Editing Steampunk (section)

==Problems==
Like many things, Steampunk can be awesome if executed with care, attention to detail and the the nature of the technology and time frame that it is drawing upon. Alas, much of modern Steampunk work gets a lot of well-deserved hate for being only skin-deep, as lamented in the semi-viral music video, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA&feature=kp|"Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)"]. Some fa/tg/uys have declared that we should dub this debris of the steampunk genre "cog fop" and move on to [[Dieselpunk]], though there are risks of the process happening again to dieselpunk as well should it go mainstream.

This likely happened as Steampunk was formed from the top down, rather than the bottom up. Science Fiction (in general terms) started in the 19th century, as people began to see how science and technology were beginning to reshape the world and asked themselves "what would happen if someone found a way of using electricity to rebuild and reanimate the dead" or "what if someone invented a ship that could sail around the world underwater" or "what if we could fly to the moon", with their various spins based around their experiences and beliefs. Modern Fantasy has its origin with [[Tolkien|people who studied folklore and history]] and used it to make their own mythologies and histories. Either way, both these ideas started with broad general concepts onto which various ideas were built. The aesthetic trappings generally associated with both (Laser pistols, spaceships, flying cars, robot buddies, cyborgs/dragons, dwarves, ancient named swords, recreations of the English Countryside/Feudal Japan/whatever) emerged naturally as people told those sorts of tales.

Steampunk, in contrast, emerged from a combination of some of that older sci-fi, but in particular the aesthetics thereof. Some people were interested in making use of Victorian/Wild West settings, but far more were interested in the surface details of old fashioned brass machinery with overtly mechanical gears and all that, as well as fashion which looks like someone ran through the costume department of a Jane Austin theater company and then fell into a pile of old clock parts.

This sort of stuff ''is'' important, especially in visual fiction, but as a general rule it's supposed to be there to build upon a central theme or otherwise contribute to the story. [[Star Trek]] would still be Star Trek if the Enterprise was an art-deco rocketship with everyone dressed as Chicago gangsters (nevermind that Star Trek actually did a Chicago gangsters episode and a Flash Gordon episode) but the scripts, actors and direction was all the same (though it might be a bit wonky due to clashing themes), but it would not be Star Trek if you got all the aesthetic details down as they were in the show but it's episodes were about a bunch of [[Imperium of Man|imperialistic assholes]] who shoot innocent aliens for the Emperor (and they did that too a few times). So much of steampunk ends up being just generic adventures in a setting with some psuedo-Victorian backdrops. There is nothing ''wrong'' with that, but it's running entirely on novelty and novelty (for most people at least) has a limited shelf life.