i'm not sure what isn't appealing about it aside from those genre tropes. it's good for the same reason that dystopian fiction is good.
Okay but I don’t generally care for dystopian fiction, really.
is this because you think it's bad or because you'd rather not read/watch doom and gloom when there's plenty of doom and gloom oppressing us in our actual lives
Both?
There’s something about cyberpunk that seems to glorify the squalor and misery of its setting, and if I’m being honest a lot of it is marred by growing up watching the generation only a little older than me caught up in entertainment where maladjusted antiheroes with shitty goatees and black trenchcoats fought ninja robots in dingy gutters . . . because it looked cool. So much of nerd culture during my tween years seemed like this, and it felt try-hard and hilariously oblivious and not a little tied to the same solipsistic assholes that would later coelesce into the festering clot of the internet’s nice guy/fedora/incel/neckbeard neighborhood.
I know I joke about being the oldest millennial, but while barely true, I identify as such because I identify with millennials and their lives and culture far more than I do GenX. I like bright, poppy, optimistic, inclusive shit. I like media that brings people together over shared interests and common goals. I like to laugh and smile and promote that in others. I like goofy shit. I don’t want to think about all the creative ways shit can get bleak; I want to celebrate all the ways we can do good with a genuine goddamn smile on my face.
Well let me give you another take on it.
The big rise of the anti hero and dingy gutters was a direct rebellion to finding out the promises of our parents that culminated in the messages in our youth were all bullshit. Gen X cynicism isn't rooted in some random turn (though some of it probably is). It's rooted in finding out the villains aren't like Cobra and Mum-Ra, but the banker in the high rise destroying lives. And the heroes aren't like Superman, and maybe non existent.
So the idea that the hero wasn't the super patriotic super good guy our parents told us heroes were made sense. The world wasn't hoo ra Reagan Morning In America and stories that stopped selling that lie became more appealing.
Listen, I get it. I mostly hate the 90s and Xtreme Antiheroes. But that wasn't just some neckbeard shit. But a real reaction to the bullshit we saw behind the veil of the pretty things our folks shoveled at us.
Just like your optimistic, bright, poppy shit is a direct reaction to ours. Hell, it's pretty much a re tread of all the bright poppy shit of my youth. It's just that yours is trying harder to not have that bullshit veneer that drove my generation to a place where our defining factor is overblown cynicism.
I guess I should in theory give ready player one a chance but every excerpt I've read has made my brain start bleeding
I dunno if I would be able to power through it if every excerpt I've read has been illustrative of the whole thing
It seems like Joseph Campbell + some guy reading TV Tropes to you
I think people give it too much shit. It's just massively popular and that has created a backlash against it.
It's just like The Dresden Files or those trashy Forgotten Realms books that were being written in the 90s, it just doesn't pretend to be anything but what it is. It is absolutely just a bunch of '80s references in a book wrapped in a young adult adventure story. It's not trying to be anything else, and yes it is written poorly.
But despite all of that, I managed to enjoy it.
you have now named Ready Player One, Dresden Files, Forgotten Realms novels, and Transformers films--all absolutely things that are bad enough that people shouldn't waste their time on them, even if they're looking for silly pulpy fun
And yet, enough people have bought all of those things to turn them into massive successes.
popularity has little bearing on quality; i feel like that's a truism
The Fifth Element is not particularly dystopian. I mean, Corbin Dallas has a small apartment, but hey ho.
Its in the background. But its there. He lives in a shit hole with a shit job and is brought into an adventure from a girl who was reconstructed with just her hand left after getting blown up. The darkness of the world is masked by 90s horrible colors/cringy fashion meant to show off a the upper class living why the remainder live in squalor. As shown during the times up to his adventure start.
I've always thought of cyberpunk the genre being a literary reaction to the Golden Age of science fiction. The Golden Age writers mostly celebrated scientific achievements of the time, and cyberpunk started picking up steam right around the time that Dune was released and authors began to explore more complex themes, veering more towards dystopia.
Cyberpunk as a genre is usually focused on themes like the perils of rapid technological change, post-capitalist dystopias, cyberspace, depressing real-world conditions including overpopulation and climate change, individual alienation, and consumerism.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
In XY systems that homogametic sex is women, and in ZW the homogametic sex is men
So XY makes homo ladies and ZW makes homo men
So choose based on your appropriate juvenile jokes I guess
Wait don't you have this backwards
No, he got it right
Ah yes, he did. I AM SORRY ARCH I WILL NEVER DOUBT U AGAIN
I will continue to doubt Arch. Can't trust a six-legger.
You're right
With their paucity of legs, they will become jealous, and try to steal the legs of the trustworthies
How dare you! A paucity of legs! I'll have you know that we have reduced the number of legs down to the most efficient and blessed number (3!) and have also made room for wings, so that we can become closer to the divine
you
you
bottom feeder
Come and get me, motherfucker
Is it correct that Maine lobsters are more related to crayfish than to pacific/spiny lobsters?
Looks like they're all equally related, i.e., decapoda, along with crabs. But who knows, no one does genetics on them (BUT EVERYONE SHOULD, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS).
Also that is a crayfish, but it's from New Zealand.
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BeNarwhalThe Work Left UnfinishedRegistered Userregular
Famously, the health card that I continue to use to this day because I'm a stubborn ass was issued to me prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's not an inconvenience I'm foisting upon you because I'm too lazy to go get the new free card, dear admin worker, it's a piece of history and you shall respect it as such! >_>
man I remember being a young kid and wondering if the contrails in the sky were missiles and this was the end. That shit was real for us.
I don't think you need to have been born prior to the collapse of the soviet union (to be clear, I was, but I was very small, so) in order to feel and enjoy soviet themes.
The police state/paranoia/disappearance/bureaucracy themes in Master and Margarita are visceral and horribly chilling even if you didn't live it
And then having read and internalize that, you can go on to feel the resonance in other works that are maybe less well-written but still draw on those feelings
In general, you don't have to have personally experienced the themes, events, or settings in a work or game in order to be profoundly affected and moved by them, or in order to feel like they are relevant to you
I agree with that!
But with Paranoia, we're talking about a couple of removes and a comedic shift. Humor is a reflection of the times, and it just doesn't hit the mark even if you gathered up enough cultural referential experience to get what people were so scared of.
It's like a Laurel & Hardy routines now, or watching Bugs Bunny do impressions - they're funny at one remove, not in the way they were for audiences of the day. Even if you've watched every Turner Classic movie, it still won't hit you the same way as it did when it was released.
The Fifth Element, and I think I've said this before, is pretty much the first science fiction film after Blade Runner to radically change the aesthetics of visual SF worlds. It was bright, colourful, fun and the style was utterly unlike the dim, grimy, rainy worlds of most SF at that time.
People in that world weren't depressed, or angry, or railing against the unfeeling system. They were having instant roast chicken and listening to Ruby Rhod and having sex and having odd slapstick interludes with Lee Evans.
In XY systems that homogametic sex is women, and in ZW the homogametic sex is men
So XY makes homo ladies and ZW makes homo men
So choose based on your appropriate juvenile jokes I guess
Wait don't you have this backwards
No, he got it right
Ah yes, he did. I AM SORRY ARCH I WILL NEVER DOUBT U AGAIN
I will continue to doubt Arch. Can't trust a six-legger.
You're right
With their paucity of legs, they will become jealous, and try to steal the legs of the trustworthies
How dare you! A paucity of legs! I'll have you know that we have reduced the number of legs down to the most efficient and blessed number (3!) and have also made room for wings, so that we can become closer to the divine
you
you
bottom feeder
Come and get me, motherfucker
Is it correct that Maine lobsters are more related to crayfish than to pacific/spiny lobsters?
Looks like they're all equally related, i.e., decapoda, along with crabs. But who knows, no one does genetics on them (BUT EVERYONE SHOULD, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS).
Also that is a crayfish, but it's from New Zealand
Cyberpunk201X as a genre is usually focused on themes like the perils of rapid technological change, post-capitalist dystopias, cyberspace, depressing real-world conditions including overpopulation and climate change, individual alienation, and consumerism.
Having written all that, it's interesting how cyberpunk can be about utter dystopian pessimism or about deeply human optimism in a dystopian context. Both feel really authentic in the genre.
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Sir Landsharkresting shark faceRegistered Userregular
oh man the xanth series was great
the quality dipped towards the later books of course, p normal thing, but still had some gems later on like the one that was all a computer game (and I think an actual computer game was based on that book but I never tried it)
Please consider the environment before printing this post.
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Element BrianPeanut Butter ShillRegistered Userregular
The Fifth Element, and I think I've said this before, is pretty much the first science fiction film after Blade Runner to radically change the aesthetics of visual SF worlds. It was bright, colourful, fun and the style was utterly unlike the dim, grimy, rainy worlds of most SF at that time.
People in that world weren't depressed, or angry, or railing against the unfeeling system. They were having instant roast chicken and listening to Ruby Rhod and having sex and having odd slapstick interludes with Lee Evans.
I am ready for any vision of the future that looks like a mid 90s Janet Jackson video
Cyberpunk is absolutely a reaction to old timey SF, as in Gibson's story The Gernsback Continuum, where an alternate reality based on those old timey worlds nauseatingly intrudes on normality.
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Well let me give you another take on it.
The big rise of the anti hero and dingy gutters was a direct rebellion to finding out the promises of our parents that culminated in the messages in our youth were all bullshit. Gen X cynicism isn't rooted in some random turn (though some of it probably is). It's rooted in finding out the villains aren't like Cobra and Mum-Ra, but the banker in the high rise destroying lives. And the heroes aren't like Superman, and maybe non existent.
So the idea that the hero wasn't the super patriotic super good guy our parents told us heroes were made sense. The world wasn't hoo ra Reagan Morning In America and stories that stopped selling that lie became more appealing.
Listen, I get it. I mostly hate the 90s and Xtreme Antiheroes. But that wasn't just some neckbeard shit. But a real reaction to the bullshit we saw behind the veil of the pretty things our folks shoveled at us.
Just like your optimistic, bright, poppy shit is a direct reaction to ours. Hell, it's pretty much a re tread of all the bright poppy shit of my youth. It's just that yours is trying harder to not have that bullshit veneer that drove my generation to a place where our defining factor is overblown cynicism.
I mean, if having cramped living conditions made for a dystopia, then that would mean that the UK was a dysto-
Wait
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
If that was toilet paper it was easily 5+ ply and therefore it can’t be a dystopia.
Look, when you admit you are a meat popsicle in a rundown tiny apartment is say its dystopian
The Xanth series
the real point is feeling smug about knowing better than the author.
"ah, I see that the author holds to a common flawed interpretation of Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut und Böse. How amusing."
popularity has little bearing on quality; i feel like that's a truism
My current prolixity is 100% born of procrastination
I feel like I'm doing work if I put some effort into sentence construction and then go on a bit more than is strictly needed
...it's definitely not work...
Its in the background. But its there. He lives in a shit hole with a shit job and is brought into an adventure from a girl who was reconstructed with just her hand left after getting blown up. The darkness of the world is masked by 90s horrible colors/cringy fashion meant to show off a the upper class living why the remainder live in squalor. As shown during the times up to his adventure start.
Cyberpunk as a genre is usually focused on themes like the perils of rapid technological change, post-capitalist dystopias, cyberspace, depressing real-world conditions including overpopulation and climate change, individual alienation, and consumerism.
Looks like they're all equally related, i.e., decapoda, along with crabs. But who knows, no one does genetics on them (BUT EVERYONE SHOULD, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS).
Also that is a crayfish, but it's from New Zealand.
It's not an inconvenience I'm foisting upon you because I'm too lazy to go get the new free card, dear admin worker, it's a piece of history and you shall respect it as such! >_>
I agree with that!
But with Paranoia, we're talking about a couple of removes and a comedic shift. Humor is a reflection of the times, and it just doesn't hit the mark even if you gathered up enough cultural referential experience to get what people were so scared of.
It's like a Laurel & Hardy routines now, or watching Bugs Bunny do impressions - they're funny at one remove, not in the way they were for audiences of the day. Even if you've watched every Turner Classic movie, it still won't hit you the same way as it did when it was released.
People in that world weren't depressed, or angry, or railing against the unfeeling system. They were having instant roast chicken and listening to Ruby Rhod and having sex and having odd slapstick interludes with Lee Evans.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Have you read one of his other books, Diamond Age? It felt similar to Snow Crash to me, and I enjoyed most of it.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Diamond Age started strong, but it was a slog to finish.
Snow Crash I feel was just a better pace.
"What happened, Bogart? Why did you delete this user and all his content?"
"I ... slipped, Tube. Yes. That's it. Slipped."
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
the quality dipped towards the later books of course, p normal thing, but still had some gems later on like the one that was all a computer game (and I think an actual computer game was based on that book but I never tried it)
lick it
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
I am ready for any vision of the future that looks like a mid 90s Janet Jackson video
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
:winky:
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
I fear this may only encourage it