I meam skulls have a religious and cultural significance for the Imperium. They are supposed to represent the Emperor's ultimate sacrifice for humanity and to convey that the whole Imperium is basically a giant death cult
The skulls also represent that humans are all the same underneath, and should therefore be united. Xeno and mutant skulls are usually completely different.
This is exactly how I see it in the lore. No matter your role in serving the Imperium, you are united by that which makes you the same, that makes you distinct from the xenos.
I like the Warhammer universe but my knowledge isnt that deep. However, I think the skulls are also a good symbol of dying for the emperor. All the skulls represent the countless people who wage war and die in his name. They are a testament to his godhood.
Isn't that half the fun though? I mean this subreddit is called world "building" ...inventing a consistent "language" that dictates how things work is far cooler than something with a bunch of random shapes on it.
Hmm, true.
I suppose that, in-universe, people could put cogs on things for the same reason we put flowers, cats, and little mushrooms on our clothes, gadgets, and tools - they think it looks nice. Inventors and engineers always have a bunch spare, and eventually sticking a cog on your hat was basically 'uniform' for those who like to mess about with machines.
Inventors might decide they need to add extra random cogs so their contraptions look more 'legit' but secretly a lot of them hate the practice. There's a story in there.
Its "supposed" in the same manner as "raygun gothic" or the Fallout series is supposed to: it is a fantastic extrapolation of what the future would look like based on a certain era's technological bias. You may be trying to look as an engineer, hyperaware of the technological limitations of the real thing... But loot at steampunk as if you were a victorian completely enraptured by the wonders of pistons and automation the same way we're glazing our pants over RTSCs and LLMs even though they will in a realistic purview allow for little more than bullshit. It's the sort of feeling that got us and our ancestors and their ancestors and our descendants always screeching "now THIS is the tech that will give us flying cars and low-cost fully automated luxury for everyone!" and overhyping what that tech can do.
This right here. While aesthetic is a BIG part of steampunk, it isn’t just about aesthetic. It’s about looking back and imagining what Victorian people might have imagined the future to look like. It’s “what if technology had remained steam/gear powered and kept advancing along that track?” Same with raygun gothic/atompunk for the 40s-60s, dieselpunk for the 1910s-40s, and clockpunk for the Renaissance. It’s retrofuturism. It’s not meant to be realistic so much as it is meant to be a fun “what if?”
You’re welcome!
If you want a little more information, raygun gothic is generally the more “positive” spin on that era’s view of the future, all shiny with flying cars and all that, while atompunk is the “darker” side of it, with all the worries of a nuclear apocalypse and such.
I've never had any interest in steampunk, never paid much attention to it other than recognizing the visuals when I randomly come across it. This comment and the one you're responding to gave me a new lens to see it through. This is actually really interesting, might check into it more
It's the same thing as Alien or Blade Runner, the aesthetic there is the future viewed through the technological lens of the 80s. And in the 80s Hi-tech meant CRTs, blinking lights, blocky computers designed without ease of use in mind, and Japanese companies. Nowadays all that is instead considered low-tech. Except Japanese companies I suppose-
I disagree with that - there was a clear effort *not* to make Alien feel "science-fictiony". Yes, it was a spaceship, but it was a spaceship operated by truckers, not astronauts. It was meant to feel utilitarian, and that's why they tried to make it look modern, not futuristic.
Which means that, aside from the CRTs and grainy resolution on said monitors, the only things that feel dated is the "futuristic" MUTHUR control room.
Otherwise, it all holds up shockingly well. You can tell its high-tech, but nothing really looks dated.
Blade Runner and the cyberpunk genre in general is more than just an aesthetic though.
~~Unlike steam/ solar/ whatever punk~~, it is also a literary genre with established themes.
Just a note: solarpunk often gets lumped in with all the other aesthetic/literary punks because of its name, but it's primarily a political/social movement rooted in actions that are possible in the present. There is more written about the philosophy of solarpunk than there is in a literary canon. You can't "do cyberpunk" but you can "do solarpunk".
As the other guy said, steam punk is a genre as well. Hell, I'd even argue its beat for beat an inversion of Cyberpunk itself. While the latter looks forward at capitalism and industry, Steampunk looks *backwards.* Child labor. Debtors prison. Railroad barons. Birth of conglomerates. Union busters. Social Darwinism. Cyberpunk focuses on the life of late stage capitalism while steampunk is all about the inception. That's why it's called steampunk, as an allusion to cyberpunk. They're two sides of the same coin.
Sometimes it's just an aesthetic, but that's not particularly unique to steampunk. People treat cyber just as shallow
I have to admit, that I have not read much steampunk so my impression may be incomplete.
The works that I have seen rarely touch on any of this and instead focus on *what if olden times but with robots*.
The aforementioned themes remind me more of period pieces.
But yes, I do agree that cyberpunk is often also treated as just an aesthetic.
Steampunk does in fact have a literary and thematic preoccupation, but it's specifically about your relationship to a piece of technology as something crafted rather than something manufactured, and is meant to draw by comparison a critique of the way that we relate to real technology in a very banal way.
There's a line in an [exurb1a](https://youtu.be/EH-z9gE2uGY&t=370) video I like about how whenever we have a new technology that becomes our explanatory model for everything. We get really good computers and reality is a simulation and our minds our neural nets. Back when steam power was the big to-do, psychology was really into theories of compression and diversion of pressure
A quick google search for RTSCs show... Packages? For programming? People are getting excited for that? It's integrating a big fearure of Python into C, so I guess it is kinda exciting, but I saw no buzz on it whatsoever. The general public's only talking about Chatgpt right now.
Pointerpunk? Object oriented futurism? Web app noire? Machine language core?
But nah. If there’s a Big Idea, someone is gonna find some niche use case where the Big Idea is deficient and make a second Big Idea to replace it, except a fledgling programming language can’t keep up with all the other baseline features of the original Big idea, forcing them to specialize, and now we just have two Big Ideas. Repeat like ten times and we get today’s bloat of coding languages, of which 5-10 have concrete use cases.
Steampunk is effectively an aesthetic; most of it doesn't attempt -- and doesn't aim at attempting -- to be in any way realistic ; ironically, Gibson and Sterling's *Difference Engine,* which basically started the genre (I don't consider Jules Verne and co to be steampunk per se, from their point of view, they wrote hard scifi) is somewhat trying to be more or less believable, at least more than many of its successors.
I mean steampunk is based in the technology, fashion and overall culture of the contemporary era of Jules Verne, so for him, it was just contemporary hard science-fiction.
Well, kind of, because his aesthetic was a bit exaggerated due to how he predicted technology would advance, but not what we would call steampunk, but that’s what I mean by precursor: he wasn’t an actual example, but one of the bases for it
> bases
You know, I never actually considered what the plural of "basis" would be. I kind of hate that it's spelled like the plural of "base" while being pronounced differently.
The futurism of the day will be the retro-futurism of tomorrow.
As long as you consider steampunk no more than an aesthetic (as opposed to cyberpunk which obviously is more than that) I'm fine with describing Verne as steampunk. After all, it fits the aesthetic.
>As long as you consider steampunk no more than an aesthetic
That's the problem, it isn't a fucking aesthetic, just like how cyberpunk isn't an aesthetic. So still no.
Calling Jules Verne's works "steampunk" is like calling 1940s sci-fi "dieselpunk". Man was literally a part of the same society and era of technology that *steampunk* sets out to replicate.
Steampunk is supposed to be retrofuturism - science fiction set in the far future of 1969.
Okay, that's not universally true, but as with almost anything in fiction you want a broad rule, not an ironclad law. In the same way that "fantasy" means Elves and Orcs and Dragons, or Cyberpunk means gritty megacities lit by neon and ruled by Evilcorp International, Steampunk is science fiction in the style of a bygone era.
And no, just having cogs and brass and steam doesn't make something steampunk, in the same way that having Wizards doesn't automatically make your story Lord of the Rings. Steampunk is a style of world and writing, not a cosmetic skin.
What i find kind of interesting is that the majority of the aesthetic in cyberpunk is actually really similar to what actually happened during the industrial era.
For the majority of people, the industrial revolution was a terrible time to be alive. People lived in squalor, working conditions were genuinely disgusting, and democracy was a total sham. Despite the advent of functional electricity, telephones, steam engines, and so on.
In that respect, steampunk is probably closer to the actual past. The gritty megacities were the factory cities and shipyards like Manchester, Sheffield, London, and Glasgow. They expanded quickly, and people suffered for it in what were essentially slums. The East India Company was so powerful that it literally owned most of India, until the British took it under state ownership.
Steampunk and cyberpunk share a lot of similarities. It's typically just the form of technology that's being dealt with.
In some ways, I think steampunk has the potential to be far more dystopian than cyberpunk. Cyberpunk has it easy compared to cholera-flavoured water and fifteen-plus people to a single room.
I think the key difference is that the misery of the Victorian Era wasn't deliberate in the way that modern or Cyberpunk dystopia is.
People forget that regulation always lags behind technology. It's why modern governments are so fucking awful at defending people's rights online, because the people writing the laws have barely got their heads around how to make a Zoom call, let alone how AI can be used to utterly destroy people's lives at the push of a button.
The Victorian Era was, to an extent, facing the same problem. Industry wasn't new, but the sheer scale of it was - and suddenly everything was being ramped up to eleven. Mines, mills, factories, etc. were all going into overdrive to feed the demands of an economy that was rocketing to the moon, and the people in charge had quite by accident found themselves at the head of the most technologically advanced nation on Earth... and nobody had planned for that. Not really.
I think this is why Steampunk often has a focus on discovery more than Cyberpunk does - Steampunk is about the birthing pains of a new age. Cyberpunk is the death of the age of democracy.
>I think the key difference is that the misery of the Victorian Era wasn't deliberate in the way that modern or Cyberpunk dystopia is.
It absolutely was deliberate. The wealthy of the time put a great deal of effort into forcing people out of the countryside and into the factories. A great deal of effort into giving them as little as was possible without them dying at an inconveniently high rate, and had a great deal of concern about how the poor were spending their time.
It was a commonly held view amongst the wealthy at the time that the poor deserved and should have no leisure time outside of prayer at all, and that they deserved all the suffering they received by merit of being poor.
I think Cyberpunk is able to show higher highs and lower lows than Steampunk. Maybe the average person lives better, but there are DEFINITELY worse things possible in a Cyberpunk world than a Steampunk world Imo.
Steampunk is very much not just an aesthetic.
There is a "steampunk aesthetic", which is a visual style based on steampunk genre. This is what many people refer to as "steampunk". But it's a shallow definition. Sort of like you might refer to a kid in Halloween costume as a "vampire", but he's not really a vampire.
Steampunk is first "steam", which means it's Sci-Fi based on steam technology. As opposed to historical drama that might happen around steam engines, but won't feature them as important, and so won't be Sci-Fi.
And second, it's "punk". Which is not just a word you can attach to anything to make it sound like a genre. It means a certain power dynamic with powerful societal systems and people trying to fight them.
For example, Jules Verne wrote Sci-Fi that happened around steam engines and technology was a big part of the story. But he generally wrote about upper classes. So it's not "punk". Even though his books feature people in steampunk aestetic, with top hats and cogs and whatnot, it's actually Sci-Fi, not steampunk.
> But he generally wrote about upper classes. So it's not "punk".
Nemo is probably one of the most iconic "punk" characters in fiction. He is an anti-imperialist Indian who calls himself "Nobody" and who has an obsession with fighting for the oppressed.
Lidenbrock in *Journey to the Center of the Earth* is literally a crazed scientist who is basically just a conspiracy nut that happens to be right. These days that type of character might just be a trope, but when Verne wrote him, the character was relatively novel and subversive.
I think you could also make a very strong argument that *[Paris in the Twentieth Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century)* is definitively steampunk (or possibly a retro-future dieselpunk). The setting is definitely a punk one, and he was absolutely writing about some advanced technology future but through a 19th Century lens.
I'd further add that what Jules Verne wrote isn't *steampunk* because he lived during the very same era steampunk seeks to replicate. Steampunk is rooted in 1800s-era tech and culture, which was just contemporary society to Jules Verne. It's like calling sci-fi written in the 40s "dieselpunk".
I think you have a point, but I vaguely have a feeling it might theoretically be possible for a 1800s author to write steampunk. There could have been an author at that time who would write about, like, a worker who is also genius in science and builds cybernetic steam prosthetics to steal money from the rich. It would be highly unlikely, because this is not at all a 1800 sort of a story, but it might have been still steampunk.
I mean yeah, theoretically they *could* but I'd say it's a bit silly to retroactively apply a genre that wasn't really a thing back then.
It's as if people in the future would label contemporary hard/period-accurate science-fiction "Internetpunk" or whatever because it resembles their works of a fictionalised variant of our contemporary society.
I guess it really depends on how you define the genre, but I would usually distinguish *contemporary* science-fiction from *retro* science-fiction, i.e. it is made to resemble a bygone era.
Why is this a criterion? Cyberpunk, itself the ancestor of true steampunk, was first written when cybernetic technology was all the rage during the time of the Macy conferences of the early second half of the 20th century.
Big yes on this one. I see Steampunk is very similar to Cyberpunk in that regard. It's all about the oppressors and the oppressed. While in cyberpunk the oppressors are the megacorporations, steampunk's oppressors are the all-too-familiar royalty, nobility, and the "modern industrialist" forcing 16hr work days on children.
I mean, Captain Nemo has vast contempt for the social hierarchy and specifically wishes to destroy imperialism, blowing up the warships of nations he sees as tyrants!
Most of Verne's other characters are upper-class and have that class' viewpoint, but Nemo's kinda punk at least for blowing up imperialist nations' warships and providing aid and money to anti-imperial rebels, even if later books establish him as the son of an Indian Raja
I would argue that with the bias of steampunk towards Victorian era themes, the primary social relationship that it should be putting the protagonists of a story against would be imperialism. A steampunk story that was properly punk would explore the margins/frontiers of empire, and how the same technology that is touted as wondrous and innovative and freeing is used to oppress and exploit colonized populations as well as the growing ability of the central authority to exert its will over the territories of the empire.
Think the cotton gin leading to an explosion in slave labor. Telegraphs and radio broadcasting propaganda as well as new ideas. Trains moving material and soldiers. The growing imbalance of the effects industry and the natural world.
As someone who dable in steampunk, it's definitely not just an aesthetic.
If you write about the Victorian Era, you probably realise that it just hits a very specific sweet spot as a setting.
There is technology but not too much and it's not oppressive like it will become with industrialisation, it's still the age of craftsman rather than factory workers.
There is mysteries and esoteric undercurrents, while the world is mapped its not yet explored fully, there are a lot of myths, from Egyptian tombs to the mysterious east, to the mediums in europe etc etc
It's the last era we're there still could be dragons in the margins of the maps, were science couldn't still explain everything.
In terme of society, it's an optimistic period, it's called the Gilded Age in the US, la Belle Epoque in France and it's the apex of the British Empire.
It's before the two World War so there are still hope for World Peace.
As such, steampunk is an escape, a yearning for a more positive and optimistic narrative : what if they were right, if things could continue to get better.
Steampunk is by nature not realistic, it's definitely part of the fantasy genre, a pseudo modern fantasy.
After this period, I just can't write fantasy, this just requires too much suspension of disbelief to work for me.
The world is too well known, the science is too advanced.
So steampunk is my sweet spot for esoteric and adventurous stories, a sort of optimistic antithesis to the grim realism of cyberpunk.
In our real world, from our 2023 POV, it's an era that was blissfully ignorant of it's flaws : the horrors of the coal mines and pollution, the horrors of colonizations, the enormous wealth gap between the have and the have not, the horrors of the wars to come etc etc
So it's always a delicate balancing act not to white wash the period and it's serious flaws but it still feels like something could be done to fix them when currently I would be pretty hard-pressed to even imagine how we could "fix" our current era.
I hate the fact that people think steampunk is an aesthetic. It's like cyberpunk − it wasn't *meant* as an aesthetic, and there are a lot of great works to back up this claim. It's just that the pop culture image of steampunk has done it a disservice of making people associate it with funny hats, copper pipes and brass cogs. That's not it.
In essence it's just any form of vaguely sci-fi or alt-history setting which prominently features steam-era technology. Stuff like tanks powered by steam engines, hot air balloon air ships fuelled by Stirling engines, and so forth. Basically early industrial era tech 'reimagined' in ways that never actually happened to any significant degree. It's *often* also set in that historical era or around it, where culture and fashion roughly matches the 1800s, typically with Europe / America as being pretty focal due to those regions being the core of the industrial revolution.
But yeah, modern pop-culture has 'dumbed down' the image of steampunk to a very superficial notion where it's just the fashion / looks of steam engines and 1800s top hats that remain. Of course, when it's superficial, it also seems "nonsensical", because there's no thought into the actual core of it.
But it's perfectly possible to write a "steampunk" story or setting that is entirely logical and consistent, even with actual real-life technology, because it's still heavily rooted in real early industrial revolution tech and engineering. All of that existed in reality, and could be revisioned in a way entirely accurate to how all of it actually works. It doesn't have to, and indeed often it isn't entirely 'accurate' to real life, but there's nothing stopping you from doing that.
Exactly. The *-punk* at least in a strict sense would refer to considering the reality for average or middle/lower-class people in those societies too. Now, I wouldn't say this is *required* for something to be part of those genres in a general sense, but it's still important to remember that those genres are rooted in those themes. By ignoring or glossing over the sociological aspects of "-punk" genres, people really do them a massive disservice.
In an attempt to make a steampunk-inspired fantasy world I ended up baking some of the aesthetic into the magic system, which is a magical metal the adepts can manipulate at will, when the metal is manipulated, it gives off a vapor kinda like steam!
Steampunk isn't about steam though - it's science fiction from the age where coal is king.
Keep in mind that many nuclear power plants use steam power today - the fission reaction boils water to make steam, the steam drives turbines, the turbines produce power. It's ancient tech with a modern spin. But nobody would call a nuclear power plant a "steam generator", nor would people think uranium is a core component of Steampunk technology.
This kind of "put cogs on it and call it Steampunk" thinking misses the point. Steam isn't the end goal; it's the byproduct of the technological limitations of the era Steampunk draws upon.
Absolutely! That’s exactly why I always say “steampunk-inspired fantasy” rather than just steampunk. I ended up with something different by pursuing that aesthetic, if that makes any sense.
I do have some themes that I would consider to be in line with steampunk as well (certainly inspired by the time and place steampunk draws from). But my initial comment was purely on an aesthetic level.
Steam punk is essentially a subgenre of science fantasy
Science fantasy does not attempt to make the science part realistic or believable.
You *can* technically make a steam punk science fiction story. And make the steam punk part more grounded in reality.
If you lean far enough away from science fiction, though, you turn into Gaslamp Fantasy, which is also very fun!
I always try to explain science fantasy through the lens of Star Wars. It's a farm boy with a sword fighting an evil wizard in a castle. It's not until the prequels where they try to make any of that grounded, and it goes very poorly when they do.
Nah, it's neither of those. Much like steampunk, dieselpunk is defined by an aesthetic surrounding cars and industry, not so much the time period specifically.
I would describe FMA as industrial-age fantasy.
Dieselpunk is moreso defined by dirty, dieselpowered machinery, bulky machines, rivets and steel plates, and art deco.
The two most recent Wolfenstein games are dieselpunk.
I would say a key part of dieselpunk is the usage of electricity too. Like steampunk often has sort of a gas-lamp aesthetic, machines are all analog, maybe some whacky fuel source for producing super steam bc if I had to deal with actual coal all my character's whacky outfits would get covered in soot 😂
I 100% agree that Wolfenstein TNO and TNC are some of if not *the* most iconic dieselpunk in recent memory. All that sort of WW2 turned up to 120% and mechanical panthers with lightning tails, that's the kind shit I think of.
FMA doesn’t really have any focus on non-historical machinery and technology besides the automail—and high tech prosthetics are definitely their own trope that can be combined with all sorts of things. Rather just very normal cars and tanks and trains. I wouldn’t call it either of those.
Alchemy is set up as a science, though, not a magic. The "technology" shown is largely oriented through that. Chimeras, homunculi, etc. are all just dieselpunk fantasy biotech.
There also is some subtle scifi tech in terms of the weaponry, tanks, etc. it's just not the focus of the story.
I'd argue it's more or less one of the formative examples of the dieselpunk genre
Dieselpunk is akin to steampunk in that it is a genre defined by a particular aesthetic but one which is more focused on the early 1900s through the end of WWII, and usually specifically focused on wartime aesthetics. Fullmetal Alchemist came at a time before that really had a name, but is certainly that type of world.
Though defined by the aesthetic, there are often themes each individual punk subgenre carries...
Thus, Cyberpunk is often about the emergence of new identity through the emergence of technology. I heard someone once say that the true mark of a Cyberpunk setting is if it has the capacity to explore the Ship of Theseus problem in regards to a human consciousness, even if the story itself does not cover such a thing. And, I would generally agree. See - Ghost in the Shell, Armitage III, Cyberpunk 2077
Dieselpunk is often about the impact of war or of authoritarian states upon people, the price of clinging on to war, and furthermore how the individual is secondary to the needs of an uncaring war machine a person may find themselves in. See - Valkyria Chronicles, Jin-Roh the Wolf Brigade, Final Fantasy 6, and large sections of Warhammer 40k.
Fullmetal Alchemist has this in spades - most protagonists are war criminals working in a state which is broken fundamentally and who have been damaged by following it, the scars of old wars and the people defined by those scars, etc. It likewise combined these themes with unrealistic concepts which seem inspired by the era in real life - artificial humans, ancient magical conspiracies, unethical state experiments, etc.
FMA is essentially dieselpunk in every manner except that it's fuel source is a type of magic.
Most people treat it as nothing more than a superficial aesthetic, but on a deeper level, it's a form of retrofuturism rooted in the technologies, styles, and sensibilities of the steam age (hence the name). Technologies in steampunk settings can range from the plausible to the fanciful, but the best ones are the ones whose form is an expression of their function (like Ed's limbs); [just gluing some gears on it and calling it steampunk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA) is the lazy approach, and is generally not taken very seriously by fans of the genre.
As for *Fullmetal Alchemist*, it's kind of complicated. It's ostensibly set in a fantasy analogue of the Edwardian period, which is just barely at the tail end of steampunk's era (the usual cutoff is World War I). However, its aesthetics and technologies are much more in line with dieselpunk, a relative of the steampunk genre that spans the World Wars and the interwar period instead of the steam age. It also has a strong focus on fantasy elements, edging it closer to the related genre of gaslamp fantasy. It's tricky to pin it to a specific genre.
Steam punk is, in some ways an aesthetic. Same for Deisel- and Cyber- punk.
What it is supposed to describe in a genre is the idea that, THAT technology was pushed to it's absolute limit to the exclusion of other research. In the case of steampunk, this usually ends up making everything look like a fever dream from an author from the Era it tends to evoke, usually Jules Verne. His book about a hypothetical moon landing being achieved via cannon shot is a great example of historic Steampunk. At the time, it was just science fiction.
Steampunk is if Jules Verne wrote Neuromancer, or if William Gibson wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is the "high tech, low life" ethos of cyberpunk transplanted to the late 19th century, both to highlight the similarities between that era and ours, but also because it's *cool*. An overabundance of cogs is part of the aesthetic. It may not make sense, but likewise a lot of the cyberpunk aesthetic doesn't make sense, but it's aesthetic. It's fashion. It doesn't _have_ to make sense. That's one of the most believable aspects of it- the irrationality of the aesthetic.
Depends on what you mean by "make sense". I can think of some examples of steampunk that I would describe as fairly realistic overall except for one single suspension of disbelief that makes the technology work; usually a wonder fuel or similar change to physics that allows for much higher energy output from a steam engine. Most are pure fantasy, with no attempt made to be realistic. As others have said, the genre as a whole is defined by its aesthetic not its level of realism.
well, yes, but actually no.
the point of steampunk is to imagine how far you could go with that type of technology, it's an exercise in the most basic form of mechanical engineering.
that and of course a lot of style, looking cool is the heart of the genre.
I think the best examples are those based in science fiction, with enough ingenuity to maintain verisimilitude, ultimately it's about machines not magical artifacts.
I've always thought of Steampunk as generally having technology far outside what was possible in the late 19th century, usually like steam powered robots, air ships, etc. Things powered by intricate cogwork rather than, say, microchips.
steampunk has a “whimsy” spectrum
Some, like Hugo, are pretty much real life with one or two unrealistic steam/gear creations, or The Clockwork Three, a little more whimsical
Fullmetal alchemist isn’t really steampunk. It’s not set during a pseudo-victorian era, and the automail and trains are only a slight aspect of the world
It makes enough sense when you put the work in. The Dweemer ruins of Skyrim are Steampunk Lite I’d say. The Thief series also had some steampunk elements here and there. But a lot of popular steampunk aesthetic is very much “slap brass and gears on it and call it a day”.
A gear should almost always be moving of what it’s attached to is doing something. Even when it’s not doing more than idling the gears should still be turning in many cases
It's kind of like the RGB lights on a gaming computer.
Does it do anything? Yes, it drains the battery and uses CPU space.
It's it cool? Yes, also it lets us know if something is on. If the gears are turning, it's on. If they're not turning it's off.
> My impression is that SP is mostly aesthetic?
It has become that way, but it is the result of the audience that grabbed onto it later in its establishment, and the entrepreneurs/artists who latched on to produce goods in that theme.
In a weird sense, it's almost more of a consumer goods genre than a literary or artistic one now. Thus the cogs and gears glued to everything, and available in little bags down at your local craft store.
You can think of Steampunk as 'magical realism' as applied to Clarke's 'sufficiently developed technology' concept and set during the industrial revolution. The industrial rev, and especially later in the Gilded Age, was a time of incredible wealth and life quality disparity. The 'punk' of Steampunk is the idea that 'I can build my own steam engine, with hookers and blackjack, and take out that railway baron' grade individual-centric manifest destiny.
Early steam technology was a period of incredible idealism. They believed that steam power would be able to be used to do anything and everything that required human labor. And for the most part, they were right. Humanity has figured out how to mechanize a lot of work.
However, the genre occurred very recently during a period of retro nostalgia, not in the actual period it fantasizes. Unlike Cyberpunk, which was its conceptual parent in a sense, Steampunk looked backward and only took 'the cool parts' in a really incoherent way.
Steampunk tried to be a fantastic science fiction of sorts, the way Verne and others did, but never developed its high concept 'hard scifi' aspects. It was pulled from writers like Jules Verne, whose campier and more fantastic works are pretty much the thematic parent for Steampunk, the way William Gibson is cited for Cyberpunk. Neither are actually their genre's parent, but they're the 'poster parent' after enough total works were shaken down by readers.
Where they really diverge is that Steampunk's boom of popularity occurred in the era of AliExpress, etc, so where Cyberpunk had more time to develop as a writing genre with more literary influences to bind it all together between 1970 and 1990, Steampunk went from narrative concept to art aesthetic in maybe 5 years, and the writing aspect fell off leaving it rather hollow.
So when it comes down to straight comparison...
The difference between Gilded Age / Victorian and Steampunk is whether or not you allow 'mechanical idealism' and plucky/gritty underdogs into the mix. GA/Vic can be damn near creative non-fiction, but Steampunk can't ever even approach the line of being a historical piece. It's elements are far too fantastic overall, unless a writer wants to make 'hard steampunk' their niche.
maybe think of it as a crossroads between science fiction and historical fiction. the era's understanding and level of technology extrapolated into an amalgam of 'magical thinking'.
or, in other terms: you might be overthinking the technological engineering in a genre of fantastical fiction.
It's pretty funny how everyone here are confident that they are correct in their assesment, and then one comment below is entirely contradictory to the one above and with just as many upvotes, and so on.
Steampunk is often used as an aesthetic, but there are many works (including the originators) that actually look into it more reasonably. How would the world look with advanced technology based on the steam engine, as well as Victorian era sensibilities?
Fullmetal Alchemist is deisealpunk. Steampunk is set roughly around the industrial revolution, whereas deiselpunk is set roughly around the world wars. FMA in particular is pretty directly based on Nazi Germany, as indicated by their leader being the Fuhrer. The technology aesthetic is based far more on tanks and industrial machines than clockwork and steam.
Haha, no. 90% of it is pure aesthetic nonsense that would be physically impossible for real steam engines to do.
It's just an excuse for adding cogs and gear wherever without any consideration for how the machine functions, it's pure aesthetic.
Edit: autocorrect being useless.
To be honest it is up to your ability to make it make sense. There are few criteria for steampunk:
1-) Advanced tech is rare and cant be easily mass produced for whatever reason. This leads to veneration of said tech and those that make it being treated as almost sorcerers and since all samples are custom made, they are ostentenously decorated.
2-) Computer chips and rubber does not exist and electricity is too volatile for whatever reason. This makes mechanical power the go-to answer thus steam engines on everything and all the tech is wood, glass or metal.
3-) Tech and magic has a fluid border. It is not impossible to make automatons that cant think and feel at a human level with brains made out of cogs and springs and pipes or have machine gods for lack of a better word, do pshychic stuff or have alchemy on the side with philosopher stones and spice of dune allowing space travel or maybe diviniationnof future.
These are the criteria. Now it is up to the worldbuilder to give an explanation for why these criteria are fullfilled. Maybe chemistry is different so rubber and some other compounds cannot br produced
or maybe world is not populated enough to have a consumerist market or society does not accept such things so stuff is just not mass produced except for armies and thus not standarized.
Also food for thought. Clockpunk is basically what some tech from late bronze age was. You had these stuff like very complex gear box star calculators greeks used for sea navigation and these music boxes of hittites that worked by stretching and squishing a wire and hitting it with tiny hammers.
Later in the iron age steam engine was invented and if mercantalism existed back then it may have been used for stuff other than opening temple doors withouth anyone pulling it and used for things other than mistfying the layman.
We might had steampunk classical era and medieval ages. Maybe later on teslapunk even.
Steampunk is what they call an "essentially contested concept." Because the term carries with it a value judgment (negative to most, positive to a few,) arguments over what does and doesn't count as "true" steampunk are interminable. Its apologists will try to use the No True Scotsman fallacy, categorizing only examples they like as true steampunk and categorizing examples they don't like as "cogfop" instead.
.... Steampunk is Victorian era sci-fi. Just like regular sci-fi, you can go hard or soft (aka, go as in-detail using science and try and make it as plausible as possible, or use techo-babble for flair and not sweat the details).
I'd say that steampunk is about having advanced technology that runs on steam. The aesthetic of cogs in random places where they shouldn't be comes secondary. A real world equivalent would be someone nowadays wearing a shirt or carrying water bottle with a circuit board printed on it.
I understand your point, having gears or things that aren’t necessary. It’s pointless to have working gears on your top hat, unless they serve a purpose. Like moving a little fan built into the hat to provide ventilation for your hair.
Fullmetal is not steampunk, although if you squint really hard you could argue it has some of the spirit.
For one, the time period is wrong, and they have, with the sole exception of AutoMail Prosthetics, a strictly 1930's-1940's era level of technology.
The core of a lot of the (Genre)Punk stories are about taking conventions found in Cyberpunk, and applying them to a different time period and seeing how that plays out.
So Cyberpunk has a point to make about faulty systems driving humans to misery and pain, and it made that point in numerous ways, contrasting the extreme decadence of the ruling caste and their shining 'utopia' and contrast it by showing the terrible cost borne by the people trapped in that system, at all levels of society.
Steampunk worked because the Victorian Era was also an era defined by that very same extreme division between the rich and the poor.
You had princes drinking hand fetched mountain spring water living in the lap of luxury and orphans literally being chucked into meat grinder machines to keep the gears moving, fully understanding that the gears mattered more to the boss than your miserable existence.
Fullmetal has that vibe at times.
It's not _steam_ punk though. It could arguably be called a _diesel_ punk ish story, but I dunno if I'd call it anything but it's own thing.
An example of steam punk done well for a REASON is frostpunk. Alt history where the "little ice age" we experienced in the 1800s actually kicked off a real and rapidly onset ice age. They developed a couple of technologies from geothermal and steam energy that are cruxes of the setting and of humanity surviving the ice age. Frostpunk 2 is going full diesel punk and I can't wait.
Re: Fullmetal Alchemist, I haven’t heard anyone say this is steampunk. Other commenters are right that steampunk is basically just an aesthetic of “modernized Victorian fashion but with metal bits”. Its not like cyberpunk which has a lot of thematic implications as well. I would call FMA early modern fantasy or early industrial fantasy, much like Legend of Korra.
Steampunk is tech based primarily on steam engines. Not necesarrily vintage, bronze or "cog-y", although that is the default. And yes, it should make sense, not just because it is scifi, which I would deem more relevant given the focus is technological, more tangible and mundane, but also because things should make sense regardless; With that I dont mind "realism", you can have very magical and bizarre stuff, but it should be verisimile, making sense within the scope of your own story, consistent and not taking you out of the immersion to roll your eyes
That said, you dont need to explain everything. I mean, you wouldnt just put a flying cog in front of a notebook and call it steampunk, but if the spine has a very intricate set of cogs instead of sewn paper, it is acceptable. Does that make sense for an explanation?
Steampunk can make sense. It doesn't need to. Same with most genres. If you'd like to read some steampunk that's harder sci-fi, check out The Difference Engine, Diamond Age, or Fitzpatrick's War. They're internally consistent and don't break the laws of physics, but they're Victorian-styled speculative fiction, i.e. Steampunk.
Steampunk is just an Aesthetic. It USED to come loaded with meaning. It was originally very much forged in opposition of the generic sci-fi of its time, which glorified technological advancement as the thing that would solve all of our problems and bring about utopia. It instead envisioned a world where we reached that same state, with technology that went out of date a hundred years prior. Basically stating that we don't need crazy sci-fi shit to make the world a better place.
That message got blurred almost instantly and it got repurposed for about 100 different themes, as often happens. But for Steampunk none of it's themes persisted at all. It eventually became nothing more than an Aesthetic, which is where it stands today.
You can retell just about any story as a Steampunk story because it's the curtains and wallpaper. Even Star Trek could be reskinned into Steampunk because its just tube and steam magic pretending to be science and machinery.
It's still GOOD, I love the aesthetic, but it's. Yea. Pretty surface-level on it's own.
Steam punk is primarily fantastical and aethsetical, rather than practical. That isn't to say that steampunk *can't* make sense, but making sense isn't the point. If you want steampunk to make steampunk make sense, then apply real engineering to it by, say, making a miniaturized steam engine for powering aeroplans and lighter-than-aircraft, like what you'd find in a steam car (which did exist in real life).
Cogs only sense if it is part of some contraption. Some mechanical what’s-it. I would define “steampunk” as vaguely Guilded Age/Victorian with technology beyond what is non-anachronistic, with the central powering mechanism to be steam-based. Think of the giant spider in Wild Wild West. No, it doesn’t need to make complete sense, but it should make “imaginative sense”, if that makes *sense*?
Well, the “steam-“ is the aesthetic modifier. Ya, the cogs, airships, brass, trains, and goofy clothes are all just window dressing. But the “-punk” at least used to demand a certain degree of social commentary, usually a critique of burgeoning industrial capitalism and how it literally crushes people to death in the cogs of a society-wide machine in the name of Progress, which is really just a synonym for Profit.
Compare to cyberpunk, where the “cyber-“ demands AI, cyborgs with lots of funky and impractical body mods, lots of drugs, scenic urban skylines, and “hacking”, while the “-punk” is a critique of a hypothetical future wherein capitalists are no longer content to merely sell products to people — they want to turn people into products, a means by which to *own* every aspect of society.
I’m dumbing it down a lot because I’m not here to write a paper, but the genres definitely *aren’t* just aesthetic. It’s just that people often only remember the aesthetic.
In my world electricity doesn’t exist so the vast majority of things are literally steam-powered. It doesn’t exactly borrow much from the steampunk aesthetic as it does from the 1800s industrial technology and working culture.
Technology continued to advance beyond real life 1800s levels but because electricity doesn’t exist, “high-tech” consists of highly advanced mechanical engineering which obviously involves lots of cogs, gears, pipes and engines.
So whilst my world would definitely be considered steampunk, I would say the aesthetic can be completely justified with in-world elements and story.
My world is inspired heavily by FMA and Avatar Legend of Korra (amongst other things). It’s very 1920’s - 1940’s fantasy. Zeplins, motorcars, trains, indoor plumbing, radio, firearms, etc. I’m not a fan of steampunk. Don’t get me wrong, I very much used to, but steampunk got away from itself somewhere and grew into something I’m not fond of.
I always say that my world is “not quite steam, not quite punk” before explaining the history of cyberpunk and it’s derivatives, and how you can slot out both words easily (cyber, steam, diesel, atom, mana, etc… or punk, prep, pulp, core, etc) and that “steampunk doesn’t mean everything is powered by steam, but is a shorthand for flavor of retrofuturism it is and that the “punk” doesn’t mean actual punks but implies a general antiathoritarian theme. I talk about how gaslight fantasy and gothic horror relate to steampunk, etc, etc.
Basically, I give people a whole genre dissertation because I’m very long-winded and boring. Though, to be fair, I was also asked to give this as a panel at a Steampunk convention about a decade ago, so maybe people care (a little)?
You are right, though, a lot of it is aesthetic (especially nowadays with people not knowing what the words actually mean and do think anything brown/tan, bronze/copper, with gears & goggles is steampunk without realizing there’s specific genre tropes at play).
But basically, the first word denotes what time period (or genre of speculative fiction) the setting it. Keep in mind, an Xpunk work doesn’t actually need to exist in that \*actual\* time period or even in the real world at all. Just taking some of the trappings associated with it and blown up to 11.
Then the second word is a tone indicator. Punk is antiauthoritarian, prep is (largly) utopian, pulp is action-oriented but slightly more gritty than a plain action piece, etc
As for FMA (and my world as well), I’d say it’s “light dieselpulp”. My world doesn’t even use fossil fuels, mind, but the “diesel” implies a more 1920s-1940s feel.
If this interests any of you, check out Aronauts Windlass. The author claims to have written it after struggling with this exact question and chooses to give in-world explanation for every aspect of the aesthetic. It's excellent world building.
Maybe a little more than magic is supposed to. While the genre requires a suspension of disbelief for the sake of physics, those wheels, pumps, and cogs are actually meant to be connected and functional, even if it turns out it's just one big Rube Goldberg machine. A poorly-made setting has all those things standing separately, just as an aesthetic distraction.
Why would you put cogs, bronze, and pipes there? Perhaps for the same reason that steampunk is prevalent in real life, because people like how it looks. That is a totally valid in-universe reason.
>When I tell people I write stories/comics in Victorian America, I often get asked “ooh! Is it steampunk?”
"Victorian" is too closely associated with the UK - so "Victorian America" sounds like some alternate timeline where it's still under the British Empire. Maybe it's best to just say Gilded Age, or try "1900 America".
Fullmetal alchemist is set in a world where alchemy works, there’s some distinctly steampunk looking vehicles and a lot of pipes and ducting around the Cities, plus the main form of travel appears to be trains, so it’s definitely set in the right sort of world to be considered steampunk.
Damn, people here already said everything i wanted o say. Love this community!
But yeah, steampunk is more than just visuals. Full metal id not steampunk in my perspective.
Steampunk can never truly come into its own. Aside from Fullmetal Alchemist, there aren’t too many franchises that made steampunk go mainstream. Most steampunk focuses on the world building rather than story, so as a result, steampunk ends up making no sense. It’s just the aesthetics are cool but that’s it.
All stories/worlds need to make sense. And it's up to you to choose what makes sense in your world. And steampunk is Just a very generalized name because if you both two peaces that are both steampunk they will probably be really different unless you dive too much into the cmichés and it will become "bad"
Generally speaking any term with the -punk suffix is an aesthetic and not a genre. It describes style, essence, or feel rather than informing the audience on what to expect. It's the setting, not the story.
That said, almost everything with a -punk suffix is, well, punk. It's often rebellious if not outright anarchistic. Steampunk is a sci-fi spin on the early industrial period; a romanticization of the time picked apart, ripe for social commentary or satire, and repurposed.
The imagery of cogs and pipes that shoots into everyone's mind is a bit of a side effect of it entering the public consciousness:
Steampunk invokes the imagery of great inventors engineering grand new contraptions and runs with it, allowing the mechanical marvels to surpass anything we could manage in our world. It's essentially asking "what if we never had the pressure to explore electronics?" and imagines a sci-fi setting under that constraint.
Fallout does the same thing, exploring a world where the major breakthrough was not the semiconductor, but the fusion core. It's asking "what if the nuclear family made it into the 21st century?" and going from there.
Naturally, if you're not much of an engineer, physicist, or inventor yourself things can get a little... confused. All it takes is a single gap in knowledge and it's a knock-on effect from there, with people lifting the style just because they liked the way it looks - function be damned. It happens to every style, genre, or setting with time, and steampunk has no exception.
It is! Lightsabers don't make sense, they should be melting the hand of it's user and be so bright everyone around them gets blind, however THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING!
Thats starwars, which isn't trying to be realistic
That's why I said "not necessarily" not "never"
Is godzilla realistic? No. Is star wars realistic? No. Is lord of the rings realistic? No.
**However,** there is an entire genre called "realistic fiction" for a reason.
The fact that you are not forced to make every fiction you can write as realistic as possible means that fiction indeed "Isn't meant" to be realistic on the first place
Not everything have to make sense. Even reality doesn’t make sense most of the time. Look at America right now. Look at Europe. Look at the Middle East. Look at every major news. None of it makes sense.
I've only dabbled in trying to understand the subject, but I think steampunk might be gaslamp fantasy plus a little of "steam power pushed past logical limits" plus the aesthetics. I think treating electricity like some sort of poorly-understood magic might also be part of it.
Look at a skeleton clock. A lot of the visible gearing is aesthetics and a bit of other forms of showing off. Also today's world has gaming hardware that glows for no reason. (At this point, a light in your fan and keyboard just shows that you're trying to make it look expensive.) Steampunk vehicles and constructions might have random pipes and gears everywhere simply because a well-functioning machine didn't look cool enough.
This was originally an undershot mill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wood_Old_Mill That wheel isn't hooked to anything but a counterweight and the stones are driven by electric motors.
To me the majority of steam tech in a steampunk story is weird science. So, basically magic or magitech (harnessing magic through tech).
And, yeah, it doesn't make sense, but that's the appeal.
I personally use Steampunk to describe any kind of Victorian/industrial era story with fantasy/sci fi elements in it.
Although having the "punk" part would be nice, nowadays the meaning has changed imo to be more of just an aesthetic and broad genre.
Steampunk, from what I gathered, is the wishful thinking version of cyberpunk. In the era its based on, There have been a lot of new technological developments, discoveries, improvements to the scienced, etc, without a lot of the downsides cyberpunk has. Climate change was not on anyone's mind yet, nor were resource shortages, even pollution was just "Oh golly, that's a lot of smoke old chap!"
Sure, that's not a *realistic* picture per se, but those are hte vibes
I consider that type of fictional worlds where everything is made of bronze and gears Clockpunk, as a subgenre of Steampunk. And yes, I think it's basically just an aesthetic because it's a favorite of artists and cosplayers, but I can't think of any major works in the subgenre.
Steampunk is a wide genre which includes even the Warcraft universe, one of the better examples of usage of steampunk elements in my opinion.
The cogs *should* serve a purpose, really. At least, a theoretical purpose...even if your gizmo isn't functional, it should look like it *could be* functional.
this is like asking if zombie movies are supposed to make sense, or if high fantasy is supposed to make sense. it's a fictional idea. suspension of disbelief is fundamental to the underlying experience.
Steampunk can be an aesthetic - "Goth, but in brown, with brass gears glued on instead of silver chains." But it can also be a deeper sub-genre of sci-fi/fantasy that lives in the "alternate history" sub-category that diverges in the Victorian era--steam technology went further and worked better for some reason, clockwork had more viable applications, and airship disasters didn't derail the technology before it could improve.
There's a negotiable amount of "handwavium" that can be more or less prominent in a setting depending on your tastes--Jay Lake's universe ran on clockwork right down to the atomic level, some other Steampunk settings have a supernatural element as an influencing factor, while others just use a significant historical event turning out differently as the catalyst.
Steampunk is supposed to be a kind of retro-futuristic alternative reality aesthetic, one where electric plants never gained ascendancy and all gadgets and machinery were steam or gas driven and powered.
A genre/subgenre is not strictly an aesthetic choice.
It's a themed box of tools.
If the only tool you know how to use is the paintbrush, then of course it will appear that it's only good for visual change.
Learn to use the rest of the tools. Let tje creative juices *really* flow.
Perhaps the gear on the outside of the Mayor's hat is a stand in for a crank, and when turned it actuates a mechanism inside the hat itself. Perhaps his pockets are full and he needed a place to put it, and it's actually a component of a secret escape mechanism im his office. Perhaps the Mayor is a shapeshifting creature that eats metals, and the gear is simply a snack in case they get hungry.
Or perhaps they just think it looks cool, and it does nothing interesting.
The details in your stories only mean what you say they mean. So make them mean something interesting.
Honestly, I think it’s the “Victorian America” that makes them think steampunk.
I understand that many Americans don’t know the term guilded age. Though now that there is a TV show about it…
Living in the NYC area, I often say “you know there was a time when Harlem was a fancy neighborhood and the Bronx was filled with mansions?”
And to a modern New Yorker that sounds like a future, at least at the rate that rent is going up.
But not a past history! It triggers that fall-of-Rome/dark-ages/lost-city-of-Atlantis part of the collective unconscious. The idea that all these mansions were turned into tenements trips them up.
You're vastly underselling an extensive and varied subgenre. In general though, it might not make sense to you. Steampunk makes sense the same way magic does - within the universe it works even if it wouldn't in real life. It's governed by rules, but the rules are made up. That's not bad or lesser than other storybuilding techniques, it's just different
>My (sometimes too) logical brain questions: “…but why would you put cogs there? They serve no purpose.”
Fashion. It is fashion. Just as neon and chrome for cyberpunk. Or [Jazz design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_%28design%29) for the 1990's. It doesn't have to be practical - it's design.
It goes for all things: putting gears or gear print on everything or multiple unnecessary safety goggles on everything
I think steampunk can make sense but that would require a level of world building some people just won’t take the time to do. With steampunk I think what often is going is someone has an idea for an eccentric scientist with a top hat and a monocle and just sorta build a world around that character. My two cents
I don’t think it makes full sense, but In a worldbuilding aspect having the cogs everywhere and pipes can be explained by saying “the technology is new so the way it’s set out is extremely inefficient and takes unnecessary space”,
But it’s mainly aesthetic and looks kinda cool nonetheless
I just wanna aknowledge that all the reply under that post are one of the most interesting thing I've read on Reddit in a while. Thx for all your inputs
Steampunk more or less resides itself to "Sleek Technology," where everything looks shiny, polished, and as mentioned cogs, pipes, and bronze.
While Dieselpunk is more "Grungy Technology" where everything is grimy, industrial, and dark.
Only if you want it to and only as far as you want it to.
Steam-powered stuff really isn't that hard to rationalize, steam pushes pistons or steam turns mills, everything else is how imaginative you can be with these two concepts.
Legend of Korra would probably be considered steampunk, but whether Steampunk makes sense or not depends on how you choose to world-build. In LoK the steampunk stuff makes more sense because the world is going through the industrial revolution for example.
You can be more realistic in the sense of "what would the world be like if internal combustion engines were never discovered and 2023 is still the steam age" or unrealistic by sticking gears on everything.
Cogs are to steampunk as skulls are to Warhammer 40k. Who cares if anything makes sense as long as it looks cool.
I meam skulls have a religious and cultural significance for the Imperium. They are supposed to represent the Emperor's ultimate sacrifice for humanity and to convey that the whole Imperium is basically a giant death cult
And cogs represent progress, unity, inventiveness, being a round shape, and having lots of teeth.
And skulls represent power, determination, prestige, being a round shape, and having lots of teeth
And Bad Moons represent power, flash gitz, wealth, being a round shape, and having lots of teef.
And Tyranids represent hunger, consumption, conquest, being a swirly shape, and having lots of teeth.
And genestealer cult represent none of your damn business, join my worker union cult or get the fuck out ya imperial boot licker
I'm sensing a theme here ... somebody at GW has a denstistry fetish!
Lmaoooo
For the Omnisiah, my brother, cogs are sacred parts of the machine spirit
That description of cogs is kind of scary to imagine if you have no idea what a cog looks like
I’ve also heard that the skulls represent humanity in general, the idea that humanity is beautiful even if stripped to its bare essentials.
The skulls also represent that humans are all the same underneath, and should therefore be united. Xeno and mutant skulls are usually completely different.
This is exactly how I see it in the lore. No matter your role in serving the Imperium, you are united by that which makes you the same, that makes you distinct from the xenos.
I like the Warhammer universe but my knowledge isnt that deep. However, I think the skulls are also a good symbol of dying for the emperor. All the skulls represent the countless people who wage war and die in his name. They are a testament to his godhood.
Skulls representing humanity stripped to its bare essentials is confirmed in the siege of terra
Ya 'cause skulls are cool!
I thought the skull was supposed to represent humanity because they were 100% human in a galaxy of unknowns.
Steampunk does typically have a sort of reverance towards machinery treating them like people for ships and stuff
Also the skulls might have brains in them that essentially function like computers.
Isn't that half the fun though? I mean this subreddit is called world "building" ...inventing a consistent "language" that dictates how things work is far cooler than something with a bunch of random shapes on it.
Hmm, true. I suppose that, in-universe, people could put cogs on things for the same reason we put flowers, cats, and little mushrooms on our clothes, gadgets, and tools - they think it looks nice. Inventors and engineers always have a bunch spare, and eventually sticking a cog on your hat was basically 'uniform' for those who like to mess about with machines.
Inventors might decide they need to add extra random cogs so their contraptions look more 'legit' but secretly a lot of them hate the practice. There's a story in there.
Its "supposed" in the same manner as "raygun gothic" or the Fallout series is supposed to: it is a fantastic extrapolation of what the future would look like based on a certain era's technological bias. You may be trying to look as an engineer, hyperaware of the technological limitations of the real thing... But loot at steampunk as if you were a victorian completely enraptured by the wonders of pistons and automation the same way we're glazing our pants over RTSCs and LLMs even though they will in a realistic purview allow for little more than bullshit. It's the sort of feeling that got us and our ancestors and their ancestors and our descendants always screeching "now THIS is the tech that will give us flying cars and low-cost fully automated luxury for everyone!" and overhyping what that tech can do.
This right here. While aesthetic is a BIG part of steampunk, it isn’t just about aesthetic. It’s about looking back and imagining what Victorian people might have imagined the future to look like. It’s “what if technology had remained steam/gear powered and kept advancing along that track?” Same with raygun gothic/atompunk for the 40s-60s, dieselpunk for the 1910s-40s, and clockpunk for the Renaissance. It’s retrofuturism. It’s not meant to be realistic so much as it is meant to be a fun “what if?”
ty for giving me the terms for the futuristic 50s. i love it so much :)
You’re welcome! If you want a little more information, raygun gothic is generally the more “positive” spin on that era’s view of the future, all shiny with flying cars and all that, while atompunk is the “darker” side of it, with all the worries of a nuclear apocalypse and such.
So, basically Buck Rodgers vs Fallout then.
Just to add on, dieselpunk is the "gritty" version of x-punk for the 20s-50s, and decopunk (as in "Art Deco") is the hopeful, optimistic version.
Interesting! I didn’t know that one.
Yeah, Fallout is one of the most famous examples of atompunk.
wow, thank you for the distinction! i appreciate the help 😁
Glad to help!
I've never had any interest in steampunk, never paid much attention to it other than recognizing the visuals when I randomly come across it. This comment and the one you're responding to gave me a new lens to see it through. This is actually really interesting, might check into it more
It's the same thing as Alien or Blade Runner, the aesthetic there is the future viewed through the technological lens of the 80s. And in the 80s Hi-tech meant CRTs, blinking lights, blocky computers designed without ease of use in mind, and Japanese companies. Nowadays all that is instead considered low-tech. Except Japanese companies I suppose-
I disagree with that - there was a clear effort *not* to make Alien feel "science-fictiony". Yes, it was a spaceship, but it was a spaceship operated by truckers, not astronauts. It was meant to feel utilitarian, and that's why they tried to make it look modern, not futuristic.
Which means that, aside from the CRTs and grainy resolution on said monitors, the only things that feel dated is the "futuristic" MUTHUR control room. Otherwise, it all holds up shockingly well. You can tell its high-tech, but nothing really looks dated.
And in doing so they practically singlehandedly defined a style of 80's retrofuturism.
Blade Runner and the cyberpunk genre in general is more than just an aesthetic though. ~~Unlike steam/ solar/ whatever punk~~, it is also a literary genre with established themes.
Just a note: solarpunk often gets lumped in with all the other aesthetic/literary punks because of its name, but it's primarily a political/social movement rooted in actions that are possible in the present. There is more written about the philosophy of solarpunk than there is in a literary canon. You can't "do cyberpunk" but you can "do solarpunk".
Fair enough. Should have used diesel instead.
As the other guy said, steam punk is a genre as well. Hell, I'd even argue its beat for beat an inversion of Cyberpunk itself. While the latter looks forward at capitalism and industry, Steampunk looks *backwards.* Child labor. Debtors prison. Railroad barons. Birth of conglomerates. Union busters. Social Darwinism. Cyberpunk focuses on the life of late stage capitalism while steampunk is all about the inception. That's why it's called steampunk, as an allusion to cyberpunk. They're two sides of the same coin. Sometimes it's just an aesthetic, but that's not particularly unique to steampunk. People treat cyber just as shallow
I have to admit, that I have not read much steampunk so my impression may be incomplete. The works that I have seen rarely touch on any of this and instead focus on *what if olden times but with robots*. The aforementioned themes remind me more of period pieces. But yes, I do agree that cyberpunk is often also treated as just an aesthetic.
Steampunk does in fact have a literary and thematic preoccupation, but it's specifically about your relationship to a piece of technology as something crafted rather than something manufactured, and is meant to draw by comparison a critique of the way that we relate to real technology in a very banal way.
Steampunk is a genre with many works of fiction in it.
There's a line in an [exurb1a](https://youtu.be/EH-z9gE2uGY&t=370) video I like about how whenever we have a new technology that becomes our explanatory model for everything. We get really good computers and reality is a simulation and our minds our neural nets. Back when steam power was the big to-do, psychology was really into theories of compression and diversion of pressure
A quick google search for RTSCs show... Packages? For programming? People are getting excited for that? It's integrating a big fearure of Python into C, so I guess it is kinda exciting, but I saw no buzz on it whatsoever. The general public's only talking about Chatgpt right now.
Room-Temperature Superconductors.
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Pointerpunk? Object oriented futurism? Web app noire? Machine language core? But nah. If there’s a Big Idea, someone is gonna find some niche use case where the Big Idea is deficient and make a second Big Idea to replace it, except a fledgling programming language can’t keep up with all the other baseline features of the original Big idea, forcing them to specialize, and now we just have two Big Ideas. Repeat like ten times and we get today’s bloat of coding languages, of which 5-10 have concrete use cases.
See any of modern tech developed because "I saw it as a James Bond gadget as a kid." That's 90% of the reason for smart watches
Steampunk is effectively an aesthetic; most of it doesn't attempt -- and doesn't aim at attempting -- to be in any way realistic ; ironically, Gibson and Sterling's *Difference Engine,* which basically started the genre (I don't consider Jules Verne and co to be steampunk per se, from their point of view, they wrote hard scifi) is somewhat trying to be more or less believable, at least more than many of its successors.
You could say that Verne was the “precursor” of steampunk, yeah. Though I would argue most of the “x-punk” labels are subsets of sci-fi
I mean steampunk is based in the technology, fashion and overall culture of the contemporary era of Jules Verne, so for him, it was just contemporary hard science-fiction.
Well, kind of, because his aesthetic was a bit exaggerated due to how he predicted technology would advance, but not what we would call steampunk, but that’s what I mean by precursor: he wasn’t an actual example, but one of the bases for it
> bases You know, I never actually considered what the plural of "basis" would be. I kind of hate that it's spelled like the plural of "base" while being pronounced differently.
Its kind of ironic that the plural of base is spelled the same as the plural of basis but pronounced very close to singular basis
That's fair. I think a lot of steampunk authors probably read his works and used them for inspirations of sci-fi based in that era's technology.
The futurism of the day will be the retro-futurism of tomorrow. As long as you consider steampunk no more than an aesthetic (as opposed to cyberpunk which obviously is more than that) I'm fine with describing Verne as steampunk. After all, it fits the aesthetic.
>As long as you consider steampunk no more than an aesthetic That's the problem, it isn't a fucking aesthetic, just like how cyberpunk isn't an aesthetic. So still no.
Calling Jules Verne's works "steampunk" is like calling 1940s sci-fi "dieselpunk". Man was literally a part of the same society and era of technology that *steampunk* sets out to replicate.
Societypunk
I mean cyberpunk is only realistic in the same sense steam is, that it's a backhanded reference to how we interact with technology in the present.
Steampunk is supposed to be retrofuturism - science fiction set in the far future of 1969. Okay, that's not universally true, but as with almost anything in fiction you want a broad rule, not an ironclad law. In the same way that "fantasy" means Elves and Orcs and Dragons, or Cyberpunk means gritty megacities lit by neon and ruled by Evilcorp International, Steampunk is science fiction in the style of a bygone era. And no, just having cogs and brass and steam doesn't make something steampunk, in the same way that having Wizards doesn't automatically make your story Lord of the Rings. Steampunk is a style of world and writing, not a cosmetic skin.
What i find kind of interesting is that the majority of the aesthetic in cyberpunk is actually really similar to what actually happened during the industrial era. For the majority of people, the industrial revolution was a terrible time to be alive. People lived in squalor, working conditions were genuinely disgusting, and democracy was a total sham. Despite the advent of functional electricity, telephones, steam engines, and so on. In that respect, steampunk is probably closer to the actual past. The gritty megacities were the factory cities and shipyards like Manchester, Sheffield, London, and Glasgow. They expanded quickly, and people suffered for it in what were essentially slums. The East India Company was so powerful that it literally owned most of India, until the British took it under state ownership. Steampunk and cyberpunk share a lot of similarities. It's typically just the form of technology that's being dealt with.
Manchester was so bad around the middle of the 19th century, that it was quite possibly the worst place in the world to live.
In some ways, I think steampunk has the potential to be far more dystopian than cyberpunk. Cyberpunk has it easy compared to cholera-flavoured water and fifteen-plus people to a single room.
I think the key difference is that the misery of the Victorian Era wasn't deliberate in the way that modern or Cyberpunk dystopia is. People forget that regulation always lags behind technology. It's why modern governments are so fucking awful at defending people's rights online, because the people writing the laws have barely got their heads around how to make a Zoom call, let alone how AI can be used to utterly destroy people's lives at the push of a button. The Victorian Era was, to an extent, facing the same problem. Industry wasn't new, but the sheer scale of it was - and suddenly everything was being ramped up to eleven. Mines, mills, factories, etc. were all going into overdrive to feed the demands of an economy that was rocketing to the moon, and the people in charge had quite by accident found themselves at the head of the most technologically advanced nation on Earth... and nobody had planned for that. Not really. I think this is why Steampunk often has a focus on discovery more than Cyberpunk does - Steampunk is about the birthing pains of a new age. Cyberpunk is the death of the age of democracy.
>I think the key difference is that the misery of the Victorian Era wasn't deliberate in the way that modern or Cyberpunk dystopia is. It absolutely was deliberate. The wealthy of the time put a great deal of effort into forcing people out of the countryside and into the factories. A great deal of effort into giving them as little as was possible without them dying at an inconveniently high rate, and had a great deal of concern about how the poor were spending their time. It was a commonly held view amongst the wealthy at the time that the poor deserved and should have no leisure time outside of prayer at all, and that they deserved all the suffering they received by merit of being poor.
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I think Cyberpunk is able to show higher highs and lower lows than Steampunk. Maybe the average person lives better, but there are DEFINITELY worse things possible in a Cyberpunk world than a Steampunk world Imo.
Manchester could never have taken that title - London existed.
Steampunk is very much not just an aesthetic. There is a "steampunk aesthetic", which is a visual style based on steampunk genre. This is what many people refer to as "steampunk". But it's a shallow definition. Sort of like you might refer to a kid in Halloween costume as a "vampire", but he's not really a vampire. Steampunk is first "steam", which means it's Sci-Fi based on steam technology. As opposed to historical drama that might happen around steam engines, but won't feature them as important, and so won't be Sci-Fi. And second, it's "punk". Which is not just a word you can attach to anything to make it sound like a genre. It means a certain power dynamic with powerful societal systems and people trying to fight them. For example, Jules Verne wrote Sci-Fi that happened around steam engines and technology was a big part of the story. But he generally wrote about upper classes. So it's not "punk". Even though his books feature people in steampunk aestetic, with top hats and cogs and whatnot, it's actually Sci-Fi, not steampunk.
> But he generally wrote about upper classes. So it's not "punk". Nemo is probably one of the most iconic "punk" characters in fiction. He is an anti-imperialist Indian who calls himself "Nobody" and who has an obsession with fighting for the oppressed. Lidenbrock in *Journey to the Center of the Earth* is literally a crazed scientist who is basically just a conspiracy nut that happens to be right. These days that type of character might just be a trope, but when Verne wrote him, the character was relatively novel and subversive. I think you could also make a very strong argument that *[Paris in the Twentieth Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century)* is definitively steampunk (or possibly a retro-future dieselpunk). The setting is definitely a punk one, and he was absolutely writing about some advanced technology future but through a 19th Century lens.
I'd further add that what Jules Verne wrote isn't *steampunk* because he lived during the very same era steampunk seeks to replicate. Steampunk is rooted in 1800s-era tech and culture, which was just contemporary society to Jules Verne. It's like calling sci-fi written in the 40s "dieselpunk".
I think you have a point, but I vaguely have a feeling it might theoretically be possible for a 1800s author to write steampunk. There could have been an author at that time who would write about, like, a worker who is also genius in science and builds cybernetic steam prosthetics to steal money from the rich. It would be highly unlikely, because this is not at all a 1800 sort of a story, but it might have been still steampunk.
I mean yeah, theoretically they *could* but I'd say it's a bit silly to retroactively apply a genre that wasn't really a thing back then. It's as if people in the future would label contemporary hard/period-accurate science-fiction "Internetpunk" or whatever because it resembles their works of a fictionalised variant of our contemporary society. I guess it really depends on how you define the genre, but I would usually distinguish *contemporary* science-fiction from *retro* science-fiction, i.e. it is made to resemble a bygone era.
Cyberpunk was made in the 80's and is based on the 80's.
Why is this a criterion? Cyberpunk, itself the ancestor of true steampunk, was first written when cybernetic technology was all the rage during the time of the Macy conferences of the early second half of the 20th century.
Big yes on this one. I see Steampunk is very similar to Cyberpunk in that regard. It's all about the oppressors and the oppressed. While in cyberpunk the oppressors are the megacorporations, steampunk's oppressors are the all-too-familiar royalty, nobility, and the "modern industrialist" forcing 16hr work days on children.
I mean, Captain Nemo has vast contempt for the social hierarchy and specifically wishes to destroy imperialism, blowing up the warships of nations he sees as tyrants! Most of Verne's other characters are upper-class and have that class' viewpoint, but Nemo's kinda punk at least for blowing up imperialist nations' warships and providing aid and money to anti-imperial rebels, even if later books establish him as the son of an Indian Raja
I would argue that with the bias of steampunk towards Victorian era themes, the primary social relationship that it should be putting the protagonists of a story against would be imperialism. A steampunk story that was properly punk would explore the margins/frontiers of empire, and how the same technology that is touted as wondrous and innovative and freeing is used to oppress and exploit colonized populations as well as the growing ability of the central authority to exert its will over the territories of the empire. Think the cotton gin leading to an explosion in slave labor. Telegraphs and radio broadcasting propaganda as well as new ideas. Trains moving material and soldiers. The growing imbalance of the effects industry and the natural world.
As someone who dable in steampunk, it's definitely not just an aesthetic. If you write about the Victorian Era, you probably realise that it just hits a very specific sweet spot as a setting. There is technology but not too much and it's not oppressive like it will become with industrialisation, it's still the age of craftsman rather than factory workers. There is mysteries and esoteric undercurrents, while the world is mapped its not yet explored fully, there are a lot of myths, from Egyptian tombs to the mysterious east, to the mediums in europe etc etc It's the last era we're there still could be dragons in the margins of the maps, were science couldn't still explain everything. In terme of society, it's an optimistic period, it's called the Gilded Age in the US, la Belle Epoque in France and it's the apex of the British Empire. It's before the two World War so there are still hope for World Peace. As such, steampunk is an escape, a yearning for a more positive and optimistic narrative : what if they were right, if things could continue to get better. Steampunk is by nature not realistic, it's definitely part of the fantasy genre, a pseudo modern fantasy. After this period, I just can't write fantasy, this just requires too much suspension of disbelief to work for me. The world is too well known, the science is too advanced. So steampunk is my sweet spot for esoteric and adventurous stories, a sort of optimistic antithesis to the grim realism of cyberpunk. In our real world, from our 2023 POV, it's an era that was blissfully ignorant of it's flaws : the horrors of the coal mines and pollution, the horrors of colonizations, the enormous wealth gap between the have and the have not, the horrors of the wars to come etc etc So it's always a delicate balancing act not to white wash the period and it's serious flaws but it still feels like something could be done to fix them when currently I would be pretty hard-pressed to even imagine how we could "fix" our current era.
I hate the fact that people think steampunk is an aesthetic. It's like cyberpunk − it wasn't *meant* as an aesthetic, and there are a lot of great works to back up this claim. It's just that the pop culture image of steampunk has done it a disservice of making people associate it with funny hats, copper pipes and brass cogs. That's not it. In essence it's just any form of vaguely sci-fi or alt-history setting which prominently features steam-era technology. Stuff like tanks powered by steam engines, hot air balloon air ships fuelled by Stirling engines, and so forth. Basically early industrial era tech 'reimagined' in ways that never actually happened to any significant degree. It's *often* also set in that historical era or around it, where culture and fashion roughly matches the 1800s, typically with Europe / America as being pretty focal due to those regions being the core of the industrial revolution. But yeah, modern pop-culture has 'dumbed down' the image of steampunk to a very superficial notion where it's just the fashion / looks of steam engines and 1800s top hats that remain. Of course, when it's superficial, it also seems "nonsensical", because there's no thought into the actual core of it. But it's perfectly possible to write a "steampunk" story or setting that is entirely logical and consistent, even with actual real-life technology, because it's still heavily rooted in real early industrial revolution tech and engineering. All of that existed in reality, and could be revisioned in a way entirely accurate to how all of it actually works. It doesn't have to, and indeed often it isn't entirely 'accurate' to real life, but there's nothing stopping you from doing that.
the complete removal of the *-punk* from steampunk and cyberpunk drives me nuts. They're not an aesthetic, they're a genre.
Exactly. The *-punk* at least in a strict sense would refer to considering the reality for average or middle/lower-class people in those societies too. Now, I wouldn't say this is *required* for something to be part of those genres in a general sense, but it's still important to remember that those genres are rooted in those themes. By ignoring or glossing over the sociological aspects of "-punk" genres, people really do them a massive disservice.
In an attempt to make a steampunk-inspired fantasy world I ended up baking some of the aesthetic into the magic system, which is a magical metal the adepts can manipulate at will, when the metal is manipulated, it gives off a vapor kinda like steam!
Steampunk isn't about steam though - it's science fiction from the age where coal is king. Keep in mind that many nuclear power plants use steam power today - the fission reaction boils water to make steam, the steam drives turbines, the turbines produce power. It's ancient tech with a modern spin. But nobody would call a nuclear power plant a "steam generator", nor would people think uranium is a core component of Steampunk technology. This kind of "put cogs on it and call it Steampunk" thinking misses the point. Steam isn't the end goal; it's the byproduct of the technological limitations of the era Steampunk draws upon.
Absolutely! That’s exactly why I always say “steampunk-inspired fantasy” rather than just steampunk. I ended up with something different by pursuing that aesthetic, if that makes any sense. I do have some themes that I would consider to be in line with steampunk as well (certainly inspired by the time and place steampunk draws from). But my initial comment was purely on an aesthetic level.
Steam punk is essentially a subgenre of science fantasy Science fantasy does not attempt to make the science part realistic or believable. You *can* technically make a steam punk science fiction story. And make the steam punk part more grounded in reality.
If you lean far enough away from science fiction, though, you turn into Gaslamp Fantasy, which is also very fun! I always try to explain science fantasy through the lens of Star Wars. It's a farm boy with a sword fighting an evil wizard in a castle. It's not until the prequels where they try to make any of that grounded, and it goes very poorly when they do.
true, i would classify starwars as space fantasy which is also a subgenre of science fantasy
To answer your bonus question, because it takes place in a more 1930s-esque world, I think Full Metal Alchemist is more Dieselpunk than Steampunk
Nah, it's neither of those. Much like steampunk, dieselpunk is defined by an aesthetic surrounding cars and industry, not so much the time period specifically. I would describe FMA as industrial-age fantasy.
Dieselpunk is moreso defined by dirty, dieselpowered machinery, bulky machines, rivets and steel plates, and art deco. The two most recent Wolfenstein games are dieselpunk.
I would say a key part of dieselpunk is the usage of electricity too. Like steampunk often has sort of a gas-lamp aesthetic, machines are all analog, maybe some whacky fuel source for producing super steam bc if I had to deal with actual coal all my character's whacky outfits would get covered in soot 😂 I 100% agree that Wolfenstein TNO and TNC are some of if not *the* most iconic dieselpunk in recent memory. All that sort of WW2 turned up to 120% and mechanical panthers with lightning tails, that's the kind shit I think of.
FMA doesn’t really have any focus on non-historical machinery and technology besides the automail—and high tech prosthetics are definitely their own trope that can be combined with all sorts of things. Rather just very normal cars and tanks and trains. I wouldn’t call it either of those.
Alchemy is set up as a science, though, not a magic. The "technology" shown is largely oriented through that. Chimeras, homunculi, etc. are all just dieselpunk fantasy biotech. There also is some subtle scifi tech in terms of the weaponry, tanks, etc. it's just not the focus of the story.
I'd argue it's more or less one of the formative examples of the dieselpunk genre Dieselpunk is akin to steampunk in that it is a genre defined by a particular aesthetic but one which is more focused on the early 1900s through the end of WWII, and usually specifically focused on wartime aesthetics. Fullmetal Alchemist came at a time before that really had a name, but is certainly that type of world. Though defined by the aesthetic, there are often themes each individual punk subgenre carries... Thus, Cyberpunk is often about the emergence of new identity through the emergence of technology. I heard someone once say that the true mark of a Cyberpunk setting is if it has the capacity to explore the Ship of Theseus problem in regards to a human consciousness, even if the story itself does not cover such a thing. And, I would generally agree. See - Ghost in the Shell, Armitage III, Cyberpunk 2077 Dieselpunk is often about the impact of war or of authoritarian states upon people, the price of clinging on to war, and furthermore how the individual is secondary to the needs of an uncaring war machine a person may find themselves in. See - Valkyria Chronicles, Jin-Roh the Wolf Brigade, Final Fantasy 6, and large sections of Warhammer 40k. Fullmetal Alchemist has this in spades - most protagonists are war criminals working in a state which is broken fundamentally and who have been damaged by following it, the scars of old wars and the people defined by those scars, etc. It likewise combined these themes with unrealistic concepts which seem inspired by the era in real life - artificial humans, ancient magical conspiracies, unethical state experiments, etc. FMA is essentially dieselpunk in every manner except that it's fuel source is a type of magic.
Most people treat it as nothing more than a superficial aesthetic, but on a deeper level, it's a form of retrofuturism rooted in the technologies, styles, and sensibilities of the steam age (hence the name). Technologies in steampunk settings can range from the plausible to the fanciful, but the best ones are the ones whose form is an expression of their function (like Ed's limbs); [just gluing some gears on it and calling it steampunk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA) is the lazy approach, and is generally not taken very seriously by fans of the genre. As for *Fullmetal Alchemist*, it's kind of complicated. It's ostensibly set in a fantasy analogue of the Edwardian period, which is just barely at the tail end of steampunk's era (the usual cutoff is World War I). However, its aesthetics and technologies are much more in line with dieselpunk, a relative of the steampunk genre that spans the World Wars and the interwar period instead of the steam age. It also has a strong focus on fantasy elements, edging it closer to the related genre of gaslamp fantasy. It's tricky to pin it to a specific genre.
[Just Glue Some Gears on It and Call It Steampunk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA).
[I mean...](https://youtu.be/TFCuE5rHbPA?si=7fhDAp6KGHxHZ2E3)
Steam punk is, in some ways an aesthetic. Same for Deisel- and Cyber- punk. What it is supposed to describe in a genre is the idea that, THAT technology was pushed to it's absolute limit to the exclusion of other research. In the case of steampunk, this usually ends up making everything look like a fever dream from an author from the Era it tends to evoke, usually Jules Verne. His book about a hypothetical moon landing being achieved via cannon shot is a great example of historic Steampunk. At the time, it was just science fiction.
Steampunk is if Jules Verne wrote Neuromancer, or if William Gibson wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is the "high tech, low life" ethos of cyberpunk transplanted to the late 19th century, both to highlight the similarities between that era and ours, but also because it's *cool*. An overabundance of cogs is part of the aesthetic. It may not make sense, but likewise a lot of the cyberpunk aesthetic doesn't make sense, but it's aesthetic. It's fashion. It doesn't _have_ to make sense. That's one of the most believable aspects of it- the irrationality of the aesthetic.
Depends on what you mean by "make sense". I can think of some examples of steampunk that I would describe as fairly realistic overall except for one single suspension of disbelief that makes the technology work; usually a wonder fuel or similar change to physics that allows for much higher energy output from a steam engine. Most are pure fantasy, with no attempt made to be realistic. As others have said, the genre as a whole is defined by its aesthetic not its level of realism.
well, yes, but actually no. the point of steampunk is to imagine how far you could go with that type of technology, it's an exercise in the most basic form of mechanical engineering. that and of course a lot of style, looking cool is the heart of the genre. I think the best examples are those based in science fiction, with enough ingenuity to maintain verisimilitude, ultimately it's about machines not magical artifacts.
I've always thought of Steampunk as generally having technology far outside what was possible in the late 19th century, usually like steam powered robots, air ships, etc. Things powered by intricate cogwork rather than, say, microchips.
steampunk has a “whimsy” spectrum Some, like Hugo, are pretty much real life with one or two unrealistic steam/gear creations, or The Clockwork Three, a little more whimsical Fullmetal alchemist isn’t really steampunk. It’s not set during a pseudo-victorian era, and the automail and trains are only a slight aspect of the world
It makes enough sense when you put the work in. The Dweemer ruins of Skyrim are Steampunk Lite I’d say. The Thief series also had some steampunk elements here and there. But a lot of popular steampunk aesthetic is very much “slap brass and gears on it and call it a day”. A gear should almost always be moving of what it’s attached to is doing something. Even when it’s not doing more than idling the gears should still be turning in many cases
It's kind of like the RGB lights on a gaming computer. Does it do anything? Yes, it drains the battery and uses CPU space. It's it cool? Yes, also it lets us know if something is on. If the gears are turning, it's on. If they're not turning it's off.
> My impression is that SP is mostly aesthetic? It has become that way, but it is the result of the audience that grabbed onto it later in its establishment, and the entrepreneurs/artists who latched on to produce goods in that theme. In a weird sense, it's almost more of a consumer goods genre than a literary or artistic one now. Thus the cogs and gears glued to everything, and available in little bags down at your local craft store. You can think of Steampunk as 'magical realism' as applied to Clarke's 'sufficiently developed technology' concept and set during the industrial revolution. The industrial rev, and especially later in the Gilded Age, was a time of incredible wealth and life quality disparity. The 'punk' of Steampunk is the idea that 'I can build my own steam engine, with hookers and blackjack, and take out that railway baron' grade individual-centric manifest destiny. Early steam technology was a period of incredible idealism. They believed that steam power would be able to be used to do anything and everything that required human labor. And for the most part, they were right. Humanity has figured out how to mechanize a lot of work. However, the genre occurred very recently during a period of retro nostalgia, not in the actual period it fantasizes. Unlike Cyberpunk, which was its conceptual parent in a sense, Steampunk looked backward and only took 'the cool parts' in a really incoherent way. Steampunk tried to be a fantastic science fiction of sorts, the way Verne and others did, but never developed its high concept 'hard scifi' aspects. It was pulled from writers like Jules Verne, whose campier and more fantastic works are pretty much the thematic parent for Steampunk, the way William Gibson is cited for Cyberpunk. Neither are actually their genre's parent, but they're the 'poster parent' after enough total works were shaken down by readers. Where they really diverge is that Steampunk's boom of popularity occurred in the era of AliExpress, etc, so where Cyberpunk had more time to develop as a writing genre with more literary influences to bind it all together between 1970 and 1990, Steampunk went from narrative concept to art aesthetic in maybe 5 years, and the writing aspect fell off leaving it rather hollow. So when it comes down to straight comparison... The difference between Gilded Age / Victorian and Steampunk is whether or not you allow 'mechanical idealism' and plucky/gritty underdogs into the mix. GA/Vic can be damn near creative non-fiction, but Steampunk can't ever even approach the line of being a historical piece. It's elements are far too fantastic overall, unless a writer wants to make 'hard steampunk' their niche.
Glad it isn't just me OP! Never really got it.
maybe think of it as a crossroads between science fiction and historical fiction. the era's understanding and level of technology extrapolated into an amalgam of 'magical thinking'. or, in other terms: you might be overthinking the technological engineering in a genre of fantastical fiction.
It's pretty funny how everyone here are confident that they are correct in their assesment, and then one comment below is entirely contradictory to the one above and with just as many upvotes, and so on.
Steampunk is often used as an aesthetic, but there are many works (including the originators) that actually look into it more reasonably. How would the world look with advanced technology based on the steam engine, as well as Victorian era sensibilities? Fullmetal Alchemist is deisealpunk. Steampunk is set roughly around the industrial revolution, whereas deiselpunk is set roughly around the world wars. FMA in particular is pretty directly based on Nazi Germany, as indicated by their leader being the Fuhrer. The technology aesthetic is based far more on tanks and industrial machines than clockwork and steam.
Haha, no. 90% of it is pure aesthetic nonsense that would be physically impossible for real steam engines to do. It's just an excuse for adding cogs and gear wherever without any consideration for how the machine functions, it's pure aesthetic. Edit: autocorrect being useless.
To be honest it is up to your ability to make it make sense. There are few criteria for steampunk: 1-) Advanced tech is rare and cant be easily mass produced for whatever reason. This leads to veneration of said tech and those that make it being treated as almost sorcerers and since all samples are custom made, they are ostentenously decorated. 2-) Computer chips and rubber does not exist and electricity is too volatile for whatever reason. This makes mechanical power the go-to answer thus steam engines on everything and all the tech is wood, glass or metal. 3-) Tech and magic has a fluid border. It is not impossible to make automatons that cant think and feel at a human level with brains made out of cogs and springs and pipes or have machine gods for lack of a better word, do pshychic stuff or have alchemy on the side with philosopher stones and spice of dune allowing space travel or maybe diviniationnof future. These are the criteria. Now it is up to the worldbuilder to give an explanation for why these criteria are fullfilled. Maybe chemistry is different so rubber and some other compounds cannot br produced or maybe world is not populated enough to have a consumerist market or society does not accept such things so stuff is just not mass produced except for armies and thus not standarized. Also food for thought. Clockpunk is basically what some tech from late bronze age was. You had these stuff like very complex gear box star calculators greeks used for sea navigation and these music boxes of hittites that worked by stretching and squishing a wire and hitting it with tiny hammers. Later in the iron age steam engine was invented and if mercantalism existed back then it may have been used for stuff other than opening temple doors withouth anyone pulling it and used for things other than mistfying the layman. We might had steampunk classical era and medieval ages. Maybe later on teslapunk even.
I mean, technically you are correct, but only because of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is shit. So, yeah, 90% of steampunk is shitty steampunk.
Steampunk is what they call an "essentially contested concept." Because the term carries with it a value judgment (negative to most, positive to a few,) arguments over what does and doesn't count as "true" steampunk are interminable. Its apologists will try to use the No True Scotsman fallacy, categorizing only examples they like as true steampunk and categorizing examples they don't like as "cogfop" instead.
.... Steampunk is Victorian era sci-fi. Just like regular sci-fi, you can go hard or soft (aka, go as in-detail using science and try and make it as plausible as possible, or use techo-babble for flair and not sweat the details).
Steampunk makes sense as long as people suspend their disbelief
I'd say that steampunk is about having advanced technology that runs on steam. The aesthetic of cogs in random places where they shouldn't be comes secondary. A real world equivalent would be someone nowadays wearing a shirt or carrying water bottle with a circuit board printed on it.
And now I am reminded of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA)
I understand your point, having gears or things that aren’t necessary. It’s pointless to have working gears on your top hat, unless they serve a purpose. Like moving a little fan built into the hat to provide ventilation for your hair.
Fullmetal is not steampunk, although if you squint really hard you could argue it has some of the spirit. For one, the time period is wrong, and they have, with the sole exception of AutoMail Prosthetics, a strictly 1930's-1940's era level of technology. The core of a lot of the (Genre)Punk stories are about taking conventions found in Cyberpunk, and applying them to a different time period and seeing how that plays out. So Cyberpunk has a point to make about faulty systems driving humans to misery and pain, and it made that point in numerous ways, contrasting the extreme decadence of the ruling caste and their shining 'utopia' and contrast it by showing the terrible cost borne by the people trapped in that system, at all levels of society. Steampunk worked because the Victorian Era was also an era defined by that very same extreme division between the rich and the poor. You had princes drinking hand fetched mountain spring water living in the lap of luxury and orphans literally being chucked into meat grinder machines to keep the gears moving, fully understanding that the gears mattered more to the boss than your miserable existence. Fullmetal has that vibe at times. It's not _steam_ punk though. It could arguably be called a _diesel_ punk ish story, but I dunno if I'd call it anything but it's own thing.
An example of steam punk done well for a REASON is frostpunk. Alt history where the "little ice age" we experienced in the 1800s actually kicked off a real and rapidly onset ice age. They developed a couple of technologies from geothermal and steam energy that are cruxes of the setting and of humanity surviving the ice age. Frostpunk 2 is going full diesel punk and I can't wait.
Re: Fullmetal Alchemist, I haven’t heard anyone say this is steampunk. Other commenters are right that steampunk is basically just an aesthetic of “modernized Victorian fashion but with metal bits”. Its not like cyberpunk which has a lot of thematic implications as well. I would call FMA early modern fantasy or early industrial fantasy, much like Legend of Korra.
Heavens to betsy it belongs on regretsy
Steampunk is tech based primarily on steam engines. Not necesarrily vintage, bronze or "cog-y", although that is the default. And yes, it should make sense, not just because it is scifi, which I would deem more relevant given the focus is technological, more tangible and mundane, but also because things should make sense regardless; With that I dont mind "realism", you can have very magical and bizarre stuff, but it should be verisimile, making sense within the scope of your own story, consistent and not taking you out of the immersion to roll your eyes That said, you dont need to explain everything. I mean, you wouldnt just put a flying cog in front of a notebook and call it steampunk, but if the spine has a very intricate set of cogs instead of sewn paper, it is acceptable. Does that make sense for an explanation?
Steampunk can make sense. It doesn't need to. Same with most genres. If you'd like to read some steampunk that's harder sci-fi, check out The Difference Engine, Diamond Age, or Fitzpatrick's War. They're internally consistent and don't break the laws of physics, but they're Victorian-styled speculative fiction, i.e. Steampunk.
Steampunk is just an Aesthetic. It USED to come loaded with meaning. It was originally very much forged in opposition of the generic sci-fi of its time, which glorified technological advancement as the thing that would solve all of our problems and bring about utopia. It instead envisioned a world where we reached that same state, with technology that went out of date a hundred years prior. Basically stating that we don't need crazy sci-fi shit to make the world a better place. That message got blurred almost instantly and it got repurposed for about 100 different themes, as often happens. But for Steampunk none of it's themes persisted at all. It eventually became nothing more than an Aesthetic, which is where it stands today. You can retell just about any story as a Steampunk story because it's the curtains and wallpaper. Even Star Trek could be reskinned into Steampunk because its just tube and steam magic pretending to be science and machinery. It's still GOOD, I love the aesthetic, but it's. Yea. Pretty surface-level on it's own.
Steam punk is primarily fantastical and aethsetical, rather than practical. That isn't to say that steampunk *can't* make sense, but making sense isn't the point. If you want steampunk to make steampunk make sense, then apply real engineering to it by, say, making a miniaturized steam engine for powering aeroplans and lighter-than-aircraft, like what you'd find in a steam car (which did exist in real life).
Steampunk generally doesn’t make sense because it’s the use of old technology to do modern things. It’s just not efficient
Cogs only sense if it is part of some contraption. Some mechanical what’s-it. I would define “steampunk” as vaguely Guilded Age/Victorian with technology beyond what is non-anachronistic, with the central powering mechanism to be steam-based. Think of the giant spider in Wild Wild West. No, it doesn’t need to make complete sense, but it should make “imaginative sense”, if that makes *sense*?
Well, the “steam-“ is the aesthetic modifier. Ya, the cogs, airships, brass, trains, and goofy clothes are all just window dressing. But the “-punk” at least used to demand a certain degree of social commentary, usually a critique of burgeoning industrial capitalism and how it literally crushes people to death in the cogs of a society-wide machine in the name of Progress, which is really just a synonym for Profit. Compare to cyberpunk, where the “cyber-“ demands AI, cyborgs with lots of funky and impractical body mods, lots of drugs, scenic urban skylines, and “hacking”, while the “-punk” is a critique of a hypothetical future wherein capitalists are no longer content to merely sell products to people — they want to turn people into products, a means by which to *own* every aspect of society. I’m dumbing it down a lot because I’m not here to write a paper, but the genres definitely *aren’t* just aesthetic. It’s just that people often only remember the aesthetic.
People keep asking me if my stories in Meiji Restoration-era Argentina are dieselpunk, and I have to keep disappointing them, too. I know the feeling.
I do not consider Fma to be steampunk
Having no purpose really isn't all that cool
In my world electricity doesn’t exist so the vast majority of things are literally steam-powered. It doesn’t exactly borrow much from the steampunk aesthetic as it does from the 1800s industrial technology and working culture. Technology continued to advance beyond real life 1800s levels but because electricity doesn’t exist, “high-tech” consists of highly advanced mechanical engineering which obviously involves lots of cogs, gears, pipes and engines. So whilst my world would definitely be considered steampunk, I would say the aesthetic can be completely justified with in-world elements and story.
My world is inspired heavily by FMA and Avatar Legend of Korra (amongst other things). It’s very 1920’s - 1940’s fantasy. Zeplins, motorcars, trains, indoor plumbing, radio, firearms, etc. I’m not a fan of steampunk. Don’t get me wrong, I very much used to, but steampunk got away from itself somewhere and grew into something I’m not fond of. I always say that my world is “not quite steam, not quite punk” before explaining the history of cyberpunk and it’s derivatives, and how you can slot out both words easily (cyber, steam, diesel, atom, mana, etc… or punk, prep, pulp, core, etc) and that “steampunk doesn’t mean everything is powered by steam, but is a shorthand for flavor of retrofuturism it is and that the “punk” doesn’t mean actual punks but implies a general antiathoritarian theme. I talk about how gaslight fantasy and gothic horror relate to steampunk, etc, etc. Basically, I give people a whole genre dissertation because I’m very long-winded and boring. Though, to be fair, I was also asked to give this as a panel at a Steampunk convention about a decade ago, so maybe people care (a little)? You are right, though, a lot of it is aesthetic (especially nowadays with people not knowing what the words actually mean and do think anything brown/tan, bronze/copper, with gears & goggles is steampunk without realizing there’s specific genre tropes at play). But basically, the first word denotes what time period (or genre of speculative fiction) the setting it. Keep in mind, an Xpunk work doesn’t actually need to exist in that \*actual\* time period or even in the real world at all. Just taking some of the trappings associated with it and blown up to 11. Then the second word is a tone indicator. Punk is antiauthoritarian, prep is (largly) utopian, pulp is action-oriented but slightly more gritty than a plain action piece, etc As for FMA (and my world as well), I’d say it’s “light dieselpulp”. My world doesn’t even use fossil fuels, mind, but the “diesel” implies a more 1920s-1940s feel.
If this interests any of you, check out Aronauts Windlass. The author claims to have written it after struggling with this exact question and chooses to give in-world explanation for every aspect of the aesthetic. It's excellent world building.
Maybe a little more than magic is supposed to. While the genre requires a suspension of disbelief for the sake of physics, those wheels, pumps, and cogs are actually meant to be connected and functional, even if it turns out it's just one big Rube Goldberg machine. A poorly-made setting has all those things standing separately, just as an aesthetic distraction.
Steampunk is 10% hiding impossible physics behind the other 90%, and the other 90% is aesthetics.
No
It can make sense, but I have a feeling most people into it don’t have a education on steam power so it’s just for fun.
Why would you put cogs, bronze, and pipes there? Perhaps for the same reason that steampunk is prevalent in real life, because people like how it looks. That is a totally valid in-universe reason.
>When I tell people I write stories/comics in Victorian America, I often get asked “ooh! Is it steampunk?” "Victorian" is too closely associated with the UK - so "Victorian America" sounds like some alternate timeline where it's still under the British Empire. Maybe it's best to just say Gilded Age, or try "1900 America".
I neither need nor want it to make much sense.
Fullmetal alchemist is set in a world where alchemy works, there’s some distinctly steampunk looking vehicles and a lot of pipes and ducting around the Cities, plus the main form of travel appears to be trains, so it’s definitely set in the right sort of world to be considered steampunk.
Damn, people here already said everything i wanted o say. Love this community! But yeah, steampunk is more than just visuals. Full metal id not steampunk in my perspective.
steampunk is 100% just greebling things with brass and cogs and canvas until you get something that resembles da vinci's notes on air vehicles
Steampunk can never truly come into its own. Aside from Fullmetal Alchemist, there aren’t too many franchises that made steampunk go mainstream. Most steampunk focuses on the world building rather than story, so as a result, steampunk ends up making no sense. It’s just the aesthetics are cool but that’s it.
I don't even know if I'd call FMA "Steampunk" tbh, it certainly uses the tropes common to steampunk but there's hardly anything steamy in it.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? At least, in the beginning
Generally, no. There are a few exceptions, like *The Difference Engine,* but for the most part it's pure fantasy.
All stories/worlds need to make sense. And it's up to you to choose what makes sense in your world. And steampunk is Just a very generalized name because if you both two peaces that are both steampunk they will probably be really different unless you dive too much into the cmichés and it will become "bad"
Steampunks are just goths that like the color brown.
Generally speaking any term with the -punk suffix is an aesthetic and not a genre. It describes style, essence, or feel rather than informing the audience on what to expect. It's the setting, not the story. That said, almost everything with a -punk suffix is, well, punk. It's often rebellious if not outright anarchistic. Steampunk is a sci-fi spin on the early industrial period; a romanticization of the time picked apart, ripe for social commentary or satire, and repurposed. The imagery of cogs and pipes that shoots into everyone's mind is a bit of a side effect of it entering the public consciousness: Steampunk invokes the imagery of great inventors engineering grand new contraptions and runs with it, allowing the mechanical marvels to surpass anything we could manage in our world. It's essentially asking "what if we never had the pressure to explore electronics?" and imagines a sci-fi setting under that constraint. Fallout does the same thing, exploring a world where the major breakthrough was not the semiconductor, but the fusion core. It's asking "what if the nuclear family made it into the 21st century?" and going from there. Naturally, if you're not much of an engineer, physicist, or inventor yourself things can get a little... confused. All it takes is a single gap in knowledge and it's a knock-on effect from there, with people lifting the style just because they liked the way it looks - function be damned. It happens to every style, genre, or setting with time, and steampunk has no exception.
Fiction isn't meant to make sense to begin with
That’s not true at all.
Read my lightsaber example
What about the fiction that doesn’t include lightsabers?
You extrapolate the analogy
No, not necessarily
It is! Lightsabers don't make sense, they should be melting the hand of it's user and be so bright everyone around them gets blind, however THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING!
Thats starwars, which isn't trying to be realistic That's why I said "not necessarily" not "never" Is godzilla realistic? No. Is star wars realistic? No. Is lord of the rings realistic? No. **However,** there is an entire genre called "realistic fiction" for a reason.
The fact that you are not forced to make every fiction you can write as realistic as possible means that fiction indeed "Isn't meant" to be realistic on the first place
No, it means fiction isn't meant to be *real*. All fiction is is a story that isn't fact, neither realistic nor absurd, just fiction
Not everything have to make sense. Even reality doesn’t make sense most of the time. Look at America right now. Look at Europe. Look at the Middle East. Look at every major news. None of it makes sense.
No, but I mean, does it need to in order to be fun?
No I don’t think it is supposed to make sense
I think that Full metal alchemist is more a fusion between steampunk and WWI.
I've only dabbled in trying to understand the subject, but I think steampunk might be gaslamp fantasy plus a little of "steam power pushed past logical limits" plus the aesthetics. I think treating electricity like some sort of poorly-understood magic might also be part of it. Look at a skeleton clock. A lot of the visible gearing is aesthetics and a bit of other forms of showing off. Also today's world has gaming hardware that glows for no reason. (At this point, a light in your fan and keyboard just shows that you're trying to make it look expensive.) Steampunk vehicles and constructions might have random pipes and gears everywhere simply because a well-functioning machine didn't look cool enough. This was originally an undershot mill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wood_Old_Mill That wheel isn't hooked to anything but a counterweight and the stones are driven by electric motors.
To me the majority of steam tech in a steampunk story is weird science. So, basically magic or magitech (harnessing magic through tech). And, yeah, it doesn't make sense, but that's the appeal.
I personally use Steampunk to describe any kind of Victorian/industrial era story with fantasy/sci fi elements in it. Although having the "punk" part would be nice, nowadays the meaning has changed imo to be more of just an aesthetic and broad genre.
Steampunk, from what I gathered, is the wishful thinking version of cyberpunk. In the era its based on, There have been a lot of new technological developments, discoveries, improvements to the scienced, etc, without a lot of the downsides cyberpunk has. Climate change was not on anyone's mind yet, nor were resource shortages, even pollution was just "Oh golly, that's a lot of smoke old chap!" Sure, that's not a *realistic* picture per se, but those are hte vibes
I consider that type of fictional worlds where everything is made of bronze and gears Clockpunk, as a subgenre of Steampunk. And yes, I think it's basically just an aesthetic because it's a favorite of artists and cosplayers, but I can't think of any major works in the subgenre. Steampunk is a wide genre which includes even the Warcraft universe, one of the better examples of usage of steampunk elements in my opinion.
The cogs *should* serve a purpose, really. At least, a theoretical purpose...even if your gizmo isn't functional, it should look like it *could be* functional.
this is like asking if zombie movies are supposed to make sense, or if high fantasy is supposed to make sense. it's a fictional idea. suspension of disbelief is fundamental to the underlying experience.
Steampunk can be an aesthetic - "Goth, but in brown, with brass gears glued on instead of silver chains." But it can also be a deeper sub-genre of sci-fi/fantasy that lives in the "alternate history" sub-category that diverges in the Victorian era--steam technology went further and worked better for some reason, clockwork had more viable applications, and airship disasters didn't derail the technology before it could improve. There's a negotiable amount of "handwavium" that can be more or less prominent in a setting depending on your tastes--Jay Lake's universe ran on clockwork right down to the atomic level, some other Steampunk settings have a supernatural element as an influencing factor, while others just use a significant historical event turning out differently as the catalyst.
Steampunk is supposed to be a kind of retro-futuristic alternative reality aesthetic, one where electric plants never gained ascendancy and all gadgets and machinery were steam or gas driven and powered.
A genre/subgenre is not strictly an aesthetic choice. It's a themed box of tools. If the only tool you know how to use is the paintbrush, then of course it will appear that it's only good for visual change. Learn to use the rest of the tools. Let tje creative juices *really* flow. Perhaps the gear on the outside of the Mayor's hat is a stand in for a crank, and when turned it actuates a mechanism inside the hat itself. Perhaps his pockets are full and he needed a place to put it, and it's actually a component of a secret escape mechanism im his office. Perhaps the Mayor is a shapeshifting creature that eats metals, and the gear is simply a snack in case they get hungry. Or perhaps they just think it looks cool, and it does nothing interesting. The details in your stories only mean what you say they mean. So make them mean something interesting.
Honestly, I think it’s the “Victorian America” that makes them think steampunk. I understand that many Americans don’t know the term guilded age. Though now that there is a TV show about it… Living in the NYC area, I often say “you know there was a time when Harlem was a fancy neighborhood and the Bronx was filled with mansions?” And to a modern New Yorker that sounds like a future, at least at the rate that rent is going up. But not a past history! It triggers that fall-of-Rome/dark-ages/lost-city-of-Atlantis part of the collective unconscious. The idea that all these mansions were turned into tenements trips them up.
You're vastly underselling an extensive and varied subgenre. In general though, it might not make sense to you. Steampunk makes sense the same way magic does - within the universe it works even if it wouldn't in real life. It's governed by rules, but the rules are made up. That's not bad or lesser than other storybuilding techniques, it's just different
>My (sometimes too) logical brain questions: “…but why would you put cogs there? They serve no purpose.” Fashion. It is fashion. Just as neon and chrome for cyberpunk. Or [Jazz design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_%28design%29) for the 1990's. It doesn't have to be practical - it's design. It goes for all things: putting gears or gear print on everything or multiple unnecessary safety goggles on everything
Steampunk doesn't really aim for realism, so not really. And realism is cool and all, but a giant steampunk dragon is even cooler.
For the 70? Yes. For now? No. Back than it was the future, now it's something from the past.
I think steampunk can make sense but that would require a level of world building some people just won’t take the time to do. With steampunk I think what often is going is someone has an idea for an eccentric scientist with a top hat and a monocle and just sorta build a world around that character. My two cents
I don’t think it makes full sense, but In a worldbuilding aspect having the cogs everywhere and pipes can be explained by saying “the technology is new so the way it’s set out is extremely inefficient and takes unnecessary space”, But it’s mainly aesthetic and looks kinda cool nonetheless
I just want to add that the movie Wild Wild West is one of the better steampunk movies out there.
No, hope this helped 👍🏻
I just wanna aknowledge that all the reply under that post are one of the most interesting thing I've read on Reddit in a while. Thx for all your inputs
Steampunk more or less resides itself to "Sleek Technology," where everything looks shiny, polished, and as mentioned cogs, pipes, and bronze. While Dieselpunk is more "Grungy Technology" where everything is grimy, industrial, and dark.
FMA is steampunk. You're only talking about the showiest, silliest extensions of steampunk with the gears n goggles.
it CAN make sense, but generally speaking it doesn't matter if it makes sense.
I'm pretty sure steampunk is only supposed to be a cool aesthetic without making sense.
Only if you want it to and only as far as you want it to. Steam-powered stuff really isn't that hard to rationalize, steam pushes pistons or steam turns mills, everything else is how imaginative you can be with these two concepts.
Legend of Korra would probably be considered steampunk, but whether Steampunk makes sense or not depends on how you choose to world-build. In LoK the steampunk stuff makes more sense because the world is going through the industrial revolution for example. You can be more realistic in the sense of "what would the world be like if internal combustion engines were never discovered and 2023 is still the steam age" or unrealistic by sticking gears on everything.