My solarpunk story ideas: Solarpunk VS the Past
I got kind of tired of keeping my ideas in the dark. Silence kills creativity. I want to share my unfinished, imperfect brainstorms and WIPs just to get them out of my system and, perhaps, get some feedback. After all, shouldn't I help fellow creatives by sharing my ideas with them? Why the heck not?
So, here's some things I think about for my solarpunk story/stories and setting. This is probably part one of however many it will become.
Many find it difficult to imagine conflict in a utopia. So why not have the conflict result from a danger to said utopia?
Maybe it's my liking of fantasy or my interest in folklore, but I simply cannot imagine my solarpunk world without mythical creatures. In terms of creating conflict, I imagine ancient monsters returning to give humanity a hard time. These monsters are inspired by the bashqort epic "Ural Batyr" (because of course they are). Though most were defeated by the hero at the dawn of time, they have gained more strength and came back because of human greed and foolish disregard of nature and memory (something closer to modern times, like destroying an ancient mountain for resources and thus freeing the monsters trapped underneath it). These evil creatures resent humans and want to destroy the planet's nature, because a) they know it will destroy humanity and b) reviving and immortalizing nature was the last feat of the aforementioned hero.
The monsters represent the mistakes made by humanity in the current times, which is the past for the solarpunk world, as well as the worst traits a person can have. "Ural Batyr" tells us that the human nature is inherently good. When someone rejects their own kindness in favour of greed or lust for power, they stray from this good nature, and thus, from their humanity. A detail I liked is that bad people like these were poetically described to have black blood. So I imagined that, if a monster takes advantage of a person, influencing them and pushing them to do bad things, the person would slowly gain more monstrous features. Of course, this person could always turn back if they rethink their decisions, apologize and make amends. The process may be long, but it's possible.
So imagine, if you will, a story where a sprouting or even thriving solarpunk utopia is threatened by ancient monsters that were freed by the foolish mistakes of the past.
