[hildea]

Originally Posted by ekbell

My first association was Rappaccini's Daughter

Is it good? Or so bad it's entertaining? I have a weakness for old gothics.

I don't think we will stop having weird genre tags given both the normal human tendency to classify and label and the fact that people can have weirdly specific reading tastes (when I was a teen, I loved boarding school books of all sorts to the point where what I remember from my first readthrough of Jane Eyre was the boarding school bit not the romance).

Looking in this forum, there are a lot of specific requests for recommendations - naval historical fiction - books like One Piece -cozy, easy, gentle fiction without being a “cozy mystery” or “Christian fiction” - swashbuckling ruritarian romances...

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

And that Asimov tale. That used to be a thing. Nerdy Star Trek or Dr. Who or whatever fans would have some variation of 'it was all fine until a girl showed up!' As nerd culture has expanded, I think that's mostly fallen by the wayside.

Well, there's a very vocal minority who howled "sacrilege" when girl cooties got all over Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who, and James Bond. But hopefully they are few.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Even in the article linked to earlier, I still couldn't tell a difference between noblebright and hopepunk.

I don't care much for noblebright, so I might be wrong, but my feeling is that in a noblebright novel, you might see the destined ruler or the hero foretold in prophesies defeat the ancient evil and take the throne, to rule the land in peace and prosperity hereafter. In a hopepunk novel, a more-or-less ordinary person fights back badness for a little while -- prevents an orphanage where children are loved from being closed, saves a handful of scientists from being killed on a hostile planet, helps defeat a coup attempt so the legal government can continue in power, with all its imperfections and compromises.

And as I mentioned, all fantasy fiction except what could be classified 'grimdark' would fall under hopepunk/noblebright.

Books which are neither are all those where the plot/conflict is personal, where the protagonists do what they do for their own sake, not to save the world or a subset of it/defeat the evil force/bad guys. For instance stories of traveling adventurers like Fritz Leiber's Ffard and the Grey Mouser series, and Jennifer Roberson's Sword Dancer series.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

After reading the Nobelbright page I’m not going to try and defend it anymore. The blog comes off way more as this author trying to make fetch happen rather than say grimdark which happened organically.

I got an "If you build it, they will come" vibe from it, yes But I don't see that that makes it illegitimate. The author is trying to sell their books by trying to make readers seek out the kind of books the author writes. If they succeed in making people talk about it and ask for it, a new subgenre is born. If there's not enough interest, it will fall into obscurity.

Like I said before, all words are made up. Someone once decided to use "fantasy" to describe a group of books, as well.

Hopepunk seems to me to be when the characters fight for good not just to overthrow a big bad, but because they believe people are inherently good.

It’s been a minute since I read LOTR (I want to do a reread) but my recollection is that Frodo is a reluctant hero. He’s doing the thing because circumstances have resulted in pushing him to do it. For it to be hopepunk he’d have to have sought out the quest rather than essentially falling into it. Likewise for Bilbo in The Hobbit.

I don't agree with either of those criteria for hopepunk -- not the belief in inherent goodness of people, and certainly not the volunteer hero. Rowland's example in the post where she defined the genre is Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It's a very bleak story, and the protagonist is mostly fighting for her own survival and freedom. She takes heart in an inscription left by an earlier prisoner: "Don't let the bastards grind you down". The hopepunk examples I've read on this list all have protagonists who are trying to mind their own business when something happens and they are thrust into a difficult or dangerous situation.