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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9095714" data-attributes="member: 18">And yet almost every full-on steampunk setting is in fact set in 1800s, and hews to 1800s superficial social norms just with the racism, misogyny, homophobia, intrinsic gender roles and so on carefully removed, and the violent classism turned down in a way that only an American could credit. Sometimes they forget a bit too, like most 1990s steampunk was still basically pro-colonialist and thought that the upper classes genuinely were better people, including Castle Falkenstein, and it wasn't even really anti-Imperialist, it just quietly removed most of the imperalism without figuring out how they got to this place without the triangle trade and so on (hint: they couldn't have).Anyway funny that, if they really "don't need the 1800s". You do see some in fantasy settings, but ironically that stuff tends to be much more critical! Much more capable of acknowledging that to have a class of incredibly wealthy industrial barons and aristocrats and so on, you need an oppressed underclass. That's the real problem underlying most steampunk - they always want the grimmest trappings of Victoriana, but with none of what caused them to exist, even though they make no sense. They want aristocrats without an underclass - just an impossibility by definition. They want factories churning stuff out without anyone working in them and suffering - despite the fact that they depict people working in them! They want smoke without soot.You could make a much better case for dieselpunk not needing the 1900s, for example, because instead of being set in the 1900s, it tends to be set in nebulous non-times. The aesthetic is also less fetishistic of specific elements of 1930-1960s attire and style than steampunk is of Victorian stuff.</blockquote>

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