Allison writes...

Hey, Greg! Love Gargoyles, excited for Rain of the Ghosts, and I just reread the comics and have a question about the clones.

We know that if gargoyles A and B are cloned, the clones, C and D, will have photo-negative coloration. Now, let's say A and C are female, and B and D are male. Let's also say that A and B do not become mates, but C and D do. The egg, E, is not artificially sped up, but develops over the ten year period. When E hatches, will its coloring resemble that of A/B or C/D?

Just curious about the practical application of the clones. Also, I think a Gargoyles Kickstarter would be a great idea! Have a nice day!

Rebel writes...

Which part of the world did gargoyles first arise in? For example, humans apparently arose in Africa and then migrated almost everywhere else, and then evolved. I'm curious to know which continent gargoyles first came from. If you'd care to narrow it down even further, that'd be great, since a continent is a really big place.

I did a search to see if this had already been answered, but I didn't see anything. If you've answered it already and I missed it, my apologies.

Joseph writes...

what would be the science behind how goliath and his clan glide,and climb almost anything except solid steel?

Rick Maloney writes...

How can Thailog and the Clones be cured of the clone virus when they're solid stone, and incapable of intraveneous injection? If science is a kind of magic, as Titania mentions in 'The Gathering' two-parter, no mage could meddle with it.

Jacob writes...

If someone would bring a gargoyle by plain very far into eastern or western direction during he's stone, would his internal clock notice that or would it be a way for him to be awake at day?

Demona Taina writes...

Hey, Greg:

I was checking the archives, and I think I can explain why sometimes, the gargoyles turn to stone slowly, and sometimes just slowly solidify until they're completely in stone. In Awakening 1, Goliath and Hudson could've turned to stone slowly because they were struggling, so the body couldn't solidify as quickly. So it starts down and spreads throughout their bodies until they're trapped in stone. When they're sitting/standing still, the body can solidify at normal speed. Anyway, that's what I think makes sense. What do you think, oh wise Greg?

matt writes...

if all the female gargoyles on Avalon only are able or ready to reproduce when the Earth 20-year cycle comes around wouldn't that mean that they would be laying their eggs within a very short time on Avalon? i mean, on Avalon that cycle would come around every 10 months! would the females on Avalon be ready to concieve after just laying an egg?

and lets say that its too soon to be laying another egg and they skip a cycle, that means that they will only lay two eggs in their lifetimes, and if that happened it would be bad for the Avalon clan. first of all, their population would never grow, in fact over time it would probably shrink due to the unequal distribution of males and females, a couple has to have more than two children for any population growth to occur. another problem is that over time (and may i remind you that time is way faster on Avalon) there would be a huge amount of inbreeding, esspecially as the population dropped.

so, the problem is, either Avalon females are birthing their eggs twenty four times faster than gargoyles typically do, or the Avalon clan is doomed to die out.

i'm a bit worried about the fate of the Avalon clan, whats going to happen with them and this problem?

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

Okay, we've asked you this question before, and you've never really given a strait answer. Nothing says you will now, but here goes:

1) What happens to the stone sleep cycle of gargs in space?

I know the sleep is a biological process that's triggered by the sun. So, would they keep their normal cycle of 12 hours, or would the cycle change.

If you dont want to answer that question:

2) Have you yet figured out what happens to gargoyles in space, and you just dont want to tell us, or are you waiting for divine inspiration? :)

Steven L. writes...

Gargoyles mate for life. Does that mean that once two gargoyles show interest in each other, and become intimate, that they've mated, and are officially forevermore monogamous?
If so, what happens if, over the years, the two gargoyles come to drift apart, or realize they have nothing in common? Do they stay together simply because of tradition? I take it there's no gargoyle equivalent of divorce. (Or at least there wasn't until Goliath and Demona kinda set precident).
And in that vein; should a gargoyle have an affair, then what happens if that affair is discovered? Does the unfaithful gargoyle and the one he/she had the affair with get banished from the clan?
Hope this hasn't been asked before.

matt writes...

i'm going to try to guess the date you're reading this and i think it'll be a bit less then the current two month wait cuz i bet you'll try to catch up before the next contest so: is it August 8? lol, do i get another prize if i'm right?

by the way, your most recent batch of questions was extremely interesting and hilarious, as usual. esspecially Arthur's other Avalon adventure, and (LOL) masturbating gargoyles. its been a while since i've laughed that much!

ok, question time:

1. you recently said that if a gargoyle slept in caves for day after day after day they would begin to have ill effects from lack of sunlight, but you've said that the Korean and Loch Ness clans live in caves. so, did you mean that they sleep outside the caves, i guess?

2. do gargoyle eggs need sunlight ever or are they fine spending their ten year incubation in caves and rookeries?

maybe i'm just really tired or something and kinda giddy, but i'm still laughing about masturbating gargoyles. interesting you won't tell us about gargs going to the bathroom, but you'll tell us about them masturbating! LOL

Mary Mack writes...

I was just skimming through the Garg Science archive, and I ran across a post by Faieq asking about colored irises, and whether or not gargoyles had them. She came to the conclusion that gargs had no irises, since the dim moonlight would be enough for them. I don't think that works, biologically, because sophisticated animals (humans included) have irises-- involuntary sphincters which control how much light enters the eye, constricting to prevent damage from too much light and expanding to let in more light in darkness. Gargoyles, like cats, probably have excellent night vision, being all noctournal and stuff, so they HAVE to have irises.

Maybe their eyes are just predominantly dark, like horses and dogs, with light blue eyes cropping up occaisionally.

Dunno why I went on so long. I was actually just checking for your next Gathering ramble (It's still June at this writing), and for some reason I just had to mention the horse/dog/iris thing.

Thanks for your time.

matt writes...

you said gargoyle fetuses turn to stone inside their eggs to store energy. what do you mean? i doubt they would store energy collected from the sun seeing as how they are inside eggs deep inside a cave and probably don't see much sunlight. what energy are they storing?

Gipdac writes...

1) How long do female gargoyles carry their eggs?
2) Could a female gargoyle ever have a miscarriage while they were pregnant for their egg? Or if their egg dose not hatch is that considered a miscarriage?

Jacob writes...

Hi I'm back.

One time I asked you "Are gargoyles at day really heavier than at night? If they are, where does the wheight come from?", and you answered "I never said they were."

Actually, I got this information from a collection-card I found in the internet, and it says, at night he weighs about 130 and at day something about 900 kg.

1. Does it mean that this information is wrong or

2. Don't you want to say it this time?

matt writes...

any ideas yet why the English gargs have evolved to look like they do and so different from other garg clans?

btw, if you don't have an idea yet, i do! i really have a plausible and good idea why they look like that, but if you don't want to hear it...

matt writes...

grrr, because anonymous had to bring it up again i thought i should once more say that i seriously doubt gargoyles evolved from dinosaurs, maybe they had a common ancestors or something, but it seems really unlikely that gargs are saurian descendants. i mean, look at the English gargs! they don't look anything like dinosaurs or even reptiles. i think its more likely that the English gargs evolved from lions, horses, and birds then other gargs evolving from dinosaurs, and Greg has said that they didn't. i think Gargs are so different from most higher life forms of life that the gargate family seperated from the rest of the animal kingdom far back in history, before dinosaurs, maybe even before reptiles!

sorry, i had to rant about that again...
"Why do the little things always frustrate me!" -Demona
geeeez, Greg, do YOU think gargs evolved from dinosaurs? i know you're not a biologist, but what do you think?

Angie I. writes...

Hi, Greg

I have a few questions about the gargoyles' healing abilities.

1a.) What are the limits of their healing abilities by stone sleep? What types of injuries or abnormalities are beyond its power to heal?

1b.) Can they heal the physical abnormalities that occur over the course of old age? Loss of vision, hearing, possible internal problems such as with the heart. Things like that.

2.) How does the severity of the injury determine how long it takes to heal? For example, a severe bruising and maybe a few small cuts caused by a beating by either fists or blunt objects compared to more lethal and grievous wounds and lacerations caused by either blades, guns or even another gargoyle's claws.

3.) I think you may have been asked this before, but what happens if an appendage is somehow broken off while in stone sleep such as a hand or a part of their tail or horns (if he/she has them)? Would it eventually regenerate the lost part or would it be gone for good?

4.) How severely do you have to injure a gargoyle until it causes a permanent scar? Example, Hudson's scar.

5.) Would partaking in stimulants like alcohol, smoking, drugs and caffeine cause permanent damage as it does in humans? Could they heal it to any degree?

Epantiras writes...

Why Gargoyles have horns if they don't use them?

Anonymous writes...

Our ancestors are apes and our distant ones are a bunch of rodents that resemble lemurs or rats. The ancestors of the gargoyles are lizards and dinosaurs. Who exactly are the ancestors of the fay? Blobs of energy or something else entirely?

Dracolich writes...

Hey again! Here's a Gargoyle health q.

1. Back in April, someone asked about the chance of Gargoyles getting viral diseases. So, what about mental disorders, birth defects and genetic diseases?

2. This probably falls under genetic diseases, but what about cancer? How would it affect them?

3. Now, here's probably a silly one. It sounds like one that might have been asked, but it's been awhile since I had the free time to check the archives. So, what would happen if a gargoyle lost a limb?

OK, enough with the morbid thaughts.

matt writes...

i have a question about the process of gargs turning to stone, i've noticed that they turn to stone differently at different times. sometimes they convert to stone all at once, sometimes they do this fast and sometimes they do it slowly, and sometimes they turn to stone from the ground up or from one direction to another. my question is, why do they turn to stone different ways? is it because of their mindset at dawn or is it just random? i've noticed that they turn to stone slowly from the ground up when they don't want to turn to stone, like when Goliath and Hudson were returning to Wyvern the night of the massacre, or when Goliath was told Elisa was shot, or when Broadway was caught in midair at dawn. in a way are they trying to to forstall the change to stone and this causes the change to happen in a different way? am i looking at this way too hard, i don't think i am, the stone changing process just seems slower and more "forced" when the gargs are in distress or don't want it to be dawn...

i think thats all i have to say...

Anastasia writes...

Hello Greg!
I loved the show, especialy the Goliath/Elisa story. But I have a question, I heard that gargoyles age at half the rate that humans do. Would that affect Goliath and Elisa's relationship as the years whent on?
(Oh yeah, and just a daft one...do gargoyles shave? Hudson is the only one with facial hair of any description, I just wondered...)
OK. That you very much. How are you today?

Punchinello writes...

Hello Mr. Weisman.

I don't come here often, but occasionally I'm struck by the urge to quiz you on something. I was browsing the questions you're fielding, and I was struck again by something I notice every time I visit this page. There seems to be some preoccupation here with "the mind of the other." I noticed another poster make reference to your interest in it (although I cannot find any record of your having initiated the discussion).

While the series was still active I saw you invoke this theme frequently whenever you emphasized the cultural shock that the gargoyles experienced in modern America, and I appreciated the fact that you treated our linguistic tendencies to "name everything" as a curious human social construction. It helped to push the idea that these creatures were _not_ human and that we could not understand their natures or their motivations from within the context of human sensibilities. I see there is some similar talk here of the fay, and the notion that their essential nature might be something that is sufficiently far removed from humans so as to be outside our understanding. All of this puts me in mind of the anthropomorphic problem that the SETI administration outlined for dealing with the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence's. Human beings have a tendency to ascribe human values to non human species, and beyond that have considerable difficulty in contextualizing "the mind of the other" without unconsciously resorting to the context of human sensibilities.

Which brings me to the reason for this post; because being a student of the sciences (and probably less attached to my humanity than most people), I have found reason to be extremely critical of some of the aspects of the way the anthropomorphic problem is treated within the natural sciences as it applies to non-human animals. Generally speaking, my problem is that some of the more archaic ethical distinctions that are made between humans and other animals have their foundation in the premise that the ascription of certain mental capacities ( reflection, emotion, etc.) are the ascription of _uniquely human_ qualities. The fact that this premise, itself, is socially constructed rather than informed by data, seems to be lost on at least most _social_ scientists. What is troubling me is that I have begun to observe this kind of thinking migrate into the popular domain through science fiction. I don't really follow sci fi, but I've seen star trek, and I have had occasion to see the half-dozen or so other popular sci fi programs that one can find on television. I see a trend wherein the heroes casual disintegration of a planet is commonly justified with the hazily defined and indistinct ethics of "It did not harbor any sentient life."

This trend is scaring the hell out of me; because the expression "sentient" is not really used within the scientific community, so it does not have any agreed upon definition attached to it and there is no objective data informing the idea of it. The word seems to have infiltrated popular culture, however, where it finds frequent expression. That's what's bothering me. I see a lot of the same hazy ethical reasoning on this board. A number of messages expressing the confusion that humans in your story were subject to when they "mistook the gargoyles for animals rather than sentient beings" and in doing so, justified a campaign to exterminate them.

I would hope that a reasonable group of people would be given pause by the almost casual disregard for life that is being demonstrated with the prioritization of one life over another based upon the presence or non-presence of this seemingly magical endowment. Because if I am reading the intentions of the contributors to this board accurately, then it would appear their position is that if the occupants of that clock tower had been a group of stray dogs or a family of polar bears, then annihilating them with a wire guided missile would have been perfectly reasonable. "It's all right. It didn't harbor any sentient life." I would encourage the fans that come to this site to give some thought to what it is they mean by "sentience." What is the content of this sentience? If it entails that a creature can react to it's environment, anticipate, reflect and emote, then it should be pointed out that what available data exists indicates that this capacity is only about as exclusive a domain as most land based vertebrates.

I guess they shouldn't have disintegrated that planet after all. I hope to encourage others to give this issue the thought that it requires. I am also hoping to elicit some commentary from you, on the matter of how you perceive "the mind of the other." What mental distinctions do you draw between humans and gargates or faeries. I would be interested in hearing you address the notion.

Punchinello

matt writes...

1. do either Broadway or Lexington shave their heads? do either have hairy heads if they wanted to let it grow?

2. do some beast have hair in the same way that some gargs have hair and some don't?