Steampunk Archetypes
Today’s steampunk post is from here. Enjoy!
Today, I want to talk a little about Steampunk Archetypes.
Archetypes are stereotypes or epitomes of personalities, a generic or ideal personification if you will. They often serve as a basis for characters. Folklore has archetypes, art has archetypes, even Jung has archetypes.
Steampunk has archetypes as well. One trick to using archetypes in our story without making them seem too stereotypical or stale is to turn archetypes on their ear or even combine them (though not all characters will be based on these archetypes, and that’s okay. Original characters are just as fun).
Just a few archetypes sometimes found in Steampunk stories:
Air-Pirate – one of the quintessential Steampunk characters. Airpirates are bad, bold, and armed to the teeth.
Adventurer/Explorer—their reason for being is to boldly go where no one has gone before and to experience new things and discover new places.
Aviator—whether roguish or military, whether they’re flying a bi-plane, a zeppelin, or a space ship, they they’re tough, brave, and a can even be a bit gallant, especially in contrast to Air-Pirates.
Dandy/Femme Fatale—they use their wiles and charms to get what they want, sometimes at the expense of others.
Mad Scientist/Inventor—another quintessential Steampunk character, they embody the steam in steampunk, discovering new things, solving problems, and occasionally blowing things up
Add your own steampunk archetypes in the comments!
In other news, if you live in Melbourne, you’re in luck. Circus Oz has gone steampunk. Go here for info on a discount, or here for general Circus Oz stuff.
How not to write a query letter
If you’re a writer long enough, the carefree laugh of creative joy turns to a bitter sarcastic coughing hack.
Here, for your bitter (but equally way more valid) joy, is an entire website devoted to sarcastic replies to idiotic queries. It’s called Slushpile Hell. (For those not in the know, the slushpile is the pile of manuscripts waiting to be read by an editor or publisher.)
Here’s two cut and pasted examples:
My writing coach told me that my novel is not yet ready to send to agents and needs more work. Could you read the attached sample chapters and tell me if you think she’s right?
I’d love to, but I’m terribly busy right now hitting myself in the head with a hammer.
Dear Slushpile Hell Scum, you think you’re so funny. I wish I knew who you were so I could come mock you and everyone in your little circle of ugliness. I’ve written a fiction novel—a GREAT novel. Do you think I’ll ever submit my manuscript to a CLOWN like you, or ANY of your fellow clown literary agents for that matter? Think again. You’re missing out on MILLIONS of dollars here.
Dear Charlie Sheen, thanks for your email. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.
You want the link again now, don’t you? Okay.
Time for your cat picture of the week.
I was airing out all our cushions and covers and chairs and so on, and put our very rickety cat tower on the barrier of the second-storey balcony. Five seconds later. . .
The black diamond mystery. . . solved!
I received a message from the buyer of the black diamond this morning. . . it turns out the crime was a crime of customer service, rather than fraud or theft or forgery.
The ground-level postman forgot to leave a “pick up your parcel” slip at the buyer’s house (two weeks ago).
The customer service person I spoke to on the phone simply lied about the signature (disgrunted post office worker + abused phone staff = pants on fire).
When the buyer took further action (going to the post office in person?threatening police action? threatening the post office in person? utilising the services of someone called “Billy the face”?), the TRUTH was REVEALED.
He now has his diamond. Says it’s very pretty.
The End
Medical Mystery
I made the decision while driving to the pool. The road in front of me was a grey haze, and cars and trees and pedestrians were blurry blobs.
Yep, it was time to see my optometrist.
I’ve worn contact lenses for years, but the specific type I use stopped getting made late last year, so I switched to a different type. Every so often – perhaps once a week – I get an hour of blurriness before they suddenly work fine. “I really should get this seen to” inevitably switches to “Nah, it’s fine” every time my vision clears.
But, ya know, driving.
So I called the optomestrist’s office and tried to simply order a different type to try out, but they wouldn’t let me.
And so it was that I went to see my optometrist.
I like medical professionals (probably mainly because I’ve never broken a bone or been shot*, so I’ve never had an urgent need for help that they couldn’t solve with a couple of pills).
Unrelated sidebar: I actually once ran into my optometrist in Christchurch, New Zealand (several years ago). The antipodes are ridiculously small sometimes, even when combined.
So she looks at me, puts dye in my eyes, and does the tests where I need to choose whether a set of blurry dots is more or less blurry than another set of dots. It’s mildly unpleasant, and I always feel slightly concerned I’m answering incorrectly.
As she shone a bright light into my right eyeball, I knew she’d found something. She kept looking, and hmm-ing, and looking again. “Does your right eye hurt at all?”
“No,” I said, wondering if there was some kind of tumour and/or spider nest growing on my corneas. “It feels fine.”
“Hmm.”
She shone the light in my eye some more, and finally gave it to me straight: “You have something in your eye – probably a tiny piece of lint.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I’m going to try and flush it out, and then I’ll need to see you again in a few days. If it’s not gone, I’ll have to refer you to someone else.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.”
“But it’s probably harmless.”
“Oh, okay.”
She proceeded to rummage through a drawer and soon produced a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “Tip your head back. This is going to be messy.”
“Um.” I tipped my head back and tried not to panic as she approached me, pushed my eyelid open Clockwork Orange-style, and aimed the syringe.
The clear solution squirted everywhere, including in my mouth.
“Oops,” she said.
“Salty,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s just a saline solution.”
She sat down. “This thing in your eye probably has nothing to do with the blurriness you’ve been experiencing.”
“Oh, okay.”
She cast around for some inspiration. “You know contact lenses are weighted, don’t you?”
“Um.”
“When you put them in, there’s a certain way you have to do it.”
“Oh!” I said, on familiar ground now. “Yes of course – I know that. I always put them in so the little line on the lense goes at the top.”
“The. . . top?” she said.
“Um, yes?”
She shook her head. “The little line goes at the bottom.”
“So. . . I’ve been putting my contact lenses in upside down all this time?”
“Yes.”
“That would explain the blurriness then, I should think.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Um. Okay, I understand now.”
Then, with absolutely no trace of sarcasm**, she took out a business card and drew me the following diagram to take home (presumably to consult each morning):
Medical mystery: solved.
*yet
**You think I’m joking. I assure you I am not.
The Black Diamond has been Stolen
Yep, that’s right – my life is either a spy thriller or a heist movie.
I mentioned at http://shootingthrough.net/2011/03/22/307-ebay-fu/ that I’d sold my $2400 black diamond ring on ebay. I have been paid in full and thus posted it off long ago – and I have proof, too (which is suddenly very important). More importantly for the buyer, I was smart enough to insure it for the full value. . . which should mean there’s no victim here, but also means HE HAS A MOTIVE!
But then, so does his postie.
Or. . . Australia Post has a computer error and the black diamond is just sitting on a desk (or more likely under it) somewhere.
According to Australia Post, the diamond has arrived at the address and been signed for by “someone in the household”.
According to the buyer, no-one was at home that day.
DUN DUN DAAAAAAAHHH!!!!
Here it is, the $2400 piece of (probably) meteorite (as discussed in the previous post’s comments):
Will the truth ever come out?
Will I be taken to court and questioned as a suspect and/or witness?
Is the black diamond cursed?
We may never know the truth. . . but SOMEONE has committed a diamond-related crime with my inherited family fortune.
Buy a live Christmas tree
During the first year of my marriage to CJ, flushed with the joy of planning charming traditions to share, I bought a tiny conifer (10cm high) in a pot, believing it would grow bit by bit over the years as a sweet metaphor for the growth of our love.
It died. Horribly.
This year, I bought another – somewhat earlier in the year, so it’s three times the height and 100 times more healthy. Hopefully THIS charming metaphor will survive.
I was intelligent enough to buy something (a) slow-growing, (b) sun-loving, and (c) not that big when it’s fully grown.*
If you want to buy yourself a living, growing Christmas tree in a pot, NOW is the right time. Around September, a whole lot of people get the same idea all at once.
It looks happy, don’t you think? I’ll let you know if it makes it to December.
In case you’re curious, it’s a Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’. Here’s hoping all the teasing it gets from the other plants helps it to toughen up (and it doesn’t get too confused due to growing up in a giant teapot painted with Lavenders).
*assuming it lives. . .
Writers and their poisons
I don’t care how good your writing is – if you have a drug habit it’s stupid and needs to be stopped.
But I do understand the situation – a little.
A few weeks ago I began writing a steampunk novel. It’s loads of fun, but also requires about 100 times more research than anything else I’ve ever written. The character arrives at a house – is it brick or wood or sandstone or mud? What are the curtains made of? Does her gentleman companion remove his hat? Where does he put it?
Even worse, I’ve used several real buildings including the 1853 Governor’s residence in Melbourne (which you’d think would be the historic Government House – but it wasn’t built yet*). It’s incredibly daunting – more daunting than unwritten books already are, considering the failure statistics I know about.
Usually when I write a first draft I write it at lightning speed – generally within three weeks, and once in three days. I’m deliberately trying not to do that – although for me it’s psychologically devastating when I write nothing at all for a whole day.
Yesterday I was really struggling, and I bought booze to boost my mojo. It helped tremendously. I wrote a quite long and complicated escape sequence, and then today I wrote another important scene. I’m now over the 20,000 word mark, and feeling good again – it’s probably about a third of the first draft.
I’ve used booze (and, more usually, huge amounts of chocolate) a few times, and so far it works remarkably well. On the one hand, it’s a little worrying. On the other, it’s hardly a habit (and even if it was, all it takes is a single drink to get me going).
A couple of you are writers, and others are students (or public servants). Have you ever turned to drink, and how did it work out for you?
*In 1853, it was an Italianate building in Toorak, which is now a Swedish church. I heart google.
Traditional Australian Food
There is traditional Australian food that goes back hundreds of years – but other than macadamia nuts and perhaps witchety grubs, most modern Australians don’t know what it is. We do have lamb (cue hundreds of sheep jokes), vegemite (blurk), pavlova (yay – but technically a New Zealand dish) and barbeques.
On Sunday CJ and I went to my brother’s house for a barbeque. There were sausages, steaks, and kebabs. It was insanely delicious.
My brother, stoically ignoring me:
And yes, like everything else from non-indigenous Australia, it’s not unique to us. The historically-recent mix of cultures is what makes Australia special. That, and our (usually deadly) animals.
Here’s a video of some galahs partying in the recent heavy rain:
What’s your favourite Australian dish?
Screams in the night
Welcome to the first ever miscellaneous Monday.
I was going to write about the twittertales (writing a real-time tale each month is starting to make me crazy*, so I’ve decided to start using regular stories, hastily cannibalised into a twitterable form. It turned out to work really, really well – as you’ll discover in April, when “Cinders” happens).
But I decided not to talk about that.
Before we were married, I slept in a single bed and CJ slept in a double. That partially explains why, when we go to sleep, I’m curled up waaaay on the very edge of my side of the bed, and CJ is curled up RIGHT up against me, with his arm around my belly.
It’s all very sweet and romantic until I want to move. How to de-spoon from CJ’s dead weight**? Who knew an arm could be so heavy? Where can I possible move to anyway, with only millimeters to spare and a wall of husband blocking all feasible options other than the windowsill?
But it’s fine, because CJ doesn’t just sleep promptly – he sleeps thoroughly.
So I simply turn over as well as I can, and he – without in any way waking up – instinctively turns over and shifts to his side of the bed. Easy!
Or so I thought.
Last night, in a haze of sleepy contentment, I began the usual nightly operation of mutual turning over.
CJ began sleepily turning over, as always. About halfway into his unconscious turn something in his mind snapped. He finished the turn at rapid speed – and kept turning, faster and faster until he fell off the bed with a scrambling thud.
I heard violent battle commence at once between CJ’s limbs, the floor, his bag, and his shoes. It sounded bad. I screamed. CJ won the fight, however, and charged for the doorway (after a brief but fervent altercation with the dressing table), where he slapped on the light before he was fully upright.
The lightbulb above the bed blazed into luminescence, and I saw CJ, still hunched from his flight, staring fixedly at the light. He spoke with the deep voice of a man still crouched ready to grab a weapon: “It’s. . . it’s gone.”
By this time I was sitting up in bed, very concerned the corner of our dressing table had brained my husband. “What is it? What’s wrong? CJ?”
He didn’t break his stare at the light, evidently not quite believing that the threat to us had passed. His voice was still deep, clipped, and utterly serious.
“Dragonfly,” he said.
I stared at him in disbelief, and he began to realise something was off. There was a long and mutual pause.
“. . . a big one,” he amended.
I laughed hysterically for the next hour, gasping for breath. My unconscious mind regularly comes up with ravening zombies, nests of vampires (not the sparkly kind), gun massacres, automatons with knives coming out of their fingertips, and so on.
CJ has a nightmare about a bug. A pretty bug. He assured me it was “as big as a pigeon”.
That didn’t help.
Next Monday: Top ten awesomenesses to play along at home.
*er
**He’s pretty much always asleep before me. Cue comments about “no rest for the wicked”, “guilty conscience”, etc.
Australian Steampunk: Bushrangers
Steampunk often features tales of high adventure – which the Australian late 1800s have in abundance.
Here are two tales of the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt (yep, that’s really what he called himself), taken (without alteration to punctuation or spelling) from “Australian Bushrangers” by George Boxall (which is definitely not recommended for younger readers):
[Captain Thunderbolt] walked into the bar of the inn and asked if he could have something to eat. Mrs Byrne, the landlady, replied “Certainly” and went out to cut him some bread and meat. He sat down and waited, and on her return ate the bread and meat as if he was very hungry. When he had finished he asked “How much?” “Oh nothing,” replied Mrs Byrne, “we never charge for a little thing like that.” “Well,” said the robber, “I came here to stick you up, but as you’re so damned hospitable I won’t.” He then asked for a bottle of rum, paid for it, and went away.
. . . He stopped a number of other people during the afternoon, robbing some and letting others go, and in the evening went back. . . for tea. He chatted for some time with Mrs Byrne, telling her of his exploits.
Did you enjoy that? Here’s another:
One of the stories told about [Captain Thunderbolt] was that he stuck up a German band at Goonoo Goonoo Gap, and made the musicians play for him, besides giving him their money. The Germans pleaded hard. They said they were only poor men, and that their wives and children would suffer if they were robbed. Thunderbolt told them that he must have money. He was waiting for the principal winner at the Tamworth Races, he added, and he promised that if he caught him he would return the Germans their money. Ho took down their names and addresses. The Germans departed very sorrowful, never expecting to see their money again. Nevertheless, on their arrival at their home in Warwick, Queensland, they found a Post Office Order for 20 pounds awaiting them. They guessed, therefore, that Thunderbolt had captured the winner.
NB: Not pictured: the winning horse.
