This is maybe a spicy take but I think the defining aspect of the steampunk genre is a lack of interest in any of the component elements that it jams together and pretty much all fiction would be better off discarding steampunk and instead figuring out what individual elements of the conceit they actually think are interesting and worth examining
There was a guy at a local con who sold "steampunk watches" for years. They were actual formerly-working watches with all the innards removed and a bunch of randomly sized gears poured in with glue. Like they'd been spilled all over the floor. This was somehow more steampunk than a watch that functioned at all because Gears. That is steampunk to me
I feel like a lot of people never finished reading The Difference Engine because if they did then they would know that mass production of steam power would cause a climate apocalypse lol
This is literally how I differentiate steampunk (and other *punks like it) from cyberpunk and its derivatives in my Enthusiastic Rest episode on the topic.
