Scylla Rhiadra

Really lovely, Charalyne! I'm really enjoying your experiments with photography! Wow. SO GOOD. Gwin, this is such a lovely shot! You should post it on one of the friendship groups here, or on Flickr! What a really cute avatar! (I have that hair too, and it doesn't look nearly as adorable on me.)

This is rather profound. Nicely said.

Interesting article. I don't know whether Au is "right" or not, but the experience and platform he describes is pretty recognizable to me. And I actually agree (although it will of course vary from person to person) that "community" is probably the most important thing SL has going for it, even if that is being redefined in more diffuse forms.

Apparently there will be no attempt to enforce the theme. Hello everyone, I would like to clarify some of the confusion about being "in theme", the last couple of years we have been strongly encouraging resident exhibitors to be "out of theme" and display what they love about Second Life. This could be their own community, their art, their story or anything they wish to display. We removed the rule of having to be in theme for exhibitors. The themes that are selected are specific to the main designs, such as the stages and decoration. Please be yourself and show everyone what you been enjoying all these years in Second Life as an exhibitor! (Applications will open soon) https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/484574-sl19b-planning/?do=findComment&comment=2430078

If so, I think this was a poor marketing decision. The overall "mood" is good -- sassy, in-your-face, and edgy -- but in a general audience newspaper, it's really going to turn some people off.

It seems likely that this work wasn't, in fact, submitted by LL itself, so it's difficult to know how much it reflects the Lab's own marketing thrust, I suppose. I totally agree that SL needs to be sold as something very different -- messier, edgier, more experimental, and more diverse -- than the competing "offerings" available at the moment. I think the "sex" stuff is fine, if it's handled properly. The problem with simply throwing it out there indiscriminately is that it's as likely to turn some people off as it is to turn others on. Which is where targeted marketing should come into play. By all means, sell SL as a place with virtual sex and BDSM -- but do it in places where it is likely to be seen by a receptive audience. Focusing on those elements of the platform in, for instance, a broadly-targeted newspaper is probably counterproductive.

It's origin certainly is, and that does make a difference in some ways. But then the best art often takes older forms and reshapes, appropriates, and transforms them. The novel is a Eurocentric form, but in the hands of a Nigerian writer like Chinua Achebe, or a Japanese novelist like Haruki Murakami -- although the latter is blending some Western traditions into the native Japanese tradition of the novel -- it can become a voice for a very different cultural tradition. Steampunk isn't a very "pure" form either -- even the solidly Eurocentric versions often deviate a lot from a stricter definition of what it is "supposed' to be, so that's evidence that it's a fertile field for adaptation and creative play. It also, as Maddy and others have noted, overlaps and intersects with Retrofuturism in interesting ways. Doing a bit of digging in the critical lit on the subject, I haven't found a lot of non-Eurocentric Steampunk outside of Japan, where there is a strong tradition that has cross-fed with the Western one. I think I mentioned Miyazaki somewhere above: a lot of my own exposure to Steampunk is via his anime. Interestingly, Porco Rosso and perhaps Howl's Moving Castle are set in explicitly European settings. There's a parallel genre called Silkpunk which is East Asian, and which employs some of the central mechanics of Steampunk, but is really kind of its own thing from what I can see. In some ways, this is all rather moot, of course: we've been assured in the other thread that the Steampunk theme is merely a "suggestion" rather than a requirement. I should also note that Eurocentrism was only one of four or five things that I initially mentioned as being a bit "niche" about this choice -- and I literally meant simply that a very great many people aren't into the genre. The subtext that has arisen here, suggesting that Steampunk is also "colonialist" or "imperialist" is interesting (and last night I read some interesting discussions of that topic), but wasn't something I actually said. Anyway, it's all rather cool. I learned stuff! And that makes this a very productive and interesting thread so far as I'm concerned. This is why I love these forums sometimes: people like yourself, Ayashe, and others have contributed really interesting things! So thanks for that!!

Indeed. She's kind of gorgeous, and she's got really good presence.

OMG. So good! That last piece especially!

No! I don't! But I'm curious to know how you do! 😉

It frankly never occurred to me to think of "crystals" in terms of supernatural power. I was thinking in geological terms, if that makes any sense, and when I created a "crystal" for the exhibit (which was about online feminist activism), it was the metaphorical idea of lucidity, of sharpness and organic form, that I played with. As for steam power -- one of the things that I do like about such Steampunk as I've read or watched is its often deeply ambivalent attitude towards science and technology. The genre glories in "contraptions" and technological advances -- but so often also features a dystopian vision of an imagined past in which humans have lost, or are losing, control of their own machines and inventions. Historically, the strongest resonances for me in the period of Industrial Revolution as the social evils that technological innovation, as applied by unregulated Capitalism, brought in. The nightmarish cityscapes of the great industrial urban centres like Manchester -- the landscapes of William Blake's "Satanic mills" documented later in Dicken's novels (esp. Hard Times), Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton and North and South, and, in non-fiction, Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor -- are often magnified in Steampunk beyond even the actual horrors that "steam power" ushered in. In fact, one of the "inventions" which we owe to steam is arguably Marxism, which ultimately became a (deeply flawed) attempt to create a "scientific" analysis of society and history. Technology didn't create the nightmare of course (and eventually helped provide solutions for some of it), but our inability to control it certainly did. And it wasn't science that addressed the problems it had produced: it was human endeavour that did that. Which is, I think maybe, why Steampunk has cultural resonance today. We live in a world in which technology has made us both the masters, and the fools, of nature. It has enabled us to do miraculous things -- and also transformed us potentially (or perhaps truly, given climate change) into "Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." So yeah . . . I'm no Luddite. I wouldn't be in SL if I were. But "steam power" carries some pretty complicated freight for me. And insofar as Steampunk functions, as does most science fiction, as a commentary upon us, I'd expect to see that ambivalence reflected there too. It may "exist for everyone," but our relationship with it is . . . complex and problematic.

Thanks for this! That does indeed clarify and reassure!

Agreed. Most of the Steampunk builds I've seen in SL have been pretty good. They're a little "darker" than is my personal preference, but they certainly are good at creating ambiance. It will be interesting to see what results. And if, as I hope happens, Han and Ayashe are right, and creators who are not necessarily into Steampunk rise to the challenge.

I honestly don't know -- I loved the pics you posted on the other thread, and I'm quite willing to believe Orwar and Catrie that it is more multicultural than my admittedly superficial experience of it would suggest. Again, though, this isn't really about Steampunk, as such, so far as I'm concerned. A theme of anime would be as limiting, I think. Although . . . now I think about it . . . most of Miyazaki's films have a strong and very visible element that is Steampunk-ish . . . hmmmmmm! Fingers crossed!

Oh definitely. And there have been lots of examples of it extended into other cultures here, and on the other SLB thread. That's fascinating. One of my favourite YA novel series employs elements that have been clearly lifted from Steampunk -- and it's set in a high fantasy medieval world. The cleverness of that derives from the way that "science" is treated as a kind of a "magic" to those who don't understand it.

This is sort of my concern. Regardless of whether or not one actually needs "a coal tender behind your sportster," I suspect a lot of people are going to simply read it this way. But yes, I agree that it is interesting. But so are a great many other things that are probably not going to be appearing at SLB because of this.

I very much hope that that is the way the proposal judges understand it. I'm not at all sure that is the way the potential exhibitors who are not into Steampunk will read this announcement.

If I had any confidence that the proposal adjudicators would look favourably upon imaginative and creative ways of applying the theme, I'd be more inclined to agree. I am sure that there are lots of Steampunk aficionados who are genuinely really excited by this. And that's totally a good thing. But if I had to guess, a great many people who might have submitted will look at the announced theme and simply give up: "Well, that's not my thing. I can't do that." I may be wrong. I genuinely hope I am wrong. We'll see, I guess!

I'd endorse the first part of this statement. I don't really understand why we need "themes." There is no "theme" to SL. It's what we make of it.

I think all of these things can be niche, depending upon how one interprets them. I actually DID an exhibit for crystal -- my nod to the theme was a giant crystal that housed the actual exhibit, which I seem to remember relating thematically to the content, but I don't remember precisely how. But "carnival" is a much more generic term -- it needn't refer to any one particular celebration. The "carnivalesque" is actually a sort of narrative/rhetorical mode which can be applied to almost any context: it's the idea of a "world turned upside down," a "court of misrule," and so forth. We could go through the list and find themes that I'm sure are niche, although I still think most are more "open" than this one. I'm sure that a Steampunk theme will produce a very attractive and interesting set of installations, but it is, by definition, limited in its appeal in the way that something like "community" or "the future" is not. The key point is not that "Steampunk sucks." I haven't said that, and wouldn't. The point I'm trying to make is that these shouldn't be niche: they should be themes that can be related to any of the enormous diversity of experiences available in SL. Maybe that's a tough ask -- but I think they've done better at it in the past, and could have done better this time around.

The transhumanism thing is one of the elements you sometimes see in it that I actually find rather interesting -- although, God knows, I'm not a transhumanist. But it's clever and thoughtful and playful. Aesthetically, I like the historical elements, but I find the Victorian a bit dark and murky, on the whole. (And yes, there are of course LOTS of exceptions.) I'm more Edwardian myself. I like the idea of a civilization on the edge of self-immolation, and too elegant and refined to acknowledge it.

That's terrific, Catrie. Thanks. I've already said, well before this, that I accepted that Steampunk is "inclusive" in terms of cultures and identities, but please . . . consider me "educated." None of this responds to my central point: this has niche appeal. Just as any particular flavour of aesthetic or role play would.

Close enough for jazz. Er, Steampunk . . .

I am not "clanking down" on anyone. Indeed, I've said, several times here in fact, that I quite like Steampunk. But a theme like "community" or "crystals" is applicable across a far wider range of interests and aesthetics. It's that simple. Um, what?

Well, that's kinda cool. I miss the pastels, though!