I really enjoy being here. It is refreshing to be among people who share my interests. I wanted to inspire you with the following:

Steampunk. The practice of taking bits and pieces from different genres and making it fit within a neo-victorian context. The best part about it is that it's not a fully defined genre.

We must not look to Gaia, or anyone in the whole world to make "Steampunk" items. I don't want to discourage anyone. I realize there are staples: goggles, corsets, boots, etc. But if you think about it, none of those things are inherently "Steampunk." Nothing is inherently Steampunk. That's what's so great about it!

We have to remember that at first our brand of boot wearing, brass burnishing, Victorian loving people lived without a name, and that our name was self-made as an overarching term for the lifestyle that fits into our interests.

If we start letting the name "Steampunk" get attatched to clothes, and styles, and types of writing, and ways of thinking, or talking... then the name Steampunk has become a trap for our minds. Instead of our lives defining our title, it will define our lives!

I want to inspire you wonderful folks. But I never dress in a victorian or pirate or explorer style. That's just not my bag. Also, I don't really read modern Steampunk fiction either. And, I don't like Abney Park (there I said it). I like the Beatles. So... am I a Steampunk?

Before you make your judgement, I will tell you what I do on a regular basis:

I've taken art history classes of the British Victorian period
I research engineering and mechanics often and I have an account with instructables
Some of my favorite stories come from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells
I read and take classes about Greek history (things that would've been an inspiration for Victorian people)
As a Christian I try to understand the Victorian mindset on the values of family, romance, creativity, science, and philosophy
I love old school aviation and I've been a lot of the Washington D.C. Smithsonians
And I love dinosaurs, excavations, and paleontology!

We should be educating ourselves: researching anything and everything we get it into our head to learn about; understanding the mindset of the Victorian people who have walked before us, and our own culture as it is today. If we are doing those things, then we can be completely assured that we are Steampunk, and we won't have to ask anyone to confirm that for us.

Don't let the term "Steampunk" define you. Just be yourself. If you dress the way you want to dress, and you act the way you want to act, and people see you and say, "that person has such wide interests, looks weird (possibly, but maybe you look normal like me) and they like victoriana," then you must be a Steampunk, title or not.

I'll provide you with some links to wikipedia which I find positively fascinating. I hope you will enjoy them, too. If you have to reference a bunch of other websites to understand what the one you are reading is talking about, just go for it! Don't give up, try to understand it, because the kind of learning I want you to go out and do is a game, it's freestyle, and it's fun. It will take as long as you want, it may take hours or minutes at a time, like a roleplaying game - but for your mind!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_trimotor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Richard_Owen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

Each one of those links is enough for me to spend a couple hours freestyle researching. Woo!

Would any of you want me to keep posting links to online research I've been doing? I would start a thread... somewhere on this Guild.