As part of our current unit in Humanities we have been reading the book Leviathan and learning a bit about the genre of Steampunk. Leviathan is a novel set in the times of World War I but includes machines and weapons and other concepts that feel more futuristic. According to Wikipedia the definition of Steampunk fiction 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.” 

In learning about Steampunk we have seen that it has also has an influence on fashion and other areas such as music. So for my inquiry question I decided to ask:

“Are there any sports influenced by Steampunk?”

And the quick answer is NO. Blog post over, the end!

 

 

 

 

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Fine, I guess that answer isn’t really PLP enough, so here’s my research that I used to come to that conclusion. I did some searching for Steampunk sports and the first item I found was the super exciting sport of “Auto-Polo”. This is the weird sport of polo played by driving around in cars instead of riding horses. I am not sure I would really consider normal polo a “sport” and changing to cars just makes it even less sporty. I don’t really consider this a sport – but it is kind of crazy to watch so here’s a video.

 

Next, “Tea Duelling” – even the name sounds boring. Basically you dip a cookie into some tea and hope your cookie doesn’t break. How is this a sport?? I wouldn’t even consider this an activity. However if you want to sit on your lazy butt drinking tea and eating cookies, you could claim you’re playing a sport (but you’re really not) Anyway if you think this thing sounds fun here is a youtube video on it. It must get a lot of views!

 

Finally I found tea pot racing. From the title you might think that this game is lame. Anyways this game involves you ripping up a perfectly good RC Car and throwing a tea pot on it. There are different events in this like racing, sheep dog trials, and who knows what else. This is still definitely not a sport!! Nothing can be a sport if you are controlling some kind of miniature. However I did enjoy watching the following video.

At this point there was nothing left and my inquiry question was answered. However, I decided to have a go at creating a functioning tea pot auto. This was a bit more fun than expected. I got a cheap RC Car from Walmart and tore it up to put a dollar store tea pot on top. I used a hot glue gun to attach all kinds of bits of metal (also from the dollar store) and added some gears to the front. Most importantly I then added sparkles!  My creation is slightly based off the Clankers side from the book Leviathan. I didn’t have any available sheep so had to make do with a mechanical hamster which drove my dog insane and therefore didn’t last to see another day. Here’s a video of my teapot in action (I’m not a bad driver just fooling around).

In conclusion as mentioned earlier – there really are no sports based on Steampunk. Instead there are some games, or activities based on Steampunk that are mostly pretty odd (and un-athletic) but I guess can actually be quite fun.