Duty Ends Only In Death

Every single time you do something good, you’ve made a decision to make the world a little brighter.

You can’t ever truly win, you can only delay the inevitable and hopefully make it out alive with your sanity intact. 

Get rid of that entire mindset to start with. Even if it’s true, a good paladin’s not one to wallow in existential despair while people need their help. Even if you’ve seen every madness inducing sight of the Old Ones, no matter their power, they don’t have the right to make you give up, to crush you out of either cruelty or apathy. Fight them, because even in a world where you can’t win, you cannot let them defeat you either.

 Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. Fight and fight, and fight. Defy the old ones and their twisted sight. Keep going until you fall or their power is broken, and right makes might.

Stepan Kovalevich

Lap Pun Cheung

Jan Schäffler

So the essence of grimdark is that everyone’s inherently sort of a bad person and does bad things, and that’s awful and disheartening and cynical. It’s looking at human nature and going, “The glass is half empty.” Hopepunk says, “No, I don’t accept that. Go fuck yourself: The glass is half-full.”  YEAH, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but (and here’s the important part) we’ve also been soft and forgiving and KIND. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion. 

Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts. 

Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. The 1% doesn’t want you to have feelings, they just want you to feel resigned. Feeling resigned is not hopepunk.

Examples! THE HANDMAID’S TALE is arguably hopepunk. It’s scary and dark, and at first glance it looks like grimdark because it’s a dystopia… but goddammit she keeps fighting. That’s the key, right there. She fights every single day, because she won’t let them take away meaning from her life. She survives stubbornly in the hope that one day she can live again. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” is one of the core tenets of hopepunk, along with, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Robin Hood and John Lennon were hopepunk. (Remember: Hopepunk isn’t about moral perfection. It’s not about being as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. You get grubby when you fight. You make mistakes. You’re sometimes a little bit of an asshole. Maybe you’re as much as 50% an asshole. But the glass is half full, not half empty. You get up, and you keep fighting, and caring, and trying to make the world a little better for the people around you. You get to make mistakes. It’s a process. You get to ask for and earn forgiveness. And you love, and love, and love.) 

And THIS, this is hopepunk: 

Depends on the individual I could see it go either way.

“Thanks for giving my father a true orc death – NOW I MUST CLAIM VENGEANCE!”

Orc society is really confusing sometimes.

Even better, elves are long-lived. Extend this out a bit on the timeline, and maybe the daughter has had children of her own, and with her dying breath, she tells the elf to give her sword and necklace to her child, who then immediately swears to claim vengeance for their fallen mother AND grandfather.

And the cycle continues on like this for many, many years, and there’s nothing the poor elf can do to get out of it; he’s too honorable to just let the orc die without carrying out his foe’s final wish, and too good in battle to just die when the inevitable revenge match comes along again.

Each time, he slays the orc only to find out that they have a child/sibling/next-of-kin to pass the blade and necklace on to, and invariably that orc is both grateful for the honor, and wants revenge for each and every one of their antecedents, also. (After all, no honorable orc would let them all die for nothing, right?)

((I’m behind. This should have gone out like two weeks ago.))

The note isn’t signed, but Arist’s abominable handwriting should be easily recognized.

E-

I’m sure you’ve heard what’s going on. If you’re not already down there, I expect you will be soon. I’ll keep an eye out for you in Dalaran. Don’t know where we’re going from there.

Hey–

Good to hear you’re still alive. Got a little worried, what with everything going on. If I’m not in Dalaran, our mutual friend should get setting up his old shop thereabouts. Drop in a leave a message, we’ll meet up.