Steampunk then: What if we combined real Victorian craftsmanship and tech with imagined advanced machines.
Steampunk now: What if I glued two plastic gears to a cheap vinyl corset.
Comment on What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom?
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I have a tangentially related thing. I got big into steampunk decades ago when it was still young. Back then, it was a maker culture, a loosely defined idea of cogs and boilers that gave you a fun little world to practice your craft in. It wasn’t just form, it was function. Hammering brass to make functional goggles, learning the Victorian techniques to whalebone corsets, clockwork to accomplish something we only do now with variable controllers.
Now I look for my people and I find a rusting husk of I knew. Gone are the color and texture, replaced by brown on brown in cotton and leather. Where once gears and cogs were carved to spin and move, now they serve only to be glued to cheap accessories. The gleaming promises of brass and copper and steel, userped by soulless luster of plastics.
We should Never have let the world in.
EpeeGnome@feddit.online 1 day ago
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
The biggest sin is when you see cheap plastic goggles with gears and spikes covering one eye. The point if goggles is to protect the eyes, not obscure your vision and carry your trash.
ooterness@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Relevant song: Just Glue Some Gears On It and Call It Strampunk
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I’ll have to listen to this after work, but I already feel at home in the comments.
spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Maybe you could help a new generation learn the value of intentional steampunk :) bring some of the passion back to the hobby, as it sounds like many just accept it as presented. Share it as a “when I got into this, we made this shit” and how you did it. I might be wrong, but I’m weirdly confident you’ll eventually find a cross section of steampunks that would be interested in the creative element
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
It’s not quite the same as you describe, but I do carry the tenets of that old steampunk to my modern crafts. Right now I’m making an electric hurdy gurdy cello out of a broken guitar, a kitchen mixer, and 3d printed models of my own construction. If steampunk taught me anything it’s that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
I don’t know what it says about me that I already knew what a hurdy gurdy was lol
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
No that’s valid tbh. Genres are 100% a part of fandom. I always admired the steampunk aesthetic but never had the resources to get into it. I’ve loved the bits that overlap with stuff like stardust though!
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I’m much the same. When I got into it, the brass goggles forum required you to hand make and chare your goggles to be a full member. By the time I had the skill to do that, the forum had died and the fandom was a tag on Etsy for dropshippers.
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 1 day ago
So it went the way of the modern world. It's sad, really.
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Too many beautiful sculptures melt under the scorching gaze of capitalism.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Just update it to a genre subset: steamcraft punk (or functionpunk or some such)