Needs Help: Punk Punk

This seems like a complex one. Unclear Description, Misused, and one of the most Wikied supertropes out there, I would suspect, not to mention all the subtropes.

The problem - or what appears to be the problem - is a lack of a single definition, which has led to proliferation without proper rules. It seems to be defined in one of three different ways which nobody will agree on:

• Punk Punk is about rebelling against society.

or

• Punk Punk is about being a technologically advanced Dystopia.

or

• Punk Punk is about advanced technology and the adverse effects it can have, even if it isn't dystopian.

"Shared Genre Conventions" points out things that often pop up, but does not define the actual requirements, leading to the above.

There has been discussion on the exact definition, and it is likely that the "best" solution would require massive changes to the meaning and names of Punk Punk spanning the entire TV Tropes Wiki, this would be a huge "long-term project" that would also probably result in heated arguments. I think an easier solution is for Punk Punk setting tropes to be defined by having two or more of the following...

• The Protagonists are La Résistance
• The setting is Dystopian or at least crapsack-y
• The theme is partially about our relationships with technology (or Magitek equivalent)
• The setting is a Utopia or World Half Full under siege (possibly from within)
• The protagonists (or antagonists with lighter shades of morality) are trying to turn a World Half Full into a Utopia

Aside from the various Punk Punk settings that already exist, the vague definition has stalled both Social Media Dystopia and Graffiti Punk on the Trope Launch Pad. The former has good examples and clear definition but was originally called "Social Punk", and the latter is one that I know we had but all traces have disappeared and the Internet Archive first snapshotted it in 2008.

There are also three temporary Punk Punk entries that I planned to launch (possibly under better names), all of which have multiple examples. "Modem Punk" is Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk settings where nearly all of the punk aspects only happen via the internet, and has several examples that I can give content to when the trope is proposed, but the name can't be ambiguous and it currently is because Punk Punk isn't defined. "Kid Punk", settings where childhood rebellion is given more emphasis than most stories with a Kid Hero, and "Post-Punk Punk", the recently-popular setting often including Child Soldiers and overlap with Bio Punk that reconstructs the Dystopia to avoid the points brought up by Dystopia Is Hard, are also shown in their descriptions to have multiple examples that can be expanded upon, and need Punk Punk to be properly defined to do so because as you can tell the names "Modem Punk", "Kid Punk" and especially "Post-Punk Punk" are a work in progress.

Is the proposal any good? Because as I said, changing it too much would have drastic requirements due to how proliferated the "X Punk" problem-tropes have become, and redirects would not be as much a help as a simpler and newer trope.

edited 10th Sep '17 8:42:50 PM by SimYouLater

Opening.

Linking to relevant Trope Talk thread.

At this point, -punk seems to have devolved into "setting." Past that, there isn't anything connecting them. Of the "legitimate" -punks (Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Dieselpunk) the theme seems to be a setting where one prevalent technology has risen and the entire world is built around that. "Gritty" is a word thrown around a lot but even that doesn't really fit since Steampunk is usually a fairly optimistic setting.

I take issue with the fact that a lot of TLP entries as -punk seem to imply they're existing terms but based on googling, are not.

That definition works.

Expecting the whole thing to make sense is just going to lead to confusion. It doesn't make sense, except when viewed historically. It's a series of bizarre accidents.

First came Cyberpunk, and the punk part was important. It started as a movement, not a genre.

Then came Steampunk, which mostly got that name because some of the founders of the cyberpunk movement got involved. (See The Difference Engine.)

Then, for a couple of decades, those two terms evolved: Cyberpunk became a genre instead of a movement, but the punk part remained important. However, Steampunk went a completely different direction, and the punk part was almost completely forgotten. Instead, it became, basically, "alt-history high-tech Victorians".

And then, and only then, long after the two founding "-punks" had become almost completely unrelated, the snowcloning began. Most variants are derived from Steampunk (alt-history), but there may be a few that link back to the now-unrelated Cyberpunk.

Source: I was there; I was a young, rebellious SF fan who helped Neuromancer win its Hugo Award, and I watched (in some puzzlement) as the whole thing unfolded.

edited 7th Dec '17 1:28:34 PM by Xtifr

Clocking.

I agree with that analysis. I'm not sure we can really define an overall "punk" supergenre (is that a word?) because the subtypes aren't all the same. Cyberpunk tends to be a future Crapsack World built on Artificial Intelligence and pervasive computer networking, Steampunk as you said is an optimistic world where folks went nuts with steam (usually in ways that make physicists and engineers cry).

Then you get permutations like Post-Cyberpunk in there, which is Cyberpunk in tech but more generally optimistic.

Fortunately, this is serving mostly as an index for the various -Punk genres, so we could easily just substitute in a more reasonable description.

The alternative is a wick-check to see what we're dealing with, but my suspicion (based on a few quick glances) is that most examples will simply be referring to various -Punk genres. I've looked at four so far: three were potholes to more obscure genres with "punk" in the name, and the last was simply a statement about how "punk" genres tend to feature Schizo Tech. Which is more true of the Steampunk branch, but basically true of them all.

I can probably whip up a sandbox, based on my earlier post, and with details cribbed from the existing page. May take me a day or two, but I'm definitely willing to give it a try if folks want.

Imo punk-punk is fine. What really needs help are the various -punk subgenres it redirects to. Many of them are redundant, relying so heavily on one trope that you may as well just list them under that. Dungeon Punk for example is functionally just "has magitek". Sandal punk is even less useful, the description almost literally being "punk punk in the classical era", whatever that means. Then theres stuff like goth-punk which is basically just urban fantasy, cape-punk thats just a deconstruction of superhero tropes... I think punk-punk would be a lot clearer if it were more selective in what counts as a -punk genre. Stick to the basics, like Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk, Steampunk, and Clockpunk, and get rid of or rename the rest.

If it were just tropers who were doing all this snowcloning, I would wholeheartedly agree with you—but it's not. It's not even limited to fandom(s). Writers and publishers have been getting in on the craze of describing things as X-punk. At which point, it becomes our job to document.

If you want to argue that certain specific examples shouldn't have separate pages for some reason, then you can take those pages to TRS. But the general phenomenon of using "-punk" as a suffix for new sub-genres (or sub-sub-genres) is common enough that The Other Wiki has its own page about it. And they have notability requirements we don't.

Not all of our Punk Punk tropes actually line up with being actual things and/or named differently.

Stuff like Dungeon Punk, Sandal Punk, and Capepunk are not a thing. Raygun Gothic should be named Atom Punk and Ocean Punk should be named Sea Punk. And for some reason its missing Elfpunk, Decopunk and Nanopunk

edited 22nd Mar '18 9:31:27 PM by Memers

I thought the other wiki did mention Sandal Punk in passing, but I could be misremembering.

Aside from that, yes, I'm sure we could use some cleanup, but I'm not entirely sure what criteria we want to use for inclusion. My preference would be something along the lines of "widely used in fandom or adopted by a well-known author." We don't want everything that some random fan somewhere throws up on their blog for the entertainment of all three of their friends, but some random writer who has many thousands of readers might be another story.

eta: Note that I'm talking about criteria for being mentioned on the Punk Punk page. I'd support much stronger criteria for having a separate page. But that's slightly beyond the scope of this particular repair shop thread.

edited 23rd Mar '18 12:52:54 AM by Xtifr

If its used I think it is worthy on the page, however it should be specifically about established punk genres and their correct punk titles.

The page tries to pass things like The Sky Is an Ocean as "Sky Punk" but I literally only get our page when I google it. That needs to go.

I get a hit for a book named Sky Punk. But otherwise, yeah, nothing, so I'm absolutely fine with killing that one.

I think I'm in agreement with Xtifr: clean up specific pages, and make it clear that the various -punk genres don't neccesarily have much in common with each other.

A clearer formatting of the page would probably help. Right now its a wall of text mostly about the history of the trope, followed by "shared genre conventions" that dont really hold up, and a list of example genres, some of which don't fit, and which are sorted "by time period" and "by genre". Each of these needs work.

I think the guiding principle behind the re-formatting should be aknowledging the fact that steampunk and cyberpunk have almost nothing in common, and categorizing punk-punk genres by which of these two they mostly take influence from. This would allow us to have a much more specific list of genre conventions for each. Genres that fall into neither of the two camps, but are still undeniably a thing should be called out as not really being punk, but still be listed on the page.

As for the specific pages of punk genres that need cleanup: should i make a separate post for each, or should we compile a list on this thread first?

I've whipped up a sandbox at Sandbox.Punk Punk. It's very first-draftish, and needs quite a bit of work, but I think it's a decent starting place. I've limited it to punkpunk genres I'm personally familiar with for now, as I'm pretty sure none of them will need further debate.

The rest...we can discuss.

Obviously, the main description could use work as well; as I say, this is just a starting place.

Lets see...

• Elfpunk is a thing: Elves and other established humanoid faerie / tolken fantasy races in an Urban Fantasy setting, No monsters like werewolves or original races but there might be dragons and such. Think I Couldnt Become A Hero So I Reluctantly Decided To Get A Job.
• Formica Punk what we call Cassette Futurism is also a thing.
• Desert Punk is a valid one, made famous by a manga of the same name.
• Myth Punk is a growing one that was coined in like 2005 or 2006.
• Post Apocalyptic Punk is a thing but not under our current bad pun title The Apunkalypse, think Fallout.

edited 26th Mar '18 2:33:37 AM by Memers

A couple of those appear to be terms used by a single creator for their own works. Which means we need to discuss what our inclusion criteria are before adding them. I do lean towards inclusiveness, but this needs to be a community decision.

• Elf Punk has clearly made it; I added it.
• Formica Punk appears to be used by a French company, Bouletcorp. Cassette Futurism appears to be the more-established term. I have mixed feelings mainly because another term seems to be more prevelant.
• Desert Punk is indeed the name of a work—and I'm not finding much evidence that it's used as anything else. Much like Sky Punk above. I'm not sure why we should include this but exclude the latter.
• Myth Punk appears to a single-author label, used by Catherynne M. Valente. On the other hand, it seems to be gaining popularity, and does not have a competing name (unlike Formica Punk), so I'm leaning towards acceptance.
• Post Apocalyptic Punk doesn't seem to give me a lot of ghits. I'm dubious.

Desert Punk seems by description to basically be "setting: desert world", "desert world" usually taking the form of a Single-Biome Planet. It's also a pile of ZCEs.

Addendum: Earliest version in the Wayback Machine, which predates YKTTW and similarly is more about desert planets as a subtrope of Single-Biome Planet than about anything relating to a punk genre. I'm putting this one down to Trope-Namer Syndrome.

edited 26th Mar '18 12:01:25 PM by StarSword

Edited the sandbox. I dont think cassette futurism quite counts, if nothing else because it isn't called x-punk, which should be the primary factor. aesthetically it also seems to have significant overlap with normal cyberpunk, and doesnt really have much of a technological level associated with it.

I'm not sure what desert punk would be besides cattle punk and the apunkalypse. The manga seems pretty apunkalyptic though. If people are calling the apunkalypse desert punk then it would merit inclusion, but otherwise no.

I dont think post apocalyptic punk is a thing. Fallout is an amalglam of atom punk and apunkalypse, i dont think that merits its own topic

Post Apocalyptic Punk is Apunkalypse just with an appropriate name.

if we're insistant on making apunkalypse a punk genre i think it may be better/ easier to appropriate desert punk. Apunkalypse links to desert punk already, and there's significant overlap, plus desert punk seems like it has wider out of site use. List wasteland punk and post apocalyptic punk as alternate titles. you can differentiate from apunkalypse by focusing less on the punk fashion and more on the -punk technology. Like mad max is post apocalyptic dieselpunk while fallout is post apocalyptic atom punk.

I am fine with that.

Even very diverse Sci Fi like Star Craft go the Desert Punk style on Desert planets like Mar Sara.

The only issue is Post-Apunkalyptic Armor which should be more the established term 'Post-Apocalyptic Raider'.

edited 27th Mar '18 4:49:00 AM by Memers

We shouldn't be making examples. We should be documenting existing examples. Unless there's evidence that "Desert Punk" or "Post-Apocalyptic Punk" are real terms that people actually use outside of this site, we shouldn't list them. And I couldn't find evidence for either one. (Although results for "Desert Punk" may have been hidden by the work which bears that name, so I'm willing to look at counter-evidence.)

However, my google-fu suggests that Decopunk is definitely a thing. I'm undecided about Sandal Punk and Stonepunk—they seem to have some currency, and are even listed on The Other Wiki, This is not conclusive, since their page on cyberpunk derivatives appears to be controversial and frequently edited, but it's suggestive. My feeling from the search results is that Sandal Punk looks like the more established of the two, and I support its inclusion. I'm undecided about Stonepunk.

The thing with sandalpunk and stonepunk is that the examples we have refer to works that are in no way intended to be punk, eg. The flintstones being stonepunk or clash of the titans being sandalpunk, and besides those there arent that many.