Imagine a bee rn in a hive muttering "the beekeeper is not real because he is not intervening or helping me at all with this disastrous relationship I have with another bee". now imagine that's you talking about the good lord. now imagine a dog with a propeller hat on
I can't believe home depot literally produced a wildly successful science fiction musical and we all just pretend it didn't happen. on one hand yes it had a boring white guy main character but like.... home depot just... Made it? And it had shit ton of box office sales? and no one even talks about this. this is like avatar (2009) all over again
OK so. After a lot of frantic googling I realized this was all a dream. home depot did not in fact produce a wildly successful science fiction musical. I was on allergy meds and took a nap and my brain simply prophesized this. slightly disappointed because I wanted to watch it.
I saw a bumper sticker and thought “is that seductive Daffy Duck” and then when I looked closer I realized it was actually a fishing bumper sticker but also. also it is still very much seductive Daffy Duck???? somehow????????
Something I think ppl who aren't used to it struggle with when it comes to ancient history is that frequently 'we do not and cannot know this' is the only truthful response a historian can give. People severely overestimate how much we actually know about Ancient Rome.
I remember talking to someone at a party once about the debate over Septimius Severus's ethnicity (whole other can of worms) and they asked if genetic testing of his remains was not a way to settle it and I was like oh. Oh okay you are under the impression we have the physical remains of Roman emperors from the second century AD alright then. (We. Do not.)
Can't stress how much of high level study of Ancient History is devoted to trying to make sense of what actually factually happened. When I was at university (10+ years ago now) the discipline was embroiled in the lengthy and ongoing process of trying to unpack not just the biases in ancient sources but the centuries & centuries of biases within the field itself. I don't imagine this process is ever going to Stop. It's not uncommon for historical accounts to be so garbled & contradictory that it's not possible to reconstruct the real events behind them.
Once in an introductory lecture one of my professors was talking about this problem and articulated it very simply as 'we know real things happened between real people, but we aren't sure what they were'. Sums it up really!!
i never understood what made steampunk punk. romanticizing georgian era england and industrial revolutions are some of the least punk things ever. youre putting gears on a top hat
i genuinely believe that you can directly blame steampunk directly cribbing from cyberpunk for the fact that solarpunk is an aesthetic and not an ideology. the roots of considering a civilization for its trappings and appearance rather than what it does goes back to that. cyberpunk was punk* because of the stories it told** not because of its aesthetics***
*extremely debatable depending on which punk you ask.
**objectively debatable depending on the game and system
***cyberpunk as a modern franchise not a genre is absolutely a prioritization of aesthetics over punk ideology. you cannot be punk if youre a fuckin franchise of a corporation idk i feel like this should be obvious
Hi hello, Steampunk here: the 19th century was punk as fuck actually, and the active steampunk scene in 2005-2010 was very much aware of and into it. You're citing the Spirit Halloween version.
Way back in November 2013 I made a post about the aestheticization of the subculture that STILL stands:
Steampunk: VICTORIAN LONDON VICTORIAN LONDON TOP HATS CORSETS ARISTOCRACY GLORIOUS BRITISH EMPIRE AIRSHIP PIRATES RAY GUNS APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!
Me: …Industrialization, colonialism, imperialism, exploitation of the working class and oppression of POC culminating in violent socialist revolution because fuck yeah the working class and don’t you dare forget it?
Steampunk: ::crickets::
[Steampunk]: THE GREAT GAME COGS GEARS VAMPIRES BUSTLES EXOSKELETON GOGGLES ANGLOPHILIA SUPER CREEPY OBSESSION WITH ORIENTALISM INCLUDING CLOCKWORK GEISHAS MANOR HOUSES TEA!
Me: ::sigh::
^ you are doing exactly this.
The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatism, a do-it-yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action, and not "selling out". That is what 'punk' means, in terms of subculture.
When steampunk arose as a subculture, out of Goth mind you, it was entirely a DIY and small business scene.
What steampunk music, fiction, craft groups, or meetups have you been to? Steampunk is, like cyberpunk, about the stories it told/is telling. Often stories of revolution (often violent), the overthrowing of governments and toppling of monarchies, civil rights movements (emancipation from chattel slavery! Indian wars! Rising against colonial powers!), the dawn of first wave feminism and women's suffrage, the original source of communist and socialist thought, workers' rights movements, the fucking enlightenment...
What is more punk than The Communist Manifesto(1848)
What is more punk than The Battle of Greasy Grass(1876)
Who's a more OG Punk than John Brown?
Steampunk literally music and fiction set in and about the Age of Revolution.
Judging Steampunk as a subculture by the part that was heavily commercialized is like judging all of Goth and a subculture by Hot Topic (which is not punk rock).
Go read China Mieville's Bas Lag cycle.
Go read Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
Go read Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Go read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (crossover with dieselpunk and biopunk!)
Go read Steeplejack by AJ Hartley
Go listen to some The Cog is Dead and some Abney Park and some Rasputina and some Steam Powered Giraffe and, hey, let me link Painless Parker one more time. You will note that that recording is from Occupy Wallstreet.
Also keep in mind that labor/union songs are wildly popular steampunk standards; you will hear Solidarity Forever and other songs from The Little Red Songbook at steampunk song circles. You will hear marching band and orchestral covers of The Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen and The Clash's London Calling. You'll hear songs from Chumbawumba's album English Rebel Songs 1381-1984.
I'm gonna linkspam a bunch of my older writings on this:
#50 Overcoming the Noble Savage & the Sexy Squaw: Native Steampunk–Guest Blog by Monique Poirier
#98 Musing about Native Steampunk-Guest blog by Monique Poirier
Some of you already know Monique Poirier, either from her Beyond Victoriana essay , or from Tumblr , or you know her from cons and stuff. S
Other steampunks of my followers, please reblog with more recommendations about Steampunk stuff that's actually PUNK.
@sapphoandvanzetti , would love to hear you chime in.
Well shit yknow what I retract my statements because I had no idea about any of this! And the fact that the Spirit Halloween version was the only one I'd heard about is actually insulting with how cool a lot of this stuff sounds! Thank you for spending the time to drop all this, it's really appreciated!
I went to an exhibition on the history of migration and colonial rhetoric in Australia and it really helped me to pinpoint my exact issue with the way non-Australians (and. tbh. some aussies) talk about this country
this map is a piece of propaganda from 1921. honestly what shocked me about it was how little of Australia is marked out as “uninhabited”. I have seen maps shared around on this website that basically mark out the entirety of non-coastal Australia as “empty”. fucking colonialists from 1921 were more generous than some of you
the history of colonial Australia is a history of “taming the untameable land”. this has been reinforced through narratives that this country is:
inherently dangerous
uninhabitable
empty
this rhetoric survives in both the way Australia is imagined by non-Australians and in the self-image of Australia. the (white) aussie battler conquers the unconquerable. the outback is imagined as a post-apocalyptic hellscape. our fauna is categorised as uniquely hellish and unwieldy. so when non-Australians make joke after joke about how scared they are of this place. well you can imagine why it fills me with the kind of rage that can only be generated by the understanding that You Are Reinforcing Colonialism
HOW is it possible that I am seeing this for the first time? Now safely installed in my tumblr short cuts folder. I am SO bad at coding that this is a real life saver.
HOW is it possible that I am seeing this for the first time? Now safely installed in my tumblr short cuts folder. I am SO bad at coding that this is a real life saver.
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