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I pulled this comment of mine from a locked entry on my f-list on "hopepunk," which linked to some articles on it. After reading the articles, I wrote:
Apart from the impossible-to-pronounce name, hopepunk is a weird movement because it seems so utterly undefined as anything but "not grimdark," which is also a useless term as nobody agrees on what that even is either. One of the articles says The Handmaid's Tale (novel) is hopepunk because Offred is resisting inside her mind, but lots of others would say the book defines grimdark.
You can't have a movement without a set of media that everyone agrees exemplify it, but there doesn't seem to be a single example of something everyone can point at and say "it's hopepunk." If you take steampunk, there's tons of things that everyone can point at and say, "Those are steampunk." I think "punk" should be limited to things with a clear aesthetic that includes visuals - which was also the case for originalpunk.
The most interesting possible definition of hopepunk, IMO, would be this:
- Stories involve communities rather than lone individuals.
- Great change requires communal effort.
- Communities are not inherently bad, though some may be.
- People are not inherently selfish and cruel, though some may be.
- Compassion, kindness, and idealism is more likely to lead to good rather than bad consequences.
- Protecting only yourself or only your own loved ones at the expense of the Other or strangers is wrong.
- Meeting strangers is more likely to lead to interesting conversations, trade, or relationships than fights to the death.
- Even if the society contains prejudice, from the point of view of the story, all people are equal. Even if a story takes place in a racist and sexist society, the story itself will not marginalize those characters.
- Non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic (etc) societies are common in these stories.
- The visual aesthetic is pretty/beautiful/intricate/fun, with multiple cultures represented. There is an effort to make even ordinary items fun to use and pleasant to look at. Clothing is colorful and individual. The aesthetic is that things are both for use and for pleasure, showing that life is not only for survival.
Black Panther would be a good example of this, I think. Everything ever written by Diane Duane and Sherwood Smith.
Apart from the impossible-to-pronounce name, hopepunk is a weird movement because it seems so utterly undefined as anything but "not grimdark," which is also a useless term as nobody agrees on what that even is either. One of the articles says The Handmaid's Tale (novel) is hopepunk because Offred is resisting inside her mind, but lots of others would say the book defines grimdark.
You can't have a movement without a set of media that everyone agrees exemplify it, but there doesn't seem to be a single example of something everyone can point at and say "it's hopepunk." If you take steampunk, there's tons of things that everyone can point at and say, "Those are steampunk." I think "punk" should be limited to things with a clear aesthetic that includes visuals - which was also the case for originalpunk.
The most interesting possible definition of hopepunk, IMO, would be this:
- Stories involve communities rather than lone individuals.
- Great change requires communal effort.
- Communities are not inherently bad, though some may be.
- People are not inherently selfish and cruel, though some may be.
- Compassion, kindness, and idealism is more likely to lead to good rather than bad consequences.
- Protecting only yourself or only your own loved ones at the expense of the Other or strangers is wrong.
- Meeting strangers is more likely to lead to interesting conversations, trade, or relationships than fights to the death.
- Even if the society contains prejudice, from the point of view of the story, all people are equal. Even if a story takes place in a racist and sexist society, the story itself will not marginalize those characters.
- Non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic (etc) societies are common in these stories.
- The visual aesthetic is pretty/beautiful/intricate/fun, with multiple cultures represented. There is an effort to make even ordinary items fun to use and pleasant to look at. Clothing is colorful and individual. The aesthetic is that things are both for use and for pleasure, showing that life is not only for survival.
Black Panther would be a good example of this, I think. Everything ever written by Diane Duane and Sherwood Smith.
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Just don't. Trust me.
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So I imagine that, like you, when she read them she got the stated intent. I don't know if she's reread them lately and encountered the suck fairy or not, but it explains why I could never get into them and why she would have.
The suck fairy sucks, man.
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I remember Callahan's Key coming out in 2000 and everyone on alt.callahans and #callahans being shocked by how bad it was. In retrospect, that's not because it was markedly worse than the other books, but because we'd already outgrown the mode that Spider was still in. So rereading them (and other pre-2000 SF "classics"), for me, is like my experience being a progressive Jew reading Leviticus: recognizing its importance to our history, finding bits of wisdom and language that still resonate, but also being relieved that we've generally moved on to better things.
The suck fairy sucks pretty hard. :/
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I think he did also worsen. Because of the books we had in the house and my own idiosyncratic reading patterns, I went straight from Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) and Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981) to The Callahan Touch (1993) and that was a bit weird and then Callahan's Legacy (1996) came out and I swear I felt my brain bounce. I know for a fact that my reading tastes had not evolved sufficiently in those three years to account for it; in 1996 I was still reading Piers Anthony. I am willing to believe the Suck Fairy was always lurking, but after a certain point I think all its relatives had moved in, like the pseudo-Irish version nobody asked for of "It Could Always Be Worse."
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Like, I'm never gonna go off on the man more publically than this and I'm keeping my battered copy of Crosstime Saloon, but I haven't recommended him to anybody in years and probably never will again.
If I do, it will be under extremely particular circumstances and with a boatload of caveats.