behira-the-bard asked:

I gotta say, Chippin' In is a hard quest to reconcile. You've just reached a truce and confirmed trust with the dog tags and he immediately violates it. I'm trying to make sense of it, and a slight mitigating factor comes up at his grave. He talks about being relieved when he realizes that you're still there and I wonder if there was ever any concern that taking the pills would tip over to V being gone for good? Since he woke up in 2077, V has been there with him and then he's alone again!

ssilverhand:

gosh-emperor:

I feel like his actions during the whole “take the meat talk to rogue” section are his final attempts at taking back what he thought he wanted out of life. He’s just pledged himself to die for this person, to throw away a second chance that legit so few are ever handed, all because he doesn’t want V to die. Because its fucked up and breaks his weird moral code. (and because he cares about them so much it scares him but he’s not addressing that)

This, I think, fucks him up. That’s a HUGE thing to declare, and its exceedingly selfless. Johnny could have just as easily been like “lmao if you figure out a way to keep the meat congrats but when it comes down to it, i will take it if i can” and that would have vibed with the person he pretends so hard that he is. Instead, he is selfless and THAT is weird and not where he thought this “relationship” was gonna go.

So, he takes the body, violates V’s trust and immediately slips back into his old life. And I think he fucking hates it. V, as we are all aware, has changed him. And he does not enjoy that. So he reverts back to what he knows best. It’s why he’s such an asshole when V gets control back. It’s all about the pushing her away and the denying of this person he’s turning into. Johnny didn’t ask for this, but it’s still happening to him.

And then he has to contend with V being fucking furious and hurt at him. He lied and it makes her doubt his promise at the Pistis Sophia. And like WOW is that not what he wants because those dog tags are the only real thing he has left to give and she cannot reject them, because then its all for naught. and he’s stuck having to reflect on all of this which is why the graveyard scene just HITS the way it does

he almost lost V and fucked up the one thing he had done right thus far in life, and that was by slipping back into his old self. The consequences of his actions are the same as they always were, only with V he is given a front row seat to how much hurt he is capable of causing. And he hates it. Hates realizing that he threw his life away and alienated everyone who ever tried to love him. It was the final nail in the coffin of The Man Who Was Once Johnny Silverhand. (the poetry of this happening at his grave is *chefs kiss*).

As Yeats says “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”. His way of life wasn’t sustainable, it was always gonna end in disaster. That last hurrah shows him that. Proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he will never be that man again. And i think he’s grateful for it. it frees him from the prison of his beliefs. 

Johnny was never gonna go quietly. He was never gonna lay down and die, let himself be permanently altered into someone else, without fighting it. He had to try, one last time. He did that a lot when he was alive, too, only there was no follow up because Rogue, and Alt, and Kerry, just said “Fuck You” and bailed on him (which good for them because there was nothing redeemable in the man Johnny was before his resurrection into V’s head). He didn’t have to see what he did to others until V and its this that changes everything.

Said it before, say it again: V teaches him to be a man, not a symbol and that last hurrah is the way in which he sees it.

I think (though no one asked) there’s also something to be said about the way he acknowledges this at the gravesite. We don’t have to guess at his remorse. He knows it’s his fault that of his other relationships are fucked. He says to V, point-blank, “I don’t wanna fuck this up, what we have.” He tried to be his old self, and it didn’t work, and now he’s sorry. He gives them an apology. That’s something that the Johnny Silverhand pre-Relic never would’ve done. That’s why I think V forgives him for it. 

06·03·21 190n rblg
johnny silverhand
  1. jsilverhvnd reblogged this from jhnnysilverhand
  2. aelwen reblogged this from gosh-emperor
  3. darthmoose reblogged this from augmented-beauty
  4. augmented-beauty reblogged this from maeveelemora
  5. earfwerm-party reblogged this from maeveelemora
  6. deathbunnies reblogged this from gosh-emperor
  7. streetsamura1 reblogged this from sleepymarmot
  8. anaisonfire reblogged this from gosh-emperor
  9. l4re4th reblogged this from gosh-emperor
  10. gosh-emperor reblogged this from ssilverhand
  11. ssilverhand reblogged this from lily-silverhand and added:
    Important addition is important. Addiction lives in the brain just as it does in the body, and Johnny getting to pilot...