Punk Is Dead. Long Live Steampunk!

Thank you for your response.

Let me start by saying I have read the article you quoted, and many of his other articles. I have read many of yours too. Your historical pieces are very good (I too am a history lover, with a deep fascination more with the way people thought and lived during each era, than with the clinical dates). I have read other blogs, forums and media coverage of the scene too.

All seem to point to the same thing. You and Mr. Fisk have many sililarities in both of your outlook and passion for the scene. Stating you like it as just a dress up nostalgia, when you are editor of an online magazine dedicated to the scene, write on the history, the philosophies and literature, the nuances, and write pieces where you yourself are politicizing and beimg an activist, such as the one above, I think its a downplay on your actual views.

One of the underlying currents and between-the-lines drives right now on most blogs, forums and media about Steampunk in the last year is an actual misuse and misdefinition of the scene, which is not coming from writers like yourself and Mr. Fisk. In fact I believe you both, with many others, are all saying the same thing, but struggling with it, as it is a very charged topic. That is the context. I did not miss it.

In the last few years, both West Coast and East Coast, and several in between, the Steampunk movement has been rocked by sexual consent and assault issues. Persons in the scene have misused their high positions to do the actual and real harm, not just to many individual that they preyed on, but to the scene itself. They changed it from a fun, family-like and -friendly, artistic and creative, philosophical and adventurous scene, into something more like their own predatory playground. It has become something very different from the goid both you and Mr. Fisk describe. Many of these same persons have used the ‘it’s just fun and dress up, don’t ruin it’ as a way to shut down those speaking up, and to convince others that they should shut them down too. Many people through the years, as it is coming out more and more, were actually pushed from the scene, targetted, scapegoated, by the perpetrators, for doing the right thing in speaking up and out, trying to save a good thing from becoming something it should never have been, a victim rich environment for predators.

I am not suggesting that you wrote this to do such a thing, but it does not help and is divisive, far more than the articles and writers you mentioned, simply because it assists them. Even if it was unrelated and unbeknownst.

Again, I will state, I have read the articles, blogs, not just of Mr. Fisk and yourself, but of many, and I do not think you were quoting them in context. They, like many, including yourself, are struggling to preserve something good. And broach a difficult topic that comes with very real and very unfair social consequences to the victims and folks brave enough to speak up about.

I think you and folks like Mr. Fisk are very much the same in your outlook and drive and passion and should be coming together, to save it, not competitively attacking each others philosophies. The scene is in jeopardy and I believe you both feel it. I do not think you would have written this article if on some level you did not.

Thank you again for taking the time to read and respond. And again, keep up the great work.

Hello,

In the last couple weeks I discovered your website and have been reading some of the many articles. Some beautiful, some fascinating, and some… well, quite puzzling. So, I have some questions.

I’m not sure if this is the place to post the questions, but it seems as good as any since this is the first article posted under “Steampunk” and what puzzles me falls in that category.

To give some background, (and show off my own ignorance) I should explain that I really haven’t been aware of the Alternate History genre and fandom as a thing. I’ve seen some references to it, and read some comics, but I hadn’t been aware of it more than just peripherally.

My wife and I are cartoonists, and one day, she was joking about how, since the sexual revolution, our society has gotten kinda lewd and rude, and the internet has only pushed things farther. So, the question came up about, what will happen when the pendulum of human taste starts to swing the other way…?

So, to continue the joke, we made up the Neo-Victorian movement. (Honestly, we thought we made it up.)

A few years later, we were shocked when we ran into an immaculately dressed lady at a Sci-Fi con who told us that it was real! Honestly, I think we laughed for days over that!

In any case, I started putting Neo-Victorian characters in my comic strip. I kind of enjoy putting up strange and unusual cultures, because it’s a fun mental exercise to create them with worldbuilding.
A bit like Star Trek’s, “What if you find a planet full of people who believe their civilization was created by ancient aliens?” Or a planet where the Spanish Empire ruled? or in this case, where Victorian morals still ruled?

Now, at the time I suddenly started getting some rather angry comments about Victorian Politics. Not that I had any Victorian politics in my comic, which is set in the year 2066. But, I had zero idea where the criticism was coming from. Utterly confusing!

It wasn’t until I started reading your site that I began to understand that Steampunk had an audience that is (or was) so politically charged up. And frankly, I guess I still don’t understand it.

In other articles, you mention the frustration with the stereotype of Alternate History stories, about Nazis or other groups of super nasties that are still causing trouble. To my mind, those stories are basically driven by the idea of fighting bad guys who are dead and gone and no one will defend. Enemies who it’s perfectly socially acceptable to hate and want to destroy.

Victorian Politicians morals and the social mores of over 100 years ago are also easy targets. No one will be offended by opposing slavery or women’s right to vote, or a woman showing her ankle.
HG Wells already won those battles. But the easy victory and mustache twirling villains of Victorian Politics are going to have a big appeal to activists, so I can understand the draw.

But, then I get confused. If some people are drawn to the idea of Tearing Down Victorian Villains and Values, what would the appeal of reading about such a world be to the people who want to destroy it? It would be like reading a book about Nazis, just so you can destroy them? What would the appeal be? If the culture the Victorians live in repels one, then why would one want to read about it?

It makes my head hurt.

Frankly, I came up with the Neo-Victorians in my story because it was fun. That and the idea of people wanting to make the world a more polite and sane place appeals to me. As the noted philosopher Mike Tyson (!) observed:
People today have gotten way too comfortable disrespecting others and not getting punched in the face for it. 😉 So, I can see the appeal of Neo-Victorian social graces.

Anyway, after all this I guess the question that I’ve been wondering about is: Did I get it right? I’m kind of a non-conformist, so I didn’t set out to copy someone’s ideas of what a Neo-Victorian society would be like. I just started making it up as I went along, blissfully unaware others were following similar paths. I had no idea this was a Trope.