You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (25 page)

Once I recovered from hyperventilating in shame, we finished the panel and went to sign posters. Hundreds of fans shuffled through our line, jostling one another and the table, with security guards struggling to hold the crowd in check. When my hand started to cramp from signing and I developed a crazy tic over my right eye from smiling too hard, I wondered,
How did THIS become part of my life?

[
 Fan by Fan 
]

I attended my first fan convention during college. It was the South Texas Amphibian and Lizard Show, held in the run-down ballroom of an Austin Hilton. No, I wasn’t a toad collector at any point (although that wouldn’t surprise you, would it?). I was there on a first date. I’d planned the whole thing myself and thought it was a creative way for two people to get to know each other. Afterward, we went to a staging of
Antigone
performed in ancient Greek, and for dinner I found an Ethiopian restaurant where, per cultural tradition, we ate a feast only with our fingers.

Dude didn’t ask me out again.

But I remember walking into the lizard convention, enchanted by how many people in Austin
loved
lizards. And amphibians. And spiders. And a lot of other things I didn’t have any temptation to bring home with me. (When I was twelve, I had a pet boa constrictor, Stella, whom I loved until I realized it needed to eat LIVE ANIMALS to survive. My mom had to feed Stella just-born “pinkie” mice while I sobbed outside in the hallway. Thank God, she died of a mouth infection before she got big enough to eat animals with actual hair. SORRY, STELLA, IT WAS ME NOT YOU!)

My favorite part of the lizard event was standing near a group of guys
at a meet-up in the hotel coffee shop, all with ginormous iguanas perched on their shoulders. They were discussing the best type of feed, what to do when your “friend” was molting, and breeding techniques. (I grabbed my Frappuccino and walked away at that point. Quickly.)

Even though it was hella strange, I loved the vibe of the event. There were so many people meeting to celebrate something they loved. I wanted to be a part of that. Without the iguana sex tips. I had no idea that years later, fan conventions of the GEEK kind would build my career more than anything else.

Despite most of the media attention centering around big Hollywood-driven events like San Diego Comic-Con, there are hundreds of smaller fan conventions taking place around the world every weekend, celebrating sci-fi, anime, Abraham Lincoln impersonators (yup): you name it, there’s a fan convention for it. I’ve attended hundreds of these events as a guest, starting as an actor on the cult favorite
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. When I started my web show
The Guild
, I continued attending. Even though people didn’t know that it existed.

I called up Kim right after we launched.

“Hey! There’s a World of Warcraft convention happening next week in Anaheim. I’m gonna make
The Guild
bookmarks and hand them out down there so gamers will watch the show.”

“Bookmarks? What about postcards?” said Kim.

“They’re twenty-three percent more expensive.”

“Bookmarks sound great!”

I ordered two thousand of them and drove down to Anaheim. I didn’t have a ticket to the convention—they’d sold out months in advance—so I stood in front and handed out my DIY bookmarks to everyone who went inside. The experience had to be like a college student working the sidewalk for Amnesty International: smiles greeted with hostility all the way!

“Hi! Would you like a bookmark? No? Okay.”

“Hey, I’d love to talk to you about my . . . no, it’s not a church thing . . .”

“. . . it’s a web series about gamers who play a game like WoW? No, I’m not a booth girl. Yes, I play the game. No, you can’t test me . . .”

Ninety percent of my handouts got thrown in the trash. Most people did it right in front of me. But 10 percent seemed mildly interested in the show, and in the face of so much rejection, mild interest felt like a huge win! After dark, I collected all the discarded bookmarks that didn’t have gum stuck on them and drove home, vowing to canvass more events in the future. (I got rid of the extras by placing stacks of them on the doors of public toilets. Captive audience, yo!)

During the first few seasons of the show, I lived the life of an old-timey traveling salesman. I’d tweet, “Be in Seattle this weekend! Come on down! Buy more, get more discount! SALE SALE SALE!” and fans would let me crash their convention booths, dragging boxes of my
Guild
DVDs and comics as my “wares” (along with my face for selfies).

We even got ambitious for a few years and tried to run our own
Guild
booth at Comic-Con, sharing with my friend Jamie, a game designer. The experience did not go well. Our friendly indie fans generally got crowded out by mainstream fans lining up to get free life-size Harry Potter bags at the bigger movie studio booths.

“Hey, are you Emily Blunt?!”

“Definitely not. I’m here with my web show. Can I sell you a DVD?”

“Not unless you’re Emily Blunt.”

The last straw was when we decided one year to sell T-shirts and bought tons of Ikea shelving. Which I tried to assemble. By myself.

“Why are there so many pieces?! And there are no words to explain the pictures? Is it a secret IQ test?”

“No one knows,” Jamie said.

I put a whole shelving unit together backward, and when I discovered I had to undo two hours of work, I started hyperventilating.

“Kim! I’m having flashbacks to DVD stuffing. No T-shirts! Never again!”

Eventually, our show got more popular, and the cast and I started to get invited to conventions legitimately as guests, all expenses paid, no Ikea shelving required. I guess coordinators saw the lines of fans waiting to meet me and thought,
That web series chick doesn’t have a sales tax permit. Better give her an official spot before she gets arrested by the feds.

By the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, the most influential fan convention in the world,
The Guild
had grown in popularity enough to fill a three-thousand-seat panel room. More than some network TV shows. Not bad for a show that was shot in our garages, huh? (Yes, I’ve mentioned the garage thing too many times, but listen: we did all that stuff out of our garages.) At the same time I was doing my own show,
I was also acting on other sci-fi friendly shows.
Eureka
.
Supernatural.
And those projects, along with
Dr. Horrible
and my other web projects, bumped me pretty high up the “situational recognition” ladder at fan conventions not only in the US, but around the world.

It’s a very strange experience to go back and forth between real life, where almost no one recognizes me except baristas, to events where 99 percent of people see me and think,
I know that chick! She’s pale like the underbelly of a fish in person!
It’s a shock to the ego.

They think I’m awesome!

Actually, I’m crap.

Correction! Awesome again!

Shut up, nobody.

As a self-conscious, I’m-sure-I-have-a-booger-in-my-nose kind of person, it was hard to get used to the scrutiny. When I first started doing speeches and panels, I’d constantly get flashbacks to the only high school event I ever attended.

It was a Valentine’s dance and I was sixteen. An assistant instructor at my karate school, Juan, asked me to be his date. I was nervous because I’d never been INSIDE a public school before, but I said to myself,
He’s a karate instructor, so if the jocks attack us, I should be safe.

I asked, “What should I wear?” and he said, “It’s Valentine’s. The fanciest dress you have.” No need to say it twice! I got the most beautiful green crushed-velvet dress, floor length, no back, jewels galore, mile-high heels; I even bought my own corsage. (I didn’t know at the time those were supposed to be gifted to you by the guy. Oh well. I’m liberated.)

We entered the San Antonio High School gym dressed like we were meeting the Queen of England, and as I descended the steps, I gazed around the room. Everyone turned to stare at us. More than a
hundred people. Not one dress in sight. Everyone was dressed in plain jeans and T-shirts. One person was wearing pajamas.

The kids pointed and whispered at us as we worked our way through the crowd. A few snickered. I had never been around this many kids my own age before. At that moment I understood exactly how Carrie must have felt at her prom.

I’ve gotten used to public speaking in front of thousands and spending an extra hour in the mirror every morning trying to decide if I’m overdressed or not now, but sometimes when I enter a convention floor and walk through the crowds, I have a traumatic flash of
Green velvet, green velvet!
zip through my brain.

It gets weirder when I meet celebrities whom I admire. Then my sense of identity really starts to cartwheel. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat backstage feeling like an interloper who somehow made the convention invite list by accident. When someone I adore, like Gillian Anderson or William Shatner, enters the greenroom, I generally try to keep quiet and stand near the hummus, waiting for someone to say, “Oops. Someone invited the wrong ‘Felicia.’ Kick out that girl who’s hogging all the pita chips.”

I met Patrick Stewart one time, and when he started directing words toward my head, I became so light-headed I almost fainted. I kept repeating, “Would you like my chair? Would you like my chair?” until a volunteer came to extract him. Another time I got up two hours early, walked to a special donut shop four miles away from my hotel, and brought dozens of donuts to the convention for the EXPRESS purpose of carrying a box over to Matt Smith (Doctor Who #11) and asking, “Do you want one?”
Because I couldn’t figure out how to introduce myself like a real human being.
(He did NOT want a donut. And he ended up thinking I was a volunteer, not a guest. For obvious reasons.)

The most mortifying incident was when I met Nichelle Nichols at a convention in Salt Lake City. She was wearing the most dazzling gold jacket I’d ever seen, sitting in a golf cart, glam as all get-out. I mean,
Lieutenant Uhura, in the flesh!
As I skirted around her golf cart in the hallway, I wanted to stare, willed myself not to, then compromised with a creepy side-eye look as I passed and then . . . she called out to me.

“Hi! Felicia! I wanted to meet you!” She waved.

I froze. She knew my name? No way.
No WAY.

“Uh, you wanted to meet ME?! But . . . but . . . but . . .”
Mind melting . . . say something human being-ish.
“Hi?”

“Hello!”

Form words, Felicia . . .
“Uh, your jacket is so pretty!”

“Thank you, dear.”

“Your jacket is sparkly. So pretty.”
Doh! I said that already. But it came out of my mouth again for some reason.
Flashbacks to Patrick Stewart situation. I wanted to die.

“Yes. You already said that.”

Crap, she noticed. “I love your work.”

“Thank you!”

My body started moving of its own volition, shifting weight back and forth, a move taken from a Motown group, while my mind seized up.
Say something smart, something more about how you love her work, except less general . . .
“Uh . . . you’re in a golf cart!” NOT THAT! SHE MIGHT HAVE A HIP PROBLEM! WHY BRING THAT UP?!

“Yes, it’s easier to get around the crowds this way.”

I babbled. “I still can’t believe you know my . . . why did you want to . . . I’m a big fan of your work!”
COMPLETE A SENTENCE, GOD!

“Thank you!”

Mention your favorite episode of hers! No, for some reason, your mind isn’t working. I am your mind, and I’m not working. I’m warning you, if you say something right now, you might accidentally say “Star Wars” instead of “Star Trek” and then you’ll have to commit hari-kari, right here, right now in this hallway, so just compliment her jacket again . . . NO! WRONG CHOICE! NO-WIN CONDITION! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!

“I have to pee. Nicetomeetyoubye!”

And I ran away. Like, full-tilt running down the hallway. If you haven’t guessed already, it’s a habit of mine. I never found out why she wanted to meet me, either. I felt so ridiculous that I sat on the toilet for fifteen minutes until I was able to rewrite the scene in my head into a more functional account of what happened so I could live with myself. (It included a conversation about her sister, who was once an actor in
The Guild
. Why couldn’t I have remembered that during the panic attack? I’m the WORST!)

I’m sure the conversation wasn’t that weird from her point of view (maybe) but from mine it was mortifying. All I wanted to have said was
one thing
, one simple thing to have her remember me. To make an impact. To summarize why I was having a loose-bowel situation just LOOKING at her in person. Because I admired her so much.

Those experiences make me appreciate every interaction I have with fans of my own work at conventions. I try to go out of my way to connect with each person as much as I possibly can despite the long lines and stifling crowds and people in cosplay with fake weapons who accidentally poke people in the eyes with rubber broadswords. Because that single moment you get with someone you admire is so important, I never want anyone to walk away feeling mortified like I generally do when meeting someone I fan over.