Punk

[apocalypstick]

If you're interested in my take on it, check out the link in my dot-sig.

 

[Umbran]

Shadowrunners, however, aren't content to live "in the system", and go around causing trouble, attacking these corporations, and their holdings, in what is basicly a selfish desire to improve their own state of being without doing it through the usual channels.

Hr. I don't see this as a terribly accurate description. You make Shadowrunners sound like bandits, when generally they're more like mercenaries. Shadowrunners generally don't go around causing trouble or attacking anyone unless hired to do so by another corporation. So, every time they attack someone, it's to do something constructive for someone else.

Shadowrunners aren't living "outside the system". They are a necessary part of the system. Without shadowrunners, the system itself would collapse into open and direct corporate warfare, in which everyone would lose.

That's aside from the fact that "attacking corporations and causing trouble" is only one of the standard Shadowrunner jobs. They play bodyguard or private investigator about as often as they do anything else.

 

[Desdichado]

WayneLigon: if -punk just means the genre is typified by marginalized and disenfranchized individuals fighting against the system, does that make Midnight the Tolkienpunk setting?

 

[Tsyr]

Hr. I don't see this as a terribly accurate description. You make Shadowrunners sound like bandits, when generally they're more like mercenaries. Shadowrunners generally don't go around causing trouble or attacking anyone unless hired to do so by another corporation. So, every time they attack someone, it's to do something constructive for someone else.

Remember, most Shadowrunners don't have a SIN anymore, or at least not one that is safe to use. Outside of under-the-table payment, they don't have a method to earn a living. Simply put, a Shadowrunner that doesnt shadowrun is a shadowrunner that doesn't last long. Even phoney SINs cost a lot of money, if they are worth anything, and even a good phoney SIN will fail you sooner or later.

Shadowrunners aren't living "outside the system". They are a necessary part of the system. Without shadowrunners, the system itself would collapse into open and direct corporate warfare, in which everyone would lose.

Conjecture. A far more likely result would be that Shadowrunners would simply be replaced by a group of "special consultants" that are a quasi-legal version of the same thing... The Seraphim for Cross, for example.

That's aside from the fact that "attacking corporations and causing trouble" is only one of the standard Shadowrunner jobs. They play bodyguard or private investigator about as often as they do anything else.

They do other things, sure. But pretty much everything a Shadowrunner does is likely against the law or at least skirts the law in some form or another... be it official law or corp law. After all, there are legal versions of bodyguards and PIs too, so why wouldn't a person go to them first, if the job was legit?

Again, though, this depends in part on your particular vision of the Sixth World.

 

[WayneLigon]

WayneLigon: if -punk just means the genre is typified by marginalized and disenfranchized individuals fighting against the system, does that make Midnight the Tolkienpunk setting?

Probably, yeah Man, I love that book.

 

[WizarDru]

Tim Powers' Anubis Gates being labeled as Steampunk would be something of forcing a square peg into a round hole, IMHO. While it does have strange occurences with the eqyptian magicians and a variation of Sping-Heeled Jack (though it would years before I even knew who that was), it's mostly a book about head-twisting time travel tricks and hanging with Shelley and Byron.


And whlie Neuromancer was the book that put the genre on the map, a lot of people would contend that it had been running for several years by that point. Hell, Johnny Mnemonic, by Gibson, was several years old at that point. Folks like A.E. VanVogt, Alfred Bester and Phillip K. Dick (not to mention movies like A Clockwork Orange and BladeRunner*) had already walked much of this territory...just not under a convienent label.

Steampunk always struck me as changing the window dressing of Cyberpunk, but keeping the core ideas, to some extent. However, that quickly changed into a campier, more romanticized version, with anime giant steam-powered robots sitting side by side with The Babbage Engine.

After that, it was merely an attempt to 'buzz word' in something that was easy to label, and hopefully carried some meaning to the reader, vaguely intended to mean 'cutting edge', but often just meaning 'clueless'.


* - And let's be honest here, Blade Runner is THE cyberpunk movie...much moreso than say most other movies for it's strong visual aspects and references. Ironically, The Matrix never even came to mind as a 'cyberpunk' movie, even though it bears most of the trappings of the genre, and I'm not sure why I think that way.

 

[Tsyr]

Johnny Mnemonic made a great movie...

 

[eXodus]

Johnny Mnemonic made a great movie...

surely you jest!

that movie made me ill. the effects were alright. hell, they even followed the story very well. it could have made a good movie. but are you aware of the acting stars we had in that bomb?

keanu reeves? he has no acting talent whatsoever. though one day he will be seen as one of the greats/

henry rollins? come now. lift a few more weights, hank. get a few more tattoos and tour with black flag again. please stay out of movies. and don't hit me.

ice-t? not a whole lot to say about this pimp turned rapper turned actor. i would say something about his acting skills but he would somehow find out about it and i would end up gunned down in an alley somewhere.

 

[Desdichado]

Wasn't Dolph Lundgren in that movie too?

 

[eXodus]

Wasn't Dolph Lundgren in that movie too?

gads! he was, wasn't he. he played the preacher/assassin.

whomever it was who played the girly street samurai was lousy as well.