Urban Occult Punk
“Peace for whom?”
We are demanded to “preserve the peace,” to not rock the boat, to stay quiet while others are bullied, marginalized, and broken. This kind of peace works great for the oppressor. It’s a peace that ensures the comfort of the privileged and the suffocating silence of a status quo that benefits the powerful at the expense of everyone else.
We reject this peace. We are the storm breaks this false peace.
Urban Occult Punk is a genre that must exist. It’s not just an aesthetic; it’s a response. It’s a rebellion against a modern, 21st-century world that demands conformity while gifting only spiritual isolation.
The Pillars of Our Punk
Urban Occult Punk supported by three pillars, each uniquely loved for their contribution to our genre:
The Urban. Behold our multifarious and protean setting. It’s the 21st-century modern world, the concrete and steel, the neon and the static, the crowded subways, and the digital isolation that we’ve all come to know and love. It’s the reality of a life lived in a system that tries to pave over all individuality, history, and power for the benefit of a select and deeply disconnected few.
The Occult. Behold our most versatile weapon. This isn’t the spic-and-span magic of hidden societies or fantastical schools hidden away by transphobic witches. This is the low magic, the grit. It’s power ground from pain, not revealed from on high. It’s sigils spray-painted in alleys, rituals performed in abandoned warehouses, and power drawn from the forgotten genii loci of a place. It’s spirituality as a brazen act of defiance against a sterile, corporate, and technological world that tells us there’s nothing left to believe in.
The Punk. Behold our despised ethos. It is the why that inspires us to write and that shoves our characters across their narratives. Punk is anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, and fiercely individualistic. It is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) philosophy. When the world refuses to grant you community, Punk says, “Build your own, motherfucker.” When the system denies you power, Punk says, “Make your own and stop being a bitch.” It is the angry, screaming, compassionate heart of the genre.
Why This Genre? And Why Now? And Why Did You Make Me Read All This? What Kind of a Monst—
Urban Occult Punk fills a gap left by its older cousins. And we’re just gonna go ahead and slide on in here....
*upsets Urban Fantasy and Cyberpunk as she pushes them out of her way with her wiggling butt*
We’re not Urban Fantasy.
Urban Fantasy is often about hidden magical worlds co-existing with ours. The rebellion is in knowing the secret. In Urban Occult Punk, the rebellion is in using power. The magic isn’t a secret to be kept; it’s a weapon to be aimed directly at the systems of oppression.
And the systems sure as fuck understand and will wield that power with impunity if we allow them to. The local preacher isn’t kidding about healing the sick and about surviving cobra snake bites. The goth magician on Las Vegas Strip did actually just walk through that glass. That corporation you hate is actually run by a demon who puts cursed rat flesh into all our cereal to cause us to sin. Meanwhile, a bank employs magi to enchant their commercials and make an entire population of people go apply for loans. And the president has magi on call, too, in case of supernatural emergencies.
All over the real world, real people with rational minds, intelligent and well-educated people, believe that possession, magic, astrology, ghosts, mediums, and psychic powers are a part of our everyday lives. We’re anything but a secular, “disbelieving” society. Need proof? A 2020 Gallup poll asked Americans whether they’d vote for a “well-qualified” candidate from another group of people. An atheist candidate rated second lowest, immediately after Muslim, but at least higher than socialists—you know, the group we’ve specifically spent half a century demonizing. So yeah, nah. We ain’t secular.
And if magic is an arms race, then let’s kick the tires and light the fires, baby. We’ve got systems to burn. 🔥
We’re not Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk’s rebellion is technological and transhumanistic. Which is awesome, and we support it wholeheartedly. But in Urban Occult Punk the real rebellion is a psychospiritual one. In a world obsessed with the digital communication, social media, and performative allyship, the greatest power lies in the analog, the ancient, the spiritual, and the human. Urban Occult Punk tells stories about the soul fighting back against the grinder that the world around us has grown into.
Urban Occult Punk is a genre for the disenfranchised. It’s for those who look at the “peaceful” world around them and want to scream because all they see is a glaring, maddeningly hilarious lie. It gives voice to that fury, and it gives a framework for the rebellion that must follow it.
Otherwise, what the fuck are we even doing?
It’s not just about magic in the city. It’s about finding the magic in the gutter and using it to tear down the walls.