My autistic physical chemistry student (who also has tremors) study on Viper’s hands, or more specifically, her tremors and twitching and how it is most likely ruining her.
The “Incident” was, if not directly, a major contributor to the tremors. I’m going to (reasonably) assume her work with toxins and poisons is the main cause of the shaking. Her core abilities in game (and objectives in daily life and the war if we ignore the terrible game and see it world wise) revolve around controlling space and dealing damage where it’s needed.
Now, Toxic Screen and Poison Cloud creates an area of toxic gas that is meant to damage and obscure vision. This is a war, a very stressful and very tense war, morality and empathy are often forgotten under stress in soldiers when their life is on the line.
So, what would these hypothetical chemicals be?
- Sarin gas
A nerve agent that can obscure/blur vision. It disrupts the nervous system and leads to symptoms such as: Moisis (constricted pupils), eye pain, seizures, difficulty breathing.
Adding in the morality of Valorant and the fact she hasn’t seemingly gone completely insane, and assuming chemical warfare laws stand in the Valorant universe as they do here, using a nerve gas that is considered a war crime is a line I feel like Viper wouldn’t cross.
If she isn’t using a highly illegal gas, what could she be using? Maybe it’s simply CS gas (tear gas).
- Non-lethal
- Causes symptoms such as eye pain, lacrimation (tearing up), and respiratory irritation.
- Obscures vision and forces enemies to disperse/clear out of a site
- A little more ethically okay while still being effective
How is any of this relevant? If she is using something as harsh as a nerve gas, it would explain the tremors. Nerve agents work by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase (an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine) leading to buildup of acetylcholine in nerve synapses. This excess acetylcholine overstimulates nerve cells which causes various symptoms including muscle twitching, weakness, and tremors. Working with this for years, even with PPE, would still do damage.
If she’s using something more civil such as CS gas, while hand tremors aren’t a commonly reported thing with CS exposure, there can and is still secondary effects of other neurological symptoms that might arise from exposure in either her lab or the field. CS often irritates the skin. In some cases, exposure can lead to more severe neurological symptoms including muscle weakness, numbness, and imbalance, which all potentially contribute to tremors.
Once again, how is this relevant?
Uncontrolled tremors often and will significantly impact one’s emotional well-being. They can lead to anxiety, depression, feelings of social embarrassment, affecting self-esteem and quality of life ect ect. The difficulty of simply functioning with tremors, especially when you’re a chemist working with very dangerous and deadly toxins and poisons all day, has to be god awful. Tremors affect the much simpler things such as eating, drinking, and writing which Viper does a lot of (both paperwork and experiments).
Depression caused from the tremors. Limitations imposed by tremors on daily activities and social interactions can lead to depression, depression leads to other emotions such as anger, anxiety, grief. Things along those lines. Stress Viper definitely doesn’t need in her already stressful life. Viper is so painfully alone and isolated. Having another agent see her tremors, seeing such a vulnerable part of herself definitely adds to her isolation. Locking herself in her lab for hours, days even, simply because of the tremors.
Shooting. Twitching or shaking hands and trying to hold and shoot a gun doesn’t go together very well. Despite this, once again choosing to put my mind into the lore wise world, Viper’s aim would be what I assume to be nearly perfect. Everything else about her is calculated and controlled, it’s assumption she’d pride her shot on being one of the best in the protocol. But as you could imagine, shaky hands would likely lead to missed shots on a few occasions. Despite her having shaky hands she stays calm and collected and can shoot with guns precisely, keeping her control and the show of being calculated around the others.
In conclusion, she definitely has what I would assume to be emotion driven tremors. Fear, guilt, discomfort and perhaps excitement are all adding to the shaking and twitching. Unfortunately I feel like any ounce of stress placed on the chemist would cause the tremors to worsen.
Going by her personality and way of processing things and reactions to situations, she’d definitely be the type of person to hit her hands off of her desk or lab bench in pure frustration at not being able to do an experiment or handle chemicals due to the tremors. Or in worse situations of panic and rage, I definitely think she’d try to break her hands if she got angry and desperate enough.
In conclusion again, she is definitely suffering with most likely very simple daily tasks on the bad days, and while they’re controlled as much as possible and hidden, it is still a contributor to her isolation and grief (and likely self hatred).
does any of that make any sense lol
