship, not the same emotional shape, and not some automatic substitute.

I’ve seen the same thing with Pragmata too, where people compare Hugh and Diana to Hank and Connor as if that proves anything. But again, that’s exactly the problem: fandom keeps grabbing completely different relationships, flattening them down to a few basic traits, and then pretending that those traits are enough to make the dynamics interchangeable.

And sometimes I run into edits that make it even more absurd... people will use an explicitly romantic song, one that is very obviously about lovers, longing, or a romantic relationship, and then insist the dynamic they’re editing is "not a ship" but father-son or some other purely familial bond. And at that point I just have to ask: why? If the relationship is supposedly so clearly non-romantic, why keep reaching for material that is built around romance in the first place?

And then, if enough people repeat these comparisons or edits, suddenly the comment sections start treating the whole thing like accepted fact. Not as "it's my interpretation," but as "this is what the relationship really is," and everyone else is supposedly ignoring canon.

This part just drives me insane... not just the headcanon itself, again, but the way fandom can take something that is obviously a stretch, repeat it over and over, and eventually start acting like anyone who questions it is the one missing the point. I’m not saying people can’t make edits or play with symbolism. Obviously they can. Fandom has always done that. But there’s a difference between "this is a fun fan interpretation" and "this is now basically the truth of the relationship," especially when the source material being used does not actually support the claim in the way people pretend it does.

So I guess what I’m asking is... does this bother anyone else too?

Not just with ships, but with character dynamics in general when fandom grabs scenes, audios, or parallels that are wildly wrong in tone or meaning, and then keeps pushing them until fanon starts getting treated like canon.

I mean... I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I’m really curious how other people see it.

How much weight do creator comments actually have for you when it comes to shipping?

Like, if a show/game/series is already out, the text is already there, the story is finished or at least established, and then later a creator, actor, writer, etc. says "those characters are more like siblings," or "they’re just friends," or "that dynamic was never meant to be romantic" does that actually change anything for you?

Because personally, I’ve always felt like there’s a difference between what is actually in the text and what people say about it later. If something was never clearly stated in canon itself, then I don’t really see why a later comment should suddenly override what’s on screen or how people connected with the dynamic in the first place. For example, I ship Hank/Connor. A lot of anti-ship arguments around them lean heavily on outside commentary, creator intent, or people insisting the relationship is "really" some other dynamic. But to me, if that reading was never explicitly established in the actual game, then I don’t see those later statements as canon in the same way the text itself is canon.

That doesn’t mean people can’t personally read the relationship as platonic, familial, or anything else. Obviously they can. But I’ve never really understood why fandoms sometimes treat post-release creator comments like they should completely shut down every other interpretation, especially when the original work itself leaves room for multiple readings. And I’m not even saying people have to agree with my ship specifically. I’m more interested in the general question: if the canon text gives you one experience, and later commentary gives you another, which one matters more to you?

And I don’t think this is unique to Hank/Connor either. A good example is Arcane. I don’t even personally ship Jayce/Viktor, but from what I’ve seen, that fandom has had the exact same kind of discourse around creator comments, character intent, and whether people are "supposed" to read a relationship one way or another. And despite that, the ship is still massively popular, because a lot of fans ultimately go with what they saw in the dynamic itself, not just whichever outside comment lines up with their preference.

So... would a creator saying "that’s not what I intended" ever make you stop shipping something? Or once the work is already out there, do you mostly go by what is actually in the story itself?

I make tiktok content centered around my favourite ship, and one thing that has been getting on my nerves for a long time is how often people show up anywhere it is mentioned just to push some other options instead. And I do not just mean under my own content. I mean in general. You open the comments under almost anything that mentions the ship, and alongside the usual "how can you even ship this" comments, there is almost always someone acting like the obvious solution is for people to ship something else instead. Sometimes the comments are not even really about ships. It is more like people cannot process the idea that you specifically want these two characters together. They act like if another character exists in the canon, then your interest should automatically transfer there. Which is such a bizarre way to engage with fiction that I honestly do not know what to call it except deeply annoying. Because that is the part that gets me: people talk as if characters and ships are interchangeable. As if liking a character in one specific dynamic means you should be perfectly satisfied swapping them into whatever pairing they personally find more acceptable. As if the only thing that matters is filling a slot.

But people do not ship something just because it fits a vague category. Not because it is "human/non-human," not because it is mlm, not because it shares some surface-level dynamic with another pairing. People get attached to specific characters, specific chemistry, specific tension, and the exact emotional dynamic between those two characters.

That is why this whole "just ship something else instead" attitude feels so shallow and so condescending. It treats ships like replaceable products, and characters like they can simply be swapped out with whatever fandom-approved alternative someone prefers.

But that is not how shipping works?

When people constantly do this anywhere my ship is mentioned (and I’m sure this happens to other ships in other fandoms too), it does not come across as helpful. It comes across as pushy, dismissive, and weirdly entitled. Like they cannot simply dislike the ship and move on. They have to insert their preferred alternative into every space where this ship exists, as if other people’s taste needs to be corrected. Like... It is not enough for some people to say "not my thing." They have to show up under videos/comments about this ship and make sure everyone knows which pairing or which character they think would be more acceptable. As if they genuinely cannot stand the fact that people like a pairing they personally disapprove of. If someone is making content about the ship they dislike, or if people are just discussing it, why is it so hard to either scroll or stay in your own lane? Why does every mention of the ship seem to attract people who feel the need to "fix" it?

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of thing in fandom spaces?