Miami 2085: A Setting Rumination on 80s Trash Culture.

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Modern pop culture is entering a very weird point. If you look back over the 20th century, there was a kind of general progression in, if not an upwards fashion at least, of American popular culture.

But I've come to notice lately a backwards slip into the 80s. With proliferation of chillwave, explosive action movies, bright colored clothes (saw a kid with bright-blue acid-washed shorts the other day), and a resurgence in progressive social movements, it's both a return of and criticism of the 80s.

Another strange part of the 80s was the idea of cyberpunk, though the execution was poor and never realized. And in a way, the cyberpunk aesthetic is a little TOO grimy. It's nearly noir, and extremely pessimistic, and only located on certain sub-cultures like early punk and post-mob drug dealers.

So that's where I am thinking about working on a setting I'm calling "Miami 2085". It's not about the 80s that people were experiencing, or the 80s that people wanted, but the pop 80s that happened.

You may notice in the headline I mention 'trash culture', and you probably wonder what that is. Trash culture is my self-coined term that revolves around looking back on the overly saturated, decade defining cultural memes and playing up their ridiculousness. This setting isn't about the Sex Pistols, Reganomics or post-Veitnam rights movements; this setting is about cocaine, white leisure suits, Top Gun, Naked Eyes, Tears for Fears, enormous cellphones, pastel colors and Ferraris. Miami 2085 is just as influenced by American Psycho and Com Truise as it is by Back to the Future and Drive.

This is all just ideas at this point, and I have no idea what system it'd use (or if it'd just be generic), but it has promise, I feel. Check here for more