Here be some complicated Relief in Recovery series headcanons for T3nna. Because an.g.st has exploded in my drafts and I need to step back and process the basics.
It got long, so I’m dividing it up. This here is all about the generalized aftereffects of cle/av/ing that could be used with any kink. I’ll have a Part 2 that’s all about how these work directly with the omorashi content in my stories, but I don’t really go into that here. It might be helpful context for when I get part 2 up, though, but it’s not needed. I already made it, and I just have to post it and edit to hyperlink it back here.
Placed under a cut because they could be seen as spoilers, and it’s still long. But it doesn’t really show how it would pan out in a story. It’s more focused on the in-depth how-it-works stuff that might not all be possible to build into the plot beyond implying it somewhere, in nerd level detail.
Disclaimer that I also don’t write or draw this level of detail of what’s happening here, because it feels too mean for me, and if it shows up, it’s very lightly implied with the resulting consequences. This is just some context to how the stuff I will write works, which is either omo or heavy on comfort.
I have to address the obvious first, because it’s expected. Cle/av/ed arms. If he doesn’t have these put back on right away, the problems before he gets them back are endless. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that he’d have some long term problems even after having them put back. This is a popular theory that can lead to many other popular issues. And it works so well if we tie it to real world stuff, too.
Yes, T3nna gets his arms back, and we’ll assume he gets all his wires spliced and soldered back together, and he eventually gets his shoulder joints welded so they’re properly attached. Even with everything repaired the best it can possibly be, it’s not like it never happened. I like to imagine robotic Dar/ken/ners as biomechanical, so let’s imagine wires are similar to nerves. The functions parallel each other well if we’re not going as far as chemical signals in the deep physiology. Nerves have limited capacity to regenerate. They can heal up to a point, but with massive trauma, major nerves are not going to come back to full function. Even if they come back enough to where someone doesn’t notice many effects, neurons have died off, and there’s differences in nerves that have been compressed, partially cut, or cut all the way through.
On the bright side for T3nna, wires do much better than nerves after breakage. But like a damaged nerve that manages to regenerate to a limited capacity, a torn wire that gets spliced back together is still more fragile than it was before it broke. And without proper insulation, contact with anything else to complete the electrical circuit by another path is possible. The coating of T3nna’s wires got severed, too, because everything got severed. Insulating tape isn’t as strong as a rubber cord coating, and it could come loose with excessive motion and humidity changes. That’s possible with T3nna’s d4rk w0rld form where he’s moving around all over the place. But, if repeated motion could cause individual wires to break at some point again, applying a proper rubber coating makes it harder to access that weak point where breakage will happen again in the future. Working harder and digging through a cord coating to get back into it to fix one wire might break additional wires in the process, too, and probably wouldn’t feel too good. Nobody wants a frayed nerve poked and prodded any more than necessary, so maybe the problems with tape are the lesser of evils.
So T3nna really will need more frequent, extensive maintenance on his wires going forward. If one small wire inside a cord detaches, and makes contact with another bare wire inside the cord, that can send aberrant signals. A pathway that was never meant to be connected opens up, and he has abnormal sensations, and maybe some twitching in one part of his arms, while another moving part doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, or part of his arm is numb. The further down his arm, the more likely this is to happen with how far the wires travel, so unless it’s a wire that controls something further up and knocks his entire arm offline, this probably happens more as dexterity issues in his fingers, or fingers going numb and cold. Lack of power to his extremities is going to make them go cold too. He probably doesn’t tolerate cold temperatures as well as he used to, but if he had a more vital wire break, this could still feel cold even in a warm environment. If it’s a sensory wire, he could just be numb, but aberrant signals might mean tingling, itching, burning, or aches, too. I personally err on the side of non-painful things most of the time, but these are all the possibilities others reading are welcome to play with.
Some of these sensations relate to neuropathic pain. Even the non-painful ones. This can be weird, because sometimes it’s felt right at the source, but sometimes it’s felt in a completely different location as referred pain. Similarly, there’s phantom pain, which is poorly understood, but is believed to have some connection. Maybe T3nna should be completely numb in his fingertips with whatever wire just randomly disconnected itself again, or got pinched in a position that’s hindering its function, because that tape isn’t as strong as the rubber cord coating. Except there’s pins and needles instead, even if there’s no abnormal signal, and that path is completely disconnected and not getting any electricity to it.
T3nna could also have neuropathic pain of another sort around his shoulder welds, called windup pain. Without making this post three times longer or being the teacher with dialogue represented by a trombone sound effect any more than I already am to explain how that works, it’s related to sensitization from continuing pain. It’s why it’s easier to control pain by taking medication before something painful happens when that’s anticipated, rather than waiting for pain to get out of control to take something for it. It’s much harder to get back under the pain threshold once it’s been passed, and unfortunately, T3nna didn’t know that was going to happen and wasn’t loaded up on the cocktails of pain meds and local anesthetics that would be used for an intended amputation, or whatever that would look like in the d4rk w0rld. So, with windup pain and that hypersensitization, there could be days where if he moved wrong or got brushed up against in just the right place, it could be rough, especially early on in his healing process. On a bad day, he might even see something coming for his shoulders that never even touched him and react, because that signal will still happen with windup. And he would be well in his right to be gl00by and shrink down to nothing, because even though it seemed like nothing, it feels real! This does improve with time and healing, but realistically, he would have it to an extent with his injuries. Regular maintenance to prevent wire breakage and catch it in the early stages helps control him from redeveloping windup, and over time helps ease away what he had by supporting the healing process. Which is why in my writing he gets regular maintenance and is doing much better for it!
Another problem, not with the wires themselves is his shoulder welding. No matter how well it’s done, there is a weld scar. A thicker area compared to what his original body casing was. This isn’t unlike internal scarring and fibrosis in biological systems. Safe to say, T3nna doesn’t have the same range of motion in his shoulders he used to. But the scarring itself may pull abnormally on other structures and make a space tighter than it used to be as well. Putting his arm in a certain position may compress on the wires going back to connect with the chassis of the rest of his body above the site of cleaving, which also causes similar problems of numbness, tingling, and cold. He might try to move his arm a certain way reaching for something up high and suddenly lose his grip and drop things, kind of like with something called tho.rac.ic out.let syn.dro.me that involves nerve impingement. I’m putting dots in there because I don’t want this in the search results for people struggling with that who probably don’t want spicy content from fandoms in their search. Deeper connections closer to his chassis might give him backaches from the abnormal motion of his shoulders, too, or just the joints being tighter at that connection. If he overworks himself, he could be out of commission for a couple of days if he doesn’t have someone to massage out the tension, which with the right manipulation could free up any compressed wires. Spoiler alert, he will get this as comfort in my stories at some point
His shoulder welds also need maintenance in the d4rk w0rld, because they are a point of weakness with heavy arms attached, and they will fatigue with time. And they can go very wrong whenever they’re routinely redone. Too-thin welds will break down faster and might not hold his arms as effectively, which puts more strain on his wires, and based on the above, that’s not helpful to him. Though, it might prompt him to deal with it before his arms are falling back off in a situation where he puts off maintenances because he’s anticipating discomfort and scared about it. Too thick welds, and the decreased motion and wire impingement issues are only worse than they already will be. So that’s a delicate balance.
Enough about T3nna’s arms, though, because I think we might be sleeping on other things. Those are his glaring injuries, but T3nna fell down a massive drop when he got cle/av/ed, and he wasn’t shrunken down when it happened. With his size, that was a hard impact. Could he have had some other wires knocked loose in other parts of his body? Sure, he could have. They weren’t necessarily broken, so if they get reattached, he’ll be fine. Wires can be easily reconnected to circuit boards, unlike avulsed nerves pulled off their attachments. Figuring out where the problem is and getting to it though might be a whole thing, though, and maybe he doesn’t even notice some of these until he’s back up and moving around after his initial repair and recovery.
The canon plot screams of T3nna getting older. The joints in his legs are probably not what they used to be, and there’s not much on how they were affected when he fell. Which means anything could be possible. They weren’t detached, but they could have been hyperextended or dislocated. Any of those things could have temporarily pinched wires in his legs. These things, aside from the wear and tear on his joints are potentially recoverable if a wire wasn’t torn apart, but that could take some time, too. So really, he could be dealing with leg injuries, too. And anyone who has had leg injuries, or just been really sore knows that when trying to get around, arms are usually a compensation tool. Pushing up from sitting or laying down with arms, or using certain tools that pull weight off the legs, like crutches or a cane.
Maybe T3nna can still compensate with his arms on a good day, but if his arms aren’t working and his legs aren’t fully online either, he’s going to need someone to help him around. And he’s probably going to want it anyway, because with his abandonment fears and not being able to follow after anyone to try and prevent being left behind when he thinks that might happen, it would help him a lot to have someone come to him and help him out. Show that T/V some actions instead of just saying that everyone’s always going to come back! It’s gonna be awhile before he can believe it without seeing it! There might even be some room for comic relief in that. He would need to shrink down for most other dar/ken/ers to be able to help him around, which might be easy at first if he’s feeling gl00by because his legs and arms aren’t working right and he’s scared and all, but imagine if he starts feeling comforted by the help he’s getting and he starts growing back up to full size. Uh-oh!
And then canonically, he has a bent antenna, and a cracked screen is a popular concept, even though he doesn’t have this in the game if he gets saved. If his antenna isn’t braced right, it might not stay in position to pick up signals appropriately, so maybe this would equate to something like fatigue and brain fog? It seems more than fair he might have some issues with that. The cracked screen, if it’s used, which I personally don’t, but there’s nothing wrong with using that take is something I imagine would either affect his vision on one side, or give him sharp headaches, like migraines on that side. Again, I personally don’t go for that, because it feels a little too mean for me to do on top of everything else, but there’s side effects of migraines and all I know work for some people here, so it could be something. He’s also mentioned to have messed up colors, so maybe his internal degaussing mechanism doesn’t work quite right anymore. Since that corrects the ion flow, I imagine that would present as vertigo. Maybe it gets worse in certain positions, or with certain activities. My own take, I like to think it doesn’t make him feel sick unless it gets exaggerated by maintenance procedures for a short moment, but it does have an effect, especially when his arms and legs already aren’t at full strength to help him balance. So that’s another time he might be dependent on someone to help him around, or even if he can get around, he just wants to shrink down and be carried because it’s comforting.
And those are the major leads for possibilities I managed to pull out of T3nna’s injuries. If you sat through this whole lecture into the void, thanks for attending. There will be a follow-up soon for omo freaks like me, though like this one, it’s optional. I’ll answer any questions anyone has in the comments or by asks!