#i'm upset about how we're taking this bs man at face value when he's so fucking pathetic and i don't mean that as an insult.

[cyberpunk-20xx]

Hey hey

Hey

Johnny Silverhand's not cool

Johnny's disabled. Johnny had a military issued chrome forced onto him. Johnny treated himself like shit and probably smelled like shit too for it.

Do you think he got therapy for it? No I don't mean mental therapy I mean physical therapy, for the arm, I mean do you think he got physical therapy for a metal arm shoved onto a wound (I don't expect the wound was taken care of anymore than what was strictly practical no of course not), no no he wasn't given therapy, he wasn't given time to adapt, his trauma at losing a trustworthy friend on the field was just stacked with the trauma of just being weaponized even more before being put back on the field for a fucking pointless war, so that means-

I mean you know about amputation? No? No, right, of course not, it'd be weird, right? To know about amputation and implants and prothesis and the psychological impacts in detail you'd need to have read up on it, pretty obsessively at that, too, that's not normal, normal people don't do that, what kind of weirdo has hyperfixations about that because of OCD right? Right.

Well amputations are so fucking traumatizing even if they save your life. Of course they are. It's a part of your body. Your body is not supposed to see its insides and it's not supposed to lose parts either, your brain can't actually compute that, like let's say, cutting your nails?

They put a metal arm on him like cutting nails, they didn't care, he wasn't a person to them he was a tool.

He never got physical therapy for it. He never went to have it recalibrated or maintained. Why would he? I don't even think he knows what model it is. Do you think they bothered telling him? Do you think they gave him a little booklet for "how to take care of your new implant"? Ahahahah of course not that'd be so fucking silly and kind and thoughtful. Of course not.

Johnny needs his addictions. Do you think he has prescribed medicine for the chronic pains that the arm causes him? No of course not. Do you think he started drinking and taking Lace because it was fun? Because it was cool? Because he was gonna be a rockerboy? And he wanted to impress girls.

In the real world, as of 2020, the first cause of mortality in the USA is opiates, and the main demographic is white men, aged 30 to 60, roughly, a large amount of those men war veterans, cumulating psychological trauma even prior to the addiction, even prior to the army itself, cus the majority of people who join the military do it to escape poverty and a dysfunctional household. It's a well oiled machine because at worse they go back to the motherland and die quietly of OD or something else, or best case scenario they have kids! And some of those kids are boys, and out of middle class recrutes, a good part are from military families!

It's a system that works just as designed really.

America, abuse and neglect of your chronically ill and chronically in pain is part of your DNA currently.

Johnny's not cool. He runs hot, he's a fucking spoonie who ran out of spoons before he even joined the military so now all he's got is knives. Knives knives nothing else nothing but knives. Johnny's a man overheating on constant, he's been dying for years, he likely has fevers from his port inflammatory's issues due to neglect, he doesn't know how to take care of himself, he wasn't taught, it's not expected of him, no one in his entourage sees him as what he is, do you remember for one second someone treating him like he was disabled and needed accomodation?

Disabled people whose chronic pains are not given the deserved care are most likely to develop the hardest addictions to cope with it, with the physical pain, and the psychological consequences- namely, psychosis, psychosis is a common consequence for having your pain ignored because this kind of neglect breaks your psyche at its core, at its sense of self.

Johnny has all the symptoms of a man in pain but because American soft power made drug abuse cool people think he's cool for drinking and fucking and killing and coking himself up until he blows himself up. Johnny's not cool, he's a tragedy, he's hurt, he's self-medicating, no he's not going to go cold turkey because he loves Kerry or because he loves your V, love isn't going to fucking save him, if you just erase Johnny's addictions because you think love fixes that honestly fuck you, because I'm tired of people just treating addiction like a bad spot to bleach out of sight, like it's got no roots and it's got no continuation, to no longer need self-medication Johnny would need reparation and better treatment, especially if he's brought back with that fucking arm, why do people not get that he didn't reclaim the arm, he let it take over, for fuck's sake he canonically blames all HIS bad deeds on The Hand, that's not reclaiming, that's self-sabotage.

Johnny dies like a pathetic pawn in Blackhand's plan, and even among people who were supposed to be his own, he's not seen as anything but a hero or a monster. No inbetween. He's not a man to them. He's something to workship, and if he doesn't grant them miracles he's the Devil.

What a load of bullshit.

Fuck, Johnny's not cool. Johnny needed help but didn't even want it because he was so full of violence and hatred he killed himself. But he deserved better nonetheless.