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!”