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Jacob writes...
Hello all, hello Greg,
I've been absent for a while (did anyone miss me??), but now there are a few things I want to say.
First of all I never said thank you for such a great animated series - still the best I've ever seen. It can be seen that you wanted to make it very good and not just tried to create something for a quick success. Nearly no one-dimensional characters, complex stories that can't be every time easily understood, a continuing plot and not every episode the same story with the some characters and the same end, all this makes Gargoyles to one of the best series ever. What I liked very much either are the (not too) dark atmosphere, some fantasy elements and the elements of old mythologies.
Unfortunately I haven't seen any episode for a few years (any German out there who knows when the last one was aired?). Because of this I appreciate your work with answering all of our questions. I don't know if I had the motivation for this.
I'll keep my fingers crossed that some day new episodes will be aired. But what about the real life movie? Do you know anything new?
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.
Punchinello writes...
<<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.
Hello Mr. Weisman.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently about new kinds of conventions in contemporary fiction, (it was less a conversation than a herculean effort on his part to _educate me_ about some of these things which I should know more about) and the topic of literary devices imported from things that are generally considered banal or somehow inferior to literature came up. The Sunday funnies, technical manuals, etc. He brought up something that I thought you would find interesting. I wanted to find out if you had any reaction to this, as I gather that you consider introducing young people to literature very important and this is something which is (possibly) maligning the way in which they perceive it.
My friend explained the phenomenon of these "adventure card games" to me. I guess the pokemon fall into this category. (Horrifying little things) There are also all manner of these dungeons and dragons type games. Apparently a convention has developed among people who play the games of generating fiction using the cards. For instance, each player would represent a character internal to a story and the cards they play with would dictate the structure of a work of fiction they were creating and "acting out" at the same time. The interesting thing about this is that characters within this convention are frequently developed by means of a pre defined list of "character attributes." Once again, for instance, you would have a condition like
10 personality types. Pick one.
10 types of conventional behavior. Pick one.
10 types of hats. Pick one.
The idea seems to be that character development emerges from the intersection of these variables. Even though I'm certain that this kind of convention could be exploited towards an interesting end in literature, I found this sort of "amateur authors" version of writing very limiting, and the whole method of lists of typical character attributes seems to be an arbitrary convention that was being maintained for the sake of game playing. It's all very silly.
The reason I mention all of this is because my friend told me that he has observed a trend among many amateur authors and many young aspiring authors to use this same kind of convention when writing. He sees characters being treated as though the author were at a buffet, and the author were allowed one "feature" for each little spot on his tray. He sees this a lot. He teaches a creative writing class at the moment and has noticed this sentiment that people are coming into the class with, that if they string together a lot of trivia about a fictional person, a real character will emerge as if by magic. He sees them conduct this exercise a lot where they define a character with...
John lives in Wisconsin.
John works in the Madison public Library.
John likes his job okay.
He mentioned he sees this limiting perspective carry over into their observations of other peoples writing. This way of thinking seems to prevent them from really experiencing a character. It seems they can only define the character for themselves from within the context of this kind of trivia.
He asked me if I had seen this obsession over trivia instead of character anywhere else. I immediately realized that I had! It usually takes the form of...
Where did fox get her tattoo?
Who were Mab's parents?
Who were Oberon's parents?
Who were Titania's parents?
Who were anansi's parents?
Will Brooklyn have children?
How many children?
Will his children have names?
Will those names begin with a consonant or a vowel?
This is why some people so appreciate your continued participation with this board. I'm really just writing this because I would like to read any general reaction you have to it. However, I think I would not be alone in wanting to hear you comment on the kind of questions outlined above (of which you field many). I think I kind of resent the implication in some of these questions that, as the author, you should know the names and mailing addresses of all of Elisa's cousin's three times removed, along with their favorite foods and weight at birth. Is there something you think is essentially being missed with questions like these? Maybe if you were to share with your fans, the kind of dialogue you think is worthwhile and exciting, you would see the trivia questions replaced with more real dialogue about "Gargoyles."
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.
J writes...
Hey,
You ever get tired of answering all these questions? Like this one, "How come blah blah blah and blah dont blah blah blah, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." After reading a page or two of questions they all started to fade together into one simple demand. "TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU WILL KNOW, HAVE KNOWN AND PRESENTLY KNOW ABOUT GARGOYLES!!!" You've either got the patience of a saint or.... well I dont know what.
Thankyou for helping to create such a fantastic and fulfilling story/world. You can tell if something is great fantasy if it makes the everyday world seem all the more pale and ordinary.
And now on to the questions.......
Greg responds...
Sometimes individual questions do annoy me, I'll confess. But I generally enjoy doing this, or frankly... I wouldn't.
Galvatron writes...
Aris- Yes I know western centric doesn't fit I was looking for something like ethnocentric.
"Anyway, the Greeks, Norse, whatever had their deities be finite creatures which began their lives within the universe. There's a difference between that and a supposedly infinite God which *created* the universe. I can imagine the monotheists being upset if they discovered their god was a fay - if The Infinite proved finite, only one of many. But the Norse and the ancient Greeks already believed that there existed many gods. Why be too upset at discovering a couple more they hadn't heard about?"
Thats not my point, my point is that making the God of the gargoyles universe the God of Jews/Christians/Muslims makes it seem that they're superior to all these other cultures since they worship the true god while the other cultures worhip energy beings.
Greg responds...
I'll just sit back and let you guys talk.
Well, maybe I won't.
Anyway, I got your point, G. But it's based on facts not in evidence, as I said before.
Aris Katsaris writes...
Galvatron> I think you are confusing Greg's words and intent... His take is after all something like "Everything is true for a given value of 'true'"...
He never said that Muslims, Jews and Christians are *correct* in everything they believed. That might indeed be offensive - but it would also be impossible to pull off, since after all, they believe in some contradictory things as well.
From what I understand, Greg said that these guys worship what they perceive as Infinite and as Creator. That's factually correct in our real world. And then he went on to say that such an Infinite and a Creator exists. Some of the more specific beliefs may well be wrong.
Pagans believed in Zeus or Odin or Osiris or many others gods. And Greg says that, yes, Zeus and Odin and Osiris also exist. But some of the more specific beliefs about them may also be wrong.
So your claim seems to me to be nothing more than "Odin isn't portrayed as Infinite!". To which my response is: "He was never supposed to be, not even by the Norse themselves."
Now if Greg went on to portray the afterlife exactly as Christianity portrays it, *that* might be a bit exclusive... But it seems to me that he's going for a diversity of afterlives, a bit similar to what Terry Pratchett did...
(Weirdly enough however I *was* annoyed by the intrusion of monotheism and dualism in shows like Hercules & Xena which previously featured polytheistic pantheons. But that was more because it seemed to me to subvert the very theme of the heroism of "Man vs gods" and turn it into "The Real God[tm] vs the many false gods"... Greg portrays a universe where all these beliefs can pretty much coexist. The producers of Xena, on the other hand decided to portray a universe where they must fight to the death - the introduction of The One God immediately made the lesser gods something evil which needed to be destroyed. Bleh! )
Sorry for the rant, Greg! :-)
Greg responds...
No prob.
But I do think both of you have sort of missed the point. Personally, I believe in both God and evolution. I'm also a bit of a pantheistic pagan, and I don't find any of these notions mutually exclusive. But that's me.
What I believe I've always said about the show is that whatever you believe created OUR universe also created the garg universe. If that's one or more of the above (plus or minus) something else, fine.
Aris Katsaris writes...
Possibly starting a debate...
Galvatron> Umm... "western"-centric because Greg made western deities such as those of the Greeks or the Norse be children of Oberon? Do you think that Athens is somehow located to the *east* of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Mecca?
I assure you, it's not. :-)
Anyway, the Greeks, Norse, whatever had their deities be finite creatures which began their lives within the universe. There's a difference between that and a supposedly infinite God which *created* the universe. I can imagine the monotheists being upset if they discovered their god was a fay - if The Infinite proved finite, only one of many. But the Norse and the ancient Greeks already believed that there existed many gods. Why be too upset at discovering a couple more they hadn't heard about?
Greg responds...
THANK YOU!!!!
Galvatron writes...
Don't you feel it's alittle bit western centric making the god of the Greeks, Norse and all the other "pagan cultures" Children of Oberon who are no better than the non-corporeal beings of scifi while the God of Judaism, Islam, Christianity is actually the creator of the universe? I mean it's like saying that they're stupid for getting suckered in by the Children while we're smart for actually worshipping the true God.
Greg responds...
Well, first off ALL THE GODS you mentioned are "Western Culture" gods. All of them. So it's hardly Western centric -- beyond the fact that we got more western culture into the show period.
Second, I have never confirmed or denied the existance of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic GOD in the series. I have left that to every individual character and viewer's view of the universe. So I've hardly given the Abrahamist religions priority over the old "pagan cultures".
Finally, not to split hairs, wow, you got me. I've made fictional characters out of the gods of myth. Shocking.
The Cat writes...
This is The Cat,
Thank you for answering my questions. You answered the more important ones today or yesterday. Anyothers I have are a bit depressing and don't really need to be answered, so if you don't want to answer them that is okay.
Greg responds...
Uh... okay.
Anonymous writes...
I'd just like to thank you for creating such an dramatic and educational show which got me interested in Shakespeare and all those legends that appeared in the Avalon World Tour including Cuchullain, Raven and the Kichinas. Finally I'd like to thank you for answering my hundred or so question which I imagine was a very tedious task.
Greg responds...
You're welcome.
Lynati writes...
Oh. and while I'm here...
Do you think when Aaron finally tracks down Marina Sirtis and asks her to sign the Demona tatoo on his chest that she'll do it gracefully, or will she have someone distract him and then run away really fast?
Greg responds...
Even odds.
(Although I can't imagine she hasn't encountered far weirder/scarier Trek fans than our Aaron -- who still reminds me of a young Tom McMinn.)
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