gavin reed is an asshole but he is NOT that bad [detroit: become human rant]

Okay, soooo-- I've been a fan of Detroit: Become Human for a while, almost 2 years. I've been in the fandom for 6-8ish months, and oh MAN do I feel a need to explain why I think people characterize Gavin Reed incorrectly constantly. 

yes, i do think he's attractive, HOWEVER THAT IS NOT A REASON.

There are so many reasons why he's really not that bad of a person.

Firrrst of all. 

People get really angry that he was 'so mean' to Connor, however, in my opinion, it was kind of justified. 

Okay, yes, he was a complete asshole to Connor, but also like... 

mfs when a man is rightfully upset that an android is taking his job

OBVIOUSLY he's mad, given that he works extremely hard and is extremely ambitious. OF COURSE he's upset that some random ass robot comes up and does his job a hundred times better than he ever could. Yeah, dude. I'd be upset too. ALSO, people get mad about the ending in Last Chance, Connor where he shoots Connor, but also like... CONNOR WAS DOING SOMETHING HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO. The protocol is to... Destroy him... Because he's a robot not doing proper robot things. Yeah, I'd shoot his ass too! I'd destroy my oven if it gained sentience and started lighting things on fire, and while there's obviously a difference between those two things, given the way people view androids in the story, it's quite easily comparable.

People act as if the android characters in DBH are humans from the very start, and that everyone is going to see them that way, but like.. People see them as robots because THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE. At the end of the day, the 'deviancy' they experience IS just programming and code, so it makes sense that anyone would have trouble seeing it that way. If ChatGPT started telling me it was sentient, I wouldn't believe that either. When you're talking about human people in the story, you need to apply real-life logic and reasoning to whatever you're talking about. 

It makes complete sense that Gavin hates Connor, and all androids. For example, if it were me going into Education/Teaching and a robot came up and was able to do my job perfectly and possibly steal it from me, I'd be pissed off too! I'd be LIVID! I'd feel immense hatred toward aforementioned robot. Because it's taking something from me that I'm extremely passionate about doing.

People act as if he'd be an asshole to everyone just... In general society, when if you think about it and take into account the actor's perspective and the writer's perspective, that wouldn't be true at all.

He is an asshole to his coworkers, yes. That's true. I can agree that he sucks for that. 

In-game, this is his character description.

"Ambitious and unapologetically arrogant. He has garnered the hatred of his colleagues in record time. Ruthlessly ambitious, Reed will do anything to advance his career, even if it means treading on other peoples’ toes. His hostility to Lieutenant Anderson is common knowledge."

I will admit that this does contribute to the "He's JUST an asshole and NOTHING else!" narrative quite a bit, however, Neil Newbon (the actor who played him) has said that he doesn't treat normal people in regular society that way. If you walked up to him in a coffee shop, or at a party he'd be pretty chill. Besides, the total 10 minutes of screen-time that we see of him in the game is not enough for us to come to the conclusion that Gavin is 100% an all-around asshole.

It does kind of suck that he's an asshole to his coworkers, and while that is a bad quality, what happened to changing and growing as a person? Do we not believe that people can change? We watched Hank change his mind about androids, when he previously felt very similar to the way Gavin does (albeit for a different reason). Hank has also killed Connor, and assaulted him physically, but eventually changed his mind on the way he views androids. Why do people act as if Gavin can't do the same thing?

This isn't fully canon, but in my opinion it is implied (A lot of the game is implications, hear me out on this one.) that his 'hostility to Lieutenant Anderson' is a result of two main things.

•  A lack of understanding regarding what happened to Hank and his son.
•  He probably looked up to Hank when he was a good employee, and when Hank fell into heavy amounts of alcoholism Gavin most likely grew resentful.

So, yes, a lot of that hostility is on him, but you'd think that if he knew about Cole's death and if his hostility to Hank was for a different reason, he'd try to get to Hank about THAT too, right? 

Perspective is everything. If all he saw was a sudden shift in the way Hank acted, with no KNOWN reason for it, obviously there'd be a sense of resentment. This lack of understanding for his situation is somewhat shown when he talks to/about Hank in the Eden Club chapter (He's talking to Chris but he obviously means for Hank to hear it).

"Let's get out of here. It's, uh, starting to stink of booze."

That's also kind of Hank's fault for consistently getting extremely drunk when he's supposed to be working, or coming into work very late, or even not at all. While it isn't entirely his fault, it is at the same time extremely ignorant to write off his behavior on Cole's death, despite the trauma that he experienced. 

Also, a side note that doesn't really deserve its own section in this, but in my opinion TOTALLY adds another layer to what I'm saying in regard to Gavin,

Neil Newbon based Gavin's movements off the movements of a Pitbull (The dog breed), which, if you look into, is extremely interesting because Pitbulls are misunderstood animals from a behavioral standpoint. I'm not completely sure if this was on purpose, but I think that it's a very interesting detail.

That is all! To whoever happens to stumble across this, I hope that this is somewhat understandable. 

i did a lot of yapping in this blog post LMAO