The King of Steampunk

Don't let the title fool you I am not the king of steampunk, YET.

I have been getting into steampunk for a while I like the aesthetic, I like the sound, I like the concept. I do not however like much of the participants, but the hipster inside of me make himself well heard sometimes.

One of my favorite t-shirt/bumpersticker/coffee mug/mouse pad/ iPhone case/novelty nose-ring say "To many captains not enough airships," which is to say that most people, I have encountered, within this culture are trying to take the opportunity to seize power as they have rarely had any in the real world. I understand that, I was bullied a lot, and in-turn bullied quite a few myself (I am not proud of this but if I could change history everyone would know my name). I understand wanting to feel important, however if everyone is a captain it is as if everyone is a crewman.

Also while doing research on the topic I can not find any level of standardization. Which is great, but when speaking with people in real life they all have some level of hierarchy or status even of people who are not on an airship. People speak much of what X object means, or what Y aspect of blah equates to, but none of them seem to agree with each other. I would like there to be some level of online society or something for this culture where a person could register their ship, their crew, their standing or whatever, ect. with real world participation required to increase status. Much like the LARPing of my youth, it all may still exist I just don't spend anytime around that particular aspect of nerd-dom anymore.

Some of the best resources I found as far as ideals go have been Steampunk.com and steampunkmagazine.com. An other interesting source of information is of course wikipedia. And then a great place to look for steampunk styled gadgetry and accessory is obviously instructables.

I also leave you with some musical groups to look up that I feel do a solid job of capturing the steampunk feel, which is funny to me as the genre is Electro-Swing. But check out Steam Powered Giraffe, Caravan Palace, and Parov Stelar. An other great steam punk piece I have found is Paul Shapera's The Dolls Of New Albion my favorite song being Annabel has a Doll.

I am setting up a crew for the Dread Airship Literal Hyperbole so if you do not mind taking orders from Captain Badger the Black and White, then we could use some more hands on deck. So far we have a few members, but would like to make a scene at next year's MisCon so come be a part of something larger than yourself and bask in the King's indulgent glory.

Probably not as confident as he seems
The King