On "steampunk" and why it doesn't work

this is a 1st grade level blog post dedicated to an intrusive thought. consider this is a warning.

 As cool as I think "steampunk" settings are, they make it unduly difficult to set aside my disbelief, as is required for the enjoyment of any fictional setting. Ideally, a setting in fiction is either sufficiently distanced from the real world (if not disconnected from it entirely), or believably bridged to by the real world.

The former camp includes totally alien worlds which are more or less completely distinct from our own, and thus avoid ever confronting audience's disbelief. Take Star Wars, for example: you can't really question the setting that takes place "in a galaxy far, far away" by cross checking it with our world since our world has exactly zero bearing on it. Now, admittedly, a very particular sort of person might defy this by asking what a lightsaber even is. That individual is rightfully shushed and, as far as a general audience is concerned, the happenings of Star Wars don't provoke disbelief.

I'd also lump in the world of 1984, which doesn't employ a far off setting to earn its authenticity. It's a strange case in that the story takes place on Earth and involves all sorts of familiar human stuff, like dystopian bureaucracies, all while entertaining the world's more fantastical features. I think 1984 manages to be satisfyingly plausible by being, in part, a work of rhetoric: you read 1984 for an insight into the dangers of boundless government, not for Orwell's believable world-building. Whether a government such as that imagined in 1984 could really come about isn't relevant.

Then, there's the latter camp of settings, those which remain rooted in the real world in some manner. They don't have the privilege of entirely sidestepping the reader's disbelief, and the fictional world put forward must be a plausible descendent of our own. It's in this camp that the steampunk setting falls and fails.

The sights and sounds of steam power are powerfully enthralling, stirring up the mind's eye. That is, it lends itself to a really cool aesthetic. Naturally, the extrapolation of steam-powered technology further in time is deeply fascinating to me. What a thought-provoking question: what would the world look like if the steam age were prolonged? As it turns out, what should be a strength for the genre -- an awesome premise -- is a chronic weak point. Steampunk necessarily implicates a good bit of history since steam power took to prominence during a specific period thanks to specific people with their own specific motivations. The rich history of the Industrial Revolution would serve as a fantastic branching-off point for an alternative world.

What happens between the British and the French, two nations possessing innovative minds, industrial might, and which have been dueling on and off for centuries? You've gotta give a reimagining of the historical biggies of the 1900's, surely, right? If you advance to the modern day, how might the world differ with clockwork in place of circuits?

You thought global warming was bad? Try replacing every car with a coal-powered steam engine.

Alas, that is not what steampunk is. What's tragic is the ball gets dropped almost immediately. Bruh, why is everything needlessly gilded in gears? Give me one good reason a dog's food bowl incorporates a gearshift. I rest my case.