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Justin writes...

Greg,
You have mentioned that there is a clan in Korea.
1)Where in Korea is this clan located?
2)Who is the leader of the clan?
3) Have they had a massacre recently? Or do the Koreans in the area even know they exist?
4) In 1998 did the clan have a rookery?
5) Will any Korean gargs play a part in future story lines?
6) Of the 12 Existing clans; how many is the Illuminati aware of?

Thanks

Greg responds...

1. Pukhan, Korea. This clan lives in tunnels and caves that run through the mountains along the Pukhan River.

2. Don't know yet.

3. No full-scale massacre, if that's what you mean.

3a. There are legends.

4. Yes.

5. Yes.

6. In 2001, there are not 12 existing clans. There are 10, including Avalon, Manhattan and the Labyrinth. And the Illuminati probably know about fewer than you think.

Response recorded on March 02, 2001

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Matt "KS" Maybray writes...

Greg,

This is my first time asking a question here, so be gentle...

It's been mentioned that in "Bad Guys", The Director would've been fighting against the Illuminati's Mr. Duval. Since you had planned for Duval to be Sir Percival, was the Director going to be any notable character from history, mythology, or literature? If so, then who?

In closing, I'd just like to thank you for helping create something that I've had much enjoyment from these past 7 years. There hasn't been any show quite like "Gargoyles" since (unfortunately).

Greg responds...

No.

(Was that gentle?)

And thanks. Glad you've stuck around.

Response recorded on March 02, 2001

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Baal writes...

Hey, um. Sorry about Question 2 in my Angela post.
I guess you DID say that you weren't gonna answer in questions about 2198 until the contest was over. (Although SOME people are already asking questions.

Here are some questions of my own.
1. Do Arthur and his comrades go on a quest to retrieve the Holy Grail. (I think I've seen yes in the archive). If so, does this pit the against Percival/Duval, the leader of the Illuminati.

2. Does Macbeth get involved.

Greg responds...

1. Eventually and yes.

2. A bit.

Response recorded on February 15, 2001

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LSZ writes...

How did Matt first learn about the Illuminati's existence?

Greg responds...

Good question. Fun answer. But it's a long story.

Response recorded on February 01, 2001

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LSZ writes...

Is the Director's enmity primarily aimed at Duval himself, or the Illuminati?

Greg responds...

"enmity" is the wrong word.

Response recorded on January 26, 2001

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LSZ writes...

Are there any other Garg-universe controlling-major-events-from-behind-the-scenes secret societies besides the Illuminati?

Greg responds...

Not really. (Would get redundant.)

Response recorded on January 26, 2001

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(The Guppi) writes...

What was the Illuminati Society's reaction (if any) to the various historical Anti-Mason movements?

Greg responds...

As long as they're ire was directed at splinter groups, copy-cats and shells, the actual Society was just fine with them.

Response recorded on January 26, 2001

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Sapphire writes...

How many people are members of the illuminati society in 1996?

Greg responds...

I've never counted.

Response recorded on January 26, 2001

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Ithica writes...

Would Duval make any attempt to make his identity known to King Arthur? Arthur was Percival's great uncle, and Percy was one of Art's best knights, so would they make contact of any sort?

Greg responds...

Contact would be made.

Response recorded on January 26, 2001

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Sapphire writes...

Will any gargoyles ever become members of the illuminati society in the future?

Greg responds...

How do you know some aren't already?

Response recorded on January 17, 2001

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LSZ writes...

Are any of the members of the Illmunati pre-2198 non-humans? If so, what race are they?

Greg responds...

Not answering.

Response recorded on December 21, 2000

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LSZ writes...

1) Do the Illuminati know about Macbeth?
2) Do the Illuminati know about the Gathering?
3) The were-panthers?
4) The Golem?
5) The Matrix, whether before or after it hooked up with Dingo?
6) Do they know Owen is Puck?
7) Do they know why Macbeth or Demona are immortal?

Greg responds...

1. Maybe.

2. Probably.

3. Doubtful.

4. Probably.

5. Yes.

6. No.

7. See (1).

Response recorded on December 21, 2000

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Chapter XXI: "Vows"

Written by Shari Goodhartz
Michael Reaves, Story Editor

Benny: "But Daddy, when it's dark they get alive. But when it's light, the get frozen like a statue."

Last night, the kids, my sister, my wife and I all watched "Vows" together. Time to ramble.

Back to the Golden Cup Bakery Building. As I noted in the previously posted memo about this episode, I wanted a little opening battle, but I didn't want to waste time in a tight, packed script explaining how this came about. It does beg the question though. Assume that X contacted Elisa. She told Goliath. He went ALONE? His friends allowed this? Hmmm.

Xanatos knows from the letter to himself what to do, but I sometimes wonder just how detailed the letter was. I like to think it was fairly sketchy. That exactly HOW Xanatos got Goliath to come was his own machinations. Otherwise, though he takes the credit for the letter, the truth is that the plan itself wasn't his idea. He got the idea from the letter. And he wrote the letter based on what he had done, which he had gotten from the letter. None of this is really his to own, though he does claim ownership. So I like to think that at least some of the details were X's. For example, X knows what G will respond to, i.e. Demona.

Hudson, on hearing about the wedding, suddenly makes the connection to the long ago incident when he met the Goliath from the future. So he's strangely ambivalent. Elisa on the other hand, seems flat out jealous to me. After the events of "The Mirror" and "Eye of the Beholder", she's much more aware and focused on her feelings for Goliath. SHE DOES NOT WANT TO ACT ON THOSE FEELINGS. At this time, she thinks it's impossible. But that doesn't change how she feels. And now, she's jealous. Goliath's feelings for Elisa are just as intense, but so are his feelings for the "Angel" of his youth. He HAS to give it one last chance. (And this will be the last chance. The final nail in the coffin of his and Demona's "marriage".) Brooklyn, meanwhile, is just knee-jerk against anything involving Demona.

PETROS XANATOS is introduced. Again, I wonder why he was invited. Was he also included in the letter? Or did Xanatos invite him to prove something to his father. Is X that needy? Or did X invite him to the wedding, because of course he'd invite his father to his wedding, and his already planned "honeymoon" to 975 shouldn't alter his decorum. Perhaps he's mildly surprised his father winds up coming along? Anyway, Petros was a fun character. A tough hard physical man. With morals. A great contrast to the son. I knew even then that we'd give Petros and David an arc to their relationship, (one that eventually would culminate in Gathering2).

"Oh, reason not the need." A little King Lear is always nice. And I love Petros' attitude on the line, "And the armor?" I mean what would you say to your son if you saw him dressed like that? I'd like to know how many people had sort of forgotten that X was even wearing armor (we're so used to it) until Petros made an issue of it?

I love all the irony in the dialogue between Petros and David. David knows what he's planning. He must be smiling when Petros says "I'd like to get my hands on the man who gave you that coin." And when David says, "Someday, I'll prove to you that I'm a self-made man," he must really be patting himself on the back.

I love the voice work of Keith and Marina when doing their teen-age counterparts. So subtle, yet it's always clear which Goliath and Demona is talking at any given moment.

CONTINUITY:
Gotta love that storage room in the clock tower. The Eye of Odin, the Grimorum, half the Phoenix Gate, and, oh, yes, a comatose Coldstone. By the way, despite what the memo said, I think generally, Goliath carried that Gate in the pouch attached to his belt. Not behind some brick. We hadn't actually come up with that pouch yet, not until the World Tour. But using RetCon, I think that's where he kept it until they moved to the clock tower and Demona tried to kill him, Hudson and Elisa in "Long Way to Morning".

One interesting thing: this is the first episode where we actually CONFIRM that the ILLUMINATI does exist. Matt's mentioned it. Even chased it in SILVER FALCON, but we've never been shown any proof of it's existence until now. Was anyone surprised by that?

Judge Roebling was interesting in theory, though not so much in the episode. I'd like to do more with him some day. I also thought that it was interesting that despite seeing the tape of the Gargoyles in advance. And not reacting outwardly when he saw Goliath, he still gasps when Demona enters. What is it about her? When she entered, Benny turned to me and said: "She's queen of the Gargoyles." Oh. So that's it.

(And everytime Xanatos and Fox are on screen together, Benny likes to point out that he and Erin dressed up as them at the last Gathering. "That's me. That's you, Erin.")

To some extent, X must have filled D in on his plan. I love her "acting" when she enters and gives her bitter "excuse" for being there to Goliath. She's playing hard to get!

I love Petros: "Unnacceptable." He's still trying to teach David the error of his ways.

The Gate itself is very idiosyncratic. It's size, the size of its portal, and the duration the portal stays open seems to vary not just from episode to episode but from scene to scene. Sometimes it annoys me, like when Princess Elena removes the Gate from her sleeve, and suddenly it's bigger than her hand. But now I'm just amused by it. Again, if you think of it as a steam valve for the timestream, it explains a lot.

I love the little sound that Paca put in when the two pieces of the Gate first come together. What a tip-off that was, yet it's subtle. Did anyone think about the significance of the talisman that Demona had shared with Goliath before she started speaking in Latin and flames appeared out of nowhere?

It was hard to make people understand the time loop a bit. But it seemed really hard to make them see why I kept wanting to repeat scenes to show the connective tissue. We had to squeeze in Owen's "Honeymoon" line the second time. No one left space for it.

For the first of many times in the series, someone (X) says the line: "It's not where, it's when". (Erin: "I know when.")

I love X & Fox's relationship. "Having fun." "A marvelous time." Great stuff.

Hudson gets a close look at 1995 Goliath and immediately sees the age and wear and tear on the guy. (I love the shot of Goliath gagging him.) That says a lot for Hudson, because the visual difference between the two Gs was extremely subtle in the animation -- when it existed at all.

Knowing what we had planned (more or less) for Avalon, we were already laying groundwork here for that. Setting up the combined power of the Gate, Grimorum and Eye. Setting up the Archmage's desire for that power. Further demonstrating his enmity for the people he'd wind up using. Of course, making Demona his apprentice was fun. Tells a lot about her own desire for power that even when she was a good girl, she was still willing to work for the Archmage in order to learn his secrets. Willing even to steal for him.

The Norman Ambassador and Prince Malcolm make a BIG deal about how odd the Xanatoses' clothes are. But were they THAT strange? Was Fox's wedding gown that odd? And even if they were strange, did they look as shabby as Prince Malcolm seemed to suggest?

Not every episode gives you a double wedding. Fox and David. Elena and Malcolm. Hey, did anyone notice that we married off our lead villain? That was very daring, and we all but threw it away in Act One. Was anyone expecting Fox and X to really get married? And once they were, did you think you'd see them have a kid by season's end? I think we broke new ground there.

I like the exchange between Goliath and Hudson. Goliath's trying to explain that he's not a creature of sorcery, but a time traveler. H: "And I suppose you came back in time on the wind." O.k., well sorcery was involved if you're gonna get technical. And Goliath has some amusing tense problems while trying to describe what happened in his recent past, Hudson's FAR future. Then Hudson looks him in the eye and decides to trust him on no further evidence. Cool.

I knew a girl named Bryant from Bar Harbor, Maine once. That's where we got X's home town.

Fox is so proud of her man. But I love Petros' "Mr. Big-Shot Time Traveler" line. Or rather I love the way Morgan Shepard read the line.

How hard did Demona try to do things differently from the way she remembered them being done? She knows Goliath is going to fly down to try and join her and her younger self. She tries to leave before he can get there. But the gate stays open long enough for him to go with. Did it ever occur to her to go somewhen else other than 994? I guess part of it could be chalked up to dim memory. It was over a thousand years ago. And Demona lived through that 1000 years. Even for a very significant event in her life, it must still be very hazy.

That exchange between Demona and Demona is a lot of fun. Demona is so brutal to Demona. (And, hey, she spells out the Gate's power to any audience member who hasn't yet caught on.) "Do not share it with-- Do not share it!" I love that line. Also:

"I am what you will become."
"I will never be like you."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"And I don't want to BE you."

pretty cool stuff.

I also like the moment when we have two gates rolling about on the floor and young Demona and older Goliath both bend over to pick them up. At first we had a lot of discussion as to who should pick up which gate. But the discussion became moot, since after the gate pieces were reunited, they almost always seemed like they had never been broken in the first place. Magic.

And the young Demona, older Goliath scene is also gorgeous.

"What am I to do?"
"Nothing."

Love that. Love his whole "Do nothing/attend the petty jealousy" speech. I think it's very pretty. Very sad. At that moment, does Goliath hope he's changing the future? Or is he simply trying to spare this young Angel a couple extra decades of pain?

Showing Demona's natural bents again: Goliath isn't sure if he remembers the incantation, though he's heard it multiple times by this point. Young Demona, having only heard it ONCE, does remember and uses the Gate perfectly.

"Time Travel's funny that way." At least it is in the Gargoyle Universe with the strict, strict rules that I imposed. Of course, I've always thought that those strict rules made the stories more challenging for the writer and, yet, more fun and satisfying for the viewer.

I also really like Petros' "American Penny" speech. For once the "Xanatos Tag" of victory doesn't go to David.

Where did the expression "More's the pity." come from? I've heard it many times. I know what it means, though that's more from sound and context than from the words themselves. What am I quoting when I use it? Does anyone know? (This isn't a contest. I really don't know.)

Finally, my tape has the weird mistake ending that first aired, which shows Demona and Goliath in the clock tower. It's pretty, but it drives me nuts and I think it's really confusing. But I've talked about that many times before, and I'm sick of it, so this time, I'll let it go.

COMMENTS WELCOME!


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Todd Jensen writes...

A second comment, on "Vows". You mentioned that you weren't certain as to whether the one-eyed pyramid design on Xanatos's Illuminati pin was a genuine Illuminati symbol or not. Actually, it is - or at least, it's popularly associated with the Illuminati in conspiracy theory mythology. (Said conspiracy theories like to particularly make a big thing of the one-eyed pyramid also showing up on the Great Seal of the United States and the back of the one-dollar bill, as if indicating that there was some connection between the Illuminati and the Founding Fathers. I won't ask if that was indeed the case in the Gargoyles Universe; I doubt that the fandom has been cleared for that answer yet :)

Greg responds...

:) Yeah, I thought I remembered something about that even at the time, but the Illuminati was a concept that Michael had intro'd into the series, so I didn't want to be presumptuous.

Response recorded on November 16, 2000

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Sapphire writes...

Will the Illuminati ever lose its interest in capturing a live Gargoyle?

Greg responds...

Ever's a long time.

Response recorded on November 15, 2000

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Todd Jensen writes...

In "The Silver Falcon", the letter from Mace Malone to Dominic Dracon shows that Mace's full first name is "Mason". Was this a reference to the Freemasons (who seem to have been a partial-original for the Illuminati of "Gargoyles" - or at least, the popular beliefs about the Freemasons were), in light of Mace Malone's being an Illuminatus?

Greg responds...

Maybe. I'd have to ask Cary Bates, who came up with the name.

Response recorded on November 01, 2000

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Sapphire writes...

1)Why does sir Pervical want the Manhatten Clan?
Does he want to destroy them, enslave them, cage them for protection from humans, or some other sinister plan?

Greg responds...

He wants to neutralize a variable. Incorporate it into his master plan.

Response recorded on November 01, 2000

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Anonymous writes...

Where did Mace Malone really hide the gems Dominic Dracon was looking for in the Silver Falcon?

Greg responds...

He didn't. He gave them to the Illuminati as his admission fee.

Response recorded on November 01, 2000

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Shihuang and his trusty goat writes...

Do the rejuvination drugs the Illuminati give out to their senior members have any connection to the Holy Grail? I ask because their leader is the Fisher King, the keeper of the grail.

Greg responds...

Maybe.

Response recorded on November 01, 2000

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Todd Jensen writes...

In one of your recent answers to "Ask Greg", when somebody asked you if you had any plans to include events in "Gargoyles" that people blamed on the Illuminati, you asked if people do still blame events on the Illuminati. Actually, there are a few people out there who do - generally the ones who see the United Nations and the European Economic Union as Satanic tools to unite the world under the Antichrist. They actually believe that the Illuminati are the ones behind these events (and often identify them with the Freemasons, or with some sort of inner clique of the Freemasons).

(For my own part, given Duval's function as Fisher King, i.e., guardian of the Holy Grail, I doubt that the Illuminati of the Gargoyles Universe can be seriously intending to promote Satan-worship).

Greg responds...

No. Not Satan Worship. Just expediency. (Or is that the same thing sometimes?)

Response recorded on October 20, 2000

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Sapphire writes...

Some Questions about the illuminati society in the Gargoyles universe.

1) Matt Bluestone once said that the president works for the Illuminati society, is this true?

2) It is extremely hard for a person in power to have completly loyal followers. Does Sir Pervical who is the leader of the Illuminati Society have any followers that are willing to betray him and try to sieze power in the Illuminati society?

Why does Sir Percival want the Manhatten clan?
Does he want to destroy them, enslave them, put them in a cage to prevent them from getting killed by the humans? or does he have other plans for them?

Greg responds...

1. I'm afraid to say.

2. It's certainly possible.

Why did YOU stop numbering your questions?

Response recorded on October 20, 2000

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Todd Jensen writes...

Does the Illuminati Society accept female members, or is it strictly a "males-only" organization?

Greg responds...

These days it'll pull from either gender.

Response recorded on October 20, 2000

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Todd Jensen writes...

1. What is the legal status of Percival/Duval and Blanchefleur's marriage at present? Are they still legally married (although clearly estranged)?

2. Do the marital problems that Percival and Blanchefleur are having at present have anything to do with the Illuminati's activities (particularly the less ethical ones such as the Hotel Cabal and the Quarrymen)?

Greg responds...

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

Response recorded on October 20, 2000

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John writes...

Hi Greg,
Some Illuminati questions
(Some of them are hard to understand. But I hope, you could awnser them):
1.:In the Illuminati books, written by Robert Wilson, the Illuminati are founded by a man called Adam Weishaupt in Germany around 1700. Well, I could imagine, that in "Vows" we see a man in Wyvern Castle, who is a member of the Illuminati. Hmmm... that was around 970... Weishaupt is born 800 years later!!! So, the "Gargoyle-Illuminati-therory" isn´t the same like the one from the "real life", huh?
2.:Have you planed to show one of the five MAIN members of the Illuminati in the show?
3.: Matt is now member of the Illuminati too. Would he fight his new bosses, or work with them?
4.: If in our "real world" now happens something, like a murder case, and manny people say "Hey, that was the Illuminati", and the show is on air again, would then the same thing happen in the "Gargoyle world"?
Hope, you could help me with that.
CU, John

Greg responds...

1. Right. Or at least not the same as Wilson's version.

2. Who said there were five Main members? All I've said is that Duval is the leader.

3. On the surface he would work with them. Secretly, he'd be working to expose them.

4. Uh, do people in "our real world" really continue to blame things on the Illuminati?

Response recorded on October 18, 2000

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Sapphire writes...

Will Sir Pervical be the leader of the illuminati society forever or will someone else replace him?

Greg responds...

Not saying.

Response recorded on September 27, 2000


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