Thread by @rynkrynk

Yesterday Facebook reminded me that, precisely one year ago, my almost-one-year-old and I were having fun at the Comic Con Ukraine — an amazing geeky event which, sadly, has been postponed this year due to Russia’s invasion. Now, my husband and I are unabashedly nerdy people: he

works as head of content for a large local streaming company and co-hosts multiple podcasts about The Lord of The Rings, and I translate nerdy cookbooks for a living. We’re also editors of Ukraine’s largest online outlet about pop-culture. So we’ve been following the development

of Ukrainian fandoms for quite a while now. And here’s the thing you have to understand: just a few years ago being a movie or comic book geek in Ukraine was tough. Comic books didn’t get translated into Ukrainian, so most fans had to settle for titles imported from Russia (and,

obviously, translated into Russian), local series were an amazing rarity, and Ukrainian fandoms were mostly seen as part of Russian geek communities. But over the past decade or so, we saw a gradual, but hugely important transformation: new Ukrainian indie publishers started

popping up and translating new comic books and manga into Ukrainian, as well as publishing fun new series authored and drawn by Ukrainian artists. Comic book stores started opening up, at least in large cities such as Kyiv. Our fan communities were quickly developing and growing

pretty large. Events such as Comic Con Ukraine started actually inviting hugely popular western guests and attracting pretty big sponsors. Western streaming services started adding Ukrainian subtitles and audiotracks. Yes, the market was still much smaller than the Russian one,

but change was happening — and happening fast. I’m pretty sure that, had Russia not ruined everything by invading our homeland, we’d have a thriving market in just a few years, and events such as Comic Con Ukraine would have become some of the best and most popular ones in

Eastern Europe. And I know we’ll still get there one day, but it’s just so damn annoying that Russia is hindering whatever progress Ukrainian society is achieving.