#this topic is important to me cus i studied up on the sociology and psychology of abuse and yeah no johnny really just fails at that

[cyberpunk-20xx]

Reading about people calling Johnny abusive (not just that one post, I've come across a lot of that in forums and Discord servers too) and I'm like 🧍🏻 where?

The only person who we have solid hard proof he actually manipulated is Henry (ie he slept with him to keep him interested in the band, and even that isn't specified enough to give a solid judgement- for all we know about Henry the guy could have tagged along willingly, dude was not exactly healthy to begin with).

And like yes Johnny's manipulative, but tbh... We mostly get told he is? I'm still miffed about that, because he's not the only one from 2023 who's manipulative, but since he's the only one who's called so by the authors, he seems to be the only one we hold accountable on that. That bothers me.

But people keep saying he abused Rogue and Alt??? And I'm sorry, like, where??? Yes he was an asshole, yes he cheated on Rogue, but he didn't have power over these two women?? Hell Rogue used him just as much as he used her in the end. She sold him off to Blackhand's plot for her own gain and she sold out for good afterward, I'm really tired of people sugarcoating Rogue and Alt just because they're women and conventionally attractive, they're not your helpless damsels in distress, those women were made of grit and blood and tears just like the rest of the OG Cyberpunk Red cast.

And Alteria motherfucking Cunningham was NOT a victim lmao, if anything out of the two of them she had the upperhand lmao, didn't you catch how she was his dealer (even if that's a one-time thing, which we can't know if it is) ? Or how she insults him every sentence? Like I love that woman but she was literally just him, but genderswapped, and not tech-illiterate, unlike Johnny, who death-unplugged her.

They were toxic to each other but there was no villain out of the two, same with Rogue??? And I repeat, I insist, Johnny didn't have the control over those two women that warrants being called abusive, given we have squat all in terms of actual canon proof of what he did to them?

If anything the other person he could have been abusive to would be Kerry, but even then it's a stretch/headcanons. Like, I got no problem with that, even got my own in fact, but to just come in and state he's canonically abusive?

We do see him trashtalking Kerry if we make him choose that, but even then there's still not enough of a pattern. Abuse isn't just a dude being an asshole to everyone, or being a bad person, because yeah I won't say Johnny's someone good to the people around him- it's a relationship that relies on active dependency from person A to person B, and person B holds power over what person A needs, be it emotionally, psychologically, or materially. Person B needs to have power over person A though, and not by accident or punctually.

And btw I agree that he assaults V, and that he fucking needs to back off, but that's him wanting to kill himself more than anything, really. Cus he knows damn well that if they do take him up on his "advice" he's gone too. By 2077 the man just wants to stop, there's not a single route where he's happy about the perspective of a second chance at life.

And yeah, Johnny can be called abusive of V by proxy, in his quest to get himself flatlined for good, but that's the only person we actually do see him mistreat on the regular, in a power dynamic where he has the upper hand.

But the way he acts with other people, that's not being abusive, abuse isn't a fucking buzzword to throw around to qualify someone who's a shit person, I know I'm getting worked up over semantics but like in this case I feel it's warranted. Johnny is too much of a loser to have abused people, in canon. He's a guy screaming in a mic desperate to be heard, but he never did anything to force people to stay. I know it's a bit repetitive coming from me, but I keep thinking the man was more of a victim of his own success than a mastermind of anything, much less the social kind.