Ship It(18)

“They’re not fanboys?”


I hear the cheers before I even see the door, and it takes me a few beats to register that they’re for us. My heart is beating in my ears, and I feel distant and shallow. There’s a nudge at my elbow, and I turn to see Rico running his hand through his thick curly hair and winking at me. I hear the moderator call our names from the stage and somebody opens the doors for us and I keep my eyes locked on Rico’s feet in front of me, stepping where he steps, climbing the stairs, finding my chair, the lights bright.

I shade my eyes and look out and see…girls. Women. Moms, daughters, friends. All screaming.

“Fangirls,” I whisper to Rico, and I can tell he’s dying laughing at me on the inside.

Some of these girls are even dressed like us, wearing heavy yellow Carhartt jackets for Heart and carrying battle-axes for Smokey, faux stubble drawn on painstakingly with eyebrow pencil, looking tough in leather jackets a bit too large for them. But someone should tell them that screaming that much is very out of character for either Smokey or Heart.

There’s a girl in the front row, maybe fifteen years old, who has broken down sobbing and I’m not sure why. Have we already disappointed her without even opening our mouths? She notices me looking at her. I give her a small smile, but she only cries harder.

The moderator, some comic-book website guy I’d never heard of before, quiets the crowd, somehow bringing order to the chaos, and starts the panel. I glance around the room, searching the faces for Jon Reynolds, but there’s no sign of him. Then the back doors open, and I see Tattoo Guy sneak into the back and stand against the wall. Okay! It’s not Reynolds, but at least someone came. This is my chance to show him I’m capable of being a star.

As the moderator introduces us, I pick up the mic, cool and heavy in my hand. Let’s do this.


SMOKEY IS SITTING, like, forty feet from me right now. I’m smiling, no, grinning, and I can’t stop. I might break into hysterical giggles at any second. I don’t even know why. I mean, I know why, Smokey is right there. But my body is outside my control. There’s a girl in the front row who is all-out bawling, and I know how she feels. Emotions are, like, leaking out my pores. Crying actually seems like a pretty minor reaction. All things considered, I might literally explode.

“Local girl explodes at Boise Comics Convention. Doctors mystified, but witnesses suspect she had too many feels. Details at eleven.”

The moderator starts the panel and he has prepared a slew of easy questions about the show (it’s great), life on set in North Carolina (very rainy), and what’s coming up at the end of the season (can’t tell us). Forest is wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt, and I realize I didn’t even know he was a fan. I love that he loves Wonder Woman, how great is that? The shirt looks old; I wonder how long he’s had it. There’s still so much I don’t know about him—I wish the questions were more about his feelings and background and personality. What does he think about the new Star Trek movies? Is he a dog person or a cat person? Does he ship SmokeHeart? Will it go canon?

There’s a chick in a really cool bright floral blazer wandering around, taking pictures of the panel and the crowd with her phone and posting them somewhere, her thumbs flying over the screen. I assume she must work for the show; it seems like a cool job and I wonder how she got it.

Before I know it, it’s time for the audience Q&A, and I’m trying not to think about my mom’s dumb suggestion that I should ask a question. I just want to enjoy this, I don’t need to be a participant, too.

There’s a palpable shift in tone once the Q&A portion begins, as fans stand up to ask questions I’ve seen percolating on Tumblr that haven’t had an outlet until now. A girl with pink hair asks whether the demons on the show are intended as a metaphor for race relations in America. A woman in an electric wheelchair asks why her favorite female character was killed off after just three episodes. Jamie glides through one answer after another. “It’s just where the story took us,” he says breezily, as though the story were somehow sentient, like a jungle guide leading him through a forest of ideas, showing him the only possible path.

Which is obviously wrong. I might not know exactly how TV works behind the scenes, but I know story decisions are consciously made. By him. He’s trying to anthropomorphize the story to make it sound like the episodes spring to life and write themselves, but it’s just not true.

I listen to Jamie sidestep another question about why the only Asian character on the show was a hacker computer wiz—something that hadn’t even occurred to me but is definitely a tired stereotype. He deftly avoids answering the question by talking about how the show is actually really popular in Japan.

The anger feels like sand on my tongue. I don’t understand how this guy could create this show that’s such a tender and thoughtful story about friendship and loving others despite our differences. He doesn’t seem capable of it.

I check the time on my phone. The panel will be ending soon. I’m waiting for someone to ask what I really want to know. Someone in her twenties with buzzed hair steps up to the mic. She has the look—maybe she’ll ask the question. She leans in, her mouth too close to the microphone. “Hi, my name’s Heather and when Smokey says in episode seven that he finally feels like he knows where he belongs, is he talking about working with Heart?”