Lariria

@Ligana5

She/Her They/Them Fae/faer

Commie non-binary trans woman.

Lariria @Ligana57/6/2024, 6:12 PM

Aura @MOOMANiBE

Aura @MOOMANiBE7/6/2024, 5:45 PM

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

Aura @MOOMANiBE7/6/2024, 5:49 PM

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

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Pim de Groot @mifune7/6/2024, 6:20 PM

They also pick the worst gears possible, the ones with the square teeth. That's not how I was taught how to calculate and design gears at engineering school. The whole thing is cargo cult Victorian engineering.

@mcgiants7/6/2024, 6:51 PM

I feel like this is a disconnect between the literary genre of steampunk vs the widespread influence. That said, this feeling is based on friends into reading steampunk and no first hand knowledge.

JKDarkside @JK-Darkside7/6/2024, 7:19 PM

I think the best steampunk is the stuff that is steampunk but doesn't push that. Syberia is a great example, which I think most people just subconsciously know as The Mammoth Adventure and forget that the big thing that moves the story is Kate finding the various gear based robots and contraptions laid all over old Europe by their creator. Even The World Before still has this as a major theme while being mainly focused on the legacy of WWII, the creator's odd inventions popping up all over the place as symbols of the old and dying world.