Paladin Danse, the Brotherhood, Autism, and not being a person
dragging myself back to my forgotten fallout blog to rant abt how people seem to talk abt Danse's whole deal (which means. a lot of things. he has a lot of deals going on), by which I mean the fact he is more of a tool and not a person to the Brotherhood who is largely taking advantage of him, and people talk abt Danse being autistic (which I fully and whole heartedly believe is completely unintentional by Bethesda, but nonetheless very well written and present, so much so I consider it vital to his character) but never how both of these work in combination.
Been getting really into ENA lately, and a lot of ENA Dream BBQ seems to focus on the fact ENA is not so much a person but an entity doomed to toil forever, to LITERALLY die and even give pieces of herself away (her arm to enter the purge event) to complete whatever job she's been assigned, and is functionally more a tool than someone with personhood. So of course I have to make this about my favorite fictional man, an action I realize would get me taken outside and shot but I digress.
Back when I was active I had some semi well received takes on his character (such being largely de-desensitized and much more worldly than he is often depicted by fans-- come the fuck on, bro lived in the CAPITAL WASTELAND. Arguably one of the most inhospitable locales we see in the series, from my understanding) so maybe I've talked about this before but I think Danse's character suffers from being confined to the affinity conversations, particularly in regards to Cutler, who I feel is much more vital to understanding why Danse is the way he is than we're allowed to get info about.
He and Danse ran a junk shop in the CW, Danse-- who is a synth, who came into this world as a full-grown adult, with fake memories of a fake childhood and fake backstory (possibly the Railroad's work?), and as such we know (and later, he knows) Cutler was, most likely, Danse's only relationship (whatever you interpret it as, friend or lover) and thus only tether to the world outside himself. The shop and Cutler was his place(tm), what keeps him from being any other wasteland drifter. Cutler is probably everything to him. Cutler wants to join the Brotherhood, Danse follows, Danse likes the structure and sense of purpose because he's autistic. Then Cutler is gone, and all that's left is the Brotherhood with an environment perfectly suited to his neurology and with no tethers to the outside to ever make him even think of leaving them. There's nowhere and nothing outside of the Brotherhood for him, of course it becomes his life. Of course they're happy to have him, their little soldier who listens to their dear leader and follows directions so so good and follows the rulebook to every minute word and will never ever think of leaving or questioning them. Why would he?
I fully believe Cutler was real, as I feel like if he wasn't, Danse would talk about how he had to beg (beg!!!!!! he had to fucking ASK for them to look for the missing team Cutler was a part of, as if we had any reason to doubt their soldiers are units, not people) to look for Cutler or just mention that missing team at all and would have his fellow soldiers be like what the fuck are you talking about dude that did not that happen. Like he'd totally know. As such, him being gone left Danse in the perfect position to be fully modeled into whatever the Brotherhood wanted of him. Notice how he (which he even later acknowledges!) fully expects you to just...follow in his footsteps and wholeheartedly believe in and follow the BOS's ideology? Like doesn't even question that there could be a reality where these guys are wrong? How he full send believes synths are just machines and struggles even when finding out he is one, and thus forced to face they are in fact people with memories and feelings and personalities and identities and relationships? The BOS is just his objective reality.
He views himself as a tool because they view him as a tool, he is a Paladin, he's his squad's leader, his feelings and wants don't matter, just the mission and keeping his people alive. Not that he doesn't care, if anything we're shown that he cares so SO much. He cares so much about Haylen, about you. If you romance him, he's nearly sick with worry about you getting hurt, you leaving, doing something wrong to you. He just doesn't really know what to do about it or how.
He doesn't even consider having wants or desires for himself, unaware he operates as an extension of the BOS, not as a person who merely sorta agrees with them or just wants 3 meals a day and a place to sleep in exchange for shooting some guys.
Hell, the only time we see him break out of this is once he knows he's a synth, and thus forcibly ejected from the BOS and all he knows and believes in. Only then does he go "wait? what the fuck? I'm a person?". Note his utter offense at Maxson implying he knew he was a synth and was a purposeful spy and traitor, how even worse to him than being sentenced to death is having his faith in them doubted, his usefulness to them doubted. He's happy to let the player kill him, because it would be a continuation of their ideals. But the second his servitude to the Brotherhood, which he values above all else, including his personhood, getting questioned? Now he's upset!
Hell, he's even dehumanized OUTSIDE of the Brotherhood! See this comment from Piper when Maxson reveals him being a synth:
(Girl what the fuck + you are not immune to propaganda + she is sometimes accidentally complacent or even actively participating in the same discrimination she is trying to stop btw and I love that yum yum yum writing so good sometimes)
Dehumanization of autistic people is nothing too, take this really good chunk of an article I found trying to gather my own thoughts together for this post:
"Here’s a classic by Ivar Lovaas, an early pioneer most associated with the current therapy most aggressively recommended for autistic kids, Applied Behavioral Analysis:
You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense […] One way to look at the job of helping an autistic kid is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."
"You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense […]"
Hmm...sure sounds like something a commonwealther would say about a synth, huh?
Besides, identity confusion is very much a thing to those with autism: both in regards to themselves as a person, but also about themselves as part of society. Danse is very lost and listless after Blind Betrayal, and furthermore with the knowledge he's a synth, that he's artificial and thus inherently different from many people around him, despite looking and sounding like them. He's just different, a feeling likely not new if we assume him to be autistic, and when we consider the multiple times in canon he describes struggling with interacting with others and understanding their feelings and actions. Being a soldier gave him an easy, simple, digestible answer to this confusion: he's a soldier. A soldier's conduct gave him a playbook to interaction and his own actions, an objective, structured way of life. It was made to appeal to him in every way, and was probably almost therapeutic.
He is, in my opinion, the perfect victim.
My point in vomiting words isn't to like, try to exonerate him btw. Any sort of "hes actually an innocent cinnamon roll who did nothing wrong!!!!" Danse depictions equally piss me off. Regardless of BOS brainwashing (they're a cult to me and always will be) or victimhood or diagnosis, he IS an adult and responsible for his own actions, and his discrimination and violence against non-humans and participation in BOS acts...but I also think it's just as shallow to imply he just, is a normal well adapted adult who agreed with the BOS bc he's a discriminatory ass, and not due to being the exact type of person who is incredibly likely to be victimized by an entity such as the BOS, and what the isolation of a person can do to them. ESPECIALLY considering him being a synth-- he is (whether accidentally or not or both) an active participate in the discrimination of his own kind, of people like him...is that not kind of spectacular, very interesting (and considering it's Bethesda...possibly unintentional?) writing? Especially when I feel we get very few examples of synths who are anything except perfect victims until like, Far Harbor came out. I just think this is a very interesting chunk of his character that barely got explored but exists to at least some extent, and I'm disappointed to seemingly see largely unexplored or under explored in fandom materials.
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