holy fucking shit how can you stretch a dollar shave club ad into 4 minutes of joke flailing
Dieselpunk and teslapunk are cooler than steampunk anyway.
Well, That punk is techincally subgenre for both Steampunk and Dieselpunks.
Yeah you're right. Still seeing WWI/WWII mixed with metal monstrosities like in Wolfenstein always makes me happy.
Frostpunk proved to me that Steampunk can be done right. But throwing sepia tone on and giving everyone gear cock rings isn't that way.
when you desperately need to hit that 10 minute youtube magic number
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXn-zOt68V8
I don't take anyone seriously who uses this as their background music, especially when they're making fun of someone.
Steampunk is by far the worst -punk aesthetic. It looks like absolute shit. That, and so few things seem to actually deal with the complexities of the era they take influence from to begin with. Which I can't blame on Steampunk alone, because most Victorian era influenced (or directly set in) stuff I've seen seems to not take into account anything about Victorian society and instead just uses it as fancy set dressing.
Because victorian times were generally shit. Heehaw wealth and social inequality, the most idiotic doctrine on sex ever devised outside in the western hemisphere and ingrained institutional hypocrisy.
Exploring the shittiness of the Victorian era and its effects on the story's world and its characters isn't unapplicable because the Victorian era was a shit time to live. The Victorian era was not simply prudishness, rigid class distinctions and complete lack of care towards people without social standing, there were political intrigues, plots, political movements (this is the era that birthed the entire socialist movement), uprisings and strikes, those who viewed the existing society as fundamentally corrupt and those who wished to preserve it. And not to mention a fair bit of violence and brutality on the part of those who wished to keep power. There is plenty to use in the Victorian era, but so few that I've seen actually choose to take influence from it and instead go "LOL a funny dress and way of speech!".
Besides, practically every era seems ridiculous to write about if you reduce it to that level. Why write about Medieval times when it was just people dying of dysentery, self flagellating and farming? Why write about WW2 when it was just people in brown shirts doing rapes and murders?
It is unfair to dismiss Steampunk as a whole as being nothing more than a bunch of gears and goggles that disregards the problematics of the Victorian era because that's entirely what the "-punk" postfix is supposed to represent. Whereas most people today just use the term "punk" to refer to be shorthand for "technological divergence", its true definition is a spirit of rebellion, derision, and general criticism of the era.
If you can't tell the difference between your story and a Wells or Vernes story, then you're just making science fiction in the style of the victorians, or science fiction in a victorian setting. If you're doing that, but you're also applying your own modern lens to it, then that's steampunk.
This'd probably be a lot more effective if he pointed out specific works that did this crap.
Dieselpunk is so much cooler than steampunk. Its why im excited for that strategy game based on it with diesel mechs in ww2.
I don't really think there's any respectable steampunk novels out there.
Cinder Spires by Jim Butcher I found thoroughly enjoyable.
Saying that there are not respectable steampunk novels because most of it is trash is like saying there are no respectable dystopic novels because the genre is saturated by stuff like Hunger Games and Divergent. I am not myself a fan of steampunk, and have read very little of the genre (although I do quite like the aesthetic, but then I do like most of the divergent tech aesthetics, from atom to diesel to clock) but just from a few articles about it I can just list:
Morlock Nights and Infernal Devices by K.W. Jeter
The Anubis Gate by Tim Powers
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (two of the most influential Cyberpunk writers, too)
The Warlord of the Air By Michael Moorcock
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore
Yes, But take little dip of Biopunk like BioShock games did for their gameplay. Which may make coolest thing for Dieselpunk video game or any medium.
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