Welcome Captain Hawthorne! I'm not sure what to make of the peerage titles, however. Perhaps that is just a combination of silliness and psychological need to compensate for one's shortcomings? 
And not everyone has a persona, but to be honest I just have more fun with one 
It allows me to be as silly as I want to be.
It is interesting to see that you are a writer. The other day out of curiosity I was perusing your pages at Wattpad. I come from the maker side of things, and after 4 years of living from my own steampunk business I am back now doing the more conventional costume planning and I am developing (what to me looks like) a giant saga around the fictitious Admiral Wilhelm... in a story very heavily based on real history (because I'm an incurable amateur historian).
http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,47892.msg968580.html#msg968580
But I'm approaching this by developing the background first, and immersing myself in history (I'm currently "swimming" in Austrian and Prussian history to formulate a global conflict) so it'll be sometime before the story emerges in the "Textual" segment of this forum.
I'm curious to see what you'll discuss in the forum... And again, welcome.
I remain at your service,
Adm. J. Wilhelm
USAS Orca
Oops, sorry if I wasn't clear! I'm Annemarie; the other user is Hawthorne 
For me, at least, the title comes from a) really, really wanting to be an airship captain, and b) silliness (because I love the long names all steampunks seem to make for themselves). And yes, I really enjoy my little alter ego! It's especially fun that I have friends who are into it with me; we'll sometimes slip into character and have a miniature, unplanned rp session. We're eventually planning on all dressing up as our characters and taking photos together, which I'm really looking forward to! As silly/nerdy as it may be, I have a lot of fun with this. And one of the best things about steampunk (in my opinion, at least), is that it provides an outlet to do that.
Oh no! Ahh, I didn't think anyone would actually see the link! I only posted it because I didn't feel right not acknowledging my internet forum origins. I'm sorry the writing quality isn't that great and everything's unedited! We're really writing this entire thing without an end in mind and without a plan, so it's more than a bit scrambled right now. Hopefully we'll get on our feet soon...
It seems that an interest in steampunk and a love for history often go hand in hand! I'm sure your enthusiasm for bringing in factual events to your fiction make your story more interesting and more realistic. I also think it's a great idea to explore the world and background before you get too heavily into the plot-- we didn't do that in ours and ended up starting over after about a year.
Since I'm such a newbie, I don't know, but do people post their writings in the Textual section? In my poking around there I've only seen threads for people wanting to discuss writing. I'd be very interested in reading some things on there. I've been searching for good steampunk stories for a long time!
Ah! My lord! One thousand apologies Fräulein von Preussen! The fault is mine, though I reserve the right to lay fault on the two pints of Bock ale which I just imbibed.
Don't worry, I won't judge your writings. Though I may fancy myself to be a writer, the truth is that fiction writing is a completely new endeavour of mine (I have much better experience at technical writing), though I realise that if I don't write the fictional story, someone will! Thus the story writes itself by mere action of it's accumulated background.
History, of course is the easy way to write a novel, for it provides all the background and details you need (though some may think of it as cheating). In that sense my story is true anachronism (writing alternate timelines as opposed to writing entire fictional places or times). The story of course writes itself if you look at real history and simply ask the question: what could go wrong here?
Once the background history reaches critical mass, it MUST be put down on paper! You will find that the story writes itself if you simply develop all the background "what if's" first. Like the musings of a Machiavellic mind, it is the chaos and entropy of the whole situation where you will find your story!
Indeed, Textual is the place to post your written musings, be it background discussion, or whatever. I am at the point where I will have to do that, as I started with my story many years ago just to develop a character. But as the years turned my interests changed, and the story became spread across several sections of the forum. At some point I have to consolidate the story, and formally present the characters. The characters, of course are like alter egos, each representing a different facet of my own person.
Since I can't afford a true reproduction of an Admiral's (or Captain's) US officer's uniform, I have tackled my second character's uniform instead... that of an Austrian elf-like airship engineer, Julin Bahlmann. That second uniform is nearly complete, so it will most likely appear first in the Anatomical section (where most things sartorial are placed). Perhaps All Hallow's Eve will provide an opportunity to unleash that alter ego.
I remain AYS
Adm. J. Wilhelm
