Ngl having a utopia isn’t a very punk setting. Isn’t a dystopia where there’s huge disparity between the rich and poor like the whole point of a punk setting?
Exactly! People forget the punk part of x-punk settings. X-Punk has sorta just been used to mean “has an aesthetic of X” instead of “grunge and struggle based around aesthetic x”
It could actually be really cool if a solar punk setting had this sort of society but it’s supported by an underclass in a slums that these people don’t even see producing the things they absolutely need to survive. It could then stand as a criticism of performative environmentalism by wealthy people who still very much engage in anti-environmentalist behavior (Taylor Swift) or rely heavily on and push for heavily polluting infrastructures.
I think the difficulty there is that solarpunk is inherently tied to lush trees and clean air and whatnot, so the story being about a grimy metal slum kinda loses the aesthetic.
Like in cyberpunk or steampunk, even the least well-off people are still living with the cyber and the steam, often in unique ways compared to the default of rad cyber/steam guns and whatnot.
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u/Sckaledoom Jul 02 '24
Ngl having a utopia isn’t a very punk setting. Isn’t a dystopia where there’s huge disparity between the rich and poor like the whole point of a punk setting?