Aris Katsaris writes...

I started to wonder about the 'Future Tense' episode...

1. What would have happened if Goliath had indeed given Puck the gate? After all he was dreaming the whole thing - would the real-life gate have just disappeared and been taken by Puck or something? Goliath waking up and finding it missing?

2. That thing about Puck not being able to take the gate, he having to be given it - is that again a law of Oberon's or something inherent in the nature of the Gate and/or fae?

3. And if the former, why when in other cases the fae could use just any flimsy excuse to bend Oberon's law, this one was so strictly interpreted that even 'Here you have it, take the gate' wasn't sufficient for Puck to take it?

Todd Jensen writes...

You asked in a recent rambling about our responses to a number of the "permanent changes" in the course of the series. In the case of the ones that you cited, I can't really recall now how I responded to them at the time (for example, in the case of "Enter Macbeth", my attention was more grabbed by Macbeth's entrance into the series - particularly on account of his name, since that's always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays - than by the gargoyles' forced relocation - and I was even more delighted in later episodes when we found out more about him and that he was *the* Macbeth).

However, I do recall two "changes" (if relatively small ones) that did startle me. The first was Owen's hand getting turned permanently to stone at the end of "The Price". The second was the destruction of the Grimorum Arcanorum in "Avalon", which particularly raised my eyebrows since that book had been around since the beginning of the series, so that I was astonished to see it go. (I might add that, from my subjective view-point, the end of the Grimorum came, in a sense, not so much when it self-destructed in "Avalon Part Three" as when the Archmage devoured it in "Avalon Part Two").

But when I did look back on them in retrospect, I found that I very much appreciated the changes. It was one of those things that gave "Gargoyles" a special feeling about it that I've so rarely seen in television animation. More like a televised novel, almost.

Llewwellyn Gaelfire writes...

Hi Greg

1. Would Oberon's Mirror work for doing the same sorts of magicks as Titania's (specifically the spell Demona used in "The Mirror" to summon Puck)?

2. If yes, then why did not Oberon simply yank Puck back through his mirror in "The Gathering pt1" instead of going after him?

thanks

Kar -kwannon@yahoo.com writes...

When Xanatos loses his "guinea pig" aka Hudson in "The Price" why would he allow Owen to test the Cauldron of life for him? Since Owen is Puck, and Puck being a Fey is naturally immortal what does this accomplish? If it worked Owen would be no different or did Owen set out to prove that it did NOT work?

Aaron writes...

Greg, thanks for taking these questions. I'm sure you've answered this before, but I can't find any mention of it in the archives.

You've stated that female gargoyles have a worldwide 20-year fertility cycle.

1. Does Demona conform to this cycle, or does her being forever 70(35) short-circuit that?

2. The last question applied for about nine hundred years. But now, what effect do Demona's daily transformations have on her reproductive cycle? I remember a question about this, but I think all you said was that Puck didn't design the spell with pregnancy in mind.

3. When Demona changes to a human, is it simply an exterior, cosmetic change, or does she become fully human internally? I'm betting the former, since she doesn't seem to have a belly button in human form, but that could be either an animation glitch or simply a detail too small to pick up.

4. If she does make a full change, does she have a human reproductive system, and all the monthly fun that comes with it?

Thanks again.

Bud-Clare writes...

What is the Stone of Destiny? Until now, I never gave it any thought, dismissing it as just another magical artifact... except no other magical object shown on Gargoyles had the ability to talk. What makes it so special?

Bud-Clare writes...

Why did the Eye of Odin only transform Fox at night?

Aris Katsaris writes...

In "Hunter's Moon" one of the requirement for Demona's spell to work was that it should be cast in "holy ground". For that reason she uses an abandoned church... The question I'm going to ask is a bit vague, but hopefully you'll understand it: what does this place's "holiness" as pertaining to the spell, derive from? Is it something all places of worship would have, even "pagan" ones? Does it derive from people considering it 'holy' or is an objective "gift" (so to speak) from the deity in question and thus unrelated to belief?

It's almost certainly something which you couldn't answer within the series (I think), but perhaps you could answer it here... :-)

Todd Jensen writes...

You've stated that gargoyles, in your vision at least, came about naturally in the way that all other living things did, and were not creations of faerie or human magic. I certainly feel that that's the most probable explanation for them. But something that I would like to raise is this - in the Gargoyles Universe, would it even be possible to create a genuinely sentient race using magic?

My own feeling is that it isn't, based on what I saw in the series. Oberon, one of the most powerful magic-users in the Gargoyles Universe, animates a number of statues in "The Gathering Part Two" to aid him against Goliath and his clan, but the statues remained made out of stone rather than becoming flesh and blood, and showed no sign of true sentience in battling the clan, no more so than - say - the Steel Clan. The same thing was the case with Raven's "totem beasts" in "Heritage", who, when animated by him, remained made out of wood and also behaved more like automatons than like truly alive and intelligent beings. And in "Golem", the Golem that was created by Rabbi Loew likewise didn't come across to me as truly sentient, but just a walking clay statue - it never even spoke except when Renard was possessing it. (The Golem did show some dim signs of genuine awareness, but not on the level of a gargoyle, certainly).

So, what I'm basically asking here is - aside from your belief that gargoyles were not created by magic - would it even be possible in the Gargoyles Universe to magically create a truly sentient being or race? Or is such a thing beyond the capabilities of any being other than God?

E.J. Kalafarski writes...

Just out of curiosity, did the Cauldron of Life transform Owen's arm in actual stone, or into the organic stone-like substance that Gargoyles become during the day?