Source: Hasti for The Game of Nerds
Montreal hosts so many different events throughout the summers, from the Jazz festival, to the beer festival, to the comedy festival we’ll be covering later this week. The most important for us at The Game Of Nerds happens to be the Comic Con & I just happened to attend all 3 days of the con. Below, I’ve compiled everything I saw & learned on day 1 (days 2 & 3 coming soon)
Two things you should know about me before we start: I have never been to a comic con before, and I am terrified of going places/doing things alone. By July 10th, neither of those things were true anymore.
Let’s break it down, the first day was a shorter day, so I spent most of my time wandering the convention floor, being absorbed by all the things I could by, the figurines, the tshirts, etc, and just gasping in awe at all the amazing cosplay I saw. I was so amazed that most of the time I forgot to take a picture, like a dork.
I attended a talk about Fan Fiction given from the perspective of a writer and a reader. Lots of important points were raised for authors but also people looking to get into fan fiction writing.
~Always proof your work, have other people read it for you and give you critiques
~Be respectful of the topic you’re writing about, do your research if it’s something you know nothing about, you don’t want to do a story about assault and then create triggers for your readers or handle the situation badly.
~Tag your work! It’s so important that you tag accurately and give a good summary. People want to know what they’re getting into, a reader might want to avoid stories that would be triggering or stress her out.
~Be true to the source material and the voice of the characters. It’s fine and encouraged to do things in your stories that aren’t canon, but someone seeking out fan fiction is very familiar with the OG characters and wants to still feel them reflected.
~Map out your story and know what you want to write, don’t start a daunting 12 chapter fic and then stop after the 3rd one – even if you have 3 readers, they were excited to see where your story went
~Give yourself a posting schedule
~Basically, do your best work
Source: Hasti for The Game of Nerds
After the fan fiction panel – I wanted to start writing stories, but I was also starving so I ran to a Starbucks, had a banana bread and ran back to attend Noelle Hannibal’s panel. I know nothing of Star Trek but there was nothing else happening at the time. Boy am I glad I went to see her! She was so funny and a huge musical theatre nerd and she moved to Montreal from LA when she married her husband. She now has her own production company and works on bringing acting jobs to Montreal as well as producing theatre and bringing broadway shows into the city. Honestly I could’ve talked to her about Hamilton all day.
~She say Hamilton two weekends in a row with standing room tickets that her friend Leslie Odom Jr. gave her
~The second weekend, when Lin saw her hanging out on stage, he exclaimed NOELLE!! and hugged her!
~She sort of got typecast as the tall demon/villain that gets killed
~Her fondest memory of the Buffy set is little tiny Sarah Michelle Gellar helping her stand up off camera after having slayed her on camera
~She wants to move to new york and do musical theatre
~She found my tweet about wanting to talk to her about Hamilton and said I should’ve done it and now not hanging out with her is my greatest regret!
~Ireland is her favourite place in the world, she lived there for a while when she was younger and became friends with U2′s The Edge’s sister!
Next up, Billy Dee Williams of Star Wars fame had a panel where he talked about his decades long career
~He knows nothing about the new Star Wars so stop asking him
~”I never have to audition for anything”
~He did a movie right after Star Wars where he was a romantic lead so that helped him diversify and avoid typecasting
~He got his start on Broadway at age 6!
~#BringBackLando
~He doesn’t think of Lando as a bad guy in the universe, just someone who was scared and was put in an impossible situation.
Lastly for this day, William Shatner held a panel. He’s a natural born storyteller and spent most of his 45 minutes telling us stories about growing up in Montreal and his Canadian roots. While that panel was a good, uneventful time, I was unable to attend the panel later in the weekend with Shatner, Mulgrew & other Star Trek alum where he was problematic and sexist to Kate & to some fans.
That was it for my first day round up – links to day 2 and day 3 will be updated here when those pieces go live!
Source: Hasti for The Game of Nerds
