Steampunk

Hello,

I hate dressing up. I hate it with passion since I was two or three years old. On the other hand I find the Steampunk subculture quite interesting. Hmm.

Regards
Gyro

 

Good luck with that.

 

Hello,

thank you .

Regards
Gyro

 

Hello,

that;s what I mean.

Regards
Gyro

 

Looks very practical. Also seems like a fitting attribute for someone called Gyro Gearloose :biggrin:

 

Hello,

some time in the future I need to craft me this little guy with the light bulb head .

Regards
Gyro

 

I find it interesting, too. Interesting that people would go to those lengths to be part of a group.

Lame.

 

I think the outfits and little contraptions they put together are neat, but I am far too lazy to get into it myself.

 

Hello,

indeed, some people put a lot of work into their stuff. Steampunk seems to attract people who like to tinker and play with materials and tools.

Regards
Gyro

 

i have a kind of love/hate relationship with it. On the one hand, i fucking love victoriana in general, and particularly like the fashion of the era, i also love things with gears and mechanisms and clockwork. This should make me love steampunk, but i find myself often left underwhelmed by the combination of the two.



in many ways, its the antithesis of cyberpunk. cyberpunk takes place in a world where traditional boundaries through which we make sense of the world are broken down. technology makes gender boundaries redundant, the line between man and machine is broken by the advance of biomechanics, countries and national borders are rendered meaningless by globalisation and the rise of continent-spanning mega-corporations. Even the sanctity of the individual is no longer concrete as virtual identities and realities compete with the "real"world. Cyberpunk paints pictures of post-modern dystopias where traditional assumptions and certainties are repeatedly and dramatically compromised.

steampunk, on the other hand, can be seen as being a reaction to just such a world, retreating, in the face of uncertainties, into a fantasy world where these certainties are re-affirmed. This, in my opinion, works both for and against the subculture:

On the plus side, the aesthetic is refreshing. in a world where technology is all becoming bland, homogenised, shiny, white and as tiny as we can possibly make it (as if we're trying to forget about or deny the power it has over our lives) with their functions hidden away whenever necessary and performed digitally wherever possible, Steampunk is an aesthetic kick in the opposite direction. Steampunk prizes the hand-made, the unique. things that are beautiful not because they hide their function away like an iwhatever(TM), but because they wear them proudly on their sleeves in the form of whizzing gears, clanking handles and liberal coatings of grease. This is an aesthetic plus for me.

Another plus is literary. For too long (largely, in my opinion, because cyberpunk failed to translate onto the big screen) SF has been stuck in the 70's. Re-hashing the same tired beige dystopias and irrelevant cold war or cliched ecological fears. Steampunk goes back to the source: HG Wells, Jules Verne the birth of science fiction. Its a fascinating place to draw from and a good kick up the arse for modern SF. SF of the Wells era was not happy-go-lucky, (the time machine ends with the heat death of the universe) but it was at least excited. advances in evolutionary science and the rise of marxism, as well as scientific discoveries about the galaxy meant that writers of that time were almost overwhelmed by the possibilities of the future. Once again, this is refreshing, when such a great deal of modern SF is almost hysterically gloomy. so thats another plus for steampunk. I certainly don't think that steampunk is the "next thing" in SF, but i do think that it will be invaluable in terms of shaping the "next thing" when it appears.

So far, so good. But the minus side? well, that stuff i was saying earlier about the re-affirmation of traditional boundaries? the victorian era was a master of those, gender boundaries never stricter, class boundaries too. moreover, racial boundaries were firmly affixed. could it be that the desire to retreat into steampunk worlds represents darker longings? i certainly see a lot of steampunk stuff that doesn't make me too optimistic in that regard. Military fetishism is all over the place, as is class roleplay (most steampunks with developed characters seem to have given them titles) even a (feigned, i hope) praise for the days of the old british empire (as a brit, this sort of thing sets off alarm bells.) probably i'm just being paranoid and all steampunks don't actually want all women to get back in the kitchen and all natives to give them all their gold, but it still puts me off slightly.



secondly, theres just something very twee about a lot of the stempunk that i seem to come across, something very homely and comfortable which belies the "punk" part of the title. I went to a steampunk fair pretty recently. mostly middle aged hippies selling assorted crap trinkets theyd made and were now selling at absurd prices. at one point people on a stage started "tea-duelling" putting biscuits in tea and hoping the submerged half of the bicuits didnt fall off. It was all so very, sickeningly, safe. let us remember how fucking miserable the victorian era was, the great stink, the violence, jack the fucking ripper, death in childbirth. its all very well dressing up on the weekends as "proffessor burpwattenger, purveyor of fine gentleman's couture" but In my opinion, steampunk needs to stop being so light and fluffy and earn the second half of its namesake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYZTvRgTupY"]THE MEN THAT WILL NOT BE BLAMED FOR NOTHING- GOGGLES [STEAMPUNK MUSIC] - YouTube

 

Hello.

I find steampunk to be a trashy yet innocent attempt, by a bunch of culture-less geeks, to create a new culture.

 

speaking of Steampunk, here's the greatest band ever (Steam Powered Giraffe)with yours truly

 

What's the point of having a point?

I can't be assed dressing up, but if I could, I still probably wouldn't. It does look badass though, those goggles that Fairlight posted are cool as hell. Incredibly impractical, they look like they'd get in the way of your peripheral vision, and I'd DEFINITELY manage to break off some of those cogs, but hey..

 

.....enjoyment?

 

those guys are just so totally cool. just to wear that makeup would be a trip. i'd end up having to scratch something and totally screw it up.

also, "just glue some gears on it" (steampunk joke for those who get it)

 

Hello,

I think I need a giraffe like that. And a girl with goggles .

It's on my books2read list.

I can understand that some people are having fun dressing up. For instance, I like playing in the woods, I like playing with older techniques for making tools or fire. I use plain lether boots, no fancy synthetic materials and I use flint and steel or a bow drill. That's all fun. But I don't dress up like a settler from the eigtheenhundreds. That's not fun, at least not for me .

Regards
Gyro