Below is the comprehensive list of all steampunk elements that can be found throughout the genre. These include aesthetic, thematic, and other elements definitive of or common within the steampunk subgenre.
Settings[]
The settings in this section explain the influences behind steampunk settings, rather than rigid settings of steampunk stories.
Wild West[]
(1607-1912): The culture and aesthetic of the American frontier is commonly used in steampunk stories, including small, mostly decentralized desert towns; bandits and bounties; lawkeepers and gunslingers; saloons and brothels; bank robberies and gunfights.
Industrial Revolution[]
(1820-1840): Industry is a very common theme found in steampunk stories and worlds, with lots of factories, smoke, iron, burning coal, and grease. The expansion of business, labor, and entrepreneurialism are common steampunk elements stemming from this era. The aesthetic of sturdy, iron factory architecture is often added to steampunk buildings.
Victorian Era[]
(1837-1901): Steampunk stories most commonly take place in worlds inspired heavily by Victorian England. This can mean that they literally take place in England during the period; that they take place in a world that continued on after this era without leaving behind its aesthetic, ideals, and/or technological style; takes place in an entirely separate world with some of these traits in tact; or anything in between. Horse-drawn carriages, decorative clothing and architecture, and the early development of "modern" big cities are common elements in steampunk that come from this era.
Edwardian Era[]
(1901-1919): The Edwardian elements tend to be very similar to the Victorian, but push the elegance and intricacy of the designs and patterns. The Edwardian elements lean more into the ornate qualities of the high-society lifestyle.
The combustion engine[]
(1920-1930s): Dieselpunk, an offshoot of steampunk that includes internal combustion engines, typically takes up the aesthetic and culture of the post-Edwardian, pre-electricity time period. Steampunk purists may exclude dieselpunk from the strict definition of "steampunk," but dieselpunk exists in the same realm and targets the same fancy.
Dystopia[]
Dystopian settings are not uncommon among steampunk media, including extreme struggles of the proletariat class, fascism, and apocalyptic or impending apocalyptic scenarios.
Characters[]
Below are descriptions of common traits appearing in characters across steampunk media. These traits don't necessarily apply exclusively to steampunk characters but, in combination with distinct steampunk traits, can make a story feel more at home in the genre.
Fashion[]
Fashion alone has the power to define imagery as steampunk, utilizing the Victorian-plus style that is so recognizable. Steampunk fashion is characterized by top hats, vests, poofy dresses, corsets, leather gloves and boots, goggles, and much of this accentuated with brass decoration and/or gadgetry. Sometimes this manner of dress maintains deeper cultural implications of the Victorian Era, such as being more reserved and showing less skin, while other times they style is augmented to reflect other values.
Class[]
Steampunk worlds commonly feature a dramatic split between high society and the proletariat or simply focus on one or the other, with bright, clean characters in decorative dress and/or dark, dirty characters in dank streets. Governors, entrepeneurs, inventors, and heiresses; factory workers, miners, pickpockets, and the impoverished.
Adventure[]
In line with the era from which steampunk is influenced, characters are often in professions of adventure, such as explorers, researchers, pilots, and inventors. On the other side, criminals such as confidence artists, pickpockets, murderers, burglars, and rebels also show up frequently in steampunk stories. Bounties and bounty hunters can be quite common.
Quixotic characters[]
Characters with an overabundance of hope or other strong, defining characteristics are common in steampunk media. Inventors who don't know when to quit, explorers who never give up, and heroes who face impossible odds without hesitation.
Technology[]
Steampunk media is defined primarily by its technology, which consists of technology from a society that advanced with steam power and clockworks instead of oil and electricity.
Steam power[]
Steam-powered machines are the most definitive of the genre, being that for which steampunk is named. Steam engines, themselves, aren't inherently steampunk as they're a real-world invention used to make real-world tools and vehicles, however, real-world steam technology can be common in steampunk worlds. More notable in the genre is the sci-fi extension beyond the real technology; using steam power for bigger and better things. Boilers and piping, smoke and steam, valves and pistons.
Airship[]
One of the most recognizable elements of steampunk imagery is that of the airship. Airships can vary widely, but most feature a large, lighter-than-air compartment that keeps the ship afloat.
Clockworks[]
Clockworks, predating steam technology but never losing their usefulness, also fit right at home alongside steam technology. Cogs and sprockets, chains and springs, hinges and latches. Like steam power, clockworks in steampunk media is often expanded beyond real-world applications.
Clever gadgetry[]
Clever gadgetry comes in many forms, from hidden weapons to everyday tools reimagined with new mechanisms that make them easier to use, more versatile, or more potent.
Ornate weaponry[]
Steampunk weapons are often particularly ornate and unique, with intricate designs and customizations, often also incorporating clever gadgetry that allows them to transform for different purposes, like Vash's hidden weapons in Trigun or several characters' melee-based guns in RWBY.
Automatons[]
Another word for "robot," an automaton is an autonomous machine, typically without modern robotics such as wires and electricity (hence the preference for the older term, "automaton"), functioning instead through clockworks or other steampunk-applicable methods.
Anachronistic technology[]
Steampunk media commonly features anacrhonistic technology of other types in addition to those listed above, such as an avancement in one area in one point in time that would have come about at a different point in time and likely in a different way in the real world, or an advancement that doesn't necessarily apply to the real world, but does apply to the setting in the story. An example of this is the clacks system in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, which is a series of manned towers used to send messages across distances. The system is faster than the post, but invented earlier than phones and email, resulting in a distinct anachronism that redefines the era. This serves the same purpose as real-world technology but does so instead of them. On the other hand, the tallboys in Dishonored protect guards from rats, which carry the plague. This is technology that never came about in the real world, but suits the world of Dishonored.
Alternative power sources[]
It's not uncommon for the steampunk aesthetic to be applied to technology that runs on an alternative to steam pressure, such as magic or world-specific sources that enhance or replace the steam or steam-like tech of the world.
Diesel power[]
Internal combustion engines are typically used in dieselpunk rather than the average steampunk story, but anachronistic use of combustion engines are common in dieselpunk in the same way that steam engines are used in steampunk.