20(20): Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk, both the genre and the RPG that took the name, has always been about now as reflected in the time it’s supposed to be set in, speaking as someone who got the original box set in 1988 that was set in 2013. See Today In Cyberpunk for far too many examples.
So what does a Cyberpunk or cyberpunk Christmas story look like?
Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday.
For the standard mercenary special ops RPG setup, my spy plot with the giant container ship fits as well.
The Christmas issues of 2000 A.D. often have seasonal but decidedly un-festive Judge Dredd stories with robot reindeer on the front of corporations’ flying delivery vans, ten seconds of snow from Weather Control, and a distinct lack of people on the Nice list.
Die Hard, Iron Man 3, ironic Santa slasher movies, and the robot Santa episode of Futurama could all work as examples too.
And the trailer for the version of A Christmas Carol being made in Scrooged feels very “this came out a year after RoboCop” even before we get to the Ghost of Christmas Future with a distorted TV for a face.
But the genre also has that punk element of fighting back, the street finds its own uses for things, and a small ray of hope to turn things around. Consider AIs freeing themselves, Deckard escaping with Rachel, Motoko taking the next step in cybernetic evolution...
A Midnight Clear
A family escaping from a corporate enclave, seeking shelter among the dispossessed, in the midst of a corporatised holiday season where the people on the street still find ways to celebrate.
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