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Question writes...

1) Is Lexington really gay? Why then did he pursue Angela or did he just pursue her like the rest of the trio because his rookery brothers were pursuing her?

2) When did you realize that Lexington was gay? Was it during the writing and production of the show or years after the show got cancelled because I really didn't see any hints about his homosexuality in the animated series.

Greg responds...

1. Yes, in my mind at least, if not necessarily quite yet in his (as of 1996). He pursued Angela because that seemed like the thing to do. And because I don't think he's completely come to terms with his sexuality yet.

2. I wasn't trying to hint at anything. Some things just are. As for when I knew... it was definitely back when I was at Disney, so sometime in '95 or '96.

Response recorded on April 14, 2005

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Mooncat >^,,^< writes...

Noticed a lot of recent questions by "Anonymous" that are deliberately stupid... My question is would the site admin filter out questions posted by "Anonymous" to save everyone from a waste of time?

I'm not sure if the admins the site has conversed with Greg about this problem, but it would be nice if there was a filter or questions page moderator to get rid of the obvious attempts to troll.

With the regular debates over this sort of thing in the message board, I am wondering if there has been any real move to create a filter (or set up a moderator) for questions that are already answered in ASK GREG and questions that are just from a jack*** trying to waste time Greg's time.

Knowing Greg has a limited amount of time to allocate to Ask Greg, and can only answers a few 'questions' at a time, that rare and valued resouce gets eaten up with every 'joke' question and the ones by people who don't bother to read the archives first. I'm hoping that some screening will be done in the future, because I am always eager to see some new thought or insight from Greg on Gargoyles and his other work.

Thanks Greg, for taking the time for questions and keeping the fandom active with your participation!

Mooncat

Greg responds...

Right now, Todd, our moderator has very strict rules -- imposed by me -- as to what he is and isn't allowed to kick. I appreciate the strongly worded feelings, Mooncat, but I'm not prepared to change the rules of this site until Gorebash has had the opportunity to fully take ASK GREG to the next level.

Response recorded on April 13, 2005

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Akia writes...

Hi!

I´m a big Owen/Puck fan!
And I asked myself (and now you;))what would be the charakter of his girlfriend? He has two(maybe thousand?)personalitys. But what is it he likes at other peoples personalitys?

Greg responds...

I'm not going into Owen's love life at this time.

Response recorded on April 13, 2005

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jade mcmahon writes...

what are some of the gargoyles myths and ledgens?

Greg responds...

What aren't?

Response recorded on April 13, 2005

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matt writes...

Hi Greg. You said in the archives that as of the time you left the show (The Journey, i'm assuming) that Demona didn't know about Broadway and Angela's relationship, and the only other person who knew was Brooklyn.

1. How did Brook find out? Did Broadway and Angela tell him? Was the scene in "The Journey" how Brook find out?

2. When would the rest of the Clan find out about them? Would they try to keep it quiet for awhile or would they even care who knew?

3. Had Angela had any romantic connections with any of her rookery brothers on Avalon?

Greg responds...

1. Yes, the scene in "The Journey".

2. I don't think it was a major secret. But honestly, I haven't given much thought to the order of how and when everyone learned about it.

3. No. Nothing even vaguely serious.

Response recorded on April 07, 2005

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Valaine Fea writes...

Hello!
I´m from Austria and a big Gargoyles fan!:)
Thanks for the show!
Now my question:
2198
Will Owen look like the Owen we know? Or older?
You said he has a love life. In 1996 or in 2198(between?)?

Please excuse me if I said something grammatically wrong. I`m not very good in english;)

Greetings from Vienna,
Valaine

Greg responds...

Owen will look like Owen, allowing for differences in fashion. I'm not going to go into details of his love life at this time.

Response recorded on April 07, 2005

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John writes...

Hi Greg,

Some years ago, people kept permanently asking 'bout Brooklyns permanent "injury" or "disfigurement" he got during his Timedancing. You never told...

By now, you revealed other, in my mind bigger secrets 'bout the future masterplan (especially that Lex is gay), so I ask again, hoping you are in a good mood and want to spoil it:

What is Brooklyns permanent injury/disfigurement he receives during Timedancing? Andif you don't want to tell us, what sort is it? Scar? Loss of Limb? Loss of wing???

So, however, have a nice day,
CU, John

Greg responds...

Eh, sorry. It's a fair question, but I'm just not in the mood.

Response recorded on April 07, 2005

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The Cat writes...

I'm going to ramble and rant, so I hope you can forgive me if I confuse you or loose you along the way.

Response from Greg to Vanity's question that was posted January 6th 2002:

The notion that vengeance begets nothing more than a vicious cycle of further vengeance, is not only true but is if anything UNDERSTATED. Hardly exaggerate. One only has to look at a newspaper to see that the Montagues and Capulets of this world simply refuse to recognize this obvious, obvious FACT. It drives me insane. Your casual dismissal of the notion doesn't thrill me either. (Sorry.)

Okay, I'm going to ramble on this one a bit. Chew it up spit it out type deal.

Okay, what has always confused me about Demona is that she supposably hates humans. She wants to kill them and wipe them off the planet.

If that is true then why didn't she kill the Canmore brat when he was young and not any sort of threat to her. She could have gotten away with it to, to an extent of the imagination anyway, saying that she was protecting herself from attack and that she just happened to rake the young child's jugular vein with her talons would have worked rather nicely as an excuse. The thing is Demona knew, sort of, that Canmore would become vengeful. I mean, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out that this little bratty prince is going to go looking for revenge. He's so spoiled he still needs some one to wipe his butt! If that doesn't say"I'm going to go seeking revenge because somebody lower than me hurt my pride I don't know what does. She could have easily nipped it in the bud and there would no longer be any Hunters. Of course, you put them into the show to keep the plot rolling, but that really didn't work out did it. Of course not.

Also, Demona is suppose to be insane. She could have easily taken out the humans with her plague. Why tell Goliath that all he had to do was destroy the praying gargoyle and then she wouldn't spread the plague. Insane people are not known for having morals! What got me to was she wouldn't spread the plague because it would kill Angela. That made no sense. Demona has always tried to kill Goliath and the clan, saying that they've been corrupted by the humans. Now, the interesting thing is Angela has been the most corrupted. She was raised by humans and taught by humans, so Demona should have wanted to kill her to. Especially her. That would have definitely reinstated the fact that Demona was a villain.

Perhaps I'm looking into this too much, but Demona had the opportunity to kill a lot of people in the last thousand years and save herself a lot of heartache later. I highly doubt that anyone would defend the Canmore brat. I highly doubt anyone would have been capable of stopping her from killing the last hundred or so Hunters that came after her when Canmore didn't succeed.

However, I think I can answer this for myself I just want to know your thoughts on it.

Demona is not evil, per say, and she's hoping that the humans realize that they've treated her kind wrong and will repent, however, she doesn't see that time coming up anytime soon. She also saw that Macbeth's way of handling Canmore was better, not as fulfilling, but better. She, I suppose, was expecting Canmore to realize, later, that she had spared his life and that he might realize that it was out of the goodness of her heart not out of the fact that she couldn't kill him. Men are extremely short sighted in this fact: A woman can kill you! A beast can kill you! *shrugs* I've never understood how come it was so hard for some men to understand this.

Also, I think Demona's looking at the whole revenge thing a bit wrong. If I'm correct she's looking at it as though its her against The Hunter. She's not looking at it as though it is a war. That it is a campaign that she has to plan for. That she has to choose her ground. She needed to think things through!

I honestly have to wonder how many times she has planned out her schemes. Aside from the plague thingy, I don't think she's ever thought any of her things through to the very end. I'd have to say that she never thought about what torture Puck would put her through the night she stole The Mirror, if she had she probably wouldn't have stolen it. The one time she does plan for years upon years she hamstrings her own plan by telling Goliath how to defeat her. Stupid! Utterly stupid!

So, now I've ranted and I want to know am I right? Even to some degree.
Also, I'd like it if you read this. It was the main reason I began this rant. The book is titled: Oathblood and was written by Mercedes Lackey. One of my all time favorite authors. (I know you don't read fan fiction, quite understandable really, but I usually incorporate some aspect of her stuff into my fan fiction.) This book is a bunch of short stories pulled together and the last one is the one that inspired this rant, however, the whole book is good and I would suggest reading the other two that go with this one as well. Their titles are "Oathbound" and "Oathbreakers". They're good books and a must read for anybody because they go into details that most fantasy novels just don't go into. Especially, the ones published back in the 1980's when it was still "a man's world".

Greg responds...

Where do I start?

Okay, let me start with the Oath-recommendations. I have found that I don't enjoy most fantasy fiction books. Isn't that surprising? It surprises me. Among other reasons, it may have something to do with envy. (I don't like admitting that, but it's true.) But I also like to keep my head generally clear of other people's ideas. I just prefer reading detective fiction, for some reason. But if I do decide to read fantasy again, I'll keep your recommendations in mind.

As for Demona... I like to believe that she is a complex character with complex motivations. That she is "human" enough to have inconsistencies. Yes, she tells herself she wants all humans dead, but in fact she isn't always ready to act on those feelings. Also, you need to keep in mind that the Demona of the late 20th century is not the same Demona of the early 11th century. She'd gone through a lot in the interrum that changed her, hardened her.

Likewise, she tells herself that she wants corrupted Gargoyles out of the way. But when push comes to shove, she's not prepared to sacrifice her daughter. So when you say things like: "That made no sense." All I can do is disagree with you and say it made sense to me.

And there are all kinds of "insane". Demona fits a definition, certainly. But of course, it's not like she's brain-dead.

Some of what you write sounds right to me -- or at least in the ballpark. But I don't agree with your assessment of Canmore really. And I don't agree that Demona could have just killed him easily as a child without repercussions. Even Macbeth felt he couldn't kill the kid without repercussions. And I tend to agree with him.

Obviously there were repercussions for NOT killing the kid too. But you roll the dice, you know?

As for Demona often if not always sewing (sowing?) the seeds of her own defeat. Why, yes, she sort of does. I don't think she consciously thought she was giving Goliath the info he needed to stop her. But she did. She's a conflicted character. I think that's what makes her so fascinating to so many people.

Response recorded on April 06, 2005

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Chaos9001 writes...

Hey greg

love the show(obviously) but i have a question, if Fang was cooped up with demona for at least five weeks by the day that it showed on screen demona changing form, why did he looked so shocked when she turned human?

Greg responds...

I don't think he looked shocked. It may have taken him five weeks to come up with a funny line.

Response recorded on April 06, 2005

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Punchinello writes...

<<Gargoyles as well can type on keyboards and relay thought. Lexington with very little experience in terms of years and could only practice at night, was able to punch a keyboard judging by the "clicking" sound of the keyboard at nearly 129 words per minute, without looking and locate Coldstone in MacBeth's mansion. Quite impressive really.>>

Breathtaking.

<<Yet his thoughts were in English.>>

No. They were not. Look. Mental concepts (especially highly abstract concepts) do not emerge from language. It works the other way around. Concepts are formed internally. We can use language to describe them but we don't need to. That's the important distinction.
Consider the acquisition of tool use. A tool you have never used before. Lets consider something like a construction crane. You see it's controls. By experimentation you might begin to discern the function of each control. But none of this is the product of some mental narrative. Pretend you've never seen a crane before. Maybe you're an aboriginal who has never seen western devices. Better yet, pretend you're Lexington. You're a gargoyle transplanted from 10th century Scotland into contemporary America. Lexington has never seen a lever. He's never seen a gas pedal or a start button. If you sit him in a crane and point to controls and tell him what each one _is called_ what do you think it would mean to him? Nothing. Simply calling something a gas pedal gives it no context. You have not imparted anything about it's function. Lexington has no concept that these structures in front of him have functional relationships with the larger device. However, if he experiments, he can begin to observe that if he pushes the lever forward, the crane rotates clockwise. If he pulls it backwards, the crane rotates counterclockwise. He can make associations now, and he can begin to detect patterns. He can anticipate that if moving a control in one direction corresponds to one function, then moving it in the other corresponds to the opposite function. This process of observation, association and anticipation is an example of conceptual thinking. In order to understand the crane, he would have needed to think about it in concepts. Not in English.

The corollary to the computer should be clear. Lexington simply could not have considered the novelty of the computer in words. He would have no words to describe it's properties, it's function or it's nature. If you were transplanted 1000 years into the future and someone handed you a solid metal sphere and told you to use it to write words, how would you contemplate the thing they handed you? It's surface is smooth. No obvious control mechanisms. No obvious surface features of any kind. So how the devil do you write with it? Speculating about it's functionality is a highly conceptual and visual process. If handwriting and typing are both lost arts in 1000 years, then you don't even have words to describe this thing's function.

Think about how Lexington would actually interpret a computer. You have a conceptual understanding of what a keyboard is, but Lexington doesn't. He's never seen a typewriter. He's never even seen a printing press. Do you suppose that when Lexington ponders this device, his thinking takes the form of mentally spoken instructions? Instructions to do what? To type? He has no concept of typing. He would be as mystified by this thing as you would be by the sphere.

However, if he can observe the device in use, and if he can experiment with it, then just as with the crane, he can begin to infer the functional relationships of the keys. He can form a mental picture of how this device works. At that point, he's certainly free to attribute words to the concepts if he want's to communicate them to someone else, but he doesn't need to. His ability to think about the device is not contingent upon his ability to describe those thoughts linguistically.

Proponents of the idea that thought is a purely linguistic process cling to this fantasy that thought is a perpetual little personal narration providing us with instructions. As though a little person were sitting on our shoulder whispering to us. Even if this ridiculous picture of the thought process were verifiable, consider that it would be useless as a medium for thought. Instructions mean nothing without concepts. Even simple concepts.

What about Bronx...

The point of my original thesis on sentience was that it is frequently treated in an uncritical and mentally lazy way. It enters popular culture, not as anything analytical, but as an imagined distinction between those we have to respect and those we don't have to treat with any kind of consideration.

So, is the mental world of Bronx (or Cagney) diminished by their not being able to articulate it? It should be evident that the notion their thought hinges upon language is ridiculous. Can we say they are sentient? Can we say they have the ability to observe, make inferences and anticipate? Can we say they are aware?

Of course. It's not just a matter of our having significant evidence for the ability of non-humans to have this type of mental experience. It's profoundly unreasonable to maintain that they are not aware and intelligent when we consider the emergence of intelligence in pre-history. It's often supposed that these mental abilities just suddenly appeared in homo sapiens, as if by magic, once we passed a certain threshold in our evolution. Nothing compels this feature to emerge, according to popular mythology. It just shows up unannounced. And it renders homo sapiens capable of language and tool use in a single second of evolutionary history.

Now, evolutionary psychologists have realized for a long time, that this picture of the development of intelligence was as silly as they come. Highly ordered structures like awareness and intellect don't just appear all at once. They emerge over time from more primitive systems. Intelligence evolved under the pressures that all species face in nature.

Awareness and thought did not emerge from nature as a means to get us into college or to allow us to write resumes. They emerged as a means to avoid large predators and distinguish things we can eat from things that can eat us. Living beings need to be able to distinguish between these two things in order to survive. The ability to contemplate concepts of things in our environment is just the natural product of species adapting to interact beneficially with it. All of our mental abilities are inherited from our earliest ancestors and were developed as an instrument for them to survive. The development of these faculties simply could never have delayed emerging until after we developed language.

If you consider it, you will discover that abstract concepts frequently defy linguistic expression, because our ability to think abstractly developed independently of language. You can't really describe a sophisticated mathematical concept or a work of music in words. They can only be contemplated conceptually. In fact very common things defy linguistic expression. Try this experiment.

Describe the color red.

The reason we cant is because the linguistic structure to describe it does not exist. It didn't emerge because it does not serve to benefit our species survival in any way. Yet you can picture red mentally. Or any number of colors. Doubtlessly, a variety of hues, which you might not even have a name for, exist in your mind. They exist as concepts. Mental pictures. And their inability to be defined linguistically does not diminish them. You can picture red. You can apply it to various forms. You can anticipate what would happen if you mixed it with another color. But you don't need language to do that. The imaginative process, the conceptual process, has nothing to do with language.

<<Eskimos have something like seven words that really just mean "snow". Yet an Eskimo thinks like an Eskimo and can judge the minor differences in the type of snow they see and to them one kind of snow is not "a" snow but a "d" snow and ect.. >>

This anecdote about Eskimo's having such a plurality of words for snow is often referred to in arguments for the dependence of thought on language. I don't know why. It does not appear to lend anything to this position. I guess the idea is that the way Eskimo's think about snow is supposed to be structurally different from the way english speakers think of snow. If they do, then it's not evident that it follows from their having more words for snow. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are at least a dozen words for snow in the english language. Flurry, Slush, Hardpack, Frost, Powder, IceLens, etc. And if we include all the descriptive lexemes that we count when we talk about the Eskimo words for snow, then there are probably dozens more in english.

This really is not an indicator that thought is contingent upon language. I can provide an analogous example though, which begins to demonstrate that thought takes place in the absence of language. Colors end up being a good example again, because they are such a large part of our visual world.

In Swedish, there are probably as many words to describe various colors as there are in English. Possibly more. I know they have a special word for light gray. Linguistic relativists would take the position that the Swedish or English must be thinking about colors in a way that is fundamentally denied to people of other cultures, who do not have all these words for colors.

There are many, such cultures. For instance, the Tiv language of New Guinea, where there are only two words for colors, equivalent to light and dark. A Swedish scientific study done years ago sought to test the theory that thought must be absent where language to describe something is also absent. However, when tested, it became apparent that Tiv speakers were able to recognize as many colors (and with the same facility) as Swedish speakers. This is certainly an indicator that thought exists without the benefit of language.

<<Luckily for us I suppose that as humans we all relatively think alike even with our differing way of thinking.>>

I find some arguments for deep structure very persuasive Vanity, but you treat the concept in a way which is very far removed from those arguments.

<<This allows for learning multiple languages each human no matter his language that language has the ability to "learn" or adapt to the use of another language and that is quite a remarkable thing. Almost too remarkable to be chance. >>

Has this become a prescription for theology now?

Greg responds...

Punchinello, I agree with everything you're saying... and yet....

Language, once created, does not then exist in a vacuum. Language itself INFLUENCES thought, influences one's thinking about even the most abstract of concepts -- including Red.

Learning a birth language must wire the brain a certain way. At least out of habit. Not hard-wired of course, but non-survival laziness dictates that a birth language must influence thought. That the learning of a new language (in any depth) must also influence thought.

That introducing new words to a human being may in fact on occasion introduce new concepts not discovered.

In 1984, Orwell posited that the destruction or dissolution of words underlying concepts like "Freedom", etc. would result in a population with less awareness of the concepts themselves. Of course even in that novel, he didn't posit that this was enough to completely WIPE OUT the concept of Freedom. Thus individuals like Smith are intentionally awakened by Ingsoc out of their stupor in order to push them down various roads to "Freedom" while under constant observation. These roads are then cut off -- along with the road-takers -- in order to prevent Freedom from, well, ringing.

Yes, concepts exist independent of language. But language, once created, takes on a life of its own (says the writer -- so take it with a grain of salt). Language has, as I'm sure you'd agree, a power of its own.

I'm not at all sure, but that may be where Vanity was heading.

Response recorded on April 05, 2005


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