Gearing Up

I’d been putting this off until I had a more polished presentation to bring to the table, but the popularity of Victorientalism lately has given me cause to move ahead, good planning be damned.

Put simply, sky ninja are the natural enemies of that overpopulated scourge of the air, the sky pirate. It was only natural that ninja would evolve skyward just as pirates did.

The name sky ninja actually came about as a joke referring to Captain Jack Rose’s unhealthy attachment to the exotic but dangerous and far-flung colonies of the Mysterious East where he accompanied his parents for a several years of his misspent youth. He spent a few years there in the company of a pair of Imperial agents, eventually losing track of them when they disappeared to oppose the schemes of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and thereafter Jack insisted on bringing an Oriental flair to all things, whether it was really helpful or not.

In addition to the pieces he bought or assembled himself, he has commissioned a few pieces that he feels capture the spirit in which he was “trained”. He enjoys the use of weapons from throughout Asia, including Nipponese shuriken (a pair of which he commissioned from Alexandra of the White Peacock Trading Company shortly after they met) and an Indian talwar sword which was passed on to him from his father. He’s not necessarily much good with all these exotic weapons, mind you, but he tries.

Sky ninja is not so much an actual job (I’d imagine actual steampunk ninja would be more land-based unless they were engaged in specific warfare against their sky pirate enemies) as an expression of interest in Asia as filtered through the Victorian-colonial mentality.

It is important, when looking at Asia through steam-colored glasses, that we use the Western/British mentality toward Asians in the same way we do their mentality toward women and the lower classes: something to play with, parody, and subvert, but not something to seriously adopt. The stereotype of the exotic geisha or the silent warrior monk may be interesting to flesh out or turn inside out, but especially in writing, it’s essential to remember that cardboard cutouts are never interesting characters and stereotypical cutouts are less so.

(If you’re interested in making sure you don’t write stereotypes for your Asian characters, you may wish to read this discussion on LJ for a privilege check and a thread on the many interesting possibilities for non-Eurocentric stories.)

And remember, if you don’t see sky ninja stalking you from above, that just means they’re doing their job.

In the early part of the 20th century, many people in both Europe and America became quite fascinated with the Mysterious East. While treatment of those actually from the mysterious east was rather wretched, the both easterners and westerners were happy to borrow superficial details from each other’s culture, and this is well-reflected in late Victorian and Edwardian fashion. Whether you’re actually Asian and want to dress the part or you want to play a proto-otaku, there’s plenty of historical precedent for mixing up western and eastern dress.

The West’s fascination with Asian style is usually traced to the 1909 debut of the Ballets Russes in Paris. From this inspiration, many of the major French designers began incorporating Asian elements into their designs.
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It’s Wednesday, so let’s have a costume post, shall we?

I happened across a page on Stalinist fashion on The Costumer’s Manifesto, and this men’s jacket caught my eye. The book it’s from is dated 1956 but I don’t think it would be too out of place on a Russian a decade earlier. It’s a very simple style and is described as a very common style, particularly the front of the jacket.

In fact, it looks quite a bit like the uniform that was popularized in Communist China as well. It’s very utilitarian and doesn’t require a great deal of tailoring, so that doesn’t surprise me. A Russian overseas might very well wear one of these, particularly if he’s escaping the early stages of the Stalinist regime with his brilliant-but-mad scientific ideas. Communist activists might wear them as well, though if you’re supposed to be under cover, I wouldn’t recommend it for obvious reasons.

For an idea what they looked like in practice, take a look at this jacket, an actual piece from the 1930s. The high collar is very similar. It features two breast pockets rather than the lower pockets shown in the sketch, but is still very utilitarian. The Communist style can’t be beat if you’re the kind of person who has to carry lots of little things on your person.

Ladies will want to check out the jackets near the top of the page. They’re not the most stylish things in the world, but particularly the one on the left has some definite potential. With a bit of tailoring, it would look absolutely smashing on a femme fatale.

Speaking of femme fatales, don’t worry too much about tailoring your Communist clothes. Shots of Cate Blanchett on the set of the new Indiana Jones movie make it clear that even the apparently unappealing Communist uniform can be quite smashing if you wear it with the right attitude.

I think it’s a shame we don’t see more Russian-inspired costumes, especially in steampunk. The country has a very dark fantasy feel in the imaginations of many despite its scientific progress in the last century. Perhaps the popularity of the Night Watch series will attract more attention to the character and storytelling possibilities of Russia both now and then.