The promotional still from the lovely short pictures which, we still hope, will someday come into being.  You know what I’m really excited for?  “Hullaballoo“, perhaps the best-funded Steampunk Kickstarter of all time. But I’m not that excited for the movie.  After all this time, I have no idea how the movie will be.  Hopefully,…

Code Of The Shocking Pink Illuminatus (To Be Read With Closed Eyes) Never surrender your Transylvanian soul. They have the money, the power, the logic; theirs are theguns, the good beer, the air-conditioning, and the light of day. But we have the Mad Science. We draw the blood of destiny. We autograph madness. Wescribble in…

Are we really defined by being a festival, and not a convention?  For me, the answer’s yes.   I do love conventions.  But think about conventions.  Trade shows are conventions.  Academia has conventions.  Your corporate job probably has, or attends, conventions.  I happen to enjoy all of those things.  They’re not bad things.  BUT… Think…

Why do I think Steampunk descended, at least in part, from Goth?  Lots of reasons.  And not just because this weekend is the opening of our collaboration with Vampire Freaks – “Dark Side Of The Con: America’s 3 Day Goth / Dark Alternative Convention“.  There are reasons why we get along so well together –…

Why, exactly, do we associate squid with Steampunk? My guess is that Kraken scene from that one “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” movie.  It may be peculiar, but it’s canon: tentacles are Steampunk.  So in that spirit, I present to you this Steampunk poem. It’s sort-of a kid’s poem. Depending on the kid. What kind…

Every month, we ask, “What is Steampunk?”, and we think about it again. Here’s a practical answer you can use: Steampunk is a creative focus, based re-imagining the 19th century, which you can use for any form of inventiveness.  It could be music, art, dress, writing, games – and those are just beginning points. Steampunk…

There’s a simple goal I have for every Jeff Mach Event: I make weekend-long homes for unusual people. What does that mean? The second martial arts school I attended was literally in the back of an alley, up a long flight of stairs. And leading to the school door, there was a pair of signs.…

The total number of incredible Steampunk webcomics is, of course, “Lots”.  Webcomics and Steampunk, in many ways, grew up together, and it’s not surprising that some of the oldest and flat-out best webcomic tales are of Steampunk universes and spirit. Here are a few for you to consider: 1. Girl Genius. Girl Genius is perhaps the…

I applaud the positivity of saying “You are beautiful”, but it doesn’t apply to me.. I’m not beautiful, inside or out.. And I don’t want to be. What I am is functional.. Not that beauty has no function, but I’m functional in a way which strips away loveliness. If there was some pretty inner glow…

I’ve been running conventions, festivals, and events for well over two decades now. There have been tremendous changes within that time, unsurprisingly – for example,  quite relevant to my own life and career, it’s not like there were really any Steampunk events 20 years ago.  Not anywhere in the entire world. But there are a…

When people say, “What does it take to run weekend-long Steampunk, Fairy, or Goth events,” I generally say: A hotel that actually WANTS your weird friends to hang out in it. This is more unusual than you’d expect..  If you’ve not booked a hotel before, your feeling might be, “Well, it’s business; you’re bringing them money;…

Photographer Credit: Babette Daniels Photography You might have heard us talking about a Q&A with ENSMB – well that has now morphed into a private all-request concert just for the 100 lucky folks who purchase this $10.00 add-on.  Wow!!! What a bargain! Ticket buyers will even get to help choose the songs!  Look for a…

Billy Idol’s Steampunk bolt of lightning. I do not own this photo. I have loved music since I was thirteen, perhaps much younger.  And I grew up in that weird time when MTV was getting started. Strange fact: MTV, like Steampunk, brought weirdness to the rest of the world partway through accident and partway through…

From The Steampunk World’s Fair 2014, by Babs Who Takes Pictures As a person who runs the world’s largest Steampunk event, I am an expert in con preparation. In fact, I can sum up how to plan for a convention in less than a dozen words: Give up. Give up NOW. Show up in nothing but…

In preparation for our collaboration with Vampire Freaks – Dark Side Of The Con, America’s only 3 day Goth festival – I thought I might put together a bit of conversation about whether or not Goth and Steampunk truly to go together. Steampunk and Goth have a number of differences, as well as an extraordinary…

Today’s the last day to get $20 off of Dark Side Of The Con with promo code “vampirefreaks”, and so I thought I’d do something Gothic.  You might have seen my recent entry wherein I crowdsourced the question “What is Steampunk?” I thought, given how quickly  is coming up, I might try the same thing with…

Steampunks love tea, but more than tea, we love the idea of tea-time, an oasis during which we might sip stimulating boiled plant-leaves and eat things that are like cookies but fancier, and like cake but smaller, and like toast but called something cooler, such as “scones”.  It is my goal to show you how…

It’s challenging to create worthwhile new programming ideas, and I can safely tell you that the amount of time we spent on trying to figure out how to develop a new VIP event was approximately 237 years.  If you see Hermione, tell her I’ll get her Time-Turner back to her right after 2020. I knew…

Does your loved one have The Steampunk? Are they suddenly significantly taller, due to the addition of a top-hat with a clock nailed to it? Do they possess goggles which, for no particular reason, never seem to be found on their eyes? Do they suddenly insist on drinking tea?  Oh, sure, I’ve heard that normal…