This February, the Airship Ashanti is organizing an event with other steampunk organizations to support Project Linus, which provides blankets for charity. Come and help those in need stay warm this winter and join the Fleet of Fleece, either by going to their event on February 11th, or reaching out to host one in your local community.
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Filed under Announcement, Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends
Photo Credit: Allison Stock Photography
To close out 2016, I’m boosting my steampunk comrade-in-arms Kevin Steil’s 100th interview on the Airship Ambassador (and here’s great snapshot of him from my wedding this year, where he served as the officiant!). He has been tirelessly tacking the steampunk community for the last six years, and has touched base with people he interviewed in the past (including yours truly) to see how their time in the community has been. Here’s the full ten part series, featuring Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine, Evan Butterfield, Gail Carriger, Jaymee Goh, James Ng, Mike Perschon, Richard Preston, Lev AC Rosen, Arthur Slade, Nick Valentino, and Jean-Christophe Valtat.
Cheers, and see you in 2017!
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Filed under Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Interviews
I have some convention reports overdue — namely, I’d like to take New York Comic Con to task, the good and the bad — but I’m waiting until the full media coverage of my panels from NerdCaliber comes out before posting (so readers can get the full experience!)
But until then, giving a shout-out to a few more events I’ll be at before 2013 ends.
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Click to see their Facebook page for this episode, or download at the link below!
I was recently interviewed for Sounds of Steam — the episode is now available for download!
Sounds Of Steam, Steampunk to Reality: Making Your Dreams Come True
Description:
We all have dreams that we would love to have come true. Some want to be writers, authors, and songwriters, others want to sing or start a band, and some just want to decorate their house to look like the inside of the Nautilus. Those things are too much to ask, are they? But they seem so far away, and almost impossible to achieve. How can you make them happen? Where do you even start?
We know a bit about making dreams come true, and we draw upon the even greater knowledge of our guests, Warren and Betsy Talbot of ‘Married With Luggage’, and Ay-leen the Peacemaker (winner of Steampunk Chronicle’s Reader Choice Awards of ‘Best Politically Minded Steampunk’ and ‘Best Multicultural Steampunk’) , to help us give you ideas and ways, that are proven to work, to make your dreams become reality!
Music by The Bewitched, Birthrite, The Blibbering Humdingers, The Cog is Dead, Crimson Clocks, The Aeronauts, Automaton, The Electric Swing Circus, Doctor Steel, The Extraordinary Contraptions, Escape the Clouds, BB Blackdog, Alexandra Hamer, Klaxton, Victor Sierra and more!
Filed under Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Interviews
Interrupting this blog for a special bulletin — or, rather, a bit of an intellectual endeavor. I’ve been talking with Dr. Roger Whitson of Washington State University about steampunk — and he is currently working on an MLA Special Session proposal on the subject — and what came up in our discussion was the role of the social media and how it fosters and records the process of cultural change. Steampunk, which has been both upheld as a ideological movement and downplayed as an apolitical fashion trend, is only as politically substantial as people make it to be. But the use of the aethernetz, however, democratizes the power of social opinions and magnifies the power of these conversations. More importantly, however, all of these conversations create a more transparent picture of what cultural politics are actually happening on the ground, and opens up more possibilities of challenging “entrenched institutions”, as Roger explained to me, “…it is a politics that is removed from the exclusive analysis of the academic, the editor, and the expert, and placed into the hands of everyday people using social media.”
How can we gauge the political potential of our imaginations in the steampunk community?
Thus, Roger asked me to submit a brief response — at most 250 words — in reply to his questions: “What role do feminism and queer politics have in steampunk? What role should they have?” in order to assist his article on steampunk fandom and the digital archive.
And of course, being a steampunk, I rebelled, and, instead, unleashed this question to my fellow readers. To show a sampling of what political awareness the community has (and the application of that awareness to steampunk) I posted the above blog to Beyond Victoriana’s tumblr and another one to its Facebook page. After the jump, I do give my response, but it cannot be one made separate from the responses of many, many others.
Filed under Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Essays
2013 is the year to get ready for some pseudo-time-travelling, what-if wanderings, and speculative festivities of the dapper variety. I have a list of 39 steampunk and steam-friendly conventions and one-day events from around the world, gathered with help from Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador.
Since new steampunk cons spring out of the gearwork every so often, if I had missed yours, please drop a comment (and email me about featuring it for my monthly steampunk events roundup).
All descriptions taken from the convention website or Facebook page.
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Filed under Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Conventions, Linkspams
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A couple of cons coming up this month, and a special announcement:
In two weeks the revolution returns to Nashua, New Hampshire: the Steampunk Industrial Revolution will be telegraphed from June 8-10. From what I’ve heard, the theme is “Year of the Dragon” and the convention is preparing for an inter-dimensional beast to who visits this realm once every twelve years…with the smoldering threat coming from the heavens, can enough clockwork gadgets and a pirate ship bar be enough for this weekend? Yup, immersive storytelling strikes again at this con, and I’m looking forward to it.
The con schedule isn’t up yet, but I know that I’ll be doing my standard panels, plus a couple new in-character ones (you’ll have to come to see what they’re about…) — and hanging out with cool folks such as Guest of Honor Dr. Grymm, The Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew, Jake von Slatt, Mr. Saturday & Sixpence, Platform One, and many, many more musicians, entertainers and other ne’er-do-wells!
And as a reminder later that month, I will be in PortCon in Maine from June 21 – 24, where Lucretia Dearfour and I will be their Steampunk Guests of Honor.
I’ll be hanging around this weekend, presenting two new events:
Costume as Character, Character as Costume – Friday 11 AM – 12 PM in the Monhegan Room
Steampunk Meetup – Sunday 10 AM – 11 AM in the Monhegan Room
Plus, news from the ivory tower: I am very excited to announce that Fashion Talks: Undressing the Power of Style is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com!
Waaaaay back in 2009 (!), Jaymee Goh and I co-wrote an article about the imperialist — and postcolonial — leanings in steampunk fashion, our first academic venture together. Now, the anthology it is included in — Fashion Talks: Undressing the Power of Style from SUNY Press — can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com and will pub in September! Fashion Talks is all about the roles race, class, gender, and sexuality play in everyday style, and the other chapters range from Lolita and goth to hijabs and stripper shoes to emo and hipsters & more. If you are into fashion, pop culture, politics, and how all three collide, this book is for you. Read the description after the jump.
Filed under Announcement, Conventions
Earlier last month, I checked out the newest music video from PROPS!, a hip-hop artist based in Seattle and enjoyed his use of the steampunk aesthetic. More than “insert gears here,” it told an engaging storyline, featured local talent, and the song itself — about romantic longing and loss — seems more appropriate for a steampunk music video than, say, an autotuned command to “turn me on.” I had the opportunity to interview both PROPS! and the director of the music video Paul Maupoux, both relative newcomers to the scene, about the experience filming “The Taste of Heaven.”
Filed under Interviews
Click for to see the list of full results on the Steampunk Chronicle's website
Wow — quick announcement here. I checked my email this morning to find out a delightful surprise about the results from the Steampunk Chronicle: Beyond Victoriana had won in their Reader’s Choice Awards.
Filed under Announcement
Contributor in Sarah Hans's Steampunk World, Winner of the 2015 Steampunk Chronicle's Reader's Choice Awards for "Best Fiction"
Winner of SteamCon's 2013 Airship Award for Community Contributor
Visitors from Around the Globe in Real-Time
Beyond Victoriana 