How would you design a cyberpunk non-fantasy setting to heavily incorporate vaporwave themes and aesthetics?

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Vaporwave is more about aesthetic than about content. As some user pointed it out before, vaporwave cyberpunk would simply be your average cyberpunk universe, but on the corporate side. Huge walled arcologies, with shopping malls, mag-lev stations, residential districts and office towers. Marshmallow flavored coffee, jazz music, genetically engineered palm trees, copies of antique statues made from plastisteel, pastel colors, lots of holo-ads in Japanese, dolphins...

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>In the year 2063, the eco-terror group known as "Sons of the Sun" released into the atmosphere what they had planned as a targeted bioweapon that would kill humanity without harming the environment. Instead, it simply dyed the lower atmosphere, giving the world pink daytimes and purple nighttimes.

Vaporhead hipsters across the world rejoiced the failure.

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youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg

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Kung Fury is based on synthwave not vaporwave.

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What's the diff?

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ

Relevant A E S T H E T I C value. Cyberpunk would be littered with the hollow corpses of consumerism, devoid of economic and social life.

Synthwave is the 80's (and early 90's) pop culture

Vaporwave is the 80's (and early 90's) corporate culture

You're a corporate drone. You live in the arcologie's residential district for low-level employees. Day after day, you travel from your studio, through the mall, to your cubicle in an office tower. At lunch, you get a hot-dog or some sushi and marshmallow flavored ice-tea from the office's vending machine. After work you go to the mall for some food and distraction, or you go back to your studio, eat a prepacked meal you heat in your microwave oven and play some online VR game (alternatively you can also shitpost on the company's forum, but that's pretty risky since the mods might ban you). Sometimes you wonder how is life outside of the arcology. Is it really as bad as the news pretend it is? Will you ever try to go outside despite corp-sec prohibiting it? Will you die if you don't get your daily mocha-flavored iced espresso?

So no difference whatsoever?

I'm guessing cultural viewpoints of the aesthetics of the 80s. One's based on Jap nostalgia (vaporwave); the other is based on American nostalgia (synthwave).

Both can fit a cyberpunk campaign and can be mixed and matched freely due to many aesthetic and musical values that were common to the time period; I find them to be complimentary.

Vaporwave is often presented as an exaggerated commentary/parody of consumerist culture, which is basically already a part of normal cyberpunk

Pop culture includes the gross, rude, and foreign parts that are distasteful and "not advertiser friendly"

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>Jap nostalgia
What?

Vaporwave is more the 80s "as presented" a parody of the culture the corporate businesses promoted, consumerism, form over function, sterile "futuristic" environments.
Synthwave is more the 80s "as experienced" from the eyes of the popular culture in movies and other such media. A more personal, gritty interpretation

Show me on the doll where the 20th century touched you, bait-kun.

Personally, I feel that synthwave is more linked to the 1980s while vaporwave is more linked to the 1990s, aesthetically speaking. Though, both also cover the late 1980s period, and thus, share common elements.

Adding that to the list of imaginary things I want.

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BEWARE OF KNOCKOFF BRANDS!

The easiest way to tell if your gun is a bootleg is if it plays a cover of Careless Whisper with high quality audio instead of the original with a low bitrate.

Example bootleg audio: youtube.com/watch?v=lVXziMFEqX0

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A cyberpunk vaporwave universe woould simply be a slightly less dark cyberpunk universe. Like the world would have areas that aren't grimy like malls and whatnot.

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Polymer-frame and dual tone guns are a must for a vaporwave setting.

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No. Synthwave is a shitty action movie by Michael Bay. Vaporwave is a kino arthouse mindfuck by David Lynch.

youtube.com/watch?v=oKlPKwAvnPQ

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>a shitty action movie by Michael Bay
>Not a gritty action thriller by James Cameron
If the theme for The Terminator was written today, we'd call it Synthwave.
youtube.com/watch?v=mpMg1upld0w
I'll admit though that Vaporwave can be pretty Lynchian

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youtube.com/watch?time_continue=710&v=yFWCoeZjx8A

youtube.com/watch?v=oKJzZQ9Ln-Y

Incorporating the aesthetic elements of vaporwave isn't difficult. Just look at the pictures posted so far and incorporate Greek statues, Arizona ice-tea and Fiji water, Japanese characters, and pastel colors (especially pink, purple and mint) to your setting.

Vaporwave themes on the other hand are few and not specially interesting - vaporwave can be interpreted as a critic of consumerism, which is a tad light to be the focus of a setting.

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You wouldn't have to stray too far from the traditional cyberpunk setting (keep the Japanese future aesthetic, corporations run everything, etc); it's more about the attitude and mood of the campaign. It's less dark and gritty, and more surreal and ironic. So the game would focus more on corporate/yuppie characters, rather than your gutter street rats usually common in cyberpunk. Vaporwave is also all nostalgia for that weird transitional era between analog and digital technology, so it would definitely be a retro future setting, think Fallout but late 80s/early 90s East Asian influence instead of 1950s Americana.

Vaporwave is very slow, dreamy and surreal, like David Lynch. You could pretty much do Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive, and just replace all the nostalgia for '50s Americana with 80s/90s consumer culture. The Lynchian dream logic fits well with the low-fi, glitchy and screwed (slowed down/pitch shifted) vaporwave sound. If you didn't want a supernatural/paranormal vibe, those uncanny valley dream logic scenes could be easily done through brain-computer interfacing with virtual and augmented reality.

youtube.com/watch?v=7qAyaNYkvno

Looks like the stormtroopers' guns from Star Wars 7

A small playlist to listen to while cruising around suburbs in your Lexus LS400 and drinking Pepsi Crystal:

youtube.com/watch?v=YcsYSJwewWk
youtube.com/watch?v=3r2zleGxv7w
youtube.com/watch?v=4kdwUOlihDA
youtube.com/watch?v=8oBbJg_PqbU

Possibly. Whenever someone wants to make a gun looks futuristic, just paint/ceracote it white (Alien: Covenant, District 9).

That Blank Banshee vaportrap remix of the fucking Beach Boys is fantastic.

youtube.com/watch?v=kyTvMOXfaUA

>Jap nostalgia
Mainly the nostalgia of 1980s to 1990s anime and manga (Sailor Moon, Angel...).

Jap nostalgia is also when you miss:

Girls wearing pullovers and long dresses
Watching anime with your Pioneer LaserDisc system
Playing video games on your PC Engine CoreGrafx with CD-ROM or FM Towns
Fapping to hentai by U-Jin or Haruka Inui

It's also when you absolutely want to drive one of those cars:

Nissan Skyline R32
Toyota Supra MA70
Toyota MR2 W1
Toyota Celica T16
Lexus LS 400
Honda/Acura NSX NA1

More sound:

youtube.com/watch?v=PBxWrC7FTQs

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duh, have it focus on augmented reality or holograms - holographic palmtrees line glowing checkboard streets, the facades of buildings appear to be neo-classical and warm but in reality everything is damp, decaying and dark.

A cyberpunk dystopia that's faking utopia under the logic of "faking it til it makes it"

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Sounds almost like a cyberpunk version of the premise of "we happy few"

A lot of mod stuff and vapourwave stuff kinda gels, the surfer culture stuff vapourwave reuses and reworks was basically west coast LA's take on mod culture in a climate where it's not miserable and raining all the time.

Hey man, I work here!

And there aren't any sharks when it's flooding at Union. Just small piranhas.

Normal punk+bubblegum pop.

>Like the world would have areas that aren't grimy like malls and whatnot.
Any half-decent cyberpunk does that. Gotta get that contrast.

Q U A L I T Y

>He's actually called Kung Fury
topkek

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