Donald writes...

You know, of all the types of Time Travel stories there are, the "working paradox", as you put it, is my favorite. However, it does seem that many people, like Vashkoda, have fundamental difficulties grasping the one defining aspect of the concept.

Time is not linear. All of time exists as one unit...there is no beginning and no end. Think of it as a multi-faceted jewel, of which we can only see one facet at a time. The whole jewel is already there, but it is a limit of our perception that makes us think time is linear.

I suppose your love of the working paradox is why you like the first Terminator but not the sequel. I feel the same way. It is probably one of the more famous of the working paradox stories. Another good example is The Philadelphia Experiment, which was more purely focused on the concept.

In case you're wondering, the multi-faceted jewel explanation comes from Alan Moore's Watchmen, which did not really have a time travel element to it, but the roots of the concept were there with the Dr. Manhattan character's ability to perceive all of time within his existence.

Of course, that idea harkens back to poor old Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Of course, that's not really a time travel story either, but it does help explain the concept a bit.

Hope I haven't bored everyone ;-)

Melissa writes...

Hey Greg,

Just a few small comments on your ramble on "Vows".

Although I think this was a great episode and it had amazing dialogue moments, I thought that after seeing it a few times it became boring and I was less interested in it. I was definitely more "into" the second half of the episode when it got to conversations held by the old and young Goliath and Demona. The dialogue between all of them just seemed to fit so well and flowed beautifully.

I did notice the change in size of the Gate but I just thought of it as being bigger in human hands and smaller in the gargoyle's hands because of size difference between gargoyles and humans.

I also thought that Elisa (my favorite character) was acting way out of hand. I thought it was out of character for her to act so jealous. It wasn't even that, it just looked like she had PMS. I kept yelling at the tv (to Elisa) to back off his case!

Alright...I'm done.

Aris Katsaris writes...

You said: <<O.K. Thanks. So death was NEVER personified?
Certainly Uranos was personified in the mythology, right? And Eros, of course. >>

Umm, I'm not certain what exactly it is you mean by "personification", so let me be a bit more elaborate.

Pretty much *everything* was personified as a deity, including abstractions like "Victory"-Nike, "Peace"-Eirene, "Justice"-Dike, "Violence"-Bia, "Night"-Nyx, "Sleep"-Hypnos, etc. The name is the concept is the deity...

However most of these deities never seemed to have a solid existence in stories besides their very function - unlike gods and goddesses like Athena, Hades, Hermes, Thetis, Callisto, etc, who very clearly were "persons" with a history and personalities that was separate from their specific roles...

Uranus was ofcourse personified - he was a person who was defeated and castrated by Cronos, etc, etc. And in fact he was probably personified so much that the meaning of his name being "sky" was probably almost forgotten, and Zeus was considered the god whose province was the sky, etc.

Eros is a weird case: The story which "personified" him as the son of Aphrodite and the lover of Psyche, was written very late, 2nd century AD I think, by a Roman writer. In that one he was obviously a seperate person, "personified" with any definition one can come up with.

But before that, Eros seems to have been much more of an abstraction, one of the very first gods who was birthed by Chaos: For if there had been no Eros (no love) later gods (like Gaia and Uranus, or Cronos and Rhea, or Zeus and Hera) could not have loved each other. More of a force, less of a person.

Now Death-"Thanatos" was ofcourse personified like anything else: he's supposed to be the son of Night, and the older brother of Sleep (Hypnos). But besides that, he seems to me to be much more of an abstraction like Nike, and less of a person like Athena. He's referred to as a person occasionally (Zeus sends Hypnos and Thanatos to carry the body of Sarpedon with honour away from Troy, I think that Hercules is supposed to have wrestled with Thanatos in one case) but those two are pretty much the only occasions I remember him be a person...

I don't know if the above helped clarify or confuse...

Kalafarski writes...

A couple comments on your Vows ramble....

As I've said in a couple of posts about the Phoenix Gate before, I love the way you handle time travel. It just works so perfectly.

But here's what I found interesting. Demona has brought her past self nineteen years into the future. She shows her that her home has been invaded, her clan has been betrayed, her brothers and sisters are dead. And her true love has been turned to stone.

I thought it was interesting that Demona doesn't try to convince her younger self that Goliath is naive, too trusting of humans, or foolish. She doesn't even try to tell her that all this destruction will be Goliath's fault. Instead, she plays off of young Demona's love for Goliath, blaming the humans for what has happened to him. But it's not like the humans are the only ones old Demona blames in her own head right now. Goliath is clearly there. "Do not share it with....do not share it!"

So my question is, why does Demona do this? Is she certain that, knowing how she herself thought 1000 years ago, her younger self would never turn away from Goliath? Or is it that Demona's plan is to use her past self's own "foolish trust" in Goliath to serve her own ends?

Jon writes...

Well, now that I've posted once... :)

After reading your ramble on Vows, I wanted to comment a bit about it. It is an excellent episode, and one of the things I noticed is that Goliath sure gets the crud beat out of him in this one, first by Xanatos at the Golden Cup, and then by Demona after he barges in on her reunion with her younger self. Both animation sequences showed Goliath bleeding from the mouth after various blows. For some reason, that just awed me (and still does). This is a cartoon where the "hero" gets hurt!! I was always ridiulously amazed and pleased by this, maybe because it is so unusual to have that level of maturity and realism incorporated into a cartoon.

The animation sequence where Goliath and Demona are flying down to the watch the wedding is just terrific, really gives a sense of the power of movement of the gargoyles.

I never thought about Demona's overly excited greeting to Goliath that we see at the beginning and end of the episode was because she was just shook up about the encounter with the future Goliath. Very sophisticated.

I was always very amused at the concept of Goliath as Best Man for Xanatos. Not only is it ironic given their history, it's just funny to see Goliath in a role that is so "human".

I had a few questions, too:
1) The older Demona tells her younger self "Do not share it [the Gate] with... Do not share it!" Who did she mean her younger self shouldn't share it with? You may have said this before, sorry if I missed it.

2) Was the scene where Owen offers Goliath a bow tie cut during production (you mentioned it in the memo, but, unfortunately, it's not in the show)?

3) Did the younger Demona have any reservations about stealing the Gate? I'm still a bit shocked that the she stole it so willingly. While I know that this sort of foreshadows her personality to come, I'm still surprised she didn't have a bit more moral fiber at the time. Maybe she was living in fear of what the arch mage would do to her if she failed? Or perhaps she just didn't place any value in the trinkets or possessions of the worthless humans?

4) Was Demona's abuse by the Arch-mage intended to be a primary motivation for her general hatred towards humans? Early in her life she was mistreated by a cruel human that was more powerful than herself, and her self-loathing at carrying out his evil little errands could very easily have created a guilt cycle that resulted in a desire to kill ALL humans, as sort of a payback for what the Arch-mage did. All of which was compounded multifold by the events of the massacre, but still, her early suspicion/dislike of humans could have stemmed solely or at least primarily from the abuse of the Arch-mage. Ok, I'll stop trying to psychoanalyze Demona. But she's so FASCINATING....

Thanks!

Ed writes...

'VOWS' - what an episode. So many twists, so much drama, and some brilliant comedy from the Xanatos family. The thing that always occurred to me when watching this is: who on earth in Shari Goodharz? She only wrote the one episode that I recall and yet this is one of my favourites, if not my favourite outright. And yet she never did anything else. I guess looking at your outline she had a lot of dialogue to work in but even so, it was pretty damn good.

Actually, it always seemed like quite an intense episode to put before a multi-part story. I didn't watch it in order properly until I knew the whole season ('CITY OF STONE' aired at the beginning of the season here in two back-to-back weekends: accompanied with some stunning preview adverts of Demona blasting the stone humans).

Just one reply:

You said…
"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."

Apart from the shock factor of the castle still burning (in this episode) and Goliath in stone, I think this would have meant most to Demona. But another possible explanation is in your outline:
"But choosing requires incredible concentration. Otherwise, the chooser's emotional or mental whim of the moment may cause the gate to drop everyone off at Burger King instead of Fort Knox."

Seeing as how Demona claims to have a clear memory of Goliath's 'inspirational' presumably this is the thought that would have dragged her to 994.

I really like your explanation of the Gate's changing size as being due to its 'time valve' function. Was this something you ever planned to develop or at least mention out loud in the series? I guess we'd get some hints from what you've told us about 'TIMEDANCER' so far.

Todd Jensen writes...

One other interesting feature about "Vows" that I forgot to mention in my ramble last night. When Goliath is talking to Hudson in 975, he indicates that he is afraid that Xanatos went back in time to 10th century Castle Wyvern to plot some sort of skullduggery against the clan then. But in fact, it turns out that Xanatos's real purpose for being there is to receive the coins from Prince Malcolm, not because of the gargoyles, and that it's merely a coincidence (insomuch as anything in the Gargoyles Universe can be considered a coincidence) that he received those coins at the old home of Goliath and his clan.

I mention this because it brings up one of the interesting features of Xanatos that makes him different from the conventional "main villain" in an animated series. Most such "main villains" focus their schemes almost exclusively on settling their feud with the protagonists, to such an extent that it often results in the rest of their objectives failing because they let themselves get sidetracked by their obsession. But Xanatos didn't. A lot of his schemes turned out to be, from his own perspective, only marginally involving the gargoyles, while really focused in a different direction ("Leader of the Pack" is a good example of this, where it turns out that Xanatos's real interest was in getting Fox out of prison rather than in defeating the gargoyles), and in fact, he often accomplishes a lot of his objectives (the ones that didn't involve capturing Goliath and Co. - or, later on, becoming immortal). Other antagonists in the series do strike me as thoroughly capable of letting themselves get sidetracked by the feud to the detriment of their other goals (Demona, the Archmage, and the Pack spring immediately to mind in such a category), but Xanatos seemed more inclined to focus his attention elsewhere than on the clan.

At the same time, of course, Goliath always seemed ready to take an angle towards Xanatos as though he really was the "stereotyped master-villain" above, automatically assuming that Xanatos's schemes were directed towards the gargoyles (as per the case above) or even initially thinking that he was behind somebody else's scheme (as when he initially believed that it was Xanatos rather than Macbeth who stole the Scrolls of Merlin). That helped make Xanatos's break with "cartoon tradition" all the more noteworthy, in having Goliath's perception of Xanatos being closer to how such a conventional villain acted than Xanatos in person actually was.

Revel writes...

Regarding your "Vows" ramble

I think More's the pitty is kind of like Ignorance is bliss. You've just heard it so many times no one knows who origninally said it.
(my opinion of course)

Todd Jensen writes...

My ramble/reply to your ramble on "Vows".

I very much liked this one. We got the time travel story at last (as I mentioned in my ramble/reply for "Lighthouse in the Sea of Time", I'd read that there was going to be time travel in the second season of "Gargoyles", but initially mistakenly believed that it would be in the "Lighthouse" episode because of the "Sea of Time" part of the title). I've always been fond of time travel stories, particularly ones sending the characters into the historical past, and this one I very much enjoyed, particularly since it led to more "10th century Castle Wyvern scenes" (one of my favorite parts of the series). I also noticed the care used (both here and throughout "Gargoyles") with how time travel doesn't change history but is simply part of the already extant history (which makes all the more sense to me since I've been working on a fantasy novel for some time now, begun before "Gargoyles" ever came out, which made similar use of time travel, with even a time loop or two similar to those in "Avalon Part Two" and "M.I.A." - which helped me understand those episodes better, but that's another story). Certainly that kind of time travel helps make certain that there's no cheating.

I also liked seeing the Archmage again, and hearing the mention of the Eye of Odin (without realizing the full significance of that part, though). One interesting piece in this episode is that Hudson seems to already suspect, by 975, the Archmage's true nature (given the bit where he comes to the aid of Young Demona near the end).

I was half-expecting the Hudson of 1995 to mention Goliath's showing up in 975 at the end, after Goliath returned to the clock tower; he didn't, but his behavior in the modern day does make more sense in light of his meeting the present-day Goliath back in 975.

I learned about the "King Lear" quote from a friend, and was amused to discover that in its original place in the play, it was spoken by Lear to his daughters Goneril and Regan; trust Xanatos to reverse the parent/child roles when he quoted it! :)

I was very interested to see Xanatos wearing an Illuminati pin and to have the Society's existence confirmed (doubly so with the Norman Ambassador). I can definitely remember what I thought upon seeing that bit: "I wonder what Matt would say if he could see this."

And yes, I was definitely surprised to see Xanatos getting married. (Maybe all the more so since the main antagonist of the aforementioned fantasy novel has some Xanatosian qualities - coincidental, since his basic character was worked out before "Gargoyles" ever came out - but is a very solitary figure, whom I definitely can't imagine ever developing genuine feelings of the sort that Xanatos had for Fox). Very daring, I've got to agree.

One interesting feature about Young Demona's visit to 994 (incidentally, that means that there were *three* Demonas existing simultaneously at that moment, the Demona of 975, of 994, and of 1995 - good thing that the 994-Demona didn't show up or things could really have gotten confusing:) is that she learns about the future Wyvern Massacre, which probably subtly influenced her towards eventually working with the Captain to betray the humans. It's been suspected by many fans that Young Demona might have believed that it was the humans native to the castle who carried out the massacre (note that 1995-Demona never says that it was an outside enemy who destroyed the clan - or, for that matter, that the reason why Goliath was turned to stone was because he begged the Magus to do it), so in her scheming with the Captain to avert the prophecy, she actually helped fulfill it. (A time-honored literary concept, of course, going back at least to Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" where similarly Laius and Oedipus's very efforts to prevent Oedipus's prophecied destiny of killing his father and marrying his mother actually help bring that destiny about). A very chilling concept.

I've seen the phrase "more's the pity" used a few times in works that I know that I've read before "Gargoyles", and even used the phrase at least once in something that I wrote before "Gargoyles" ever premiered, but I've no idea myself where it comes from. Maybe it's one of those general phrases with no single originator.

At any rate, I enjoyed the rambling - and am looking forward to the comments on "City of Stone".

Todd Jensen writes...

I just read your two recently-posted memos for "Eye of the Beholder" and "Vows". Thank you for posting them (and I'm looking forward to the "Vows" ramble/review).

These inspired three comments, which I thought that I'd post (though all three separately, of course).

This first comment is on the "Eye of the Beholder" memo. One thing that stood out to me is that in the memo, Xanatos mentions that legend had it that the Eye of Odin was literally that, but this doesn't pop up in the actual episode. Actually, I'm glad that it didn't, because I feel that it made the impact of Odin showing up to claim the Eye in "Eye of the Storm" more dramatic as a result. Up until that episode ("Eye of the Storm") aired, I'd assumed that the Eye was just given a fancy name borrowed from Norse mythology, so it was more of a surprise when it turned out to be the actual eye that Odin gave up to Mimir than it would if Xanatos had mentioned rumors about that in "Eye of the Beholder".