sine lucro friget ludus

What does it take to make African mythology real? Everything we had. Over 70% of our Kickstarter Backers came from Tumblr. Thank you. Now it's yours.

So not only is their not evidence ADHD is over diagnosed the experts agree it’s under diagnosed

Resource shortages driven by mass consumption

Urban decay brought about by austerity and the collapse of the American economy in response to globalization

Ultracomodification and alienation driven by unchecked capitalism

Increased corporate power subverting or even outright replacing governments

Information technology being used to reinforce state power, and subsequently take on it's own power outside of anyone's control.

Plus a million other things the genre grew to include

Problem is, the cyberpunk dystopia happened: We hit the upper limit of what dysfuncitonal economies and broken goverments and capitalist profiteering were able to exploit and it's all down hill from here as the value extraction systems cannibalize each other.

Cyberpunk has gone from being dystopian to being nostalgic, a retro throwback to the days when the cultural assumptions about personal agency in a world full of infinite growth were still somewhat possible. Yeah, the world was shitty, but you could still be an ultracool badass who smashed the system before going down in a blaze of glory.

Flash forward to the day and systems are smashing themselves (plus all of us, and the world in general) to pieces trying to siphon the last little slivers of market percentage into shareholder's pockets.

If you wanted to make a genre that was as topical for right now as cyberpunk was for it's time, I think there's two directions you could go..

Fantasy of Reform: Stories that are based around people's resonances to these massive systems breaking down and how to subvert/repair/overcome them. Society is worth saving, we just need to steward it through the birthpangs of latestage capitalist collapse. Shoutout to Cory Doctorow who's been writing in this protogenre since the bush administration.

Some ttrpgs I think might be worth exploring, if you're looking at sci-fi/fantasy genres about rebellion, reform and post-apocalypse:

Detente for the Ravenous, by A.A. Voigt: The Cold War if Henry Kissinger was the Pope. About colonized peoples organizing to bring down the Kaiju-as-metaphor for colonialist and capitalist attempts to consume the world around them, it feels heavily inspired by Heart, Babel, and F.I.S.T..

Rising Tide, by cosmicbeagle: A PARAGON playset about ecojustice pirates striking back against oil companies and other multi-conglomerates by destroying their assets while on the high seas.

Hunting Billionaires for Sport, by hexavexagon: A game where hunting billionaires is a legitimate practice that provides a media company with plenty of profits due to the popularity of live-streaming these hunts. You are some of those hunters, going up against everything those billionaires throw at you.

Apocalypse Roadtrip, by Mynar Lenahan: In a world overtaken by aliens, cryptids, kaiju, and secret government entities, your home has quickly fallen apart. Travel from place to place keeping each-other alive using whatever technology you can get your hands on.

Red Markets, by Hebanon Games: The zombie apocalypse happened and we just kind of... kept going. Try to make a living while on the wrong side of the economy by recovering proof that certain people died, so that your employers can claim the contents of their wills.

Sea Legs, by Jack Blair: The rich have left our climate apocalypse behind. We are left with a world where most cities have sunk beneath a rising ocean. You are a crew scavenging in order to keep your community alive, and sometimes fighting with others to get precious resources.

Me when I'm so sweet and beautiful and also a seal.

Your wish is my command!

Elizabeth the First, and I am not making this up, had an advisor called John Dee, who was a 'mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist.' So, openly a wizard. At court. Just chilling and doing wizard things. Sometimes advising the Queen.

Also he looked like this:

As far as I know, this man was the first on record to advocate founding colonies abroad to form a British Empire.

This man.

The wizard.