Greg responds...

Well, really intro it in Pendragon, though it might appear in any of them.

Greg responds...

1. Not really, though she may be useful in that function.

2. Yes and no.

Greg responds...

Thanks. I did. Twice.

How's married life?

Greg responds...

Seriously, why should I throw a bone to someone who refers to my stuff as crap? Does this method of antagonizing people you're asking favors from work for you in life?

But since someone reading this (a year and a half after you asked) might also be interested, I'd suggest looking at the Gargoyles 2198 archive. Most of what exists is in there.

Greg responds...

Very planned.

Greg responds...

1. I think she'd be suspicious of them, while simultaneously looking for a way to exploit them and/or coopt them to her anti-human cause. But I don't think she'd trust them.

2. The New Olympians were inspired by the various works of Jack Kirby, including the New Gods, the Inhumans and the Eternals. I'd tend to agree that they're more Eternal than New Godian, but my point in sighting all three is that we weren't trying to rip off one specific group. We simply were inspired by the style of that sort of mythic stuff.

3. It was the same four characters. Sphinx, Talos, Taurus and Terry. It was the same show. Same relationships. We just threw in a gargoyles prequel episode.

3a. Every show goes through a development process. And at one point VERY EARLY ON, Medusa was in Sphinx's place (in every way). But I was told her hair would be hard to have to animate if she was going to be a regular and in almost every scene. So we switched in Sphinx. But all this was long before New Olympians got co-opted into Gargoyles, by which time Sphinx had long been in the Medusa slot. FYI, Back then Kiron the Centaur was in Taurus' slot. Again, we made a one-for-one switch for animation purposes.

4a. Kaleas and Zeteas

4b. No. (At least none that I know of.)

Greg responds...

I don't know what you're referring to vis-a-vis Vanity/Gruoch...?

As to your Awakening question, Hakon's sword did hurt Goliath. Cut down to the bone. He just toughed it out. Cuz he's Goliath. That's who he is. You expected him to cry?

And Hakon's sword could certainly cut THROUGH bone. But he would have needed to put more power behind the swing to do that. Given his position on that tower, Hakon did the best he could, but it wasn't good enough, and Goliath's been in enough fights to know what he can and cannot take. He stopped the blow with his hand before it could gain enough momentum to do serious damage.

What Hakon saw, before he spoke his line, was the Goliath's blood. We made a point of that, and even convinced our S&P exec to let us show the blood. Which is very rare for cartoons. If Goliath had been invincible, there would have been no blood. And the sword would have bounced off his hide. Which it didn't. Weapons don't bounce off our gargs.

Hudson doesn't have a dagger, by the way, but a sword. And a lot of Gargoyle muscle behind his swing.

And you, Super, have a lot of attitude, bordering on disrespect. Just so you know, it's really off-putting.

Greg responds...

1. We auditioned a few composers. Liked what Carl Johnson was doing. Hired him. And he composed the theme.

2. All the music that aired on the series was composed FOR the series, but once a piece was composed it was put in our Gargoyles' Music Library. Our budget didn't allow for us to score every episode with original music, so our amazing music editor, Marc Perlman, used the Gargoyles' Music Library to edit a score for every episode.

3. Uh... Well, again, Carl composed certain themes that were applied and often reapplied to certain characters. But Marc juggled all this stuff.

Greg responds...

I either don't remember or never knew.

Greg responds...

As far as I know, the live-action movie is currently on hold at Touchstone. Shelved. Sorry. I guess they were just never able to crack the script to their satisfaction.

Greg responds...

Thank God I'm out of 2001 questions. I was beginning to think I'd never get to 2002. Now if I could just get to 2003. (It's hard to believe that in September of 2001, I had actually caught up. CAUGHT UP!!!)

I think that Hudson, like all thinking creatures, has probably run all sorts of scenarios through his mind. But Hudson's pact with Malcolm was hardly the only factor that led to the massacre, and given the state of things in the 20th and 21st centuries, if we're thinking long term, it hardly would have made a difference. He did the best he could with the available info. Regrets, and he has a few, are too few to mention.

Greg responds...

1. Not necessarily. I don't think early man could kill a gargoyle. That took practice.

2. I think fear -- not necessarily superstition, but old-fashioned, this thing is bigger and stronger than I am fear -- would have been there.

3. And Mammoths were something of a match for man, certainly they were dangerous prey. And they weren't nearly as intelligent as a gargoyle.

4. Since, my theory is that Gargoyles pre-date modern man, the answer is, all of them, I believe.

5. I don't have dates for this, but I'm not sure that gargoyles ever truly adopted the spear. Yes, it hurt. But they had better defenses (and offensive strategies) given their physical natures than to adopt spears.

6. Note - I don' mind a billion questions. Just wish you'd NUMBER them, for easier reference. (EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION!)

7. Well, they didn't just let men rule the world. They were largely asleep when man began to take over. Gargs tended to trump everything that came before, including man. But a man with tools, ultimately trumped the Gargs.

8. Who said they didn't? Who's to say that some of those artifacts you speak of weren't gargoylean. And were just attributed to man by human archaeologists who know no better.

9. No, not burying the dead, because gargs have their own tradition, the Wind Ceremony, ashes to ashes or dust to dust.

10. Again, you're assuming facts not in evidence. The fact that they didn't use clothes or weapons or have sophisticated shelters, none of which they physically required, is hardly proof that all they did was use or mimic man's achievements. The first time you meet the gargoyles, in 994, the species is, sadly, already in decline. What you know doesn't speak to what there was or might have been once upon a time.

Greg responds...

1. I've never given it any thought? Any biologists out there with a theory?

2. I wish I had, frankly. That's a mistake I think we made. We wanted to really tie Zafiro in with Quetzacoatl, and I was so focused on him, that I didn't think to do the same with the others. I like their upper body designs a lot, but I wish I had had the art guys give them snake lower bodies too. I've decided that the majority of the slaughtered Mayan clan were lower-snake types. And when the new batch of eggs hatches the hatchlings would reflect that fact.

3. See above. After the fact, I think they're more common. But I'd like to see a mix of lower Zafiro with (for lack of a better term) upper Obsidiana, etc. Or upper Zafiro with lower Jade. You get the idea.

4. Yes.

Greg responds...

I haven't done the research on this yet. I have a few notions in mind, and there's probably more out there that would work, but I haven't done the research yet.

Greg responds...

You got to be kidding me. Do you really think I'm going to respond to an anonymous post by outlining all the story arcs I have planned, as if it were a laundry list?

You're asking me to write a novel in this little ASK GREG response box. Ain't gonna happen.

Greg responds...

"Mad"-Angry or "Mad"-Nutso?

Greg responds...

It was, of course, largely a throw-away. An in-joke reference to Star Wars and a quick way for Puck to explain his lack of knowledge of Thailog's relationship to Demona.

But -- without making too big a deal of the name "Clone Wars" itself, as I don't want to get sued -- we'd have ourselves some Clone Wars down the line, yes.

Greg responds...

Well, let's start with the "buffet"/game-playing writing style.

I think it's awful.

Having said that, I have this friend, a garg fan who's now a pretty darn successful writer. When I read her first book, I felt that the first half of it was written in that way. As if rolls of the dice determined who each character was, what he or she could do and what happenned to them.

The second half of the book was MUCH better. She took a few of the characters from the first half and delved much deeper into their lives and their stories.

When I asked her about it, she confessed (if that's the word) that I was dead on. The first half of the book was her almost literally setting to prose a game of D&D that she had played.

I don't recommend doing that, but look at the result. The second half of the novel, inspired as it was by the first half, was wonderful. And she's moved forward with these characters into other books as well.

My point is that people get inspiration from all sorts of places. I get it from Shakespeare, for example, and Shakespeare got his from all sorts of other sources. A good writer can take something that begins as an exercise... maybe a worthwhile exercise or maybe a dubious one... and turns it into something real and meaningful.

The question -- your first question, I think -- is whether these writers ever grow out of the exercise or whether they become trapped in them. Well, the answer is obviously both. Some will transcend, as some writers always have.

But your second question is more serious. Does this process in fact impair the reader/audience. Forget that some of these guys will never be great writers, will this make them bad readers?

I don't know. But my guess is that it's the same (or similar) percentage of people who would have been bad readers in the first place. The good ones will transcend. The others won't. That's my hypothesis.

Now, bringing it more specifically to ASK GREG and the "trivia questions" I often get, well, I have mixed feelings.

In some ways, trivia is exactly what this forum is for. After all, just a minute ago I fielded a question from a guy who wanted me to lay out ALL the story arcs for Bad Guys. That's not going to happen, as I told him. This isn't a forum for storytelling. It's a forum for people to get a peak inside the box, (the box being my head).

And in fact, I know no zip codes, but I am a font of unrevealed trivia about the show. I do know more about these characters then 66 episodes has revealed. Some of it I like to keep to myself, some of it I like to tease. Some of it I don't mind revealing and have done so.

So a lot comes down to the intent of the questioner, and you can usually tell, if not in a single post then in the range of posts that that person submits. If I get 16 posts in a row asking something like, "Who is Maggie's father?" followed by "Who is Claw's father?" followed by "Who is Fang's father?" or if I get requests for laundry lists of things, "Name all the ancient heroes who have encountered Oberon," then you can bet that the questioner was looking for a question to ask, as opposed to trying to deepen his or her understanding of the show or character.

But sometimes a so-called trivial question can lead to just that. Look at your list above. Some of it seems stupid, but some of the answers to some of those questions would certainly lead to a better understanding. "Who were Oberon's parents?" Once upon a time, I hadn't revealed the answer to that. Eventually, I revealed that Oberon's mother was Mab. And that revelation, and the info I gave about Oberon's overthrowing of his mother, certainly lends something to one's understanding of his character. I haven't yet revealed who his father is. Not in the mood. But I would hope that learning that would also effect one's understanding of the character.

And again, I think you can often (though not always) tell by the question itself if that's what the questioner is seeking. A deeper understanding about some aspect of the show.

So sometimes, it does get annoying. But mostly I enjoy doing this. (I do think that doing a little a day has been a much better system than trying to do big batches of questions all at once. I get less annoyed when not burdened with the cumulative effects of annoyance.)

Do I wish this could be more of a forum for ideas and discussion? Well, yeah, duh. I've invited that in the past, and, P., I always enjoy reading and responding to your posts.

(Although what you quoted at the head of your post:

<<You idiot! Did you not read the no ideas clause on the main askgreg page or are you just pretending to be stupid!>>

I found this to be a remarkable statement.

is a bit lost on me out of context. I can't believe I wrote the first quote.)

Admittedly, we do have a problem with making this a forum right now. The FLOOD. The flood of submissions during a period when I all but ceased to answer questions (all around the time of 9/11 and following) created a backlog so immense that creating a forum is nearly impossible. Now it truly is impossible, as we have temporarily shut down the submission function. You can't respond to this response.

I'd love to try and solve this problem, and I've made suggestions. But ultimately this isn't my site, it's Gorebash's. Until he's ready, willing and able to initate a new system, we're stuck with me slowly catching up.

I hope that 18 months later you're still checking ASK GREG and reading this. I hope that you'll compose your response and hold on to it, submitting it when we finally get things back up and running. But even if you're not, even if you're long gone, thanks for raising some interesting issues.

Greg responds...

Yes.

Greg responds...

Yes, of course.

Yes, of course.

Greg responds...

1. Uh, I suppose... but certainly not in the sense that the term is generally used.

2. I'm not sure we yet have any true AI's aside from Matrix.

Does even Coyote 4.0 qualify? He's certainly sophisticated by robotic standards, but is he truly artificially intelligent?

Would you categorize Coldfire & Coldsteel as A.I.'s when it is the sorcerous possession of gargoyle souls that engenders their intelligence?

Am I missing anyone?

So far all I've got is Matrix, who, yes, is more advanced than Golem, if you even want to put Golem on that scale, which I don't.

Greg responds...

I'm not telling at this time.

Greg responds...

I'm not telling at this time.

Greg responds...

I'm not telling at this time.

Greg responds...

As opposed to what?

All are based on a core truth, and as we know, "All things are true."