Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog, today is the part two of my previous post in case you didn’t notice. This post will be about another question that I came up with in class. “Why do people like steampunk?”

 

But before I go into that question I know some of you might not know what steampunk is, so I’ll just tell you a bit about it first. The official term of steampunk was made up in the 1980’s but there were several books and movies that came out before such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, that had steampunk elements.

 

It is basically a sub genre of science fiction that includes lots of steam powered contraptions and outlandish vehicles. The definition is “Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.” It is like the past of the Victorian era if the future happened sooner.

 

Now that you know a bit about steampunk it’s time for me to get into my question. “Why do people like Steampunk.”

 

First of all the main reason people do this is for the excitement that it brings them. Normally their lives don’t hold enough adventure for them so the go to steampunk as a way to escape from their regular lives. There are other things they could do to help with their boredom like go on holiday or or join a sports team but there is something about steampunk that makes it more appealing to more people.

 

The second thing is that with steampunk it is meant to be an old setting doing new and futuristic things. This isn’t really a thing now but back when steampunk was invented it was really cool to have things that looked futuristic and worked off of steam. A lot of people that do steampunk want to relive these feelings that people felt when it first began.

 

 

The third reason is the social media and electronic things to do with steampunk. Lots of people that join the genre here about it or see it on the internet. This includes websites like twitter, Instagram and Facebook. People see steampunk on here and find it interesting so they go and check it out. They then post on their social media and more people see it.

 

Another thing is people seeing it in video games or movies. Since both of these things are extremely popular a lot of people see them and want to live that movie or video game in real life. Some famous movies based on steampunk or have it in them are Hugo, The Golden Compass and Van Helsing. Some famous video games with steampunk elements are the bioshock series, the Dishonered series and some of the final fantasy games.

 

 

All of these had millions of views in the movie theatres and millions of people had bought the video games. A large amount of steampunk following had originally heard about the genre from video games and movies. A bunch of these people try to recreate what they saw in theses movies or video games and so the steampunk genre grew.

 

There is something about steampunk as well that a lot of people can relate to and understand. It is a fun thing to do that someone at least once in their lifetimehas always wanted to do, dress up and pretend there isn’t a problem in the world. There is also something in the gears and clockwork of steampunk that humans understand. It’s not like a modern machine where everything is on the inside and you can’t see anything, everything that makes the machines work is on the outside so you can look at it and know how the machine works.

 

 

Steampunk is a way of letting go of everything in your life and living a completely different lifestyle, some people use it as a way to escape from their boring lives. Others use it as a way to have fun and try something new and more use it as a way to recreate their favourite movie or video game. No matter how you use it steampunk is a growing subculture that is both fun and interesting to lear about.