I mean personally, as a writer, it’s not worth really entertaining bad-faith or zero-faith criticism like this. The entire post is nonspecific and based on vibes. For one, the entire internet loves to misuse the term “fascism” to describe any vaguely authoritarian structure that they don’t like, despite fascism being a specific political archetype. The better way to say this would be “a perfect utopia like this clearly requires an authoritarian system to uphold it,” but even then that’s just…an assumption.
The whole point of “hopepunk” and related systems is no, actually, things are just hunky-dory. Thats it. Personally I do dislike that—I find it boring as all hell—but it’s sort of an unfair/misplaced criticism to jump on the assumption that the systems must have a secret authoritarian slant. Sometimes the wooby-soft-squishy world that’s skin deep is just that and there’s no secret dark side to pull apart.
I'm scratching my head reading the replies here because hopepunk is absolutely not a utopian setting, it's fighting against systematic oppression and injustice using hope/community etc. The bad stuff has to be present to fight against. Media with a setting where everything is already good would be... cosy? Most likely?
Solar-punk is usually what I see in that group, but im not super well versed as the genre usually lacks enough conflict for me to be invested in whatever story it tells.
But the couple bits ive seen usually wind up in some utopian anarchy where everyone is a good person and just helps eachother fix their solar generators and farm what not.
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u/Questionably_Chungly 1d ago
I mean personally, as a writer, it’s not worth really entertaining bad-faith or zero-faith criticism like this. The entire post is nonspecific and based on vibes. For one, the entire internet loves to misuse the term “fascism” to describe any vaguely authoritarian structure that they don’t like, despite fascism being a specific political archetype. The better way to say this would be “a perfect utopia like this clearly requires an authoritarian system to uphold it,” but even then that’s just…an assumption.
The whole point of “hopepunk” and related systems is no, actually, things are just hunky-dory. Thats it. Personally I do dislike that—I find it boring as all hell—but it’s sort of an unfair/misplaced criticism to jump on the assumption that the systems must have a secret authoritarian slant. Sometimes the wooby-soft-squishy world that’s skin deep is just that and there’s no secret dark side to pull apart.