Steam-Powered II Roundtable! Patty Templeton

Patty, like so many of us awesome people, can be found on LiveJournal and Tumblr. She contributed the steampunk western “Fruit Jar Drinkin’, Cheatin’ Heart Blues” to the anthology!

A two-sentence summary: 

Balma Walker is plain tired of Cazy Tipple’s cheating, especially now that it’s interfering with business. The moonshine ain’t gonna make itself and who has time to feud with ex-lovers, current sheriffs and make ends meet?

How did your characters come to be? 

Once I name someone, I can think clearly about them. I start to see their personality form on the page. I wanted women who, even for their opposite natures, found solace in one another. Balma Walker became a sturdy, town educated woman and Cazy Tipple, a hard drinking rake. 

Why this setting? 

My father’s from Harlan, Kentucky and it’s a setting that I haven't written much in, but have plenty more to spill about.  

You’re in an antho of lesbian steampunk stories. Obviously you are writing about lesbians. How does lesbianism fit in your setting? 

This story is set in an alternate 1914 Kentucky. People live and let live. Folks think more on Balma and Cazy’s moonshine than they do on their bedroom. Unfortunately, what is acceptable to most, doesn’t mean acceptable to all. The town sheriff has an idiotic bone to pick with Cazy about his daughter... who is not Balma.

What was the funnest or hair-tearingly frustrating thing in writing your piece? 

The best part of writing for me is always the research. This round I was able to call my dad and jaw for an hour. He told me piles of moonshine tales from when he was a kid in the ‘50s in Kentucky. I still need to write a few stories inspired from that conversation, like the drunken plane crash or the juke joint brawl or the tree-climbing spy.

The next best thing about writing Balma and Cazy's story was that C.S.E. Cooney* was sleeping on my couch while I was writing it. It was wonderful to live with another writer, not only to keep me on task, but to share in each other’s creative processes. Now if only we could actually make time to write the John Henry story we thought up while researching our Steam-Powered stories...

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*C.S.E Cooney is ALSO in this anthology. Keep an eye out for her answers in the upcoming days!

Theory Adventures: Civility and Colonialism

I know there should be more of substance but right now I'm catching up on theory I didn't get to read. I'm currently reading Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture, wherein he talks about mimicry and hybridity. 

And this line caught my eye:

... at the same time as the questions of cultural difference emerged in the colonial text, discourses of civility were defining the doubling moment of the emergence of Western modernity. Thus, the political and theoretical genealogy of modernity lies not only in the origins of the idea of civility, but in this history of the colonial moment. (46)

Note that the concept of "cultural difference" is different from "diversity"--cultural difference refers to the sense that many philosophers and theorists have that apart from their subject position in the West, there is an Other space, against which they compare their own civilizations to. It's very much tied to how we construct identity by contrasting ourselves to something different from ourselves. 

The reason why this line in particular caught my eye is because there is a sentiment I see every so often in steampunk conversations, usually by some well-meaning white person, waxing poetic about how the Victorian era was so refined, so polite and well-mannered, and part of the draw of steampunk is to bring those good manners back. 

Because let's face it, the Victorians as a civilization were terribly ill-mannered. I would consider stomping yourselves all over other people's homes and taking their resources, forcing them to surrender their crops so they can buy it back from you at high prices, and finding excuses to launch an attack because they wouldn't let you sell your stuff on their shores by encouraging the use of poison to be very, very bad manners. 

When I took an etiquette class, I was taught that etiquette's more than just knowing how to use the right kind of spoon... it's about making the people around you comfortable. And therefore, if someone next to you isn't Using the Right Spoon, it's not really a faux pas. Those are things we can overlook. 

And there is a lot to recommend of a way of life that encourages poise, graciousness, and wonderful clothing, a culture that encourages articulation and reading, as well as enterprise. But let's not forget that often, the price of this graciousness is that someone else must be uncouth so you have a yardstick for measurement, someone else must do all the labourious work so you can focus on your reading and writing.

Understanding where we get this idealization of Victoriana from, and understanding what we elide so we can believe in those ideals, is really important. We got many of our ideals of modernity, civility, and prosperity on the back of colonialism, land appropriation, cultural genocide. 

Yes, be well-mannered! But remember, good manners should be more than just your individual gracefulness and more than how you perform it. We need to think about what we mean by good manners, and who that serves, and why. We need to think about where we learn about good manners from, and from who, and what we do with this knowledge. 

Caricature and Sense

Sometimes I like to turn my Judgey McJudgerson eye on people's costumes, and judge them. I try not to do this very often because usually it ends up with me counting the ways a costume is wrong, trying to balance them with what is right, and then getting pissed off anyway. 

And yes, it is true, there are definitely some costumes out there which do not piss me off. 

I was thinking about two particular costumes while considering what my own lines are (but if you want a nice comprehensive list on whether or not you should do this outfit you really want to do, Thursday of the Sadness of Pencils has a pretty good list). I've mentioned them before, too: during Nova Albion, I saw a terrible outfit which appeared to consist of disparate Random Asian Things pulled together into some semblance of a peacock-themed outfit. The other is a traveler's outfit at GearCon.

What's the main difference?

The first outfit, though it looks like a lot of love has gone into it, doesn't make sense. In no historical period would anybody be wearing a giant fan at their backside to approximate a peacock that I can think of. Staring at it, I couldn't place what or where this person is supposed to be, except at some a-historical space where one can apparently pull random shit together. 

Outfits, to me, generally ought to have some sort of sense, even if it's a bit of a stretch. Even if it means really stretching. This Cthulhu bustle, for example, is a bit of a stretch. But you can tell where it comes from: Lovecraftian lore, combined with a Victoriana-inspired outfit. 

The fact that outfits really should have sense is even more imperative when you're not using an outfit from your culture. And I really wish people had more of an explanation for why they're doing it besides "I love this [usually non-white] culture." I get it if you're not white and you're wearing white fashions, because assimilation and the imposition of white culture has been pretty widespread. That's what colonialism is all about. But the only reason I can ever think of, for white people using non-white cultures, is this sense of entitlement that's so often on display: "I SHOULD be able to!" Cue racist bullshit about post-racism, culture-belonging-to-anybody, you're-racist-for-noticing-racism-and-harshing-our-squee.

There are totally outfits that make sense, even when non-white on white bodies.

Dude I met at GearCon, for example? His was a traveler's outfit. It was a plain white shirt, and a shawl, and loose trousers, and a pointy straw hat. I really liked it. Why? Because it made sense. It is entirely possible that a white dude would be traveling in Asia, and he'd adapt these random things, which have some goddamn function, by the way, not like a bustle in the shape of a giant fan, into a workable outfit for traveling. It's comfortable, looks sturdy to protect against the elements, and even though I can't exactly place the outfit historically, it looks like something that belongs on the Silk Road. It looks like something an actual traveler would wear. 

I've only been able to articulate this because other people have already done it, of course. Monique Poirier recently took an attempted NDN steampunk cosplay to task for its appropriation:

If you want to dress as a character who wears NDN attire, be prepared to have a backstory that explains why you, a white person, are wearing it (please not ‘My character was adopted into X tribe!’ either as a child or later in life or through marriage when they fell in love with a Badass Native/Chief’s Beautiful Daughter - that is the most overplayed Mighty Whitey bullshit fantasy ever and for fuck’s sakewhen, when, WHEN will white people get tired of it? I cannot tell you how many white people I have heard expound unto me thier Dances With Wolves or Little Big Man or Every Third Romance Novel With NDNs In It backstory. Shit gets old, and you do not have enough we-sha-sha.). Do some historical study on what characters might be likely to do this (fur trappers and prospectors come immediately to mind). Know that some things are never, ever ok to wear (war paint, feathered headdresses, ESPECIALLY war bonnets, specific religious symbols, etc.) and that evern of you think you’ve done all your homeworks, NDN people might still be pissed at you and that they are right to be so. If you’re not willing to do this, to take these extra steps, then just don’t do it.
Stop and think about why you even want to.

Note the bit about fur trappers and prospectors. Those were real people, who interacted a lot with NDNs and therefore, it makes sense that they would be wearing some NDN attire as a result. When people bleat about "cultural exchange", I doubt they're actually thinking about situations like this; too often, I get a sense of "cultural exchange" being "I SHOULD be able to!"

The first outfit, because it makes no historical sense, nor even functional sense, ends up being a caricature of Asian Things, drawing on everything that looks Possibly Asian to create an image that Looks Asian, but doesn't actually say anything besides the fact that this person that the wherewithal to buy Asian-Looking-Things. And you know what? White people pulling random Asian-looking shit together is part of white privilege. It reminds me that a white person can do this and they can take it off later and not suffer for it; that it's only a costume, and thus meaningless when taken apart.

I don't even trust that GearCon dude did homework or has a profound sense of respect for Asian cultures. I can't read that from his outfit. What I can read is that it's historically-logical that a white person in Asia would be wearing such an outfit, and that signifies a story. And fine, white Orientalists traveling the depths of Asia, that's not a new story either. But it's a story that potentially engages with Asia and Asians, as a fellow human being, not as a consumer.

And that makes a real difference in how I'm going to feel about an outfit.