"Life can be miserable, and it usually is."- Anonymous.
As someone who'd barely had a birthday with double digits when the Fourth Coporate War ended and the Old Net died, I may not seem like much of an authority on the subject. Unfortunately for everyone, I have enough audacity to speak on it as someone who's devoted a lot of screen-burnt nights to the subject. Hopefully this helps someone, somewhere down the line. It's a little like screaming into the void, but if someone pulls this up on an Agent or DataTerm and gains at least a little knowledge, or some Kibble for thought from it, I think that's worth it.
At risk of waxing poetic, it really makes me feel like something of a psychopomp, guiding people through the ruins of the world, the Net, things like that. Night City, located on the once-beautiful Coronado Bay on the west coast of what was once the United States of America, is something of a city back from the dead, when you think about it. Or, more accurately, like something stirring in the bones of a fallen city that never really understood that it fell. This is far from the Night City my mom cavorted around in during the late oughts and into the early twenties, a young 'Punk herself, and that was far from the Coronado City my grandparents moved to in 1997 for career purposes. I suppose it's called the City of Dreams for a reason -- dreams are ephemeral, ever in flux, with little to no control that can be truly exerted over them. Clearly doesn't stop people from trying, as we're all very well aware of, but the metaphor stands. To understand this place, I've found that for context, you have to go through the paces and beats of the city's own life. It's the easiest way to make the city in its entirety coalesce in your mind, and from there, its identity becomes so much clearer.
To understand the Time of the Red, you need to understand the city at the heart of it. So buckle in, rev the CHOOH2, and get ready for the first part of this ride.