for all of us who've seen the light, salute the dead and lead the fight (part II)

(Continued from part one.)


(Decopunk poster, and Mad Max.)

[14:13] Edward Pearse: By and large dieselpunk takes over where steampunk finishes.
[14:14] Edward Pearse: It's set roughly between WW1 and the 1950s.
[14:14] Edward Pearse: I tend to aim for a more late 30s to early 40s style when designing things myself.
[14:14] Baron Klaus Wulfenbach (klauswulfenbach.outlander): Welcome, Fraulein Baker. Do come have a seat.
[14:14] Edward Pearse: The aristocracy features a lot less in dieselpunk than steampunk
[14:15] Edward Pearse: While you will get officers in military settings there's far less Dukes, Barons and Ladies.
[14:15] Baron Klaus Wulfenbach (klauswulfenbach.outlander) chuckles
[14:15] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): Perhaps I've overdressed.
[14:15] Edward Pearse: As with the change in time period most of the great monarchies of the 19th century had disappeared by this time.
[14:15] Wildstar Beaumont: no Ladies ... sounds scandalous
[14:15] Edward Pearse: There is also a larger involvement of aeroplanes in dieselpunk.
[14:15] Nyx Malaspina: but plenty of dames....
[14:15] Edward Pearse: Steampunk co-opted the airship but in reality the airships heyday was the 1920s to 30s

(The allure of uniforms.)

[14:16] Edward Pearse: Britain had the R100 and the R101.
[14:16] Edward Pearse: With the R101's crash in France in 1930 that effectively killed Imperial Airship Scheme
[14:16] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): Such a pity...
[14:17] Polly (polly.ellsmere): funny - lots of train crashes didn't put an end to rail
[14:17] Edward Pearse: The Zeppelin company continued with airships until the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 brought
[14:17] Edward Pearse: that to a screeching halt.
[14:17] Edward Pearse: As steampunk is the age where steam engines powered the world with soot and a Victorian aesthetic,
[14:17] Edward Pearse: dieselpunk is when diesel engines ruled along with the grease and oil required to run them.
[14:18] Edward Pearse: And just as there are those who like their steampunk brass to be shiny and their wood to be teak,
[14:18] Ceejay Writer: It seems to appeal to most of my mechanically inclined friends.
[14:18] Edward Pearse: there are dieselpunks who like their engines clean and their buildings repaired.
[14:18] Edward Pearse: So much so that some have created a subgenre called decopunk.
[14:19] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): I still haven't figured that out yet.
[14:19] Jimmy Branagh: Oy love th' smell of grease and oil on th' morning ...
[14:19] Edward Pearse: I personally disagree with splitting it into a smaller genre, but each to their own.
[14:19] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): Mm, you're telling me...
[14:19] Breezy Carver: lol
[14:19] Wildstar Beaumont: :)
[14:19] Sophie Cloud: yes, please wipe your boots before coming into my kitchen

(Actual period uniforms.)

[14:19] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): Again, I do apologize for "appearing from the future" so to speak.
[14:20] Ceejay Writer: Meh, Steampunk is all fragmented up too, for me it's all a happy jumble.
[14:20] Edward Pearse: I have also seen people try and put things like Mad Max into the dieselpunk genre.
[14:20] Prof (professor.woodsheart): people like their bit of the pie
[14:20] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): Let us roll our eyes in unison.
[14:20] Vernden Jervil: Oh we have a time travel incident at least once a month, no worries
[14:20] Edward Pearse: While I understand why, to me post-apocalyptic genres are another beast altogether.
[14:20] Darlingmonster Ember: ouch
[14:20] Nyx Malaspina: considers how many times she's tried to explain rococo punque and given up.
[14:20] Ceejay Writer: Daisy, no worries at all!
[14:20] Edward Pearse: *snorts*
[14:21] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): Especially since I tend to appear from the more...red light district of the future.
[14:21] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) grins
[14:21] Edward Pearse: Oh fer
[14:22] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): Nice graphics!
[14:22] Edward Pearse: Looks like the right hand parcel is full
[14:22] Darlingmonster Ember: nod
[14:23] Jimmy Branagh: ((Lucky day, everything's rezzing))
[14:23] Edward Pearse: Continuing

(And uniforms for the dames.)

[14:23] Edward Pearse: As a rough guide steampunk uses a lot of brass and brown as its base palette.
[14:23] Nyx Malaspina: camming wildly
[14:23] Edward Pearse: In a similar way dieselpunk uses greys and chrome.
[14:23] Ceejay Writer: (Daisy, I ran a burlesque club in Seraph City.)
[14:23] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): (I was probably going to dance for it)
[14:23] Jimmy Branagh: ((Someone ran one in Babbage 'way back too))
[14:23] Ceejay Writer: :D
[14:23] Edward Pearse: Posters and artwork tend to hark back to the propaganda styles of the 30s and 40s
[14:24] Edward Pearse: and there is a huge influence of art deco, especially in the art.
[14:24] Ceejay Writer: ((I worked for that one too Jimmy!))
[14:24] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): (Well, I was thinking about it, Miss Daisy, so you're not alone.)
[14:24] Edward Pearse: General settings are often dark though.
[14:24] Jimmy Branagh: ((Oy dint wanna say nuffin; L) ))
[14:24] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) smiles at Jimmy
[14:24] Edward Pearse: As I mentioned before there's a lot of greys in dieselpunk,
[14:24] Sophie Cloud: I'd love to see a museum of your posters, they are brillant.

I'd actually love to see an exhibit of dieselpunk art, and the influences leading up to it. RL or SL, in fact.

[14:25] Edward Pearse: but the noir influence with contrast and lighting also features considerably in many aspects.
[14:25] Galactic Baroque: (Mad Max is gasoline fantasy, not post-apoc. Fight me.)
[14:25] Darlingmonster Ember: pics are promised for the journal logs
[14:25] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): WWII was a grim period...
[14:25] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): No, I agree.
[14:25] Edward Pearse: I was asked about dieselpunk music.
[14:25] Edward Pearse: I'll say up front that trying to pigeonhole dieselpunk music is even harder than trying to define steampunk music, so I'm not even going to try.

(Another set of fantasy diesel uniforms.)

It really is. "Electroswing" is a good catch-all, but that goes into so many different genres on its own.

[14:25] Nyx Malaspina: electroswing?
[14:25] Edward Pearse: Much like steampunk music is "music that steampunks like", so too dieselpunk music is "music that dieselpunks like".
[14:25] Edward Pearse: That said, Swing and Big Band music tends to feature heavily in the genre.
[14:26] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Electroswing is mostly something everything agrees on
[14:26] Edward Pearse: As I said there is a large 1930s-40s aesthetic in dieselpunk.
[14:26] Edward Pearse: There's a heavy military element with lots of uniforms around.
[14:26] Cassie Eldemar (cashew.writer): :)
[14:26] Nyx Malaspina: s h o u l d e r p a d s
[14:27] Galactic Baroque: l a p e l s
[14:27] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): ((I tend to play my character as a poster girl in addition to former air force mechanic))
[14:27] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): A lot of Hellboy fits into the aesthetic
[14:27] Edward Pearse: T a i l o r i n g
[14:27] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): In one sense or another
[14:27] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): ((But that can be a story for another time))
[14:27] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): High fashion gas masks?
[14:27] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Why not?
[14:27] Edward Pearse: Since many of those uniforms are WW2 inspired there's been suggestion that dieselpunk leads to Nazi cosplay or at least Nazi fetishism.
[14:28] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Anything that deals with uniforms gets that
the difference between a German uniform and a Belgian one.
[14:28] Darlingmonster Ember: nod
[14:28] Edward Pearse: But when you have State Police who dress like this I don't think it carries much weight.
[14:29] Edward Pearse: Current uniform of the New Jersey State Police for those wondering

(Raiders of the Lost Ark theatre poster, and...I forget the one on the right.)

[14:29] Polly (polly.ellsmere): REZ DARNIT!!!!!!
[14:29] Edward Pearse: That said, you always need bad guys. [14:30] Nyx Malaspina: Ho....leave my home state outta dis.
[14:30] Polly (polly.ellsmere): New Jersey is all foggy
[14:30] Edward Pearse: The pinup aesthetic also features heavily in the depiction of women.
[14:30] Poison (marylucretia): Nj NY CT Ma Rhode Island all similar uniforms
[14:31] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Especially in SL iterations
[14:31] Edward Pearse: I think the pinup aesthetic is certainly one of the reasons it's a lot easier to find pictures of dieselpunk women than of dieselpunk men.
[14:31] Edward Pearse: As I said earlier, dieselpunk is more set dressing than actual genre.
[14:31] Edward Pearse: As such it tends to be use existing genres for the story and dress them up accordingly.
[14:32] Nyx Malaspina whispers: (ladies..check out the dark fair for a hat that might meet these requirements.)
[14:32] Rory Torrance (rory.torrance): That gal on the far left looks SO authentic *cough cough* authentic *cough cough*
[14:32] Daisy Baker (sweetdanax24): (Speaking of, if anyone needs a poster model for their gallery...)

(A still from The Shadow on the left, and a still from Metropolis on the right.)

[14:32] Polly (polly.ellsmere): looks like all the gents need are joddhies, riding boots and a smart military jacket
[14:32] Edward Pearse: Pulp is a heavy component of dieselpunk.
[14:33] Edward Pearse: Properties such as Indiana Jones and Doc Savage, to The Shadow and Metropolis.
[14:33] Darlingmonster Ember: yay!
[14:33] Edward Pearse: Pulp started as a nickname for the adventure stories that were being published on very cheap paper (pulp).
[14:33] Prof (professor.woodsheart): A pair of oily overalls
[14:33] Ceejay Writer: That tends to be my personal faavorite aspect!
[14:33] Edward Pearse: The name stuck with the genre.
[14:34] Edward Pearse: There are many stories that were published in pulp mags but tend not to be viewed as pulp.
[14:34] Edward Pearse: Pulp is often an action adventure story that does for thrills rather than quality of writing.
[14:34] Edward Pearse: Or at least it did
[14:34] Edward Pearse: Noir can also be a part of dieselpunk.
[14:35] Edward Pearse: Big city detectives, femme fatales, gangsters, mad scientists, you can do it all
[14:35] Vernden Jervil likes noir
[14:35] Edward Pearse: Certainly the Noir genre can be adapted to other aesthetics anyway.
[14:35] Edward Pearse: Blade Runner is probably the best example of a non-noir Noir movies.
[14:35] Edward Pearse: A lot of dieselpunk is about adding in retrofuturism to the setting.
[14:35] Edward Pearse: Al Capone is not dieselpunk.
[14:36] Edward Pearse: Al Capone with an army of robot goons could very well be dieselpunk.
[14:36] Jimmy Branagh: Sky Captain and the World of Tommorow
[14:36] Edward Pearse: FDR with an electromagnetic repulsorlift chair.
[14:36] Edward Pearse: The possibilities are pretty much endless.

(Continued in part three.)