best in da world

They will then violently insist that this version is superior to the canon one and act like they "fixed" them and it's like. Buddy that's not the same character anymore. That's just your own oc commiting identity fraud. Like. I get the desire to experiment with different interpretations of a story. But first of all it's okay to just make an original character if that's what you really want to do. And second of all, are you even really a fan of the character you "fixed" if they're a completely different person afterwards?

Yes I’m

Yes hmmms ow

Eh

And unfortunately said person (who was already known for making up shit online, sometimes about things from real life/history, and then going “Look at me, I’m an expert!”) was very obviously just winging it when they wrote the ‘manifesto’ of what this alleged genre was supposed to be like.

In my opinion “hopepunk” was doomed to be ineffective at describing any real sort of genre and hence not something people could actually attempt to write in, and instead had to retroactively apply to other works, which fit the “vibe” because it’s fundamentally reactive. It exists only in contrast to “grimdark”, another vibes-based pseudo-subgenre which is based on subjective opinions about whether something with heavy content (which can be in any number of genres—tragedy, horror, war stories, mysteries/thrillers, historical fiction, etc…) is being gratuitous/over the top with said content. “Grimdark” is also a nothingburger because people’s lines for “too much” and opinions on what’s “necessary” vary wildly (there’s not an objective line you can draw on when a tragedy is too tragic, or horror is too horrifying). Similarly, trying to pin down what the “right” amount of defiance/resistance and positivity and happy-endingness that supposedly constitutes hopepunk is a losing game because it’s basically about whether you feel like it does.

The thing that makes both of them the most subjective, though, is that unlike other genres they’re dependent on value judgments of works to categorize them. Not every tragedy is “grimdark” because is not a neutral term, it’s describing bad writing—bungling of dark topics that leaves you bummed out in a bad way, not a cathartic one. “Hopepunk” is supposed to describe good writing, a kind of Goldilocks “not too twee and saccharine, not too intense about what’s being resisted, but juuuust right”.

You can’t define either without group consensus on what is good/bad writing, which makes sense when you take into account that it was invented by a semi-professional opinion-haver who is known for doubling down on everything they say being the correct opinion no matter what. It was always just What I Say It Is so everyone will come up with a different book list and the repeats will mostly be books which are popular.

gormless

lacking gorm