How Cyberpsychosis works and why V doesnt get affected. From Mike Pondsmith himself(creator of Cyberpunk).

[Alt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/xklzsx/why_doesnt_v_get_cyberpsychosis/ipffmf4/?context=3
"Okay, so time to (partially) explain CYBERPSYCHOSIS.

First of all, Cyberpsychosis is a disorder that in part depends on the subject's overall internal susceptibility. Just like every person who drinks a lot at parties doesn't end up an alcoholic in the gutter, not everyone who gets loaded up on cyberware is going to automatically go cyberpsycho. You have to have an inherent susceptibility, which (in the TRPG) is represented by the player's Humanity Stat. Humanity is not just a measure of one aspect of personality, but an overall measure of several elements including the subject's ability to emphasize and relate with others, their ability to absorb and rebound from mental and physical stressors, their ability to show compassion and flexibility to others, and whether they are able to balance their worldview through other methods.

So, in some ways, I tend to treat cyberware as an addiction--heavy anabolic steroid use being my favorite model. Not everyone who juices ends up crazy mad with roid rage. But those who are more susceptible to the need to take more steroids are more likely to hit a point where they do flip into roid rage. (Take a look at this article from Livescience https://www.livescience.com/38354-what-is-roid-rage.html for a pretty good idea of how roid rage works--notice that it's got the same basic profile as cyberpsychosis).

David's starting Humanity was probably already pretty high. And before things went to crap, he had a loving mother, a career path, and no more hassle than the average poor guy in a wealthy Ivy League school. So he had lots of buffer. But even so, he still, even after losing all that, was able to make friends, build a replacement family, and (after some prompting) even get a girlfriend. And a mentor (Maine) to create a supportive father figure. So he could definitely handle the stress of added cyberware up to a point.

Most people in Night City don't have the level of Humanity to pull this kind of stunt off without going cyberpsychotic. So David is one in a million. And that's why Arasaka wants him.

V is a different case. We don't know V's background, but even if V was a full on Corpo, they were able to hold it together even when they ended up with a dead Rockerboy in their heads (Yah, tell me about it; Johnny Silverhand's been in my head for the last three decades.) In fact, having Johnny in their head probably helped V, because Siilverhand's rage and attitude probably acted as a buffer for the psychological hits V is taking. It's like having a time share with a guy who's already half cyberpsycho and doesn't mind if V slaps stuff on their shared body; he's already crazy and violent.

So that's a rough explanation of the roots of cyberpsychosis. If I ever get band width, I'm going to start writing/posting some stuff about what I had in mind as I put together the Night City universe. But for now, you'll have to go with what I've got here. Have fun, and remember not to chip mili-spec cyberware, like your mother warned you about.

And no, cyberpsychosis isn't caused by AI net demons. Gimme a break, chooms!"

[RACHMANOVSKI]

David is bland character with no personality. Surely that's one of the reason why he is not affected by all the chrome in him.

[Alt]

Originally posted by RACHMANOVSKI:

David is bland character with no personality. Surely that's one of the reason why he is not affected by all the chrome in him.

Tell me how you didnt read what i posted without telling me. Everything is there. And David is a great character. You just cant see it.

[RACHMANOVSKI]

No, I understand perfectly. Cyberpsychosis vs. Humanity. David Humanity supposedly High.

Pondsmith can say anything he want and you can believe anything you want. But what I talk is about character depiction, David is bland. Rebecca has personality. David has nothing.

The anime is a 6 or 7 tops.

Anime as story telling medium objectively has died since the bubble burst. Now it's just commercial product to sell fleshlight and pachinko machine.

Edgerunners wasn't necessarily a bad anime, it just does not hit most of great story telling and/or visual story telling checklist compared to AKIRA or the original Ghost in the Shell.

[Alt]

Originally posted by RACHMANOVSKI:

No, I understand perfectly. Cyberpsychosis vs. Humanity. David Humanity supposedly High.

Pondsmith can say anything he want and you can believe anything you want. But what I talk is about character depiction, David is bland. Rebecca has personality. David has nothing.

The anime is a 6 or 7 tops.

Anime as story telling medium objectively has died since the bubble burst. Now it's just commercial product to sell fleshlight and pachinko machine.

Edgerunners wasn't necessarily a bad anime, it just does not hit most of great story telling and/or visual story telling checklist compared to AKIRA or the original Ghost in the Shell.

I disagree. This anime is as much deep as original GitS. Trigger just doesnt need to spend whole hour on brooding scene to show that to you. You see it in carefully crafted scenes. Even in action. Small moments. Interactions with Lucy and David. How David looses his sleep after death of his mother and how he regains it when he finds new family in his crewmates. And then again he starts to loose it after Pilars death. And continues to get worse with Maine's. Most people saw start of his cyberpsychosis at the end of episode 7/begiining of 8. But you could spot it even far before that.

If something is primarily consists of action scenes it doesn't mean it have moments and messages that are less meaningful than something philosophical as GitS. GitS just uses other visual style and methods to show it. Those 2 anime's show completely different sides of cyberpunk genre.

[Like Button]

Originally posted by Alt:

Originally posted by RACHMANOVSKI:

David is bland character with no personality. Surely that's one of the reason why he is not affected by all the chrome in him.

Tell me how you didnt read what i posted without telling me. Everything is there. And David is a great character. You just cant see it.

nah david boring af until the end

[SnuffSaid]

Originally posted by RACHMANOVSKI:

No, I understand perfectly. Cyberpsychosis vs. Humanity. David Humanity supposedly High.

Pondsmith can say anything he want and you can believe anything you want. But what I talk is about character depiction, David is bland. Rebecca has personality. David has nothing.

The anime is a 6 or 7 tops.

Anime as story telling medium objectively has died since the bubble burst. Now it's just commercial product to sell fleshlight and pachinko machine.

Edgerunners wasn't necessarily a bad anime, it just does not hit most of great story telling and/or visual story telling checklist compared to AKIRA or the original Ghost in the Shell.

See, I too would give the anime 7/10, only difference is I think 7/10 is a good score. Comparing it to a genre-defining masterpiece like Akira, of course it's going to come out worse. That's like comparing Scarface to The Godfather.

As far as video-game tie-ins go it was a hell of a lot better than the usual crap we get. I'd put it alongside Castlevania in the "pleasant surprise" category.

[r.linder]

V doesn't suffer from Cyberpsychosis because plot armor.

[Bahamut_A6M5]

Originally posted by r.linder:

V doesn't suffer from Cyberpsychosis because plot armor.

Agreed. Also, CP2077 doesn't even have a humanity system to represent the impact cyberware has upon an individual's psyche. V isn't affected in the first place because there isn't a mechanics for internally explaining cyberpsychosis in CP2077.

[Alt]

Originally posted by Bahamut_A6M5:

Originally posted by r.linder:

V doesn't suffer from Cyberpsychosis because plot armor.

Agreed. Also, CP2077 doesn't even have a humanity system to represent the impact cyberware has upon an individual's psyche. V isn't affected in the first place because there isn't a mechanics for internally explaining cyberpsychosis in CP2077.

You 2 seems to not read message from creator of Cyberpunk.

[Bahamut_A6M5]

You are the one not reading the message:

"First of all, Cyberpsychosis is a disorder that in part depends on the subject's overall internal susceptibility. Just like every person who drinks a lot at parties doesn't end up an alcoholic in the gutter, not everyone who gets loaded up on cyberware is going to automatically go cyberpsycho. You have to have an inherent susceptibility, which (in the TRPG) is represented by the player's Humanity Stat. Humanity is not just a measure of one aspect of personality, but an overall measure of several elements including the subject's ability to emphasize and relate with others, their ability to absorb and rebound from mental and physical stressors, their ability to show compassion and flexibility to others, and whether they are able to balance their worldview through other methods."

CP2077 doesn't even have the Humanity stat Pondsmith talks about. All the cyberpsychosis plot falls flat when the mechanics which would internally explain the factor doesn't even exist in the videogame.

[Alt]

Originally posted by Bahamut_A6M5:

You are the one not reading the message:

"First of all, Cyberpsychosis is a disorder that in part depends on the subject's overall internal susceptibility. Just like every person who drinks a lot at parties doesn't end up an alcoholic in the gutter, not everyone who gets loaded up on cyberware is going to automatically go cyberpsycho. You have to have an inherent susceptibility, which (in the TRPG) is represented by the player's Humanity Stat. Humanity is not just a measure of one aspect of personality, but an overall measure of several elements including the subject's ability to emphasize and relate with others, their ability to absorb and rebound from mental and physical stressors, their ability to show compassion and flexibility to others, and whether they are able to balance their worldview through other methods."

CP2077 doesn't even have the Humanity stat Pondsmith talks about. All the cyberpsychosis plot falls flat when the mechanics which would internally explain the factor doesn't even exist in the videogame.

I love how people take information out of context. Did you even read second halth of the post?
"V is a different case. We don't know V's background, but even if V was a full on Corpo, they were able to hold it together even when they ended up with a dead Rockerboy in their heads (Yah, tell me about it; Johnny Silverhand's been in my head for the last three decades.) In fact, having Johnny in their head probably helped V, because Siilverhand's rage and attitude probably acted as a buffer for the psychological hits V is taking. It's like having a time share with a guy who's already half cyberpsycho and doesn't mind if V slaps stuff on their shared body; he's already crazy and violent."

And lets not forget that game takes place only in the span of couple of weeks.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Lets be honest, V doesn't have that much chrome.

Also, it really was just a justification to balance the games cybernetics system in the TTRPG. Logically it makes no sense other than some people going on a power trip after having so much power at their fingertips.

Think about it, if I replace my arms, eyes, legs, lungs, and heart with a superior cybernetic does that make me insane? From a simple minded perspective, maybe, but it doesn't explain people going berserk.

There should reasonably be a lot more people like Adam Smasher in the setting with a warped perception of others and superiority complex.

[Bahamut_A6M5]

That paragraph says nothing. How do you expect to have cyberpsychosis without a structured system for normalizing the mechanics? If there's no Humanity stat in the game, the decission about going cyberpsycho is completely arbitrary: that guy goes psycho because me, writter, decides so; this other does not because it fits my purposes.

No matter what V has in her head, she should also had to have a Humanity stat, even if Johnny's engram is acting as a buffer, softening the impact an implant might have. But here's the issue: CP2077 has no Humanity stat.

Also, time is irrelevant because cyberpsychosis is caused by the impact of cyberware on the psyche: a guy implanting himself too much chrome, more than his "internal susceptibility" (Humanity) can withstand, at a time goes bonkers as his mind crumbles under the many inhuman capabilities that cyberware is giving him in such a short span of time.

And for the record, I've been playing and running games of CP2020 (the TTRPG) for more than 25 years. I have had ample time to read about the cyberpsychosis on the handbooks, about therapies for softening the blow and rebuilding a damaged psyche as not to fall into cyberpsychosis, about drugs which could also cause a similar effect on individuals,...

[Sea Base]

Originally posted by Alt:

This anime is as much deep as original GitS.

Please point out where in Edgerunners where there are philosophical debates that draw in religious texts or their equivalent to highlight different aspects of the various components to the arguments that characters take with each other...

The Cyberpunk anime is great, but trying to say it's as deep as the first GitS is kinda laughable. But that is an unfair standard to try to match.

As for the cyberpsycho stuff, as others have pointed out, V has very little chrome and V has Johnny to pin all perceived psychological displacements on, thus there is no self destructive self questioning forcing a further hunger to self medicate that feeds into an addiction cycle.

[Alt]

Originally posted by Sea Base:

Originally posted by Alt:

This anime is as much deep as original GitS.

Please point out where in Edgerunners where there are philosophical debates that draw in religious texts or their equivalent to highlight different aspects of the various components to the arguments that characters take with each other...

The Cyberpunk anime is great, but trying to say it's as deep as the first GitS is kinda laughable. But that is an unfair standard to try to match.

its in the same message. I already said that in order to tell a deep story you dont need to spend so much time on all that brooding and dip into religious texts. People seems to love pointing out singles sentences the moment they see them, without reading whole message and thinking over it before responding

Originally posted by Sea Base:

As for the cyberpsycho stuff, as others have pointed out, V has very little chrome and V has Johnny to pin all perceived psychological displacements on, thus there is no self destructive self questioning forcing a further hunger to self medicate that feeds into an addiction cycle.

Dont need to tell me that, already pointed this out. But i would not say V has little chrome. In the game you can replace legs, hands, skin, strengthen your muscles and bones. And im not even talking about Sandavistan. V just doesnt have enough time to stop and think to fall into that pit of despair that could potentially lead to cyberpsychosis. Not with dead rocker boy in her/his head and looming death. I would say doing all those GiG's and side quests, between main missions, allows V to be clear headed, to not think about that depressing sh*t. + funny, wholesome and not so wholesome moments with Johnny