{"id":3739,"date":"2013-01-17T12:07:09","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T19:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2017-01-26T22:36:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T05:36:24","slug":"youre-not-pu-well-hang-on-a-sec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2013\/01\/youre-not-pu-well-hang-on-a-sec\/","title":{"rendered":"You’re Not Pu — Well, Hang On a Sec…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I wrote about the overuse of the -punk additive in the world of publishing<\/a>. The cyberpunk label lead (tongue in cheek, initially) to steam-punks\/steampunk, which started some kind of not-so-tongue-in-cheek avalanche of “Punk means cool! If our thing is cool, we should add -punk to it to denote our coolness!”<\/p>\n

It was (and still is) my opinion that that overuse “dilutes the brand<\/a>“, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

Unexpectedly, the post hit some kind of vein or nerve or alarm gong for people. Some responded with “Yes! THIS!” Some rolled their eyes and muttered “Overthinking it, dude.” Fair enough; that happens.<\/p>\n

But the most interesting response was related specifically to steampunk, where several readers and writers of same stepped up and said “Hey! You don’t think there’s rebellion against the status-quo in Steampunk? You’re ignoring all the awesome stories about women rising up out of dismissed second-class status and making a name for themselves.”<\/p>\n

And, again, that’s fair; I didn’t ignore<\/em> those stories, exactly, but they didn’t ping my radar when I wrote my little screed, because I don’t see them as the same thing as “punk rebellion”. I twooted:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why would I have to be stupid to try such a detangling? Frankly, because I know next to nothing about gender issues in any kind of lit. I’m not really qualified.<\/p>\n

But that’s never stopped me before! All I need is a little encouragement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Done!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, stepping very carefully, I started noodling this over. I felt, and still feel, that punk-the-way-I-defined-it isn’t a very strong presence in steampunk novels. That said, I could see people’s point that there were many, as one reader put it “uppity wummanz unite!” stories in there. Not always<\/em>: it’s obviously not enough to just have a female protagonist — Boneshaker<\/em> isn’t about “little person against the Institution”; it’s a classic “hero journeys into Hades to retrieve a loved one” — but it shows up fairly often.<\/p>\n

So that’s a curious thing. “Punk nobody against the Establishment” is a big part of cyberpunk, but not-so-much in steampunk, where “Smart Woman rises out of Gender Oppression” is common, instead.<\/p>\n

And really, that’s obvious: both are frontloaded into their respective settings. Cyberpunk is a subset of science fiction for a reason: it’s usually near-future — a predictable near-future — in which corporations have become even more monolithic untouchable things than they already are. “Little guy uses tech to rise up” is obvious: tech is one of the arenas in which envision some level of equality, thanks to the early hackers that writers like Gibson heard and read about. Gender issues in a future-us setting aren’t nearly as easy to find, and in my experience they don’t find as much traction with readers (in that kind of story) — we’d like to imagine ourselves having evolved past that<\/em>, at least, even if we’re stuck in some dystopian future, ground down under a corpocracy.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t to say gender inequality issues aren’t relevant and important and a thing worth thinking and talking about: they are. Enter steampunk which, due to its sort of hazy, hand-wavey “era”, pretty much gives us gender bias as an issue by default. It’s a good match.<\/p>\n

So, finally, that Venn diagram, rendered with my undeniable Paint skills:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, in this somewhat obvious breakdown, the difference between the two kinds of stories lie in the character’s motivation, and the big overlap is in the resulting action: rebellion. Simplistic? Sure. Maybe even way off base, but that’s the spot I got to in my couple-three days of thinking about it.<\/p>\n

And maybe that opens up the discussion of all ‘-punk’ stories, a little bit. If you solve for the common denominator in all this, you get “Someone representing a significant portion of the population (and someone we can identify with) uses the [tech] of the setting to upset the apple cart in some way. Flavor as appropriate to sub-genre, bake, and serve.”<\/p>\n

I can accept that. That’s a reasonable way to (re)define the “-punk” umbrella.<\/p>\n

That still doesn’t mean the term isn’t wildly overused<\/strong>, and often laughably inaccurate (see my The City & The City example from the last post). That is still a problem, and it’s really what I was ranting about in the first place.<\/p>\n

But if you hand me a book and say “this is steampunk” or “this is dieselpunk”, I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand; I’m going to look (full of hope) for a certain kind of story.<\/p>\n

Because it’s really awesome when it’s there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I wrote about the overuse of the -punk additive in the world of publishing. The cyberpunk label lead (tongue in cheek, initially) to steam-punks\/steampunk, which started some kind of not-so-tongue-in-cheek avalanche of “Punk means cool! If our thing is cool, we should add -punk to it to denote our coolness!” It … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “You’re Not Pu — Well, Hang On a Sec…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15085,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/15085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}