solarbird | pacific rim fandom is the best fandom (Reply)

…or at least is the most explosively out-of-nowhere-to-epic fandom I’ve ever seen.

Honestly. This must be what Star Wars must’ve been like. Jaegercon, organised out of nowhere, online, in about two weeks. Real-life gatherings in dozens of cities; Manila got together first, I think, at least on K-Day, thanks to calendar advantages; we had 23 or so Saturday night in Seattle; San Francisco led the pack with 40-something? Vancouver and Toronto had big groups too.

Hundreds if not thousands of people checked in on Tumblr; 500ish have signed the roll call post that went out a couple of hours ago, but you have to both see it and specifically sign it, which will leave out many. There were cosplay events (awards get announced Monday – Mako Mori and fem!Tendo were both particularly popular), videos, gift exchanges, essays (particularly focusing on Mako Mori, who, as a lead character woman of colour, people have been desperately thirsting for, particularly in this Summer Of No Women In Movies), fanart, analysis (my favourites being of the use of politeness levels in the Japanese dialogue), music (not just me)…

…and honestly, I can’t get over the reaction to Kaiju Meat, the song I did for the con. Nearly 600 people have played this thing, it has dozens of notes and reblogs, people have been donating money for this free download, and two people I don’t even know also brought it to the party, posting about it separately, themselves.

I don’t even know how that happened. To borrow a Texas phrase, I am whomperjawed by that.

(If you missed the link, it’s here. It’s a different sound for me, but I really think I hit my T-Rex-in-F-14s goal. Thanks again to tereshkova2001 and Kathryn Tewson for volunteer chorus vocals, and Flatbear for making badges for everybody to print. :D )

Then, while all this was happening, the Russians, Sasha and Aleksis, dropped by – or, rather, their actors. As did the Triplets, and three crowd actors who were there for a lot of the Shatterdome scenes in Hong Kong. Then the screenwriter, Travis Beacham, showed up. And the editor of the art book, Elaine Morethansky, and the movie’s producer, then finally the director, Guillermo del Toro. All in interviews, answering questions from the Jaegercon crowd.

There’s already a Fanlore page about it. It has links to the interviews, and to some of the alt-universe threads which have started up.

But, yeah – this has been an amazing out-of-nowhere experience. Tumblr, Pacific Rim fandom; I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing, but please, please keep doing it; you are doing it right.

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