YMMV / Cyberpunk: Fatherhood

• Canon Defilement:
  • V, both Vincent and Valerie, and Jackie are practically OCs with identical names. Their new histories and motivations are interesting and well-written but still a far cry from their canonical counterparts. Granted it is more acceptable for V given their variable backstory.
  • David is Flanderized and generally belittled as detailed above.
  • Rebecca decides to keep V's severely injured state from his family. She states the crew should be grateful V didn't kill them or in Lucy's case sent her back to Arasaka. She also gets manipulated and taken advantage of by V and easily lets him off the hook.
• Cry for the Devil: In a way. Faraday is still as much of a Smug Snake as ever, but it's difficult not to feel that even he deserves better than his hideous Fate Worse than Death at Robert's hands, being subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture and Unwilling Roboticisation to turn him into an Empty Shell. He's left as yet another of Robert's mind-controlled playthings, simply as a demonstration that the Linder patriarch is Eviler than Thou. It probably helps that this version of him didn't succeed in killing or betraying any of the protagonists.
• Flanderization:
  • David is given this treatment, often being referred to as dumb, lacking intelligence or street-smarts. Katsuo accuses him of wasting the chance his Mother gave him, despite Kiwi outright stating he is a Straight-A student. Further, Corpo Students undoubtedly have neural Cyberware designed to aid in their education, meaning David outdid them all, only with his Organic Brain and Hard-work. A shard in Cyberpunk 2077 states how suicide, anxiety, depression and other such issues are common for Arasaka Academy Students. David being a Straight-A student says a lot about him. However, this fic completely ignores all this to prop up V.
  • David selling XBDs is stated to be simply because he's an adrenaline junkie. It's also stated that he only ever spent any profits he made on himself. This is completely baseless and unfounded as the show directly implies that David had been using his earnings to try and cut corners for school payments, making things easier for his Mom.
  • David is solely blamed for the events leading to Gloria's death. This vastly reduces the tragedy of her character, and the idea that no matter how hard she tried or how much she sacrificed, David was never going to make it.
• Genius Bonus: From Chapter 5 onward, the scene breaks in the story are punctuated by lines of binary numbers. Translated, they mostly spell out "Scene break", but sometimes they spell out other things too. When V goes cyberpsycho in the Grand Imperial Mall, the binary scene breaks spell out stuff like "Help me. Stop Me Too Much" while he's on a rampage and "FIND HIM TRACK HIM LOCATE" as Maine's crew retrieve him and retreat, knowing his target has likely gotten away.
• Jerkass Woobie: Oddly enough, Katsuo Tanaka gets hit with this treatment — after siccing a mob of thugs on David and getting apprehended by V, the resulting investigation gets his father terminated by Arasaka and he has to account for various fines and debts incurred by Tanaka Senior's XBD addiction, resulting in him losing almost everything. When he ends up running into David during a street race, he tells the young Edgerunner that he was jealous of the fact that David had a loving mother who worked her ass off to get him into Arasaka Academy but (in Katsuo's view) squandered his good fortune and his mother's hard work selling the very same XBDs that ruined his father, pocketing the cash for himself. That doesn't change the fact that Tanaka's misfortune is largely his own fault, however.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The events of Neo-Oaxaca. V and Jackie were tasked to purge it of all undesirable elements for Arasaka to take over, which V did by unleashing a host of highly contagious techno-viruses onto the populace that completely drove everyone insane, from the mind-wiping Lethe to the Hate Plague of Phonoi, vicious enough to cause families and friends to rip each other into pieces. And not even the children were spared. It's a big reason why V has earned the name "Las Plagas".
  • Virtually every scene with Robert John Linder Jr. as he exerts his control on his entire world, but special emphasis on his Doll chips, which he has implanted into his own family. Just him speaking the command words turns Eleanor ^note My Wife. My Love. My Muse. from a defiant firebrand into a submissive Stepford wife and Vincent ^note My Son. My Boy. My Legacy. from a rebellious rocker into a dutiful son and family scion. And to make matters worse, they remain completely conscious as their puppeteered body obeys Robert's every command.
    • The fact that Eleanor has tried to kill herself multiple times as a result of Robert's abuse, but he's forcibly chipped her with cyberware that keeps her alive each time.
    • Faraday's fate. After fleeing from the Grand Imperial Mall, he is captured, subjected to brutal Cold-Blooded Torture, including at Robert's own hand, then packed off to Maelstrom and forcibly transformed, while fully conscious into a different kind of "Doll" — a barely-human metal monster that Robert can remotely embody and use to slaughter people for the hell of it. Making it even worse are the creepy sexual overtones and the fact the Maelstrom went above and beyond to ensure his shattered Empty Shell of a mind is still in there somewhere.
• Starboarding: Rebecca gets the hots and later feelings for V. This is despite the fact that he is the antithesis of practically everything she liked about David in canon.

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