#Gs1e5

[thoughtfulfangirling]

I love Goliath's line here. I love how it's delivered.

And that's the thing. Goliath sees no sense, no use, no possibility of waging war on an entire world.

Demona has spent 1,000 years doing just that though. It's a fight she can never, ever win. She thinks she wants to, but I believe the reality is that as long as she is stuck in an endless battle, she never has to look in at herself. She never has to look at the hate she has fostered that blossomed in the first place because she betrayed her own people. She is the enemy and since she cannot live with that, she wages an impossible war that can never be won and therefore can never stop giving her others besides herself to blame.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

After my last liveblog, I perused the Gargoyles tag and found this gem. I have a feeling it's referencing the comics which I haven't read, but I quite timely imo to all the thoughts I was having on Demona in Awakening Part 5 and it's so much better articulated here in certain ways why it's utter failure to "wage war on an entire world."

Because that's it! Her focus is the war! Not rebuilding her kind. Not bringing her kind together for community and betterment of their lives and lot.

When things get better, all that's left is to confront the many ways she is culpable for all the bad things that happened to her. If she stops blazing, she's left in the ashes of all she has wrought.

And all this time would have been better served to what she claims to want if she would try to make things better. To create for her people the world they can thrive in rather than punish those she hates. Instead of always choosing what hurt her enemies more than what helps her people most.

She keeps burning herself and burning herself when the purpose of burning anything down is so one can rebuild. But she never builds, only burns.

I think the thing that definitely damned Demona the most is that outside of her justified anger at the human mistreatment of her kind, Demona does nothing to actually make things better for them. She goes behind Goliath's back makes a deal with the Captain who makes a deal with the Viking who in the end fucks everyone over.

Demona doesn't seek to make a better world for other Gargoyles, instead she just makes it worse. Ends up playing a damning role in her clan getting genocided, turned one of her clanmates into a Frankenstein abomination, and tries to murder her husband and remaining clan mates daily, on top of the usual gaslighting, emotional manipulation, and many attempts at committing genocide.

Hell, even when Puck gives her the chance to make Goliath fall in love with her again, she vouches instead for killing Elisa because she's human and because she cannot stand the idea of Goliath moving on with someone else.

I know a lot of people compare her to Magneto and yeah, I get the comparison, and depending on which version of him we're talking about you'd be right. But at least, Magneto for a lot of his own faults created Genosha, a safe haven for his kind. Demona doesn't attempt to do any of this, she's more intent on burning down the whole fucking boat even if it includes killing the last remnants of her own people.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Physical contact was established so quickly. Haha. She truly feels bad for him, and this is a gesture of compassion, but it does not hurt that she gets a chance to touch him! Softly. On his face. Oh Elisa!

But I do think this gesture is moving to him. She gives him a moment to look away from her, to not see what is inconvenient to him. Like he did when he saw Demona's hatred.

Elisa doesn't realize how much she's asking of him. He knows that she's asking him to trust what she's telling him while not understanding that to do is to distrust one of his kind, someone of his own kind who he loves deeply and thought he had lost... is realizing he already had lost.

Unlike Demona though, who accepts Goliath's averted gaze, Elisa reaches out to ask for him to see her. She doesn't ask just with words but with touch, with her very being. Elisa's hands have no strength in comparison to him; he did not have to let her turn his face. Her touch was a question, a request, and he says yes and accepts. He says okay, I will see you and what you have to say.

Another contrast. It's not just that Elisa didn't just let him get away with refusing to see what is in front of him, it's his willingness to look at what she is saying to him because it does in fact align with who he is in a way Demona had not. He can accept Elisa in a way he could not accept Demona. And though yes, my shipper heart sees it as a path to their future romance, but I don't truly believe that's at all where his mind is. I don't think he really, on any conscious level anyway, sees Elisa in that light.

She is a reflection for everything he tries to be and was failing to be. Of course he would look at her where he couldn't look at Demona. When Demona declared her war on humanity, he stopped viewing her entirely to this point. He could have done the same when Elisa asked him to see the guilt on Xanatos's, Demona's, and even his own hands. How much easier may that have been?

But he looks. He accepts.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

She might not know it now, but she's a liar. Haha. And I love that about her. I love how she ends up trying to keep them as her own little secret, and I can't wait to get to that stuff. But still, in this moment I think she does believe it, and this is sweet. Goliath is grasping at anything that will give him reason to continue. He'd started looking toward a future, I think, when Demona returned. He's coming to terms with the fact he will have to find his own reason, and this is an attempt at that, and I think it's a great start ^_^

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Imagine what these shots would look like with fully new and updated animation. Like I do have a lot of love for the animators here. They do some fantastic work. But they didn't have to work with what we have now, and I would love to see that so so much!

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Demona sets up to take a shot she can't miss, but Elisa finally arrives. I love that there's no hesitation. We don't see any moment of her taking in the scene. She just sees a BIG ASS GUN being pointed for a kill and throws herself at the threat.

As a result, we get a dramatic misfire into yet another tower (so many towers!) and bam! Xanatos is going to miss the rest of the show. What a dissappointment to him. He clearly loves a good show!

[thoughtfulfangirling]

GOD SHE'S GREAT!

Oh the robots didn't work?

LET'S ROLL OUT WITH A FUCKING BAZOOKA!

Through the entire series, I'm pretty sure she is the only gargoyle of any stripe who embraces technology the way Demona does. Which is amazing given how disgusted she is with humankind.

But she is a practical warrior. If there are weapons that will do the job quickly and efficiently, well, she will just get her hands on those tools.

When Demona is done playing around, she is brutal and vicious and I love it.

And I love that final expression. I believe she was half wanting to blow Goliath to smitherines and half not done with him yet, so when he falls from the tower to the ground and she's not yet sure whether she's killed him or not, you get this look. She doesn't know what she wants more, him to stay down or get up. Win/win for her really whatever happens.

She's such a ball of raging fury all the time and it never disappoints even while we're just like 'girl! aren't you tired?!!'

[thoughtfulfangirling]

The tower falls in a way that throws Demona and Elisa over the side of the castle, and Goliath has to choose (Demona get's knocked out by falling rocks of course) between the woman he loved and a woman he'd only just begun to trust. One just threatened his life, and the other saved it. It is no surprise he chooses the one who saved his life, but that doesn't mean that the choice was easy. Just because things had gotten super fucking toxic and messy doesn't mean he just stopped having any particular feelings or history with Demona.

Though it probably honestly did help in that moment that he had just discovered her betrayal as well. He was supposed to have been able to trust her back at Castle Wyvern, but she went behind his back and did something that led its way to the the death of their clan because she knew he would not have approved. Goliath can be an angry creature, and I think he is, and in the spur of the moment, I'm sure that helped. Which again, I still don't think makes it easy.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

GOLIATH LOOKS AWAY AGAIN! I love that we've returned there. He cannot look at her, cannot see her in this way. It does mean something to him, but it means he has lost something precious and dear to him, and he cannot look at this version of her, the version of her that has become something he cannot be or follow.

And it's just this wonderfully quiet moment. He does not answer her. What an absurd question. Of course it meant something, but it cannot be the foundation of a relationship of two people who have changed away from each other so extremely.

And we return to the idea that she's not truly even presenting him with a choice. The choice she is offering is not community or companionship or trust. Not when the alternative is being her enemy and at the mercy of her wrath.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Dun Duu DUUH

And now all the players are revealed for who they are.

Xanatos was in fact just using the gargoyles and never* intended to work with them.

And Demona was always working alongside Xanatos, not some sort of grateful pawn. I think her real reason always was to see if she could win them to her cause as Xanatos truly is nothing to her except someone she can maybe use as some point for her ends. What does she have to gain from robotic gargoyles? Weapons against humanity sure but that's not Xanatos's intent, and I think even she knows that he wasn't just going to go around wreaking havoc on New York with these. These are tools to him, not a weapon per se.

But Demona is a creature of fury and vengeance. If Goliath won't side with her, if the clan won't join with her cause, and most importantly, if they will deny her, then she will see them perish!

And Owen Barnett is the only practical one among them. He is the only one who doesn't live for the drama. Wait till dawn, he says, and their problem will be resolved. A bit cold hearted sure, but the most surefire way to make sure their goals are met.

The theater kids are not about to listen to the math nerd.

*I say never because that's what is being implied here, but I definitely think if they would have been putty in Xanatos's hands, he would have kept them around. It packages things nice up neat and clean for kids with 'they would never be safe with Xanatos' instead of 'they might have been physically safe, but they would be living against their values'.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Goliath has been fighting this all along because A) it will hamper this newfound happiness he was looking to have and B) it's literally one of his worst fears coming to fruition again.

Demona was determined to be grateful to Xanatos. He is her new friend in this world, and Goliath knows her well enough to believe that if that's what she says, her mind won't be changed by the word of another human she does not know.

And Goliath knew that Xanatos was trying to use him. Xanatos said as much directly to him, even threatened him and his kind obliquely but which Goliath fully caught when Goliath threatened not to help him. This has huge implications. Xanatos's blackmail still stands whether he was genuine or not. He is the human who lives in his castle which complicates thing. He must trust Xanatos not to destroy him during the day and how can he if he must confront Xanatos? But can he live with himself and his desire to be honorable if he does not?

It's a giant mess for Goliath and in the wake of his determination to just allow him and his clan some happiness, he wanted something easy and it was easiest to go along.

He doesn't refute Elisa because he doesn't believe her. In fact I believe as she speaks, things are actually falling into place, suddenly making sense where before what he new had all sorts of gaps. But these truths are more than inconvenient for him.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

There's such pain as he walks past her, but still he refuses to look at her. It's quite a contrast the way her gaze follows him so closely. And very interesting in how in some ways, I think Demona fails to see so much of Goliath, while Goliath was seeing so much... too much, of Demona. And perhaps that's what I'm thinking here. He can't bear to take in all he came to see in her in the last several hours, while she failed to see the ways in which he changed or even what drives him. She always found his unwillingness to 'wage war on a whole world' pretty opaque. And after all these years, she still doesn't get how he can't see things her way.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

I'M NOT DONE APPRECIATING THESE ANIMATORS!!!

LOOK AT THIS LITTLE TANTRUM! LOOK AT HOW PLEASE AND PROUD OF HIMSELF HE IS WHEN HIS PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE WORKS! I LOVE HIM!

Also, lol, @docholligay perhaps if ever a gargoyles character is you, it's Hudson in this moment, being told to retrieve information from, at the time, cutting edge technology, and having your luck just rear it's gleaming head for you when you punch the goddamn machine for being confusing.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

And when you get that blood, and they want yours, are they not as just as you in wanting that?

But of course that's exactly what has been happening. She can't tell him yet that she's seen humans shatter many more of their kind. She wouldn't tell him that she had a no tolerance policy for humans and killed them wherever she could, driving them to hunt her down so as not to die themselves. That each time she gets revenge on a human, a human desires revenge on her.

Because that's what it means to 'wage a war on a whole world.' There's nothing but blood and hate and fury, and though Demona may be able to keep herself going that way, it isn't going to be a way to live for Goliath. I think he's well proven that rage and revenge can motivate him to violence, but it's in the quiet moments when he reflects, that he is able to see his own faults, that the weight of the blood would sink in and prevent him from continuing. While Demona sees blood on her hands and sees it as her own and that of her kind and can view only the victimization.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

OH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

I exceeded my photo limit in the last few moments of the show. XDXD Go figure.

Elisa tells Goliath that she'll always be his friend though, and he seems pleased. I think perhaps he feels like it may have been worth letting Xanatos live. Whether or not he spared him to 'not be like Demona,' it saved the friendship between himself and Elisa to spare him. He proved something to her by doing so, I think. And I love the idea that it's almost certainly not that he wasn't perfectly capable of doing it.

He turns to stone, and she wonders if the city is ready for them. It's a pretty screencap, so maybe I'll post it tomorrow, but uh yeah no. Haha. New York isn't ready for our Gargoyles! What would be the fun of that! XD =P

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Anyone following my liveblogs (presumably people who have seen the show anyway) would already be clear on the fact that Demona had an active hand in what happened at Castle Wyvern in Scotland 1,000 years ago, but we're having it revealed on screen.

Demona is a very good tactical mind, but her downfall is that she wants others' to know it. I honestly think some of that absolutely comes, actually, from her many years of loneliness. This didn't quite feel like a standout attribute of the Demona we met in our flashbacks. The bitterness that only grew to momentous proportions since that time and her times alone has brought her to this moment.

Which also brings me to the fact that she has been carrying this burden in her for 1,000 years as well. I doubt she cared to explain that to Xanatos. I'm sure she told him the bare minimum of what he needed to know to interest him in this venture.

I definitely don't think she told any other gargoyles she knew since then of her role in the death of a whole clan. Or at least, she hasn't told many.

And her role in that whole affair has been eating her alive from the inside out for 1,000 years. She's so distorted by guilt and grief and anger that she can't bear to acknowledge her part without breaking; she must keep raging on and placing the blame on the humans who she felt got chosen over her and her people.