Random things make a post!

[oyceter]

1. Aiiiieeee! IBARW3 starts on Monday and I am so not prepared.


2. N.K. Jemison and Yoon Ha Lee A group of authors published on Helix put together Transcriptase, a site featuring fiction and poetry that appeared on Helix prior to the William Sanders idiocy. Go check it out!


3. In manga news, 20th Century Boys is finally being scheduled for release! Whoo! For those who don't know, it's a great manga by the mangaka of Monster, only this one covers childhood games, manga geekery, music geekery, giant robots, and the bravery of ordinary people. (my write ups)


4. On the boo side, vol. 3 and 4 of Bride of the Water God aren't coming out until next year. Argh! I knew I should have read ahead in Taiwan.


5. I keep forgetting that people reading me don't magically and telepathically extract what I'm reading from my brain. You may all find this nifty, particularly if you're into steampunk:
   

   I don’t know if I’d even consider the look ‘steampunk’, more of an abstract 19th century cargo cult. It’s partially based on the images I’ve seen of native cultures dominated by industrialized societies. Wearing the clothes of the imperialists, adopting their mannerisms, but retaining an identity in their hair and skin. There’s an odd subjugation yet an ownership of the style in these old photos. Take the trappings of your enemy and wear them in your own way, use them against them.

   
   The gadget and clothes geek in me absolutely adores steampunk, but I also have issues with it, especially since it's based in a time that wreaked havoc on POC communities, thanks to imperialism, and because the point of view in steampunk is frequently coming from aforementioned imperialist white cultures.
   
   While I love the imagery of the technology, it's difficult to forget that that very technology was a highly destructive one to both the environment and to POC. And if steampunk is centered on Victorian England, where does that leave everyone else? I want to be in steampunk too, but not if my friends and I are mysterious Oriental girls smoking opium or Indian widows waiting to be rescued by rich British travelers or savages in Africa awaiting civilization by missionaries.
   
   ETA: I don't mean to just bash steampunk and people who like it; one of the reasons it appeals to me is because there's this enormous potential in the genre to rewrite and reappropriate traditional Western narratives of imperialism and dominance, much like anachronaut is doing with his costuming. I'm just not convinced that that's what's actually happening most of the time. (OK, and I'm preemptively grumpy that when people think "1800s," they probably aren't thinking about the Opium Wars or the Berlin Conference or Native boarding schools.)

Comments

[seajules]

Partly I don't know the timelines for things, and I worry that the terminology I know is offensive (for instance, the Boxer Rebellion, I think it's the right time period, but I could be wrong, and I don't right offhand remember when Japan's borders were forced open, though that one should be easy to look up, and wow, I am so woefully ignorant of Korean history, even after the Korean War). I know nothing about the levels of Chinese technology during the relevant time period, though I do know some snake oil salesmen far enough west would employ Chinese "sidekicks" like their more eastern counterparts would Native American (and, of course, you'd often get sidekicks in "yellow face" or "red face," not Chinese or Native at all). I know the Chinese worked on the railroad going east from the West Coast, as the Irish worked on it going west and...hmm, did I submit the Golden Spike? I'm not sure I did, and then there were all the Black men and women who were also involved with laying those tracks all across the continent, often to their deaths, maimings, and so on. Okay, so I have a few things to suggest, except I need to check dates on the Boxer Rebellion.