I've been thinking about what makes sweetweird and hopepunk cousins and not twins. I think I'm approaching it now, having engaged with a fair amount of both. Hopepunk is about recognizing that "there's no great glorious end to all this," to borrow from the most hopepunk TV show Angel (and an episode written by, I'd argue, one of the most hopepunk screenwriters, Tim Minear), and choosing to fight the good fight, epically, anyway. Sweetweird is more about understanding that within a hellscape, you can create a haven: the Boiling Isles are terrible, but the Owl House itself is cozy. (Of all the examples Anders offers, this feels to me the purest sweetweird.) Hopepunk is global, sweetweird is local. I have a bunch more thoughts on this that I just realized are enough for a blog post, so I'm going to stop here for now, except to say that hopepunk was what we needed from 2016-2020, when things were terrible but we had energy for the fight. In the age of COVID, sweetweird lets us imagine ways to build small communities and safe spaces where we can rest until we feel ready to be hopepunk again.
I've been thinking about what makes sweetweird and hopepunk cousins and not twins. I think I'm approaching it now, having engaged with a fair amount of both. Hopepunk is about recognizing that "there's no great glorious end to all this," to borrow from the most hopepunk TV show Angel (and an episode written by, I'd argue, one of the most hopepunk screenwriters, Tim Minear), and choosing to fight the good fight, epically, anyway. Sweetweird is more about understanding that within a hellscape, you can create a haven: the Boiling Isles are terrible, but the Owl House itself is cozy. (Of all the examples Anders offers, this feels to me the purest sweetweird.) Hopepunk is global, sweetweird is local. I have a bunch more thoughts on this that I just realized are enough for a blog post, so I'm going to stop here for now, except to say that hopepunk was what we needed from 2016-2020, when things were terrible but we had energy for the fight. In the age of COVID, sweetweird lets us imagine ways to build small communities and safe spaces where we can rest until we feel ready to be hopepunk again.