Quote from: RPGPundit;712612An utterly absurd and ignorant notion of what culture and society were like in the 19th century?

Steampunk is like Orientalism turned in on the West.

Quote from: RPGPundit;712612An utterly absurd and ignorant notion of what culture and society were like in the 19th century?

Steampunk is like Orientalism turned in on the West.

Quote from: Simlasa;712619Kind of like how 'mainstream fantasy' is an absurd and ignorant notion of medieval Europe?

Quote from: Steerpike;712644This is very dependent on the author in question.  Sometimes this can be true (and it might be too common in steampunk works), but I wouldn't say this is the case for things like Moorcock's Warlord of the Air, Sterling and Gibsons' The Difference Engine, or something like Pullman's The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, all of which I'd consider essentially steampunk

Quote from: RPGPundit;713090Would any of these be self-described by their authors as "steampunk", though? Or is steampunk the ridiculous derivative movement that fails to catch the really important parts of those kinds of works and instead focuses on a ridiculous obsession with the superficial trappings of the same?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Omega;713094hey... Storytelling is a rebellion against RPGs. Can we call it Storypunk? :banghead:

Quote from: RPGPunditWould any of these be self-described by their authors as "steampunk", though?

Quote from: China MiévilleIn recent years, I know there's been a lot of debate about the political aspects of steampunk. Charlie Stross wrote his controversial article about steampunk as an exoneration of Victorian Imperialism, a nostalgia for a certain type of neglected empire, kind of "once more with feeling." And then a lot of people responded to that and felt he was being unfair. I think the fact that that argument is now out there and there are a lot of people writing, if you like, a kind of altermandialiste steampunk is very exciting. You know, I think that kind of argument can really rejuvenate and spark rethinkings of movements. And I hope that that happens. I hope we get the steampunk version of the Belgian Congo and the steampunk version of the 1857 Indian Uprising and all those things, to really interrogate some of the aesthetic assumptions in that field.

Because of the incredibly fast, voracious cycles of cultural production and consumption in which we all partake, any interesting moment or movement becomes a cliché and then a self-parody very, very quickly. And I do think it is the case that a lot of steampunk has become so much focused on the cool stuff, on the endless replication of corsets and zeppelins and strange steampunky eyeglasses and typewriter laptops. That kind of thing does not interest me very much in itself. It feels like a completely deracinated aesthetic, but if it's part of an interrogation, and something new is done with it, then that's great. And it's like any of these things when they become very culturally prevalent, like zombies or vampires or so on, I think my argument is not that one shouldn't do them, but just that the bar gets higher and higher and higher. It's exactly the same for any cultural set of tropes and memes that reach a certain level of saturation.

Quote from: Simlasa;712180I think I see bits of epic 40K ork gargants on that thing... which does itself look a bit like a 40K ork gargant.

Quote from: Steerpike;713105I think his diagnosis of steampunk's self-parody is quite apt, and I agree with him that people shouldn't just stop writing steampunk fiction, but if they want to keep writing it they should resist the temptation to slide into a clichéd, stereotypical version of the thing, the sort of "Orientalism in the West" mode you were discussing.