Striving For Steampunk

     A bold summer choice
 

We sighed and sipped our frozen grasshopper, wondering why we had ordered a frozen grasshopper in the first place. Then we remembered. It was a mere week until Jackie Kennedy's birthday. Ms.|Kennedy being a woman whom we regard as a most admirable woman possessed of Victorian sensibilities which she ingeniously revamped to suit a less genteel age, we like to celebrate her birthday by sipping a grasshopper cocktail, a drink which she herself enjoyed during the high summer of her youth. Then again, dear Jackie has been dead for seventeen years. Steampunk thrives. It seemed only right that we turn our attention to it for a moment longer.
"Allow me to assist you," we said to our friend.
 Taking out our cell phone, we hit "browse" and went immediately to the Etsy website where we showed her a photograph of our recent purchase.
"Oh what a cool clock! I love it!" our friend opined, as we knew she would.
"Yes, but let's keep our minds on the business as hand, shall we?" we suggested kindly.

  

      "Steampunk, steampunk!" our friend who writes a budget travel blog exclaimed rather inexplicably the other afternoon over drinks at a crowded downtown saloon. "That's all I hear about these days. In fashion magazines, in all the food blogs. But I still don't really understand exactly what makes something steampunk."

  Never uttered the words "steampunk"

HG Wells was a man of his time and ours, too

"In other words, steampunk is stuff that looks like it could have come out of some Victorian's crazy dream about the future," our friend said. 

    "Some might call them crazy dreams," we said. "But this cell phone I'm holding didn't simply invent itself." 

                                        

    The thing is, Gentle Reader, that steampunk is one of those genres that overlaps other genres, thereby blurring the lines between them and igniting verbal, and sometimes physical altercations among steampunk geeks and cyberpunk geeks all across this and other great lands. No doubt there are Victoriana geeks who feel called upon to offer their two cents worth as well, although, in general, the relationship between a Victoriana aficonado and steampunkers could be compared to that of a well-groomed poodle and a spike-collar sporting Doberman eating dinner from the same flowered porcelain bowl before going off to different corners of the yard to digest and perhaps regurgitate what they've eaten. What's that? You find the analogy an offensive one? We apologize. Perhaps we should make another attempt to clarify the subject with a pictorial lesson using elements of compare and contrast.

   Let's begin with the photograph directly below us, which is an example of what could be referred to as a "sexy steampunk lady", whereas the photograph to our side is more representative of what one might call a "saucy Victorian gal." The difference? Elementary.

Sexy Steampunk lady

For one thing, the woman in the photograph is wearing a mannish hat and coat on which there are shiny metal objects most likely possessing certain scientific attributes that only a real Victorian's mind could imagine, and she's holding a pocketwatch, which, we may conjecture, is also probably some kind of weapon or scientific device. By contrast, the lady below us is just standing there behind a fake fence looking saucy, and she probably doesn't walk along beaches with a random man's pocket watch between her dainty digits. That would be unladylike. How could you even suggest it? Although she does look saucy enough to have repeated a blue phrase or two in her time.

Saucy Victorian gal

    Now for another example, this time using jewelry, an artifact in which members of both camps place a great deal of value as a mode of expression. Below , we have the image of a lovely Victorian era necklace, .

 with specific attributes in keeping with the apt description of same given on the venerable WiseGeek website. To wit: "The look of Victorian jewelry is quite distinctive. It tends to be heavy and elegant, with a lot of jet, diamond, and coral. To the modern eye, it has an old fashioned feel. Victorianstyle has such enduring popularity that several firms make reproduction jewelry which is modeled after or inspired by real Victorian jewelry. Reproduction jewelry tends to be less costly, because it is not an antique like real Victorian jewelry. Many of the fabrication techniques for hand made pieces are the same, reflecting the fact that metalsmithing has changed little over the centuries." 
     What more can we add without being ridiculously redundant? But what we can offer is a contrasting example of an equally lovely steampunk necklace from NobleStudiosLTD, one of our favorite sellers on Etsy. See the cross, the clockface, the unnecessary,,but ever so appealing little metal extras on it? Steampunk at its most basic.As is this ring we also found at NobleStudios, LTD.
 

   In fact, we are so enraptured by the ring in the photograph above that we may never be able to recover from our joy and will be forced to give up writing and become a greeter at Wal-|Mart.
    But that's our problem. We only hope that our little attempt at steampunk edification has brought some clarity of mind and vision into your life, Gentle Reader. Remember...

Victorian looks like this

Steampunk looks like that

And both of them are capable of creating.....

Happiness, baby