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i’m calling it ‘wil wheatcon’ until i can think of something better

Posted on By Wil

In an average year, I travel to around 5 or 6 cities for conventions. Almost every time I announce an appearance, the most common response is some version of “that’s great! When are you coming to [my town]?”

I’m not coming to your town, but I am coming to your computer (or your tablet or your phone or even your TV, I think) on June 7 for a virtual convention that needs a much better name than Couch Con, because at this moment in time, that creates a very specific, very unfortunate, image. (Maybe it will happen today).

Seriously, I hate every name I think of for this. What would you call a virtual convention where I am the guest of honor, the toastmaster, the featured author, and also the only guest? Wil Wheatcon is kind of cute, I think, but I feel like there’s something better. If you have one, would you comment?

The Untitled Wil Wheaton Virtual Convention came out of an unrelated meeting with my friends and partners in crime at Stands about how we wanted to turn some of my designs into stickers. One thing lead to another, and I’m just going to get to the graphic you’ve probably looked at already:

Join Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stand By Me, Big Bang Theory) for a live virtual event featuring a fan-driven Q&A panel, where you can hear stories, insights, and moments you won’t get anywhere else. For those looking for something more personal, a limited number of Meet & Greet spots offer a chance to connect in a smaller group setting.

I love going to cons, and spending time with my people. I love sharing how much we love all our nerd shit. I love the safe place we create together. And I know that money is tight for everyone right now, everything costs more than it should, and just the price of a ticket can put a con out of reach for a lot of people. And that’s not even accounting for whatever we spend on merch, art, autographs, and photo-ops.

Wil Wheaton fandom has always lived at the intersection of sci-fi, gaming, internet chaos, heartfelt sincerity, and extremely specific jokes that somehow become part of your personality. This sticker collection leans directly into that energy with designs inspired by tabletop adventures, spacefaring mischief, fandom pride, and the wonderfully self-aware sense of humor that Wil has spent years cultivating both on screen and off. Equal parts nerdy and sarcastic, these stickers feel right at home on laptops, water bottles, notebooks, gaming cases, convention bins, and any surface that could use a little more chaotic good energy.

So a big, big part of my wanting to do this is the opportunity to do something convention-ish, which is way more affordable, at just fifteen bucks. Hell, get ten friends together and everyone can cover the ticket with the change in their pockets. People still have change in their pockets, right?

I have met tens of thousands of people over the years. I know that this is an unscientific, heavily-skewed metric that would fail any peer review, but I still think it matters that the single most common thing they tell me is some version of “I loved your panel discussion. I wish you’d had more time for questions.”

Well, if you’re one of those people, this is probably going to crawl your dungeon. We have as much time as we want, I can take as many questions as I want, and if enough people ask, I’ll even read you some flash fiction I wrote. And we’re offering some break out, private meet and greets, for anyone who wants that experience.

Oh, I’m also going to pull my kitty ears out and put them on for a Wil Wheatcon exclusive autographed 8×10, if that’s your thing and you wanted to add some whimsy to your life.

A few people I know have done this kind of event, and they all tell me that it’s so much fun, so uplifting, and a wonderful way to spend a couple hours together. I believe them, and I’m excited to experience that for myself. I hope you’ll join me!

I’m so glad you are here. If you’d like to get my updates via email, here’s the thingy:

come closer and see

Posted on By Wil

I want to take a moment and say thank you for all the messages of comfort and support that so many of y’all have shared with me since Marlowe passed. I haven’t ever felt this kind of grief, for this long, in my life. When I am feeling the most sad, when I’m sobbing until I can’t breathe, I feel closest to her, so all I can do is go through it, honor it, and embrace her memory.

There’s a dog on Instagram called Wesley the Chicken Nugget. I adore him, and I love it when his person shares photos and video of him being a dog, so I completely understand how we can love animals we’ve never met. I know that lots of you loved Marlowe, and that comforts me every day.

So thank you, from Anne and me, for choosing to be kind.

I had to take a couple weeks off from recording stories for It’s Storytime (I’ve come to believe that four or five weeks of bereavement leave isn’t unreasonable) but we’re back to work and there’s a new story this week that I wanted everyone to know about.

It’s called To Carry You Inside You, by Tia Tashiro. Here’s my intro:

I grew up in the entertainment industry, not by choice, so I had a front row seat to the abuse and exploitation of child actors like myself. I grew up absolutely terrified of upsetting anyone on the set, robotically doing whatever I was told, so I could just get through it and have one of the precious and rare hours of my childhood where I got to just be a kid, before I was ripped out of childhood and thrust back into a place I never wanted to be.

Today, we are going to visit a future where child actors are still exploited, still used up and discarded, facing an adult life without purpose, that they were never prepared for, because nobody cared what happened to them past an arbitrary age.

We will meet a young woman who is doing her best to assemble the pieces of a stolen childhood into a fulfilling adult life. It isn’t what she wanted, or would have chosen for herself, but she’s doing her best, which is all any of us can do.

This is one of those examples of speculative fiction that I point to when I talk about the power of storytelling that lands on different people for different reasons. This story isn’t about me, but holy shit is it about me. In fact, when I reached out to Tia and asked for permission to do the narration, I mentioned that she captured the experience of being a child actor so perfectly and honestly, she must have some firsthand experience … imagine my surprise when she told me that she didn’t, that she used her imagination to create those moments.

Holy shit. That’s incredible. Please let me know what you think, if you listen.

Anyway, I’m doing my best to promote the show and just let people know it exists, but I keep getting crushed by the algorithm. On Threads, the posts before and after I talked about the podcast have thousands of views and hundreds of interactions, but my post about this episode has like 20 interactions and has only been seen by about 2000 of the 5000000 accounts that follow me. That seems … odd. And honestly, it’s kind demoralizing that one of the few direct ways I have to tell people this exists seems to work against supporting that. I’ve tried letting Bluesky know, and the 13 people who tend to notice me there are excited about it, I’m sure, but it just doesn’t seem to get traction there at all. If anyone reading this has experience bringing something to an audience who will probably love it, but just don’t know about it, I’d be grateful to hear anything you have to say about it.

Last thing, that is explicitly in service of promotion: If you listen to the podcast, you can help me out by rating and reviewing it wherever you are subscribed. The show’s audience is growing slowly but steadily, and I know it isn’t because of me; it’s because listeners are recommending it. That means so much to me. Thank you.

i will miss her forever

Posted on By Wil

Fourteen years ago, Anne and I went to Pasadena Humane Society to see some of the construction our fundraising supported. While we were there, we chatted with Kevin, who was our adoption coordinator for our dog, Seamus.

Seamus had been part of our pack for about a year, and we were talking with Kevin about how much we loved him, what an incredible dog he was, and how happy and grateful we were to have met and adopted him.

I remember saying, “I don’t think I will ever have another dog who isn’t a pittie. He is so sweet, and affectionate, and so gentle, and …” I stopped because I saw a volunteer walking a puppy toward us. She was tiny and underweight, but she had the biggest smile. I knelt down to meet her, and she did a somersault into my lap, wagging her tail so fast I couldn’t see it.

“Well, they are just like this!” I concluded. Then I loved on that puppy until Anne gently told me it was time to let her walk into the shelter.

I was completely in love with her, that fast. She reached into my heart and never left. The next day, it was Anne’s birthday. We went down to the beach for a long walk, as is tradition. We were approaching the Manhattan Beach pier when I said, “I just need to confirm with you that we are not adding another dog to our pack, because I can’t stop thinking about that puppy.”

Anne told me that she didn’t pet her, because she knew that she’d fall in love, too, if she did. I don’t recall what we said to each other, but Anne called PHS and asked them to put us on a waiting list to adopt her.

A few days later, Marlowe came home with us, and she was my baby girl for over a decade. Even when she was an old lady, she was my little girl.

Just over a month ago, we found out Marlowe had lymphoma. It was so aggressive, it moved so quickly, we couldn’t stop it. We did everything we could for her, but we had to say goodbye to her last month.

I miss her so much, my heart hurts. It’s been a month, and I still look for her everywhere in the house. I’ll be okay, and then something will remind me of her and I am sobbing in a heap on the floor.

This is the first time in my life I have experienced this kind of grief, this kind of loss. When we lost Seamus, at least Marlowe was here for both of us while we grieved (and we were here for her, when she grieved). Now there’s just a big empty house and my broken heart.

I will miss her forever, my sweet little girl.

so, i am having a little bit of a stand by me moment

Posted on By Wil

There’s a lot happening in my world right now, joy and sorrow, and I don’t have the spoons to write about it. But I’m having a Stand By Me moment that I wanted to share before it passes.

Yesterday, my narration of The Body by Stephen King (the novella that was adapted into Stand By Me) was released. I have wanted to do this for years, and I can’t believe I never wrote about it here. I’ll address that in the future, because it’s a cool story. Simon and Schuster, the publisher, has been super supportive and enthusiastic about this release. They gave me a whole chapter to share, and it’s at the end of this week’s1 It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, I am the subject of a truly wonderful column in the New York Times that includes interactive clips from my narration, scenes from Stand By Me, and the text of the novella. It’s a beautiful piece that genuinely surprised and delighted me. And it comes just a few days after we were the subject of this incredible essay, also in the New York Times, about our Stand By Me Live tour2.

Tonight, Jerry and Corey and I are together on Entertainment Tonight3 to talk about the movie’s theatrical re-release, which starts on Friday.

I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

  1. I had to take last week off, so we are replaying one of my favorite performances, End of Play. ↩︎
  2. This weekend, we are in Anaheim Friday, Seattle on Saturday (see you at No Kings, Seattle), and Portland on Sunday. Tickets are still available for all three shows. ↩︎
  3. In Los Angeles, that’s 7:30pm on CBS, check your local listing to be sure. ↩︎
blog

in which i take a deliberate moment to appreciate art

Posted on By Wil

I am making a deliberate effort to leave my phone as far away from my attention as I can, whenever I am able. I’m not looking at the news, I’m not scrolling the feeds, I’m not posting. I’m leaving it in my pocket, my car, in the kitchen, just … not in my face.

This fits into my efforts to slow down and be more present. It’s creating space I desperately need to decompress, get bored, let my mind wander and come back with a fun and creative idea.

Today, I was out for a minute and saw this little art installation on a telephone pole. It was weathered quite a bit; it’s been here for awhile. And it was beautiful to me. It was a few moments better spent than they would have been looking at anything on my phone, or anything I could have been listening to. It wasn’t dysregulating, it didn’t increase my internal DEFCON level.

I chose to experience and appreciate this thing that someone made when they were very much not thinking about me, because it was exactly where I needed it to be, exactly when I needed it.

I took some pictures (using only the camera and nothing else on the phone) so I could remember the moment, and share the art. They’re pretty big, so I’m gonna put them behind a jump.

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