Geeking Out with Our Steampunk Favorites: The Finale
***This is the third and final installment in a miniseries interviewing Madame Askew and The Grand Arbiter. Apologies; this piece runs a tad longer than our usual pieces, but I believed it was important for these queer nerds to let their flags fly.
For this interview’s finale, I’m pleased to present to you the minds’ eyes of the whimsically wonderful Madame Askew (MA) and The Grand Arbiter (TGA):
Me: What do you think audiences love most from your performances?
TGA: It’s that we are insane on stage together. Absolutely bananas. Every time. The big draw is we are a two-person team, and because we have two distinct personalities attributed to us, they can follow the throughline, and…we build gags, and the gags are known by the audience so there’s this participatory option. And the reoccurring vibe that happens between us…it’s a little bit antagonist, there’s a little bit of conflict, there’s a regular thing. There was a gag for a while where Madame Askew would do something silly and obnoxious and I would start to pontificate and write in my diary aloud and…I would be talking about how I need to go to the widow’s walk to look upon the ocean and despair—
MA: It’s so great! It’s a great gag, honestly it’s so funny!
TGA: It’s really the gags that’s the biggest draw. Cuz we all know your favorite gag… [looks to Askew]
MA: The castle vs. rook! So the cookies we use for Tea Duelling are Chessman biscuits and there’s a lot of nonsense as to why it needs to be these biscuits… On the biscuit of course is a rook and like a lot of informal players of chess, I've referred to the rook as the castle (and there’s the horsey and the hat). So at some point during Duelling we would get into this thing where I'd say, “Oh it’s a castle” and The Grand Arbiter goes, “No it’s a rook” and I say, “Castle” and he’s like ARRGGH. We have a team of people who come with us to our bigger events; our wonderful butler… would do this big dance and fire up the audience, and Glenn looks really put upon, and everyone laughs. …I think that’s one of the things people really get from our stuff is the joy and the laughter.
Steampunk can be treated in a really serious fashion, as any genre can be. There is very serious steampunk fiction—I really recommend reading Everfair by Nisi Shawl if you want some very beautiful serious steampunk fiction—but also there’s a certain element to steampunk that is absurd. It’s ridiculous! And we’re leaning into that. And sometimes people need to be reminded as adults, especially in this hard, hard world, that you can laugh! You can just come and as the English say, take the piss out of something. And if you want to talk about colonialism (and we do), and if you want to talk about the problematic aspects of history in the 19th century… you can get really into the weeds and it’s depressing. Or you can just laugh at them for being awful people doing awful things because they couldn’t see a way to be better. So we’re gonna hold up a mirror to the past and make comedy and laughter out of it.
TGA: We’re drawing a mustache on it.
Me: Describe your dynamic together in one or two words:
MA: Sweet ‘n Sour
TGA: Resonant. We’re not the same but we resonate with each other.
Me: Which steampunk books would you recommend for beginners?
TGA: From our dear friend, Gail Carriger’s Soulless is one of the easiest steps into the steampunk genre. …Humor first, multiple series, lots of queer people and POCs in the world, diverse adventures. Criticisms toward power which we love.
MA: Cherie Priest for Seattle people; Boneshaker is a fundamental read. Her prose is so incredible, some social commentary and critique of the past, and zombies! P. Djèlí Clark is a rising star, prose is great, great storyteller. [Madame Askew then mentioned she had an entire list, and sent me the link you’re free to refer to here.]
Me: Have you met The Doctor, and who’s your favorite Doctor?
TGA: We are big Doctor Who fans. ...If it were a year ago, I'd say Tennant. You never forget your first.
MA: My first Doctor was Tom Baker, so he’ll always have a special place in my heart for sure.
TGA: But we are OBSESSED with Ncuti Gatwa!
Ncuti Gatwa as the latest Doctor in Doctor Who / Reactor
TGA: Gatwa is… SO good! His acting chops are amazing, the writing for him is strong, and I liked all the other actors who’ve played the Doctor, I think they’ve all done a great job. Ncuti Gatwa is elevating Doctor Who to a new level of sincerity and it takes itself seriously AND with humor.
MA: And he’s SO GAY!! Those costumes… Listen I have loved the Doctor since I was kneehigh to a grasshopper—very wee—so I say this with respect: He almost felt too good. He’s so talented. I was like, ‘How dare you be so good!’ It’s not even right, he’s so amazing.
TGA: He’s almost even too hot. I’m so distracted by how hot he is. It’s not just physically attractive, because he is beautiful, but he’s charming in a way no other Doctor has ever been.
MA: He outcharmed David Tennant and David Tennant has been my favorite Doctor since he hit the scene. Oh no, now i have a Top 3, oh no!!
[After much gushing about Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, we continued…]
Me: What do you enjoy most about steampunk fashion?
MA: I make all of our costumes…[banter about their collaborative process and ideation] …I like the excess, I like the flamboyance, and I'm also very keen on the silhouette. I’m a fat lady in a world that says fat ladies can’t be…all sorts of things. And when I put on my bustle dress and I know people are slightly aghast and a little bit pearl-clutchy, I feel very successful. Like [hair flip] yes, I am very out here actually making myself bigger. Bustle dresses (which is the main thing I do for myself)...do not make you smaller, they are adding more to your body, making you take up even more space. So I kind of love that experience of being more excessive, of taking more space, and being really flamboyant and over the top. And for Glenn, he’s such a good sport, he lets me dress him up in almost whatever I want, but we do a more historical fantasy thing with him.
TGA: I think the big thing I like about steampunk fashion is that it is fairly accessible in lots of different ways. Because you can make whatever you want to a certain extent. The big thing I like is that there is a rule set that has been determined by the mainstream about ‘what steampunk is’ and we get to obliterate that every single time. We hate brown. We refuse to wear it at this point. We wear bright colors. …Our current goal is to make costumes that are of every color imaginable. And we’re close!
MA: We’re getting there. We’re gonna have our whole rainbow ensemble.
TGA: And I like that…as a queer man, I find a lot of challenges in my own internal misogyny and internal homophobia that can sometimes rear its head…cuz I’m a fairly femme person, but I want to be seen as attractive and desirable and part of that masculinity is not attainable to me in a standard path. Steampunk really allows me to accept the more feminine presentation cuz it’s so ostentatious and it’s really difficult for people to engage with it in a disrespectful manner that isn’t just ridiculous sounding in my mind. Like I'm dressed in a giant purple corset vest with a cape. Sure that’s goofy, but you making fun of it is way goofier. So for me, the more we make it more ridiculous, the easier it is for that outfit to become emotional armor against homophobia and gender bullshit.
Madame Askew in one of her creations / Pete Mecozzi via Madame Askew
Me: What’s your favorite tea and snack pairing?
TGA: Assam with coronation chicken sandwich,
MA: Darjeeling with a cucumber sandwich or cream tea with a real scone.
Me: Tell us about Compliment Duelling. What is it, and how do you play?
MA: [After a backstory iterating its origins…] Essentially it’s an opportunity where we are sort of lobbing compliments back and forth between the opponents. Everybody kind of wins in this game to be honest cuz it’s just a lot of good vibes. But we bounce these compliments back and forth and what people discover is that we insist that they take the compliment. And that’s the hardest part of the game—you have to accept the compliment. The way you ‘lose’ at Compliment Duelling is when you are flummoxed and you can’t say anything cuz you are so overwhelmed by the compliment. And then you cede the duel.
I just think it’s lovely to watch people have these moments where they’re…a little overwhelmed, but also uplifted and everybody in the audience gets…teared up and verklempt and…a lot of warmhearted feelings. Then everybody walks out of the room like, ‘Oh I just feel so much better about the world and life’.
TGA: We are constantly looking for ways to make our games more accessible. We want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to do something. We’re constantly looking for ways to incorporate more acceptance. …I came up with this idea of a Compliment Relay. …The entire crowd has to pass a compliment to the next, not repeating a compliment—
MA: All the way through the room. It’s beautiful.
TGA: For some people it was deeply touching moments, like fathers telling daughters that they’re so happy they invited them to this space and that they feel like they’d never been able to play like this before and been able to engage with this before. Children telling their parents the same thing, partners telling each other how much they mean to each other, strangers telling each other how they helped them in the hallways… It’s just always been a beautiful experience and …I know it’s the hardest sell of our whole docket to get people to participate in, but I think we have to keep advocating for it because it’s such a valuable experience for a convention space where isolation can become king, particularly post-pandemic. People have become way more clique-ish and more isolationist. And so trying to get people to be open to connecting again has been really valuable.
MA: We do really love this game and I feel very passionate about it, since I was a founder of the game. But I think Glenn’s really hitting on part of why we love it so much: It’s this reminder for people to connect. And to connect in ways that are not about sexualizing people…but just as humans, to respect a fellow human, to see the beauty in each human being and to find a way to interact that’s kind. Being kind of mean and snarky and critical of people is very easy... It gets you more clicks, more engagement, people will laugh at that, it’s the low-hanging fruit. …To say. “No, we’re going to encourage you to look a little deeper, to reach a little higher,” and to do this thing that doesn’t get as much accolade. “Please be kind and find that kindness.” I think it’s the most radical thing we do.
Me: Speaking of radical kindness, tell us about Tea Scouts.
MA: Glenn and I would go to cons and we wouldn’t get to do a bunch of things. In fact we’d been going to this one convention for years and we didn’t even know there was this whole part of the venue! There was a train ride and a merry-go-round…and our friends were like, “What do you mean you’ve never seen the train?” And we were like, “Well we’re over here working.”
TGA: We go to two places and we’re there for eight hours!
MA: So we started to realize that it wasn’t just us! That it was a lot of people at conventions who were not aware of all the cool stuff happening…they weren’t meeting new people, they weren’t connecting, they were sort of floating along in maybe ones and twos, not connecting to the community and feeling like ‘How do I do this new convention thing? I don’t know anybody, I don't know anything’. And we wanted to create a sort of ambassador program that would help bring new people in, but also give people who met a way to connect outside of cons and also do charity work.
So the Tea Scouts are doing a lot of lifting and it’s totally free! …There are no dues, you do not have to pay any money to participate. It’s just a thing we bring to cons. It’s not even usually in our contracts that we’ll bring it. It’s just something that’s extra where we do these …what we call Quest Chains…and the Quest Chains are little activities that you’re probably already doing, or they may be things you don’t think about doing, but now we’ve given you a prompt to…do this thing that will hopefully get you to meet some new people or to just get out of your comfort zone in a way that’s not dangerous, but kind of fun and whimsical and low stakes. And so we do anywhere from one to six Quest Chains at different cons and people get little pins as their badges…and they can go up in ranks. At some of our bigger conventions we’ll host a raffle or something to get money for charity.
TGA: It’s mostly not us directing it anymore. It’s actually kind of magical. We make the Quest Chains, but a lot of the philanthropy actually comes from the agents themselves. We don’t need to tell them to do things, they just do good works on their own. And sometimes it’s just cleaning up a park, sometimes it’s hosting get-togethers to try to connect with their community. It’s a lovely experience. I really like it because it’s become…a perpetual motion machine in some places... We’re offering it, we’re telling people they can do it…and become like little troupes and connect in that way. …We’re facilitating it, but it’s them running this show for the most part.
MA: We have troupes all over North America, England, Japan, all over the place. Wherever people have heard about us and asked, “Can I have a troupe?” The answer is always: “Yes, do you want to run one? You can run one.” We don’t have a strict charter or anything like that. As Glenn likes to say, it’s a pretty flat organization, so there were eight of us that came together originally who came up with the idea and created the concept together. Then we created a Facebook group for the troupes, and a different one for the troupe leaders, so everybody has some support to ask questions and to get feedback and to share what they’re doing, so hopefully other troupe leaders will feel inspired to do that thing in their area. And there’s no onus to be more or less active. It’s all about what works for that local group.
In a thing like steampunk where…there isn’t a central organizing body, these decentralized systems can sometimes be very overwhelming for people; they want a little support network to help them learn how to put together a community or put together events. Tea Scouts and being part of that means not only do you come to cons and meet all of us and participate in this wackiness, but outside of the con you can come to a group of people and be like, ‘I want to host steampunk events but I don’t know how or where to start’ and somebody will give you a little bit of suggestion or support, or people will be like, ‘Oh my gosh I live in your town! I wanna come and do this with you too.’ So it’s nice to have that network of people invested in kindness and connection because it is a bit self-perpetuating in that way.
Me: That’s amazing!
MA: Thank you; it’s such an incredible thing that took on a life of its own. It’s another thing where the pandemic really shifted the dynamic of it. And we’re coming back to events after the pandemic and trying to navigate how things work now…But the Tea Scouts continue and continue to show up to stuff and I really love that.
The Grand Arbiter and Madame Askew in their most rainbow-iest of outfits / Courtesy of Madame Askew
The final question, as I like to do with all of my interviews, was to let the creators shamelessly plug whatever they’d like. They mentioned the following:
There’s a patreon that keeps their blog running, the tea pouring, and the sewing machine working. But mostly for Jocelynne’s show called Sip the Tea wherein she conducts interviews of her own. It also supports their new satirical paper, Oolong Observer.
They’re hirable! Team building with Compliment Duelling or Tea Duelling, emceeing or hosting events when you want a little whimsy and humor, or virtual educational events are just portions of their huge professional repertoire.
Every Friday at 6:30pm PST is their live stream on Twitch and YouTube, where they chat about anything and everything. One recent episode was about rating Kaiju, for instance.
In March 2025 they’ll be hosting the drag and burlesque show at Wild Wild West Convention for their third year.
They have oodles of digital content, so feel free to ask!
