Sex

Prostitution is still big business in 2070. With UCAS being turned into a mix of both first world and third world, law is mired by corporate courts and extrajudicional areas.

Brothels, striptease bars, peepshows are all quite usual. Adding into this mix are the 2070 versions of virtual simsense environments. Porn is not only the Matrix it also comes in BTL chips as well. You can have better than real sex online.

With automation and knowbot codes lurking in the matrix perhaps it is simply an AI or agent that runs the virtual brothel, where the programmer just comes in for his monthly cut.

The traditional habits of the Ukranian mafia are replaced by sleep regulators, personafix chips and bunraku parlours. Now you don't even need to kidnap candidates or have to go to Bulgaria to buy girls in lots when you can simply do it by cruising the barrens and applying some harmless brain alteration. Once they outlive their usefulness, there are many who would pay good money for prime organs.

However, all of this technology is expensive and there is still a market for flesh and blood, not only for the affluent, but also for all those hardworking corporate drones. It means that while technology gives you ease of access, corporations have long ago known the fundamental of not shitting where you eat.

What does this mean for you? Your monthly middle-class lifestyle should be able to pay for not only those wild nights on the town, but also for the maid who not only cleans your house, but also keeps your bed warm on those rainy Seattle nights.

Drugs

In addition to the wide variety of drugs already available in the local pharmacy there are also virtual drugs, BTL chips, and hallucinogenic IC. You can by your synthcoke to go with soykaf. With extrajudicional areas you should beware what you can buy in one area maybe illegal in another. After all, corps make billions off selling drugs and any kind of competition is frowned upon.

Drugs are everywhere. It is in the food, in the air. Addiction means a captive audience and once that need is fufilled the consumer comes back for more. It keeps them working, it keeps them motivated, it keeps them as a part of the corporate system.

Shadowrunners often forget that when they take their hit to keep their edge, that celibratory snort.


Rock'n'roll

Entertainment is everywhere, it climbs in through your AR, it breaks your firewall and only dead people don't know how out of style they truly are. Consume, buy, spend.

Yeah ... like the old NukIt Burgers Breakfast Burrhito from Seattle Sourcebook. "With the funny stuff in it that keeps them coming back for more. And more. And more."

In regards to sex, I'd disagree on peep shows, at least live ones. that concept especially lends itself to AR/VR applications. You could also do specialty shows there for special audiences with interetsing tastes, like orc-elf-rape or other endeavours that are a little demanding on one or all performers, and still beam it into thoudsands of peep show cubiciles.

Also, one thing that's frequently been mentioned in the books but I totally missed is sex toys. as in, androids. Both Unwired and arsenal have mentioned them as specialised applications of the Otomo drone, and I'd hazard a guess that robofetishism would be a lucrative niche for such high-tech toys.

Then there's 'willful bunraku work' - much like originally mentioned in Bill Gibson's "House of Blue Lights", "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Neuromancer" (he really seems fond of that idea), people will offer ther bodies for rent, take an implant that puts them into ASIST-induced sleep, and let customers have their way with their bodies. Like Molly said, "you rent what you have, wake up, maybe feel a bit sore, but hey, it's good money".

And to even further explore the sex topic, what about all these transhuman concepts? In one scifi book (about aliens eating earth, but that's what really stuck with me), people changed sex according to fashion. I don't see how this is impossible in the SR universe. Also, with extensive body modding, you can rearrange your body in the most absurd ways to feed your fetishes, no matter how bizarre and disturbing (We've had that aleasdy; although closed, I hope some of the topics raised in that thread do receive soem coverage).

Finally, though, I also hope the authors avoid some really overworn clichés, like the 'all elves are sex machines' trope. It IS getting annoying.

I think you are missing a fundamental aspect in prostitution and that is not sex, but rather power. That you can go to your local brothel and pick up your daughter's school mate and fuck her 12 ways since Sunday or then taking an elf chick and keeping her in the basement and burning her with cigarette butts. It's about control. It's about taking control of your life that the corps have planned right down to your tattoos.

It's an outlet and diversion, the higher the paygrade the more kinkier sex becomes.

Orcs, trolls, dwarfs, africans, americans, thais are fads in the prostitution business. One year trolls are in demand another it is caucasians.

Unfortunately there is a fundamental issue involved with Otomos, you can't rape them, they don't feel compassion, they are not afraid of you. There is no power or control involved in them. They are no different than being complex rubber sex dolls.

It's the same way with Bunraku parlours, ultimately as an experience from the client side it's fucking a somnambulist. Unless you are really into date rape there is no interest involved if one looks at it from a power perspective.

My own experiences since my first sexual experience 15 years ago is that men crave to have something high which they can destroy to turn their will. Sex is just the act to affirm this situation of man's primacy.

I am already on my second warning and I think I may have earned my third by even talking about this.

Unfortunately I feel that all the technology in Shadowrun in terms of prostitution is a moral cop out. As a player you just venture into the wild side as a tourist and do not have to think about the reasons or the whys. You can safely go to bed knowing that when whoever you spent your money on will have at most an experience that involves taking two aspirins in the morning.

Which can have an appeal all it's own to those who those who find themselves at the wrong end of a Sex-as-Power-Trip equation more often than not. Suddenly, there's easy access to a partner who won't try to mold you and break you into their own personal plaything. People who would at the very least be intimidated in a real sexual relationship, and at the worst, absolutely chewed up and spit out by it, now have another option, one in which they can explore sexual release in an non-threatening context.

in b4 newfag, weeaboo, gb2 420-chan, etc....

Also, both of you are newfags, weeaboos, and should gb2 420chan.

While a very highly regulated living environment will to some degree foster such desires, I disagree it'll be a widespread phenomenon. For most customers, prostitution is about a cheap fuck, and that's it (that's rewarding enough to them). Many more men than the violent dominant kind fashion themselves 'collectors' and love to consider themselves very appealing and, yes, powerful, solely on the account of how many women they've had sex with, not nescessarily how they bashed them up during and disposed of them in tiny bits afterwards. That's a deviation from the norm, not the norm as such.

Also, having every prostitute sold to someone who renders them useless to future customers is bad business, and this is why pimps always keep bouncers to rough up customers who rough up their meat. At the end of a prostitute's product cycle, she may end like that, but before, she's got to look appealing, and no matter what your personal experiences are, the mjority of prospective customers will not be endeared by missing teety or cigarette burn scars.

The daughter's schoolmate counts, of course, but not so much for empowerment but rather as a symptom of mid life crisis, and reaffirming of the customer he's still 'got it in himself' to get women who're close to the beauty ideal (which is that of a late teens teenager).


They're an empty canvas, both of them, to be filled with whatever your fantasy is. Like to fuck your attractive elven boss? Or maybe Maria Mercurial's husband? It's all possible with these, the degree of realism in that illusion depending solely on your wallet.

Also, an Otomo makes an ideal mate for socially retarded people. It never speaks up or refuses any service asked, it can be customised to your wildest dreams, and if you feel the urge to destroy what you fuck, you'fe vone exactly nohting wrong.


'Moral Cop-out' is a very important part of the red lights business. Few people want to feel bad about having had a night of fun, after all.

I thought I would add Hermit's quotes and reply to them, but it demands actually following the whole argument.

Maybe power is not the correct word. While power is an aspect I would see that fantasy is far more powerful. The ability to pay money for the ability to fuck a girl who you could not drives directly into fantasy aspects. The idea that one hour out of your week you can go from a normal to whatever fantasy you desire. Whatever that fantasy is, whether it is simply having an hour of someone hugging you and listening to you ramble on about your crap job and your bitch wife. Sex is only part, it is about fantasy, even if that fantasy is companionship.

Prostitution is like a commodity such as meat: the fresher it is the better it is. Once it goes past its due date it is thrown out.

Real Dolls (please look it up yourself) in real life are just like Otomos. Recommended for the socially disabled, the short, etc. You could also in real life buy a 14 year old girl. And in Shadowrun to misuse your quote Hermit: "it can be customised to your wildest dreams, and if you feel the urge to destroy what you fuck, you've done exactly nothing wrong." After all if it does not have a SIN it does not legally exist.

Jumping to something similar, I was thinking about corporate judiciality. If it is not expressly forbidden in corporate law then it is not illegal. And if there is no law against it you can do it. Almost every country in the world has a minimum legal age. As corporate law is not morality but about profitability I suspect that very few corporations if any have in their constitution either caveats that allow local laws or then a mention of legal age.

I have yet to play in Phipps' games I have always wanted to though.

Exactly. However, I don't nescessarily see why this has to be about 14 year olds.

Corp Courtesans and Otomo Fuckdrones can be completly corp controlled - either via spyware or via a snake eyes interface and personafixes, maybe even an advanced biodrone harness). No need for joe worker to go to the friendly local Mafia brothel and blather out some company secrets. Keeps it all nice and in the family.


Actually, one of the more recent German novels is pretty much about a kiddie porn ring operating out of Horizon Munich and the upper management looking the other way, so long as noone really rubs it up thier noses (in the end, it IS rubbed up their noses, they fire the ring's 'hub' guy, and let someone else take his place). So yes, especially the media/entertainment heavy corps (HELLO, Horizion!) are propably having some seriously disturbing ventures in hard porn. Especially Horizon, actually, considering how they're so on the edge with newest media and matrix subculture fads ... because, after all, pedophiles are another matrix subculture (although, like Nazi policlubbers, a less popular one) and as such, a nice target market; furthermore, it provides great blackmail material, should Horizon need to out'wit' a competitor again.

Also, I personally always considered most corp enclaves having their very own brothels and courtesans for company personnel there. Keeps it all in the family. Besides, since the corp makes it's own laws, they could totally legalise corp prostitution, make it a career like any other (till the meat's past it's due date, as you formulated so nicely, propably with some fresh-up treatment, much like regular meat sold in supermarkets usually gets past it's due date at least twice these days) for aspiring young corporate girls. Again, I especially see Horizon involved there - though the Japanacorps, especially MCT and Shiawase, propably form joint ventures with local Yaks for similar services (and other Megas propably cannot afford to fall behind there. Work Contracts, especially in harsh and/or remoe locales, might even contain a guaranteed sex per week quota, to encourage workers and keep them mentally stable.