Hello and welcome to Louis and Mon’s first joint con diary! Louis and Mon are twins and have been making an annual pilgrimage to Fan Expo Canada every year since they moved to the country. This year, they decided to pool their resources and share their experiences in one con diary to rule them all!
Fan Expo Canada took place from Thursday, August 22 to Sunday, August 25. Here’s volume one of our day-by-day recap of the con.
Louis: I think Thursday was quite productive. We had a plan for the day, we got to the convention well in time, and we covered everything we wanted to do.
Mon: I know when we sign up to cover these conventions, we’re also signing up to spend a lot of time standing in line, but my word, today was a doozy? We essentially spent a good 3 hours just standing in line – as press – to attend just three brand activations.
Louis: Okay, yes, we did spend a lot of time queuing. This being Toronto, standing in line is par for the course. But we got to visit the few brand activations that we had been invited to: a sneak preview of Agatha All Along at the Disney+ booth, a ring-making workshop at Prime’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power booth, and the Paramount Lodge. But it was a little more disorganized than we expected.
Mon: I’m glad we didn’t have to stand for the Agatha All Along activation because that was… meh. The little dark, witchy cave set that we entered had three costumes, but it was really dark, so I couldn’t really appreciate them. Also, they planted a poor, hapless volunteer in there who scared the bejeezus out of me – I thought she was a mannequin, but then she moved.
Louis: The witchy volunteer was my favourite part! Because I could barely see the costumes.
Mon: Yeah, she was. It was all in good spirit, but considering we came early just for this activation, I was… disappointed. Also, was the witchy cave supposed to smell like that?
Louis: I don’t know if they were going for realism, since it is a cave but the smell was really something. It came right through our masks. I was relieved to escape.
Mon: I’m glad we sat and chilled for a bit after, because hoo boy, we were in for a realllllly long wait after that, weren’t we?
Louis: Probably should add here that it was hot, too. Ridiculously hot. We’d had the loveliest weather all week and bam, the day of Fan Expo Canada, the sun and humidity had a vendetta against us. So, yes, rest was needed!
Mon: I don’t remember the last time I felt this hot and sticky. Oh no wait, I do. It was last Saturday.
Anyway, we got to the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power booth. They were, I’m sorry to say, pretty clueless about what was happening. The email to press didn’t state that we had to book a time, so many of us just said “we’ll drop by.” Apparently, that was not what they wanted. And then when we got there, we were told that someone had snuck in and stolen our slot!
The waiting around for the ring-making workshop was so aggravating. The Prime people, though, were very lovely, but obviously overwhelmed by just how many people were interested in the ring-making workshop. I’m surprised they were surprised, because, who doesn’t want to attend a free workshop? And LOTR has a huge fandom.
We stood in one spot for the longest time, then moved, and were then told that check-in was on the other side of the booth.
Louis: Were they hoping we’d get tired and leave or something?
Mon: I know right! The workshop sessions were supposed to last only 15 minutes, but the first one didn’t end till after 2:30pm, and we were finally let in 15 minutes after that. Despite the wait, I have to say, the workshop turned out to be so much fun that I forgot all about how annoying the wait had been.
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We were given silicone moulds that had the shape of the power ring cut into it. We had to choose a gem colour – I chose the red one and Louis chose the blue one – and then filled the mould with the coloured resin. After curing it under a UV light, we then made the band. Our instructor, Jessica, explained that a silver band works better with cool colours, while the gold one works with warm colours. Talk about perfect, because Louis and I ended up with each colour!
Making the band was harder than we thought because all the resin kept trying to leak out. But we got there in the end. The final product is, what I call, janky, but man, it’s so cool! As non-DIY people, Louis and I finally understand what people mean when they say there’s something special about making things with your own hands. We walked around wearing our rings all day, and I know I’m excited to show it off again.
Louis: The Paramount+ Lodge was also severely disorganised. The email invitation said it would be open from 2pm to 9pm. By the time we got to the multiple queues for the Lodge, it was well passed 3pm but the Lodge hadn’t yet opened. I have no idea if there were technical difficulties, but there were snaking queues. We had to ask several volunteers where press were expected to stand and got the run-around from all of them. Finally, when we were given a destination, we were turned away, because it was an entrance for influencers. Good grief! Why are influencers even being categorised as press? By the time the Lodge opened, it was nearly four. The queues were unbelievable.
Mon: Have to say, I was seeing red when they said the influencers were being let in first. Also, why did the influencers have press badges? It’s a completely different job!
Louis: The Lodge itself housed two activations, the Star Trek Menagerie and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Menagerie was fairly exciting. It was great to see a life-sized Salt Vampire from Star Trek, the Kwejian tree, a Trill symbiont, and some tribbles. But if you’re going to call it a menagerie, I’m expecting the Gorn and the Crystalline Entity. Throw in some Kazon for good measure.
Mon: Couldn’t agree more. We needed more stuff in there.
Louis: The final section of the Paramount Lodge was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Seeing the life-sized turtles completely transported me to our childhood. I could’ve hugged them. The turtles have been a part of our lives for so long. I thought this section was super cute.
Mon: Yeah, I totally felt like a kid again in the TMNT section. It was amazing!
Louis: The queues for the activations took so long, I was sure we wouldn’t be able to spend time at the Artists Alley. Fortunately, we managed to squeeze it in! I was on a mission to speak with Nicola Scott, who’s art we’ve enjoyed for quite a while. I had to wait a while to chat with her because there were two superfans who had a lot of questions for her. Scott spoke in detail about the artistic process behind Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons. She had her original sketches on the table, and they were stunning. The amount of detail on most pages was a sight to behold, but Scott did say that it drove her quite mad because there were so many characters on so many pages. She also said drawing the horses wasn’t fun.
I was surprised to see that the actual book is much smaller in scale. I’ve bought a copy and plan to read it soon, but how much detail will we be able to enjoy when the art has been scaled down? The large sketches made it easier to admire the detail. But if DC had gone with that size for the complete book, the cost would have been prohibitive.
Alongside the book, we got a few of Scott’s prints of DC heroes through the years. We asked her about her process for creating those covers and whether DC gave her an archive to look through. Scott said they didn’t. She had to Google it all herself! She would spend a good part of a day doing research on the various eras and styles of the heroes and then choose the most popular/primary representation of that era for her cover. But the overall process only took her two days per cover, which sounds like a ludicrously short amount of time.
I loved how chatty Scott was because we got to ask her which cover was her favourite. It was the Zatanna cover, and I have to say it’s a fun one. It’s quite subtle, the changes to Zatanna over the years, but Scott captured it well. She also loved doing the Harley Quinn cover, which paid homage to Harley’s iterations in the games as well as the comics.
Mon: When we got to Scott’s table, I noticed Marc Guggenheim was at the next table. I don’t know if people didn’t recognize him, or if the Arrowverse is now too old for new fans to recognize, but he had no one coming to his table. For anyone wondering, Marc Guggenheim is one of the creators of Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and he was an executive producer on the other CW shows as well. He’s pretty active on social media, even now, about the Arrowverse.
I had a quick chat with Guggenheim, basically telling him about how the Arrowverse was such a huge part of our lives, and how, as a child, I would never have imagined I’d have a superhero show to watch on a daily basis. He seemed very moved by that. I also talked to him about how impressed I was with how inclusive and diverse the Arrowverse was, in front of and behind the scenes. Guggenheim stated that that was intentional, which I was happy to hear, because that’s the only way these changes can happen.
I got the feeling he is still a little sad it’s all over. He did say that after ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths,’ he was done, but mentioned that, had he known all the shows had barely a year or so left in them, he may have stuck around to “tie a bow” on the whole thing.
It’s also obvious that there’s not much conversation happening for the TV side of DC now that the new guard has taken over at Warner Bros. Guggenheim is certain that there’ll be more shows again. I’m glad he’s optimistic. I’m so happy I chatted with him – it was heartening to meet one of the people that changed the landscape of superhero television, at least for us, for a short while.
Louis: Chatting with Scott was so enjoyable that we were late for the one and only session we’d planned on going to: Creating Community Online. Not very late, fortunately. From the blurb, I expected multiple panelists, but there was only one speaker: NerdyBody, who was hilarious.
She took the audience through the various online channels she’s been using to build community, including tumblr, AO3, Twitter/X, and Discord. She shared the pros and cons of each and highly recommended Discord as she’s had a fair amount of experience running a private server. I was surprised to hear that the fan-fiction to community-building pipeline was so strong. I think I’m going to have to be more intentional in the way I engage with fan-fiction – I could have been engaging with authors on their tumblr and joining Discord servers. Who knew?
Thursday turned out to be way more exhausting than we expected, but mostly it was because the brand organizers gave us the run around. We hoped Friday would be more organized.
