Steampunking: Fuck You, 29th Century Time-Cops!

So, I've been corresponding with Ay-Leen the Peacemaker about our rather specialized interest of Asian steampunking, wherein I latched onto something that truly draws me in about the steampunk genre: re-writing history.

For all intents and purposes, I could imagine a world in which I have no British colonial residue on my heritage (not that I hate it that much), where Asia isn't exoticized as the place where the girls are either meek dolls or dragon ladies, the men are squinty-eyed villains, or the opium is plentiful. A timeline in which Asia is not some mysterious, untraversed area because we, as in We From the Far East, LIVE THERE!!!

And a place where I could, as blithely as the Japanese do but hopefully with less of the problems, take elements of whatever I want from whatever culture I please, and reshape it and innovate it into my own culture's image, and it would be a hodge-podge that fits beautifully together, with the Hodge on the Podge side and the Podge side on the Hodge side, and if you got that reference, HAIL ERIS!

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