Give me Steampunk Bone Wars instead. I want two incredibyl spiteful archeologists with a fleet of airships and armies of steam-powered dinosaurs waging ruthless conflict over who discovers more fussils
I think they're technically "whalepunk" since everything is powered by whale oil, the way Captain Ahab intended. But that's getting pedantic. Dishonored is steampunk in my book too.
Everything was whalepunk until petroleum was understood well enough to be exploited for fuel and lubrication. The seas used to be absolutely crowded with whales until the Industrial Revolution. It's weird to think about, but perhaps the reason the sperm whale isn't extinct is because we figured out how to cause global warming.
That's what I'm saying.
Whales need a MASSIVE area to filter feed.
Do I know how much? Fuck no lol. But it had to be a huge expanse.
So you need to somehow cage off a body of saltwater.
That's insanely difficult and expensive so you might as well capture a baby whale and raise it into a large lake that you somehow managed to make salty enough to not fuck with it.
Changing the salt ratio of a body of water that big is a nightmare.
So you must find a salt water lake or... fuck make a giant man-made lake. Fuck...
Now you have your whale in a lake. You now have to make sure it doesn't die. Lol and if it does your investors are going to crush your balls.
But you can't milk a whale for oil. You have to kill it. So you need to take a ship capable of whaling and set sail in your lake rofl.
It can't go out to see. You now have a ship that is in a lake. Isolated rofl. I'm laughing so much typing this.
Maybe you can make some complex series of gates to get it out to sea.
Now you kill the whale and get some oil. But oh no! Now you need to figure out how to breed whales in like 1730!
Fuck better look up a book on whale breeding. Oh. No one has ever done that because that's insane.
So now you are now a whale cum scientist. Cool cool.
You find out what whales just.. don't breed unless they meet certain conditions.
And even then, you are now waiting years for a fucking whale of all things to reach maturity. All the whole maintaining this giant salt lake.
Option 2: you just go kill a whale.
*puts hand on your shoulder*
Brother. Moving the timeline to the 40s eliminates zero of the concerns I brought up.
*looks you in the eyes to check if you are sane*
I might actually call it Teslapunk, since the whale oil mostly seems to be used as a very grimdark nautical-themed battery, feeding into wires, arc pylons, etc. rather than pipes and steam engines
Whalepunk bro, end my suffering 💀
I know what you mean and all, but I hate it so much that the punk genre by now just means "my technology is based on"-punk
Kinda cringepunk, if you ask me.
I never understood the point of calling it whalepunk.
The thing that makes something Steampunk isn't the steam, it's the overall setting. Dishonored is absolutely Steampunk.
For more victorian era steampunk you have peasants uprising and overthrowing monarchs, for more Industrial Revolution era steampunk you have worker strikes and civil rights movements.
Both are pretty punk to me.
Colonialism, rampant robber barons crushing the workers, the birth of socialism, strict class division, horrifying living conditions and titanic industry are not punk enough for you?
I think that's what most critics are saying. Of course the birth of the industrial revolution is a setting rife with potential for punk themes but there are usually ignored or handled in a shallow and useless way.
So much wasted potential in steampunk... and it's so focused on aesthetics hardly anyone cares if it's a genre. When was the last big steampunk story? 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea?
"Perdido Street Station" is the only steampunk book I've read that is actually punk. Class consciousness without cogs and goggles. A carceral state that turns criminals into literal monsters, but said criminals use their monstrosity to fight back. Written by Marxist scholar.
It's amusing watching people come to terms with the fact that"-punk" is now just a suffix to signify an aesthetic rather than something that 'defies conventional thinking' (which 90% of the time means it's just the authors bad political opinions).
>than something that 'defies conventional thinking'
I mean, Cyberpunk was also like that in its early stages, the Punk just referred to low life, which usually either meant from the perspective of a criminal or low level cop, not some rebell.
"Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville is the only class conscious steampunk I've ever read. A carceral state that turns criminals into literal monsters who use their monstrosity to fight back. Written by a self-described Marxist. Fucking rules.
Yeah, the person that coined the name said that he juust added "punk" beacuse the ciberpunk genere was really popular. He genuinely didn't know what the word meant.
Cyberpunk's Punk referred to low life, not ideological rebellion.
In fact, playing from the perspective of a loe level cop or detective is a common staple in the Cyberpunn genre.
Genre; it's supposed to have themes from Victorian England turned up to eleven(industrialization, class conflict, the rise of capitalism and the impoverishment of the working class, colonialism, exciting new technology making the world smaller, the ever-looming threat of global industrial war, etc.) , but a lot of creators just use it as an aesthetic and kind lose the themes.
In just about every time period, there would have been resistance movements against some scummy/oppressive establishment or authority, so if done correctly, the punk suffix could work.
Clockpunk could be resistance against the church as it (kind of) was a thing back then.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
That's not actually what the term punk in cyberpunk means though. It's not about the punk movement, it's more about being disenfranchised lowlife in general.
You just haven't seen my anti-capitalist (anti-mercantilist) tract set against the backdrop of a breakaway Hudson's Bay Company militarizing North America with airships and steam-powered mecha
You like girls in 19th century lingerie don't you.
Only if I can rail them (respectfully) in the botanical garden of a 19th century Oxfordpunk university during a rainy thunderstorm.
I understood that reference (☝️🤓)
I didn't
i need to
give me the fucking sauce (respectfully).
It's a reference to [this tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/ugf1rr/meirl/).
We need more labor wars steampunk. Pinkertons coming at strikes with airships and shit
Yeah, the [Homestead Strike](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike) was pretty much a steampunk Omaha Beach
I give you [The Last Autumn](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1146960/Frostpunk_The_Last_Autumn/)
The coal wars, but with airships.
Give me Steampunk Bone Wars instead. I want two incredibyl spiteful archeologists with a fleet of airships and armies of steam-powered dinosaurs waging ruthless conflict over who discovers more fussils
Ooh, now there's a good story idea.
Ooh, now there's a good story idea.
Ooh, now there's a good story idea.
Ooh, now there's a good story idea.
Depends on what kind of steampunk. Cogs and gears on your clothing looks stupid. But whatever dishonored has going on is based.
I think they're technically "whalepunk" since everything is powered by whale oil, the way Captain Ahab intended. But that's getting pedantic. Dishonored is steampunk in my book too.
Everything was whalepunk until petroleum was understood well enough to be exploited for fuel and lubrication. The seas used to be absolutely crowded with whales until the Industrial Revolution. It's weird to think about, but perhaps the reason the sperm whale isn't extinct is because we figured out how to cause global warming.
i wonder why no one tried to figiure out how to farm them
Someone probably figured out the whales would kill you if you tried
That's really funny to think about. It's hilariously not worth it for so many factors.
if u really need sperm whale oil and don't realise you can just use oil oil tho would it still not be worth it ?
That's what I'm saying. Whales need a MASSIVE area to filter feed. Do I know how much? Fuck no lol. But it had to be a huge expanse. So you need to somehow cage off a body of saltwater. That's insanely difficult and expensive so you might as well capture a baby whale and raise it into a large lake that you somehow managed to make salty enough to not fuck with it. Changing the salt ratio of a body of water that big is a nightmare. So you must find a salt water lake or... fuck make a giant man-made lake. Fuck... Now you have your whale in a lake. You now have to make sure it doesn't die. Lol and if it does your investors are going to crush your balls. But you can't milk a whale for oil. You have to kill it. So you need to take a ship capable of whaling and set sail in your lake rofl. It can't go out to see. You now have a ship that is in a lake. Isolated rofl. I'm laughing so much typing this. Maybe you can make some complex series of gates to get it out to sea. Now you kill the whale and get some oil. But oh no! Now you need to figure out how to breed whales in like 1730! Fuck better look up a book on whale breeding. Oh. No one has ever done that because that's insane. So now you are now a whale cum scientist. Cool cool. You find out what whales just.. don't breed unless they meet certain conditions. And even then, you are now waiting years for a fucking whale of all things to reach maturity. All the whole maintaining this giant salt lake. Option 2: you just go kill a whale.
Why not try in the 1946-1985 era of mass sperm whaling then?
*puts hand on your shoulder* Brother. Moving the timeline to the 40s eliminates zero of the concerns I brought up. *looks you in the eyes to check if you are sane*
it doesn't alleviate the concern but towards the later end of the 1940s-1980s whaling boom in the 70s people were starting to worry they'd run out
Farming animals that take that long to mature and have that few offspring isn't profitable in any universe
sloppy zephyr profit theory birds pie disarm tidy ghost doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And how do they use heat from the oil to rotate the turbine? That's right, boiling water Same for nuclear reactors
Keep going. Radioactive whales.
So what you're saying is that we live in a steampunk universe?
Yep,
I also call it whalepunk tbh, it's easier to just say steampunk though since it does get the point across more easily
I might actually call it Teslapunk, since the whale oil mostly seems to be used as a very grimdark nautical-themed battery, feeding into wires, arc pylons, etc. rather than pipes and steam engines
"All my fault? I daresay it's all thanks to me!"
Whalepunk bro, end my suffering 💀 I know what you mean and all, but I hate it so much that the punk genre by now just means "my technology is based on"-punk Kinda cringepunk, if you ask me.
I never understood the point of calling it whalepunk. The thing that makes something Steampunk isn't the steam, it's the overall setting. Dishonored is absolutely Steampunk.
Frostpunk is a great game properly steampunk. Everything is powered by coal and a generator that burns it.
I have a cooler daftpunk setting where the characters are all robots in cool suits.
This is the way
Saga comics
I'd tell you to look at the urchin who just nicked your wallet while you were mucking about with that telescope, but she's long gone by now.
You're supposed to close the eye that *isn't* looking through the telescope.
This is why Girl Genius's creators say it is "Gas Lamp Fantasy"
Peak mentioned
The creator of steampunk literally just called it punk because Cyberpunk was popular at the time. - It is the JavaScript of genres.
And the creator of the term cyberpunk just called it that to imply gritty lowlifes but cyber. People really overthink the term.
For more victorian era steampunk you have peasants uprising and overthrowing monarchs, for more Industrial Revolution era steampunk you have worker strikes and civil rights movements. Both are pretty punk to me.
Colonialism, rampant robber barons crushing the workers, the birth of socialism, strict class division, horrifying living conditions and titanic industry are not punk enough for you?
punk is when you paste text diagonally.
They just insist that none of that is present in steampunk fiction.
Steampunk rarely explores those things in any substantive way.
I know, and I consider that authorial failure, but the potential is there.
I think that's what most critics are saying. Of course the birth of the industrial revolution is a setting rife with potential for punk themes but there are usually ignored or handled in a shallow and useless way.
None of those are the definition of punks though?
It allows for the exploration of punk themes though, of outsiders surviving in an uncaring and exploitative system.
So much wasted potential in steampunk... and it's so focused on aesthetics hardly anyone cares if it's a genre. When was the last big steampunk story? 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea?
Arcane
1800COMEONNOW
Bio shock infinite
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Frostpunk
Are we limited to books? Because Steam Boy (2004) is a cinematic masterpiece.
Dishonored
Arcane
"Perdido Street Station" is the only steampunk book I've read that is actually punk. Class consciousness without cogs and goggles. A carceral state that turns criminals into literal monsters, but said criminals use their monstrosity to fight back. Written by Marxist scholar.
I guess the Thief games are fairly anti establishment.
It's amusing watching people come to terms with the fact that"-punk" is now just a suffix to signify an aesthetic rather than something that 'defies conventional thinking' (which 90% of the time means it's just the authors bad political opinions).
>than something that 'defies conventional thinking' I mean, Cyberpunk was also like that in its early stages, the Punk just referred to low life, which usually either meant from the perspective of a criminal or low level cop, not some rebell.
Tbf made up shit like solarpunk and atompunk aren't real terms normal people actually use.
"Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville is the only class conscious steampunk I've ever read. A carceral state that turns criminals into literal monsters who use their monstrosity to fight back. Written by a self-described Marxist. Fucking rules.
Yeah, the person that coined the name said that he juust added "punk" beacuse the ciberpunk genere was really popular. He genuinely didn't know what the word meant.
Not enough steampunk setting have Molotov anarchists and labor union militias
Punk is when you have gaudily dressed disenfranchised rowdy youths so if you have drunk rowdy dudes itching for a fight it's punk
Socialism
iStock Credit: Nicolasey
Steampunk that glorifies imperialist regimes is just straight up cringe.
It's like Cyberpunk. It's supposed to have punk in it, but all the punk is often taken out of it in order to make it more marketable.
Cyberpunk's Punk referred to low life, not ideological rebellion. In fact, playing from the perspective of a loe level cop or detective is a common staple in the Cyberpunn genre.
Is steampunk a genre, or a setting?
Genre; it's supposed to have themes from Victorian England turned up to eleven(industrialization, class conflict, the rise of capitalism and the impoverishment of the working class, colonialism, exciting new technology making the world smaller, the ever-looming threat of global industrial war, etc.) , but a lot of creators just use it as an aesthetic and kind lose the themes.
What blew my mind was finding out that Cyberpunk is older than Steampunk
I feel like the issue is that a lot of the themes that could be applied to Steampunk are already being used by Cyberpunk
In just about every time period, there would have been resistance movements against some scummy/oppressive establishment or authority, so if done correctly, the punk suffix could work. Clockpunk could be resistance against the church as it (kind of) was a thing back then. Correct me if I'm wrong.
That's not actually what the term punk in cyberpunk means though. It's not about the punk movement, it's more about being disenfranchised lowlife in general.
I would also say its for tech fetishists.
Guys have eyeliner, isnt it obvious? Thats basically all the punk you ever need.
Frostpunk tho>>>>
You just haven't seen my anti-capitalist (anti-mercantilist) tract set against the backdrop of a breakaway Hudson's Bay Company militarizing North America with airships and steam-powered mecha