Beyond Thunderdome
So, I did DC FanDome.
In a year of COVID, everyone has been taking the idea of a convention and turning it into a series of Zoom meetings and YouTube videos, so I guess no-one should have been that surprised when WarnerMedia announced FanDome in the first place; it felt like the ultimate culmination of that idea crashing into Warners’ corporate desire to make DC into a lifestyle brand — something that’s been a quiet ambition since the company named dropped any modifiers and became, simply, “DC.”
(I could be wrong, but I think the official name went from DC Comics to DC Entertainment in 2009, and then quietly became just DC just under a decade later; there was certainly no big fanfare about the dropping of “Entertainment,” I just remember DC execs quietly telling me to stop calling it DC Entertainment in THR stories.)
DC FanDome felt overwhelming and overkill on first blush, I’ll be honest: a 24 hour livestream based entirely on DC properties? Is that what anyone really wants? But then I remembered that I spent four days last year at a real life convention based around Star Wars, and that’s just one series of movies. FanDome, in that context, suddenly felt like a model of restraint — only 24 hours? And for free? I could even watch from the comfort of my home, and not have to go to Chicago!
With rumors of new footage for the big DC movies of the next year or so, it was obvious that I’d have to cover the show for work, and that’s exactly what happened; I was one of a team of three at THR watching the eight hour block of programming this past Saturday — in many respects, the original plans for FanDome were scaled back before it happened, with a second event announced for the following month less than a week before it took place to host more than half the originally announced content; I’d love to know what happened behind the scenes — and, reader, it was exhausting.
Perhaps it’s because it really was a nonstop eight hour block of programming with little downtime to allow us the chance to write up stories. Maybe it’s because “panels” lasted anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes instead of physical show’s more common 45-60 minute runtime, making everything so frenetic. Or, simply, I could have just been exhausted by working on a Saturday after a long and stressful work week as-was.
All I know is, I was aware that, objectively, DC FanDome was entertaining, slickly produced, fast-paced and, honestly, kind of fun. But, personally, covering it felt like an endurance race that I was not prepared for. I’m, by this point, familiar with attending comic cons where friends say things like, “Oh, that sounds fun!” and I respond with, “No, it was work.” This one, though, despite only being eight hours, and despite seeing me at home the entire time, felt like work.
I did DC FanDome, and I’m really glad that it went well for everyone involved and all the fans that dug it; I think it’ll be a model for future events of this nature, even after COVID, whenever that may be. But I’m also very, very glad that it’s over and I can relax for a bit.
August 24, 2020
August 21 2020
And As They Call You To The Eye of the Storm
Another collection of THR newsletter graphics, with lots more revisions — this seems to be part of the process now, as ideas are thrown out and executed before getting revised into something else entirely. Sometimes it’s just a headline change, others, it’s a complete do-over for any number of reasons… including, this time, “that kid looks too scary.”
August 20 2020
The Great Disaster
The news last week that a train had derailed outside of Stonehaven, a small town in the North-East of Scotland on the outskirts of Aberdeen, hit surprisingly hard. For most people outside of the UK, and likely outside of Scotland, this isn’t even news they would’ve heard in the first place, perhaps understandably given what’s happening everywhere else in the world right now; and yet, it was a subject that I found myself obsessed with on the day it happened, checking and rechecking and refreshing news reports from the Guardian and the BBC for whatever new updates I could get.
A lot of the reason for my fascination was, I’ll be honest, something resembling nostalgia. Not for train disasters, although when I put it like that, it feels like something that someone would have a weird longing for, because it sounds like a horror from days of old. “Remember when the worst thing that could happen would be a train derailment? Oh, those were the days…!”
Instead, I mean nostalgia for my old art school days, and the people that filled them. My best friend of the time moved to Stonehaven a few years after we all graduated, into a tiny little house with his family that always felt curiously old-fashioned and beautifully peaceful at once; when I first read the news, my first thought (and my second, and third, and on and on until I saw an appropriate update) was concern that maybe he or one of his family had been in the train when it happened. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
Nonetheless, the more I read and learned, the more I imagined how horrible what was happening for everyone involved. Sure, my friend wasn’t in the train but I was all too aware of what everyone else who feared the same thing was feeling, and just as certain that a number of those people would find their fears turn out to be well-founded. There’s something about that kind of strange close shave that adds to whatever sense of empathy you already had, because for all intents and purposes, you really were that person just minutes earlier.
Three people died in the accident, as it turned out, with six others taken to hospital. I feel guilty for being as relieved as I am that I didn’t know any of them.
August 19 2020
August 18 2020
Mellow Doubt
There was a day at the end of last month where I got surprising good news. I’m tempted to make the joke that, in 2020, that’s enough of an unusual occurrence to be the entire story — I mean, have you seen this year? — but the reason I say that isn’t to boast that there was one day when everything wasn’t terrible, but to cue up the real point: when I got that good news, I didn’t really know how to react.
On the one hand, it was certainly not news I’d been expecting. It’s fair to say that I’d been expecting just the opposite, with regards to this particular subject, so I had that element of the unexpected to deal with; I wouldn’t go so far as to call it outright disbelief, but it was close. That might explain some of my confusion as to just how to respond, if nothing else.
Nonetheless, I was in a daze. I worked through what could legitimately be described as suspicion that what certainly appeared to be good news was, in fact, actually bad news in disguise. That felt more comfortable, more believable, more 2020: the idea that something that at first feels like a win is, in fact, setting us up for not only disappointment but failure in some sense. Sure, my subconscious told me, that, I can believe.
But… what if it wasn’t? What if the good news was… just good news? What did that mean? That idea made my brain spin. I’d become so used to the alternative, to getting used to the idea that everything is, given the odds, going to be bad news that being presented with good news just felt nearly impossible, for want if a better way to put it.
Realizing this didn’t feel like a positive. What had happened to my optimism? Had the past year — maybe the past four years, considering — really made me so unable to appreciate the good things? The idea stuck with me for awhile, saddening me with its potential to be true, until I remembered the first thing I’d thought when learning of the good news: Maybe this is a sign that everything’s turning around! Anyone who sincerely thinks things like that hasn’t lost it just yet.