portraying her as a trailblazer of 'hopepunk'. WTF is that? Well, I've seen someone sum it up as 'comfort food for the kind of people who think frosting is a cake', and I can't disagree with that assessment.

sigh

You know, I too am getting a little tired of constant hyper-realism "Morally Grey" sort of stories. But I still like my stories to have, you know, a little something called conflict.

There are three styles of "punk" I like: Steampunk, Dieselpunk, and Cyberpunk. All of them have some form of conflict. Charismatic, kind hearted, swashbuckling rogues fighting for corset wearing maidens against big businessmen in their imperial holdings. Men fighting utterly grinding war with titanic machines capable of killing scores in seconds with armies who throw around chemical weapons with casual disregard. Some poor schmuck trying to cut out a life between uncontrolled gangs of deranged cyborgs and corpos who would sell their own mothers for a little profit (too bad they already did).

But guess what? They will all fight against the odds no matter how long they seem. Hell, a usual theme in Dieselpunk is that the threat is supposed to be unbeatable. And the hero either beats it to prove that it wasnt as unbeatable as people thought, or they face the death machine with a witty one liner, a grim look, and their rifle in hand.

So why, oh why, do I get the feeling that 'hopepunk' includes no such conflict? To answer my own question, because I have seen how these people write their stories. I have seen far too many stories done by these modern authors where the conflict is comparatively mild. Stuff like "Damn, I am poor and cant make rent." (and the "poverty" is almost always self inflicted by poor life choices), or its against a strawman of racist, always white. Then when they are forced to fight, they.....win. There is no real fight. The villain will likely even stand there and get hit or just miss obvious attacks, because otherwise the hero might lose. And we cant have that, that doesnt feel good to lose. Never mind that that is how you grow and learn. No, you need to be carried through everything and always win. Because "hope" and "good vibes" or some shit.

They have no lasting cultural impact and never will, hell she'll be lucky if she retains any relevance in 3 years' time.

More than that, I dont think they have a cultural basis to build OFF of. So few of them stick around with any sort of relevance. They cant use those dumb, icky "conservative" ideals like God, king, or country. And while they used to have Harry Potter, Rowling became an apostate so now they must scrub all use of her. So it makes it that much harder for them to actually create any sort of meaningful story.