\n"}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI feel like that\u00a0\u201chopepunk\u201d thing someone made up a while back depends on strawmanning and forcefully redefining noblebright stories into something simplistic and lesser to then present\u00a0\u201chopepunk\u201d as the superior and realistic alternative.
I have no idea What\u2019s going on in this discourse, but it has words like noblebright and hopepunk, so I approve.
\nNoblebright refers to the opposite of grimdark. This expanded into a two-variable classification (3x3 square, with a neutral category in between the two extremes; Gary Gygax haunts the dreams of many). Bright to dark is pretty much what it sounds like; while bad things happen in bright stories (have to create drama somehow), they\u2019re basically surmountable, and at the end of the day you\u2019re pretty sure the good guys are going to win. A dark story is much more likely to have a sad or bittersweet ending, and/or feature protagonists for whom the term \u201cgood guys\u201d is a bit of a stretch. The noble-grim axis deals with the extent to which individual agency can affect the setting. Noble settings, regardless of their position on the light-dark axis, are full of heroes and villains who bestride the narrow world like colossi. Individuals have much less power in grim settings: the weight of history, economics, and mass social and political trends far outweighs the power of individual action.
\nStar Wars (the original trilogy) is probably the archetypal example of a noblebright story.
\nInteresting. By this definition, Madoka Magica is Neutral Dark.
\nWhat would nobledark or grimbright look like, then? Doom and post-post-apocalypse?