Spacebabie writes...

Friday June 23

I woke up sometime after Gregx left, washed my hair and got dressed. After Revel was ready we went out to seek breakfast and were joined by Ckayote. We ended up in the mall food court and at a Cinnabon we got classic Cinnabons and I tried a caramel chillata. Ah sweet ice-cold caffeine goodness. We scrambled back to the hotel and scarfed down our breakfasts while in the lobby.

10:00 am. I got separated from Revel on the way to the registration table. Talked with Ellen while we both waited in line for our Reg packets. Our packets contained our con badges, beautiful programs, participant ribbons, copies of the anthology and our name cards for our panels. This was my first time of being published in the anthology and I still can't believe it. The end results were beautiful. I loved Kyt's design of the book.
After receiving my packet I went into the art room to help Revel set up his art until about 11.

11:am Ellen and I joined up with Gregx and Christine in the dealer's room to do some prepping for the panels. The first writing panels were about characters and their development but since the four of us was also on the villains panel. This was one of the few times where we could have a group meeting since both Christine and Greg were one staff.

11:55 am. I dashed back to my room to make sure Pippin had finished his feeding. To explain, Pippin is my Compaq Presario 2200 laptop, named after a hobbit since it's small and it travels well and if I get mad at it I can shout "Fool of a Took." When I say feeding I mean recharging his battery. I brought Pippin since he has my list of original characters.

NOON: Time for my first panel, Creating compelling characters. We had a good-sized group who were very attentive and asked a whole lot of interesting questions. Points that were covered:
· Avoiding the Mary Sue and Gary Stu syndrome.
· Believable dialog
· Making the characters into real people, aka giving them well developed backgrounds
· And listing several examples

1:00 pm basically went around the art room to look at the art and show Cindy what Mara drew for me, the picture of Matt Bluestone in his underwear.

2:00 pm I rejoined Revel during the voice-acting workshop hosted by the talented couple: Crispin Freeman and Thom Adcox. I'm a fan of both, Thom for being Lex and occasionally dropping his pants and Crispin from various anime I have seen. Crispin had brought some anime dubbing equipment and asked for volunteers. The first was Blaise who voiced a comedy relief character and was ZOMG amazing!!!

3:00pm my next panel was Tools, Tricks and Traps of the trade with Christine. Here is me, the fanfic author and I'm teamed up with The Christine Morgan, creator of Jericho, author of one of the best Gargoyles fanfic saga's and pro author of several book series. She was fun to work with and just as easy going and fun to talk with, as she is online. We both brought up the tips we had used when writing and also brought up the mistakes we had made in the past and how to avoid them.

4:00 pm. After our panel, Christine and I both raced back to the dealer's room for the Anthology signing party. That was a fun experience. The writers and artists passed around their books like high school yearbooks and signed our names and wrote funny messages before we singed copies from other people. It was a good time to kick back and relax a bit before opening ceremonies.

5:00 pm. Opening Ceremonies began with a beat, a rocking beat. We got to view several great music videos including Jen's "Bring Me to Life." Video, Gregx's "Sympathy for the Devil" Video. The hilarious "Can You Feel The Love Tonight." Vid and the emotional "Hemorrhage." Vid.

Jen and the rest of the con staff greeted everyone and asked to see who were this years con virgins. There was a great show of hands. Then came the second timers, third timers and so on until there were only a few hands for those who have had been to every Gathering. They got a special award ribbon.

The Fan Guest of honor award went to the one who started it all. Mai Li aka Beth Maza.
Allaine, Ellen, Y2Hecate and Kyt received special awards for being featured in all three anthologies.

Y2Hecate came up and announced next year's Gathering at Pigeon Forge Tennessee.
Greg Weisman came up and did his thing: which was tell the story of how Gargoyles came to be, along with show us his usual video goodie of the intro's to the series, the pitches of New Olympians, and Dark Ages, and the Leica Reel of Bad Guys. Revel had to remind him to tell everyone not film it and we got to see some of The Last video that was a collaboration between fans using the storyboard and art panels created by Greg's team and the recorded voices.

There was a bit of bad news. There is no definite release for the second half of Season Two.
8:PM FOOOOOOD! I was hungry. Revel was hungry. A lot of people were hungry. It was time for another walk to the food court, but first we got a surprise from Norcumi and Quindar, the creators of the Gargle pun and shirts. They handed out custom Gargle toothbrushes out to everyone.

A good-sized crowd was organized and we set out for dinner. Revel and I both decided on Arbies and I had a classic Arbies with cheese combo. We hung out in the Food Court until it was time for the mall to close and we returned to the hotel to catch the tail end of MST3K before we hung out in Aaron's room until we got tired. Marty/Kai talked about the comic and a very disturbing video game.