A Station Eight Fan Web Site
Ask Greg Archives
RESPONSES 2001-9 (Sept)
Archive Index
: « First : « 25 : Displaying #131 - #155 of 292 records. : 25 » : Last » :
Posts Per Page: 1 : 10 : 25 : 50 : 100 : All :
Anonymous writes...
Did Mab have any children besides Oberon? If so are they more or less powerful than Oberon?
Greg responds...
Not answering this now.
Anonymous writes...
Was it intentional to make Nick Maza similar to Captain of the Guard since both are described by you in the Garg bible and the 2198 contest as much like a gargoyle as a human can be?
Greg responds...
You're taking that too literally.
I was actually trying to connect Nick up to Tom, thematically.
matt writes...
since Fox has twice as much Children of Oberon blood in her as Alex and Alex has managed to live til 2198 would Fox herself still be alive in 2198?
Greg responds...
Not revealing one way or another.
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.
Greg responds...
Agreed. And I'll also admit that your thinking on this subject is much more sophisiticated than mine has been.
I think a lot of how we are defining sentience does come down to the "Potential for Direct Communication", which is of course a fairly preposterous criteria.
On the other hand, if it is truly another hand, I don't think these ideas are mutually exclusive with notions of religion. Dog heaven, man. You know?
And don't worry about not getting back to me sooner. As I'm sure you've noticed, there's something of a delay going on in this whole system. I have trouble keeping up with the posts here. So as long as you remind me of what we were talking about, we should be fine.
matt writes...
in the gargoyles universe, why did the chicken cross the road?
i'm not telling a joke, i'm looking for an answer. i swear theres a good one here somewhere... and this will keep me busy til the next contest!
Greg responds...
To find out how many gargoyles it takes to screw in a lightbulb, I guess.
Lacey writes...
Which character do you feel is most like you, or closely resembles you physically and/or mentally?
Greg responds...
None really resembles me physically, I think. But many of you have seen me at Gatherings. Do you agree?
As for mentally... if you took ALL the characters and squashed them together you'd get me, I think.
Yttrium writes...
You mentioned you were in a play called THE WARRIOR'S HUSBAND and played Theseus. Could you tell us what it was about?
---Ytt
Greg responds...
Sure. Although, keep in mind, that I was in this play over twenty years ago. So I may be misremembering stuff. I'd recommend hitting a library and reading it for yourself. It's by Julian Thompson.
But anyway... Hercules and Theseus attack the Amazons to get the girdle of Hippolyta, which Herc needs to complete his ninth labor. Homer is along to report on the action.
Hercules is very strong and carries a big club, but is neither bright nor brave in this play. Theseus is smart and cunning and good with a sword. He likes to let Herc stand up as the front man, while he makes things work behind the scenes. He's used to getting his way.
The Greeks come up against the Amazon Queen Hippolyta and her younger sister Princess Antiope. All the Amazon men are pretty wimpy. The title character is an Amazon man named Sapiens, Hippolyta's husband. He gains backbone as the play progresses.
Theseus and Antiope do battle. Antiope is very turned on to find a man who can hold his own with her. Theseus, used to just getting what he wants, is also knocked for a loop to find an equal in this woman. They fall in love. Together, they end the war. Herc gets a girdle. Not THE girdle, but everyone figures no one will notice the difference. It ends happily.
It's a bit of fluff, but I remember really liking it. Fun fluff. (It probably didn't hurt that in rehearsing the kiss between Antiope and Theseus, Elizabeth and I sort of discovered that we liked each other. As a result, we were boyfriend and girlfriend throughout my senior year of high school. So, as you can imagine, my memories of the play are rather fond.) Elizabeth also recently reminded me that David Schwimmer, now of FRIENDS, played Giganius the Herald.
FYI, Katharine Hepburn played Antiope in the original Broadway cast.
And thanks for asking this question. It makes me very nostalgic.
matt writes...
in The Mirror when the are in that plaza and battling Demona as humans, why is there a shop selling medieval weopons? Demona breaks a store window and all of a sudden the clan starts grabbing swords, sheilds, maces, spears, axes... why are those in NYC?
Greg responds...
They just are. Have you been to New York? They sell all sorts of things there.
matt writes...
Legion questions:
1. when Recap downloaded the computer virus through the taser line from Coldstone, why didn't the virus destroy recaps programming?
2. when Coldstone first arrives at the Clocktower with Goliath and Lex, Bronx is growling at him. why? Iago has yet to take control of Coldstone. does Bronx just hate the cybernetics of Coldstone or does he sense the evil one or something?
Greg responds...
1. It destroyed much of Recap's programming. But keep in mind, Xanatos knew what he was after. So he got the virus working on a loop of some kind so that it wouldn't SELF-destruct.
2. I'd have to see it again.
matt writes...
Broadway bring back Maggie's Genutech bracelet after they first encounter her and Elisa says its a tracking device. doesn't that mean that Genutech knows where they went with it? is this how Xanatos found their new home? why wasn't the clan worried about bringing a tracking device into their home? seems kinda foolish to me, esspecially in light of what would happen with a tracking device in Hunters Moon!
Greg responds...
I'm fairly certain that Broadway says it's busted now. (But perhaps I'm confusing it with another episode.)
matt writes...
in Metamorphosis Elisa and Matt show up at Genutech to investigate a kidnapping. whose kidnapping are they investigateing? i wouldn't think it was Maggie cuz i don't know who would report her as missing, and why would they think to look for anyone at Genutech anyway?
Greg responds...
I'd have to see it again, but I think they were investigating Maggie on Brooklyn and Broadway's tip. (Obvioulsy, Elisa must have been circumspect about what she revealed to Matt and the folk at Gen-U-Tech.)
matt writes...
why did you decide to redo the look of the Mutates after Metamorphosis? esspecially Talon, his hair got smoother and darker, he lost his tail, and all the Mutates gained retinas in their eyes, not just white like Bronx's. and yes, he did have a tail!
2. in the garg universe do you have an explanation for the change in appearence? like perhaps they were still mutating? i don't know how that explains gaining a tail then losing it...
Greg responds...
1. I didn't. Frank did. I just didn't object.
2. Yes. They were still mutating. That's why I didn't object. It was absorbed back into their bodies as their human dna regained some ascendency.
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.
Greg responds...
Spawny. I like that.
Play with these ideas:
1. I believe that Oberon's Children evolved from the Will-O-the-Wisp.
2. I believe that they can die, as completely or not as any human. But they can't die of old age, unless they stubbornly insist on maintaining a mortal form until it kills them. They are therefore, acutally, technically mortal themselves, but don't truly comprehend mortality (if that makes sense). So they like to pretend they are fully immortal, fully untouchable. (Well, that's a generalization, really. Individuals may vary.)
3. I don't necessarily believe that we have seen the true form of any of Oberon's Children. We have seen 'preferred forms', but not anything that isn't just as much of a guise as any other shape they've taken on.
4. When they transform into a mortal of whatever species -- as opposed to just taking on the glamour of a mortal -- they are bound by all the rules of that species, save ONE. They can transform back.
5. I don't find them as irritating as you seem to.
Anyway, play with those five notions and get back to me.
Lord Sloth writes...
Do you think that the the music in "the Green" was a bit over done when we first saw the pyramid? I think they had seen seen a few other more impressive sights, like egypt's pyramids, and Easter Island's heads. I'm not complaining, just wondering why the music was so dramatic.
Greg responds...
Well, I'd have to look at it again, I guess.
But probably, my answer would be "NO." After all, I was present when we mixed the show and I must have approved the music at that time.
matt writes...
1. from where did Gabriel inherit his chin horns and strange brow ridges? neither Othello or Desdemona have them, are these traits recessive from a biological grandparent(s)?
2. any reason why Iago is the only other garg to have the chin horns besides Gabriel?
3. what does Ophelia find physically attractive about Gabriel?
4. doesn't Gabriel have any close male friends?
5. is the reason Gabriel was the only male garg we were introduced to on Avalon because so many of the main characters up til "Avalon" were male, esspecially gargoyles?
Greg responds...
1. Potentially. (Again, I'd ask you, what answer did you think I'd give?)
2. The only other one you've seen, you mean.
3. Probably lots.
4. I'm sure he does.
5. Mostly, it's about time limits and design limits. Just the reality of making television.
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.
Greg responds...
I don't know what a "Turing test" is. Sorry.
I believe that in the Gargoyles Universe that artificial intelligence is truly possible. I just don't think any Coyote robot we've seen has truly achieved it yet.
Matrix may be closer.
matt writes...
1. in Leader of the Pack when the clan learns from Elisa that the Pack escaped from prison Lex wants to head off to PMS cuz he thinks they'll return there like "snakes to a nest", Goliath and Elisa try to stop him and then Brooklyn says he'll go with Lex to PMS to check it out. what gives Brooklyn the authority to just run off with Lex like that, hes not yet Second and he never asks Goliath or anyone if they can go?
2. what does "snakes to a nest" mean anyway? from what i know of snakes, they all abandon their eggs completly or stay with their eggs until they hatch.
Greg responds...
1. Look, these guys have been working together for awhile. Brooklyn makes the offer (whether he phrases it that way or not), and Goliath tacitly accepts. What's going on here, primarily, is that everyone is aware that Lex is out of control. Elisa (and thus Goliath and Brooklyn and everyone) don't believe that the Studio is a likely place for the Pack to go to. So Brooklyn goes along to keep Lex out of trouble at a theoretically harmless location.
2. Ask the writer. I was just the producer.
matt writes...
1. did Dingo meet up with Coyote for the first time when he was in Europe or was it when he returned to the States?
2. how well did Dingo know Coyote? did he know that it was 'Xanatos'?
Greg responds...
1. That's a story for another day.
2. Not well. No.
matt writes...
1. does Coyote from Upgrade still have the memories of his original version from Leader of the Pack?
2. since the head of Coyote Version 1 was destroyed in Version 2 does Version 3 or 4 still have the memories of Version 1 and 2?
what i'm asking is, did each Coyote Version that Xnatos built have a completly blank memory to start with or were the memories from the previous Coyotes passed on.
and i agree that with all these Coyotes, Coyote was probably a relative of Wile E. Coyote.
Greg responds...
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
Passed on.
And that was the idea.
Lord Sloth writes...
Is the reason you created the clone's differn't skin, eyes and hair pigmintation, because you didn't want another cartoon where your trying to figure out which one is the real Goliath or Lexington? Or at least not overdue it since this happend latter with Proteus?
Greg responds...
I liked Thailog's look. It was partially inspired by the changes that John Byrne made to the Fantastic Four's costumes in the eighties.
But yes. Though we played the beat for a couple of acts, I didn't want to do EVIL TWIN takes the place of the good guy and confuses everyone. Once Thailog was revealed, there wasn't any question as to who was who. Just seemed a more original take on the old clone idea. What do the rest of you think?
(And Proteus had nothing to do with it. At the time we were creating Thailog, I didn't yet know that I was going to insert The New Olympians into the Garg Universe.)
Jim R. writes...
When you first became involved in the production of Gargoyles, did you ever think that it would ever go as far as it has, meaning with the fanbase, merchandise, and the Gatherings, etc.? What were your hopes and doubts when producing Gargoyles?
Greg responds...
I've answered this over and over. Check the archives.
Anonymous writes...
August 15, 20
Did you plan to show any other gargates besides the gargoyle beasts and the gargoyles?
Greg responds...
I'm sorry, what does "August 15, 20" refer to?
Mariner writes...
Hi Greg,
Sorry to hear about Team Atlantis. Is there any chance you tell us what you had planned for the Gargoyles/Team Atlantis semi-crossover episode? Also, would you be able to post scripts from the series if you have them available? I suspect not, but no harm in asking.
Greg responds...
I don't have computer files for any scripts except the two that I wrote. And I won't be posting those either. But if you really want to know more about them, come to G2002.
Greg "Xanatos" Bishansky writes...
I'm very sorry to hear that "Team Atlantis" was cancelled. I really was looking forward to the series. Especially the episode you wrote with Demona and Fiona Canmore.
Out of curiosity, will that script ever see the light of day anywhere?
Greg responds...
Come to G2002 and find out.
Anonymous writes...
We know that the gargs in China have contributed to the dragon legends there did any gargoyle beasts contribute to it considering some of them like the one in Ishimura looked very much like dragons?
Greg responds...
You don't know that at all, though it's a reasonable assumption, as is your one about the beasts.
: « First : « 25 : Displaying #131 - #155 of 292 records. : 25 » : Last » :