One of the greatest things about the Steampunk community is that as an adherent to our modern throw-away culture, they make treasure from trash. At a panel recently at Comicpalooza on Steampunk Show and Tell, I saw and heard some examples of costuming accessories made form trash or garage sale finds.
Steampunk Rifleman
Pictured here, Steampunk Riffleman holds his creation fashioned from an old bb gun and a garage sale erector set find. Also the Lady Airship Captain on the panel made a period style hoop skirt out of coat hangers for under $5.00. Click here to see the hat, I found online, made out of a cereal box, with directions on how to make it. Click here to see a wicked top hat with goggles made from can tabs, two beer cans, and two soda pop bottles.These pictures and these show and tell type panels and exhibits throughout the world at various conventions and conferences celebrate the amazing art and creativity that is Steampunk.
Never forget, it began as a literary movement. So many things begin with literary, with a book and then the movie or TV show springs from it and so many people forget about the book. Many of us who write Steampunk also have personas and create costumes and many of us are poor and need everything on the cheap so many of us have created our costumes from thrift store finds or from what’s already in our closet. I certainly have. But also we can apply the directive – when you can’t get what you want use creativity – to our writing.
Coming into Steampunk from writing historical, which I researched well by keeping up with the latest archeological finds and newest historical theories, and with years of studying the ancient Celts, I had to keep pushing my guilt aside when writing alternate history. I don’t think I should have felt guilty, instead I should have celebrated my creativity in finding a way to make my story better by changing history a bit. It’s similar to the directive of making what you can’t afford to buy. If we can’t make the history work then we create new history for the story. In Steampunk it’s not only history we are creative with, we often have to do the same thing with Science.
Victorian Ghost, watch out for my ghost debilitater machine
In To Love A London ghost I had to introduce a machine, a ghost debilitater, the entire plot rested on, and to invent this machine, knowledge of protons and neutrons had to be available, even though they hadn’t yet been discovered in the time period of my story. Of course I had my mad scientist turn out to be a genius who discovered protons and neutrons but never announced his discovery as he meant to keep if for himself and get rich off of it. Then I had to describe them in a way that most people would understand without using the words protons or neutrons. To be honest, I had a moment of guilt and feared someone criticizing the way I fudged the science. Knowing this machine wouldn’t actually work to change a ghost into a human, at that part in the story I had three things going on, beams crossing on my machine, a druid chanting to the gods, and a witch casting a spell, so when the heroine is suddenly alive, more than 1500 years after her death, even my characters aren’t sure if it’s due to the science or the magic or the combinations of both. Instead of fearing someone will say that is the silliest thing they’ve ever heard of, I and all authors should take a lesson from the Steampunk community and celebrate our amazing creativity. Sometimes we can’t make our stories work in the actual world, with real science or real history, just like sometime Steampunks can’t afford to buy things they want for their costumes, but still they are proud of what they are able to make on their own that is usually better than what they wanted to buy.
Maeve,
Thanks for another encouraging post. While I’ve done plenty of research to best appease the history buffs and others who may (hopefully) read my book someday, I will say that I’ve taken some creative and historical liberties with my story because I feel that it just fits. Since my story is not wildly out there I’ve felt that it has been necessary to have a solid historical foundation, but at the same time the story is more about the characters rather than the 1800s world they exist in. So if you are history buff you’ll catch the little nuggets here and there, but if not it should still be good fun.
One thing I’ve tried to reassure myself of and rest on is this: It’s steampunk, and to me that in itself automatically creates a butterfly effect in mine or anyone else’s world that can have any number of possible outcomes that differ from actual history and/or science.
And now back to working on and writing this book I keep talking about.
That kind of guilt is so crippling, isn’t it? I’m so glad to hear you worked through it . . . your ghost debilitator sounds like a truly wondrous machine. I’ve often thought of ghost-living person romance plot lines but couldn’t figure out how to get past the ‘how do they … erm … touch’ conundrum.
Thank you so much for your comment J. R. Woods, I appreciate it so much and you made a good point I fully agree with.” It’s steampunk, and to me that in itself automatically creates a butterfly effect in mine or anyone else’s world that can have any number of possible outcomes that differ from actual history and/or science.” Thank you for posting that.
Thank you so much for your comment Widdershins and think you for the kind words, I appreciate it.
Thanks so much for this. Especially the bit about history. It’s so hard to work with history sometimes. I want to be as accurate as possible and somehow fit my characters and story into the world so seamlessly that people could think that it was real. But that is impossible to do. Eventually, after I read and study enough, I will come across something that prevents it from happening. And that can be completely demoralizing. When that happens, I have to remind myself that I am writing a fictional story. Not just fictional– fantasy! So if I can’t change history a bit here and there, then where is the fun?
Thank you for your comment Lindsay, I fully understand and fully agree. Most people probably don’t realize how much research we do and how guilty we do feel sometimes but we shouldn’t feel guilty because the story does come first, it is fiction we just try so hard to make it as real as possible we forget that we’re making it up so we can change anything we need to -to make it work.