Dieselpunk movies, Series, Anime, etc.
- Thread starter Zachowon
- Start date
Bassoe
Well-known member
Personally, I'd go with S. M. Stirling's explanation for all of the 'punk genres, they're worlds where Adventure is still possible without just being a scam to transfer public funds to military-industry megacorps or Mutually Assured Destruction.
Steampunk: Imperialism is still within the overton window, most of the world is still unexplored and the colonial powers fight.
Dieselpunk: There are Great Powers which are openly antagonistic to each other, technologically advanced enough to have interesting gadgets, but not enough for their wars to either be perpetual staring contests or the apocalypse.
Atompunk: Now that humanity isn't stuck in a single biosphere, nuclear war is winnable insofar as it wouldn't kill everyone, so Great Powers can fight each other again. Plus, there's an infinite frontier to explore and conquer, possibly with Outside Context alien Great Powers in it looking to do the same to you.
Cyberpunk: Accepts the limitation that the Great Powers of megacorps are ossified and unchanging, but there's still plenty of fighting for the scraps. Still kinda surprised that aside from /tg/'s Nutopia, I can't think of any cyberpunk settings which start with the overthrowal of the ruling corporatocracy and everything imediatly going completely french/russian revolution.
Solarpunk: Divided. Solarpunk played straight is shitty propaganda about how the reader should accept a lower quality of life or deliberately dystopian horror stories with additional horror from the fact that there are genuinely people who think the world should be like that and they have power. Deconstructed solarpunk has a lot more options:
- As a reaction to a collapse of civilization brought about by Peak Resources and/or Environmental Armageddon. Without overarching civilization beyond the scale of local communities, solarpunk ideals of self-sustenance through local farming and recycling/repairing old goods rather than building or purchasing new ones aren't ideological, they're practical. Plus, with the catastrophic failure of the old status quo within living memory, people would be demonizing it in favor of alternatives. Enemies are Immortan Joe and barbarian hordes who haven't starved yet with collapse of modern agriculture and will pillage everything the survivors have built before they do.
- As freedom from cyberpunk totalitarianism. Imagine the cyberpunk dystopia the average plutocrat wants. In such a world, self-sufficiency through farming your own food and repairing gadgets after their planned obsolesce bricked them means freedom. If you can make your necessities yourself, you don't have to slave away for the local megacorp in exchange for enough company scrip to rent them from the company store and consequentially, they can't control you.
- As a means of survival in the face of your economic obsolesce. Eventually, barring Outside Context Problems such as the collapse of civilization, automation will reach the point where human laborers, no matter how overworked and underpaid, just aren't economically effective compared to robots. The only job remaining will be idle rich robotics company executive, everyone who isn't one of those is left with a choice between being kicked out of civilization now that they can't afford even the most basic level of necessities, or being shot by robotic 'security' if they violate the Non-Aggression Principle by rioting and stealing to survive. Or building their own, independent society, self-sustaining via local resources and repairing gadgetry discarded as broken by the ruling technocracy. So the technocrats become a sort of Fair Folk-style myth. Stay away from the hollow hills of their arcology manors or their robotic security will get you, don't speak disparagingly of them or autonomous keyword-checkers and ubiquitous micro-drone bugs will consider you as a potential subversive revolutionary, etc. Bonus if they've embraced transhumanism to the point where they're no longer immediately recognizable as human-derived to the solarpunk communities living in the wilderness they abandoned. See also, the dropout economy.
I mean, for Diesel punk, he isn't really wrong. That bsaically IS the whole point of it. Wars happen, as every country hates each other at some point. They just have cool air, sea, and ground tech that goes at each other. Sometimes in constant war, sometimes in more noir ways
I'm skeptical of the propulsion being sufficient, but, it IS cool!
Argent
Well-known member
I know it is the hip thing now to have everything be "realstic" with a universe's physics and science being perfectly explainable but sometimes the rule of cool is all that is needed.
I am more into the Steampunk and Victorian adventure settings.
But I always liked the airship and Sky Pirates. It is one of the best things about Talespin which was one of my favorite cartoons growing.
No but it has that diesel punk sounding name
I heard it is good but needs a lot of patches before full release
Guess there is a reason why it's in limited beta now.
Looked at some more current gameplay videos, don't see major issues there.