Tymiko writes...

Your rendition of Puck really rekindled an interest of fairy lore in me, especially since I love tricksters and their amoral personalities that make them so complex. I love how you never know if they'll do something 'good' or 'bad' to someone else simply on a whim, and you portrayed that so well.

I read a previous answer of yours to someone else that said you didn't want to label Puck, Oberon, and Titania as 'faeries' because of the pejorative connotations that the word has. I realize and empathize with you about how fairies are often thought of as nothing more than pretty little girls with butterfly wings or something to that effect, who wave magic wands to grant wishes and always do good. Makes me sick.

1. Is that why you didn't have Puck, Oberon and Titania portrayed with fairy wings despite their status in their original play?

2. If so, why bother to have Puck fly around at all, let alone with fairy dust trailing behind him?

There's a show I recently learned of called Durarara!! in which a Dullahan (technically a sort of fairy) comes to Tokyo to find her missing head, taking the form of a black-wearing motorcyclist and transferring her headless horse's spirit into a pitch black motobike. To hide the fact she has no head, she wears a full helmet and tries to blend in with the city, acting as a transporter and courier for gangs and info brokers, forcing fans to reconsider their initial mental image of a typical fairy.

I think if you had recognized that Puck and the others were Fae, it just might have saved the Fae's tainted, modern day reputation, considering how well-known and admired the Gargoyles show is. However, I understand respect the choices you made, and it was pretty much obvious who they were in the long run.

Tymiko writes...

1. If a Child of Oberon were to be imprisoned in a cell, box, room, or cage of iron, what effect might it have on them (if they can even be contained in one)?

2. Would that depend on the length of time they were imprisoned in such a cell?

3. Could they die from it, or only be weakened by it?

4.Does it physically pain them?

Sean Mc Bride writes...

Hi first time questioner, long time fan so here we gp
1)Does Titania still have feelings for Renard?
2)When Oberon sent all of the third race into the human world to learn humailty, what he was he doing for that time. Was he in the human world aswell?
3)Oberon said that they golaith could have killed him with the iron bell. If he had died what would have become of his children?(so to speak)

Anonymous writes...

Can Oberon's children eat food containing iron, such as meat or spinach?

Stephanie writes...

What I don't get is that if Oberan commanded them (his children) to not interfere in human affairs why are so many of them interested in carving out their own little dominion across Earth? That just never really clicked in my head...

Algernon writes...

Hey Greg,
I've got a Third Race question I've been mulling over. Now obviously a lot of the Children are drawn from the gods and supernatural beings of various world mythologies. But since you established that many of them have adapted mortal identities over the centuries, particularly during the 1001 year exile from Avalon, did any of them take mortal identities we might recognise from conventional history books?

Josh writes...

I don't quite understand the Gathering; was it a family reunion meant to last a few centuries before letting all the Children go back to the real world, a chance for everyone to worship their Lord, or did everyone have to go back to Avalon and stay forever?

Vaevictis Asmadi writes...

Hello Greg,

I have a question for you about the half-mortal, half-Third Race hybrids. I know that the Children of Oberon cannot use their magic directly on iron. But can half-mortal hybrids use Third Race magic to directly affect iron?

Thank you!

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

You say that Titania as Anastasia, like Puck as Owen, is completely human. Does that mean Fox being half Fae was planned choice? Does conceiving a half Fae child requiring choosing to only appear human rather than be human for a change?

Vaevictis Asmadi writes...

I just re-read The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw. It's a book I mentioned in a much earlier question to you, one about a changeling girl who is half human and half fae, and the weirdness and difficulty she has fitting in with either because she is different from both species. (It's even set in medieval Scotland.) It prompted me to ask you how different or similar, emotionally and psychologically, the Third Race are to humans, because the depiction in this book is of quite inhuman fae who really can't relate to humans. You have consistently answered that the Third Race are quite similar to humans, emotionally and psychologically -- that the main difference is that of great power without great responsibility, of never growing old or having to work, and of being able to look however they want on a whim. You've even said that a human could imagine what it is like to be such a being by imagining what life for one of us would be like with those benefits.

Reading The Moorchild again got me to wondering about what it is like growing up as a hybrid (in a family of non-hybrids), or as a non-hybrid changeling raised by another species, in the Gargoyles universe. The personality differences don't seem nearly as pronounced between humans and Third Race as they are between humans and fae in The Moorchild, so it seems like fewer problems should arise, although physically there seems to be quite a lot of difference between mortals and the Children even when they look human. Clearly a half-mortal child like Fox can grow up without ever figuring it out, or learning magic. But did she ever feel different from the mortal children around her? Did other humans notice anything different about her? Or was there nothing really out of the ordinary, no noticeable outward signs of her magical heritage?

And what about Morgan le Fay, who according to what you have revealed is a purely Third Race changeling. Was it strange for her to grow up among humans? I assume she looked human, but did she feel human, or did she feel different from those around her? Did she seem unusual to her human parents and siblings, or did they never really notice anything out of the ordinary, personality-wise or physically? Did she just seem like a regular human being to them?

As for Nimue, well, she can't have helped but notice she was different, not having the same nearly-effortless magical abilities and shapechanging that the Third Race have. That and not being made of pure magic, along with whatever that entails.

I imagine a slightly different dynamic for the Avalon Clan, since there was no human society around them and they actually outnumbered their foster parents 11-to-1, but I'm sure that was at least somewhat weird, especially for the humans.