#OUR CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA

[cyberpunk-lesbians]

tldr I will now be becoming the “homophobic pastor with a megaphone” at GT but with a super sexy “I love you. fuck the church and crapitalism. SURVIVE OUT OF SPITE MOTHERFUCKERS” dyky twist. my megaphone is teal so I AM dodging the Futurama hot pink megaphone allegations at least 😬

NO GODS (sorry Usopp)

SOME Masters (AND DOCTORS)

NO POPES (sorry Franky)

SOME PASTORS

no roof (or FUCKING BATHTUB DRUGS)

SOME rafters

ALL COPS

ARE BASTARDS (BC THE GOOD ONES DONT PUT UP WITH IT ALL)

GOOD FUCKING LUCK WITH FINALS EVERY ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!! remember your pencils, cheat sheets, and calculators!!!!!!!! I love you all so much and you can get through the end of the school year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As soon as I get 4 D batteries (fun fact, that is my bra size actually) I will make my thoughts EVERYONE IN THE CITY OF ATL’s PROBLEM

I’ll just crack enough jokes n throw out enough complements n b white enough to diffuse the situation 🐸🫣

[arcticdementor]

Paradim is basically just Bezos with a little bit of Zuckerberg.

My youngest brother, on Sir Lewis Leon Paradim, villain of 1993-1994 cyberpunk cartoon series The Bots Master.

[chaotic-aro-incarnate]

Having an incredibly generic name is both a blessing and a curse because on one hand it's always confusing when people have the same name and there's always jokes about how I must be in the witness projection program or something but on the other hand in the increasing loss of privacy via the internet and the worrying lack of anonymity for people online anymore means that I am near impossible to find online.

I could post my full legal name online (I wouldn't I'm not an idiot) and no one could dox me because there are thousands of people with my exact name. Hell I could even give a general location to where I live and people would still struggle to find me because it's a major metropolitan area with millions of people living there. There's been a moderately famous person in the last 2 decades with my exact same first and last name (I've had people get confused and think my middle name is the same as the famous person's. It's not. It's another generic name.) Any future employer running a scan on me online better hire a private investigator because I'm near impossible to find. Not because I'm super off the grid or anything, but mainly because my legal name is one of the most generic placeholder names available and to try to find me through all of the other random people is a Herculean task

[sweetfirebird]

Tech people got all my files off the dead laptop.... except the documents.

Not a single document.

Which tells me Microsoft/Word had the fucking problem. They are so tied together now you can't even use Word without being logged in to fucking Outlook. I tried not using Word but so many of the formatting/publishing programs and software basically require it.

Anyway. I have some of the files backed up. But things like... potential story notes... a lot of commentfic... the fucking summary I just wrote for Forget-Me-Not... those were not saved.

Also, the manuscripts are backed up.... but the formatted versions... probably not. I have to go check.

[spoonyruncible]

I think, maybe, I do customer support reviews badly because if someone is remotely nice to me and at least tries to fix my problem then my review is, "12/10, Angelica deserves a raise and also a free Starbucks every morning. Greatest person alive? Only time will tell for sure but they have my vote.

[sadclowncentral]

for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test - the "question only a human can answer" which would stump the computer pretending to be one - would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.

luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and it’s this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.

if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?

[the-warlock-syndicate]

You may not like to hear this, but Cruelty Squad is the best cyberpunk game out there. All your Cyberpunk 2077, and Stray, and Deus Ex games, plated in shiny chrome, don't grasp the core essence of cyberpunk nearly as well as Cruelty Squad, a game made of filth and disease. It's barely even cyber as well, it honestly leans into biological augments more than cybernetic ones.

But that doesn't matter. Because the absolute core of Cruelty Squad, is that the world is a sick, corrupt festering thing, twisted by greed, corruption, and unrestrained capitalism. Human life has no value, and this is explicitly seen in the narrative and in the game mechanics. And the thing that really stands out is that it deliberately tries to shock and disgust the player.

Sure, many cyberpunk games purport to engage in those themes, of greed, corruption, etc. But there is a dissonance. We are told narratively that this world is horrible, but visually, we see a cool, technologically advanced world, where people are badasses. And the problems in these settings are close enough to our own, real life problems, that a slightly enhanced dystopia might not seem so bad, when it comes with such technological advancement.

Cruelty Squad does not do that. There are no badass characters in the game, rather a series of pathetic, pitiable wretches who act in despicable ways, lacking empathy or humanity. The augments are horrific in such a way that the player does not fantasize about having them in real life. All of the textures are disgusting, and deliberately so. The sounds are abrasive and offputting. Even the UI is hideously ugly. It isn't poorly designed of course. But rather, designed in such a way that the player should never develop a hint of sympathy, longing, or good feelings for any aspects of that world. The underlying assumptions underpinning the cyberpunk genre are not to be romanticized, but rather exposed as a viscerally loathsome thing, which makes one reluctant to touch any part of a world tainted by it.

There aren't a lot of games which linger, and occupy headspace. But Cruelty Squad is one of them.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Neo Bowser City (aka Koopa City in PAL regions)

Debut: Mario Kart 7

Do you ever think of all the weird locations we only ever see in Mario Kart games? Despite being the biggest of all of Mario's spin-off franchises, when you really get down to it, remarkably few Mario Kart courses are actually based on established Mario locations!

It's not none, there's the occasional Donut Plains and Tick-Tock Clock and Airship Fortress, but most of the courses are these weird one-off locations we never see outside the context of that specific racetrack.

But have you ever taken a moment to step back and like, think of the Lore Implications of some of these places?

Like okay! Bowser just owns this whole dang cyberpunk city and we only ever see it in the context of Kart Racing! How messed up is that?!

One day Mario and Friends were looking for new places to race, and Bowser must have said something like "Gwah-hah-hah! I bet you puny punks could NEVER beat me in a race in my cyberpunk metropolis!" and right then and there it was established that Bowser owns a cyberpunk metropolis. Neo Bowser City is a city that exists in the Super Mario World and aside from returning in other Mario Kart games, it hasn't been acknowledged before or since.

Neo Bowser City first appeared in Mario Kart 7, as the third course in the Star Cup. Despite its flashy visuals, it actually doesn't really have a whole lot going on. It's a difficult track with some tight turns made more difficult by the rain making things more slippery, but besides that it doesn't really have any of the Wacky Obstacles that define so many Mario Kart courses.

Then it returned in Mario Kart 8 looking more gorgeous than ever! The bright colors really pop out, and the whole track is just oozing with detail that really emphasizes the scale of this city!

But like, the emphasized scale really only further raises the question of where this exists in the Mario World. Clearly, the fact that Bowser is plastered all over the billboards and the fact it's named "Neo Bowser City" helps us deduce that this city probably belongs to Bowser. Is this located in Bowser's Kingdom? Just how big is Bowser's Kingdom? And why does he own so many separate castles?

Maybe Neo Bowser City exists in the future? Is this a bad timeline? I mean, Mario Kart is allowed to have time-travel shenanigans. There's a Splatoon battle arena and that exists thousands of years in the future so sure, dust off Mario's Time Machine and head to the bad future where Bowser wins. Should've pressed that New Super Mario Bros. big yellow P-Switch!

I asked my friend Mod Chikako for their input and their theory is that Neo Bowser City isn't the future of Mario's world, but of our world. Clearly Bowser just couldn't take Wreck-It-Ralph losing the Oscar vote!

But in that case I guess it's a cooler cyberpunk future than the one we're living in right now. Corporate monopolies that run mass-surveillance with little government intervention due to their extreme wealth giving them extensive political power? No thank you! Neo Bowser City has bright neon colors, and flying cars! If I'm going to live in a dystopia, I want it to be a fun one. The only advertisements I want to see plastered everywhere are ones advertising Bowser!

Boo! That's the bad guy! Thumbs down!

The course returns again in that pitiful mobile game with another redesign, this time letting us see his Coney Island Disco Palace off in the distance. Does Bowser live in his Neo City? Is this worldbuilding we've been missing out on for decades, finally answered by a kart racer? Is this the capital city of Bowser's Kingdom? Am I once again falling victim to my perpetual hubris of overthinking the Mario franchise?

Really, I can't offer too much in terms of wacky fan theories, because I'm still thinking about this location existing in the first place. I'd love to know the Lore and worldbuilding here, but I guess the nature of Mario's canon is that it doesn't need to be over-analyzed. Bowser simply owns a cyberpunk metropolis, we'll only ever see it in the context of kart racing, and maybe that's okay.

Of course, this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention Dinohattan from the 1993 Super Mario Bros. Movie, which we've barely talked about on this blog somehow. You see, when the meteor hit, some of the dinosaurs escaped into a parallel timeline where they then evolved into humans, and then they built Dinohattan instead of Manhattan. Get it? Yeah, that movie is all sorts of bonkers. I wouldn't say it's very good, but I kinda love it. I'd recommend checking it out, if only to see a vastly different take on Mario than you'd be used to.

Anyway I bring this up because it's a completely separate instance of a version of Bowser building a large cyberpunk metropolis, and it actually predates Neo Bowser City! Do you think they could be connected? Are Dinohattan and Neo Bowser City one and the same...?

[literallymechanical]

I see a lot of posts about solarpunk aesthetic that are basically just cottagecore, but you still have an iPhone and you water your garden with a cute little drone.

And that’s fine! I get why people like it. A hopeful, optimistic green utopia that thoughtfully blends technology with stewardship of the land.

However. I, personally, find that pretty boring.

I want to write solarpunk that’s heavy on the “punk.” An ecodystopia. Most cyberpunk dystopias feature extreme class distinctions and heavy cybernetic modifications, and I want to write about an equally bleak world where the subjugation is from a hideous runaway ecosphere.  We screwed the planet, it’s screwing us back.

Concept: We tried geoengineering away global warming, and failed. The dominant form of life on earth is a globe-spanning mat of chemosynthetic iron-oxidizing bacteria, designed to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and seeded by dumping massive quantities of iron dust into the ocean.  They worked a little too well, and started chewing up our cities into acidic swamps as the oceans kept rising and flooded the coasts.  They extract iron from bedrock.  Slowly, mountains crumble.

So, no metal infrastructure.  We engineered city-trees instead.  Unfortunately, we’d already darkened the skies to keep sunlight from hitting the ground – an anti-greenhouse, built far too late.  The bacteria don’t care, they’re chemosynthetic, but the trees don’t have enough light to photosynthesize properly.  They need glucose.

Blood glucose is currency, and your taxes feed the city-tree. Your monorail fare is extracted from your blood by root tendrils. If you try to jump the turnstile, watch out for the security wasps. Your meager paycheck is payed out in injectable ampoules of glucosaline solution. There’s not enough to go around.  Watch out for the black market stuff. If you’re lucky, the worst you’ll get is a raging MRSA infection.  Everybody is hypoglycemic and mineral-deficient, but with a diet made primarily of iron-rich processed algae, at least nobody is anemic.

The criminal system is “reformed.” No more prisons, just a parasite infusion that saturates your brain and compels you into doing the dirty grunt work — scraping toxic algae off the city-trunk, sewage maintenance, arsenic reprocessing. Allegedly, the process is reversible.

The tree grows roots into your veins while you sleep.  They retract when you wake up. Usually.

But at least you have it better than that fungal village on the horizon.  The city-tree just wants your blood, but the mycelial citizens are not quite human anymore. Don’t get too close. Don’t let them breathe on you.  Don’t listen to their songs.

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

It's funny how most every cyberpunk story or setting thought that due to technology taking over people's lives and humanity, computer literacy would become commonplace enough that the very term would disappear. Everyone in Night City or whatever is super into hacking or can at least give you the difference between hardware, software, antivirus, spam, etc. To not know the basic gists or cybernetics and cyber security is paramount to not knowing how to count or how to read.

In reality we're about to enter an age where knowing how to create a folder or a zip file is back to being ancient lore inscribed in tablets that only the 30 year old who works at your IT office knows how to do. Phones and the growing marketability of easy-access no-customization technology means kids just don't use computers anymore. And it's crazy how fast it happened.

When I was in kindergarten we still had "computer class" once a week, and it was objectively useless for everyone in my class. Regardless of our age or interests, all of us had casual PC time either at home or in cyber cafes, all of us knew how to do things the teachers many times struggled with. The moment typing machine class became keyboard typing class, computers were already dominating most of our time. I learned how to navigate a computer the same way I learned English; by myself, because it was vital for my own interests.

And between highly streamlined video games, single umbrella closed OSs and everything being a fucking app, a 14 year old nowadays is lucky if they know what quotation marks do to your Google results. It's genuinely harrowing how the future is tech-dependent, yet we're becoming completely tech-illiterate.

The worst part is that it's completely on purpose by the tech industry. Much like not being able to fix your own products when they break, if you simply don't know what your phone or your computer can *do*, it's much easier to sell you a borderline identical one a little earlier than you'd actually need it. Phone updates are already pretty much semantic; you can't even see the difference between new models and old ones anymore, unless the visual difference is the point. And it all just gets more and more expensive for less and less bang for your buck.

We never expected the cyberpunk dystopia to be dull, and to rely on making us dumb. Crazy how well it worked.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

We need to open more conversations about software, intellectual property and tech literacy because every time something new happens on the internet everyone enters into crisis mode without actually knowing what to do about it. A lot of the moral panic over AI is this: nitpicking about names and scaremongering about art theft without really understanding any of the technology or legal frameworks they're discussing. (This is not to say AI is without its criticisms but people have been dropping the ball on this because they're focused on the wrong part of the equation.) A lot of the talk about NFTs and Twitter has been the same: dunking on technological changes without really understanding the root of the problem, mostly for clout and virtue signalling. We need to bring back the discussions of the early internet: freedom of information, privacy rights, right to repair, open source and public domain sustainability. Tumblr is mostly worried about moral righteousness and support, and those are all good things, but in this cyberpunk dystopia it's more important than ever to have a handle on the way technology influences our lives and how we can control it. Freedom of information is mutual aid. Digital autonomy is fighting the tech monopolies. Data gathering is the first step of capitalist propaganda. We can only crush our oppressors if we learn how to stop depending on them.

[arcticdementor]

(link)

[cyberpunkonline]

Ghosts in the Machine: A Psychedelic Voyage through Hauntology, Internet Culture, and the Cyberpunk Specter

Once upon a time, in the neon-lit underbelly of cyberspace, there existed a curious phenomenon—a trippy trinity of hauntology, internet culture, and the ghost of cyberpunk. It's a mind-bending journey through the digital rabbit hole, where reality and nostalgia collide in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of memes, memories, and mayhem.

Picture this: Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher extraordinaire, drops the term "hauntology" like a linguistic bomb, sending shockwaves through the space-time continuum. Suddenly, the past isn't just history—it's a spectral presence, haunting our collective consciousness with its fragmented echoes and retro reverberations.

Meanwhile, in the wild, wild west of the internet, a strange and wondrous culture emerges—a melting pot of memes, cat videos, and conspiracy theories swirling in the digital ether. It's a place where anonymity reigns supreme, and the only currency is attention. Welcome to the cyber circus, where anything goes and everything's up for grabs.

But wait, lurking in the shadows of this digital dystopia, is the ghost of cyberpunk—an enigmatic specter born from the fevered imaginations of William Gibson and Philip K. Dick. It's a world of hackers, hustlers, and high-tech heists—a neon-lit noir nightmare where the only law is the code.

Now, imagine these three forces colliding in a psychedelic showdown of epic proportions. It's like Hunter S. Thompson meets William S. Burroughs in a smoky dive bar at the edge of the digital frontier. Reality bends, time warps, and the boundaries between past, present, and future blur in a technicolor haze.

In this brave new world, nostalgia isn't just a feeling—it's a weapon, wielded by hackers and hipsters alike in their quest for authenticity in a world of simulacra. The internet becomes a virtual playground, where identities are fluid, and reality is up for grabs.

And amidst the chaos and confusion, the ghost of cyberpunk whispers its ominous warnings of a future gone awry—a cautionary tale of corporate greed, technological hubris, and existential despair. It's a reminder that the utopian dreams of the digital age are just as fragile as the dystopian nightmares.

So, buckle up, dear reader, and prepare for a wild ride through the haunted halls of cyberspace. Because in the weird and wacky world of hauntology, internet culture, and the ghost of cyberpunk, the only certainty is uncertainty.

[alpaca-clouds]

Cyberpunk and Solarpunk

Someone wrote a comment in a retweet under my last post about solarpunk. About how maybe Cyberpunk is more suited to motivate us to work for a better future, than Solarpunk is. Because Cyberpunk can show us, how bad it can get, it can be a warning.

My issue is, that for the most part it isn't.

Now, don't get me wrong. I adore Cyberpunk. I basically grew up in Japanese Cyberpunk especially (which I like a lot more than Western Cyberpunk - but the reasons are to complex to discuss here). But I think for a plethora of reasons it does not work as a "warning".

Part of the reason is, that the dystopia of Cyberpunk is not that far away from reality anymore these days. Even in effective Cyberpunk, that really goes into the Late Stage Capitalism... It shows a stark divide between rich and poor, state violence, rule of coorporations, end of ecosystems. Yes, it is more heightened than our reality, but it is all that we see in our reality right now and... we are kinda getting used to it. We are getting used to all the horrible things happening right now, because we feel powerless and our minds do not know how else to deal with it. So they will just chuck it of as "normal".

The other reason, why I think, Cyberpunk fails, is, that it is objectively cool. And a lot of people, who consume Cyberpunk media, do not engage with the dystopia, but just with the power fantasy of being a cool street sam with a lot of awesome augmentations. They want Cyberpunk to be real, not to prevent it. Because to them, it is mostly a really darn cool aesthetic.

And a last reason is, that in the end Cyberpunk does not offer solutions. Half the point of the genre is a sort of hopelessness. In most Cyberpunk there is no big happy ending. The happy end is, that the characters get to survive. Maybe, just maybe, the characters manage to bring down one coorporation or at least one corrupt CEO. But the most the characters get, is, to survive and maybe kiss a love interest. The point of Cyberpunk is the hopelessness.

But you cannot build a better world from hopelessness.

Which is, why I see Solarpunk as so promising - and am at the same time afraid of it turning too much into an "aesthetics only" movement. Because Solarpunk at its core is about reclaiming optimism for the future. It is not (only) an art movement, but first and foremost a genre of both fiction and activism.

If you look into the Solarpunk Manifesto, you will find that, it is about optimism and rebellion against the current system. About the things, that we so desperately need right now.

It is supposed to offer those solutions, that Cyberpunk does not want to offer - or rather that Cyberpunk thinks are out of reach.

Because here is the thing about Solarpunk: Yes, it is Science Fiction, but a lot of the Science it presents is available today. If states were actually to invest in it, we could have clean energy by 2035. That is not unrealistic. Because the technology is here, we just need to use it.

Degrowth, which is another core tennent of Solarpunk, is also possible. And it does not need to mean "live bad", as so many publications try to make it out.

Building local communities, too, is possible. The reasons we lost local communities, is, that the current system we live under, does not want us to have those communities - because communities allow us to organize and retake our power.

Those tennents have been there in Solarpunk from the very beginning. And it is quite frankly frightening to see, how the movement gets kinda taken over by people, only being there for green aesthetics.

This is not meant to be escapism. At least not just that. It is supposed to be a root of activism.

[charlesoberonn]

Worldbuilding Idea: Spicepunk. It's like a cyberpunk corporate dystopia, but with 17th and 18th century based technology and corporations (think Dutch/British East India Companies). You can add elements of fantasy too, like in Pirates of the Caribbean.

It could be an alternate history where all national and royal governments collapsed and were replaced with corporations (which were already more powerful than most governments in our timeline). Or it could be an original world with a different geography and cultures. Or something in between.

[crystaltoa]

The Toa Metru compared with the Toa Nuva are an interesting example of how a character’s alignment of lawful to chaotic good morality is dependent on context and circumstance.

As Matoran, we are given the impression that the Metru were all fairly law-abiding citizens for the most part. They didn’t have the same chips on their shoulders as the Great Disk Matoran (with the possible exception of Onewa). They were not universally liked, but at least garnered a decent amount of respect from their colleagues. None of them particularly like the Vahki, but they tend to view them as a necessity to keep the peace.

None of them had the inherent drive or the right life experience to make them say “hey actually, screw all this, this whole system needs to be overturned”- which is the attitude of a Chaotic Good.

But then, the story casts them in the role of chaotic good, regardless of their individual personality traits, when they see the system turn against them- “Turaga Dume” brands them as outlaws, and they find themselves running from the law and disrupting the “peace” rather than upholding it.

By contrast, the Toa Mata/Nuva are cast in the role of Lawful Good, regardless of individual opinions or temperaments. They are told by the Turaga, “This is Who You Are, and This Is What You Do,” and for the most part, they do it. They follow their destiny, they play by the “rules” that were laid out.

There’s even the case to be made that 01-03 and 04-05 are fundamentally different genres of story- a mythology inspired fantasy and a dystopian cyberpunk story, respectively, and those stories inherently frame their protagonists differently. Then you’ve got the Dark Mirror universe, which instead places the Toa Mata in the cyberpunk dystopia, where most of them are now functionally Lawful Evil, with the exception of Pohatu, who is now very much a Chaotic Good.

I know Greg disliked reducing characters to simple alignment archetypes, and I can see why. Framing it as an inherent personality trait without acknowledging how circumstances and narrative framing affect the characters’ behaviour ( and our perception of them) is flawed. But I think there’s some interesting conversations to be had about how the lawful-chaotic arm of the morality spectrum is presented in Bionicle.