is steampunk a sub-culture

i had a hell of a night getting beaten down by popular media. first there was a poor showing on ncis: los angeles. they could have called it anything, but wanted some realism and picked "steampunk" /sigh. then some friends got wise to snot topic was starting a steampunk line. i had known this for a while now and well... that clothing line was just sad and disapointing. what happened next was a heated discussion on a friends my spaze's status comments. the bomb dropped. steampunk was not a sub-culture. the following is a direct message i sent to a friend regarding the event and my nerd rage. names have been changed.

i mean, what DOES make a sub-culture? unique fashion, music, literature, maybe even films. oh shit, goth has all that. so does steampunk. are their steampunk clubs? i would not say right now. not regularly. sure malediction society could be said to have started as one, but only now is it really catching on. but it is only catching. i bet in 1975 there were no goth clubs either.
sure, anime is an obvious inspiration to steampunk. but anime did inspire all the comics and films. howle's moving castle and steamboy are great. they did a lot.
how did wild wild west and briscoe country, jr be inspired by anime?
what about video games? how about the entire final fantasy series? especially 1-6. skies of arcadia. and there are a ton of little flash games coming out all the time. luke sent me a link to a kick ass one.
what about literature? jules verne, obviously, but damn near any good bit of victoriana is a source. and william gibson's "the difference engine" i always tell people steampunk started out as a genre of literature rebelling against cyberpunk. instead of having the future now, what if the present was in the past? from the concept everything else flows from.
everything from league of extraordinary gentlemen, abney park, to the god damn horrible van helsing film.
steampunk IS young. sure i was into forever really, but only now are people dressing like it. trust me, no one was as surprised by that than me. it was a neat feeling to not be "the only one".
i can go on and on. i think i am done venting. i seriously need to relax.



thoughts, comments, concerns, please share them.

V the remake. why god, why?

i spent the weekend before watching the original mini series as well as the final battle in order as a re-freasher course. i was entirely way too young to have watched it but did that stop me from enjoying it? hell no. so anyways, the original was a poignant tale of the dangers of fascism and how it could happen again. sci-fi elements were only tacked on to compete with star wars. great cast (robert englund as a retarded V named willie, yes fucking awesome), acting that was ok for tv and honestly the story rocked. the subplot of having the grandson of a holocaust survivor pretty much joing the V version of the hitler youth spoke to me. despite growing up hearing grandpa's stories of how grandma got gassed he still joins. why? he gets seduced by the power of it all.

why do we need a re-make?

starts off with the world waking up to the visitors in their spaceships turning on the biggest jumbotron and their leader Anna (short for dianna? hmm?) pretty much saying "oh hai!" stupid teenagers commenting on how this is just like the movie independence day and that movie was just a rip off of any number of other sci-fi films. your attempts at being meta fail. so now we have just a straight up invasion story. hell, ed wood did the same thing with plan 9 from other space. whereas the original gave you a little bit of foreplay before the big reveal (i have zero sympathy if this is a spoiler. the original is 20 years old) that the visitors are actually bipedal space lizards bent that want to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. but here, we get the reveal at the 45 minute mark.

it is not all fail. the subplot i am enjoying unfold is of the catholic priest of a ghetto parish who ministers to drug addicts and homeless. he has a crisis of faith as his church pews fill overcapacity. absolute proof of extraterrestrial life does not obliterate faith; it drives people them to examine what god means to them, the existence of god and actually strengthens their faith. WTF? i am a skeptic to the core. extraordinary claims better have extraordinary proof to make me believe them. watching a spaceship come out of the sky leaves little doubt. so until i see angels fight space lizards... one more thing, someone i doubt most any would have noticed or cared about, but the vatican makes the decision that the visitors are proof that we are all god's children being made overnight seemed WAY to rushed. the vatican NEVER does anything that dramatic or fast. especially as something as re-writing thousands of years of tradition. space aliens invalidates all sorts of theological tenants. anyways.

so what do have now? a pre-existing underground movement of humans up against a pre-existing visitor sleeper terrorist network that paved the way for the giant space ships?

i give up. until next time.

ps gerbals are safe, for now.....