#tfg liveblogs Gargoyles

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@katrani replied:

like their height difference in general is one thing, but the size of his hands??? compared to her body???????? all of us who watched this at formative ages were doomed lmao

HA!

I'm sorry but yes. Yes we were. We were in fact doomed. And this deserved to be it's own post.

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I'm following the tag because I agree with you but also do I have news for you 😅 My takes and method of talking about it tho are not everyone's jam tho so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Me after binging 40 episodes of the hit 90s cartoon Gargoyles: why is no one else talking about the hit 90s cartoon Gargoyles!?!!!!

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Indulge me in a moment of over-capping the handshake between Goliath and Elisa.

The way Elisa slides her hand into his lkdfjoeijlkjlhioje

HANDS

Thank you that is all

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I love how Xanatos, who will be our main villain, was first shown in full daylight, looking expectantly up at a castle it sounds like he's been trying to locate for some time.

It's his assistant Owen who we watch emerge from shadow, cool and collected and worried about costs.

Given we don't know the roles of all the players yet, this could be a nice little misdirect. Xanatos is full of life and eager and bulldozing on with a passion that doesn't consider 'astronomical costs.' Those are usually traits reserved for protagonists I feel like. So maybe the villain will be the man close to the wealthy guy. Perhaps there's internal strife and betrayal. Own is far more suspicious than Xanatos just yet.

We move on to more explicitly stated risk. Not only is this venture incredibly costly and we don't yet even know why Xanatos is undertaking it, but he just ran alone into a castle known locally to be haunted, which we didn't know before, though certainly we could see that there could be risk of going into ruins that may be structurally unsound before.

I also really love that after Owen mentions the cost, Xanatos's response utterly ignores it, and he's looking at Goliath as he first speaks over Owen's concerns. Just, 'hire the crews!'

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It amuses me quite greatly that Owen just leads Elisa to the elevator and just sends her on her way. He is more thorough than that.

I can't help but wonder if the creators hadn't decided on Owen's back story yet or if this is some early mischief showing through. I know that it is done this way mostly for story. Because we have to get Elisa back in the castle by herself. But I don't like to leave it at just that. Not when it's so much more fun to contemplate.

I can't help but suspect that Owen kind of wants to see Elisa face the reality. She bulldozed her way in, waving aside excuses, prompting Xanatos into the little white lie that marked Owen as someone who gets 'confused', and openly remarked on an observation that for most would make her sound crazy. Perhaps he's curious what she would do when faced with the actual reality. I can imagine Owen might be one to look at humans face-to-face with gargoyles, fighting them, and remarking on how they're wearing masks, and be fascinated at the ways people will convince themselves that the world still works exactly as it always did while facing down something that breaks all the rules.

Perhaps if the little detective gets a taste of what is actually happening here, she will run away and never bother them again, unable to face something that challenges everything she knows about the world. He seems to say, 'are you really so sure you don't want to believe a generator exploded like the rest of New York will?'

If so, he's got another thing coming. Owen does enjoy being surprised by people after all. He should be happy at how this turns out! XD

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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.

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Aww, look at Broadway being a better person than I admitted to sometimes being XD

His story has gone from 'looking' at the gun to 'playing' with it. He knows he held back a little on his confession to Goliath, when the confession was, in a way, coerced out of him. But Elisa was the one hurt by it. Elisa was who he almost lost. And he believes Elisa deserves the truth. The full truth. Good on him.

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I love the pauses between Goliath's phrases here, like even as he speaks these words, he's not sure he can believe it. He didn't know what to expect as the sun began to rise the night before, drugged, chased by enemies, needing the aid of a human he doesn't really know if he can trust, because can he trust any humans?

But he wakes up. That alone is a miracle. For him it is still very fresh just how quickly one can be put to sleep by the sun and never come back. And he is exactly where he was when the sun froze him. And Elisa is there, still at his side.

This is the kind of relationship gargoyles are meant to live with alongside humans. While he was able the night before, he kept Elisa safe. When day came, she did the same for him and made sure he woke up the next night.

This is the community he worked for and thought he'd never be able to rely on again, and he's slow to admit it but fully appreciative of the situation.

What strikes me is that he did trust Xanatos the daybefore. He stayed where a human knew he and his would be stone, and even this day his clan slept under the knowledge of Xanatos. He may not trust the man and yet he doesn't do anything about this. But, it is Xanatos's home and Central Park is not Elisa's. She stayed away from her home all this time to protect him, and that is something.

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This is such a cute little moment. I love that despite how tired we just saw Elisa, she becomes alert so fast. She's so relieved she doesn't have to keep fighting. Also, let the evading begin! Haha. I think it's fair to assume that if a statute suddenly appeared in Central Park, the person resting there isn't going to know why it was put there. Just... enjoying the park. So her sheepish statement is just a cute testament to what a wild day it's been for her, not really an answer to him. Humor helps one survive right? XD

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Broadway immediately breaks into his confession and apology because he's a good guy, and he knows she deserves to understand what happened. And we'll talk about that more. In a sec.

GOLIATH WHAT ARE YOU DOING! This is giving me such man-leaning-again-the-door-frame vibes XD I know that's not what they're going for here, but such lean! His hand on back of the bed like he's just keeping from touching her. She's alive! He hasn't lost this new person! His clan brother had not killed on accident. He's keeping a brave face about it all, probably for Elisa's sake who does seem pretty out of it, though coherent. But I think he's very much affected.

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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.

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Xanatos's infamous line!

I come back to the knowledge that we learn that he gains his riches later in life and not born in it. I think it's easy enough for the wealthy to believe their money can get them what they want. I think it's easy to just have a fundamental belief that money just makes things happen for those people.

But I think Xanatos is speaking from experience here. He will walk barefoot into hell if it gets him where he is. In some ways, a lot of what he does in the show is his way of walking barefoot into hell given the risks he takes. He is spending 'astronomical' wealth not only in having this castle relocated to New York, but he clearly fully expects to be overpaying every single individual he hires in the process.

And to what end?

I think at this point too, knowing he has the wealth to do this, it's super fair to ask 'to what end?' Even once we understand early in the series it was to prove to himself that the paranormal exists and learning the reaches to which it exists. Because we do learn he already knows magic exists. But does this magic exist? And if these magics exist, what other magics exist?

His end is to obtain eternal life. Or at least that's the closest we come to seeing him having any sort of 'end goal.' He's testing all the magics he can and discover what he can to learn which magics reach that goal.

So he puts a castle on top of his tower where he lives to see if monsters of old will truly awaken. They will be in his home. He is there when Goliath awakens. He will be standing before him as the first human Goliath sees after everything we've just endured.

Xanatos would walk barefoot into hell, and he believes others are like him. And is he wrong? There's a lot of people shortly after depicted working on this castle. They've taken the payment to face their fears and worries for the right price.

And that's just who David Xanatos is. I love him.

And it brings me back, after all we just saw in the last episode and a half, to the complicated nature of humans. Robert was good to the gargoyles until he wasn't. Princess Katharine was bad to the gargoyles until she wasn't. Xanatos may end up becoming the gargoyles' villain, but without him, would they ever have awoken?

Nothing, so far, is black and white here.

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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.

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I was wondering if this version of Gargoyles would show Elisa's blood. I do think something was cut here, as I feel like I distinctly remember a pool of blood around her on her kitchen floor at one point of watching. It was probably an establishing shot that this version took out. I guess that much blood is too scary? I can see why it's harder to remove it from this moment, and I am glad they did not remove this moment!

Because it's powerful seeing Broadway put Elisa on a cot and feeling her blood on his skin, which he caused. He literally has her "blood on his hands" for playing around with the gun, and he is understandably quite horrified by the realization of this. It's a good moment to get left with as we close out Broadway being in this scene.

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Xanatos's office compared to Owen's. I think we can imagine who does more paperwork LMAO. Owen actually has books and bookshelves and drawers and lighting that is functional rather that mostly dramatique. It's also, clearly, much less grand and while roomy, not as big. Which he's going to be happy for in a moment as he's going to have a clan of gargoyles filling up that space.

I definitely think there are things to read in here about the personality of these two men, and also in the manner of these two different office visits lmao

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This show exists in the era even before Tsunami had to cut out scenes from Sailor Moon where characters were on bikes without helmets and very badly photoshop a seat belt onto Ami because they would not depict unsafe behaviors for kids to replicate.

LMAO It's must worse in motion too. Believe me.

So this is a case where Brooklyn is wearing a helmet for out of universe reasons. What's even more interesting to me is that the reference they made to Lexington having driven one before, he absolutely had not been wearing a helmet. I wonder if they got in trouble after that aired. XD Not bad enough to have it edited out like Elisa's blood in a future episode.

But it's no fun to shrug something off as done 'because creators had to' and I love that they knew that too.

It's not about the helmet.

It's all a part of the look!

And it very much does suit Brooklyn. Any one of them would enjoy the act of playing the part, but it works that Brooklyn is the one to set the example, to go out of his way to find what he thought of a 'biker gear.'

And for Broadway to help him into the coat like it's almost ceremonial?! LOVE THAT!

This whole sequence also speaks to how clearly they have discussed in advance, maybe even drawn straws or something, who will be the first to ride the bike after it's fixed. Absolutely adorable.