fhplotterywheel | Steampunk Weekend!

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Steampunk Weekend!

Remember Soap Opera Weekend? Remember Noir Weekend? Well, pull out your parasols, crimp your cravats and grease up your gears, because on the weekend of August 4/5th, and with thanks to Zed for the kick in the butt to make this happen, the island will be gearing itself up for its very first Steampunk Weekend!

Just like all themed AU weekend events in the past, if you opt in to having your character change, you'll find yourself playing with those steampunk tropes that make the genre so appealing. Everything electrical on the island will be replaced by clockwork, steam-powered, or geothermal alternatives, and the aesthetic will pull a major switch from Fandom's 'come as you were' aesthetic to Victorian and Edwardian sensibilities with a clockwork twist; everything from full flouncy dresses and dapper tailcoats and cravats to jodhpurs and jungle-explorer chic. Streetlamps will become gaslamps, the seaport will become the location of one of series of metal towers around the island where enterprising captains can dock their airships. If you're uncertain about what tropes to lean into for this event, consider the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. There's a pretty impressive list of examples of steampunk in popular culture over here, as well as a good write-up on what makes the genre in the first place, and for further ideas of what to do with your characters or the surroundings they live within, consider poking at the tabs of the steampunk index here!

As with all other crazy themed weekends, the clockwork sky is basically the limit. Embrace your character's darker inclinations toward mad science and experiment with power and chemicals to create a man... or a monster. Attack your neighbours from above as fearsome sky pirates sailing aboard grand airships. Catch a mechanical, spider-legged rickshaw across town in order to attend a ball thrown by the island's social elite, only to run afoul of a raging automaton. What becomes of our fair island will be largely up to whatever steampunky shenanigans you want to bring to the table, and if you want to have your character lean into cattle punk or gaslamp fantasy, could anybody possibly complain? No matter where you take this, as always, don't worry; everything that happens on the weekend will revert back to normal again on Monday morning!

It'll be structured very much the same way Soap Opera Weekend is, with OCD neatly tucked into this very post for you to all noodle about your characters' backstories, and what's going to change about the island you all know and love.

Brainstorming and question threads are all posted within for your convenience!

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This is for letting the world know what steampunk history your steampunk steamy steamer steams like!

It's my birthday, I don't have to be coherent, here. But go on and throw around some ideas for what you'd like to do with your pups here!

I call mad scientist for Cristina!

Who wants a clockwork heart?

Jono happens to be in the market for a heart! I have exactly nothing planned yet, but that sounds like fun to noodle at!

Yesssssssssssssssssssssss. Cristina will be appalled (well, primarily confused but also appalled) later, but I love it.

Does she need a mad colleague? This boy is made for it (literally)!

I mean, she would say no. But rival mad scientists could be fun.

I like it! *cackle*

Dr. O'Hara, of course, leans more towards the eldritch than the strictly mechanical, and Cristina is welcome to sneer at him for it. :D He'll probably in turn decry her lack of imagination?

Perfect! She will totally haaaaaaaaaaate him.

Re: Character Brainstorming

what_the_shock - 2018-08-03 01:58 (UTC) - Expand

Steampunk military, just for the outfits. I will have to do a pastede head but so what.

(and now that I know he'll be around for it)

Eliot will be an automaton, or at least part-automaton. Built out of the remains of a dead solider from "the Wars" (which war? who knows? specific wars are not the steampunk way), with, you know, Feelings about what it means to be human and all that.

Zack and Kaidan are doing Generic Soldiery Thing TBD, want to join us?

Hmmm, maybe as a former compatriot? I don't think I want him to be a current soldier, but he could totally have been part of their ranks and is now Conflicted™ about his time there.

;) Zack is going to be plenty conflicted, himself. I'm borrowing SOME chunks of his canon for his backstory, after all.

Kanan Jarrus has no past. He prefers it that way, as a matter of fact. Ever since the day he strolled into town, a gun on his hip, it's been clear that he's got something he wants to leave behind.

That something was a war, a religion, an entire identity. Caleb Dume never knew his real family; he was surrendered to a religious order of peacekeepers in his infancy, and went to war against the automatons when he was still quite young. When the war ended, Caleb found that his entire order was no more, their entire way of life made illegal by a government wary of a possible rival power, and he disappeared into a life on the run.

By the time Kanan Jarrus, a mysterious gunslinger of no small skill, appeared in the world, Caleb was, if not long forgotten, at least long given up for dead, the victim of an airship accident that had left dozens dead, including, incidentally, the officers who had been trying to take him in for questioning in the first place.

... I didn't actually really have to change anything but the aesthetic to make this work, help.

So... is anybody in the market for a tiny green automaton with an all-too-literal mind and a penchant for Doing a Science?

Wrong account, but -- I mean, crazy Dr. Yang could probably use her a tiny green Igor-figure.

SHE IS YOURS. TREAT HER WELL.

She'll likely be far less disturbed by what went on over that weekend than Cristina will be. ;)

Cristina will run into Peridot later and be very confused, having probably assumed that she was just part of whatever fever dream the weekend was.

Peridot is eternally confusing. ;)

Jonothon Starsmore came from the disappointing branch of the family. The Starsmores, after all, were old money, members of a secret society with a history spanning back generations. And that society had power. They weren't afraid to use an unholy combination of technology and dark rituals to bring forth a monster to lead them, and while that monster is long gone, put to rest generations before Jonothon's birth, the effects of his power still ripple through the family today.

In Jonothon's great-granddad, that power manifested in a gift for observation that made him one of the greatest detectives of his time. In Jonothon himself, a sense of intuition that makes some suspect that he might be capable of reading minds...

The trade-off is that the power, whatever its source may be, has always led to ruin in the Starsmore line. With his great-granddad, it was the addiction to opium that dragged the family into ruin even in spite of their connections. With Jonothon, a good century later, it was the accident that tore deep into his chest, leaving him with little but his intuition, his fondness for music, and a life that stubbornly (and rather mysteriously) refuses to quit, in spite of the extensive damage to quite a few of his internal organs.

Zack never thought much of letting them alter his body to turn him into a super-strong mechanical soldier. So what if he was part automaton? If he did his job well, serving the government without question, he could still prove his worth as a hero, after all.

He should have started to question his worth to that government around the time they started using him to hunt down and exterminate other clockwork soldiers like him.

It really shouldn't have been a surprise when the same doctor who had initially operated on him took advantage of the fallout of a bad encounter with one of his marks to experiment on him further. Now he's not certain if he's more man or machine, and frankly, he doesn't want to know.

What he does know is that there's no way they'll ever take him back again.

...anyone need a samurai bodyguard?

How about a mysterious nobleman with unspecified ties to the East?

Oh 100% yes please.

Clearly there needs to be a Mysterious Nobleman in town, possibly hiding from things best not spoken of, possibly on the lookout for things to do (shady or otherwise).

Anybody want to have connections?

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