prototype killswitch

Solarpunk has failed. It's time for the Solar Gothic. Show me an environmentally conscious world that is haunted by its past; where its failures still intrude upon the present. Where the characters live in the shadow of a decadent but much more materially wealthy past whose crumbling edifices mock them with the waste and the missed opportunities they represent. Show me characters who remember the promise of modernity, the story of ever-growing progress, and either lament that it is not for them or continue to cling to it like madmen. Show me a world that's trapped, claustrophobically, in an anthropocene that they are only gradually learning to manage, and where all former illusions of mastery or permanence have been dispelled.

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?