1. Nelson F Gonzalez says:

    Love the article Tim, Thanks for writing it!
    I was encouraged and inspired by it, as a person who one day may write fiction for God’s glory and who likes the fantasy & sci-fi genre.
    I’m just starting to read Christian fiction in these areas and do want the hope and light that the Christian faith can bring, without the too much safe, milktoast story that is devoid of realism.
    Reading LOTR, The Fellowship of the Ring and love it. Just the kind of Christian book I want to read. : )

    • Tim P. says:

      So glad my article was encouraging to you, Nelson! Keep enjoying Lord of the Rings. In my opinion, it keeps getting even better as it goes on.

  2. I would like to posit the inclusion of noblebright in the article as different from hopepunk. Noblebright is also explicitly in opposition to grimdark in ethos (not that it’s always happy fluffy unicorns and rainbows, but that it’s worth choosing kindness, generosity, and sacrificial love even when it’s painful and looks hopeless, because it makes the world a better place).

    However, Hopepunk is explicitly born out of an anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-conservative Christian value system (and is explicitly pro-LGBTQ+), while Noblebright strives to be relatively apolitical but tends toward much more conservative values (and I’m sort of the unofficial head of a very unorganized movement, and I am a conservative Christian with traditional views of marriage, gender identity, etc.). There have been people who identified as noblebright who did not hold to these values, and I do not want to tell them “no” because the books for the most part read as noblebright to me. But for the most part, the noblebright movement has a more traditionally Christian interpretation of “good” than hopepunk does.

    There was an article on Vox that really mischaracterized the noblebright movement as about royalty/nobility and hopepunk as the new, better alternative. But noblebright was always about nobility of character and the way that even small characters (like hobbits!) have the ability and responsibility to choose good and selflessness over selfishness and evil.

    Two articles I’d like to point to for more info about noblebright are: https://noblebright.org/noblebright-fantasy-an-overview/ (which I wrote several years ago) and https://noblebright.org/fantasy-time-writers-manifesto/ (by Nicholas Kotar)

  3. All this emphasis on sweetness and light and feel goodism disturbed me for years. Before the internet made communities like this possible.
    I wondered why the prairie romances bugged me so much. Weren’t they just obeying Philippians 4:8 by focusing on goodness?
    Then I realized I disliked the “messages” of the CBA because in denying darkness existed it was untrue. Which is against what Phil. 4:8 teaches.
    Even the Bible would not pass muster with the CBA because of how dark many stories get.

  4. Michelle says:

    Fabulous insights, Tim. Thanks.

What say you?