I love Steampunk

You wish you could invent half the things this kid does.

I remember back in my junior year of high school, I saw an amazing animated movie called Steamboy. For those of you who know anything about anime, it’s directed by Katsushiro Otomo, the writer and director of the classic Akira, a must see for any true anime fan.

Anyway, I saw this movie and was taken aback by the deep storyline, the departure from a traditional Japanese setting, and the visual aesthetics left nothing to be desired. It also features the voices of Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart, and Alfred Molina. Great movie, really reccomend it, REGARDLESS of whether you’re an anime fan or not. Fascinating contraptions powered by steam were the driving force behind the movie, and this is where my fascination with the steampunk genre began.

Kind of reminds me of that thing Mr. Garrison invented in South Park... minus the penetration

Steampunk is a sub-genre of fiction, similar to the cyberpunk and hacker sub-genre perpetuated by The Matrix. It essentially is an offshoot of world history, a Neo-Victorian era if you will, where steam power is still widely used. A world that never discovered the magic of digital and instead stuck with the gears and mechanisms of analog. Examples of steampunk in mainstream media are the movies Wild Wild West and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I like her corset. But I like her more. So much more.

I don’t really understand my fascination with it. I think it’s the fact that it represents a time where technology was more conventional and understandable. It involves practical physics, and is something that I know I can understand if studied enough. Unlike my iPhone, where I don’t really understand how it does most of the things it does. Fact.