Shan writes...

The following is in response to a question you answered for me.

Greg wrote:

Claw was mute. Renard was confined to a wheelchair. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just think that maybe you're overlooking characters because they fit so naturally into the series that you forgot they were disabled.

Shan responds:

I'm beyond exhausted at the moment, so other than Garrett from the show I worked on I can't think of anyone else who has have appeared in every other show (except Brutto if ROUGHNECKS continued). I think you may be right about characters at the supporting level -- the Robbins and Renards of the animated universe -- but most do seem to be one shots, sometimes even in storylines where their disability is "repaired" by the end of the episode (such as an injury-created blindness that surgery or something else corrects), which usually seems a cop-out. IMNSHO.

And while I do like Renard, particularly as Fox's father, he is older than most of the characters we're talking about and from what Puck shows with his images in "Gathering Part Two," wasn't always in a chair, was he? (Again, beyond exhaustion, I might be wrong) It's a combination of age and illness, or at least that's the impression I've had. But then again, Robbins was blinded in Viet Nam and he's even younger. Showing ability with disability at all ages and stages of life -- and that it isn't always congenital -- is a good thing.

I have no clue why this is such a personal springboard for me, but I'm not embarrassed about it. I can tell you it predates my seizure disorder (circa 1992). On that note, I know that seizures are usually used to comic effect in film and TV and living it isn't funny to me. I close my eyes and let it be though. I'm not going to tell people what they can and can't do. I just don't have to like it.

(Now jumping off soapbox...)

Greg also wrote:

I also would love to do a hearing impaired animated character with Marlee Matlin doing the voice. She used to come into Rockets and I once had such a big crush on her that I swore that if she came in one more time, I'd ask her to marry me. (She must have sensed that cause she never came back.)

Shan replies:

:) If you did the character as a lip-reader, it would probably work in limited animation. Sign language is a whole different ball of wax, though I do know I saw it done once as a kid (I want to say on DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH, but I am so tired right now). Christy Marx and I talked about this waaaay back when I first met her, though it's become public knowledge on the TRULY OUTRAGEOUS! JEM Mailing List over the years. Hasbro had Christy developing a JEM feature that never really went past treatment since the TRANSFORMERS and GI JOE movies did so poorly. They were going to have a deaf girl in that movie, which was integral to the plot. Later on, Christy had dinner with a woman who taught her there are many variants of sign language; ASA (American Sign Language) is just one of several so it might not be understood well in some markets that aren't familiar with ASA and thereby not translate internationally. Also the complexity of the hand gestures just might not come out right in limited animation. So she told me at that time she wasn't sure if it ultimately would have worked out it.

Just FYI...

Shan writes...

Ian>Um... thank you, I think, for complementing my questions. (I was passing through to see what other questions had been posted as long as I was online and saw your comment).

Greg>I hope my questions better exemplify your preferences, but you and I both know I can be error prone on occasion. I can think of instances both where I was your student and not proofing myself well enough as an interviewer (the latter being the greater embarrassment) where that was the case.

(And I just had to go look up embarrassment. I always have to stop and think about the "r"s and "s"s...)

Todd Jensen writes...

One thing that I thought that I'd mention here today, now that the question queue has gotten started up again, is on Goliath's smashing the Praying Gargoyle and foiling Operation Clean Slate in "Hunter's Moon".

I think that it's obvious to us all that Goliath was taking a big risk there, since if Demona had smashed the vial after that, all the gargoyles would have died alongside all the humans. But I wonder how many of us have noticed something else, that foiling Demona's genocide scheme entirely (as indeed happened here) could be almost as fatal to the gargoyle race. After all, at this point, the existence of gargoyles has been revealed to the world, and the public wasn't too thrilled with that. At the time that Goliath was confronting Demona, St. Damien's Cathedral was surrounded by an angry crowd practically howling for the gargoyles' blood, which was even prepared to charge in vigilante-style if the police didn't do anything. And even afterwards, as we saw in "The Journey", the public attitude towards gargoyles remained hostile; people were eagerly joining the Quarrymen when Castaway set it up, Margot Yale was openly calling for the capture and incarceration of the entire species on television, etc. We know, of course, from your "Gargoyles 2198" announcement that eventually humans do learn to recognize gargoyles' right to exist, and that by 2198, the days of near-universal attempts on humanity's part to hunt down and kill gargoyles are over - but Goliath, obviously, couldn't have known that.

I don't know whether Goliath had time to realize when he smashed the Praying Gargoyle (he took action extremely quickly, after all) that he was thus potentially endangering his species twice over, and that by saving humanity he was potentially dooming his race to brutal massacres (and I'm sure that even if he did know it, he'd have felt that there are just certain things that you have to do that are more important than mere survival and that wiping out one race so that another can survive is wrong - not to mention that he also knew that not all humans were crazed anti-gargoyle zealots), but I still think that that action of his was probably one of the most courageous and altruistic deeds that he performed in the entire series. I just thought that I'd give my thoughts on that here.

Virginia writes...

Are you going to be able to make any kind of art gallery in the near future? I love your work and would be interested to be able to purchase picutres from the gargoyle and Max Steel series. My 3 year old son loves the show too, btw.

Punchinello writes...

Mr. Weisman,

I'm sorry I did not acknowledge your response before now. I only realized that you had addressed my post on sentience a moment ago.

I did not really think that you condoned the obliteration of a family of polar bears (anthropomorphic or otherwise). I was raising the issue because I think I am observing a trend wherein people are only assigning value to a life based upon an inference of anthropomorphism. That is to say, some people are investing their ethical concern in something based upon how much it resembles a human being; and this is hardly an objective premise to begin with. Semblance to human beings, mental or otherwise, can not constitute a requirement for being worthy of consideration or protection. However I do believe that it is reasonable to assign values based upon certain criteria from within our own perspectives (it's the only thing we can assign values from) as long as we make a concerted effort to avoid an obviously centrist sentiment like using ourselves as a template for what is worth consideration.

If someone were to ask me what criteria I thought were appropriate, I would probably return to what has already been implied. Intelligence. Emotional intuition. Volition. And a whole host of perceptual characteristics. Those things from which emerge a picture of mental life. Perhaps an ability to suffer and to anticipate conditions which cause or alleviate suffering, and to desire to distance ones self from a cause of it. However, if we are going to determine the presence of those capacities with nothing but purely verifiable data, then we fall in league with the evolutionary psychologists foundation of mental within the biological. And the biological machinery necessary to mediate these abilities is certainly not the exclusive domain of Homo Sapiens. (I _do_ subscribe to the evolutionary psychologist foundation by the way. I like to have data I can verify beyond "it is true because it is so.")

For a lot of people though, these emergent mental properties are always considered as something transcendent of biology, immeasurable, even inviolate, because I have observed others react with hostility to the reduction of mental qualities to biology. On numerous occasions. Thinking that way leads to all kinds of misunderstandings, however. Another contributor to this board, Entity, had taken the position that humans and gorillas were intelligent but dogs were not. I found this extremely interesting because even outside the realm of biological architectures in the brain I could use as a foundation for taking the evolutionary psychologist position, it needs to be acknowledged that even within social psychology dogs are attributed a measurable intelligence. It's not extraordinary. My dog has an IQ of 12 or so for instance. And of course these kinds of figures are disputable, because it really requires the participation of the test subject past his simple presence to get accurate results. I would submit that the whole concept of IQ as it is accepted within the social sciences borders on being fraudulent anyway. The point is that the ascription of non-intelligence that was made about the dog was arbitrary. It was not informed by the physical _or_ social sciences. It was just an assumption. And that kind of casual valuization can be dangerous when it functions as the basis for how much respect we offer another. This is not a slight against this Entity. I'm just using this as an example to outline the stated purpose of my original post. If people are going to hold these positions they maintain, then they need to ask themselves why they have that particular belief. If they have this mental dialogue with themselves and they cannot answer that first question, then it is time to evaluate how much their beliefs represent reality.

____________________________________________________________________________
I'm probably as guilty as anyone of overusing, or rather overbilling the issue of "sentience". I think the concept has its uses. But it's probably used as a crutch too often.
____________________________________________________________________________

I would agree. I think of it as a crutch of language. Some people subscribe to an ideology that is a holdover from religious impulses. It maintains that the mantle of "human" is sacred and unapproachable. They need to define what the quality of "human" is that makes it thus, without any background knowledge of cognitive science so that it fits their sensibilities. They can adopt the hazily defined expression, "sentience", imported from popular culture, via star trek, to articulate their position. For some others, the mental capacities of non human animals may be very well understood. They may acknowledge capacities for reflection and emotion, but they still need a convenient means of distinguishing various abilities. So an imprecise language becomes common.

Punchinello writes...

I just reviewed what I have written here. It's so formal it's almost offensive. I'm sorry. I don't think one can talk about issues like this without sounding (obtuse? Stuffy? Something like that.) And not a word about Gargoyles.

Let me leave the realm of animal intelligence's for a minute and consider the intelligence of some of the more fantastical characters in your story. The fae. When I think about this kind of (ethereal?) character, these are the kinds of associations that I make.

-The thought of angels moves faster than human thought. (I don't recall where that comes from)

-A four dimensional object or being will cast a three dimensional shadow. (That's an observation Buckminster Fuller made.)

-A being that cannot die will have no concept of death, and certainly will not attach values, positive or negative, to the ending of a life. (This is a condensed and bastardized summary of some of the speculation of extraterrestrial intelligence's that participants of the SETI program publicized.)

I hope some of the above makes sense. My thinking is this. That the content of fae thought/mentality may be fundamentally different from homo sapiens thinking. Not just an accelerated or enhanced analogue of human thought, but structurally different. Our mental world is the emergent condition of innumerable biological systems interacting with one another. I have no reason to conclude that the fae's intelligence emerges from anything reductionist in nature. It is a condition that exists without origin in biology (potentially). Everything that we think of as intelligence rests on an evolutionary foundation of connections to allow us to successfully distinguish between things we can eat and things that will eat us. It would be absurd to think that the fae (who I don't think were subject to natural selection through predation) would have an intelligence structured upon the same principles. Simple alternative concepts like "either or" may not have the same meaning to them. This could go far towards explaining why they are so damned irritating.

My second thought on the matter, in reference to the three dimensional shadow concept, is that the visual representation we get of the fae in the story may be a poor representation of the reality. I use the concept of a hypothetical four dimensional being to illustrate. A two dimensional being could be aware of my presence if I allowed it to, although it would be a simple matter to remove myself from it's perception with a minor movement. However it's awareness could not give it a complete representation of what I am. It could only understand me as a fragment that can be translated into something comprehensible within the context of it's world. I can easily attribute an extra dimensional quality to beings like Oberon and Puck who seem o appear and disappear at will. We might not be able to understand completely, what they are. Only that the portion of them that is represented in three dimensions resembles a group of tall, angular, oddly complexioned people in period costume.

My third observation of the fae, and in particular of Oberon who has demonstrated a dispassionate distance to killing his rivals in certain instances, is that he may have no concept of murder because he may have no concept of death. (Yes I know that he reacted to the iron bell in such a way that would indicate it was harmful to him. Even lethal.) However, even if he were to express a concept of death we would not be able to be certain that his concept was anything like our concept. Does death mean an end for him? If it does not, then the gravity we attach to it may be lost on him and the other fae.

I think my point is that while it would certainly not be appropriate to think of a creature like this in human terms, i'm not even certain you can extrapolate "human" from him. There could be creatures, so far removed from human experience that it would be impossible. Of course, the associations that I make with the fae are not going to be the same ones that you make. Your concept of them may fall within human experience. You have other creatures though. Your space spawn. They would certainly have been subject to mental dispositions grounded in a different biology. We're conditioned with the genetic remainders of our hunter gatherer ancestors. They would be conditioned with something else. I dont know what. Something spawny probably.

Punchinello writes...

______________________________________________________________________________
It brings me to another distinction: the one between sentience and artificial intelligence. Coyote, for instance, can throw a zinger, but is he self-aware? I don't think he is. Xanatos hasn't achieved (or would wish to achieve) that much, has he?
______________________________________________________________________________

I don't know anything about computer technology past it's relationship to cognitive studies into artificial intelligence. There is a lot of dispute about the possibility of an actual computer intelligence. I'm not competent to say if the possibility is real but I would not discount it. I can see numerous avenues for foundations for intelligence besides the neurochemical variety. Incidentally, I once took a Turing test...and failed. I was delighted.

Todd Jensen writes...

Many mythological scholars believe that in the early days of the myths, humanity was matriarchal, worshipping some sort of "Great Goddess"-figure, but as time went on, it underwent a shift to a more patriarchal culture, producing male gods such as Zeus who toppled the "Great Goddess" and replaced her. Did such theories (assuming that you're aware of them) influence your vision of Oberon overthrowing his mother Mab and replacing her?

Chris J. writes...

Greg:

I have a million questions, but I would prefer to leave them unaswered. However, I would like to thank you (and all those others involved) for creating such a magical series. Gargoyles is truly a work that raises that bar when it comes to storytelling in an animated series.

So, regardless of whatever happens in the future with Goliath and the gang, thank you for producing some of best storytelling this fan has seen in any medium.

Entity writes...

Ok, you know what I have yet to do? Praise you on GARGOYLES 2198. I mean, there is so much worthy of praise. Here are some things I found most impressive:

1) Nicholas Natsilane Maza and the Order of the Guardian that he is a part of. It gives both Natsilane and good old Tom a legacy.

2) The idea of the Space-Spawn being born "amidst the fury of an exploding star." It's such an original idea, and in science-fiction, originality is sometimes very hard to come by. Speaking of which, maybe there's a question in here: do you know what element the Spawn Spawn are based off of? (e.g. carbon-based)

3) To have the Space-Spawn take over the world right off the bat, and in such a swift, painless manner. As you state, there is "very little loss of life, unless freedom matters to you." This puts drama before bloodshed, pure Gargoyles.

4) The Illuminati's dark pact with the Space-Spawn. This actually brings up another question (and I hope this one hasn't already been asked, if so I apologize): is Alexander Fox Xanatos IV a member of the Illuminati at the time of his abduction?

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

Lord Sloth wrote some words he/she? had learned from the show. you couldnt decifer one of them. Im not sure how to spell it, but it sounds like ESH-ih-lon (he's one of our lower ranking members, etc. at least I think thats where i remember it from)

someone may have said this already. i havent read the questions being submitted archive.

Marty "Kaioto" Lund writes...

Not really a question, but you have my sympathy on Team Atlantis. Working in a corporation, I understand that nothing quite feels the same as having a project you've invested a hefty chunk of time into suddenly get displaced. Well, maybe being kicked in the guts by a mule or something comes close. :(

I wish people would make up their minds about projects before men and women started investing large amounts of time into making the project a reality. It is even worse in a creative process.

In systems design, it feels so insulting to get along the Systems Development Lifecycle to the point where you're working to fulfill agreed-upon specifications and suddenly the client does a 180 and tanks the entire project. I imagine it is even more frustrating in an artistic / creative setting where it is only natural to put large portions of yourself into a production.

So, to you and all those with whom you worked, my sympathies. I appreciate your efforts and I'm disappointed that we'll miss out on Team Atlantis.

Bona Fortuna
- Kai

Sexy Queer writes...

Greg, I am so sorry to hear about Team Atlantis getting dropped before it even hit the air. This Demona and Fiona Cammore story did sound pretty interesting.
Hope you get another voice directing jod or somthing else soon.

Todd Jensen writes...

Count me as another person who's sorry to hear that "Team Atlantis" won't be coming out after all. From what I had heard about it (especially at the Gathering), it had sounded good (and not just because Demona was going to guest star in it). Such a pity.

zakhur writes...

This is more a comment than a question! I've been a Fan of Gargoyles for a long time, since it first aired on the Disney Afternoon! and after it stopped airing, I started looking in the internet, to see if the show would keep going, I mostly saw some fanfics, but it never was quite the same.
Although I was amazed on how many fans the show had, and more so that most the of the fans were adults.
now, when I rediscovered gargoyles on toon disney, and finding this site again, and actually asking questions, and joining the comment room.
I find myself so intrigued not only on how great the show is, but how many other people enjoy it and find so much entreteiment in it, and how wonderfull gargoyle fans are, they are very loyel and really care about Gargoyles.
So my question is, how does it make you feel, As one of the creators, that after the show has been cancelled for 5 years, so many people love and keep it alive in their hearts, through the internet and reunions such as the gathering?

Mary Mack writes...

Where can *I* buy a copy of Cree Summer's CD?

Everyone eat Round Table pizza!

Oh! And sign up for G2002!

And write to Disney asking for Gargoyles DVD's! (Greg, you can tell Mr. Fukuto that I'll by Gargs on DVD, and I don't have a DVD player.)

Todd Jensen writes...

During the course of the series, New York was struck by a number of events of a decidedly "unusual" variety, and ones which obviously weren't completely covered up (even if the true cause of them wasn't known to its citizens). Gargoyle sightings were the obvious part, but also so were the "missing nights" in "City of Stone" and Oberon putting everyone to sleep in "The Gathering", for example. By the time that the gargoyles were revealed to the public in "Hunter's Moon", therefore, New York had experienced two years' worth of Fortean activity.

While the obvious main reason for the public panic over the gargoyles in "Hunter's Moon" and "The Journey" was simple fear over them, do you suppose that the cumulative aftereffects of the two years' worth of weirdness (especially from "City of Stone" and "The Gathering") could have been a factor as well? After all, in real life, unexplained ongoing problems can often lead to people looking for scapegoats, and persecuting minority groups thereby (as in the case of persecutions of the Jews getting more severe in 14th century Europe during the Black Death). Do you think that some of that could have been at work here?

Anonymous writes...

You idiot, do you actually think he'll answer everyone of those questions. If he actually gives straight forward and clear responses for half of these then I'm a monkey's uncle.

Audra writes...

Hi Greg!!!
Gargoyles is such a great TV show. It's my favorite TV show. And it shows cartoons are not just for little kids. Anyways, I remember reading about your plans about Brooklyn's mate. I was just wondering, did you, or any or any other creators plan on what she was going to look like? Does she kind of have a "beak" like Brooklyn? It's ok if you don't want to answer, but I just wanted to know. But I am glad that Brooklyn would get a mate. I felt very sorry for him after Maggie rejected him when he was trying to help her and Anglea chose Broadway. I was just wondering if you guys planned what Katana was going to look like. Thanks for reading this. ^_^

Sincerely,
Audra

Artemis writes...

Hi Greg! First time poster here. I want to thank you on writing such a great show!! I only started to watch it a little over a year ago. I've only seen about 70% of the episodes, because of it's late airtime and the fact that I have older siblings who what dibs on the tv. What I really want to ask you is how did you come up with this whole series? It's really incredible how it all ties in, considering its complicated plot. My teachers have always told me that I have a gift for story telling, but most of its all been fan fiction. I love to write, but the only reason I do fan fiction is because I can't seem to make up my own characters. So how did you come up with all these complex characters? Did you have to sit down for hours to think of characters, or did they just suddenly come to you one day? Anything you're willing to tell me will be greatly appreciated. I don't care if writers don't really make it on their first story, I know that (I'm only 17, after all). I just want to write share with some people something that I can truly call my own. Thank you! (Next time around, I actually will ask questions regarding the show)
=^..^= <---Meow!

matt writes...

a couple weeks ago someone asked what gargoyles protected before the other races showed up and you said each other. but since we have the Mayan clan protecting a forest, the Loch Ness clan protecting prehistoric monsters, the London Clan protecting a shop in SOHO, and i'm sure there were other examples, what gargoyles protect has always been extremely varied and never limited to sentient beings.

1. it seems from clan to clan there is a wide range of what to protect. why is that?

2. every species, like the gargoyles, protect their own kind and eggs, etc., but why did gargoyles begin to extend that protection to more than themselves?

Todd Jensen writes...

Since you and Entity recently (as of July 20th) had a brief exchange about Xanatos's characterization, I thought that I'd give a thought of my own about him.

One thing that has occurred to me is that there was an intriguing paradox about Xanatos in his "feud" with the gargoyles. One advantage that Xanatos had over the conventional "cartoon super-villain" was that he was a level-headed, practical man who wasn't interested in revenge or pointless vendettas. And this, on one level, made him potentially a more challenging adversary for the gargoyles. Because as a result, he wasn't likely to get so distracted in carrying out his personal score with the clan that he'd make foolish mistakes which they could take advantage of and thereby win, the way that more conventional "master-villains" in animated series do (and which, elsewhere in "Gargoyles", the Archmage himself fell prey to, when he kept on making strategic and tactical errors in "Avalon" - such as not waiting until dawn to attack or in magically tormenting Goliath when he could just as easily have simply zapped him into a pile of dust). It removed the leading source of "mistakes that antagonists make" which can save the day for the protagonists.

But, ironically enough, this very trait of Xanatos's also may have helped the gargoyles in a way. For, since Xanatos wasn't a revenge-crazed man, he wouldn't be likely to be constantly pursuing the gargoyles obssessively in "conventional cartoon super-villain" style, and indeed, he didn't. He went after them because he had specific plans about what to do with them (using them as his agents for such operations as stealing the disks from Cyberbiotics). But that motive didn't take too long to be discarded, as it became increasingly aware to Xanatos that he couldn't make use of the gargoyles in that way ever again; in fact, I recently noticed, upon examining his actions closer, that in Season Two, despite his continued clashes with the clan, he had stopped attempting to actually capture and dominate them (the one exception being his capture of Hudson in "The Price", and then there was a different reason for that - the need to use Hudson as a guinea pig for the Cauldron of Life). So he no longer had a serious reason for capturing them, and consequently, didn't see the need to make those efforts. The only possible reason left for going after the gargoyles was that of revenge, and that obviously didn't interest him. So he had no reason to pursue them (and indeed, seems to have even been aware, as the ending of "City of Stone" makes clear, that leaving them more or less at liberty could be much more advantageous to him anyway). He could afford to leave them alone.

So I find it an amusing paradox that the very factor which could have made Xanatos a serious threat to the gargoyles actually helped to make him less of a threat than he might have been. He wasn't obssessively pursuing them on the basis of a pointless grudge. He went after them only when he saw a genuine need to, and there was increasingly less reason for him to capture or destroy the whole clan as the series went on (and good reason, on the other hand, to let them be).

KW Keller writes...

Well, I'm not Todd, but in response to the history of Excalibur, Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Caliburn" is thought by some to be derived from the Welsh "Caledfwlch" (Breton "Kaledvoulc'h"), or from the Irish "Caladbolg" or "Caladcholg." Caledfwlch appears in several Welsh Arthurian stories, especially "Culhwch ac Olwen." Caladbolg, "hard dinter," was the lightning sword of Fergus Mac Roth. Caladcholg was a similar sword owned by Fergus Mac Leti. Various people have argued at one time or another that the modern idea of Excalibur was taken from one of these sources.

Entity writes...

Hi Greg,

Don't let the death of Team Atlantis get you down, true brilliance is never recognized in its own time.

Anyway, I was wondering about your personal opinion on something: pop Arthurian Legend. First there was the "Merlin" miniseries, now there's another one on TNT called "The Mists of Avalon." Both take the traditional story of King Arthur and try to present its elements of magic to contemporary TV audiences in the guise of religion. Instead of accepting magic as a part of the legend, which I guess TV execs think is too "silly" or maybe even "controversial," they turn the Arthur legend into a morality tale about the old verse the new, Paganism verse Christianity, imagination verse logic, etc... take your pick.

What's your take? Do you think this is a constructive and innovative approach to telling the story, or a distracting and childish one?

Aris Katsaris writes...

A couple weeks ago, you posted a ramble in an interesting exchange of ideas with Punchinello, about the subject of "sentience" and how it's used in science fiction and fantasy, about whether it's a wall or not, etc, etc...

I thought to chime in, contributing with the concepts that Orson Scott Card introduces in "Speaker for the Dead" (an excellent book btw - I encourage everyone to read it). There he uses different words to differentiate between different kinds of 'alienness'... Let me quote:

"The Nordic language recognizes four orders of foreigness. The first is the otherlander, or 'utlanning', the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the 'framling' [...]. This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the 'raman', the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the 'varelse', which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it."

Obviously here the most important concepts are that of the 'raman' and of the 'varelse'. These can be useful, over and beyond the concept of 'sentience', because they refer to how much of an understanding can exist between different species - unlike 'non-sentient' for a species to be 'varelse' doesn't necessarily make it "inferior"... Only non-understandable.

On the other hand I find these concepts also intriguing because they *do* carry a moral judgment within them, even if it's a more subtle one. To recognize an alien as "raman" is to recognize him as basically human, to recognize that his fundamental motivations are the same as yours. It's the beginning of understanding and tolerance...

Now in the gargoyles universe, it's clear that both gargoyles and fae (and Nokkar's people also) are all "ramen": Other species which despite all their difference with our own, we can recognize as fundamentally 'human'. I'd also go on to say that this is what people like Jon Castaway refuse to see. By declaring that all gargoyles are monsters he doesn't necessarily refuse them their 'sentience' - he does refuse though to see that they are 'ramen'... and as such he can say things such as 'they are all evil', 'they must be destroyed', etc, etc...

And with that let me conclude with another quote from the book:
"Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals but fellow pilgrim journeying to the shrine of intelligence.
Yet that is what I see or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that *we* have."

Sorry for the length of this ramble... :-)

Patricia writes...

Hi Greg!

In response to the Tootsie Pop commercial: I've seen it within the past year on TV, so.. it's still making its rounds on TV. And yes, I know the commercial, but.. I'm an early 80s baby (born in the early 80s). And that response fit with the question, very much so.

I'm running out of things to say.. whee.. ahem...

Oh! I found a quote or a poem or something about the "Hobgoblin of Little Minds," but I've forgotten where I put the paper that has it.. hmmm Maybe (hopefully) when I find it, I'll remember to type it up for you.. and see if that's what you're talking about.

Ok, general question that isn't really on Gargoyles or any of your other projects, but you might know.

What's the plural form of series? Is it series or seria? Or none of these? If it's not one of these, then what is it?

Thanks.

P.S. I can't wait for the next Contest to begin ;) Though I respect if you take a break, I just want to see how well I think I can do in them.. hehe... Umm.. yeah. Boy this covered alot of ground...

VF writes...

Some comments about the 2001 Gathering

I am a communications director at a university and can truly appreciate the vast amount of work that goes into event planning, so thanks to all the people who worked so hard on the Gathering 2001. I had posted a note in the Station Eight Comment Room a few weeks before the convention, expressing some slight trepidation about my two daughters and myself attending the event because I felt like a bit of an outsider, but we wanted to show our support for the series and encourage its revival. Several people, including you, Greg, responded in the Comment Room and were very welcoming and put my concerns to rest.

Or so it seemed.

Imagine my thoughts when, shortly after the Opening Ceremonies got underway, my now-infamous daughter says, quite out loud for just about everybody to hear: "Mommy, what's a con virgin?!" Yes, that was my 4-year-old, Caitlin. So after blushing a bit and trying to quietly explain the term to her, all I could think of was that maybe I'd have to carefully scout out any future sessions and try to pre-determine their age-appropriate level.

But I didn't have to worry. The weekend was really very nice. I'm not very good at remembering names, so unfortunately I don't know the names of the kind people we encountered. The women in the Art Room, for example, were so accommodating and welcoming when both of my daughters became inspired to draw Elisa (as a human and as a gargoyle) and Goliath pictures and submitted them to be displayed. The girls were so excited that we had to drop in and see them ... often.

The purchase of some Gargoyles coloring books and stamps and a Goliath mug, the art table that totally occupied my daughters' time while I sat in on your Mug-A-Guest session, hearing the writers discuss their work on the show, the voice actor panel, the Radio Play (thanks for the great choice of material), the Video Room - all were very interesting and fun for this con ... uh ... first-timer.

It has been interesting to read other people's diaries of the Gathering since, including one from Aaron. I didn't know it until I read his summary, but he mentioned watching my other daughter, 6-year-old Jessica, who, during the Radio Play, spent more time turned around watching Aaron's friend, Mara, while she sketched. Mara (whose name I didn't know at the time) was kind enough not to mind Jessica staring mesmerized at her work. Jessica really has an affinity for art, and Mara was very encouraging and gave Jessica one of the sketches she had done. It was beautiful.

I also had the pleasure of meeting your wife, briefly. We compared notes a bit, this being her second - I believe she said - Gathering that she had attended. She, too, assured me that although newcomers may feel awkward at first, her estimation is that it's a pretty nice group of people who make up the fandom. I concur.

While my girls and I had perhaps only modestly participated in the Gathering, it was fun and I hope it will do some good to perpetuate what I think is a really great program that deserves to be revived. So thanks for all your work and that of the con staff and the guests for all the time and energy invested. My daughters and I certainly appreciated it.

Anonymous writes...

You realize of course that giving us vague information on future gargoyle stories and the six spinoffs only hypes gargoyles beyond proportion making it impossible for you to satisfy your audience or at least those who have read about the master plan. I mean some people are expecting your to deliver something rivaling Babylon 5 which is nearly impossible and also TGS and the other fanfics are also setting your vision so if you do something which will make the fanfic universes appear off track like that owen being puck thing then you'll alienate a lot of hardcore fans. Example of this is Star Wars fans who grew up on the sequel novels and comics which is in someway fan fanfiction since they aren't exactly canon are demanding the appearances or cameos of novel or comic characters in the prequel movies or the legitimazation of the non canon novels and comics.

1.Do you understand what I am talking about?
2.Have I changed your mind about revealing more secrets of the gargoyles universe?

matt writes...

geeez, you should make a new archive catagory called "Tootsie Roll Stuff" cuz of all these people talking about it. and for the record, i'm 19 and i remember it quite clearly despite my terrible meory, in fact, my brother and i recited the whole commercial te other day, including the best part when the Owl says two. he says, "twhoooo" its funny.

twhooo bad you had to answer "The World May Never Know" to my question, cuz first of all, i'm sure the clans with garg beast DO know, and second i don't understand why you won't tell us how many eggs a garg beast lays? i mean, is there some reason not to tell us? why are you holding this back? how many eggs does a female garg beast usually lay in a lifetime????!!!! geeeez, you frustrate me! thje archives wouldn't be so big if we didn't have to keep repeating questions cuz you avoid answering them!

i'm just kidding Greg. you don't have to reveal this, and honestly, if i were you i probably wouldn't have even revealed as much as you have about all the Gargoyles stuff. but i suppose it keeps interest and the fans pysched about the series. i'll say that since i stumbled upon this site my fanaticism in Gargoyles has gone up considerly. so good for you for revealing just the right amount of secrets, but not everything!

still wish you'd tell me though...

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

"The world may never know.
(That smart-ass response was a reference to an old tootsie-pop commercial. Anyone old enough to remember it has my sympathy.) "

Its not that old. Im 21 and I get it.

Josh Wurzel writes...

Hi Greg

First, let me congradulate you on your great speeches at Gathering opening and closing ceremonies. I don't think I've had more fun in my life than I did at Gathering, and it was in part due to you (well, not counting the whole "Greg created Gargoyles in the first place thing" - I don't want to give you ALL the credit for having a good time in my own hometown). I didn't sit in on many of your panels, but the few that I did sit in on showed me that you are funny, intelligent, and not very arrogant, considering you get worshipped as a god for three or four days a year (which would make my head inflate like Oberon in "The Gathering")

Second, I was one of the people that attended the MiSTing of "The Gathering I & II". I'm sure you remember, we were making lewd jokes and comments at the screen. Greg Bishansky said you were watching us from the back row. I was the one making bizzare gestures with shadows, particularly the picking of Oberon's nose.

This brings me to my question 1): Do Oberon's boogers have any magical powers? If so, what are they?
2): In 2198, are any of Oberon's boogers still around?

I am expecting a sarcastic remark on this one.

Shan writes...

To my question about future occurences of Jeffrey Robbins you said:

>Yep. (And you worry too much. I'm not paying that close >attention.)

1. I'm glad Jeffrey wasn't a one-time character to you. Even as a teenager I wanted to see characters with disabilities in animation, to reflect the wide variety of people in society as a whole. My sister and I co-developed a series years ago where a visually impaired character was prominent (maybe someday we'll get to do somethin with it). Fifteen years after I first got seriously interested in animation, I've seen a wide growth in character ethnicity but still not much in this area. It's one reason I loved working on EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS and having Garrett (voiced by Jason Marsden, also Pvt. Brutto from ROUGHNECKS) as our wheelchair bound hero who was such a good character you practically forgot about the wheelchair. Jeffrey's the same kind of character. While portrayed as the character is, ultimately you see the person.

To make this into a question, especially now that I realize that the elder Brutto in ROUGHNECKS ends up in a similar situation (not sure whose choice that was though): without forcing it into the story, would you be open to incorporating more characters with disabilities in animated series?

2. Me worry too much? I think there's a space in line for you behind my father and Kevin on that one. If Mom or my sister think it they're not saying. (In other words I get told that a lot.) Won't deny it. But you do I have to remember I didn't know you that well back then... much changes in a year.

matt writes...

i sent you this quote from St. Thomas Aquinas cuz of its implications in the gargoyle universe:

"Angels transcend every religion, every philosophy, every creed.
In fact angels have no religion as we know it...
their existence precedes every religious system that has ever existed on earth."

-St. Thomas Aquinas

and you asked if i had the dates of the quote, and as hard as i searched i couldn't find any, but i did some very interesting reading on him. Thomas Aquinas was an Italian philosopher and theologian who worked at various colleges in the Mediterranean world. he was probably born in 1225, and died in 1274, so most likely the quote was said between those two dates, LOL. hope thats helpful...

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

Just got done reading the Greg Weisman section of the archives. Time for a LONG rant.

I wanted to tell you at the gathering, but I forgot. which angers me to no end, because i went on and on about this at work for months before i left for LA. in awakenings, elisa makes the number three on her hand. you said how odd it was that the japanese animation studio had her make three in that particular way, with the thumb, index and middle fingers. the reality is that thats the PROPER way in AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE to make the number three. they must have looked it up to see "how americans do it." what people usually do as three, with the thumb holding down the pinky, is actually "six" in sign language. and the thumb holding down the index finger is "nine" (with the middle being eight and the ring finger being seven.) a 'hitchikers thumb' is ten. :)

speaking of awakenings, the "nice mask" comment isnt in the "movie". i was mad. i pouted all night last night.

re: goliath and elisa needing help to have a child
technically, theyre closely related enough that they prolly could have a child. that child would not be fertile tho. a Stallion and a female donky can have a hinny, a Mare and a male donky can have a mule, but neither a mule nor a hinny can have offspring. though, in your book, a garg and a human may be way farther from eachother than a donkey and a horse. despite the fact that donkeys and horses arent nearly as related as they look.

I know you dont think this way, but humor me for a second. if you were an animal, what would you be? Tore (my fiancee) would be a polarbear. he likes red meat. he likes the cold. he LOOKS like a polarbear, even when hes not overweight. he acts like one. people give him the respect of one. and he's all white collar(fur) on the surface, and blends in with the crowd(snow) but underneath hes jet black(covered in tattoos, a closet freak ;P) it took a long LONG time to find an animal for me. im nocturnal. im cute. im mostly herbiverous, but not completely. i like florida's hot and muggy weather. i sleep a lot. we went through many rodent and lemur species before settling on flying squirrel.

on the topic of what names mean (oh wise one :) my full name is Kelly Leigh Creighton. Kelly started as a gaelic name, i think spelled calleach, pronounced ka-LEE-ack(phlem sound here). Then the irish clan the O'Kellys took the name. and they were a big factor in the liberation of ireland. so it became fashionable to name boys Kelly. then in 1958 i believe, there was an actress named Kelly. so it became okay to name girls kelly. which is more the case now. anyway, Kelly means "warrior of the king" or "female warrior" Leigh is an english word still used today (in britan) which means "meadow". my last name, Creighton, started as a scottish name, and then spread to england and ireland, where it took many diversion such as Crichton, etc. my family roots have been traced to scotland. it means "near the creek." so fully, my name means "Female warrior of the King, in the meadow near the creek." i always wonder if i will find a meadow near a creek with some unmarked grave in it or something.

along the same track, have you seen the gargoyles code? its a long string of letters and symbols that, if you know how to read them, describes one's character. part of the code is for real life, and asks how obsessed you are. the maximum obsession is defined by one who would be willing to be a test subject for a mutagen that might make them a gargoyle. im one of those silly people. are you? doubt it... (thats not meant to be offensive, i just doubt youre that kind of person :)

at the gathering, while talking about all the spinoffs, specifically i think you were talking about 2198, you said "and its really sad that im still working on this." actually, i dont think its sad at all. im pretty happy about it. because it really is something special. and we all believe in you. its pretty cool that youre as obsessed with your own shows as your fans.

i also recently learned that you dont drink, and think smoking is pretty haneous (sp?). that rules. its nice to see other people out there like that, not just in the fandom too. its really rare these days. not that i didnt respect you before, but i really respect that, and in a way, appreciate it.

i read about how you fell out of the bunkbed when you were little. that reminded me of my bunkbet gymnastics. i hate using the ladder, since i can never find it when im sleep walking. (i sleepwalk a LOT). so ive trained myself to grab the bar on the side of the bunk, or if there isnt one, the lip underneat the bunk, and flip over the side to land on the floor. thing is, if i lose my balance i land on the edge of the bunk below, instead of the floor, and wake whoever is sleeping there. usually, though, since im sleepwalking, i wont remember that i did it unless they confront me about it in the morning. so no guilt ;P

on sleepwaling: i have recently discovered that any time someone tells me im dreaming, i get very angry at them and insist im not, even if i am. i have instructed my parents (specifically my mom, my dad did it anyway because he thought it was funny) to just agree with me, pretend i make sense, and send be back off to bed. o_O

ive wanted to tell you about my religion for some time, but ive been a little nervous to, because its a touchy subject with some people. but after reading your views, i feel like i can at least give you a short version, and it shouldnt be too bad. basically i believe that there are an infinite number of universes, all connected by a void. everything is true, in some universe or another. and some things can travel thru the void into other universes. so basically all religions are true, because there are an infinite number of universes. i simply choose to pray to an alternate set of dieties than the normally accepted ones. which isnt to say i put any less faith in God or Budda (sp?), etc. I just choose not to pray to him/them. which i think this kind of falls into your beliefs anyway, since you belive in alternate universes, and that all things are true. which is basically what my religion preaches. so youre Raptorian and didnt even know it ;P

theres actually scientific evidence coming to light to support the "theory" of alternate universes. cold dark matter, morphic fields, time as a fourth dimension, the possible non-existance of time... its fascinating. this thing that i knew all along is now getting proved by science. basically, the theory of cold dark matter states that there is a force in the universe that is more powerful than gravity. but it only partially exists in this universe, so it is hard to see and study. and most of the force it exerts is exerted in another universe, so were not even getting the full effect. morphic feilds is the theory that everything in the universe is connected by lines of force. this explains why when an atom is split, and two electrons go zinging away from eachother at high speed, one can look at the north/south orientation of one electron and know that the other electron is the exact same. because they are connected. which is why dogs know when their owner is comming home, even if the spouse does not. which is why people can sometimes instinctively know that something is wrong with a loved one, even if miles away. why twins, if separated, can still sense what the other is doing, even if they dont have a twin. why sometimes we can predict the future, or get flashes from the past. morphic fields trancend even time. there is also a theory that states that time is the fourth dimension. basically, since were three dimensional creatures, we can see the EDGE of things in TWO dimensions (meaning you can see the edge of a planar surface), and we can COMPREHEND things in the THIRD dimension (you cant see the edge of a 3D object, a coke can for example, the edge curves away from you and you cant see it. technically, it has no edge). fourth dimensional beings could see our EDGE, and comprehend the fourth dimension. we, as 3d creatures, can only measure what we think is the passing of time. a two dimensional creature could only measure the third dimension. of course there is another theory, who's own creator admits that its just a neat theory he came up with and doenst actually believe in. he said that maybe time doesnt exist at all. maybe we think time passes, just like when we watch a movie we think the pictures are going by, but its just many still frames. as in there is an alternate universe for each second in time. and we only think there is motion because at each second, we have the memories of all the things that have passed before. its an interesting theory, but im more inclined to think of time as the fourth dimension.

anyway, im done rambling for the night. please feel free to comment as you see fit, or not at all :)

Homer Thompson writes...

I read in the archives that you liked the Simpsons and Futurama.

1.Which episodes do you like the most?

2.What do you think of the new eiposdes thay had the last years (2-3 years ago)compared to the first ones (87-97)?

Gabriel writes...

In your latest Random Stuff, you said you thought Michael Reeves' thing about Demona casting a spell on the gargoyles the night before they woke up would make them switch to modern English...that doesn't work:
They were speaking and reading modern English syntaxicly (is that a word, syntatically) and verbally in the 10th century when they should have been speaking and reading Middle English. The familiar form of you (thou) wansn't even close to being uttered.
However, it could just be that "Awakenings" was just made into modern English so we could understand it; sort of like if an American wrote a novel about Russians, the characters' dialogue would be in English, but we're just supposed to know that it is really Russian. Get it? Is that what we were supposd to assume what was going on?
I just had trouble accepting the rambling as a concrete reason behind the Gargoyles' language.

matt writes...

for some reason i feel compelled to share this with you:

ok, i didn't even think about this until you mentioned the "Cairn" that Goliath and co. were imprisoned in in a recent question, but my dog, Gus, is a Cairn Terrier, and i've commonly called him a hound of ulster in my best irish accent. and i suddenly realized that that is funny not only cuz his species was named for digging into the same kind of place as "The Hound of Ulster" had its climax, but a Cairn Terrier was also Toto in "The Wizard of Oz" which was quoted twice in the episode (once by Elisa, and once by Banshee). and then at random i choose Cuchallin as my new screen icon in the Comment Room here! wow! i just thought that was an amazing string of coincidences, or are they coincidences?

why was "The Wizard of Oz" quoted twice seperatly in this one episode, even when it was never quoted anywhere else in the series? seems weird...

anyway, thats all i have to say... oh, and hey! now my dog is famous for being mentioned online to the Wizard of Ask Greg! hooray Gus (aka the hound of ulster reborn, lol)

Phil writes...

Another little ramble.

The last page of the Gargoyles 2198 proposal is more about the business side of the show. You wrote that WB has DC and Marvel is piecing out its characters; Disney has nothing to compete, "but Gargoyles was designed to be that competition."

I've been thinking about that statement and it does seem odd to me that Gargoyles is one of the few properties that Disney isn't taking full advantage of. Their animated features have be released and re-released on video and it seems that every new release is followed relatively quickly by a direct-to-video sequel and/or an animated series. They're even giving the sequel treatment to classics like Lady and the Tramp and Cinderella.

I wonder what it is about Gargoyles that prevents Disney from giving it similar treatment.

Phil writes...

Hi, Greg

This is just a ramble to say thanks again for the G2198 prize. I've read it several times, and I really hope the show gets made someday; I can hardly wait to see it.

Although it would be neat to have a document like this for any of the spin-offs, this is really the one to have. Gargoyles 2198 is really the culmination of everything we know. I see so many of the episodes (especially the World Tour) in a different light, and the other proposed spin-offs seem to be leading right into this one.

You said that the prize itself was worthless, but it has quickly become one of my prized possessions. Thanks again!

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

you asked for favorite smartass responses.

Heather "HUDSON" writes...
Greg,while at the Gathering, I was talking to Thom,who had this to say about Lexington:" But, I'm a virgin..."
I suppose, there has to be a celebate Gargoyle,eh?
Is this what you had in mind for the character? Or, does he get his jollies, through cyber-sex?
Personally, I don't care if he ever finds a mate...

Greg responds...

What's the question?

Are you asking if Lex is a virgin or Thom?

Ed writes...
'THE EDGE' comments.

Not a big favourite. The animation is gorgeous, and the ending is sublime. But the Steel Clan echoed the Foot Clan a bit much for my tastes. I can't remember my first viewing that well, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't expect the red robot to be Xanatos. (Although I should have, because I'd seen 'FUTURE TENSE' a few months previously).

In hindsight, there are several nice touches and the writing is delightful. But it wasn't one of those episodes where the difference between normal action cartoons and 'Gargoyles' leap out and grab you.

I guess I just never liked the Steel Clan.

Greg responds...

Oh, well...

They speak well of you though.

recorded on 07-03-00

and my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE (which actually had me in tears):

Okay... Let me try for something less revelatory... You said that Goliath and Elisa would raise a kid together. What *gender* kid? :-)

Greg responds...

Hey, how do you do that particular smiley face.

No. It's missing a nose. Wait a second.

No, that seems like too big a nose.

Large nostrils.

Hell, I just can't figure it out. :(

What was the question?

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

another science question (can you tell i have no life?)
i had a discussion with my biology teacher, specifically regarding the effects of a mutagen. she said it was actually possibly toalter the DNA of a creature, but the metamorphosis would take a long time, since it would only happen as the individual cells divided. some cells divide frewquently, like skin cells. bone cells do not. so basically the metamorphosis would have taken a lot longer. except im assuming sevarius would have taken this into account, and added a stimulant. sorry, not really a question, im just going on and on and on at this point ;P

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

ooh wait found another one. (please, if you dislike the fact that im posting dozens of questions, let me know and i will stop at once.)

Anonymous writes...
You said that the New Olympians had something better than nuclear tech could you tell us what it is?

Greg responds...

Zeracoy Enex Power.

(I just made that up.)

recorded on 06-29-01

thats great!

Aaron writes...

Monday

We headed down in time for the 3x3 eyes Q & A to look for Thom. But Mr. Punctuality is nowhere to be found. Turns out he left earlier to feed his dogs. So we stake out the only way in or out and do eventually waylay him for a bit, ostendably so he can pick up the stained glass Lex he bought. (And so he'll do the line) "C'mon, Greg's already going to rag on you for being late anyway." ;)

Thom does eventually record the line, so I also have a recording of Thom pretending he's Riff Raff, which I need to get to Lynati.

We attend closing ceremonies, which are always kind of bittersweet, and get pre-reged for next year.

After that, we sadly see Lynati off in a cab, and Wolfie, Dreamie, Warpy, Josh, Mara and I all piled into Wolfie's convertable and headed off to a chinese place Josh recommended for lunch. (Funny thing though. An hour later we were hungry again) ;)

Mara and I actually stayed until Wednesday, but that's the end of the Gathering stuff. Except for some...

Random Stories: I don't remember exactly when or where I heard these, but I thought they should be shared.

Crispy apparently had a running war with the hotel staff. He emptied his mini-bar and put his own stuff in it, which you weren't allowed to do. The staff takes it back out, and restocks the minibar. Crispy re-empties the minibar, and puts his stuff back. The staff swaps it again, and leaves him a note saying to cut it out. I don't even want to *think* about his minibar bill.

Why does Duke L'Orange sound just like Brooklyn? Apparently, when they created the character, he was supposed to be *French*. But they didn't like that, so they tried making him English instead. Apparently, they didn't like that either, so Jeff, just goofing around, starts doing his Brooklyn voice, and they're like "That's it! That's perfect!"

What were all those norms in formal wear doing at the hotel? On Friday, they were there for a wedding in the Roof Garden. A wedding that, according to Greg, trashed the place. On Saturday, I was heading up the escalator to get my auction cash, when I passed Myhr going down. He asked if I knew what was going on in the other big room downstairs, and I guessed it was a wedding. He shook his head and said "It's somebody's 18th birthday." Which blew me away. I said "When I turned eighteen, I got a cake and twenty bucks." Myhr says "I got thrown out of the house." "You win."

To sum up...

1 Coke from the hotel minibar: $2.65
Sushi dinner for two at Wasabi's: $40.00
Eye of Greg: $65.00
One week of Mara's company: Priceless.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, Greg. And see ya next year.

Aaron writes...

Sunday.

Sunday was a weird day. As I kept remarking to people, "This four day con schedule is really throwing me off." (This was in no way a bad thing, it's just that all the other cons I've been to have been three day affairs, so I felt like I should be rushing to things that weren't happening yet)

Mara and I wandered over to City Walk and spent too much time and money on souvenirs for other people, and T-shirts with witty saying on them. We also spent most of the time sharing a really great slushy from a little shop nestled in between two huge ones. If you're ever there again, I recommend the place highly.

We thought we got back to the hotel in time, but, um, various factors made us really late to the VA autograph sessions. (Had I but known Cree Summer was going to be there... I would have had her autograph my copy of Street Fairy) By the time I got there, Cree and Keith David had left, and Jeff Bennett had to run off to his Mug-a-Guest. (Again, I kept forgetting most of the guests actually *lived* in the city we were in. It wasn't like previous years where they're trapped with us for the duration) Warpy and I were actually supposed to be the last people in line, but a few more people showed up and I didn't have the heart to turn them away. I lost Mara and Lynati for a while here, but found them again by the time I was near the finish. The remaining VAs, Crispy, Elisa, Neil, Gregg, and Thom were all still signing away tho', and I got some more names for my giant puzzle. Neil, Gregg, and Elisa especially seemed really tickled that this many people would line up for them. For my part, I thought they were all very nice, and I was impressed that Elisa recognized her character. Thom looked like he was going to fall asleep in his chair, and complained of being hungry.

Thom also, at that point at least, had apparently seen Moulen Rouge three times. Mara'd seen it four times, and the two began an animated conversation about it.

And then... The auction!

I'd like to thank Myhr for being such a great auctioneer, and Draconis for stepping in when Myhr's voice started to give out.

I have, apparently, gotten a reputation as something of an auction maniac. "God of the bid", I believe was the phrase. I don't know how that happened. ^_^ I certainly wasn't close to Demona May and Heather Rice, (Two big spenders who were conspicuously absent from the auction this year), or whoever bought The Mirror for eight hundred odd dollars. But I do love an auction. Always get a good seat down front, and bring some pretty girls to distract the auctioneer if you can.

I was bidding for myself, Mara, and (sometimes) Lynati, and eventually for a pool to get one of the Carl Johnson CDs, so it might have looked like I was rolling in it.

I did mess with Jannie a little, as she'd promised a couple of weeks before to give me a run for my money. I did *not* bid against Siryn, (Don't annoy next year's con head) but anybody else was fair game to be bid against. And bid I would.

Apparently, there was some feeling that I was simply raising the bids for the sake of doing so. I swear that I bid on nothing I wasn't interested in, I simply wasn't *as* interested in some things as I was in others. And anyway, it is for charity after all. And since I wasn't allowed to give blood, I let myself go a bit at the auction, along with encouraging others to do the same. "C'mon, you can go without food for a couple of days..."

I have no idea what our final haul was since I lost track of what I bid on vs. what I actually got, but there is one standout: The shrinky-dink Brooklyn, a.k.a. The Eye of Greg, acquired for a meer three times what Greg thought it would go for.

The two stories I know are going to make the rounds are:

A. When I'd gotten up to get autographs from the crew, but was still multitasking on the auction. I'd just finished thanking the crew collectively for their autographs and the work they did on the show when I heard one of a pair of bidders who'd been going back and forth go to $35. So I yelled $40. Apparently I don't multitask as well as I thought I did, because I outbid Mara. Oops. (She got me back later) It wasn't my fault, Draconis was standing between us. And then I got outbid by a young woman sitting in the second row. So I stomp toward her, mock-angry, still going back and forth, making "Smite" gestures at her every time I outbid her, walked past her, all the way back to my seat, and then asked "What are we bidding on again?" Which broke everybody up. (Except maybe her) So I turn to look at the items on the block, some of the Hardwired action figures, and say "Oh, I don't want that. You can have that." (If you're reading this, I'm sorry, I thought it was a different set of action figures. One of the Demona/Elisa ones)

B. The script for Hunter's Moon Pt III, the radio play version comes up, and I want it. Naturally, I'm not the only one. Sadly, the auction was winding down, because it really only came down to me and Greg B. He bid fifty bucks, and I asked him if he got it, he'd put it on the internet for all to see, right? And he says no! And to me, in auction mode, he sounds sincere. So I do the only thing I *can* do under the circumstances: Put the bid up to $60. And he's like "I was kidding! Of course I'll put it up! Sixty-five!" So I made him swear on his word of honor that he would put it up for all to see, (Of course, I don't know if I should have trusted the word of a guy whose personal heroes are Xanatos and Megatron... Just kiddin' Greg) and quit bidding.

After that, we scarcely had time to pick up our things before running back to the room to change for the banquet. We came in late, and ended up at a table with a bunch of people we didn't know, Lynati, and I'm afraid I've completely blanked out on the name of the gentleman who was our guest.

Dinner was interesting. Definately the fanciest meal I've ever been to. (I really should have remembered to grab a coke out of the minibar) During the meal, we could see Thom and Crispy getting up and going back and forth between their tables. This was the subject of much debate at our table, so I got elected to go over and find out what was going on.

I have no idea what started them off like this, probably something at a panel earlier, but they were one-upping each other. At least that was what Thom told me. As near as I could piece together, Thom went over to Crispy, pretending to be a waiter, and said "I'm sorry sir, your Visa has been declined. You'll have to leave." So Crispy comes back a bit later and says "FBI sir, you'll have to come with me." So Thom thinks about that for a minute, and goes back with "Don Johnson wants his outfit back." (And, to be fair, Crispy *did* look kinda like something off Miami Vice)

So Crispy goes over and kisses Thom. And everybody claps. Including, after a moment, Thom. Sort of acknowledging that Crispy had won. So I, hating to see Thom lose, go over to and tell him to go lick Crispy's ear. That should guarantee a win. Thom kinda thinks about it for a minute, and then says that he'd already given Crispy his due. "But that would have been good tho'."

On the way over to the dessert buffet, (my favorite part of the meal) we pass Greg's table, and he notices that I have The Eye of Greg on, and asks how much it went for. I tell him $65, and he says that it "wasn't worth anywhere near that much, but thank you." I protest that it's a Greg Weisman original, and besides, I'm sure it has magical, creative powers. Greg says that he'd gotten kind of used to wearing it, and I offer, in all sincerety, to give it back to him. (Lest he, I don't know, try to reclaim it later, Odin-like. How he'd do that I don't know. Write me into Team Atlantis at the Vinnie character, maybe. I didn't say any of that at the time tho') Greg says, no, for me to keep it, and then says "You know I licked it, right?" "Really?!?" "No, not really."

We stayed, probably too long, for the artist awards, and then ran down to get changed. Really, we should have practiced this before. Various problems, mostly with my costume, took forever. (For all would-be Gorebash award contestants, you cannot fill condoms with water and then cram them into a bra. They WILL break. Use jello. Do *not* use pudding, because that has oil in it, and that will eat the latex and make a *huge* mess. Don't ask me why Hudson knew that...) Anyway, then we had to blow dry my dress... With me in it...

So we get in the elevator with two norms, one of whom says "Do I even want to know?" I just tell him that cross dressers always get great responses, and leave it at that.

When we get there, horribly late, but Slash is still playing. Thanks for stalling for us, and the other late arrival Slash. We get to go on, to much applause, and I get a little silly, performing for the crowd. Thom starts yelling for me to come over and give Lydia Moreno a lap dance, and I act like I'm going to do it, but at the last minute I sit on his lap instead. So after that photo op, I slink over to Greg, who says that he's "not as good a sport as Thom is" (Greg's words. I beg to differ) so I don't sit on his lap. Seth comes running out of the crowd, and stuffs a dollar down the front of my dress, and we leave the stage. There's one more act, and the judges leave for a bit. I've got some great photos of "Dueling Foxes" in here, along with pics with Patrick "Reno" Chavez. Jen remarks that she "can't wait until these hit the 'net."

The judges come back. Wolfie and Dreamie have won the Thom Adcox Memorial award, Mara and I have won the Gorebash award, "Because no one worked harder for it." as Greg put it.

And then I got to spring a gag I'd been planning since before G2K, giving Thom a pair of official Backstreet Boys underwear. I meant to do it in Orlando, but I chickened out. But I figured I'd already put on a dress and fake boobs, so what did I have to lose? Thom accepted them with a smile and a laugh. Thom also promised to record a line from Rocky Horror for Lynati the next day. Thom is the greatest sport in the history of the world. :)

After the dance broke up, Mara, Lynati, and I drifted back to our room, and had a long conversation about fic before turning in.

Aaron writes...

Saturday

Saturday was hang with Lynati day. We got to make a much more thorough creep through the Dealer's room, where I bought Mara a pair of little black wings, which she wore the rest of the day, Lynati got herself a tail, and I had to talk myself out of buying a pair of really cool gauntlets on the grounds that the claws were made of plastic, and therefore useless. I also spent waaaaaay too much time at the edged weapons rack. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had bought that giant broadsword, even if getting it home would have been an adventure, if only because the picture of me holding it didn't come out. (That would be the giant broadsword I tried to lift one-armed and nearly dropped on Kanthara. Sorry Kat) Then we realized that Mara hadn't put up her art yet, so we hauled over to the art room and started hanging stuff. (Next year, we have *got* to get an H-rated section for the art show)

During most of the time in the art room, we'd been having a great conversation with Lynati about her ficverse. I am *really* impressed. (I'm pretty sure this is all circumsptect enough to get by, especially since you already said you don't like the idea of the gargs universe being a multiverse)

My ficverse is kind of like a puzzle. Occasionally, I get a few more pieces to fall into place, and it sheds some light on things. Lynati... Lynati has notebooks devoted simply to the bloodlines of her characters. Can you imagine trying to keep bloodlines straight in a *multiverse*? Lynati is mad cool.

We wandered from there until we ran into Jen, (Who did ask if she could kick Josh's @$$. Hey Josh, I think she likes you!) and got sent over to the storyboarding panel to fill in the audience. (Poor guys, they got stuck in the hardest to find room, no wonder they were lonely)

After that, it was back to that art room to make sure we weren't being outbid on anything, and eventually we gathered a bunch of TGS posters around us. It was kind of like having a live TGS room. Greg came through with his family, and we all started genuflecting when they were leaving. Greg's response: "Don't do that in front of my kids, guys."

We made a quick trip back to the room for lunch, if you can call one piece of left-over pizza each lunch. We had to, since it would be the only food we ate all day.

And then it was time for the radio play. Hunter's Moon Part III, the expanded version, reedited by Greg for the occasion. (Hmm, I don't remember Demona grunting and groaning so much in the TV version) It was a blast to listen to, especially with the presence of actual gargs VAs, (and Crispy's impression of Broadway is scarily accurate) and full of material I expect to see start turning up in fanfic soon, like Charles Canmore's line about "We can no more stop hunting The Demon then breathing the air.", and Jason's admission that none of them even know *why* they hunt gargoyles, aside from family tradition. Greg Bishanksy would eventually end up with the script, and hopefully he'll be putting it up soon, so you can all see it. (That is okay, right Greg?)

I spent most of the Radio Play listening while splitting between watching Mara draw, and watching the little girl in front of us watch Mara draw.

(Another thing about this year's con: There were kids! And they didn't belong to Christine or Greg. I know the fandom hasn't spawned that much since last year, so the show must be catching on with it's "intended demographic." Kick@$$!)

After the radio play, we got another example of why Thom is the coolest guy in the world. If anybody knows about cleaning up audio, I have a kinda scratchy minitape recording of Thom saying something really funny.

3x3 Eyes was showing in one of the video rooms, so Mara, Lynati, Warpy, and I followed Greg, who declined to stick around and watch it this time. Unfortunately, either the staff forgot the second tape, or it grew legs and walked off. (I hope not) So that makes twice I've seen the beginning, without ever seeing the end. I guess I should just give up and buy the DVD, now that I *finally* have a player. Warmed up from the night before, and working with material we'd seen already, we were soon MiSTing it in fine form. We were on a serious roll, which carried on through the first four eps of the Utena dub. I'm beginning to suspect that Zelgadis sounds like Crispy, but Touga *is* Crispy.

With the credits rolling, and Spawn apparently cancelled, we were turned out. But nobody wanted to go to bed yet, so the four of us ended up deciding to check out the roof garden where the banquet would be held the next day. Heh. I'm not sure what I had pictured, something open-air with potted palm trees all over the place maybe, but it was a little less roof, and a lot less garden then that. The floor to ceiling windows did provide a pretty nice view of LA at night, however.

So we stayed there for I don't know how long, having one of those wonderful non-linear conversations, mostly between Lynati and I, about our respective ficverses. So here we are, having this loud conversation about fic, and even acting out some of it, when who walks in but Greg himself, followed by the rest of the con staff. We stayed for a while after that, trying to be quieter, but eventually we all grew tired and went our separate ways.

Aaron writes...

Friday.

It was the weirdest thing, being in the west. I kept waking up at like seven a.m., due to not being adjusted to the time change. LA has some beautiful sunrises. (Got some nice sunsets too) Still didn't make it out of the room before ten tho'... Heh. "Every time I try to leave... Someone keeps pullin' at my sleeve..."

Anyway, we went in search of registration, and found it, along with Jen, and one of her twin daughters. Which still freak me out. Jen doesn't look like she's had four kids, nor does she look old enough to have had four kids. Not only that, but her eleven year old is *taller* then me. (Future WNBA standout, I guess)

We also ran into Warpy, the Cutest Couple from last year, (Who were sporting a great "Let a gargoyle sit on your face" button) Vatana, my old auction partner from G99, who I don't keep track of well enough, and Lynati, who we would end up adopting, and spending most of the con with. Lynati's cool.

Which leads me to another point. How many people remember their first con? (If G2K1 was your first con, then obviously you do) I remember mine. (G99 in Dallas) It was fun, but like most firsts, losing your con virginity is also kinda scary. I remember being on my own in a strange city, not really knowing anyone, feeling kinda out of place. I mean, I met people in Dallas, but I felt a little too intimidated talking to *The* Greg, or even *the* Christine Morgan, to really do more then sort of float around their periphery. (Heh, that was when I even knew who people were. When I met Jen in Dallas, all I knew was that she was a pretty lady who responded to my offer to split a pizza with the words "F**k yes!") I know Mara had a similar experience when she first got to Orlando.

I know I'm supposed to be talking about *this* year's con, but bear with me, there is a point to this.

The point is that we, the people who've been here before, the older guard, (I wouldn't call myself old school, since it's the people like The Morgans, The Andersons, and the Wittenbergs, who were going to Gatherings when I didn't even know there *was* a fandom who deserve that distinction) need to do some more voluntary newbie adoption. If you see someone in Virginia who looks a little dazed, a little lost or a little overwhelmed, and they're sitting by themselves... (Had to include that. If they look all of the above, but are surrounded by people, they're probably Con Staff, not newbies) Anyway, if you see someone like that, go over and say hi. Introduce yourself. Invite them to join you. Make them feel welcome. Because we were all newbies once. And because newbies *are* the lifeblood of the fandom. Without them, there is no growth, and really, no hope of getting our beloved show back. And they're more likely to keep coming back, and bring others with them, if they have a good time. So adopt a newbie, and eventually they, in turn, will adopt their own. To quote a movie nobody saw, they won't pay it back, they'll pay it forward.

Whew, I didn't expect to get so into that. But anyway...

Right next to registration there was a nice big TV showing garg eps, and well, we couldn't resist MiSTing them good naturedly, along with a group of about twenty or so. Eventually the tape ran out, and since no replacement seemed forthcoming, I grabbed something I'd brought, a tape with a bunch of fan videos, mostly by Brad De Moss. We got to watch about half of them there before decamping to the con suite to watch the rest. (BTW, could someone who was on staff remind me of that one staffer's name? She was about my height, i.e., short, kind of curly brown hair. I was supposed to see about getting her a copy of that tape. My email addy is JCarnage@Yahoo.com Thanks)

While we were in the con suite, Thom and Greg showed up, and, to me at least, it looked like they'd come as each other, since it looked as if Greg had taken off his beard and given it to Thom. When I remarked on this, Greg misinterpreted, and said, "When did I wear khakis?"

We made a quick trip back to the room to dump off our registration stuff, and then hit Crispin Freeman's panel. I wish Greg could have made it, because I think he really would have appreciated a lot of what Crispy said about the hero's journey, mythological archetypes, historical gargoyles, and such.

(After the panel, Crispy also told a story that might be of some interest to Slayers fans. Apparently, due to recording schedule, Crispy was supposed to do a bit where Zelgadis says "That... is a secret." like Xellos does. Only they hadn't done any recordings with David Moo yet, so Crispy had no idea how he was supposed to deliver the line. So the Voice Director, (or VD as Warpy would later remark) told him, "Don't worry, just say the line however you think it should be done, and we'll make him do it like you did it." So Crispy does the line, and it sounds pretty cool when he does it. Not quite as cool as when Akira Ishida does it, but pretty cool. And then they called him back the next day... (Insert hilarious impression of David Moo by Crispy here) and said they'd have to do it again. Yes folks, bad as he was, David Moo could, and did, do worse.

Conveniently, the "Writing Successful Crossover Fiction" panel featuring Mara, Christine, Tigris Euphrates, and Gencie Salter was in the same room, so we didn't have to move much. Not having a set agenda, the group wandered merrily for over an hour, entertaining the masses and making a lot of humorous references to the "Other Panel" which is apparently extremely entertaining if you can find out where and when it's being held. (I think I showed off my tattoo for the first time this con in here. I seemed to be showing it to more people then last year, but then I think Mara just likes any excuse to have me take my shirt off in public) We also met Josh, and made his list of people he's pretty sure exist.

After the panel broke up, we took a quick look around the dealer's room, and then ran into Hudson, who told us he was forming a "Gargoyles Mafia" out of everyone who brought enough black clothing. After happening by accident at the last two cons, Clan Mafia now officially exists. And, even better, it's integrated now, Mara, Lynati, and (I think) Kanthara being the female contingent of CM.

A quick run back to the room to change into more evil-looking outfits, and Clan Mafia assembled, waiting to make an entrance at Opening Ceremonies. (Poor Kai. He tried, he really did. Black T-shirt, slacks, and wingtips, but I don't thing he's really cut out to be CM. Sorry Kai) While we were waiting I had kind of an interesting Admin to Admin to Admin talk with Kai ("Oh, so you're the sucker that got my job.") and Hudson, who has made me his Padawan. One day, I too shall be able to smite people like he does. ;)

I love hotels with mirrored walls, and CM looked pretty cool, if I do say so myself, doing that Reservoir Dogs walk down that wide hall, all of us flanking Hudson. (BTW, if anybody has a picture of that, or of later, when we're doing the group photo, please contact me at the addy listed above, because mine didn't come out)

Opening ceremonies were their usual blend of old and new. (Hee-hee, I wonder how long it'll be before Greg starts making *us* tell his stories. We know them better then he does) The highlight was Lexy receiving her "Warpy" (As we nicknamed the little bald statuettes later) for being Fan Guest of Honor. Congratulations Lexy. No one deserved it more.

Other notable points included Greg's ace podium-moving crew, (Can Patrick Toman supervise or what?) a really nice letter from Ed Asner, who said he wanted to be there so bad he considered crawling to LA, and a message from Frank Welker. The original was lost, but Greg summed it up in his usual inimitable manner. "Frank says he doesn't do conventions, because truthfully you people scare him." I'm not sure if he was kidding or not. Greg also showed off one of his contributions to the charity auction, a shrinky-dink Brooklyn, which would come to be known as The Eye of Greg.

And I want to echo Patrick's thanks to Scott Sakai and his crew. The AV setup rocked! (And it's probably be the closest we'll get to seeing gargs on a big screen anytime soon. Sigh)

After OC, a showing of Awakenings was scheduled, but most of CM decamped after being told it was the movie edit. We again adjourned to the courtyard in front of the hotel, and hung out by the "Mountain Dew fountain", so named because of the color of the water in it. (The observation was made that for their prices, we should get an *actual* fountain of Mountain Dew) Ordering pizza for twelve is always complex, but we managed. While we were waiting, Hudson regaled us with stories of how the dotcom fallout affected he and Chris, and a really funny one involving Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It!" and a patrol car... Another one of my lost pics, Mara and Lynati doing a really, um... interesting looking stretching exercise happened somewhere in here.

Eventually, the pizzas arrived, and we returned to catch the last of Awakening Part V while scarfing pie. And then it was time for the moment I'd been waiting for, Garg MST3K.

I admit to a bit of professional jealously here. I wondered at first why, if gargs were to be MiSTed, Mara and her trusty sidekick (That'd be me) didn't get to host. But Jade Griffin and Beedoo! do episodes, not fic, and do them pretty well, so it worked out. Eventually and appropriately enough, The Gathering, Parts I and II, were MiSTed. If anyone knows where the final script wound up, or if it's even up yet, please direct me to it.

Gargs fans tend to be pretty funny people, and this group proved no exception. The two episodes were MiSTed with much hilarity. Although I think the best gag may have been between episodes, on a joint effort between Hudson and Josh. (Which is funny in and of itself, considering the cr@p Huds was giving him earlier about his Mac Geek shirt) The blue screen you get from an empty VCR came on, and Josh shouted "It's a blue screen of death!" Hudson promptly responded: "This con has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Please reboot your con head, or strike any attendee to continue."

Again, much appreciation for the big screen, since it made physical comedy possible. At one point, I simply reached up and made it look like I was groping Titania. Which started Josh picking Oberon's nose. I'm told that Greg, who unbeknownst to us, had been watching the whole time, put his hand over his eyes and shook his head at that point.

Aaron writes...

(This was written for the TGS room, so if it doesn't seem addressed directly to you, that's why. And it's really cool of you to solicit our Gathering Diaries like this)

Okay, the Gathering was both a blast and a blur for me, (And I spent the whole con in close proximity to Mara, so I was a little distracted) so if I'm leaving someone or something out, please remind me. Thanks. And before we go any further, I'd like to give mad props to all the Staff, volunteers, and guests, who made G2K1 such a special event. You guys kick @$$.

Thursday.

I managed to grab five hours of sleep by virtue of sleeping through a ringing alarm for an hour, before being shaken awake by my mom. I throw on my clothes, stagger downstairs with my one giant bag, (Which, by virtue of being older then me, has no wheels on it) and go tearing off to the airport. And I was off... To Houston that is. For those not familiar with Texas geography, I had to fly east before I could fly west. Fun huh?

The flight to LA was the longest two and a half hours of my life. (Heh, that's what the lady on the plane said it was. I realized after some quick calculations (Bear in mind, I suck at math) that she wasn't factoring in the time difference between Houston and LA, so the flight was more like three and a half hours. And they showed "Air Bud: World Pup" for most of the flight. (Shudder) I was finally so bored I turned to the guy next to me and said "So, what do you do? And please don't tell me you sell soap." Of course, he didn't get the ref...

In retrospect, Josh was right. I should have shelled out the extra $ for tickets into Burbank instead of LAX. Between scrubbing our initial approach for reasons I could never find out, being towed to the gate, baggage claim, etc., I started looking for Mara about thirty minutes late. Little did I know that I would still be looking for her two hours later. LAX, if you've never been, is a big place. I know, because I got some bad directions, and went on a walking tour that included five of the seven terminals in it.

Much later, having been all over the place, having tried to drag a hand truck up a flight of stairs, paged Mara several times, dealt with the mind-numbing stupidity that is the Spirit Airlines staff, been back and forth through security, (people wearing black trenchcoats, collars, finger armor, and carrying three pairs of sunglasses, a minitape recorder, a minimaglite, a lighter, and a lucky coin do not have an easy time with metal detectors) made an urgent phone call to New York to make sure Mara'd even gotten on her plane in the first place, and fended off religious types intent on pressing books on meditation on me by threatening to beat the cr@p out of them, I gave up. I was wandering aimlessly somewhere in terminal six when some impulse turned me back the way I had just come. And then I saw a figure in a black trenchcoat walking toward me...

Cue the Romeo and Juliet music, slow down the film, do the scene that's been parodied a thousand times. I had a brief thought that with my luck, I was probably running toward Hudson, but that was dispelled as she started running toward me. I still have no idea what I did with the hand truck, but I had other things to think about at that moment. Like my first kiss. :)

I went from bummed to wonderful, and stayed there. That was the last time I would feel more then mildly vexed for a week. This is also when life took on a faint air of unreality...

After some time sitting on a bench catching up, and a quick call back to NYC, we grabbed a shuttle and headed for the hotel. The shuttle ride may have taken as much time as the flight. Highlights I can share included a sign that said LA, Population: Way too many, and Mara's remark that LA looks just like New Jersey, except it doesn't smell.

After check in, the first Gathering attendee we ran into was Slash's mom, followed by Demona May, who had a room right down the hall. She seemed geared up for a loooooooong conversation, but we declined, having been up since early that morning. So we finally found our room, and... Let's skip ahead to that evening. (Heh. BTW, how many people noticed that the logo under the room number looked like a multi-colored Hunter's mask? "But what could leave clawmarks in solid plastic?" ;) )

Eventually, we wandered back downstairs, in search of sustenance, and decided to cheat a bit, and see if we could find a Pizza Hut instead of letting one come to us. We were sent off in the direction of the City Walk, a five minute ride away via a trolley with really bad shocks, and wandered around the place for a bit, freaking the mundanes and taking in the local color. Eventually we discovered the world's only grilled pizzeria, and decided that there was a reason it was the only one, so we headed back to the hotel.

Returning, who do we find waiting in front of the hotel but Hudson and Zaius, (Whose name I can finally remember after three Gatherings. Sorry Z) who were waiting for their own pizza, from Pizza Hut no less.

So we shot the breeze for a while, which the hotel staff must have loved, (Four people in black trenchcoats hanging out in front of the main doors) and caught up generally, before leaving to order our own pizza. When the gargfans are hungry, the pizza will appear... On the way back, we ran into Warpy, and had a short conversation, during which I was mostly marveling at how cool Warpy's accent is.

Lexy writes...

OK Last year I wrote a HUGE Gathering report. Then my comp fell on its face, and I lost all of it:P So this year I am going to just write about the stuff at the GATHERING instead of including all of my vacation. I will include a _few_ highlights, but that is all.
I went on this trip with three other ppl. Kaioto, Marisa and Jamie. We spent a week in California. Four days were for the con, two days before the con, and two days after. For the two days before hand we went to Little Tokyo, A Japanese Museum, and Santimonica beach. It was at Santimonica Beach that I A) picked up that Kimono I wore to the dinner and B) Got a definitive answer. I CANT swim in ocean water. When I was really young I went to the Pacific ocean , and I remembered breaking out. I went back, and it happened again. Doesn't that suck?? :(
Day one of the con: I remember things in sort'of a blur. So here they are that way! I signed up, and then asked if I could help. I was supposed to be volunteering after all! But everyone was really busy. All I really got to do was fetch some soda from the con suite. Greg popped in at one point while I was sitting on that couch near the gift shop. He waved and said hi, and I replied. After he left my friend JT, it was her first time to the Gathering, looked at me like,"who was that guy?". My third Gathering, and the third time I have been able to turn to a traveling companion and say, "Oh him? That was just Greg Weisman." *L* I never get tired of the reaction!
The next thing I remember I was setting up my sketches in the art room. Crispin Freeman was there with Izobel. One of my favorite memories for this con then occurred. There was just something about hearing Crispin explain to someone the story of Gargoyles that made me laugh. It was so great.
Right before opening ceremonies, Bill Fagerbakke came over after work to do some signing. He was so great! I got to hug him a lot longer then I had planned since Kaioto couldn't seem to figure out my complicated instruction of, "push the button". Thom and Greg arrived around that time, and I got my first G01 hug from Thom!*beams* *L*
Opening ceremonies. Hey what can I say that hasn't been said? I suppose I was just as eager as everyone else to find out what Thom had under his shirt! *L* I was fiddling with my tape recorder when my name was called. *sits trying to figure out what to type next* Geez. I'm still in shock. I seriously don't remember much exactly what happened. I remember getting my second hug though! Yea! Afterward a friend of mine said she thought he gave me a kiss on the cheek. Can anyone verify this? I was in lala land:P I'm sorry I had to make everyone suffer through, quite possibly, the worst Gathering speech ever! I had no idea what to say! -_-; I suppose I could have been even more annoying if I had asked Greg who Lexington's mate was going to be. I am, however, glad that Crazy D stepped in to tell everyone I wasn't really the worse speech giver ever, just surprised. *thanks her* My friends made sure that there were lots of pics of me recieving the award.-_-; yea... *hides face* I'm not fond of the pics of me, but Marisa caught a shot of Thom and Greg that is so perfect! The looks on their faces really ARE priceless. To me anyway. They are just smiling to eachother. SO CUTE! It just slays me to remember those first Autum days when Gargoyles premiered. *seems like only yesterday..* I could have _never_ imagined getting to meet those names flashing down the screen. To find out they were such great ppl is even better!
The rest of opening ceremonies was a blast. I never get sick of Greg's videos, or stories. Do any of us? After the ceremony I got Thom to sign my hat. I had it made in a Santimonica mall. As Thom was signing my hat I recieved a quick spank from Crazy D. Geez, Day one and I could already brag 3 VA hugs, a possible kiss and a spanking from the hand that has..well spanked a lot of cool ppl;) I can't remember anything much after this so I guess I must have gone to City Walk for some food.
After some excellent Chinese food Kaioto, Marisa, JT and I ran into Crispin Freeman and Taliesin Jaffe in front of Hot Topic. Kaioto had a lengthy conversation with Taliesin while JT got yet another picture of her with Crispin.
Day Two- ..duh Oh man. I can't remember! *checks her schedual* OH YA I went to the Voice Acting Technique 1 panel. Got to see Thom, Crispin, Taliesin, Jonathan Klein and Morgan Sheppard. Wow what a group! Crispin had brought some funky software with his comp, on accident, that would let ppl in the audience do some dubbing of their own. We ran out of time, but that was so cool of him to set that all up for us! Morgan, as he told us to call him, was a blast! What a cool guy! I loved that panel. At the end I finally gave Thom the Kimba pin and pen that I had bought him, but had forgotten to give him the day before. I got my third hug for that. :)
I can't remember where I went after that. I think there was Mug-A-Guest with Thom soon after this panel. Anyway I did get to go to that, and it was great. Thom told us about his past gigs, and even though I knew from last year that he had danced in some music videos I didn't know which ones to look for. Now I do! You can all check out Janet Jackson's video "Nasty". Thom stated that there were two guys, one on each side of her. He was, as he put it, "the white guy with a spikey hair doo". Crazy D came in at some point, and gave Thom a personalized Gathering T-shirt with the excellent picture of Lex that I purchased from the Art show. I'm sorry I can't remember the artists name right now:P But your pics ruled! Greg's wife Beth, and their son Benny came in also, and Beth chatted with us for a while. After this was all over with I got my forth hug. Not long after this we were all at the Story boarding panel. TONS of guests there! Getting to see those Storyboards was awesome!! Getting to see so many ppl that worked on the show was great. Knowing that it was only a fraction was even cooler. (Was it just me, or did that sound like Master Card commercial?) A little after this I was dead tired. I don't know why. I was fine the other days. But anyway I had to go back to our hotel and pass out. We were all rooming at a Holiday Inn not far from the con hotel. I passed out for a few hours and missed the Radio Play! Well actually we came back in time for the tail end of it, but I didn't want to barge in, and be annoying. While everyone was filtering out though I got to run into Thom and Crispin again. I got my fifth hug then. My friends and I got some more pictures of them, and apparently Kaioto asked Thom if he would go out to eat with us later. He agreed. What a sweet heart! I think by then Thom probably was figuring out who Kai was. Apparently Both Greg and Thom didn't know who he was for most of the con, and poor Kai kept scaring them by shaking hands, and giving Thom that hug. Now they know who he is..yup..now he's Lexy's boyfriend *LOL*. Guess he is in the same boat with Izobel who is now referred to as, "Crispin's Girlfriend." Hey Greg, if you are reading this, Kai was the guy who wrote that report on Brooklyn. I don't know *shrugs* I never got to read it, but he told me, back when he wrote it, that you made a comment in S8 that you liked it. I don't know if you recall this though:P
Day Three- Again. I can't remember anything! Highlights would be getting to "mug" Greg, and going to the VA's Q&A. Boy was that a riot. Everyone was great! Cree Summers *SP* showed up as a surprise, and it was cool hearing her story about how she landed her first gig. Apparently her father played the voice of Doctor Claw on "Inspector Gadget". The little girl who was supposed to play the voice of Penny didn't show up so Cree was given the role, and did so well she kept it. Jeff's stories about how he got started were a hoot. I think everyone got a crazy little mental image of Chibi-Jeff driving his parents nuts with his Dizzy Duck impersonation, and I'm glad somebody asked why Duke, from "The Mighty Ducks", sounded just like Brooklyn, because that was bothering me too. *L* It was great when ppl would try to ask Jeff questions about his characters, or, "what was it like switching between voices like that?", and poor Jeff is just like , "I..I don't remember.. Did I play that character?" *L* Keith got to field a lot of questions about the differences between Voice acting and other forms of acting. Loved his cute little roar;), and I couldn't help but wonder what that panel of doctors in the adjacent room were thinking when they heard someone bellow, "I've lost everything..EVEN MY REVENGE!" I suppose I have to mention Thom's input on how Sally Richardson (is this last name correct!?) bragged to him, so he says, that the animators used her 'eh hem' back end as a model for Elisa's. I believe it was Jeff who put in something to the effect of, "Yup, those guys love doing their research." Somebody from the audience asked Keith what he would have done with his character if he had had the chance. Keith just grinned and said, "You know." "-And it wouldn't have been a dream either." Somebody from the audience also asked Keith if anything about Goliath had rubbed off onto him. Jeff, once again, interjected with something I am not even sure I can say in Ask Greg. *wonders* Oh geez..better safe then sorry! (appologizees to all who weren't there) Hey! Someone with guts can fill that part in. Afterward was the autograph signing. Everyone who had gotten to the last panel early, including myself, ended up in the back of the line. By the time we got up to the signing a lot of ppl had to book it. While Crispin was signing a poster I brought from Slayers Keith David, just three guests from me, had to leave. I probably did not make some ppl happy when I left my poster with Crispin and ran over to Keith with the poster I had brought. I don't think I have ever groveled that bad in my life *L*. "Um..Please Mr. David..Sir..could you PULEEZ sign this for me?" *LOL* He was cool about it of course. I loved watching Jeff inspect that Owen doll someone brought to get signed. I really should know her name:P He thought that thing was great! "Oh man. Hey guys look! It's the Owen doll!"
After the VA's got their chance, the writers and I think some artists came up to sign. I got that panel to sign my poster as well. It looks great! I wake up to it right near my bed:) Now the first thing the sun hits in the morning is Brynne Chandler's golden autograph of , "Jalapena!"
After the autographs my friends and I prepared for the banquet. I didn't get to sit with Thom this year *L*, but I still had a good time. My table was near enough to Thom's and Crispin's to get the jist of what was going on. Boy, *shakes head* those two! They just kept going at it. First Crispin would brag about his excellent imitation of Broadway, then Thom would pick on Crispin's shirt. It escalated until the next time I turned around Crispin was sitting in Thom's lap, and this was after I had missed Crispin planting one on Thom. *shakes her head* wow..must have been a hoot to be at one of those tables!
After the, what? SIX COURSE? meal was done I believe the art show winners were read off, and Mhyr called!off ticket numbers for raffle prizes. I'm still not quite sure how I got an award for art, but it was funny that both Kaioto, JT and myself won raffle prizes. I had to laugh when Kaioto's number was called off, and I heard Thom call from behind me saying, "So Lexy, I guess you won twice!" I figured at that point he knew who Kai was! *L*
Next was the cosplays and costume show. Not as many ppl seemed to dress up this year, but we still had some good costumes. I think I lost a good portion of my film when two of the contestants, sorry I don't know your names!, forced Thom with a net, and by fake gun point, to take his pants off. I also spent a couple shots taking pictures of our "Best Couple". IE: Thom and Crispin. A prize well earned!
After the awards were given out ,and ppl were beginning to dance, I asked Greg and Thom if they would be interested, if they could make it, in attending a party I would be having in honor of my wedding which would be taking place around the gathering of 2002. They both agreed that they would come if they could. I earned yet another hug from Thom AND a kiss that I can verify _did_ occur:D Asking Greg if he would come was pretty amusing. It took me a while before I could get up enough nerve to ask him. After I asked him he smiled at us with a surprised look and said, "What are you guys?? Like twelve?!" *L* I tried to explain that we were a bit older then that, though I am certain I sounded confused. (FYI We will be 22 and dang near 20) ^_^V Soon afterward my traveling partners and I went back to our hotel to sleep.
Day FOUR!!- I remember getting up, going to the 3x3 eyes panel and hitting closing ceremonies. After closing ceremonies my friends and I met up with Thom and we all went out to eat. We weren't sure where to go so Thom suggested a Thai place not far from the hotel. He asked us if we had a ride, and we had to admit we didn't. (We had been thinking we could go to City Walk, and just take a tran. Thom was cool about it though, and said we could just use his car.*pauses for a brief moment to remember* EEEEEEE! As most of you may imagine, I felt guilty yet strangely happy with the situation;) After apologizing like 200 times that his car was a mess, ( for those of you with cars..is that a standard thing to say before you let someone get in? It seems to be to me! *L*), Thom took us on what I like to call the "Thom Tour". I joked with him that he could have made a couple of bucks putting that one the scheduled events. He showed us where he buys his dog food, where he used to get his hair cut and where Kath Soucie used to live. As we were driving Thom mentioned that the studio where they recorded Gargoyles wasn't far, and then decided to take us there! What a sweetheart! The studio was almost empty that day, and some friendly ppl out front told Thom he could take us right on in. We got to take pictures of where the VA's stood, and see the place where Greg set up the pictures for the VA's too see. We also got to go in back and see a poster with the autographs of many who worked on the show.
Afterward we went out to eat, and had a general good time doing so. Thom was kind enough to take us back to the hotel so we could wander off to Universal studios. There you have it folks..my disjointed and rambled G2001 diary!
A few last things I should mention:
Christine Morgan- You wanted one of my pictures from the art show. I will mail that off to you if you email me with your addy:) (izzolexington3@yahoo.com)

Favorite G2001 quotes that I can actually say in Ask Greg:
"I've lost everything, EVEN MY REVENGE!"-Keith David
"Thom Adcox everybody. A man who never misses the opportunity to take off his pants."-Greg W.
"Your going to be even sorrier when those pictures are all over the Internet!"-Greg W.
"What are you guys? Like 12?"-Greg W.
"Master of advertising."-Jeff Bennet
"Did I play that guy?"-Jeff Bennet
"Mommy...what's a 'con virgin'?"-Little girl sitting behind me
"I've got something under my shiiiiiirt."-Thom A. (fallowed by)
"Well at least he didn't say he had something in his pants"-Greg W.
"He got to look!"-Keith David
"Ya right. If I had gotten to make changes Lex would have been second in command. NOT Brooklyn."-Thom
"Thank you for giving that award to Lexy. It really meant a lot to her." *Hugs Thom* -Kaioto (fallowed by)
"Who _was_ that guy?"-Greg W.

Todd Jensen writes...

Here's a brief Gathering report of my own.

FRIDAY: Arrived at Los Angeles in the afternoon. I arrived at the hotel in the middle of the Bill Faggerbakke signing, but got to the Opening Ceremonies a little late (I took a little while to find my room and put my luggage away). Fortunately, I did get to hear the whole of your presentation and see the videos. (I especially liked the "Gargoyles" video with the "Glory/Power of One" music, with its showing the camera passing over the "Gargoyles" title several times at different points.) I finally got to see the "Bad Guys" leica reel (and was definitely astonished at the bit where Matrix was shown listening to a boom box), the "Dark Ages" and "New Olympians" pitches, and the edited "Gargoyles" pilot. (I missed the MSTing of "The Gathering", though).

SATURDAY: Went to a few of the panels on writing and researching for "Gargoyles". I enjoyed hearing some of the famous stories about it in person, as well as some of the new revelations (such as the one about the cast getting trapped in a live performance of "Macbeth"; I'd definitely have liked to see that "odd little two-parter", or the sad story about the Loch Ness episode of "Team Atlantis" that will never get made).

And, of course, the big highlight in the evening was the radio play (and I agree that Crispin Freeman did a great Broadway); I enjoyed the additional bits (such as the "breathing the air" line, which I hadn't even imagined was there in the first draft, as well as the scene in the clock tower between Elisa and Jason that I'd read about before).

SUNDAY: Served as part of a panel on fanfic with Kathy, Patrick, and Taleweaver (the one shame about it being that I missed another panel about the development of "Gargoyles", which was being held at the same time). And had the Sunday dinner with you, your wife, Greg Bishansky, Patrick Toman, and Tigris Euphrates up in the Rooftop Garden (though you know that I was at your table, of course).

MONDAY: No special memories for that day, since I had to leave early to catch my plane. Oddly enough, and rather appropriately, the movie on the flight home was one entitled "Just Visiting", about a medieval knight and his peasant-squire who get transported to the modern world by a wizard's spell (certainly evocative of the gargoyles' plight).

Shan writes...

REFLECTIONS ON GATHERING 2001
By Shannon (Shan) Muir

MONDAY

Monday Kevin and I did breakfast at Carl's Jr. at 9AM and showed up in decent time before the ROUGHNECKS panel. Got a brief bit of time to say "hi" to Dave Hartman and Jay Oliva, both of whom I worked with on the EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS series. Before the Q&A, the episode of ROUGHNECKS screened where they go to scatter Razak's ashes… Greg, did you run this because I told you during our Suite101 interview that I cry every time that episode plays? (I doubt that's the only reason but it sprung to mind…) Speaking of Suite101, Greg "Xanatos" Bishansky sat a few seats over from me and recognized who I was. Greg, thanks for your compliments. Especially after not finding a voice in the panel Sunday, you really made my day. Thank you.

Though I knew most of the ROUGHNECKS personnel and had heard some of these stories at San Diego Comic-Con the prior summer, it's always a joy seeing those folks. I regret I didn't bring my Eduardo figurine (still MIB) from EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS for Rino (ROUGHNECKS' Johnny Rico) to sign; Rino was Eduardo and Jason Marsden (Pvt. Brutto in ROUGHNECKS) played Garrett. But it wasn't clear there'd be a signing period at this panel, not after the separate Voice Actors panel the day before.

Then we went out to lunch… and also did some shopping at Sam Goody and the comic shop on the CityWalk. Kevin owed me some money for buying his Gathering T-shirt (beautiful shirts Aimee and Greg Guler!), plus Sunday breakfast, so he got me a VOLTRON tee and the videotape of SLAYERS: THE MOTION PICTURE - can't afford DVD yet. I know Crispin's not in this movie, but I was looking for a self-contained introduction to the concept. I want to see more, and definitely with Crispin!

Got back in time for Closing Ceremonies, and then off to the car. We headed to Al's Deli on Ventura Blvd. for lunch, and afterwards go home and do drudgery things like wash the laundry so I could be ready for work the next day.

All in all, it really was a good time. And a special thing I'd like to share with Greg and everyone else. I moved to Los Angeles in 1996 from a town of 8,000 people and three stoplights, determined to make it in this town and in animation. A promise I made myself was that if I survived five years in Los Angeles, on that day (or the nearest weekend) I would throw a party and do something really special to celebrate.

My five year mark in Los Angeles was June 20, 2001… the Wednesday before the Gathering. So, indirectly, you folks threw me that memorable event and never knew it.

Thank you - Greg, the guests, the staff, the volunteers, and the fans -- for an event to remember.