Look, about this whole 'steampunk' thing...

I'm a little bit vague on what exactly steampunk is.  I know the textbook definition, which doesn't really help, but I've barely seen any textbook examples.  Is it a genre? A sub-genre? An aesthetic? A movement? A community?  Is there a demographic of 'steampunks' the way there's a demographic of gamers, and if so, what exactly is it that they do?

Despite multiple conflicting definitions, it wasn't too hard to peg my game as low fantasy.  What it all boils down to is that the 'height' of a fantasy setting is the number of things that can not exist in our world.

Steampunk is harder to nail down, even disregarding art and music labelled as steampunk.  It's got elements of alternate history wrapped up with a sort of sepia-toned, lo-fi analog sci-fi.  Relating to sci-fi, I suppose one could classify steampunk on a scale of 'hardness,' where 'hard' steampunk is scientifically realistic possible alternate paths of technological evolution and 'soft' steampunk is essentially cogs=magic.

Roleplaying games are classified into genres as tidily as movies - most fall into the standard sci-fi/horror/fantasy realms with a vey few Westerns, and all games have elements of action, adventure, and drama, though some games emphasize those universal elements more heavily than others.

What I'm really looking for is a gooder genre tag for my game.  As with most elements of the game, it's defined more by what it isn't than what it is.  Victorian, Western, and Colonial, and even fantasy versions of the same, all have very specific real-world connotations that do not coincide with my unique low-fantasy world.  It's too different from Earth to call it alternate history, steampunk (I think) puts more emphasis on alternate technology than I do, pulp is too 20th Century, just calling it adventure speculative fiction is too generic and vague.

Either there is a specific genre that perfectly fits my game, but it is too obscure for me to find or think of, and would therefore be of little use to gamers and marketing (unless it turns out there is a small but very dedicated fanbase out there) or what I am doing defies existing conventional genre classification, in which case, yay me, but I may be forced to leave it with the clunky and technical sounding "ethnological steampunkish low-fantasy."  Which I guess can't be any worse than "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing dramatic sensation" before anyone figured out we could just call them 'musicals.'