The term ‘punk’ has a specific meaning, but for some genres is used inappropriately. There’s not really any ‘punk’ in steampunk or dieselpunk, but the term is appropriate for cyber and solarpunk, which are both ideas of how an individual can rebel against the control of a state or authoritative machine by using its own technology against them.

Cyberpunk assumes the world continues down the road of consolidation and hypercapitalism, where as Solarpunk is hopeful that we can rebel against the cyberpunk future, and that individual change can bring about a future worth living in.

Solarpunk could almost be described as Techno-Anarchism, embracing technology (especially green tech) to liberate the individual and the world.

Solarpunk was coined 15 years ago at this point - its just a subgenre of a greater genre. Nothing over used about it at all.

We need words for the things we want and the communities around those ideas.

I know that cyberpunk is often overused

can’t say I’ve personally heard of anything else having the “punk” postfix conjunction besides steampunk and solarpunk

I know that steampunk is kinda common but once you get to solarpunk is there anything else?

• after writing this out I realized there’s probably more as all of these (if I remembered correctly) originated out of science-fiction (or just fiction) literature

also sidetangent: I could be wrong but doesn’t the Final Fantasy series have ties to solarpunk or is this wrong? (kinda feels close but not quite)

going back to your main point I still don’t think the punk conjuntion is an overused trend, cyberpunk I could agree on based on the plethora of book, tv shows, movies, and games but for the rest I’m still unconvinced