tobythewise

[tobythewise]

i’m sure this is VERY niche but sam reich is to brennen lee mulligan what the AI is to carl

[tobythewise]

i understand why some people hate them but i do love video game achievements because im a sick bastard who likes it when the developers call me a good boy

[tobythewise]

Quick jayvik even though I should be drawing 6 different zine stuff 💪💪💪

[tobythewise]

johnny right before he goes on the most unhinged, semi-pointless rants you've ever heard

[tobythewise]

Morning routine 🌄🏡☕️

[tobythewise]

the angel of death

my day one contribution to thanzag week, with the prompt kisses/devotion!!

[tobythewise]

Underworld boys cuddling in their spare time (again)

[tobythewise]

You left, without so much as telling me good-bye.

[tobythewise]

I both expected you to come and am surprised to see you, Son of Hades

[tobythewise]

[tobythewise]

You have my gun

[tobythewise]

So here's the thing about Johnny Silverhand.

If he were a romance option, it wouldn't even be close; he'd be the most popular option. Ao3 backs this up. But the game doesn't let us choose him.

The four options the game gives us are fine as far as romance goes--they lack the depth of old-school Bioware and Larian. Panam, Judy, and Kerry are beautifully written, wonderfully messy characters. Oh yeah, then there's River (no seriously, CDPR did him dirty). But once you play through their stories, you're kinda done with them. Sure, you get some random texts, a handful of repeatable dialog, a repeatable date--but that's such a tiny sliver of your game time.

Johnny's with you for most of the game. Over the course of many hours, you get to see him warm up to V (a stand-in for you, the player), playfully trade barbs with them, and then solemly swear to off himself in order to save their/your pathetic ass.

If you think about it for more than two seconds, V has this near-psychotic level of intimacy with Johnny. The "guy in my head" trope makes a lot of narrative sense, especially in video games. It's a more interesting story when the main character has someone to talk to, rather than internal monolog or muttering to themselves. But if you overthink the trope to a concerning degree, as I have--you understand that Johnny is forced to quietly look away while V is taking a shit, showering, flicking the bean, getting random boners, violently puking blood, etc. This is way more intimacy than I have with my husband of 15 years. We close the door when we use the bathroom.

They're sharing dreams, seeing each other's memories. They pick up each other's habits. V can play the guitar. Johnny's less of an asshole and learns how to let go. They're changing each other for the better.

All the other romances in CP77 feel so damn shallow next to Johnny and V. That's not the fault of the romancable characters. It's that they've been through some very fucked-up shit together, and I don't know how you don't trauma-bond over all that. V and Johnny are the only two souls on earth who know what it's like to be an engram on a chip inside a corpse's head.

Their story is so beautiful, tragic, and fucked-up that I don't want it to end.

And I really wanna fuck that rockerboy.

[tobythewise]

[tobythewise]

The pain Viktor Vektor radiates as he explains the effect of the Relic to a newly awakened V is... Very juicy. I was gonna try to be highbrow about this but honestly I just wanna chew on his depth of feeling there.

Just wanna chew on how much he obviously cares about this kid V (a 28 year old is a kid, if you're 65+, sorry), that he's given his hand me down clothing to, that he's given expensive cyberware to on the pretense that it's an "investment", even though he tries to refuse when you do pay him back. Because he just cares about V. Because he probably lives in fear of the day V or Jackie comes back to him unfixable, and he's doing what he can to make them safer.

And now here's V, Jackie is dead, V should have died, almost died. Viktor's spent days keeping V alive, probably racking his brain, reaching out to old contacts, trying to learn anything that might help. He's probably been dreading this conversation, rehearsing it in his head. And now V is terrified, is begging him, you can fix it, right, Vik? There's gotta be a way. You're the best!

And he wants so damn badly to say there's a way. But there's not, and he can't stop it, and he's gonna have to watch this kid he cares deeply about get slowly erased from their own mind, and suffer the whole way.

[tobythewise]

johnny

[tobythewise]

i still care them

[tobythewise]

Couldn't resist seeing Viktor's new concepts xD