Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9740913" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I think Hopepunk and solarpunk can be seen in two ways, depending on how one sees the 'punk' of cyberpunk. Either:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(as Cap'n Kobold suggests) The 'punk' is about the rebellion, and then they are continuing the rebellion by positing a positive future. Or</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The 'punk' was warning about the future through dystopian speculative fiction. In which case it is taking the basic framing, but doing the polar opposite to make a point (and I think Solar/Hopepunk is doing what it does very deliberately, and with a point). This makes it the Man of La Mancha to Cyberpunk's Don Quixote - 'yeah, I see what you did there. Tell you what, let me turn that around and see if this has any resonance.'</li> </ul>Either way, I  feel like these two movements definitely got the initial point of cyberpunk, and are reacting to it (whether you agree with either their points or what they did with the -punk genre), so it's hard for me to say they are somehow worst offenders. That differs from much of the -punks (including a lot of later cyberpunk and steampunk that definitely leans more into the 'aesthetically evocative of ____' interpretation of what -punk means.What I like about Skibidi Toilet is how much it sounds like '23 skidoo,' an easy reminder that a new generation spouting absolute nonsense that only makes sense in context is older than any of us. And this sentiment <s>older than Herodotus</s> as old as Theophrastus. Gary always* said that he was more inspired by swords and sorcery than high fantasy. However, if so, he 'grudgingly' added Tolkien-esque elements to the game when it was still Chainmail, which had everything from hobbits to ents to hero characters <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard_the_Bowman" target="_blank">specifically shooting dragons out of the sky</a>. From there on out, it was a hodgepodge of both, plus plenty of western tropes as many have realized, and such. *Gary (patron saint of inconsistency) never 'always' did anything, but you know what I mean.Beyond that, it's important to recognize that the game was always otherwise bifurcated. It had an aesthetic veneer that was some combination of fantasy literature (of arguable admixture) and artistic depiction spun from things like the aforementioned Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (or the later romantic movements inspired thereby). It was also a fun little dungeon-crawling game built on top of a multi-era wargame with a fantasy supplement. Various qualities of it can be pointed to and ascribed to fantasy tropes, or to gameplay elements. Take the plate mail and no gunpowder part we've brought up repeatedly. Was that because Howard or Tolkien referenced a cuirass in some story? Or was it because romantic art depicts knights in forests, next to horses, kneeling before maidens, in plate armor -- and swords on their belts but no gun in their hand? Or was it because plate was one of the 3 Chainmail armor types and the magic user class has replaced the cannon (and 'arquibusiers,' acted like crossbowman with slightly different to-hits and weren't especially fun when turned into individual characters)? Probably a mix of all three, but my point here is that a whole lot of things started out from the 'make a playable (and enjoyable) game' framing first, and fidelity to either a historically accurate 'medieval' era or even specific artistic or fiction genres a distant second (if at all).</blockquote>

Verification