Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be ableist! Have you ever noticed that tabletop games and other cyberpunk media often tie your decency and personhood to how many surgeries you haven’t had? But people argue that cyberpunk is actually anti-corporation, not anti-body-modification. What do you think?
(via: r/CuratedTumblr)
And there-in lays the dystopian thought process of what could happen after, with a replacement part. Coming from someone who almost lost a hand, there is … a/can be a thought/emotional response/reaction to such an injury. We’re talking my dominate hand … yes I’m mostly ambidextrous, but this was still my 100% control hand. And I’m trying to recover and not F*ck it up! ( Seen the effects of peeps not listening to the Doctors and want nothing of that shit! ) But I’m looking at my hand and wondering/hoping it will still work after I heal. (( Spoiler alert, yes it does! ))
But during the process, I’m in the unknown space of if it will? I’m literally across the urgent care room from some ganger with a similar hand wound and we’re both desperately trying to deal with the pain of having the nurses deal with our bandage removal ( yes, there were tears on both parts ) … and if you didn’t know, there is only one area of the body that is more sensitive the hand … so, back to the point of the whole tirade … I’m a firm believer that the whole loss of character points to a stat in a game is a reflective of that whole loss of self. It may not be a real loss of self, but it does represent a mental view of thew whole … and that is probably those key to whole view of how things work.
I totally get that. I nearly severed my left thumb and index finger practicing sword. The index finger isn’t a biggie, but the thumb is the difference between a human and a racoon hand. I was terrified to the point of nightmares until I recovered enough to see that it was going to be mostly functional.
What cyberpunk other than Shadowrun have you been reading?
The cyberpunk stuff I’ve read lately is still all anti-corporate and not particularly ableist. Is there a genre of Shadowrun-like settings that I’m not aware of?
The concept of “Cyberpsychois” (or whatever term you prefer to use for the Table Top mechanic) was never about like-for-like alterations, it was about extreme alterations and the mis-use of such technology. So, for example, if you lost your arm and got it replaced with a new arm it had the same psychological impact as breaking your arm and having it put in a cast.
It was about if you then used your arm like it was infinitly replacable; how that would make you look at the rest of your body and what if you stop remembering that other people don’t have infinitly replacable bodies because you have forgotten how many times you’ve been rebuilt from the ground up. How would you be different on a psychological and social level?
For TTRPGs this needed to be represented by a simple, rules bases, mechanic. Some people played with it well and told delicate and intricat stories, some people played with it bluntly becuase it was Tuesday night and they wanted to have fun and throw some dice.
In other content, the same happened. Some of those were good, some of them were undoubtadly abilist because they were written in MSPaint. And yes, some of that included discussing the psychological impact of fixing disability, rather than “upgrades”, because those would be life changing procedures. There was also a lot of “if you turn your perfectly fine human arm into a spinning death cannon, you’ll go a bit creepy”, with a lot of that because what kind of person would do that in the first place??
For the “it eats your soul” narrative, I’d suggest that Alterd Carbon is the best (or, at least the most well known) representation of this as it shows what widely available wholebody transplants could do to a society, on social, political, and economic levels. I’d also suggest that a lot of the less interesting versions are because, like with all other genres, the cliche’s turned up and became shorthand for “it’s this kind of world you’ve seen before, and we’re more focused on that thing over here…”
As ever, with cyberpunk you have to remember the following:
1 – when was it written? because cyberpunk is often about then current concerns
2 – what was it trying to achieve? because cyberpunk can be subtle drama, dumb action, or any mix inbetween
And, most importantly
3 – 86.5% is still human..^_^
This “article” gave me cancer.
If Ghost in the shell is considered cyberpunk, not sure if it is, they dealt with it, in a slightly different manner, placing emphasis on the mind/soul being connected regardless of how many body swaps, or replacement surgeries you’ve had
Ghost in the Shell is Cyberpunk. Masamune Shirow had taken a lot of inspiration from classic writers like Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Bladerunner), plus added his own experiences (earthquake in the 90s that destroyed his home, and the sarin gas attack in Tokyo later that killed hundreds). These influences and others led him to create the sci-fi/cyberpunk manga Black Magic M66, and later, Appleseed – which would lead him to write a different story: Ghost in the Shell.