Steampunk

Anyone who is a bit  often in my presence probably already heard me talking about it (I tend to not shut up when I'm in some kind of mood), but let me explain anyway.

Steampunk is a retro-future/alternate-history genre. You go back to some time in history (in this case the industrial revolution/Victorian age) and you imagine how the current age would've looked if that style persisted until today. Add in some alchemy, some magic if you would like and build a story upon that.
This is originally very fitting for novels, where Steampunk actually started (Jules Verne is often addressed as the "father" of this genre), but lately also appears in art, fashion and design.
For more info, there's a Wiki on this and Google is still your friend.

Quite recently I got caught again in a sudden burst of appreciation for this and I started looking for more on it. I found a lot of lookalikes but I won't get offended if someone switches some, because the difference sometimes isn't very big. Back to what I found: several Steam-themed websites: Dieselpunks (I'm liking some of the music) and Davenport & Winkleperry among others, but I also found Abney Park, a band that created an entire Steampunk related story around itself and with it also released a novel and a tabletop role-playing game next to their usual music. Let me try and embed another video.

At a certain moment I even found Steampunk themed W40K conversions, but I forgot to bookmark the page and now I can't find it. But still, 2 things that can capture my imagination for a while. Together!

The most interesting part of the entire Steampunk genre is (according to me) the general aesthetics behind it.

For example this. It's a gameboy classic that someone painted in a brass color, glued some cogs and "pipes" on it and called it steampunk. How good some may say it looks, it isn't steampunk enough. If he had removed the casing altogether, organized it in a wooden box and made it look like a "ye olde arcade game" with actual cogs turning on the sides with some retrotronic elements on it I would agree with it being steampunk. Now it's just a golden gameboy with bits glued on it.

The steampunk cellphone does stuff correctly in my opinion. No internet connection, no SMS, no full qwerty keyboard, hell, no keypad at all. Some gauges on a wooden box, punch-cards to dial numbers. Not over the top, aesthetically pleasing, if the Victorians had wireless communication this might have been the "ultralight version" of the busy man.

Anyways, I don't know what else to tell here. If anyone has any more questions: there's a comment section for that...

Let me end with another video, I couldn't resist to not putting this in...


I hope you enjoyed it.

-ThOR