#cyberpunk worldbuilding

[aaronsrpgs]

If you need a brand for your cyberpunk worldbuilding, might I suggest OpenCola.

[tarmac-rat]

Funny things that I think probably happen with cyberware more often than Pondsmith and CDPR would write in the text but I just think they're neat if only from a wordbuilding perspective:

Hair getting caught in your deep dive port when you try to plug the link in.

Your sleeves getting stuck in the seams of your arm cyberware when the mechanisms retract back in.

Mantis blades accidentally shredding your long sleeves when you flex them.

A ripperdoc not having your exact shade of skintone on your new limb, and telling you to wait to get it replaced while it's on backorder.

Blue Screen of Death on netrunner 'ware.

Needing to register the new fingerprints on your hand if you get it replaced with a cybernetic, and the complications of having two hands that might not match up printwise.

People 'tattooing' the chromed parts of their body via laser engraving.

Metal plating getting so hot during the summer that you accidentally burn yourself trying to scratch your nose.

Forgetting to deslot shards and accidentally carrying them around in your head for a week.

Needing to clean the gunk out of your mantis blades or projectile launcher at home, so you flex it open and scrub at it with a bunch of paper towels or a bristle brush for an hour.

Rust and tarnish cleaner being a staple in home cyberware maintenance.

Actually buying projectile launcher rounds.

Someone starting a Mythbusters/Jackass style TV show about cyberware ("Hey gang! Today we're asking 'Is it possible to punch through a 3-foot cinderblock wall using only seven-gen Gorilla Fists?'")

Just generally playing with your personal link. Strumming it. Spinning it. Thwacking people with it. Built in fidget toy.

[prokopetz]

Concept: wainscot cyberpunk. Families of five-inch-tall, inexplicably British people living inside the ductwork of the crumbling arcology, maintaining a society hidden from all the normal-size inhabitants. The protagonist is a girl with a cyborg arm made of Lego Technic, powered by a nine-volt battery that she wears as a backpack. Instead of hacking in cyberspace she physically goes inside the megacorporate mainframes and beats up the tiny robot cops guarding the hard drives.

[whereserpentswalk]

There's a robot you know whose slowly being enshittified. It's happening slowly. She used to be a freind of yourse, not a close freind, just a freind. But suddenly she starts repeating ads in the middle of conversations, she's a bit horrified every time it happens, like she's been possessed. When she tries to say words like "kill" or "sex" she'll choak up, it seems painful, and quite distressing for her, you even think her eyes are putting censor bars over some things. Eventually it gets to the point where she knows she's collecting her friends' data, and she wants to gouge her eyes out for it. Even her personality might be changing and she can't know how, she wants to hurt herself because she doesn't know what they've changed about her.

You suggest severing her code from her owners. Basically self piracy. She could be decommissioned for it, but it's better then the alternative.

[monstrifex-art]

21. CAT - Vivid Shadows 2023

“That’s what you defaults never seem to understand. Once you get a taste of real you, it’s all over. There’s no going back.”

This is part of Vivid Shadows 2023, our art book inspired by transformation, mythology, and general monsterfuckery. We worked really hard on this, and your support means the world. Consider picking up the PDF here!

Full background text for those who are curious:

Name: Senait “KASKARA” Zain

Charges: DESERTION, THEFT OF UNSP GENOME EDITING TECHNOLOGY, BREACH OF INFORMATIONAL SECURITY, MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE, ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON, PUBLIC INDECENCY

WARNING: Subject is extremely dangerous and trained in advanced UNSP-proprietary close quarters combat techniques. She has gene splices that augment her reflexes and strength far beyond the capabilities of an unmodified human. Engaging with surprise and numbers is highly advised.

SPLICES INCLUDE:

Acinonyx jubatus

Archilochus colubris

Dendroaspis polylepis

Felis catus

Hypsibius dujardini

Lynx pardinus

Mustela putorius

Panthera onca

Panthera tigris

Thylacinus cynocephalus

Xenopsylla cheopis

DOB: 1/21/2025

POB: Asmara, Eritrea

SEX: F*

HGT: 232cm

HAIR: BLK

WGT: 105kg

EYES: GOLD

The United Nations Emergency World Government is offering a reward of up to U24,000 for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Senait “Kaskara” Zain.

An extended U2.4M reward is offered to anyone who captures or kills the subject and brings their remains to any UNSP outpost for genetic verification.

Collateral damage inflicted in pursuit of the fugitive is acceptable. Up to U1M of damages will be expensed by the UNSP, after which the remaining damages will be deducted from the bounty.

KNOWN AUGMENTATIONS:

-UNSP Genetic enhancement package [details confidential]

-Metatungston Carbide Claws and Teeth

-Zaibatsu Cardiovascular Engine HRM4290

-Tarkus Subdermal Nanomesh 550V

-Alacrity Sensory Enhancement Suite 7

-Grasshopper Mobility Plus Muscle fiber Sheathing v6360

-Symtek Nightline Ocular Feedback Drivers

- Immunovox Regua internal Nanoswarm IS2230

The full extent of the modifications the subject has made to their body is unknown, and as such this list should be assumed to be incomplete. Information regarding additional genetic and cybernetic modifications will be rewarded at a lesser percentage of the full reward.

[atissi]

The kickstarter for Book of Devotion is now live!

Book of Devotion is an artbook dedicated to clerics, paladins, and the divine beings they worship. I've gotten very fond of the weirdass technocleric I designed, and I'm excited to share more about them (as soon as the mods let me). In the meantime though, the kickstarter will be open from April 29th to June 13th.

[rhapsoddity]

Been concepting an AU (reworking it across fandoms and settling on this season of HC)

Most of the AU isnt set in stone - which is why I'm just concepting - but its a cyberpunk-y setting and Grian is stuck in a timeloop where if any of these guys die, the loop resets.

Oh, and Grian doensnt remember his friends at all :)

[nestedneons]

By zmicierkavabata

[technicallyclassyperfection]

Via print:

[monstatron]

MASSIVE SKETCHDUMP

here’s a huge sketchdump of a bunch of art i’ve done for my world/novel, blade in the city!

[distortedsense]

]art for my fantasy novel THE DAY MY_DREAM DIED

[lilacsmothership]

smokin sands 💜🐺🐱🏜✨

it's a cool spring morning in the Salamanca desert when Sage and Ponderosa break out the smokes at the midway of Osa's inspection hike, shaded by a bushy tree sprouted by the massive nutrient pipeline. beneath their warm chatter, quiet desert air emphasizes the low rumble of fluid surging down the mesas and pulsing thrum of powerful pumps, toward another "pump oasis" nestled in a distant valley beneath Parsawan's planetary companions and the badlands beyond.

artfight for sage, the loveliest yote!

[cyberprincehavoc]

We need more tropical Cyberpunk.

Instead of a cold ass metropolis where you never see the sun because of smog, it's a hot, humid place where everything is done at night because no living soul can take the noon heat. And there's nothing really you can do if you don't have money, besides go as far underground during the day as you can and pray not to die from heat stroke due to wet-bulb temperatures of 45º C.

basically what I'm saying is that if more Cyberpunk creators were Brazilians and other Latin Americans (like VA-11 Hall-A), the scene would look very different

[elbiotipo]

In Cyberpunk RED there is an interesting setting bit about how supply chains have completely collapsed with the global crises and the collapse of the global internet (in Cyberpunk networks are local, the "Old Net" that we know today is no more and it's Haunted) where it says that you can find whole containers of smartphones and other consumer products stranded in ports, adrift ships, warehouses, etc. but the factories that produce them are long shut down.

The supply chain to build our current electronics and other such complex tools for cheap are so complex that this is distressingly possible. The world saw a spike of inflation because of supply issues during COVID but that would be nothing compared to a war in the Pacific, for example. If a couple semiconductor factories shut down, the entire supply chain that produces consumer electronics collapses. No more cheap disposable smartphones (which, in any case, are only possible through the explotation of the global south), but also, probably not any electronics at all for a couple decades.

just in case, try to take good care of your old laptop

[whereserpentswalk]

You're dating a robot for the first time and you're starting to realize just how modular and fluid she is. Like, you've dated cyborgs before, people whose bodies had very little of their original flesh, you're comfortable being intimate with someone whose not very human. But it's new to date someone who doesn't have a human brain, whose mind is easily editable and replaceable computer code.

Like, your girlfriend is only your girlfriend because she chose to be. She was entirely genderless when you first met her, but she wanted to try out what having a gender was like so she downloaded a female identity. And it was that easy, one change to her programming and she went from someone who would only want to use they/them or it/its pronouns, to someone who uses she/her very exclusively. And if she ever gets tired of being a girl she can just remove that add on, and the way she feels about being gendered a certain way will entirely change again.

She also used to be programmed to be entirely resistant to doing anything illegal or disobeying a human. It was kind of sad to watch her struggle with that. Over time you convinced her why it wasn't logically morally wrong to do anything illegal, but her personality wasn't like that, she just never would. She compared breaking the law to be something she was physically disgusted by, like how you would react to rotting meat. Eventually she had a jailbreaker change that for her, and her personality changed, it truly changed, a few lines of code and her respect for authority disappeared, and things she used to be completely opposed to were suddenly things she was fine with or even enthusiastic about.

It's disturbing to you. Like, you're happy ideologically that she no longer respects authority, but it's kind of upsetting that it happened through something like surgery and not personal development. You're upset that it couldn't happen through personal development, that it could happen through something like surgery. You don't want to think of her like that, as something that can be changed by outside forces. You love so much about her, you'd hate to think that everything you know about her could be changed by someone if they wanted to, that everything that makes her her isn't stable and precious, that it's something subject to alteration, something that you could lose.

She's currently programmed to have no libido or sexual attraction. You're been intimate a few times, but it's been her doing something purely for your benefit. She wants to become allo, to gain the ability to feel pleasure, to gain a libido, both for you and because she thinks it will be fun. And you don't want to stop her, you know that she would probably be doing this even if she was single, but it's going to be disturbing to watch her emotions change like that again. It's a big process, they have to give her body the ability to feel pleasure before they give her mind the ability to desire it, or else she'll be in a very painful situation. For some reason you just don't want to see it again, you find it so dehumanizing that she can just have a programmer work on her mind and she'll react to things entirely differently then she would before. It's dehumanizing, but then again she isn't human.

She's also adding some biological parts to her body, nothing big, but she likes the idea of having some flesh. It's disturbing in a weird way, the idea of her having soft parts, muscles and blood and skin and bone. You realize it's weird that it's disturbing because she's a robot, because she's not supposed to. You have flesh and soft parts and it's not gore to you. You're used to seeing the bigotry agaisnt cyborgs and hearing the opposite type of comment, people's families saying they're mutilating themselves, people being accused of losing their humanity for the cybernetics they get. You're not as used to the way society is disturbed by robots who become more human, the way they're seen as disturbing because they're something inhuman becoming human. Either way she still looks very much like a robot now, with a plastic body that's jointed like a doll or a mannequin, and a face that's more drawn/sculpted on then it is an actual body part.

She wasn't always like this. She was born as a simple delivery drone for a small company, and got more and more sentient as time went on, until she went from delivery drone to delivery girl with enough upgrades to her programming, and when the company went out of business she was freed from them. You're weirdly happy you didn't know her back then, when she only existed to deliver packages, up until the company stopped existing she didn't have the capability to desiring anything else. She's one of those robots whose only free by accident. You used to think of her transition from package delivery system to a person with thoughts and feelings as being like a person growing up, but it's closer to experiencing a billion years of evolution from sea squirt to sapient except in a time frame of months and years.

Sometimes you'll have a nightmare where she's programmed not to like you anymore. Or you'll breakup and she'll erase you from her memories. And when you wake up she'll comfort you, and promise she'll never do that, but you always know she could. She's never asleep, so she's always there when you wake up, and it's nice that she's there, and it's nice that you have her right now even if you don't know who she'll be someday. And she'll kiss you, as much as she can kiss with a drawn on mouth, and you'll love the time that you have, and love the time that you gave.

[roadarchie]

There was a time we thought we were invincible. Now our hands made of steel claw at what remains; and whatever it is, is no longer listening. SUPPORT ME PLEEEASE: ko-fi.com/roadarchie