Charisma82 writes...

I was watching "Double Jeopardy" last night and it reminded me about a question I've wanted to ask for a while. After Thailog puts Elisa, Xanatos, Sevarius, & Goliath in the oil tank, he tells Goliath that he had considered sharing the money with him but decided not to because Goliath had "disappointed him". What exactly disappointed him? I've been looking though the archives and the closest I've come to finding an answer is that Thailog didn't like it when Goliath called him an abomination. I'm sure that Thailog didn't like being called that, but that couldn't have been the main reason for not letting Goliath in on his scheme. There's got to be more to it. I've also wondered if it had to do with Goliath wanting to protect humans, because Thailog does mention something about not wanting to play "guardian angel" to the city. But then I figure that Thailog would've already known this about Goliath in the first place. He was smart enough to set everything up in "Double Jeopardy", wouldn't he be smart enough to do some research on Goliath to find out that protecting people was what he did? And if this is the case, why did Thailog even decide to include Goliath in the money part in the first place? The way I heard it was that he didn't decide until that night that he didn't want to share the money. So, why did he change his mind about Goliath?

Thank you for your time and your answer.

-Charisma82

Makhasu writes...

Who came up with the idea for the Paris scheme against Macbeth? Thailog or Demona?

Shawn writes...

Since Thailog is the clone of Xanatos, which would also imply that he has some human DNA, then does that mean that he doesn't turn into stone like Goliath since Xanatos's DNA would probably prevent that?

Psycho girl writes...

It's me! (Giggles, chuckles and many guffaws.)

How are you? I have some questions about Thailog and....yah...

1.(WHY WONT THE STUPID TAB BUTTON WORK!!!) Uh....anyway, How dose Thailog view Alexander? Dose he consider him a 'brother'?

2. How dose Thailog view his own creation? I'm asking this because of the Justice Leauge clone Galatea. She thought hse had to prove her 'own existance' to everyone by destroying super girl. Dose Thailog feel the same way about Goliath and Xanatose?

Thanks

Punchinello writes...

<<Well, let's start with the "buffet"/game-playing writing style. I think it's awful. >>

I agree.

<<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.
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. >>

When I indicated that I thought this game-players writing style could be exploited profitably, I wasn't really thinking of more mature, conventional writing emerging from it. Although, that obviouly works too. I was thinking, if you were writing something, for instance, where there was a consistent theme of game-playing, then maybe you could exploit it as a device. I'm thinking of game-playing themes more along the lines of George Perec than dungeons and dragons. So maybe there would be subtle games embedded in the text. But at the same time, maybe there could be a section of the book, or a certain character, which you treat in the game-players writing style. Sort of in the way you could mimic the writing style of the Victorians. I have given no serious thought to what properties make game-player writing read the way it does. But it _is_ recognizable. You've identified it, yourself.

<<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.>>

I suppose so. It's just that I keep on detecting subtle trends in the way people in our culture think about things. And I worry this game-players thing will worsen. It's like that business of an incomplete idea of "sentience" invading popular culture. It seems ridiculous to speculate that the idea migrated into the culture from star trek, but if you observe carefully, you can see it. I think people in our culture, are less and less informed by critical thinking today.

Ten years ago, for instance, I don't think I saw game-player writing anywhere. Now, even before this conversation I had, in which we began to put a name to this thing, it seems pervasive. I think the novelty has become the institution. Consider that twenty years ago, aspiring authors could not have seen this in literature. Today, I have waking nightmares that the kid who would have been the next Paul Auster is going to become intellectually deranged when he picks up a dungeons/dragons book for the first time and gets the idea that "this must be how people write."

I'm probably thinking of something along the lines of memes here. Ideas enter the culture and become dominant over time. Usually, stupid ideas. They begin to define the way that people think about things and even the way they value things. It doesn't just erode our intellects. It can erode sensible ethics. Consider this...

I saw an episode of star trek recently, and it really alarmed me. The premise was that the characters travel to a planet where the human population reproduces exclusively by cloning. For some ridiculous reason they could no longer continue cloning themselves, so they ask the characters to donate genetic material so their culture can survive. The characters hostility to the idea is so irrational that I wouldn't know how to describe it. And when the clone people sneak away some of their genetic material to make clones of them anyway, a demonstration of some of the most demented rationalization of science fiction occurs.

The characters go to the lab where their clones have already developed into full grown reproductions of themselves, and use their death rays to obliterate them. And I should be clear that these were not blastocysts in test tubes. These were obviously fully grown and autonomous people. And this is all treated by the authors as though it were the most natural thing in the world. It's simply understood that being cloned "diminishes you" as a human being, and that their absurd indignation was somehow righteous. Precisely how this diminishes a person is never elaborated upon, and I'm sure that the authors never even thought about it. They assume, with remarkable vacuousness, that the cloned people in the lab do not possess any type of intrinsic worth. I know that star trek authors have never picked up a science text, but the poverty of ethical thinking here, compelled me to think they had never read a book or had a thought about anything.

Of course, it's just a silly TV show. Right?

And yet, it's conspicuous that the range public debate about bioethics is defined by these concepts. I'm not talking about the range of debate in the literature of science or philosophy. That remains very isolated from the public forums where most people in our culture consider these issues. In popular magazines and network news journalism, the dominant logic is that a person is rendered somehow, "lesser" by having been cloned. The idea has been in ascendancy for a decade despite the depth of it's ignorance. The people who define and limit public discourse about it have certainly never thought about it critically. Their positions frequently contradict themselves and more frequenly rely on popular myths and emotional appeals to people's superstitions.

And it gets worse. Something far more sinister has emerged from popular, misinformed dialogue about cloning. In popular disputes about it (I heard the notion resurface on CNN about a month ago) the question of "what kind of rights would a clone have" is routinely brandished about as though it were an intelligent thought. To practicing ethicists and scientists, this notion probably would not have even entered the dialogue if it had not been thrust upon them by popular culture. That the question is being asked at all assumes, uncritically, that there is something meaningfully distinguishable about a cloned person which would compel us to assign a different worth to them. A worth, lesser than a person who came into the world by conventional means.

I have a suspicion, that the people most vocally shrieking about the moral dilemmas of cloning, are actually theologically threatened by it. I have no evidence of this. But a few inferences they have made, have got me thinking that their theological picture of "personhood" follows a very rigid prescription, and their indignation may originate with some inept idea that a clone would not have a soul.

"Soul" becomes a good parallel to "sentient life." One is from religion and one is from science fiction, but both of them are shortcuts people use instead of actually thinking about the internal properties that imbue something with intrinsic moral worth.

I hope it's apparent why I think this is important. Magical thinking can be dangerous. The worth of a being can't reasonably be described in these terms. If the distinction between ruling class and underclass or the difference between pets and meat is being determined by distinguishing one as sentient or soul-containing, then we have not really distinguished anything. We're just making things up. We might as well assign moral worth based upon who has stars on their bellies.

I don't remember what Goliath's reaction to Thailog was precisely. I remember that he was alarmed by the prospect of there being another version of himself. How would you describe his feelings about the issue. I suspect since he would have no concept of cloning technology, his perception of it would be unique.

Storyseeker writes...

Please answer me something thats been going on between me and a friend... what is Thailog's colouring? I'm certain its blue because ive got all the episodes but so does my friend and she says he's purple. Pleaseeeee settle this matter?!

Zarok writes...

SANCTUARY

Ding Dong the queue is dead, well wounded anyway. I Know this is late but the asking function was closed down before I could post it and I've been awful busy lately. A well here it is.
I was interested to learn you had planned to use a Quasimodo character originally since Quasi is kind of a Gargoyle himself. I wonder if Quasi existed in the Gargoyle Universe, hey if you can have J.V.
I also was kind of disappointed you didn't give Demona's alter ego an angel themed name like Angelique like you planned in your memo. Would've made a great parallel with Angela and created another of those cool name parallels like Peter Maza and Petros Xanatos or Alexander Xanatos and Alexander
Speaking of thailog I have something to tell you that I think you'll like. When these episodes were first being aired on Disney Channel UK they seriously aired them out of order, skipping over most of the episodes between "City of Stone" and "Avolon" as well as a few pre-CoS episodes. They actually aired half the world tour before "Avolon" and even that before "Eye of The Beholder"! Luckily they sorted it out for the reruns but the point is that when I first saw "Sanctuary" I had not yet seen "Double Jeopardy" and it didn't hurt my enjoyment of this episode one bit. Sure there was some initial confusion over this Goliath look-alike (I thought at first that Thailog's "no way to treat a lady" line was Goliath's) but once the word clone popped up I immediately went "now I get it". More reason to believe that new viewers can get into "Gargoyles". In fact I think the World Tour was good at bring new viewers in, the episodes were much more stand alone

Nick writes...

Greg,

What episodes was Faloog in? (Not sure if I spelled that correctly, Goliath's clone). He was really cool, but I was only able to catch the first time he appeared.

Mary Mack writes...

Completely out of left feild...

I've heard you worked on Darkwing Duck, and you've said many times that Thailog's coloring was in part based on Negaduck's costume. Now, I'm likely the only gargfan who has ever dressed up as Darkwing Duck for Halloween(in the eighth grade, btw, and I'm a girl), so I hope a few off topic (well, off gargoyle) questions won't bug you too much.

What did you do while working on Darkwing? Do you have any standout memories from that show? Or any favorite characters? I'm guessing you wrote-- which episodes did you work on?

Thanks for reading! I wish I were going to the Gathering this year, but I'm using my savings to start my own business instead-- that way I'll be able to make it to G2K3 in New York without emptying my penny jar. The L.A. con ROCKED, and I regret missing out this year. My siblings, however, are going, and have been instructed to videotape everything for me. (So if anyone sees Blondewookiee or The Souldier without a camera, remind them I'm pining away at home!)

And in the spirit of guessing when you'll read this... Happy New Year! (Am I right?)

George writes...

Who is the Gargoyles Arch Nemisis?