#this was the most nerdiest thing I ever wrote for this leech

[silverhandj]

>... Johnny Silverhand is less a moniker taken from the man who gave his life to protect him in the war and more an ensemble of dressings from constructs that had at one point been a point of reliance for him and all his mistakes, and all his accomplishments. Robert Linder isn't dead but he has lost its usefulness for him the minute he deserted and took to the guitar. Mind you, this transformation, happened within a month in a room he never left but instead buried himself in with his only company being books on philosophy, and tucking away Robert John Linder in the grates of the motel. The asceticism of killing Robert off, and taking his saviours name is only the tipping point of Johnny Silverhand and from it, a sense of peace in knowing he's continuing on because of Johnny. Even now, Robert Linder is no longer a point of contention for Johnny. Why go back, when the path is set passionately hurtling towards The Edge, again. All the very best of him must live on through Johnny, the self sacrifice of a of both Johnny and Robert prove to exemplify this grace.

>... Going deeper, Robert Linder was the first to have the hand. A state of the art upgrade given by Arasaka at no charge to its contractors to fight and test in an undocumented attack within the fourth corporate war. This is not without its own consequences; Evidence of DNA tampering and blood testing have made Robert a hardened veteran on the battlefield. Stay too long out there, and anyone's bound to snap. Especially when the attack starts to fail, when masses of your brothers in war start to drop dead in multitudes. Robert, mentally, shut down. The one driving his body wasn't him, it was the hand.

>... The corporate name that had built and installed the arm into would soon be scratched off, and anyone who's anyone can understand that the arm he has on him is one of a kind - issued to soldiers deployed from Arasaka in a test attack. Even with the testing, even with the radiation in his body, none of that stalls the cyber psychosis that starts and ends with the hand.

>... Johnny's parasitic nature hasn't always been because he had turned into a digital psyche, an engram in a world trying to survive. It started before that, when he was alive and well and had donned the name of his saviour. It's easy to fall into the mess that is Night City where vices and bad habits are sold to at a cheap price that funnels back into the megacorps that supply it all. It is the eco-system of Night City after all. And no one seems to understand that the game is rigged, no matter the scales, no matter the morality.

>... The hand becomes both a metaphor and an idealization for Johnny, it becomes something he can disconnect a part of himself from the part that's organic. It will not hesitate to act on his basest desires and it's easy to pull the trigger when you aren't there. Not really. Johnny has cut pieces of himself off, and has reattached different pieces of himself in ways that justify the end. The body remembers, even when the mind starts to alter memories to protect oneself.

[ Johnny stands on the stage, in his hand is his fully loaded Malorian Arms 3516 pistol. It's after the first few sets that the hand raises the gun, and shoots the crowd. A fan dies, a few scream, but mostly, they want more of Johnny Silverhand.

"Christ Johnny, what's next, you do a live execution of a corpo on stage?" Yells Kerry, backstage. ]

This isn't what Johnny shows V in their head, but it's hinted at. In V's memories, the show goes on where no one dies and no one gets angry. In his hand is his guitar, and not a gun.

>... Johnny's metallic hand, unlike how he relates to it, is very much apart of him. It is the base of his emotions, and it is as real to him just as much as his organic self is. Except, he shifts the blame of self onto the very thing he hates but has come to rely upon over the years, as a source of strength and ideals.

>... Transitioning into V's body is like swapping the hand for an even bigger upgrade, where he's apart, just as he is without.