Hopepunk Primer pt. 1
"It's like in the great stories, Mr Frodo," Sam says. "Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the Sun shines it will shine out the clearer."
"What are we holding on to, Sam?" Frodo asks.
"That there's some good in this world, Mr Frodo… and it's worth fighting for," Sam replies. [1]
Origins of Hopepunk
In 2017 author Alexandra Rowland (@ariaste) made a post on Tumblr saying: "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on." [2] From Wikipedia: "Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent. The term is inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war."" Other examples of grimdark are A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, the darker Batman worlds, and the Walking Dead. [3] 2016 was a rough year, with an even bleaker outlook (although now writing this in 2024 we knew nothing, lol). People were growing weary of the grimdark worlds in media when the world around us was already so dark and left us feeling hopeless. It was time for a change, which Alexandra Rowland brought with her one, according to her own words, off the cuff post on Tumblr. A few hours later, people were reblogging it and hopepunk found it's way to the people. Now, it's a literary genre, an aesthetic, and a philosophy that inspires people all over the globe.
[1] The Two Towers movie, based on the LOTR by J.R.R. Tolkien [2] Original tumblr post [3] Wikipedia page for Grimdark
Part 1: Intro and history Part 2: Philosophy of Hopepunk Part 3: How to practice hopepunk and further reading Part 4: Extra! Hopepunk and magic

















