Anyone here into Steampunk?
Discussion
sparkythecat said:
Last weekend I chanced upon a Steampunk Festival. It appeared to be just an excuse for mainly middle aged people to don fancy dress involving hats and goggles.
I understand it's roots are in fantasy science fiction, but, is it just harmless dressing up games for grown- ups, or is there more to it than that?
Morecambe? Saw all this. Were you there for the 10k?I understand it's roots are in fantasy science fiction, but, is it just harmless dressing up games for grown- ups, or is there more to it than that?
sparkythecat said:
Last weekend I chanced upon a Steampunk Festival. It appeared to be just an excuse for mainly middle aged people to don fancy dress involving hats and goggles.
I understand it's roots are in fantasy science fiction, but, is it just harmless dressing up games for grown- ups, or is there more to it than that?
It's all sorts of things. I understand it's roots are in fantasy science fiction, but, is it just harmless dressing up games for grown- ups, or is there more to it than that?
As you say, its roots are in speculative fiction / alternate history fiction, which "incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery" (to quote Wikipedia).
Although electronics aren't strictly part of Steampunk, you'll often see valves and Nixie tubes too.
There is, as you have observed, a LARP element in the form of Steampunk Fashion which is indeed dressing up. No different from any other form of Cosplay (including Goodwood Revival, as I mentioned earlier).
Also there is a design aesthetic, which incorporates lots of brass, wood, brown leather, gears, and the like. This keyboard would be an example of that:
http://steampunkworkshop.com/yaspkb-yet-another-st...
There is a related genre of Dieselpunk which is more inter-war, and has a 1930's aesthetic. If you've ever seen the film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie) then that would be a good example of Dieselpunk.
Steampunk isn't really my cup of tea, but I quite like the Dieselpunk vibe, and the whole Raygun Gothic retro-futurism vibe that you see in games like Fallout and Bioshock. But I digress.
Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Monday 18th June 20:51
Clockwork Cupcake said:
HannsG said:
These people don't have jobs or kids I assume?
Too much time in their hands obviously
Shouldn't you be doing something more worthy than posting on an internet forum? Too much time on your hands obviously. Too much time in their hands obviously
No live and let live round these parts
ETA: I couldn’t pull it off but have always liked the steam punk aesthetic - partly as a keen history student. Never heard of dieselpunk- but a quick google shows good stuff
Edited by Vocal Minority on Tuesday 19th June 06:19
The other thing that's worth pointing out is why it's steam 'punk' - the terms was coined by Kevin Jeter as a companion term to 'cyberpunk'. That was science fiction portraying a grimy, dystopian-verging potrayal of a high-tech future (think Bladerunner, Hackers, Total Recall and Altered Carbon). There was often an anti-establishment, radical and lefty vibe to such work,. Hence 'punk'. The protaganists were usually those who were on the 'losing side' of the society being protrayed and often worked to overthrow it (not always successfully). The idea was to explore the possible negative outcomes of technology by extrapolating and exaggerating them.
Steampunk was originally the same sort of thing but exploring industrial capitalism by setting the scene in an exaggerated version of Victorian Britain, when unfettered laissez-faire capitalism was at its height in reality and then going "what if it was never reformed?" So the early steampunk works were all similarly critical of the world they were portraying, just like cyberpunk, and usually had the aim of drawing parallels to the modern (1970s) world by showing the same issues in an exaggerated form.
Then other writers and artists seized on the aesthetic of steampunk rather than the underlying message and the term was back-applied to 'retro-futuristic' Victoriana like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, with lots of new works being all 'steam' and no 'punk'. They tend to be "British Empire but with difference engines and lots of gears because it looks cool" which is fine, but makes a lot of early-generation steampunk enthusiasts very salty because the whole original point of the genre was to explore the issues inherent in the aesthetic, rather than using it as a means to tell cool stories about upper-class professors with handlebar moustaches wearing top hats and goggles and flying around in steam-powered airships.
'Proper' steampunk would create a world where every household had a steam-powered difference engine, the streets were full of steam cars, the skies were full of steam airships and cargo was shipped by Exxon Valdez-scale steamships and then ask "where was all the coal coming from? How much pollution must there be in steampunk London? Where's all the labour coming to build and maintain these machines? Who profits from the invention of the difference engine? Has it led to industrial automation? If so, what's happened to the surplus labour? Is there an underclass of unemployed, machine-hating Anarcho-Luddites? Are wages being driven down by competition from automated machines? Is there a class of super-rich who escape the smoke-choked hellhole of the cities and fly off to the Caribbean in their zeppelins while the poor toil for a pitance in their coal mines and goggle factories? Will this lead to revolution? If not, why not? Is this an oppressive society to keep the underclass in check? Or has revolution already happened, so the story is taking place in a socialist steampunk industrial society? What problems does that have?"
But a lot of modern steampunk is just 'the modern information age but everything's made of brass and runs on steam!!!' Not all of it - China Mieville's Bas Lag novels are very 'punky' steampunk-mixed-with-fantasy but without being pure political polemics, but the implications of the aesthetic choices are fully considered and affect the events.
Steampunk was originally the same sort of thing but exploring industrial capitalism by setting the scene in an exaggerated version of Victorian Britain, when unfettered laissez-faire capitalism was at its height in reality and then going "what if it was never reformed?" So the early steampunk works were all similarly critical of the world they were portraying, just like cyberpunk, and usually had the aim of drawing parallels to the modern (1970s) world by showing the same issues in an exaggerated form.
Then other writers and artists seized on the aesthetic of steampunk rather than the underlying message and the term was back-applied to 'retro-futuristic' Victoriana like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, with lots of new works being all 'steam' and no 'punk'. They tend to be "British Empire but with difference engines and lots of gears because it looks cool" which is fine, but makes a lot of early-generation steampunk enthusiasts very salty because the whole original point of the genre was to explore the issues inherent in the aesthetic, rather than using it as a means to tell cool stories about upper-class professors with handlebar moustaches wearing top hats and goggles and flying around in steam-powered airships.
'Proper' steampunk would create a world where every household had a steam-powered difference engine, the streets were full of steam cars, the skies were full of steam airships and cargo was shipped by Exxon Valdez-scale steamships and then ask "where was all the coal coming from? How much pollution must there be in steampunk London? Where's all the labour coming to build and maintain these machines? Who profits from the invention of the difference engine? Has it led to industrial automation? If so, what's happened to the surplus labour? Is there an underclass of unemployed, machine-hating Anarcho-Luddites? Are wages being driven down by competition from automated machines? Is there a class of super-rich who escape the smoke-choked hellhole of the cities and fly off to the Caribbean in their zeppelins while the poor toil for a pitance in their coal mines and goggle factories? Will this lead to revolution? If not, why not? Is this an oppressive society to keep the underclass in check? Or has revolution already happened, so the story is taking place in a socialist steampunk industrial society? What problems does that have?"
But a lot of modern steampunk is just 'the modern information age but everything's made of brass and runs on steam!!!' Not all of it - China Mieville's Bas Lag novels are very 'punky' steampunk-mixed-with-fantasy but without being pure political polemics, but the implications of the aesthetic choices are fully considered and affect the events.
SlowcoachIII said:
There’s Steampunk music too, Professor Elemental is one of the big ones.
https://youtu.be/0iRTB-FTMdk
well I'll put my hand up and say I watched a few videos. I also asked Alexa to play it this morning while I sorted all the kids breakfasts out etc. https://youtu.be/0iRTB-FTMdk
I actually think, pretty damn good and quite entertaining. I could sit with a few beers and friends and listen to that, or go to a gig. But I and we always loved ripping yarns, python, enid blyton and all that sort of stuff
I'm going to listen to some more of it. Mind you I'm currently listening to a lot of "public service broadcasting"- so I do like stuff that's a big different from time to time.
conversely I've just seen a friend in London post on FB about going to see is it jay Z or Rhianna or Beyonnce or some folk of that ilk.
I'd rather (aptly) be slowly run over by a steamroller or hit with a steam hammer than listen to that utter dross.
I get steampunk, I think its interesting. they have a steampunk festival near me in Haworth. but alas no ladies as shown in this thread. Think big heffers who if they weren't doing steam punk, it'd be goth. And I love a goth, who doesn't love a sexy goth.
CrutyRammers said:
2xChevrons said:
stuff
Great post, sir 
I'd be one of those to make the steampunk OGs weep into their gin, though. I love the futurism aspect of it - clockwork and steam and valves, unlikely flying machines and archaic technologies. Somewhat similar to how Discworld operates.
Usget said:
Yeah this!
I'd be one of those to make the steampunk OGs weep into their gin, though. I love the futurism aspect of it - clockwork and steam and valves, unlikely flying machines and archaic technologies. Somewhat similar to how Discworld operates.
There's nothing 'wrong' (by the standards of early steampunk, of course) with loving the aesthetic. It's a cool aesthetic, especially if you have an underlying liking for/appreciation of the engineering and machinery that it's based on. That's partly why the original steampunk authors chose the setting - it makes a great basis for storytelling and can mix sci-fi, history, fantasy, action etc. etc. I'd be one of those to make the steampunk OGs weep into their gin, though. I love the futurism aspect of it - clockwork and steam and valves, unlikely flying machines and archaic technologies. Somewhat similar to how Discworld operates.
It's just that a lot of present-day steampunk not only ignores the genre's origins (usually through ignorance - the term has largely outgrown its original meaning and basically refers purely to the aesthetic now) but completely subverts it. There's a lot of semi-ironic pith helmets, Union Jacks, tea-drinking off miniature dirigible-suspended cake stands and so on which smacks of picking the 'fun' bits of British colonialism, while 95% of the characters people create for roleplaying steampunk have titles and triple-barreled surnames. So it's the complete opposite of what the people who created the genre were about.
I like both types of steampunk but the purely aesthetic kind can get tiresome, especially when you know how good stories can be if they properly engage with the setting. There was a short-lived steampunk book series (can't remember what it was called now) which was basically 'private detective and unusually liberated female assistant solve crimes in steampunk London'. The stories were fine in themselves but beyond being able to write descriptions of zeppelins and 'road trains' and automated difference-engine powered vacuum cleaners the setting had zero impact on the characters, plot or events. The author could have just set the novels in historial 1890s London and they would have played out exactly the same.
If you are of a scientific / IT persuasion, I can thoroughly recommend "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" by Sydney Padua
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sydney-...
It's a cartoon series that takes an affectionate and not-at-all-serious "what if?" look at the fictional adventures of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, had Ada Lovelace not died so young.
Wry, amusing, and rather sweet. I have quite a soft spot for it.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sydney-...
It's a cartoon series that takes an affectionate and not-at-all-serious "what if?" look at the fictional adventures of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, had Ada Lovelace not died so young.
Wry, amusing, and rather sweet. I have quite a soft spot for it.
ofnallnthe dressing up type things this seems to be the most harmless and some what eccentric fun. Furries, rubber masks, adult babies etc all makes me feel a bit sick. This sort of sits in the battle reenactment category of my thought process. You want to dress up like sherlock Holmes the Downey Jr version on you go.
Films like league of extraordinary gentlemen spring to mind when I think of steam punk. There was a don't tell the bride episode where the theme was steam punk. Groom dressed as a steam punk samurai and the brides dress had angle wings (romeo an juliet style). If you like it all well an good have fun enjoy it I say
Films like league of extraordinary gentlemen spring to mind when I think of steam punk. There was a don't tell the bride episode where the theme was steam punk. Groom dressed as a steam punk samurai and the brides dress had angle wings (romeo an juliet style). If you like it all well an good have fun enjoy it I say
Gecko1978 said:
Furries, rubber masks, adult babies etc all makes me feel a bit sick.
Can't say it bothers me, to be honest. Not my cup of tea, but if consenting adults want to get their jollies in whatever way floats their boat, then I'm happy to let them get on with it. So long as they're not hurting anyone (unless they want to be hurt, in the case of BDSM) then let them get on with it. I don't really get the hate for furries, tbh.
(I agree that Adult Babies is extremely odd, though. But, as I said, whatever floats your boat if between consenting adults)
Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Tuesday 19th June 19:52
Clockwork Cupcake said:
Gecko1978 said:
Furries, rubber masks, adult babies etc all makes me feel a bit sick.
Can't say it bothers me, to be honest. Not my cup of tea, but if consenting adults want to get their jollies in whatever way floats their boat, then I'm happy to let them get on with it. So long as they're not hurting anyone (unless they want to be hurt, in the case of BDSM) then let them get on with it. I don't really get the hate for furries, tbh.
You are right consenting adults do what you like though extream BDSM could cause you legal issues (R v Brown and others from uni days I think the case law was)
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