What I'm Hoping to Do Here

As you've already figured out on your own, this is A Steampunk Connection, a blog I've created as a final assignment in my 4th year English course at Brock University titled Victorian Afterlives. My posts here will be doing more than delving into the many facets of the Steampunk universe and genre, so I wanted to write an introduction to let you all know what I'm hoping to achieve here.

In my presentation where I pitched the overall concept of my final project, I talked about how a hierarchy exists within the Steampunk community. It centers around a quote I picked up when I attended a Steampunk 101 panel hosted by the Toronto Steampunk Society at FanExpo 2014. With regards to Steampunk, "There are no rules - but if you break them, people will laugh at you." People that lean towards a more prescriptive definition of Steampunk are the type of people that are doing the laughing in this scenario. I wanted to take a look at Steampunk through an optimistic lense and analyze the genre as a type of fandom, and I wanted to do all this by looking at it while keeping a descriptive definition of the term.

I myself started working on the creation of a Steampunk character, along with a costume, even before the beginning of this course. People in the class have described my adding these sorts of details to my final project as taking an anthropological angle to try and understand Steampunk - to explore a new environment by blending in and learning the people's traditions and customs. Unfortunately, this idea can't be applied to me, mainly because of the saying "Going Native" - where an anthropologist becomes a part of what they're studying. I discovered the Steampunk fandom in August and I've already gone native, so that sort of perspective is a little difficult for me.

That being said, from my perspective as a beginner in the Steampunk fandom, I'd like to think I hold a unique perspective, where I can speak to the inclusive and exclusive facets of the genre. There are some rules, but there are not nearly as many as prescriptivists would like you to think of.

So here we go: My take on Steampunk. I'm looking at multiple aspects of the genre, such as music, board games and letter writing, and will also be detailing the process of creating my own Steampunk character. There's places to go and people to see, so let's get to it!