something called the grand which is just a wide variety out there was a so when we look back at how insurance and and your hands consume music it's it's a very different thing you know we we all know and i you know we all have this idea of victorian sitting in their living room you know like this the oldest daughter playing the piano after you know sunday tea or something and everyone sort of listening and singing parlor songs and you know and we also have these images of of the working classes going to with the ball bills and to the dance halls and the things it's like that you know of course it's a much more common thing i think that's something that i think now especially as a musician that i try to connect to so refer to my notes here because you really don't hear me ramble it's not pretty so what complaints what were the what were the kinds of music that people were were doing in the victorian does anybody have like just something that you would what do you think of when you think of victorian music anybody got anything century and it started to play after that and was pretty much extinct by the beginning of the nineteenth century it was just basically supplanted by the piano which was invented in the early i'm going to leave that answer for you to do it well you know what i don't know where i think you know i need to look at i would i would i would totally love to look that up but it's my idea generally what i think the barbershop are to i generally think of early twentieth century but i'm sure it's a much older for like that's a really interesting thing because it's a really important part of american popular music and  thing that how we know it but local only secular song has been popular since the sixteen fifteenth century or the sixteenth century and a lot of the instrumental music of that time i know we're you and i talked earlier about some of the common of musicians who were working in that time period and some of the composers and one that's you mentioned one that's kind of close to my heart mr stephen foster who sort of becomes victorians are sort of the first people to really use printed sheet music and to actually bring bring them home and play them on the piano and share them with their friends and i mean certainly produce she was a good system before that but it was the first time where it was really actually able to be distributed as white as it was able to deduce which usually popular genre what was the first time that it became a commodity a consumer commodity and actually england throughout history has been at the forefront consumable music they were the first ones to have concerts where you would buy it take it you would see it in the concert and enjoy the show that wasn't done anywhere else it's dark in there this is the live action roleplaying game of the game rise of esther roleplaying game that takes place basically an alternate alternate history we have about thirty players in there that are basically  an underground catacombs that was a crime lords there and they are in search of any evidence that they had or of of his his treasure and they're essentially our treasure and they're about to find out that there are reasons why underground layers are very dangerous especially in iraq it's dark there are someone got it someone's got ice box open looks like it's empty quite sure what's going on turns out the ultimate goal is to not die and just survive i guess intact so we're going to take a look around and see what else is going on here man and will go in order to see what happens and just kept track on a piece of paper then where we had the whole characters pre made for us he took careful notes we got got our identification of who we are a little bit of background history and here's all those stunts and features the impedance and the qualities i was talking about as well basically stuff like save broad shoulders where i am able to move around while encumbered a little company and i do like to role play quite a bit so yeah definitely not for that so another of the games so is going on here and what the game is this what a tabletop miniatures game how is it played its turn based strategy so we have two different teams here the french and british and every turn you would start off by just rolling initiative and then move in th used to the gaming world see all just colors and said different  ok and the world and the goal is to dominate the other yeah it's currently all these guys are doing is just shooting each other out of the air  winning at the moment  that's what it is for most of the book setting they are the ones who actually discovered and initially shared a lot of this new technology which allows for mechanical mechanical squibs and giant robots and airships however i'm sure they began to isolate themselves because they saw a lot of the other seven nations help starting to pervert their technology for personal gain and power so i just decided that the island has basically new technology that should change the face of the entire here and how long does a good this will last well our standard straight up game is going to be about a thousand points that seems to be the standard and that will last about an hour and a half to two hours and what that you still got like a battleship  yeah we take breaks every so often we substitute people they like well this one gentleman over here he's worked with nick he just showed up there learnt again and he's of the right hand has developed steamships thousands of years before a full moon actually came up with his steamship and way before eight hundred fifty two we're talking about one hundred forty six a d they've developed some steamships out of  alien file and what they've done is they've created a steam powered ship that is going to send back all of the information from the alexandria library back to the people who've actually created it and then to some new destinations around the globe as well ok well we'll let you get back to your launch party and that i am banks have fun i appreciate it thanks for coming by as i said towards the beginning of this episode we saw her in that group photo and now we have her with us and we organizer of this event and you are i'm diana and this is your third year coverage there doing this event yes same country and how is it going so far it's going great i think people really enjoyed it  it yeah well my husband's pretty sure we have to top it so and so this year's theme has been twenty thousand leagues under the sea all right and we've seen quite a few a variety of outfits and what one stands out in your mind the most well during the t v we had a bathing costume competition and there were some very spectacular entries and there was one girl at a diving helmet and kind of adjusted sort of steampunk the flipper feet just just a really good off overall costume concept i really like but yeah there's been tons and tons of great things there's you know schools of jellyfish running around and people doing you know part undersea creature characters and pirates and different things like that so many people do expect there will be showing up at this event for this year it's really hard to estimate we had over fourteen hundred pre registered my husband tells me that there's usually a two to one ratio beyond that so somewhere between four thousand and five thousand maybe i don't know i haven't got a current count and i really should so you can ask registration and that that exceeds in last year's event yes  the pre registration is equal to what we had the first year and we seem to be almost doubling every year a lot of people are interested in steampunk and and for those that don't quite understand what steampunk is that give them a little little definitive sure the shortest quickest definition that you can have is victorian science fiction and the reason that's not entirely accurate but works for most people is that it's also science fiction or fantasy of a particular technological age so if you think of jules verne and h g wells having written steam punk was coined in the eighty's and then is very popular and being written today the most of it is really being written the ideas being written by modern authors about the past but it's the people of the past looking at their future so these modern writers have this wonderful you know free cognitive ability to say oh will there be computers so these people might have computers or whatever technology or bringing back into the past for the st f i tend to only talk about steampunk as a genre of literature because the subculture and me a static are hard things to define there they really are  difficult to pin down and a lot of people on agree on them most people can agree that that the genre of literature that steampunk has grown into is pretty much retro futurism it's  where the very first one was at the marriott in sea tac and then the second year what we did was we just took over the hilton as well so we had both hotels because we outgrew the first hotel before we even started the first one and it's a good problem to have but it's also kind of annoying you just you don't know what's going to happen so this hotel we have a little bit of room for growth we'll be able to stay here for a couple of years and we are contracted for the next two so at least through two twenty fourteen you'll be here that's the plan so far ok and do we know who for the two thousand and twelve steam con for we most certainly do  to hotel availability it's going to be the weekend so we can write for hollowing so essentially that we can really celebrate following since that was happening i said well we'll just have to have all in party so it's going to be victorian monsters and if you think about it a lot of the monsters came from that era even though dracula isn't specifically of that era a lot of the most famous stories about him are written at that time frankenstein the wolf man  hyde the invisible man a lot of those stories came from that period of jack the ripper so you've got kind of iconic monsters of the time and it just made a lot of sense to me that she just tweak all those stories and make them more steampunk and use that as a theme to be very interesting to check that one thing and this is this is also been very interesting and i know we didn't see everything but we've gotten pretty good glimpse of some of what goes on at steampunk and of course i thank you for having me come on the show and should be able showcase this and look forward to the halloween one next year and should be a lot of fun and of course for more information the web site is right dub dub dub dot steam condo work and all kinds of information and links and everything else there that right away we need to take a little bit of a break after this but those viewers won't be so have to just wait and check out yeah the website tickets probably won't go on sale memberships or go on sale until probably january but about that time start watching for info in one of the big room vendors all around last year we talked with the gal wears of course all the time some vendors include roleplaying game and the fingers mo and of course this will have to end our coverage of the two thousand and eleven three point two thousand leagues under the sea and as you can see it's a wide range and we'll have to see what next year's will bring have all of your travels because it venture learn more about steampunk and the steam con for with this year's theme being victorian munster's occurring october twenty sixth through the twenty eighth at steam con dot org please visit my ar at seattle community media dot org slash node slash one two three seven four slash list shows while my website is being updated or shoot me an email and i'll send you a link