#i know this is my solarpunk blog but its not a solarpunk specific thing

[solarpunkani]

"Oh no, someone's attracted to the aesthetics of my -punk movement but doesn't know the praxis and history behind it like I do--"

OK. Tell them. Make it a teaching moment. Everyone who's in your movement learned the background from somewhere at some point, maybe this is that point for that person. Give them a jumping off point that they can dive into later.

"Oh but I shouldn't be responsible for teaching baby -punks about the history and the how-tos and--"

OK. Then don't tell them. You don't have to be responsible for teaching people with a budding interest in your group the ins and outs and how-tos. That's fair and valid! It can be a lot of work. Someone else will handle it

"But I'm annoyed that they would try to claim to be part of/be interested in my community without knowing all the details that I know after being in it for months/years/decades, they're dumb, they're posers, they're--"

OK. Then don't engage with them, if it's that bad. Maybe someone else will come around and tell them the history, maybe they'll pick it up on their own, maybe they'll just enjoy the fashion elements for awhile.

"But they shouldn't claim to be part of the -punk community if they don't know the--"

I feel like we have a few options here. People can either talk to them, share the history, share the values, share the praxis. Or they can just chase off anyone who even thinks about dipping a toe in their community, and then wonder why it's dying off later down the line.

I dunno, maybe I'm too naive and patient or whatever. But if people are entering your -punk spaces without knowing The Rundown of what you feel they need to know, maybe being nice about it and informing people instead of immediately assuming stupidity and malicious intent could help you make a new friend. Even the loudest voices in a space had to learn from somewhere, and not everyone has the luxury of being in the space as the History was Happening--whether it's an age thing or a not being aware of the space thing. Or maybe I just don't see what the big deal is behind people hating people who like the aesthetic of something and don't know the behind the scenes history about it yet.

Because I believe in the word 'yet.' No one comes into this world knowing everything about everything, and we're all constantly learning new things. I'm not gonna degrade someone and call them a poser for not knowing what I know. Because if it were me, interested in a scene but getting chased out and called a poser? I wouldn't hit the books and study up, I'd go 'that fuckin sucks, those people sucked' and then avoid anyone and anything having to do with it.

So chase people off and call them posers if you want. But if your community starts dwindling, don't be fucking shocked.

#out of queue #ani rambles #punks and posers #i cant even call this a 4am hot take because its 7pm but like #idk i keep seeing posts about like 'how DARE people think I bought my punk clothes how DARE they not know the how-tos and DIYs' #or 'ugh people only care about the ~aesthetics~ of my movement if you don't know shit get out of here' and like #maybe I'm just a shy ass introverted nerd whos scared of social rejection! but I avoid that shit like the plague #so if someone were to reject me based on not knowing about something I'd never even heard about? something i was JUST getting into? #there's a high chance I'd just scram and never look back. i don't wanna be the one who causes that emotion in someone else #granted this is coming from someone who STILL doesn't know how to make her own patches or worked up the courage to do direct action praxis #outside of offering neighbors to my tomatoes and trying to talk to people about what I'm passionate about #but still imo unless someone's a malicious intentional bad actor i dont see the point in scaring newbies off #thats how movements die imo #i know this is my solarpunk blog but its not a solarpunk specific thing #i think the main post that inspired this was about store-bought versus self-made spiked leather jackets #which honestly just feels petty to me but who knows. #might delete later

[roguetelepaths]

sparrow roguetelepaths — ey/em or they/them

used to be enbygesserit, follows from helplessnessxblues

old enough to remember when neopets breakfast cereal was a thing (21+ adult)

aroace to a terrifying degree. not the cool kind that writes smut and passes out water bottles at the orgy, either. sorry

no gender we die like [tv static]

psychospiritually nonhuman, but I don't talk about it here — DM me if you want to know where I do

vaguely anarchist & emphatically against all forms of punishment as foundations for interpersonal relationships

psychiatric survivor and ex-patient. madpunk, psychpunk, neurodivergent in the original radical anti-pathologization meaning of the term. the social model isn't ableist you guys are just willfully misinterpreting it

on team "believe others about their subjective experiences". yes, this includes that subjective experience you're about to send me anon hate telling me is absolutely just kids roleplaying for attention.

my stance on proship/anti discourse can be summed up as "fiction may not literally be reality but it also can't be separated from the context of reality and it's good to foster an environment where that context can be openly talked about" and "freedom of fiction doesn't really exist without freedom of response" and "dislike and disgust are not indicators of morality but they also shouldn't be ignored or repressed, especially since they can teach you useful things about yourself" and "criticize ideas and works, not people" — some people call this neutralship but I've been known to describe myself as a pro-disliker or a pro-critic.

I don't tag unreality. if you need a blanket unreality tag this blog will probably be a bit of a minefield for you. a lot of things that are very real to me, including personal spiritual experiences, have been coercively defined as unreality for me without my consent, and I have a deeply negative association with the term. I will, however, do my best to tag specific things under the unreality umbrella (the goncharov meme, for example, which I tagged as #gonchposting at its height) with their own tags upon request.

fandoms you can expect to see (I care about themes and analysis over shipping, and when I do ship, it's always an extension of the themes I want to explore, so be prepared for me to be a pretentious piece of shit about all of these):

DS9 (especially the Dominion)

Babylon 5 (mostly telepaths but not exclusively. NOT a psi corps apologist in any way, just a season 5 telepath commune arc liker, which is almost as bad to some)

Team StarKid/Hatchetfield

Dune

Severance

The Hunger Games & The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Percy Jackson/Riordanverse

non-media interests (may or may not post about these, honestly, it's anyone's guess, but feel free to tag me in these):

fucked up unethical social experiments, the more fucked up and pseudoscientific the better

relationship anarchy

aroace shit

community building

apartment solarpunk

the history/culture of Scouting and related youth organizations

#pinned

[endcant]

i used to be very active in the cottagecore realm in 2018. im not alone in this, but i had my cottagecore blog before the word “cottagecore” was coined, and thus before it was presupposed that the lifestyle and aesthetic being posted about had anything in particular to do with cottages. a lot of the relevant posts found their way to me through other tags— dirtcore, plantcore, grandmacore, solarpunk, diy, etc— or just through the sheer natural popularity of the posts that ended up defining the cottagecore style

over the time between like 2016-2018, i had been pivoting away from my 90s/arcade themed aesthetic that i had fostered since like 2013 or something, because the colorful carpets and cheap plastic toys and bubblegum dispenser candies and slimes were beginning to be presumed to be part of something called “kidcore”, and kidcore was having a problem

the issue at hand for kidcore (and stim tumblr as well) was that ageplay and other controversial/triggering kink accounts were openly interacting with and advertising themselves on posts that were either meant for kids and age regressors, or themed around the original poster’s own childhood. as a result, kidcore/age regression and ageplay/kink were getting weirdly and uncomfortably conflated. it was a huge issue that i found really offputting, so i just bailed from the use of that visual language in general

the way that many, many kidcore and stim bloggers responded to these kinds of issues was to diligently put a DNI banner at the bottom of every single post, no matter how unsightly or combative that seemed. at the time, i thought that this was kind of a hopeless exercise. i thought that kidcore as an aesthetic would never really manage to extricate its content and reputation from that offputting area of kink tumblr, but it seems like i was wrong. through just like the sheer saturation of in-post DNI banners, it seemed to work. kidcore was more safe for kids and age regressors to blog and reblog about without getting weird fucked up interactions, and people seemed to be under less scrutiny for having a kidcore blog at all because it was no longer uncomfortably conflated with kink to that degree

the thing i admire most about this is that so many kidcore and stim bloggers decided all on their own that they wanted make it clear who their blog was and wasnt a safe space for. more of them could have decided to ignore the issue, more of them could have said that naysayers “just dont get it”, and more of them could have decided that they didnt mind added traffic, no matter who it came from. but these posters were uncomfortable with the issue, so they made that discomfort known at every opportunity.

this sort of stands in contrast to how most cottagecore bloggers ive seen have responded to the realization that cottagecore was growing to be popular with ecofascists and weird patriarchal tradcath & colonialist bloggers, esp since like 2019 or so. some bloggers sacrificed the simple aesthetic by adding DNI banners, but compared to the DNI saturation of kidcore bloggers, these were few and far between. also, weirdly, most of those banners also pertained to the kink-related boundaries that kidcore and stim bloggers had to set, and generally said little about politics except sometimes that terfs were unwelcome. anecdotally, i dont personally recall ever seeing a banner that said something like “dont interact if youre an ecofascist or christian nationalist!” or anything like that underneath any of the crafty and pastoral cottagecore imagery that ive encountered over the years.

the most common response that i saw from cottagecore bloggers to all the criticism and suspicion in 2019-2020 was every cottagecore blogger going on the defensive— “the accusations of cottagecore bloggers being right-wing or colonialist are false and not worth our time. anybody who spent any time in our community would know that plenty of us are leftist or poc!!” — for roughly one or two posts, and then never responding to the criticism again unless it came to their askbox specifically.

in short, the message a lot of cottagecore bloggers sent with their posts was not “ecofascists are unwelcome here,” but instead “critics who point out the ecofascist issue are unwelcome here.” and ecofascists and their ilk kept reblogging the same mushrooms and lace curtains and transparent homemade pie pngs as everybody else, unperturbed. there was no concerted effort to make it clear at every fucking turn that fascists were unwelcome

i ended up just drifting away from the cottagecore tag family over the course of 2019 to focus my gardening/naturalist/diy energies more directly on leftist environmentalism rather than aesthetic. since then, ive been thinking about the difference between cottagecore and the previous tumblr aesthetic i unintentionally joined and intentionally abandoned, kidcore. i have watched the response of both groups to these kinds of issues from a short distance, and i feel like kidcore posters better rose to the challenge of community infiltration by parties with harmful views and intentions. less kidcore bloggers have their DNIs directly in their posts nowadays from what ive seen, but the popular DNI banner phase of the kidcore world seemed to be essential and effective in establishing who the tag was and wasn’t meant for. no effort like this has been widespread on cottagecore tumblr, particularly among popular cottagecore posters, and so the reputational damage and the failure to exclude literal fascists from the main bulk of the aesthetic’s ecosystem continues to persist.

i guess overall the stories of these aesthetics (as i witnessed them) are just an interesting anecdotal comparison of how tolerating individuals that make vulnerable/marginalized members of a community feel threatened lead to that community becoming de-facto dominated (or assumed to be dominated) by those who are making others feel threatened, as vulnerable/marginalized members leave and additional vulnerable/marginalized people are deterred from ever joining. whereas proactively stating boundaries again and again and again leads to the creation of a better safe space, as well as a culture of awareness about the issues at hand

#mine #aesthetic #long post

[fortheloveofluxuryxo]

Get paid in crypto to read and write content on Publish0x

YOUTUBE EPISODE 6

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#blog #all #publish0x #earn crypto #make money online #earn money online #make money from your phone #turn your phone into an atm

[deitiesofduat]

What are all the Deities AUs so far? And what are some of your personal headcannons?

Ah, well I’ve never made an official count or list of DEITIES AUs / crossovers before now, I kinda just… make them up as I think of them, or as others’ bring them up??? But of the ones I know that I’ve shared on the blog or elsewhere, or that I’ve mused about myself, I can present the following under the cut, with the ones in bold that have links to their own tags.

Keep in mind that most of these are AUs that I muse about on my own or with friends, and in my personal free time. There are a few that I may hopefully explore for fun (after I resume my main activity with, y'know, the main story >>) and others are small niche AUs that may not be explored in depth, but they’re all fun to think about regardless. Just fair warning to not expect me to spill ALLLLLLLLL the headcanons I have in a row if you ask, I don’t have the stamina for it right now, but I may consider doing an AU ask theme later whenever I do…

[1] DEITIES x Pokemon AU – This AU combines my two loves and can easily be divided into several sub-AUs all its own – Deities as pokemon trainers? Deities as pokemon / pokemon gijinka? Deities as gym leaders? DEITIES but everyone has sacred pokemon forms?? PMD!DEITIES?? THIS ONE IS TRUE AU GOLD THAT NEVER RUNS OUT–

[2] DEITIES x Harry Potter – More specifically, I think of the “Deities at hogwarts” scenario in this AU, so DEITIES cast as students in their respective houses, their best subjects, their sacred animal as their patronus – one time someone asked about their ideal quidditch positions, and well, I tried.

[3] DEITIES x Avatar the Last Airbender – Specifically like, the DEITIES as element-benders or non-benders within the ATLA world. It’s a tough one because certain DEITIES would do well in multiple elements (Set as a lightning(fire)-bender or sand(earth)-bender??), but I try to stick to the ATLA lore and keep to one. No idea who the avatar would be tho…

[4] DEITIES Business AU – Admittedly, this is one that I shared with a friend, I would need to check with her to see if she minded me sharing certain details. But think of the whole pantheon as part of a big company, with the Royal Family as the top “chief officer” positions (CEO, CCO, CFO, COO, etc.), and other staff/interns in said company (plus chairman!Ra).

[5] DEITIES Mafia AU – Or crime syndicate, whichever is the better term?? Just think The Contendings but as a modern struggle between 2 opposing crime families/gangs. And knives and firearms, ofc.

[6] DEITIES Merfolk AU – Self-explanatory. Also technically not far removed from canon; some deities could transform their hybrid features to resemble merfolk if they really wanted to. I just, need to actually draw it out–

[7] Genderbent!DEITIES – Also self-explanatory, and also technically not far removed from canon, since deities can change their gender expression however it suits them. I don’t explore this too deeply though, I just like to imagine what their designs might look like, and how the dynamics in The Contendings might shift with Set and Horus as dueling goddesses, etc.

[8] Modern!DEITIES – Really just any scenario where the DEITIES are living in modern time. I like the version where it’s basically canon DEITIES in the farrrrrrrrrrrrrr future where everyone is at least 5000+ years old, fully adapted to contemporary society and living it up in the 21st century.

[9] DEITIES School/Gakeun/College AUs – Self explanatory, and a riff from Modern!DEITIES. Either the DEITIES cast as students or as teachers/profs/staff, or some combination.

[10] DEITIES Musicians / Band AU – Related to Modern!DEITIES but with all the deities as musicians, specializing in different instruments or vocals! Or alternatively, deities in an INDIE ROCK BAND or something!! Haven’t revisited it in a while though, or settled on which instruments suit them best.

[11] DEITIES Cirque AU – Think “Cirque du Soleil” or any modern circus with the DEITIES as skilled performers with different acts. But I also shared this AU with a friend who I’ll have to double check with.

[12] DEITIES Olympics AU – EVERY OTHER YEAR I wanna draw the deities participating in Summer Games or Winter Games as Olympic athletes in their respective sports and events, and I never have the time. BUT IF I DID!!! YEAH….

[13] DEITIES Vacations – Modern!DEITIES going on destination vacations “because they can” and to bring the whole pantheon together once in a while. Disney/Themeparks was the one someone recently brought up that I had in the back of my mind, but other attractions at applicable as well. I also had Las Vegas, NYC, and Hawaii in mind as well, with plenty of room for other destinations and countries-outside-the-US as well.

[14] DEITIES… futurepunk?? cyberpunk?? – IDK THE CORRECT TERM BUT basically the DEITIES storyline for The Contendings, but instead of Ancient Egypt, it’s “Ancient Egypt” if it had survived several millennia in the future – with modern advancement and technology in place of magic. I have more ideas regard this AU, but in the event someone else is planning to do a similar epic, I’ll keep my details underwraps for a bit until I can explore it myself 

(Additional note: I’m not super invested in -punk AUs but I could acknowledge things like steampunk!DEITIES, dieselpunk!DEITIES, solarpunk!DEITIES, etc.)

[15] DEITIES In-game / Gaming AUs – Basically the DEITIES cast following the mechanics and designs of different game series I like, vicariously or otherwise – including Sonic (sanic!DEITIES and sanic teams), Splatoon (Inkling/Octoling DEITIES), Animal Crossing (DEITIES as animal neighbors), Super Smash Bros (The cast as SSB fighters), Overwatch (the cast maining different heroes) and, most recently, Dragalia Lost (Adventurer!DEITIES who tURN INTO DRAGONS…!).

[16] DEITIES Holiday Designs – Not really an AU, just the DEITIES cast in festive designs for certain holidays on the blog, purely for fun. So far we have Halloween DEITIES and their transformations; Set transformed as one of santa’s reindeer; and Set’s “B-day” for Valentines day (which, I really attribute to the kemetic community for that one, I just participated with Set drawings haha;;)

[17] DEITIES Crossovers – most of the AUs I mentioned are crossover, but here I mean when I or someone else crossover’s our stories or casts for non-canon fun. On my end, so far I’ve drawn Set as a demon from Koolaid’s Living When Dead, and the Set Spawn running into some other smol familiars. Also drawn a few other crossovers with those who drew me amazing giftart in years past.

[18] Other Personal AUs – Any of the other dozen AUs that I already indulge in with my group of friends and our personal OCs, but with the DEITIES cast as a cameo. You’d have to sift thru my personal artblog with my OCs to understand most of them (and some of them aren’t even publicly posted yet), but they  include, but are not limited to: Mythical!gijinka, Fantasy AU, vampire/lycan/witches AU, demons/angels (and the related deadly sins/heavenly virtues) AU… that’s about it that I haven’t mentioned before jskdfsdf

o)———

#// DIDN'T REALIZE I GATHERED THIS MANY SO FAR LMAO but there you go #// If I was able to keep up with patreaon I would've touched upon each of these at some point; now I'll have to save them for later #DEITIES AUs #might as well make tags for alla them too #DEITIES x Pokemon #DEITIES x Harry Potter #DEITIES x ATLA #Modern AU DEITIES #crossover #DEITIES Business AU #DEITIES Cirque AU #DEITIES Olympics AU #DEITIES Musicians AU #DEITIES School AU #DEITIES Mafia AU #DEITIES Holiday Designs #DEITIES Merfolk AU #Genderbent DEITIES #DEITIES Gaming AU #Personal AUs

[cumbersome-apparatus]

Ughhh, I finished it like forever ago, but my soul won’t rest until I finally say it once and for all... What I fucking thought of 1984.

I thought it was... Bad. I disliked it. I knew I would. But I said that already and it can’t be my WHOLE ENTIRE THOUGHTS.

So I guess I’ll say it had its good points, and that, actually, its good points could be really interesting. It’s just a shame they had to be part of 1984, which was written by a guy who wanted to gloss over that stuff as quickly as possible to get back into the “but what if the government was... Bad? Bad like This? Hmm?” stuff. Which I found insufferable. Tbh, it’s one of my bottom five tropes and nothing turns me off a story faster. Which doesn’t mean Bad Governments are a trope I dislike. I just don’t like stories that are about them and seem to only exist as a Dire Warning. I hate stories as Dire Warnings and Bad Examples (or even Good Examples) in general. (It’s why my eyes roll all the way back into my head when people start up with that “As LoNg As YoU CoNdEmN iT iN tHe TeXt” bullcrap. No! I won’t! I’ll write bad situations and unlikable people and let the audience sort it out and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!)

One thing I did really like was the prison arc near the end of the book, or at least a lot of the aspects of it. I mean, most of the book listlessly oscillated between hokey and dry, and then, holy shit, the writing got really viscerally emotional and evocative right the fuck out of nowhere. This is a weird thing to say about a book I don’t even like, but the descriptions of both physical suffering and complete no-exits hopelessness, and the depiction of knock-down-drag-out person-on-person dehumanization, actually stick out as standards to hold myself to when I’m writing awful things. And like... Okay. I’ve never been a naysayer in a dystopia, and have never experienced anything to that degree, but I was an autistic kid in abusive educational and therapeutic settings, so a lot how the nuts and bolts of behavioral conditioning were written about and explained rang really true to me. There was an exchange that went something like “look at yourself!” “what are you talking about? You did this to me.” that punched me right in the gut. And my favorite part of the whole book was probably the line about how it isn’t enough that people obey you, they have to suffer while they do it, or else you can’t know they’re following your will and not their own. It honestly felt like time stopped when I read that, because, holy shit, that’s spot fucking on, it’s intentional and it always has been. That concept was an unthought known of mine, I’m pretty sure. And it probably also was for people who did all that shit to me, too, or maybe they actually were aware of it, at least in some awful euphemistic sense, and holy shit, I’m so not surprised I came out of that with probable PTSD.

...But even the really insightful parts of that leg of the story were kind of ruined because they came out in the context of one guy standing over another guy and ranting like a cartoon villain, because this goddamn book is fucking extra at all times.

The other Surprisingly Good Prison Arc revelation is why I’m not the kind of person who likes this kind of book. I’m not really all that interested in Bad Societies to Avoid on a macro scale as the meat of the story, but I am interested in interpersonal violence and trauma in stories, which might require a Bad Society or might not, but either way, the system itself isn’t the interesting part of the scenario, except as context and motivation for the individuals involved. And the wider context/specific scenario wires just never quite connected properly. The one guy was just... A cartoon villain. Talking up the whole system as if he was the one who instated it and wrapping it up with an overwrought metaphor about a boot.

ANYWAY.

A minor quibble, before I go off on a whole other long tangent about the next thing: this book seriously could not make up its mind about whether it’s good or bad to be stupid. The only conclusion it came to is that lower-class people are the stupid ones, but that makes you either docile sheeple or salt-of-the-earth noble savages who are going to save the world. I guess? Whatever it is, I don’t like it.

ONWARD.

I’ve said before that this book jumps right over the most interesting concept in the whole thing, which is the thought/language relationship. YOU INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF A LANGUAGE SPECIFICALLY CREATED TO ATTENUATE THOUGHT AND THEN DIDN’T GET INTO THE WEEDS WITH IT AT ALL. Which, duh, this a book about how attenuating thought is evil and we shouldn’t do it, not a sink-your-teeth-in exploration of cognition and semiotics. That involves open-ended conclusions on your part and would make it harder for George Orwell to smack you with a ruler!

But then there’s the thing where it did kind of start to delve deeper, which is actually a current pet fascination of mine and relevant to my goddamn Solarpunk thing: the whole premise around creating a tightly self-regulating society by manipulating social norms and letting herd mentality do the rest. Which I always think of as the “all lines are curved in the Velodrome” theory of soft authoritarianism. Like basically weaponizing the Overton Window? It’s actually really fascinating! But (there’s always a but with this book) it kind of loses some of its punch when the society portrayed is also just a regular old dictatorship where people kick the shit out of you and Make You Disappear. It’s like the author took the core concept of the book and didn’t even use it! And I guess you can argue that the setting was in a transitional phase, which is fair, and that actually could be really interesting, but it... Wasn’t. And that’s the whole problem I had with the story, pretty much. Not only was it preachy and hokey, but it was full of wasted potential.

ADDITIONAL GARBAGE THOUGHTS:

-How the heck did the other three Improbably Large Nations keep up the “we’ve only ever been at war with those guys and not the other ones” illusion? I can suspend my belief a little bit for Oceania, where the other two are three letters apart from each other and at least some people would probably just shrug and assume they read something wrong yesterday, but I don’t buy it for a second when it comes to the E*asia countries. People would damn well remember that the guys they were mad at yesterday started with an O and then the whole system would fall apart. People aren’t geniuses as a rule, but they usually damn well know if they read an O.

-Also, how is the whole “thoughtcrime” thing even enforced? I know it has to do with analyzing facial expressions, but... How? You can’t tell me that people know how to tell “bad thoughts about our overlord” from “itchy,” “smelled sour milk,” “intrusive thought about stepping on a nail,” “have to pee,” or “wondering where I put that thing” on every single individual face.

-Oh look, it’s another book that ends with a fictional document talking about the Bad Bad Government in the past tense. Where have I seen this before? Perhaps in another hamfisted trainwreck of a book. Perhaps in one that involves color-coded robes.

-Was it better than The Handmaid’s Tale? Eh. It was less-worse, for sure. But mostly just in ways that pissed me off because there were multiple interesting things ruined by being part of this Aesop Fable from hell, not just the one interesting thing with the vague threats of being sent away to clean up radioactive waste until your nose falls off.

-Did I ever tell you that I’ve considered making a blog where I read and dunk on every book in the “transparently didactic dystopian novel that somehow isn’t usually factored as genre fiction” genre? Because I have, but honestly, I don’t know when I’ll be able to bring myself to do this. Partly because I’d have to slog through THT a third time and 1984 a second, which is bad enough, but also because I’d probably eventually have to read Ayn Rand, and have you seen the size of those things? 1984 felt like it rambled on forever, and those are, like, three 1984s stacked on top of each other and there’s at least two of them. I’m willing to go through a lot if I get to make fun of something, but that’s really pushing it.

[solarpunkani]

Sonic the Hedgehog and Solarpunk Ideals

Alright, it's June 23rd which means not only is it Solarpunk Aesthetic Week, but it's also Sonic the Hedgehog's 32nd birthday. Let's all say Happy Birthday Sonic the Hedgehog.

Overall, that means it's time for me to do something I usually don't do on this blog--talk about Sonic the Hedgehog, one of my favorite series of all times. Specifically, how I feel it embodies Solarpunk at least a little bit. Hopefully you'll see where I'm coming from by the end of this.

Real quick though, special shout out to @modern-solarpunk for being my beta reader 100/10 owe you my life.

Alright let’s make one thing clear. I’m a Sonic nerd. I’ve been a Sonic nerd since at least the 5th grade. Sonic the hedgehog is one of My Things. IDK if I’d call it a hyperfixation, but it’s definitely one of My Things, and it’s been one of My Things longer than gardening or even Solarpunking and all the other stuff y’all know me for has been. I am about to talk y’alls ears off. Buckle up.

With that in mind, I’m not going to pretend that the Sonic franchise is a perfect franchise made by perfect people working under a perfect corporation. Even ignoring the timeline disasters, retconning, and rushed projects (*cough cough Sonic 06 and Sonic Boom cough cough*), Sonic the Hedgehog is made by a corporation in a capitalistic world who has done some… iffy things in the past, present, and likely the future. We are, here, today, strictly talking about two things--the creation of Sonic and the creation of Dr. Eggman. There will be a super special third topic I bring up later, but that's gonna be its own post. I’ll bring up a handful of things from the shows, comics, movies, etc. If I finish writing and editing and posting this whole lengthy diatribe and someone ignores this paragraph and brings up some inane unrelated shit that the Big Corporation Guys did That One Time Months/Years Ago I might snap. Yes, corporations are bad. Yes, I like Sonic. Let’s establish that.

Ok let’s actually get started.

Sonic the Hedgehog the Dude, Tiny Rebellions, and Freedom

Alright, so Sonic the Hedgehog is a series of games, movies, comic books, TV shows--it's a whole thing, it's an entire franchise. The basics of what you need to know here is that a little 3’3” superpowered anthropomorphic blue hedgehog dude and his array of equally-animalian and equally-colorful friends are ruining the robotics-based evil world takeover plans of a 6’1” egg-shaped human dude on the regular. Occasionally, there are other villains, and other storylines, and sometimes the motivations change, but that sentence boils down the Sonic the Hedgehog storyline to its base essentials. 

The Sonic franchise was dreamed up in 1990 when SEGA needed a new mascot to compete with Nintendo’s iconic Mario. Personality-wise, he’s said to have been inspired by “a modern sensibility of wanting to get things done right away, righting wrongs as they presented themselves instead of letting them linger.” As we currently know him, with Sonic “What you see is what you get--just a guy who loves adventure.” He’s a free-spirited drifter who goes with the flow, valuing freedom above all else and wanting nothing more than to live by his own rules and whims rather than bowing to the expectations of others. He loves interacting with the many cultures on his planet (which we mostly see in Sonic Unleashed, but still), trying local dishes with friends frequently. Overall, Sonic is driven by a strong sense of justice and fairness, fighting for the ideal of freedom rather than the name of the law--and he always fights for the underdog. He likes to handle things on his own, but he isn’t above looking to his friends for help when needed--and acknowledges their role in his life and achievements regularly (if he can be a bit smug at times). He appreciates scenic views and nature, with a special fondness for places filled with plants--we see him do this lots in the series--and he hates when people destroy it for their own gain. He doesn’t hate cities, though, and finds they have their own beauty.

So what’s Solarpunk about this? In my eyes, a good bit. If you don’t know what Solarpunk is, it’s described on Wikipedia as ‘a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works towards actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community.” Aesthetically, I like to describe it as a mix between sci-fi and cottagecore, with a particular leaning towards some steampunk and some cyberpunk elements, but in a brighter, cleaner, more hopeful way. It's important to note, however, that Solarpunk is also a practical and political action mindset--as much as Solarpunks dream of a hopeful future and work to visualize it, we also work to learn the concepts and take the actions needed to make it a reality. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Sonic is super politically revolutionary, I’m here to talk about how Sonic fits into the aesthetics of Solarpunk.

As such, lets get into the point--I feel like Sonic is pretty Solarpunk, personality-wise. He just fits a lot of the core tenants--wants to right wrongs ASAP, whether they’re his wrongs or wrongs of the past. He values freedom, traveling, and beautiful natural places--a big chunk of Solarpunk is learning to appreciate and protect the natural species around you, and plenty of people have dreamed up nomadic Solarpunk societies. Even Sonic living by his own rules instead of bowing to expectations fits in Solarpunk--A Solarpunk Manifesto states that “the ���punk’ in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture… and enthusiasm. it is about going in a different direction than the mainstream…” People in the Solarpunk movement care deeply about freedom, justice, fairness, and fixing the broken systems we deal with today--and often start the legwork by forming or taking part in community-based movements and initiatives. We lean onto those around us for strength and courage, to work as a group to think of solutions to problems, whether that be something small like trading DIY patch instructions to bigger things like planning and creating community gardens to even sharing news about unionizing and more. There’s acts a Solarpunk can do alone--like guerrilla gardening, or moss graffiti, or drawing and writing concepts of a brighter future--but we all know we’re at our strongest when we’re not just one, but many. 

But one of my biggest arguments to Sonic being Solarpunk actually centers around his nemesis--Doctor Eggman.

Doctor Eggman as the Antithesis of Solarpunk

After all, it’s pretty hard to talk about how a hero of a series is Solarpunk without discussing the people and forces he fights against, and most of the time that’s Doctor Ivo Robotnik--better known to most as Dr. Eggman. He was developed more or less directly alongside Sonic the hedgehog, and as such the notes about his creation not only influence his character, but the character and vibe of most of the franchise so far. So who is Doctor Eggman?

Doctor Eggman is often described as the World’s Vilest Person--he’s evil, mean, cruel-spirited, and a self-proclaimed genius scientist who only really thinks about what he wants and what he needs to do to get it--getting pleasure in crushing anything that gets in his way. His main goal is to establish his Eggman Empire across the entire planet and build his own version of a utopia, Eggmanland--usually taking the form of a polluted, smog-filled city or a robotic theme park. His plans have varied from excavating natural spaces and turning woodland creatures into robotic slaves (Sonic 1, 2, 3), using doomsday devices to threaten nations and blow up the moon (Sonic Adventure 2), tie down planets for his own purposes (Sonic CD, Sonic Colors), or even using cosmic forces beyond his comprehension to flood metropolises or literally rip the planet apart (Sonic Adventure, Sonic Unleashed). In the comics and some shows, he even takes it a step further--a common theme with him is Roboticization, wherein people are forcibly turned from organic beings into robot slaves. Sometimes its a machine fulfilling this sometimes-irreversible process (Archie Comics, Sonic the Hedgehog Cartoon, Sonic Underground), while other times its an all-consuming virus that grows out of his control and turns almost the entire planet into raving robotic zombies (IDW Sonic Comics issues #12-29). He’s fueled by delusions of grandeur, believing that all of the world’s problems would be solved if he specifically were in charge of everyone all the time and had things his way, and makes robotic inventions and weapons to obtain power. He’s overflowing with self-confidence and pride, highlighting his ‘scientific genius’ whenever he can. He’ll leave temporary allies to rot if it gives him a chance to take all the credit and power for  himself, he looks down on everyone else and sees them as insignificant, only interested in what benefits him. Fairness and community? With Doctor Eggman? Forget it, he’ll steal candy from a baby and then turn it into a robot if given the chance. And even with robotic helpers he makes himself, he quickly gets sick of them--Eggman doesn’t do friends. 

I’d compare him to Elon Musk, but at least Dr. Eggman is actually a genius.

A Solarpunk Manifesto was published in 2019, describing Solarpunk as “A movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question ‘what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?’”. Eggmanland is not how we get there--Doctor Eggman is an embodiment of everything the Solarpunk ideology stands against, and not entirely by accident. Here’s a quote from Yuji Naka, one of the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog.

“Robotnik was created to be the opposite of Sonic, and to be the bad guy. At that time, there was opposition between "developers" and "environmentalists", and Robotnik was created to represent machinery and development.”

He represents it pretty well--his common motifs are imperialism and pollution, and his version of a utopia is often reminiscent of pre-EPA photos of US cities. Sometimes its done to a cartoonish level--but the point still stands. Whenever we catch glimpses of Eggman’s ‘Home Bases,’ whether its Scrap Brain Zone in Sonic 1, Chemical Plant in Sonic 2, Metallic Madness in Sonic CD, or elsewhere, we’re always seeing tons of mechanization, smog, pollution, and death robots.

Solarpunks aren’t opposed to technology--not in the slightest. But I feel its safe to say that any Solarpunk would be opposed to the over-industrialized, hyper-mechanized, pollution-riddled empire hellscape that Eggman would call heaven. (And you know damn well he'd be all over those Boston Dynamic robot dogs if he were real). To me, Eggman represents the grim-dark futures that apocalyptic stories tell us we’re barreling towards--the darker, less sunny side of the already dystopian cyberpunk genre. Solarpunk is the sun that burns away at smoggy futures, the light that reveals what we can have instead, the ideas that lead to actions to secure it. Its hope in a bottle--hope that we can enjoy and add to, a dream that we can help make into a reality. The ideals are chock full of resisting the real-life Eggmans who want to send humanity into a nose-dive of mechanization and energy-burning self-destruction for the sake of short-lived profits and smug ego-trips. 

Is Sonic a strictly Solarpunk series? I wouldn’t necessarily say so. But I think if the themes and terms had existed in 1990, it certainly would have been cited as a bit of an inspiration. Whether the Solarpunk community would have been chill with a corporation citing the term as inspiration is a whole other deal.

Stay tuned for this posts' sequel, where I talk about how I feel my favorite game in the series--Sonic Colors--is Solarpunk.

#solarpunk #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #solarpunk aesthetic week #out of queue #ani rambles #nobody call me cringe i'll accept critique i'll even accept 'i disagrees' but if you call me cringe or bully me you're getting blocked #BUT ALSO IM NOT DONE YET I STILL HAVE TO POST PART TWO #UPDATE: I'VE ADDED THE LINKS GO HAM

[solarpunkani]

Hi! For a project in mz school were doingf an activity where we make a utopia. i wanted mine to be inspired by your blog and stuff like accessibility, solar engery, things like that. any things you could give me for ideas?

I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely honored I am that you're looking to my blog for inspiration on this project! I hope I can be helpful!

If you want a fantastic wellspring of cool imagery and inspiration, check out the @solarpunkaestheticweek blog! It was an event held over the summer, and a lot of people participated and did art for it! Like this one that I really love! There's also lots of talk about fashion, architecture, and general aesthetic inspiration too! The queue is also continually running with other cool stuff the other mods and I find! We've also got a pinterest board you can rifle through for more inspo! IDK when this project is due, but we're planning to host another event for the Winter Solstice, which should bring out another burst of cool stuff to be inspired by!

Other cool things that could be fun for a utopia... I go on a bit of a ramble below!

The Dear Alice animation is a great source of inspiration, honestly! The imagery in this video are vivid!

Community fridges, little free pantries, little free libraries, and the like are also super fun for a utopia! Here's a pinterest board I made while I was working on my solarpowered fridge concept project this summer!

You could always go for fun shaped and fun-colored solar panels! I've seen talk of solar panels made to look like terra cotta roof tiles, and of colorful solar glass, so either one of these could be cool to draw inspiration from! The imagery of a stained glass window but its all solar voltaic is... prominent, in my head. While I was rifling through my blog, I found another post about more people doing this (or at least something similar)!

I've been in love with this concept art of fish-shaped wind turbines for the longest while! Clean energy can be clean and fun!

Regarding accessibility--I won't claim its something I know a lot about, but I did go on a bit of a ramble about it at the behest of another asker once. Long and the short of it, I'd definitely encourage looking into talks about walkable cities and accessible cities, see what some other bloggers who are More Knowledgeable Than Me have to say about it! Here's another post I've reblogged about accessibility and solarpunk!

It could be fun to imagine how current structures in cities could be reused in a more solarpunk society! I did this a bit earlier with big parking garages, and the replies and reblogs also have some interesting ideas too!

I guess if you were to ask me what I'd like to see in an imagining of a solarpunk future/more utopian kind of vibe... I'd imagine tight-knit communities, clean energy, expansive transit systems and bike accessibility, large paths for traveling by foot, lots of gardens and greenhouses, big sunny windows, bright colors in buildings and fashion, lots of reuse of clothing and visible mending and the like, personalization, and Good Vibes. There's probably a lot more detail and specifics one would need to go to when it comes to making one, but when I think of Solarpunk those tend to be some of the first things that come to mind.

Aaaand here's a few solarpunk blogs I tend to look to for inspiration, if that's helpful to you at all!

I hope this helps! If anyone else happens across this post and wants to chime in, feel free!

#ani rambles #out of queue #answered asks #anonymous #I Hope This Made Any Sense In The Fucking Slightest #and I hope your project goes well!!! if you end up sharing it let me know I would love to see what you do! #ive also got my art tag and gardening tag if you wanna shuffle through those for more inspo #oh also southernsolarpunk is one of my solarpunk besties as is bumblebeeappletree solar-sunnyside-up and gryphonrampant #and then of course fennopunk and modern-solarpunk but i think they're both in the recc post i added? #i have been working on this for like an hour or 2 now so fingers crossed that its Actually Helpful And Makes Sense