Awww, you guys.

(I mean, personally, I love most steampunk clothes and jewelry. Gears and goggles and parasols and airships make me happy. But I think the being in character all the time thing is creepy and weird, and once you start actually placing your characters in a quasi-historical context, you have, on some level, a responsibility to be honest about what that historical context is.)

True. Have y'all seen Silver Goggles? It's a blog that's all about racial issues vis a vis steampunk. [link] The latest entry goes in-depth about some recent and not-so-recent racefails in the subculture:

This is a call-out of the steampunk community that will allow this kind of racism to stand.

This is a call-out of the steampunk community that refuses to discuss openly the myriad ways racism manifests in the subculture.

This is a call-out of the steampunk community that remains silent in the face of open racism.

This is a call-out of the subculture I love and of the community I participate in even though it is ever so alienating every passing year.

How do African American participants in steampunk culture address these issues? I know in NYC, there was quite a growing Steampunk community in Harlem.

Calli, Silver Goggles is one of the blogs I've just started reading, and I really enjoy it.

How do African American participants in steampunk culture address these issues?

I am ashamed to say that I have no clue. The Seattle steampunk scene is ... well, whitebread is putting it gently.

(Shameful disclosure time: when I was in the vampire LARP group, my character was one of the "gypsy" clan of vampires. I am retroactively appalled at myself. I was one of the group that actually researched Roma culture, but that doesn't make it better.)

Jilli, have you read N.K. Jemisin? She has a marvelous femslash steampunk story kicking around, with IIRC a couple of Haitian protagonists; I read it on her website a year or so back and it's also been reprinted in some anthologies.

By which I mean: it's possible to do steampunk without the colonialismYAY attitude.

Jilli, have you read N.K. Jemisin? She has a marvelous femslash steampunk story kicking around, with IIRC a couple of Haitian protagonists;

Ooooh, I haven't! I'll have to check her work out.

I love her books. Love. And her short stories.

I have several toasters for 100k Kingdoms. And am using the Killing Moon as a reward/carrot to egg myself through some edits right now.

100k Kingdoms

I have that on my virtual TBR pile.

In completely other news, my neighbors are redoing their kitchen and I have MAJOR renovation envy. To soothe myself, I am browsing Build It Green and imagining what I could achieve if I had any carpentry or plumbing skills or money whatsoever.

I could replace the hideous pedastal sink in my master bathroom with this!

I could replace the hideous fake wood cabinets in my kitchen with these!

So many possibilities!

I could replace the hideous pedastal sink in my master bathroom with this!

I hate pedestal sinks. I've got one in my bathroom, and I've got no storage space -- there's no counter where I can put stuff, and the base of the sink makes it impossible to store stuff underneath.