#cape punk

[artbyblastweave]

Assuming it means the same thing as words such as "steampunk", "cyberpunk", "atompunk", etc. What would a "capepunk" setting look like?

So I think that there's two kindsa settings that are being broadly gestured at when people append "punk" to something all willy-nilly. In the standard one, they're gesturing at a sci-fi universe with tech that's hooked into the aesthetics of a specific decade, or, alternatively, the actual tech-base of a decade super-charged and made capable of the impossible. Art Deco mecha, atomic rocketships, steam-powered prosthetics. Steampunk, Deiselpunk, Atompunk, Clockpunk. Cyberpunk itself is also starting to get hit with this a little bit as we become distant enough from 1980s technology for it to be similarly exaggerated and romanticized.

The other kind of setting is one that's entirely hooked into a line of technological development that doesn't have as much of real-life analogue and therefore has no visual referent to fall back on. These often end up paired with one of the decade-based punks in order for a look to cohere. Biopunk is an example of a common punk subspecies that gets hit with this. Twig and Leviathan are both alternate histories set in the 1910s and 20s, Bioshock is set in the 60s, John Dies at the End is set in the 2010s and the works of Giger could be set anywhen. All of these are clearly visually biopunk under the pornography logic of "I know it when I see it," all of them are wildly different in terms of their final output, all of them are similar in what they're saying or implying about hegemony and how weird technology intersects with power structures.

Under this logic, I think that "Cape Punk" would probably fall more cleanly into the second mold- like bioengineering, Superheroes aren't meaningfully a (social) technology that actually exists, there's no real-life moment to seize on and exaggerate. So we'd be talking about a setting that assumes the existence of, and the sociopolitical impact of, superheroes, with the visual language of those superheroes being a secondary concern, probably outsourced to whenever the story is actually set. Worm is a good example of this- it's the cape punk work to end all cape-punk works but for obvious reasons has no cohesive visual identity. The Venture Brothers, by contrast, is also capepunk but it's capepunk with an extremely specific visual identity informed by the tail end of the raygun gothic era ("atompunk") into Cassette Futurism (this is what they're starting to call the one for the 70s and 80s.) The Silver Age tapering into the Bronze, forever. Heroes, Misfits, and a couple others are awash in the visuals of the early 2000s, when costumes were largely both uncool and impractical from a costuming technology perspective, lack-of-aesthetic as aesthetic. By the nature of its project Astro City is hopscotching all over the timeline- they've got steampunks like Iron Horse, they've got cyberpunks like The Box, they got every kinda punk in there. All of this is very plug-and-play.

And, of course, circling back around to what I said last time- you gotta be careful not to let "Cape Punk" just become synonymous with "Superhero Fiction That's Doesn't Suck." Batman Beyond is interesting to look at here, because aesthetically, is the setting cyberpunk? Yeah, with shades of biopunk along for the ride. Is it thematically cyberpunk, interested in how that technology impacts society and intersects with power structures? Actually yeah, quite a lot of the time it is, at least superficially. But is the show meaningfully coloring outside the lines of a conventional-but-competently done superhero narrative? Well, no. Almost never. Maybe a little bit towards the end, centering the fucked up stuff that happened to Tim. But for the most part it's good, but it's also what it is. And that's fine.

[georgi-girl]

You know what would be cool?

A golden-age style superhero series where the heroes all have scary, lovecraftian, nightmare fuel aesthetics, and the villains all have sparkly, pastel, mahou shogo aesthetics.

[methoughtsphantom]

Danny adopts Jason and Dan kills the Joker au

Danny adopts Jason not because of the pit but because he sees how hard the guy goes after the Joker. At first Danny thinks nothing of it, but then Jason gets all the core vibes typical of wanting to avenge something. that would be fine except Jason is a bby ghost and the thing he wants to avenge is his own’s death. It’s a feeling Danny almost didn’t have to struggle with, being that a portal killed him (except it was the reason he immediately went to have beef with anyone that crossed the portal. They were essentially aided with the device that killed him and that made him feel… threatened? Frostbite didn’t explain it all that well) so yeah here’s Danny having a bit of a heart attack because the Red Hood is actively seeking to be in the same room as his murderer which baby ghosts are not allowed to what the fuck. He personally won’t do it, (cause he’s never killed someone) but he’s not above asking his older brother Dan to do it.

Danny: think of it as a favor I’m asking of u

Dan: it’s murder, that way surpasses a favor

Danny: 🥺 i’ll buy u a donut

Dan:

Dan: make it a half a dozen and you’re on

[probablyaparadox]

Shanks’ crew is really out here taking out every punk aesthetic pirate they see what did the punks ever do to you dress better than you???

[teacupballerina]

I'm surprised Akio survived his first confrontation with the Punks. Considering they probably tried to kill him and he doesn't use his powers really.

When talking fails, it's olé time.

He can manage a hell of a lot with that cape.

If the cape fails he will throw hands, which are not hands you want to catch, generally speaking

[sylvthetic]

Eclipse Outfit

january 2025 // pencil Eclipse's magical girl outfit, including design notes

[mistwalker-official]

Spent the last week back home on The Rock. Rejuvenated, respited, and re-inspired to get back to work on new music. Time to finish this new record.

Shoutout to Viscen for the new and extremely comfortable hoodie.

📸: @/plantgenitals

[afrogrunge]

[despertara]

Irene bro if you see this I want you to know I've been podcasting (talking loudly and emphatically to myself) abt that Grammy Gun post for Hours. I started ranting in the rb tags and then I got so mad I started a spreadsheet on my phone Yes I have the Excel app. No I did not finish my tags

[artbyblastweave]

You ever hear of the TV tropes term capepunk (full disclosure I kinda hate it, but given this is your wheelhouse I kind of wanted to know if you knew it)?

Familiar with it. It's an attempt to slot superhero fiction into what that site refers to as the "punk punk" lineage- cyberpunk, steampunk dieselpunk, atompunk, desert punk, clock punk, cassette punk, dungeon punk, etceterapunk.

I don't think it's completely useless. Almost everything on that list, no matter how niche, is gesturing at a genuine recurring aesthetic in genre fiction, and in the same way that steampunk in the original context is a mediation on existing science fiction that excludes the source texts of Jules Verne or HG Wells, Capepunk can be understood as superhero fiction that mediates on superhero fiction while excluding the "traditional" big-two comics canon. Or, in the sense that "Steampunk" or "Dieselpunk" and so on are often used to gesture at science-fiction worlds that adopt the aesthetics of specific decades wholesale, you can use Cape Punk to denote worlds where the worldbuilding is heavily rooted in the traditional aesthetics of superheroism. And every once in a while, you get someone who remembers the original context of the "-punk" suffix in cyberpunk as denoting a rebel against some flavor of sci-fi dystopic cultural hegemony, with "steampunk" having been developed to demonstrate that the aesthetics and sci-fi elements of cyberpunk were fungible but the underlying power dynamics were not. Through that lens, you can't throw a rock without hitting a mediation on the power dynamics of superhero fiction.

The hitch, of course, is that the Cape Punk entry on TvTropes contains basically every single superhero work you've ever heard of that isn't a big-two comic, and several big-two comics besides, and the MCU, and if your subgenre can so easily be deformed to include basically the entire genre outside some comics that no one reads, at a certain point you might be better off just calling a specific work "post-modern" so you don't get bogged down in taxonomic trench warfare. You can use it to broadly gesture, but at some point somebody is going to ask you to actually point with your finger

[hell0mega]

literally everyone in my life including my sister is always like "it wasn't a surprise when you came out as nonbinary" "you style is pretty mixed masc and femme" "i knew you were nonbinary when i first saw you" "you're they/them right? i was pretty sure but i thought i'd ask" meanwhile i'm like everyone at this grocery store thinks i am just some sort of strange straight woman. if only they knew.

[floresdepunk]

yeahhhh the city needs him !!!

i love spider gang shenanigans

in case my handwriting is too horrendous the test all say:

the text messages say:

GWANDA(*^ω^*): pls take it off, bro

PAVI !!!!o(｀ω´ )o: No !!! He’s Batman !!!

‘obie (≧∀≦)♡♡♡: ye@h; th3\ city-n33ds# <HIM”.?!/“

(((( yeah the city needs him ))))

tiny gwen: what is he doing

tiny hobie: i got him a cape ^^

tiny pav: oh! HAHA XD

between miles’ head and the phone, beginning script of batman (2021) monologue: “Thursday, October 31st. The streets are crowded for the holiday, even in the rain…”

on the left of the phone, lyrics to nirvana’s ‘something in the way’: “it’s ok to eat fish” + music notes

[illicitsandbagging]

Hmm… possible tw: The neck makeup kinda looks like scars a little bit. Anyway.

Fuck it. Selfies.

Oh! Edit: got the neck makeup idea from the twitch streamer Unholeh, and honestly I hadn’t figured out how to experience gender euphoria as a completely genderless person but uhh this worked ayy. Gonna be upset if I find out this is somehow problematic tbh

[characcoon]

the new town i'm living in rn has so many goths and punks and all that's between me and them is how absolutely fucking lazy i am.

[punkrockmixtapes]

Lagwagon - I Must Be Hateful