I’m not normally one to go spreading around the steampunk Christmas cheer (I don’t have a problem with it per se, but it’s not a holiday I celebrate and I’m old enough now to complain about the fact that the build-up starts in August), but today I’m going to be making an exception. That is because my very good friends The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing have just released the Christmassy-themed A Very Steampunk Christmas EP that is well worth the mention whether you love this time of year or not.

Some of you may have heard their ‘Ebenezer’s Carol‘ around this time last year, and they have re-recorded it for the new EP, along with a long-awaited release for their song ‘Fox’. There are also two new songs where The Men offer their own unique take on a couple of traditional Christmas songs: ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Comfort And Oi!)’, and ‘Silent Night (Stille Nacht)’.

If you’re looking for something festive, gentle and soothing then you probably have the wrong band, but if you’re looking for a funny, intelligent and boisterous steampunk Christmas album, then this is the EP for you.

‘A Very Steampunk Christmas’ is available for download, and also on very special 7″ vinyl.

Beyond Victoriana has a guest post on stereotypes in costuming and incorporating native technology.

And Multiculturalism for Steampunk has about a dozen posts on the topic. Here are my favorites:

Native American Steampunk: An Approach, a good overview on the subject.

Reflection from the Crow-Lady, Miss Kageshi’s response to criticisms of the above-mentioned post.

(There’s a bunch of costuming stuff on the same site, in addition to some recipes.)

And finally, I missed most of Tor.com’s Steampunk Fortnight a while ago, but there were a few posts dealing with imperialism, colonialism, and non-Euro-centric steampunk, including this one which has an overview non-European steampunk possibilities, including Native American characters.

Here’s my favorite bit, at the risk of spoiling the ending:

“You want to hate on steampunk? Steampunk’s not the problem. Imperialism is the problem. White supremacy is the problem. Consumerism is the problem. Implicit, microaggressive racism is the problem. Steampunk’s just the aesthetic being run over by the usual bullshit, because, guess what? Of course it’s going to be! HELLO CAPITALISM, HOW R U. US OF A SENDS ITS LOVE AS USUAL.”

Once registered, you will be able to manage your profile, comment on articles, talk to other users, and even submit articles and blog posts to us for publication here on the website.

To register, please go here, or use the ‘Login’ section at the top of this page.

We are very much looking forwards to hearing from you all, and hope to bring you more guest posts and articles from our readers, writers, artists and contributors in the coming weeks.

After much deliberation, we have decided to close the SteamPunk Magazine forum down for the foreseeable future.

Between the spambots and the technical difficulties, it has gotten increasingly difficult to maintain the Gaslamp Bazaar over the last year or so. We tried to make forums somewhere different and interesting place to hang out, but the fact of the matter is that we just don’t have the time to make them something really special any more. As such, the time has come for us to move on, and focus on other things.

Many thanks to all the people who have frequented the Bazaar over the years and made it generally an awesome place to hang out. Thanks also to T-Kew, who has spent a lot of his time moderating and generally looking after it.

For now, we hope to be seeing more comments and discussion on the articles here in our blog. In the future, we may even be looking into a registration system that will allow people to sign up for accounts, and even submit articles directly to our website.

Rikki at the Bookkeeper is sponsoring the Steampunk Challenge, a year from October 2010 to October 2011 of reading steampunk fiction! The website has some suggested book lists and reviews. I would add to that recommendation any of the fine stories published in Steampunk Magazine! If you participate, you get a shiny button to put on your website.

I’ll keep a special eye out for short story links, and possible book reviews for the occasion. If you read a particularly awesome book in the coming year (or any time, really!) and want to review it yourself, shoot me an e-mail or comment here and maybe we can even get some guest posts going!

If you’re less the artsy type and more the enjoying-comics type, Libby Bulloff tweeted about a steampunk-multicultural-feminist comic that is looking for support over at Kickstarter. It’s called Virtuoso, and it looks really cool, so I hope very much that it actually happens.

This has been your webcomics-plug of the day. We shall return to your regularly scheduled blogging soon. Happy Fall Equinox!

Quick disclaimer: None of these projects are being done by Steampunk Magazine, I’m just passing the word along in case any readers are interested.