Holy Shabbot I’m Back.
Atsuicon was enjoyable, mostly for egotistical reasons.
I met some seriously wonderful people—I mean, just very easy going, fresh people; I hung out around clsazekiel, Amelie and her friend, whose name is escaping me right now…dammit, sorry dude. For a brand new con, it did fine – the staff went above and beyond to accommodate the guests, and hotel was more than friendly. The one drawback was, it was a teen con, and so I didn’t sell much, but I didn’t mind! My panels were attended by actual people interested in writing yaoi. 0_0. I was not expecting much of a turnout, and so afterward, I felt great. The writing panel was cool, and as I said, writers showed up and listened to what I had to say—and no one walked out because I sucked. I had my working script on display for Only Words, along with a copy of Only Words, so they could take a look – and my handout was given since I only had an hour – [I need to schedule for 2 hours each panel.] Once girl is going to school to be a doctor, but is determined to turn her passion for writing BL into something substantial. It’s likely she’ll succeed, because she’s focused on school first–no one will ever earn a living ‘writing yaoi’. ^_-
The con hit a bit of a financial snag on Saturday, but rather than handle this issue the way Anime Matsuri had by charging guests for game and video room access, they handled it privately, without pressure on the guests–and with the help of some attendees asking for donations here and there. All in all, they worked out their issue with the hotel, and even the dealers were so pleased with Atsuicon, they kicked in to help the con out for Sunday. Wow.
Friday I set up my table and then did my Writing panel. The dudes from Ikkicon showed up to sell registrations, and they were placed right next to me. They are the friendliest bunch of guys—I’m so glad I’m going to be a guest at their con! One of them loves Gungrave…you can’t go wrong with that! Later in the afternoon, I closed up shop and decided to socialize; I joined clsazekiel and her friend Mandy, and the three of us went upstairs to check out the dealer’s room. I didn’t get to look it over before because I went looking for books I was supposed to have from Dramaqueen [my copies of RUSH] but they were never given to the vendor to pass on to me. [Thanks BTW]. It wasn’t fatal, as I stated above—too many teens, and not enough women of age. We met up with some VA friend of Mandy’s, Taliesin Jaffe and Blake Shepard, and had drinks at the hotel restaurant. After splintering off from them, I stayed up entirely too late, and ended in watching the 2am round of Futurama and Family Guy with some very nice VA’s and their friends. [I’m horrid with names, if anyone was there with us and reads this—please tell me who they -and you, are.]
I crawled out of bed on Saturday, set up my table, and found out my panel was at 11:00 am. Some dude showed up and filmed the whole thing. 0_0. It was no pressure though, I assumed he was with the Marzgirl who filmed a bit of my Friday panel, but his camera was bigger, and he set himself right in front of everyone; he was extremely professional about it–you didn’t even know he was in the room, despite the size of cam. I found out later exactly where he was from…interesting—he was from Houston PBS affiliate. 0_0.
There were only 5 women old enough to buy books from me, and they actually came by and bought books. I signed plenty of books though; fans of questionable age who’d brought the books with them to the con, for me to sign, instead of buying what I had. Weirdest moment: using the bathroom and as I was leaving…hearing a girl giggle to her friend: ‘OMG, I just heard Gynocrat going to the bathroom!’ There are witnesses to this–I wish I was making up. ((=_=)) BTW, my name badge said Tina Anderson, so they knew who I was anyway. (>.>)
Was asked about Caroline; *sigh* I went over to her Dev page and according to her she’ll be hitting Anime Iowa, so you can check her out there, this weekend. (^_^)’
High on confidence from successful panels, and fans telling me they loved Only Words and Roulette, I packed up happy. Tried to attend the ‘yaoi fest’ and realized that I’m just too much of an elitist to sit through some misinformed fangirl’s intros. When you discover that you have to fight the urge to correct some poor girl every five minutes as she intros Ai No Kusabi, it’s time to leave the room and have a drink, you’re taking your porn way too seriously. I kid you not, I was not going to ruin her ‘yaoi-fest’, and so I left without saying a word. *looks at AMLA* you’ve ruined my tolerance for the stupid. The Ero Genki contest was cancelled due to lack of participants, and the con events running behind schedule from the money mishap earlier in the day. It was all good; I ended my Saturday by getting extremely intoxicated with some VA’s and other guest artists.
Sunday, I hung in there for a little while, but decided to leave early. I hadn’t seen Mr. Gynocrat in over a week [he came home from a trip Thursday after midnight, and I had to leave at 5am on Friday] so I missed him and wanted to be home. Took a nap, went to eat, and now I’m blogging: gee, isn’t this better than Twitter?
I came home and my daughter Maggie had drawn me a fanart. It’s Wonder Woman, and it rocks. I have it hanging over my desk right now–it’s pencil and crayola on copy-paper.
