Here’s a thing I’ve had around in my head for a while!
Okay, so I’m pretty sure that by now everyone at least is aware of Steampunk, with it’s completely awesome Victorian sci-fi aesthetic. But what I want to see is Solarpunk – a plausible near-future sci-fi genre, which I like to imagine as based on updated Art Nouveau, Victorian, and Edwardian aesthetics, combined with a green and renewable energy movement to create a world in which children grow up being taught about building electronic tech as well as food gardening and other skills, and people have come back around to appreciating artisans and craftspeople, from stonemasons and smithies, to dress makers and jewelers, and everyone in between. A balance of sustainable energy-powered tech, environmental cities, and wicked cool aesthetics.
A lot of people seem to share a vision of futuristic tech and architecture that looks a lot like an ipod – smooth and geometrical and white. Which imo is a little boring and sterile, which is why I picked out an Art Nouveau aesthetic for this.
With energy costs at a low, I like to imagine people being more inclined to focus their expendable income on the arts!
Aesthetically my vision of solarpunk is very similar to steampunk, but with electronic technology, and an Art Nouveau veneer.
So here are some buzz words~
Natural colors! Art Nouveau! Handcrafted wares! Tailors and dressmakers! Streetcars! Airships! Stained glass window solar panels!!! Education in tech and food growing! Less corporate capitalism, and more small businesses! Solar rooftops and roadways! Communal greenhouses on top of apartments! Electric cars with old-fashioned looks! No-cars-allowed walkways lined with independent shops! Renewable energy-powered Art Nouveau-styled tech life!
Can you imagine how pretty it would be to have stained glass windows everywhere that are actually solar panels? The tech is already headed in that direction! Or how about wide-brim hats, or parasols that are topped with discreet solar panel tech incorporated into the design, with ports you can stick your phone charger in to?
(((Character art by me; click the cityscape pieces to see artist names)))
I wish more people got this because some ‘low-empathy’ people are the most compassionate and sympathetic in the universe, and I hate it when that’s taken to mean ‘unfeeling and probably hostile’ when nothing could be further from the truth
Or, as my dad put it,
Sympathy: I know how you feel Empathy: I feel how you feel Compassion: is there anything I can do to help?
Sympathy: that sucks bro empathy: I feel that compassion: want me to send you some puppy and kitten pictures to make you feel better?
Ok so imagine your fantasy setting with your typical giant spiders.
Ok, now imagine that these spiders have largely been domesticated for their incredibly valuable silk. They help make clothes, rope, textiles, even ARMOR. They’re almost treated like carnivorous cows in the regions that can support them. They might even name these girls the classic names like “Bessie”. They’re great mothers and produce many young; useful for trade and… even food if you like The Crunch.
People in this world are hardly afraid of big spiders the same as we’re hardly afraid of big dogs. Wary of wild ones, but not scream and cry terrified. Smaller spiders…it depends. Would you be scared if you suddenly saw a tiny cow crawling on your wall? The only type of spider people collectively fear are the hunting types: the ones that don’t spin webs, and instead attack their prey with brute force and a much stronger venom.
These large domestic spiders are incredibly lazy. They’ll sit in their webs and wait for their handlers to put their food on the web. Unless you get tangled, they don’t see you as food. This makes them great guards as well. They build traps for you. The venom isn’t deadly to humans…but can still be used as a weapon or in medicine. They’re just so damn useful that millennia ago, people put aside their instinctual fear just to get those sweet benefits.
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