Hopepunk was coined by author Alexandra Rowland in 2017 as the deliberate opposite of grimdark — a storytelling ethos built on radical kindness, gentle empathy, and what Rowland called "weaponized softness." Where grimdark insists cruelty is the only honest response to a broken world, hopepunk insists that choosing tenderness, cooperation, and care is itself an act of defiance.

Visually, hopepunk borrows the Art-Nouveau-adjacent register of its sibling movement, solarpunk: warm hand-drawn illustration, botanical printmaking texture, flowing whiplash curves, and a moss-and-honey palette that reads as living rather than sterile. The garden grows anyway.