Geek Culture Fandom
The subgenre of the world of “Geekdom” is actually many genres with in itself. Usually they are separate into themselves, but there are many groups and there are clubs at Edmonds Community College that caters to individual parts. There are groups that do incorporate all or sum of this genre.
What I mean by genre is a group of subjects that have the same interest. For a person who is a fan of My Little Pony, these groups are called Bronies (for the guys) or Pegasisters (for the girls). Bronies and Pegasisters have a large group of fans that watch the classic cartoons and the new anime “Friendship is Magic”, they collect individual ponies that they tend to like, each pony has its own characteristics and names such as “Rainbow Dash) who is a blue Pegasus with rainbow coloured hair. There are special edition ones, and hard to find ones and even one called Doctor Whooves, which the Doctor Who version.
Most of the geekdom genres hold different types of conventions for their favorite part of the culture, There is Steam Con, where people dress up in Victorian style and have gears and steam tech ( kind of what you would find in a Jules Verne or HG Wells book). Geek Girl Con which was started by Kristin Reilly, and one of their first host was Kari Byron (Mythbusters). Geek Girl Con is by women, who love the geek genre, but the convention isn’t just for women fans, there are a lot of men who attend the con. There are more women cosplayers at these conventions then most people would think.
Cosplayers is a term most people outside of geekdom would not know, it stands for costume players and what these are people who design, dress and display costumes from movies, TV shows, anime, video games, books and comic books. Even cross cosplayer costumes are a norm in the geek world. Women dressing like Han Solo or Captain Kirk, and men doing the same as male versions of female characters.
Norwescon is another convention, where the mixing of the cultures happen. Norwescon is the Pacific Northwest Convention; it is one of the largest mixed conventions on the west coast. Norwescon is a Sci-Fi, Fantasy convention that incorporates horror, anime (not as much, since Sekura Con moved to the Seattle Convention Centre), Vampire, Zombie, role playing and toy collecting.
Role-playing which consist of paper, pen, and many types of dice (there are a four sided, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty and even a one hundred side die.) and books that contain rules for running a game and creating a character to play. Role-playing games are a billion dollar industry and is played by many different types of people from different lifestyles. It is like acting on a stage, where the stage is a table.
Role-playing isn’t just pen and paper, it also consist of painted miniatures that represent some kind of race from Humans, Elves, Dwarfs and such. Warhammer is where you can build large armies on a table, started by a British company called Games Workshop. They have been around since the late seventies, and GW has two main systems a Sci-Fi line called Warhammer 40,0000 ( the human race in the 41st millennium), and Warhammer Fantasy ( which is kind of like our world but with differences). Both games are based on large armies and using strategy.
You can chose one of the many armies you want to play in the Warhammer world, such as the Bretonnians – a Chivalric Knight army, The Empire – based around Germans from the Medieval Era with guns and steam vehicles. There are also three different types of Elves – High, Wood and Dark. The other races in the Warhammer Fantasy world consist of Lizardmen, Dwarves, Skaven (Humanoid Rats), Ogres, Vampire, the Undead, Chaos (corrupted humans) and the Orks. This is a very fun game to play, and it does take quite a few miniatures. GW stores do show people how to play that have never played the game before.
Magic the Gathering is a collectable card game that was first released in 1992 and hasn’t stopped growing in cards and players since. Two people of a special deck of cards that have powers, characters, land and other type of items you will need to defeat the other player.
Another aspect of geekdom is the toy or collectable items collecting, this can entail collecting the different types of lightsabers from the different Star Wars movies and books, or the many different styles of Sonic Screwdriver from the various Doctor Who episodes. One of the fun things is collecting action figures that can range from classic ones such as M.A.S.K., He-man and She-ra, Transformers, Gobots, and many different ones from movies and TV shows like the Walking Dead, and G.I.JOE.
2014 will mark G.I.Joe’s 50th anniversary, the brand started in 1964 as a 12” action Figure with different types of uniforms, and accessories, this series lasted until 1978. Returning in 1982, this time Hasbro made them 3.75”, following the successful Star Wars line that came out around the time. This line has been the most popular of all the action figure lines, as they are still being produced each year with special convention ones, Collector’s Club issued ones. The original line had only twelve figures, which now range depending on the condition of figure or package (MOC – mint on card) from $200.00 - $4000.00, depending on the different character. The USS Flagg (which was the G.I.JOES aircraft carrier, it was released in 1984, and measures at 7.1’ in length it is the largest singe toy for a collection. If found Sealed in box, it can go for sale as high as $3000.00.). G.I.JOE has almost a thousand figures in its 31 series , and there are many different vehicles and playsets. There is a yearly G.I.JOE convention in the United States , and Canada, and small ones in other countries.
There is many ways one can show off their geekdom to the world, how do you show yours?
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