"kon and clark are father-son" "they're like brothers!" "nah they're just like really close friends"
hey, if the nuances of their relationship aren't clear enough as is and you genuinely need a real life point of comparison, why don't you read up on the lived experiences of donor conceived people (DCP) and their donors?
i don't talk much about being donor conceived (why would I on my fandom blog???), but it gets disheartening to see kon and clark's relationship fumbled when it so closely resembles the often overlooked and/or misunderstood experiences of myself and other DCP. representation is fucking hard to find, and good representation even more so. as far as i'm concerned, kon and clark are an invaluable gateway to more people being educated on the matter, if anyone only knew to consider viewing them that way in the first place--hence this post.
i'm not going to harp on specifics here. no DCP and donor are going to have the exact same bond--if indeed they have one at all--and i'm sure there are plenty who wouldn't see themselves reflected in kon and clark. please take the time to listen to some interviews, or look around online for posts by actual DCP talking about their lives.
while kon came about through decidedly more sci-fi means than actual DCP, he still carries the weight of being a person manufactured and treated as a product (as a recent example of this irl, just look at the fertility industry rushing to capitalize an Alysa Liu by claiming in all their ads that they can guarantee YOUR child will be a gold medalist).
his history, his genetic code, came from a man who had no part in raising him. sure, his growth was accelerated and that doesn't really happen in our world, but by the time he met clark, he was a teenager. they're family, indisputably, but no one would (or at least should) say clark is his dad, cut and dry.
clark, for his part, didn't have a direct hand in kon's creation. he's not getting paid to provide the building blocks for a whole entire person without being asked to consider the potential consequences. however, he very much so suits the part of an anonymous donor who had no expectation of meeting someone who, though not his child in the traditional sense, still rightfully regards him as a fundamental part of their existence and now wants to have a relationship of some sort. he handles it GRACEFULLY (yj animated bane of my existence), as some donors indeed do, but the bond they forge is still far from straightforward and is always going to be that way.
i guess tldr; educate yourself on the issues faced by DCP, abandon the nuclear family, read the damn comics
and as an important addendum to that: op is NOT a fan of the clex baby retcon. forget all that and read superboy 1994. please please please please pl-
