Steampunk zeppelin traffic controller cosplay

Last year at CONvergence I was contemplating cosplay. Specifically, I was contemplating what I personally might or might not get out of cosplay.

Now, I don’t know how you, Gentle Reader, do your cosplay. But to me it seems that cosplay provides two types of experiences. You can cosplay in a way that reveals something about yourself — your desires, your goals, your hopes and fears, your self-image — or you can cosplay in a way that disguises and obfuscates these things. I’ve never been good at acting, so the second option — cosplaying as something I would never be or do or want — is not appealing to me. So what, then, are the aspects of myself that I want to put on display via cosplay?

I love steampunk, I truly do. But so much of it seems to be focused on the adventurer, the lone scientist, the rebel, the explorer. I am not a loner. I am not a rebel. The closest I ever got to being a rebel in my life was being vaguely approving of ACT-UP and Queer Nation, and that was mostly because I could meet women. Yes, yes, I did shave the side of my head and braid resistors and charms into my hair in a Shadowrun-RPG-inspired way, but, honestly, so were a lot of people at the time. If I cosplayed as a swaggering piratical pilot, I would be acting the whole time. And I am pants at acting.

My desire to dress steampunk starts with “oh my, those goggles look AWESOME, I want to wear them!” Yet one really looks a bit foolish wearing a pair of brass-and-leather goggles around one’s neck while shopping for soymilk at Target. I love my fantasy life, I do, but I am not the sort of person who blends my fantasy life and my real life. I segregate, keeping the fiction off to one side. (I understand this is not the way everyone does it, and that’s fine. Not judging, speaking merely for my desires.) So I need some sort of cosplay outfit. Yet I can’t bring myself to just wear the goggles around a convention for no purpose. If I’m going to wear them, I’m going to wear them for a reason.

Finally, it hit me. If there are zeppelins, they must take off and land. And if there are airfields, there are airfield controllers. And airfield controller is EXACTLY the sort of person I am. The quiet person who stays on the ground, thank-you-very-much, helping the endeavors of others, remaining in the background. I could totally cosplay a zeppeling traffic controller.

So what does a ZTC do? What would the costume need? Well, a ZTC would stand on top of a tall tower in the center of the field, scanning the horizon for the signals of incoming airships. Brass spyglass, check. She would flash the signal lights at the incoming ships, giving the coded directions to tell the captain where to land. She would signal the ground crew to get ready. Hand-held signal box and signal flags, check. She would sometimes come down from the tower and help the ground crew pull the ship into position at mooring, or move the egress tower to and from the side of the gondola. Goggles, leather gloves, coil of rope, check.

The ZTC’s clothes would be workman’s clothes — a coverall, to protect the legs and feet from ropes, mud, and debris. Her cap would be soft and practical, shading the eyes but not getting in the way. Under the coveralls she wears a shirt, but not a vest — the coveralls provide decency.

This, this is a cosplay I can do. Stolid, staid, and practical. I look forward to showing it off at CONvergence!

Solstice eve

It’s time to mention, again, my favorite solstice poem. I blogged about it last year, here.. And you can find the full text here.

Go, read it.

Go on, I’ll wait.

This year I’m thinking that this poem is likely the first steampunk story I ever read. There is a whole world there, a whole Victorian steam era world of knightly deeds connected by the lines of rail, of rail and commerce, and by the lines drawn from one heart to another.

The older I get, the more I identify with Kay in this poem.

And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,
Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,
Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,
Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,
To help mature women that they may encounter,
Report pickpockets, gather up litter,
And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)
Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.
He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch
(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):
The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,
And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.
He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,
Doling out pennies for platform tickets,
Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,
Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.
The patrons half turn–it’s the fella from Camelot, innit?
And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.
He’s barely halfway when a page tumbles in,
Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,
So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),
Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,
And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)
To summon his liveried army of lads.

There’s an orderliness to him that I maintain in my current life. Getting the kids from place to place, respecting the schedule, making allowances for lateness and weather — it’s snowing like anything outside as I write this — and remembering to tip strangers. It all seems very familiar, Kay’s life. Half Falstaff, half Hotspur. I like to think that Kay is Falstaff’s wisdom and generosity combined with Hotspur’s passion and commitment instead of the other way around. I like to think that because I like to flatter myself, but, you know, the poem does not specify.

Anyway.

Tomorrow is solstice. It is the darkest day of the year. The longest night. But the day after, everything becomes just that much brighter.

The young knights will dally and the damsels dally back,
The old knights will play poker at a smaller Table Round.
And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on.

The train may stop, but the line goes on.

Happy Solstice, to all of you.

Unplumbed steampunk depths

When I look at the steampunk stories that are out there, I think that we are nowhere near through mining this genre for what it can tell us about ourselves. There is so much more to it than airships and railroads. History is always weirder and more complicated than you think.

1. Everyone knows that the Victorian Era was awash in new technologies. Steam engines, telegraphs, phonographs, the mechanization of industries. But it was also an era of intense scientific belief in what was then referred to as Other Powers. Spirits, souls, telepathy, distance viewing, remote healing, and a host of paranormal and supernatural phenomenon.

People believed in these things because it made scientific sense to do so. After all, the principles of electromagnetism were not fully understood, yet telegraphy worked. People could communicate across the globe in minutes. It was a breathtaking example of either man’s mastery of nature or of the wonder of the Creator’s divine world, take your pick. Scientists could manipulate metal rods from a distance — who was to say that they could not manipulate the organs of the body in a similar manner?

The same unknown vistas of science and technology that give us the steampunk tales of airship wars and mechanical men gave the Victorians themselves tales of communication with the dead and the power of mesmerism. It was all science, and at the same time it was all faith. The Victorians believed that science was enabling them to participate in the mysteries of God’s creation. That God was comforting his creatures when he allowed the souls of the dead to give messages to the living. They believed, and had no real reason to think otherwise, that these messages were delivered to the medium through the electromagnetic waves of the air in the same way a telegraph was sent from one operator to the next. And, as with telegraphy, a skilled operator or medium was better at receiving and sending clear messages than a new or untrained one.

The Free Love movement was a part of this, as was suffrage for women, the abolition of slavery, and temperance. (Yes, free love. Believe me, there is nothing new under the sun. Whatever radical and preposterous ground-breaking social notions Young People think up, someone hundreds of years ago did it first. The technology and means may change but the intention does not. Especially if it has anything to do with sex, drugs, or killing.) All of these things were based in a melange of religious fervor and scientific support. It was God’s will that human beings should improve themselves, to be as close to holy as was possible for base flesh. Therefore humans should all strive to perfect themselves internally and in their relationships with others. It made sense to not artificially restrict such divine emotions as Love — such restrictions led to a smothering of natural feeling and stifled God’s intentions, you see.

I could go on.

2. It has been pointed out by others (and I don’t recall where I read this and therefore cannot quote the person directly, but the idea is not original to me) that the Gilded Age in America (corresponding to the late Victorian Era in England) bears a strong resemblance to our current time. Intense religious fervor. An enormous and growing divide between those with wealth and those without. Questions about the role of expanding empire. Fear of and reliance on the press. Despising and attacking immigrants for their foreign-ness and strange religious practices. A sense that everything is changing too fast. These stories of steampunk are relevant to us, here and now, in ways I think the detractors miss. Fantasy and science fiction have always used the tongs of other worlds and time to address the complicated issues of the day. These particular tongs are well-suited to our current situation, as contract workers in Qatar and Abu Dhabi live in abject squalor while building magnificent paens to wealth and power.

3. There is a whole world out there, you know.

While England was being England, and New York was being New York, the rest of the world was also a part of the late 1800s. Britain conquered and then held The Raj. The wars against and genocide of the Native Americans took place in North America. King Leopold of Belgium held the Congo as his personal rubber plantation. Africa was divided among European colonial powers. The Boer Wars. The Boxer Rebellion. The Great Game for Central Asia. The Russo-Japanese war and the Sino-Russian war and the Sino-Japanese war. The mapping of the source of the Nile. The search for the headwaters of the Amazon.

If the theme of the late Victorian era is “Europeans got EVERYWHERE, oh my god,” then what of the places they got to? The people they encountered in the Punjab and in Brazil were not idiots — they tried to take everything they could from the Europeans. They tried to learn everything they could for the betterment of their countries and peoples. Other lands hungered for the power of European guns and the perceived power of European religion.

In conclusion, I’ll say it again. History is weirder and more complicated than you think. But throughout it, people are still people. They aren’t stupider than people today, nor are they smarter. They aren’t more or less venal. They aren’t more or less sexual. There is so much more to get out of the late Victorian era than goggles — though, don’t misunderstand me, I love the goggles, and own a pair. It was a chaotic, fervid, rapidly-changing time in which everything seemed uncertain and humanity was determined to make the world anew. Whether a Raj in Sind or a poppy farmer along the Yangtse or a rubber harvester on the Congo or a Bostonian blue-stocking, all of these people saw the world unfolding in strange and terrible ways. Ways that they sought to comprehend and control with whatever new tools science and faith gave them.

The steampunk world is vast and wonderful, and I cannot wait to see what happens in it next.

Wiscon thoughts: Politics of Steampunk

Someone else already wrote up excellent notes from the Politics of Steampunk panel at Wiscon. So here are some of my further thoughts.

I was fascinated by the panelist introductions, as they each mentioned what they thought Steampunk is. “Negotiating a more beautiful past,” A E-M. “Magical technology,” JG. “Turning a computer into a question,” TG. “A reaction to the entry of minorities into science fiction,” JG. But I was more fascinated by the panel composition. Panels at Wiscon are usually composed of more women than men. But it has been my personal observation that the panels with the word “politics” in them tend to have more men on them. This panel was six women. Additionally, three of the six women were people of color. I was especially heartened by this, since the racial politics of steampunk make me twitch.

The most fascinating thing, though, was that two of the women were steampunk cosplayers. They came up through the fashions and do-it-yourself movements. I welcomed this because, as open and accepting as Wiscon is, cosplay has not yet found a home at the convention, and I’m not sure why. I personally think cosplay is an invaluable tool for interrogating the Isms — making personal statements with your dress and manner and body is absolutely a manifestation of The Personal Is Political. Questions of racial and ethnic identity, sexual display, gender identity, ability or disability, cultural appropriation — ALL of these things can be addressed and engaged through cosplay, and I wish more people would do so.

The panel addressed why they thought Steampunk was the thing of the moment. P mentioned that the Victorian era and our own time are both collapsing empires. TG amended that somewhat, saying that our time certainly has a narrative of collapsing American Empire, whatever the truth may turn out to be. But the two times have a lot in common — economic depression, enormous social unrest, shifts in production and distribution of wealth, a global political landscape punctuated by small wars worldwide. JG brought up the fact that the Victorian time was the height of white supremacy worldwide — which is more complicated than it looks. The British Empire was incredibly culturally diverse, most of it through appropriation. Britain was obsessed with orientalism, with the fetishization of The Other. Curry became a British national dish during this time period. London was the heart of the world, and the world — in all its colors, languages, sights and sounds and tastes — came to London. To be sneered at, true. To be used and used up, true. But the existence of other lands and peoples was more visible to the Empire than at any previous point. Familiarity breeds contempt is a folk wisdom cliche. But familiarity also breeds familiarity.

Yet I am still stuck on the economics of Steampunk, the economics of the Victorian Era, their expression through Steampunk, and the economics of the cosplaying communities today. (As the panelists pointed out, any sort of Steampunk cosplay is any expression of privilege — either you have the time and means to make and build your own gear, or you have the money to buy it from artisans.) The power and splendor of Empire are built on a worldwide network of exploitation. Of taking everything from other countries — wood, coal, metals, grain, labor, people, animals, everything — and sucking it into the maw of Empire. Feeding the people at the top at the expense of the people, usually people of color, in far-off lands. It was true in 1880, and it’s true today. I want to see more Steampunk that explores and acknowledges this, and I was incredibly heartened to hear that the panelists of a host of forthcoming works that engage and explore these aspects. The author, Nisi Shawl, in particular, mentioned some in-progress works that made me clap in anticipatory glee.

All together, this panel made me very hopeful. It seems the interrogation of Steampunk is in progress. I want Steampunk to be examined and explored and called to account for its actions. I love the fashions, I love the ideas, I, too, love the idea of the lone hero-inventor who can Save the World With Science. If we are going to save the world, Science is one of our foremost tools.

But collective action and collaboration are the other half of the equation. The problems of the world are manifestly greater than any lone hero-inventor can manage. This is why I am both drawn to the fantasy and repelled by it. I take comfort and refuge from my world of dying oceans and food supplies under siege in the stories of lone mastery over the elements of nature. But I don’t merely want escape. I also want stories that provide visions of a world saved by people working together. I want stories like Warren Ellis’s Global Frequency, in which ordinary people save the world. I have the Global Frequency logo tattooed on my shoulder; this is how strongly I believe that we collectively contain our own salvation. This is how strongly I believe that we find the road to our future over and over again, against sometimes ridiculous odds. Listening to the panelists discuss the problems and joys of Steampunk, listening to them talk about forthcoming works, about the communities of Steampunk, I was given hope that the Steampunk fiction of the next few years will provide more of the stories I want to read.

You know, it doesn’t work that way

I’ve been wearing these gloves at work, the last week or so. Awesome hand-knit fingerless gloves, made for my by a friend who understands that sometimes you just need black fingerless gloves. I’m wearing them at work because a chilly draft blows out from the computer consoles at all times. Part of the environmental controls, you understand, ensuring that the radar screens don’t overheat. This is all fine and good, but my hands get cold.

So I’m wearing these gloves. And, in my head, I feel vaguely bad-ass. Not super bad-ass, you understand, but vaguely bad-ass. In my head, fingerless gloves are things drummers, bikers, and mercenaries wear. They are, in short, pretty cool.

So I’m wearing these gloves. And I catch sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, and I have to laugh. Because, lo and behold, I do not magically look like Mary Stuart Masterson at age twenty. I look like me, in my jeans-and-a-t-shirt, except I’m wearing knit handwarmers.

So, I’m wearing these gloves, still, today, even though I in no way whatsoever look like a bad-ass, because they do keep my hands warmer, and I’m pondering the power of the totem item. These gloves are not the first time in my life I’ve worn, carried, or wanted some specific item because of the power it carried in my head. I recall the first such item, in fact — a neon green sleeveless shirt. Why, yes, it was 1986. The shirt looked just like one from Jem and the Holograms, and I loved it. I only wore it once, though — no-one else at my junior high seemed to recognize the power of the shirt. When I wore the shirt, I was not more confident, with longer, dyed hair, and I could not suddenly play in a rock band. I was at a loss as to why these things were not true.

There have been a host of such things in my life. In high school I bleached part of my hair, in honor of Rogue and Polgara. It didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. In the photos of me at the time, I still look like me. Me, with a blond streak. In college I shaved one side of my head and braided five little teeny braids, intertwined with circuitry wires and beads. I did not find myself suddenly able to hack the global internet via my cranial jack — nor could I suddenly play Celtic drums and call up the urban Fair Folk. I wore Dr. Marten’s boots for years. I never managed to become a bad-ass British punk, though.

In all the photos through all the phases, you’ll see the incongruity of the totemic item. The boots, or the leather jacket, or the bracelets, or the pocket knife belt sheath, or whatever. The totemic items stand out because I always look the same. A little fatter every year, certainly, and the length of the haircut changes. But it’s always me — jeans, t-shirt or buttondown shirt, glasses. Me grinning at the camera regardless of how alienated or antisocial the characters I admire are. I was and am always me — a geek who loves, passionately, a host of different worlds and people, pasts and futures. But who ultimately is not interested in losing what I am in order to become someone new.

I wanted to be seen as punk rock. But I certainly didn’t want to drop out of my prestigious liberal arts college and make a living as a dishwasher. I wanted to be seen as cyberpunk. But I didn’t really care about computers or hacking at all. I wanted to be seen as mystical, magical. But I couldn’t actually bring myself to believe in Wicca, The Otherworld, faeires, or ley lines. I was — and am — too pleased with my life as it is to be willing to relinquish any of it in exchange for membership.

The transformations never worked the way I thought. They never worked because I was never willing to throw away who I was in order to be someone else. I wanted a day-pass, a return ticket. I wanted to dabble in identity. I was — and am — that thing so loathed by members of a culture. I’m the tourist.

Hero-narrative

J and I watched the movie Apollo 13 with the kids yesterday. You know, the one with Tom Hanks in it, the one with “we’ve never lost an American in space and we’re not going to start on my watch.” At the point where Jim Lovell is staring out the window at the moon, knowing he’s never going to get another chance to walk on it and he might be dead before the week is out, both my children burst into loud sobs.

We paused the movie and held them, but I honestly don’t feel too bad about it. After all, parenting can be viewed as the process of systematically scarring your kids’ brains until they instinctively flinch away from actions that a) will get them killed and b) are antisocial. Placing a scar in my kids’ little cerebellums that says, “space travel is important and dangerous and it is one of the greatest achievements of our kind, and a loss to any one of us in space is a loss to us all” — I’m okay with that. M and K were bawling not because they were worried about Lovell’s life — we had, after all, reassured them vigorously before turning on the tv that everyone lives, it all turns out okay. My kids were sobbing because Lovell was missing his chance. Because his dream was right there, and it was never going to be attained.

I’m perfectly happy that they sobbed. Out of such empathy are non-sociopaths made.

I, on the other hand, was sobbing at different parts of the film.

It’s the Mission Control parts that get to me. Partly, I suspect, because that’s the end of the mic I’m on — the end sitting in a big room with scopes and radios and monitors, trying to talk pilots through bad weather or icy conditions. I know exactly how people can be yelling and frustrated and even scared, and when we key up the mic to transmit, our voices are calm and easy. But that empathy is only part of it. The scene where the engineers all check Lovell’s math makes me cry. The scene where the engineers fit a square peg in a round hole makes me cry. The parts, all the parts, where dozens of nameless men in their short hair and ties and sportcoats and black-rimmed glasses get us into and out of space. I honestly can do without the hero-narrative throughline of Apollo 13. The true heroic story, for me, is that hundreds of people all over the country keep putting things in space.

When J and N and the kids were at the reception for the crew and families of STS-128, the party was full of representatives from all the space centers, all over the country, who contribute to getting the shuttle in orbit. The people who make the motors, the people who make the tiles, the teams of engineers and scientists who each make one small part of the shuttle and their work is in space. That’s the sort of accomplishment that gets to me. That is astonishing.

Throughout human history cultures have built things that took the production of entire nations to finish. Those things have rightly been called wonders of the world. But it’s not merely the Great Walls or Colossi that make me pause, and think, and choke up. I just finished two books, both about the Victorian Age of Empire, both about the effects of efforts of will by groups of people. The Ghost Map tells the story of how modern sewer systems made the future possible. King Leopold’s Ghost tells how and why the Congo has entered the twentieth century at a crippling disadvantage from which it has yet to recover. In both these tales, acts of will by single men set a course for great changes, both good and ill. But in both stories those acts of will did absolutely nothing, had no effect, until their causes were joined by others.

History knows the name of John Snow, but it barely recalls Henry Whitehead, or Balzagette. Snow discovered the source of the cholera epidemic in London; but Whitehead proved him right, and Balzagette was the architect of the idea of a modern sewer system. King Leopold II was the owner of the Congo, and his policies were responsible for the deaths of 10 million Congolese and the theft of 1 billion dollars from the colony. But he didn’t kill a single man, woman, or child. He cut off no hands. His work was done by thousands of willing partners in the search for first ivory, and then rubber.

When I read fiction these days, my mind is drawn to the nameless thousands implied by the story. When the resistance fighters in Terminator 4 fire those endless rounds of ammo, I’m pondering the smelting of brass, and how on earth one would hide that from the Machines. When the elves of Rivendell prance about in their clothes, I am pleased to recall that Tolkein devoted page-count to telling us how the cloth was made. I’ve read too much history to not think about the wider world beyond the page or screen. When I see Nicole Stott in orbit at the ISS, I look at the polymers and cloth and metal up there with her and wonder how much of our planet has gone into her presence in space.

This is why steampunk grates on me as a genre. Because the myth of the lone hero-inventor-scientist-engineer ignores the questions that I need answered. How does the hero get clean water when germ theory hasn’t been invented yet? And where does he get the rubber for all those steam-gaskets?