'Game Of Thrones', Vampires & Cosplay Ruled Oz Comic-Con Melbourne 2017

Melbourne's Oz Comic-Con is so huge now that, in fact, it may be multiple cons in one. The pop culture expo encompasses TV, film, comics, anime, fiction and gaming. There's also spectacular cosplay, which attracts television crews.

Beyond the inevitable superheroes, the latest trends here include costumed groups (The Addams Family!) and, for femme cosplayers, any character wearing a big hoop skirt. We even spot a convincing Barbara "Barb" Holland from Netflix' '80s-inspired hit Stranger Things – alive and slug-free.

However, for many "geeks", the main draw remains those iconic actors from genre TV and film (horror, sci-fi, supernatural and fantasy) who front Q&A sessions. Among 2017's guests are perennials like Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor Who. Alyson Hannigan, famously identified as Willow Rosenberg from Joss Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer, possibly boasts the weekend's biggest audiences – symbolic given the show is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Then there are stars from current cult TV favourites such as Game Of Thrones (Eugene Simon and Daniel Portman), iZombie (Robert Buckley, Rahul Kohli and Aly Michalka) and, indeed, Stranger Things (Barb herself – Shannon Purser).

Gracing 2015's Oz Comic-Con, Jason Momoa illuminated his role as Game Of Thrones' warlord Khal Drogo. Alas, this time the mercurial Hawaiian – presently filming DC Comics' Aquaman in Queensland – is only available for fan snaps and signings, lest he spoiler his own movie. Compensating for Momoa's elusiveness is the earthy Daniel Gillies, who plays "the gentleman monster" Elijah Mikaelson in The Vampire Diaries and its gothically gangster franchise The Originals (imagine an Anne Rice-penned Game Of Thrones). Auspiciously, Sherilyn Fenn will reflect on Twin Peaks' revival – but deflect questions about the fate of her alter-ego Audrey Horne in 1991's abrupt cliffhanger.

Curiously, celebrities tend to be more open in convention panels than interviews – or even on social media. Some approach Q&As as the kind of intimate shows that would otherwise be billed 'An Evening With…' Oz Comic-Con punters rave about DJ Qualls, readily recognisable as Supernatural's hunter-cum-werewolf Garth Fitzgerald IV, who virtually performs stand-up comedy.

IZombie

The iZombie contingent banter their way through Saturday's hilarious morning panel – apt when the show, devised by Veronica Mars' Rob Thomas, is a 'zomedy'. While Rahul Kohli's rendering of Dr Ravi Chakrabarti is endearing, he's as popular with fans for his gaming obsession and acerbic tweeting. The Brit relates how, as an actor, he struggled for eight years. Late one night, Kohli received a call from Los Angeles offering him the iZombie part – he then jumped on his parents' bed. He espies a Dr Chakrabarti cosplayer in the crowd – and high-fives him.

Game Of Thrones

A fan will ask the pair to nominate their "favourite deaths" (the list is long).

More boisterous again are Game Of Thrones' Eugene Simon and Daniel Portman – their dynamic such that they could be repping Ser Lancel Lannister and squire Podrick Payne, respectively, as YouTube goofs, complete with mic drops and (ill-advised) coffee table-stunts. The penultimate seventh season of Game Of Thrones airs this month. Invited to sum it up in three words, the Glaswegian Portman quips, "After Season 6." As to who they're championing to eventually rule the Seven Kingdoms, Simon suggests that the Iron Throne is "redundant" due to the demise of successive regents. Ironically, a fan will ask the pair to nominate their "favourite deaths" (the list is long).

Twin Peaks

"I wonder if that title doesn't limit us  as  women."

Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn pulls in an older, and cerebral, demog. The Michigan native is clearly accustomed to being quizzed about the surreal postmodernism of auteur director David Lynch. Lynch, she insists, is "not weird" but, rather, revels in the dark. Fenn is coy about discussing the new series. But does she understand it? "Hell no," Shezza quips. In the past the actor has expressed ambivalence at how, even pre-Twin Peaks, she was sexually-objectified.

Today Fenn rejects the description of Audrey as a "femme fatale" – in pursuit of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan). "I wonder if that title doesn't limit us as women." Nonetheless, Fenn later says she doesn't know how Hollywood might cast more women over 40.

Daniel Gillies

Oz Comic-Con's most revelatory speaker is Gillies. The Canadian-born Kiwi exhibiting a brusque humour and hybrid accent. Dressed in comfortably scruffy attire, he jokes how The Originals' fans expect him to wear suits like Elijah – but his style is that of "a fucking mongrel". In his two sittings, Gillies freely talks about battling The Originals' writers. Having written and directed a film himself in 2012's Broken Kingdom, Gillies is invested in The Originals' mythology, narrative and characterisation – and attuned to inconsistencies. He also espouses a disruptive acting method to avoid complacency. Gillies relishes the Aussie con-goers giving him cheek. Mind, he betrays a certain professional vulnerability. As an actor, Gillies experiences "horrific anxiety".

Set in supernatural New Orleans, The Originals has been praised for its diverse cast – and socio-political subtexts. Increasingly, the writers are responding to issues of representation raised by the #BlackLivesMatter movement, LGBT communities, and intersectional feminists. Still, producer Julie Plec's recent decision to end the toxic relationship between Elijah and vampire/werewolf Hayley Marshall (Australian Phoebe Tonkin) – baby mama of his brother, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) – polarised a female fandom seemingly fixated on 'ships'.

"I think they should both die."

Since the novelist Ann Radcliffe pioneered the female gothic in the 18th century, the genre has paradoxically linked themes of women's desire, freedom and violence. As with Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester, Elijah's romantic allure is profoundly problematic in real life. Asked during a one-on-one media chat, Gillies admits reconciling supernatural horror with contemporary feminism is tricky. "I need to tread carefully 'cause it's kind of a minefield," he begins. Gillies himself was taken aback by the Fifty Shades Of Grey phenom, noting its signalling of "a new kind of sexuality emerging in the world." "It was almost a return to some sort of classicism in terms of gender roles – that we almost lost our identity within some sort of political correctness." But, he stresses, the vampire is its own creature. "By definition, the fantasy of a vampire is loving somebody who's horrendously wrong for you. By definition, it's loving a monster. By definition, it's cannibalism – which, to me, is just sexuality in a metaphor. It's just sex. But it's a primal sex. Their standards of good and evil are not the same scale by which we measure a person. You cannot measure an Elijah against a man." Coincidentally, he's just wrapped shooting the film The Lost Wife Of Robert Durst about an alleged human killer.

Although he hasn't viewed The Originals' fourth season, Gillies is "confused" about Elijah's amnesia in the finale – and the logic of it, considering he'll inevitably encounter vamps who know him. After the Mikaelson siblings forcibly separate, and Elijah is compelled to forget his bonds, he winds up tinkering on a piano in a French bar. Supposedly, he doesn't discern Klaus observing him. Or maybe he does. "I think I might have played it both ways," Gillies recalls. "I think I played it as if there was an inkling? [But] if there was any recognition, it was tiny. It was like a ripple on an ocean. If there's any recognition, it's like the most distant kind of memory."

For Gillies, The Originals' ultimate 'ship is fraternal – being that of the co-dependent Elijah and Klaus. In Season 5, he will seek lasting resolution. "Where would I navigate the character in the future?," Gillies wonders. "I have no idea. Hopefully to his extinction. And I'm not saying that 'cause I want it to be over. I'm saying that the way for this to end poetically is the extinction of Klaus and Elijah. You can't have one and not the other… They're the same creature to me, they're the same animal. For some reason, if they both go, that's the end of the story. And the story should be over. I mean, the next season – my suspicion is it's the last. I think they should both die."