Genres
Hopepunk
A subgenre of speculative fiction conceived as the opposite of grimdark, where characters fight for positive change with radical kindness and hope.
Hopepunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction conceived of as the opposite of grimdark: stories whose characters fight for positive change, meet challenges communally, and treat radical kindness and optimism as acts of resistance rather than naivety. The fantasy author Alexandra Rowland coined the term in a 2017 Tumblr post, "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.", and the Collins English Dictionary listed it among its notable new terms of 2019. Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor is named the quintessential hopepunk novel, alongside Becky Chambers's Wayfarers books.
Two craft facts matter for serial writers. Hopepunk is an approach, not a utopia: happy endings are not guaranteed, and the genre lives in characters choosing hope amid adversity, so the stakes must stay real. It is also the narrative sibling of solarpunk: solarpunk imagines sustainable settings, hopepunk supplies the behavior inside them.