CRAIG> "Lucas has claimed that the Ewoks are a metaphor for the Vietcong and the Empire is meant to be American imperialism. This is such disingenuous hogwash."

He said that? He actually said that?! Wow.

"The Ewoks were designed to sell toys, and Lucas is the biggest capitalist going."

Which I have no problem with, but don't be disingenuous about it.

"Literally no adult viewer of RotJ ever once thought, "Oh, this is a scathing indictment of U.S. interventionism";"

I tend to overanalyze things like a bad High School English teacher, and this one never occurred to me.

"Han's reaction to Leia, the love of his life, being kidnapped, is, "I hope she's alright." Talk about passion and devotion! "

Harrison Ford didn't want to be there and it showed. He phoned in his performance. And I can't say I blame him, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" had just made him a star. Offers were coming in right and left. And the material he was hoping to get wasn't present. Why should he care?

"Having the climax center around another Death Star is so lazy and cheap."

And then J.J. Abrams did it again! But after he smeared his brand of Pretentious Michael Bay all over Wrath of Khan, I wasn't surprised. Personally, I think Abrams and Lucas deserve each other. They're cut from the same cloth.

"I'm going to include Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul discussion in spoiler tags"

Loved your comments. Both shows are masterpieces.

"I imagine that until she at least WANTS it, and acknowledges the wrongness of her actions on a conscious level to herself,"

That would be step one.

"anything beyond that is almost impossible to conceive. With 1000 years' worth of human blood on her hands...it will be a HEAVY moment for her to admit that she's been wrong. That's a LOT of guilt to take on all at once, really unfathomable to any of us. (And yes, I do believe that she is subconsciously carrying the guilt now, but that's different from truly admitting it to yourself and living with it.)"

While I sure as hell wouldn't ever compare Demona with Vir Cotto, there's this beautiful scene from Babylon 5:

https://youtu.be/0oHtLmjKRbE?si=_83KECJXg__u9OLi

"ED'S ENTIRE POST ON REDEMPTION"

I really have nothing to add. That should be an article on a professional website.

Also, a lot of great comments here about the Captain of the Guard, but I think I'll table my thoughts until we record "Shadows of the Past" for Voices... and really take the time to devote some thought to it.

JURGAN> "A gargoyles analogy might be the hunters- Goliath doesn’t have to accept Jason’s redemption, but he has to let go of his obsession for his own health."

It occurs to me we never saw Goliath's thoughts on Jason after this. Obviously he let the feud go, Elisa chose him, I think he's over it. Jason is in prison now, but I think seeing their next interaction is something to look forward to. Assuming we ever get it.

DEMONA'S ALLIES> I like Matt's theory on the Mayan Clan. I tend to think they'd be easier to radicalize than the other gargoyles we've met. But we shouldn't look at things as a monolith. There might be gargoyles in London we haven't met yet that might agree with her. Everyone is an individual. Maybe Demona splits the Mayan Clan. We may end up with a Brentwood situation.

Another potential ally is Coldsteel, too.

As for human allies... well, she's not above lying to and using humans. We've seen it before with Xanatos.

It could also be new characters. The Pukhan Clan protects justice. Maybe, depending on how she pitches it, she's bringing justice to humanity for all of the gargoyles slaughtered.

Hmmm... I do wonder if we'll get any clues as to what Demona did during World War II in "Quest". The Spear of Destiny seems to be one of the Three New Keys, and it tends to get tied in with Hitler's occult fascination.
Greg Bishansky
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 9:34:51 pm EST from 67.189.167.107

Ed > I had similar thoughts on the "glimpse behind the curtain" elements of the Weisman interview. I just always love hearing about this kind of "production" minutiae, because I'm a dork. If I'm remembering correctly, Greg once said that Nate was basically the liaison with Dynamite and Disney, and Greg hadn't heard anything directly from Disney about the book. (I hope I'm not misremembering that, but I'm pretty certain.) So I found it interesting when Greg mentioned on the Eyrie podcast that he had to very carefully finesse Goliath's "Not a man within perished by the flame" line to to meet Disney's standards. It seems like Greg has a very definite sense of what he can and can't do this time out (presumably conveyed by Disney through Nate), and it's decidedly more rigid than the SLG books. Which is fine; obviously Greg works brilliantly within whatever parameters are set for him, as that Goliath line surely attests.

As to the delays, I recall in the SLG days Greg said that a comic could sit on someone's desk at Disney for weeks before they even looked at it, let alone approved it. The irony is that, in those days, they let Greg get away with a lot! It seems like once they actually got to the book, they didn't really push back against much (perhaps I'm wrong about that, but it's honestly difficult for me to imagine that Greg ever intended to push the content much further than what we got, so it seems unlikely that much if anything was censored). Whereas now, in the Dynamite era, Disney seems to have much more rigid ideas about what is and isn't allowed, but the actual approval process seems much quicker.

At the end of the day, I'm not much concerned about the delays. Gargoyles #1 debuted last December 7, so in the past year, we've more or less lost ten weeks from the schedule overall. That really isn't that bad at all, compared to what we were used to in 2006-2008, when ten weeks between issues wasn't even that bad! (Not to mention what I'm going through now with Gaiman and Buckingham's Miracleman: Silver Age...deja vu all over again.) I'm mostly intrigued to see what happens with the transition from the main series to Quest, as I really doubt Dynamite will want to delay the new series unless it's absolutely necessary.

As to the Star Wars sequel trilogy: I liked JJ's Episode VII when it first came out, just because it remembered to be fun and felt like a breath of fresh air after the awful prequels; but in retrospect, I recognize how soulless Episode VII was, and how it's entirely a clone of A New Hope. Johnson's Episode VIII I would venture to call a pretty good movie...at the very least, it doesn't deserve nearly the level of hate it gets. It's actually pretty subversive for a blockbuster franchise movie, and there's a lot that I like about it. There's some moral ambiguity there that is lacking in ANY other Star Wars film (even the great first two) which I very much appreciate. But there is also some undeniably bad stuff, particularly an over-reliance on stupid humor which pervades all the sequels (the Space Monte Carlo sequence feels like a bad Futurama episode). JJ's Episode IX is just one of the worst movies I've ever seen, a complete failure on every single level, to an almost unbelievable degree. 'Nuff said.
Craig
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 1:12:11 pm EST from 24.46.160.117

Thanks to everyone for the positive comments on my redemption post.

Greg W Interview: Interesting that"Disney and Dynamite "weigh in, believe me, in terms of what they’re looking to publish..." I think we'd all inferred this but it's the most explicit confirmation we've had. While, in an ideal world, Greg would have complete freedom, Nate seems to have been nothing but brilliant and Dynamite has treated the franchise really well and clearly knows how to find success.

Also interesting: "For SLG, it was telling a Gargoyles story, and they wanted a spin off and we chose Bad Guys. For Dynamite, we’re telling Gargoyles, I wanted a spin off and we chose Dark Ages."

Which suggests that the push for a spin-off came more from Greg. Could just be a transcription thing but I guess that while SLG needed more books to justify the licence, Dynamite doesn't have the same pressures and might not have gone automatically to a spin-off over a different Disney franchise (although that hasn't stopped them with 'Darkwing'). Ultimately it doesn't matter all that much but it's interesting to see a glimpse behind the curtain.

Antiyonder: Hmm... that's true recently but Macbeth was pretty trustworthy. So was Robbie in his own way, even though he'd gone down a very dark path by 994.

Jurgan: It's nice to see someone praising the Johnson vision over Abrams' which doesn't seem to be the consensus view these days. Granted, I've only watched the sequel movies once each (and in the case of 8 and 9 it was because I was accompanying someone). I found 7 a soulless paint-by-numbers pastiche of the first film; 9 a kind of mindless light show to eat popcorn to; but 8 I found quite entertaining to watch, at least by the fairly dismal standards of SW. Would I want to watch it again? Probably not. But that's still head and shoulders over most of SW.

Interesting comments on "Shadows of the Past". I'm not religious but I know Greg Weisman does have a religious (or at least spiritual) sensibility so I'll be interested to see his comments, if any, on this apsect of "Shadows". I'm not sure about the idea that length of purgatory is adjudicated purely on personal guilt. I agree this seems like a fair reading of the episode but this seems to advantage the amoral who could probably quite happily exist being endlessly reminded of their crimes.

Todd: I suppose it depends on if Gorebash has the time and wish to create a workaround - wouldn't blame him if it's low on his priorities right now. I'd be cautious about adding too many hoops - I love the format of the room as a single discussion and no need for an account system. I guess my suggestion would be to only enforce some kind of additional check if the post includes an external link.

Matthew: Good thoughts on the Squad, especially your comparison of Yama and Demona. I did have notes to write more about them (and a couple of other non-'Gargoyles' examples) but the post was already far too long. Another time perhaps.

Craig: I appreciate the heads up about the delays (and don't worry - harp away!). Very curious as GargoylesNews also shared a post four weeks ago from George Kambadais who said he was working on #12. I had assumed that the delays were artistic - and perhaps there are hold-ups with colourists or letterers - but I wonder whether the current spurt of delays is from Disney. We know on the SLG book Disney could hold things up for some time and we've seen some evidence of this with the changes in covers. But if they're as, er, "involved" concerning the inside of the book as well then this could create delays. For this as well as narrative reasons, I really hope they delay "Quest" and give the production a good buffer time.

In the scheme of things, after the experience of SLG and the long sleep, I'm pretty relaxed about the comics arriving whenever but it would be nicer if they could at least hit the dates they're announced with.

(Incidentally, don't know who runs Gargoyles News, but they're great).

Morrand: Excellent point - and yes, in my head if not as clearly in what I wrote, is that the agent of forgiveness crystallises the process and provides some kind of end-point to the redemptive journey. I think originally I wanted to cycle back to the parallelism of the Christian concept of salvation and the non-Christian rendition of that in terms of forgiveness but it got away from me a little... partly because the longer I thought about it, the less sure I was that forgiveness was even as important as a metric as I'd assumed when I started writing. I do like your (and Matt's) point about the continuum and I think that's certainly a really important consideration.

Alex: I think it can be simultaneously true that characters change and don't change. For example, although Walter White was shown up as an example of a character who changed and the whole concept of the show was about change, I think "Saul Gone" in particular very much suggests that on a more fundamental level, he never changed and learned - he was always like this. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on restorative v punitive models of justice.

Craig/Alex: I agree with Craig's take on BB. [SPOILER] Indeed, even his offer to Jesse is kind of a play as Jesse would be on the hook for another murder despite the fact that Walt never planned to survive anyway - to say nothing of showing little understanding of Jesse in thinking that he would want vengeance despite what killing already did to him. [/SPOILER] However, this does show the interesting relationship between redemption and revenge.

Of course, redemption means (literally) to "buy back" whereas revenge means to "claim back" so the two have a kind of symmetry in that they involve trying to right an inequity, though redemption is through hard work and good deeds while revenge is by enforcing a claim/consequence. The symmetry between these ideas is probably an interesting avenue to explore at some point.
Ed
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 12:39:17 pm EST from 86.157.188.113

MATTHEW - Good point.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 8:22:51 am EST from 174.72.60.154

I did some checking on past weeks and I noticed that spam bots show up more frequently the more activity there is in the weekly chat.
I'm all in favor for some human verification but this would involve a huge amount of overhauling the website and I don't think those responsible for keeping it and Ask Greg up would be willing to shut it down for as long as it's needed to rework Station 8.
Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 12:35:19 am EST from 64.85.245.77

Zach> Possibly.
Antiyonder
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 12:28:11 am EST from 71.84.183.196

Does Superboy Human DNA restrict how much solar energy he can absorb
Zach - [zacha0316 at gmail dot com]
Zach
posted @ Sun, Dec 3, 2023 12:22:52 am EST from 76.35.40.7

If nothing else, even if anything following Hunter's Moon had a consistent release schedule, spoilers would definitely be an inevitability at some point, like if we got Gargoyles 2198, or given changes in the mid-2000s getting The New Olympians while the main series is in the late 90s early 2000s.
Antiyonder
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 11:31:47 pm EST from 71.84.183.196

Not to harp on release dates, but I see that Gargoyles #11 was pushed back two weeks, from this upcoming Wednesday to December 20. This makes it seem even less likely that #12 will hold its current release date of January 10 (just three weeks after #11). I wonder if it's possible that we'll get Quest #1 before "Here in Manhattan" #12, which could lead to a similar situation as with the Halloween Special, where we get a story that might spoil a bit of events that the main series hasn't gotten to yet. (Of course, it's also possible that Quest #1 doesn't specifically refer to anything in Gargoyles #12.)
Craig
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 6:54:17 pm EST from 24.46.160.212

MATT - Yes, of the different gargoyle clans we've met so far, the Mayan Clan seems the most likely to be manipulated into working with her for a while. They'd come closest to seeing humans as the enemy - their protectorate is the natural world, with humans being the main threat to the rain forest. Of course, given that they took care to only scare humans off, not harm them, they wouldn't be likely to support a "wipe humans out" scheme - but it'd be like Demona to keep her real goal secret from them.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 6:43:13 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

[SPOILER] I'm not sure anything Walter does in the finale is genuinely redemptive by that point he'd put his family and everyone he cared about through so much hell just for the sake of his own ego, and I'm not even sure his intentions matter. But I think he does come back to kinda clean up the mess he made. At least a little bit. Make sure his kids get the money he wanted them to have, save Skyler from the feds, deal with the villains he created. So maybe he's not coming back to save the day, but he did fix those problems.

Thinking on the finale, though, poor Gretchen. All she did was love Walter and all he did was treat her like garbage. [/SPOILER]
Alex (Aldrius)
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 2:37:39 pm EST from 70.48.45.124

Alex > Breaking Bad [SPOILER]
I don’t see Walt killing Lydia and Jack’s gang as any kind of redemption. He does it out of his usual pride/ego, after he sees the Charlie Rose interview with Elliot and Gretchen. He can’t stand the idea that someone is making HIS product, co-opting HIS legacy, just like what happened with Gray Matter. He plans to kill Jesse as well, until he sees that he’s a prisoner and what terrible shape he’s in. Saving Jesse’s life is his one redemptive moment in that final scene.
[/SPOILER]
Craig
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 1:06:47 pm EST from 166.199.98.2

I think Demona's allies are the Mayan Clan. I don't think they'll be fully aware of her goals and I don't think they'll stick with her when her plans become clear, but their desire to protect The Green will overlap with her desire to destroy humanity for a time. She'll speak in half truths to them, just as she did with Brooklyn in Temptation, and they will help her out. I think Obsidiana will be the most hesitant from the start and will be the voice of reason to pull the clan back from the edge at the end.

All of this is wild speculation, of course, and is based partially on a desire to see the Mayan Clan again. Plus, I've long wanted to see Demona interact with any of the other clans/gargoyles. For that matter, I wonder if the Quest could lead to London and we get the London Clan's take on Demona. Would be a great time to get Staghart involved.
Matt
"And, thus, given no choice, we waited..." - Alesand, "The Reach"
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 10:19:26 am EST from 47.233.90.133

>>Right now, I can’t see Demona achieving more than a very temporary truce with the clan. That more or less happened in Hunter’s Moon, but she betrayed it so quickly that it’ll be a long time before she is trusted again.<<

The thing is she seemed to think she was doing something Goliath WANTED at that point. She wasn't intending to betray any kind of truce. Which is really kind of funny to me. She didn't tell him what she was up to, but her dialogue implies that he's going to be pleased by what she's going to do. I think she did kinda think he'd finally come around to her way of thinking.

Which... I don't even know how to unpack that. It's so messed up and kinda funny.

There's also a degree of like... Demona's relationship or take on Goliath is very strange and unique. She seems to respect him for his strength and his power, and she even seems to admire his strength of character (as soon as Thailog turns on her, who does she immediately turn to for help? Goliath, she knows she can count on him). But at the same time I think Demona very much HATES Goliath's strength of character, because she blames it for Goliath's actions. Goliath did the noble thing and saved the humans when he should have taken the Gargoyles with him at Wyvern to prevent the massacre. "He's always making the wrong choice for the right reason" kinda thing. She's equal parts repulsed and outraged by him and attracted and inspired by him in a very messed up way.

She also seems to kind of think Elisa's seduced him or something. Like Elisa's manipulating Goliath into being the way he is. I think that's always been an element of the character and is largely at the root of her hatred of Elisa.

I will repeat, though, I find it a super limiting idea that Demona just *never* changes for the next 170 years. And there's gonna be some great epiphany moment where she realizes all this and changes. I think Demona is always changing. I think that moment from City of Stone where she was forced to face her trauma and the guilt of her own actions did have an impact, even if she did immediately rationalize it away. People make 1 step forward and then take 2 steps back. I dunno if she would have been willing to be with Thailog if it weren't for City of Stone maybe. And I think in a weird twisted way, Thailog was her attempt to build something, rather than destroy something. And when he turns on her "my vengeance is all you've left me" is her response.

I'm sure her relationship with Angela is similar. She'll take one step forward with Angela, and then 3 steps back. I doubt they can ever be close because I don't think Demona can ever be close to anyone. Or really trust anyone. Or maybe they will find they have this weird messed up trust for one another, but they'll never be on the same side. That's a cool idea I think. I think that's a little bit where their relationship is at right now.

Same with Goliath. I don't think her and Goliath can ever be true allies or friends. Too much bad blood, too much mistrust. But I doubt it really stays static either.

In terms of redemption, I don't really believe in that sort of karmic redemption. I kinda believe all actions have positive and negative connotations to them, and people react to them in different ways. Behaviour can be destructive or constructive, but morality and karmic justice are constructs enforced by society and/or nature (which doesn't mean they don't exist). Like if you do destructive things, destruction will come to you because that's the environment you've created for yourself has always been my take on morality I guess.

Redemption stories to me are about reinvention. And there's all sorts of ways for one to reinvent themselves. Not just from a bad person to a good person or a good person to a bad person. But from a meek person to an assertive one. Or a destroyer to a caretaker. Or with like... Zuko, a warrior prince to a reformist. And as we see in Korra, that's not a perfect reformation, reformation is messy and good intentions don't always mean good outcomes, or the success of said good intentions.

Even Aang kind of has a redemption arc of sorts. Multiple in fact. Aang takes every failure as a mark against his honour that he needs to redeem himself for. It's a very eastern idea. Failure being a form of evil. I don't know that, that exists in the same way in Western storytelling.

As to Return of the Jedi... I'm less bothered by how Vader doesn't earn his redemption (I mean how could he? It's a 2 hour movie set on a space station) and more that it's just so easy and simple. The ideas just aren't complex. The movie seems to suggest that deep down all fathers love their sons, so Vader switches sides when his son is in danger and asks him for help. That's kind of it. We don't really get into it more than that. And we don't really get any more insight into his character or anything like that. I think *at the time* it was sort of a novel idea in pulp filmmaking. That a dastardly bad guy could also be a loving father, but now it just seems old hat and naïve. And the prequels don't help.

Another show that deals with this idea, and I think everyone should watch it, is Naoki Urusawa's Monster so I don't want to spoil it too much, but Monster is a show which absolutely sort of looks at that idea. What's a Monster, what's a good person, what is the nature of any individual human and how can that change. In the first two episodes a good person lets someone else make a decision for him that turns out to be a bad choice, and then that same good person makes what he thinks is a good choice which turns out to be a VERY bad choice. And like some sort of wandering ronin, he spends most of the show trying to find redemption for that bad choice.

So yeah, I'm less inclined towards the sort of divine, or universal, or karmic retribution/redemption stories often put forth and more interested in the personal redemption, or interpersonal redemption type stories, I think those are way more manageable and interesting to write and read. Than trying to figure out how someone who's commited genocide makes it up to the people he's genocided. Like... really they can't.

Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul spoilers:

[SPOILER] Saul Goodman makes up for his mistakes to Kim and to the court (sort of) but can he make it up to every single life destroyed by Heisenberg? Does killing Jack and Lydia and freeing Jesse, and giving Skyler a way out redeem Walter?

I think on a personal level it does even though he created all those problems in the first place. I think Skyler kind of forgives him when he finally lets his walls down and says "I admit I did this because it made me feel good". She seems to kinda respect that. And I think that's compelling storytelling more than the broader, societal one because it's easier to wrap my head around. [/SPOILER]

There's also the idea of restorative justice (giving someone back something they lost) vs. punitive justice (punishing wrong doers) which I think is interesting, and I think one is more productive and helpful than the other. And I think the Magus's redemption is definitely an example of the former. And I think this is a big idea we can get into more, but I think I've rambled enough for one day.
Alex (Aldrius)
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 8:43:26 am EST from 70.48.45.124

Nice site and blog
Tampa Fencing - [buluksura at gmail dot com]
builder16
posted @ Sat, Dec 2, 2023 2:07:20 am EST from 120.29.78.94

We really need to do something about these spambots; they're getting worse.

I read another chapter in Magnusson's history of Scotland today, this one on Canmore and his immediate successors. It mentioned at the start about the ambivalence of the meaning of "Canmore"; its official meaning is "Great Chief", but some historians have been fond of translating it as "Big-head". I remember someone posting a remark here about that (and clearly siding with the "Big-head" translation, at least for the Canmore of "City of Stone"), though I forget who - and it was most likely before the room started getting archived in 2002.

(Incidentally, the "can" part of his name, meaning "chief" or "head", echoes the old British or Welsh word "pen", with the same meaning - thanks to their being two branches of the Celtic language; Gaelic is "Q-Celtic" and Old British and Welsh are "P-Celtic". "Pen" appears in the "chief/head" role in "Pendragon" (meaning "dragon-chief" or "dragon-king"), providing another link of a sort between Macbeth and King Arthur.)
Todd Jensen
posted @ Fri, Dec 1, 2023 7:54:32 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

I haven't been here long enough for it to count, but I'll second Greg B's nomination of Ed's post. Excellent essay, and easily one of the best I've seen in a context like this.

The one comment I could add, or emphasize, maybe, is that redemption isn't a point but a continuum. There has to be some point at which we can say the character has been redeemed, but I think it's a mistake to consider that as some definite point rather than sort of a relative state. Maybe this goes to Ed's sixth component, the agent of forgiveness: having someone there to make the call and say, all right, this is someone who has gotten far enough. Until that point can be said to have been reached, it's still a journey.

I'd certainly go along with the notion that Demona is not going to redeem herself. If anything, she's likely to sit right where she is and wait for the rest of the world to redeem itself to her. (More likely, to go out and compel it to do so.) And from a pure storytelling standpoint, she's filling an important role that you would not want her to vacate unless someone else could come in to fill it, and there's not clearly anyone else around to do that. But I like Matt's point that she may take steps toward redemption, small and inadequate and halting as they may be. That's especially likely, I think, if she can't otherwise get the one thing she seems to want more than anything, which is company.
morrand - [morrand276 at gmail dot com]
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trendshopsmerch
posted @ Fri, Dec 1, 2023 10:19:00 am EST from 103.178.187.139

I haven't seen "Hilda" (I don't have a Netflix subscription), but I have read the graphic novels it was based on and liked them. The trolls in it remind me of my theory that gargoyles were the root of troll-legends in the Gargoyles Universe (the turning to stone in the daytime part) - though since we know that there aren't any surviving gargoyle clans in Scandinavia, it'll take "Timedancer" to confirm that theory.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Fri, Dec 1, 2023 8:37:49 am EST from 174.72.60.154

I just realized that there's another big factor we've been overlooking and it's right in the name.

https://gargwiki.net/Redemption_Squad

I'm hoping to see more of them in the future because they represent both an interesting factor in both the narrative and in-universe. The fact that we have one conspiracy working to check another much older conspiracy is interesting enough but it's the characters involved and who they are is what makes it truly intriguing. The whole "Boxed Crook" has plenty of examples in real life and fiction has certainly plenty of fantastic versions as well. Whether it be The Dirty Dozen in the late 60's, The Suicide Squad in the 80's or The Thunderbolts in the 2000's. That kind of "setting a group of disorganized criminals to fight against something worse than them" story has a certain appeal to it.

Robyn was raised in the Canmore's anti-gargoyle ideology and while dedicated at one point, being part of the centuries long feud and seeing what it did to her brothers up close shook her enough to quit that line and be part of the squad. At the same time, she hasn't lost some of her unscrupulous characteristics that's needed to lead a group of misfits like this.

Dingo is an uncomplicated mercenary and while that's not of much note here it did make him one of the most moral members of the Pack. Being raised by Oldcastle certainly helped shape his less savory attitude but like Robyn he had seen what conflict with the gargoyles had done to his comrades. By the time Wolf, Jackal and Hyena had fully given up their humanity and and notion of sanity, he no longer wanted any part of them or the life he had been steeped in, opting to try and be the hero he once pretended to be.

Yama acts as an interesting parallel to Demona in that both betrayed their clan with the help of a human they once called friend. What differs is that Yama wanted to increase gargoyle/human relationships and Demona wanted to do away with them completely. It's that good but very misguided intent that got him banished but also makes him one the more heroic members of the group. I'm curious on how this will play out, his quest for redemption is certainly going to be at odds with some of the dirtier missions the squad will certainly engage in as well as more unscrupulous members that may join the team, so conflict is sure to arise.

Matrix is amoral in the purest sense of the word. They were created to reshape the world according to the plans or whims of of Xanatos and Fox but with self-awareness came an independent notion. To create an orderly world. As per the wiki it is still only self-aware not yet sentient and thus has a journey of their own to discover and grow or regress. What its destiny may be and what influence the squad's missions might have on its perception is still yet to be determined.

And finally Fang, we still don't know what kind of man Sykes used to be before his mutation and whether he was a petty thug like his literary inspiration or whether the power he attained after his mutation turned him into one. In any case, he represents the "Token Evil Teammate" so often found in groups. What's also fascinating is his recruitment in the first place, going from lackey to two far more dangerous villains to member of the team in such a short time. It certainly makes sense to have someone with powers like him in the squad, what makes it unique though is that he's also best at neutralizing other members within the squad himself, his electrical abilities in short-circuiting Matrix and his mutate strength being able to overpower Robyn and Dingo and at possibly hold his own against Yama. Whether he'll end up a wild card, or betray the team for his own self-interest remains to be seen. Or maybe being so low right now there'll be nowhere else for him to go but up.

Who's to say what happens with the Redemption Squad and whether they'll achieve some manner of redemption. Here's hoping we find out in the future.
Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!
posted @ Fri, Dec 1, 2023 3:51:46 am EST from 64.85.245.77

So Hilda on Netflix is another cartoon I watched during the decade. Final season is up on December 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx2kIDh7xOY
Antiyonder
posted @ Fri, Dec 1, 2023 12:36:45 am EST from 71.84.183.196

Todd> That'd make sense. But the more I think about it she's probably just going to try and ally herself with fellow gargoyles. It excites me to see more, though I hope the comics don't eventually fall in the same trap as Star Wars has in where there's too many Jedi around that somehow managed to survive Order 66. I've got some more thoughts but I don't wanna spiral into something only tangentially related.
Kate
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 10:47:22 pm EST from 72.49.138.52

This is a really cool website to visit
Commercial fencing Werribee - [repunzal at gmail dot com]
Commercial fencing Werribee
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 10:00:23 pm EST from 180.190.36.32

Maybe she tells them it's only to get rid of some of the humans, but not all - namely, the sub-divisions of the human race that those hypothetical human allies would like to see done away with. (Or some other lie. Since Emperor Belos from "The Owl House" got mentioned here recently, I find myself reminded of how he'd duped the Coven Heads into going along with him, and it wasn't until they found themselves subjected to the Draining Spell along with everyone else that they realized the truth....)
Todd Jensen
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 8:55:05 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

Todd> I wonder what Demona's telling her human allies if she has them in Quest. How'd she even win them over?
Kate
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 8:28:12 pm EST from 72.49.138.52

"unless we're talking solely in the Judeo-Christian sense,"

I'm not sure there is such a thing. Christians tend to say "confess your sins and you will be forgiven," while Jews tend to insist on making direct amends to the person you harmed. At least, that's the basic idea, in practice I think a mix of the two ideas is best. As for real life redemption stories, these people jump to mind: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes

Todd, interesting note about the English influence on Scotland. There's some irony in that Canmore's descendant James Stuart was the first Scottish king of England (and the reason why Shakespeare whitewashed Duncan's legacy), and then James's son Charles sparked a civil war by trying to impose English religion on Scotland. Or maybe not irony, but something.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 8:23:20 pm EST from 129.24.53.20

I wonder if we need to add one of those "I'm not a robot" to the "make-a-comment" page, to guard against these spambot posts.

I recently started reading a history of Scotland by Magnus Magnusson, titled "Scotland: The Story of a Nation", and read the chapter on Macbeth today. It opens with a description of Lumphanan, where Macbeth was killed in actual history, with the comment that it's not as familiar as the locations in Shakespeare's play, such as Dunsinane and Birnam Wood (though at least it should be fairly familiar to "Gargoyles" fans - if more the ones who've read things like GargWiki, since it was never named in the "City of Stone" screenplays). It also spoke of a "Macbeth Experience" in a visitor center fairly near Dunsinane, though I don't know if it's still around (the book was published in 2000), that covered both the Macbeth of Shakespeare and the Macbeth of history. It discussed a cousin of Macbeth and Duncan, Earl Thorfinn of Orkney (whom Greg once mentioned as having thought of including in "City of Stone", but there wasn't room for him) - a few historians have speculated that Macbeth and Thorfinn were the same person, and Dorothy Dunnett even wrote a historical novel on Macbeth taking that approach, titled "King Hereafter". And Shakespeare wasn't the only famous British writer who used the familiar "treacherous murderer" approach towards Macbeth; so did Sir Walter Scott in his "History of a Grandfather" (a history of Scotland for children, specifically aimed at Scott's grandson, which has a strong presence in Magnusson's book so far); Scott admitted that he knew that this version of Macbeth's story wasn't accurate, but seems to have liked it since he (like many others) saw Macbeth as representing the old Celtic ways and Canmore as bringing a more "English" way of life to Scotland.

I've only skimmed the interview (thanks for posting it, Bishansky), but will have to read it properly later. I'm also intrigued about Demona's allies. If they're human, she's presumably keeping them in the dark about her big intentions.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 7:57:56 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

Jurgan > Interesting point about “Grace.” We know that Seline was ascendant during the Weird Sisters’ dealings with Demona, but that all three are always also present, and their individual motivations are at play. What precisely was Grace’s contribution to Demona’s development during the time she was under the Sisters’ sway, and could that somehow play into her ultimate potential redemption, whatever that may look like?

As to the Quest interview: this is by far the best interview since the Dynamite comics started! It goes to show the benefit of having an interviewer who knows the franchise, and a website that’s willing to give Greg the space to really elaborate on things. Not a ton of new info, but just a joy to read. One thing we do learn is that Demona will have allies in Quest. Hm. Also just some good insight into Greg’s writing process and the collaboration with Dynamite and Disney, in terms of how these stories come about. (I also don’t think I knew that Greg was a regular viewer of All My Children!) Interesting to see Greg’s quick thoughts on the SAG contract as well (something I’ve been following very closely). And finally, his “smiling” refusal to comment on the Disney+ show could indicate some involvement? I hope I hope.
Craig
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 5:43:35 pm EST from 166.199.98.2

There's a lot of comments to unpack, and Ed's post might be a nominee for greatest post in the history of the comment room.

But for now, new interview with Greg Weisman about Gargoyles Quest: https://www.comicsbeat.com/interview-greg-weisman-gargoyles-quest-399-page-gargoyles-timeline/
Greg Bishansky
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 3:36:21 pm EST from 67.189.167.107

Oh, to whoever mentioned the Star Wars book about Leia’s thoughts, that was Truce at Bakura (the one with alien velociraptors), which was set immediately after RotJ. Anakin’s ghost appears to Leia and asks for her forgiveness, and she says she can’t. He says he’s sorry to hear that, and he probably can’t manifest again but if she changes her mind, he’ll be listening. At the end, when she thinks she’s about to die striking one last blow against the Empire, she thinks “still watching, father?” The attitude there is the old saying that you don’t forgive people for their sake, but for your own. Leia may never be able to accept what he did, but she’s able to think about him without being consumed by hate. And that was probably necessary to have a good relationship with Luke- he was determined to see Anakin as a good man seduced by evil. So she let go of her hatred, and that allowed her to move on with her life. A gargoyles analogy might be the hunters- Goliath doesn’t have to accept Jason’s redemption, but he has to let go of his obsession for his own health.
Jurgan
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 2:35:48 pm EST from 174.218.19.21

Ugh, sorry I forgot to double-space my paragraphs. Hope it's still readable.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]
"There is a difference between you and me. We both looked into the abyss. But when it looked back at us- you blinked." -Batman, "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths"
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 1:52:00 pm EST from 73.98.83.6

Spammers are now stealing Todd’s icon. How dare?
A lot of deep thoughts on the nature of redemption here. I’ll be responding to various people somewhat randomly. Where to start?
“The Gates of Hell are locked from the inside.” -C.S. Lewis
So we’ll start with Star Wars. First, I’m not objective on Star Wars. It’s what my dad and I watched when I was a kid, so I feel a personal connection. That said, after reading “The Secret History of Star Wars” (big recommend), I’m more able to appreciate how what we got is not necessarily what had to be. Luke fighting the Emperor over a lava pit and then wandering off like a ronin sounds more interesting than a second Death Star. I agree that there should have been a bigger loss to the good guys in RotJ- we saw an Ewok die and a bunch of nameless fighter pilots, but no good guy we had a strong connection to. Some might say “well, it’s escapism, it’s for kids,” but I agree with Weisman that if you are going to tell kids war can be justified, you have a responsibility to portray the costs honestly. Han dying would have given the story “bottom” (I still don’t get what that means, but I guess that’s a question for Ford), but also the Ewoks should have lost more. I like the idea of a technologically backwards group overwhelming the Empire, but that never happens without a ton of casualties. I can believe Lucas had Vietnam floating around in his brain when making this sequence (he was close friends with Coppola and helped develop Apocalype Now), but it’s a sugar-coated version of guerilla war.
Now, what about Vader? As was stated, in 1983 the exact level of Vader’s culpability wasn’t clear. We knew he stood by as Tarkin destroyed a planet, we knew he choked out a number of subordinates and killed Obi-Wan, who mentions that Vader “helped hunt down the Jedi,” but that’s it. He was basically just one cog in the Imperial machine, it wasn’t until the prequels that he became integral to the emperor’s rise to power. Now, does killing the emperor to save his son balance out all the harm he did? Well, no, of course not. For all of Star Wars’s Buddhist influence, the redemption of Vader is very Christian. I would add “grace” to the list of types of redemption, maybe paired with remorse and insight. The C.S. Lewis quote at the top summarizes it- you’re not locked in hell as punishment by another, you lock yourself in there and can get out if you are able to forgive yourself. So I get the argument that Vader’s redemption is “cheap grace.” His conversation with Luke about “the power of the Dark Side” is supposed to portray him as a slave who needs liberation, but honestly his character is not consistent in that regards. He went from wanting to do a coup on the emperor to meekly oberying him. Rian Johnson got this right with Kylo Ren killing Snoke and declaring himself Supreme Leader, but that hack Abrams couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Regarding Gargoyles, though, there is one much better parallel to Vader that I’m suprised no one has mentioned. A person who is responsible for the deaths of many but is redeemed by attacking a cartoonishly evil villain to save one person? That’s the Captain of the Guard. Robbie didn’t deliberately kill the Wyvern Clan, but he was responsible, and he likely also caused the deaths of a number of humans, which would have happened even if his plan had gone off without a hitch. Then he plans to kill Goliath as well, but has a change of heart at the last possible second and gets the “ghost warmly says goodbye” ending. You could argue that he paid penance (having Hakon as a roommate does sound like torture), but it’s not as though Anubis was running sand through the hourglass until the time spent outweighed his crimes. It was admitting that he hated himself that freed him. He wasn’t held by a cosmic judge, he was held by his own guilt. I don’t believe in hell as it is popularly understood, but “Shadows of the Past” is my idea of how afterlife justice should go. You’re forced to sit with your actions until you have an epiphany and can accept the truth. Now, this sort of thing could scale depending on the weight of sin- if, say, a 100 year old man who was responsible for millions of dead Cambodians were to die, I could see justice in every one of his victims walking up and punching him in the face. But even huge crimes aren’t infinite, and eventually an indefinite punishment has to outweigh what was done in a finite life.
The other type of redemption story that came up was a formerly bad guy who just sort of hangs around with the good guys and no one really talks about their past. A lot of Buffy characters fit this trope. These feel like practicality. If they’re not harming anyone right now, we can have a truce. Buffy’s view of Anya was basically “she’s human now, I don’t kill humans.” Spike... maybe they should have killed him, but it would have felt spiteful when he couldn’t hurt anyone and was marginally useful. Though if we’re honest, the real reason was “James Marsters is funny and people like him.” (Jack Dane became a major player in Gargoyles’s underworld for a similar reason.) Also Faith, who realized she hated herself and accepted prison time, until she broke out to help the good guys. She didn’t serve out her sentence, but fighting evil is another form of “paying your debt to society.” Angel and Spike, once they got their souls, both felt guilt and a need to repent. Which is a bit odd, since they were in some sense not in control. I see their vampirism as a metaphor for drug addiction- they feel the need to make up for what they did while “under the influence” of a demon.
Vegeta is a different example. Supposing the heroes decided to get rid of him, the only one who had the ability was kind of a shallow jerk anyway and liked having someone that strong around. The rest of the characters basically said “he’s dangerous to have around, but he would also be dangerous to attack, so an uneasy truce is our best option.” One of my favorite of this type of redemption is Peridot from Steven Universe. She’s basically brainwashed into hating humans and deviant gems and has never spent the time to get to know them. When she’s forced to, she eventually comes to care for them. This is evil born of ignorance, so it is corrected through knowledge. OTOH, the series is pretty naive when it comes to redemption overall- I don’t believe fascist overlords who’d ruled for 6000 years would turn it all around because a member of their family said they should be nice. Which brings us to Demona.
Right now, I can’t see Demona achieving more than a very temporary truce with the clan. That more or less happened in Hunter’s Moon, but she betrayed it so quickly that it’ll be a long time before she is trusted again. “The Reckoning” could have ended with her dying to save Angela and stop Thailog (though you’d have to write around that pesky immortality, but it’s doable), and then it would have been Return of the Jedi. The only difference is whether the show itself comments on whether she was redeemed. In general, I think you shouldn’t show what happens to dead characters in the afterlife, as I think the unknown aspect is what makes death powerful as a storytelling tool. If RotJ had ended with Vader’s death and not basically had The Voice of God say he was redeemed, it could be left to the viewers to decide for themselves. I’ve heard some people say they thought the ghost vision at the end could have just been in Luke’s mind, but editing Hayden Christiansen into the scene pretty much rules that out (I don’t think Luke knew what his father looked like in youth). Demona needs a friend, someone who can break through the loneliness that plagues her, but she of course drives them away. Macbeth is really the only option. I like the idea of them someday become allies and friends again. But could she even survive fully accepting responsibility? What’s really going on is inertia. She’s had 1000 years to dig into her place, a few months of pushing won’t overcome that. All the models of redemption are hindered by the fact that she’s too dangerous to leave to her own devices. They tried locking her up, and that played right into her hands. Teaming up against the Space-Spawn will force her into the “hang around the good guys and get to know them” model, but she’ll be resisting insight the whole way. Would seeing an alien invader cause her to think of humans as fellow Earthlings? I doubt it. Invading empires can cause ethnic rivals to work together against a common enemy, but they can also cause one group to try to use the invader against their enemy. Someone a while back brought up that remaining a villain does not necessarily mean she is static. I think the best thing is for her to change her methods and tactics based on new information (I could see her trying to recruit other clans to her way of thinking), but still holding on to that ultimate goal for a while. To actually accept humanity as having a legitimate place on Earth seems impossible for now. Even if she does try to call a truce with the Manhattan Clan, she’ll still be thinking of her next scheme the whole time. I’m trying to think of a pithy ending, but nothing’s really coming. I guess my answer is “all things are possible with time, but none of it will be easy.”
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]
"There is a difference between you and me. We both looked into the abyss. But when it looked back at us- you blinked." -Batman, "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths"
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 1:50:57 pm EST from 73.98.83.6

Gee, can't wait to get one of those classy shirts...
Matt
"And, thus, given no choice, we waited..." - Alesand, "The Reach"
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 12:00:39 pm EST from 204.184.178.1

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trendshopsmerch - [trendshopsmerch at gmail dot com]
trendshopsmerch
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 11:21:33 am EST from 103.25.248.244

Great thoughts Ed (and others!). I truly enjoyed reading what you had to say.

Only thoughts to add would be that I can't imagine Demona will ever achieve redemption the way that Magus did. Like Vader, I think there is just too much there to fully recover.

But progress over perfection! I think she will make steps. The first tiny step might be her love for Angela. And I think she'll still be taking steps in 2198 (and beyond). And I'm sure occasionally she'll take steps backward too. But the journey continues. She might have a long way to go yet in 2198, but I suspect that a Timedancing Brooklyn was probably taken aback by the changes she has made when he encounters her at that time.
Matt
"And, thus, given no choice, we waited..." - Alesand, "The Reach"
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 10:25:31 am EST from 204.184.178.1

Ed> Can't say much on the first point, but the second sounds interesting.

Anyone in general>
Incidentally another factor to look at as to why Demona seeing the error of her ways I forgot if it was Greg B or someone else who mentioned it, but while Demona's distrust for humans isn't entirely unfounded, she tends to ultimately side with the ones who are the least trustworthy.

Plus the bit about Weisman mentioning Macbeth's involvement with the allies during say World War II, but keeping things mum on what Demona was up to.
Antiyonder
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 9:01:18 am EST from 71.84.183.196

Happy St. Andrew's Day! This is the first St. Andrew's Day since St. Andrew (the patron saint of Scotland) was mentioned in "Gargoyles" ("Dark Ages"#2).

One thought that struck me about the Magus cursing the gargoyles; it's understandable that the audience doesn't fully realize that he had "killed" the gargoyles. We know that this is the start of the series, that the gargoyles are going to somehow re-awaken in the modern world (all the more so if we're familiar with the concept, found in many super-hero origin stories, of the super-hero originally being from some past age of history but being brought into the present day), so we're seeing his spell as the vehicle for transferring the gargoyles from medieval Scotland to 1990's New York. But if we look at it from the characters' perspective, who don't even suspect that a mega-millionaire is going to move the castle across the sea and set it atop a huge building a thousand years later, yes, it does indeed look like "he essentially killed them". (It similarly wasn't until Greg Weisman wrote a piece about it that I realized that Goliath's "Cast your spell one more time" was a suicide request.)
Todd Jensen
posted @ Thu, Nov 30, 2023 7:48:13 am EST from 174.72.60.154

Todd: Great Henry IV Part One quote (I’d forgotten that specific speech). And lovely point about the irony of “Temptation”. As for the Keys to Power, I’m not sure I can speculate but some interesting thoughts.

Matthew: To be fair, Greg’s a jobbing writer. I don’t blame him for taking a job on one of the still relatively few action adventure franchises that are out there. Doesn’t mean he’s responsible for “Attack of the Clones” any more than by doing a Spider-Man run he’s responsible for “One More Day” or by doing a Turtles episode he’s on the hook for “The Next Mutation”. I wish we lived in a world which was a little less beholden to these behemoth franchises and more of his original ideas could shine but, alas… As for the rest of your post, I’m not sure about “Avatar” but you’re right that the nature of the original crime is important to some degree. Indeed, the fact that Magus didn’t actually kill the gargoyles puts a different complexion on his choice than if he had, perhaps rather arbitrarily since his intention was clear.

Antiyonder: Okay, here’s an odd thought. If Demona allies with the heroes because the Space Spawn are a greater threat, the risk is that she’s still applying a monolithic view of a species as uniformly bad, just to a new group. Which means:
(1) If she has made serious steps to reform, are the survivors in 2198 essentially exploiting her by utilising her lust for vengeance against a new target? A bit like “Unforgiven” - “I ain’t like that no more.”
(2) If she does start to take a nuanced view of humans it follows that she might apply this same logic to the Space Spawn. This empathy could have lots of positive outcomes and be objectively a good and redemptive thing yet still make her an antagonist to the clan if they continue to prosecute a war.

Craig: Excellent thoughts. Funnily enough, I’d been thinking about Yama. I agree that Yama’s self-judgment is harshest. As for real-world figures, I think it’s difficult to think of redemption stories within a lifetime but as we look back there are many figures (Churchill, the Founding Fathers) who have darker sides that are eclipsed by the good they did. But I think narratives aren’t really very close to real life. We expect stories to broadly make sense for one thing! For another, public narratives are very distorted by availability of information and different people's perspectives on what is right and wrong (e.g. the bizarre recent spectacle of Bin Laden revisionism on some terrible corners of the internet).
Ed
posted @ Wed, Nov 29, 2023 11:01:02 pm EST from 86.157.188.113

I don't think I went into this here yet and waited to do so until we were all caught up on The Owl House spoiler wise.

But on the topic of Demona not being in a place as far as the relative present or nearest future, yeah we got that good Christmas Carol fic where Demona was being visited by the Three Ghosts in hopes of deterring her from her vendetta against humanity and yeah doesn't give into what she learned.

Even rationalizing how everything shown is a fabrication: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/3942961/1/Tis-the-Season

So yeah, would Belos be a good contender as a Scrooge who wouldn't change then even upon a three ghosts visit?

I'm thinking yeah, especially cause even when he tries to act like he changed, he still can't resist bad mouthing witches.
Antiyonder
posted @ Wed, Nov 29, 2023 9:53:43 pm EST from 71.84.183.196

Ed > Terrific post. Even as I was typing my short earlier reply about Demona yesterday, it crossed my mind that there are a lot of 'Re' words associated with redemption: regret/remorse, restitution/recompense, rehabilitation, reformation...even resurrection, if we wanted to really get into the Christian aspect.

Redemption is an interesting concept because it is so ill-defined, intangible, and subjective. It's probably a concept that comes up a lot more in fiction than in real life (outside of a philosophical/religious context). In life, I think we talk much more of some of the subsets of redemption that you break down (forgiveness, rehabilitation, restitution), but not of the overarching idea, which is difficult to even fathom, it's so big. It's difficult to think of many modern public figures who are viewed as "redeemed." I did a quick google, and George Wallace came up (for rejecting his earlier racist ways and trying to atone to the black community toward the end of his career), but not much else of interest. (People also mentioned Robert Downey Jr., but this IMO is stupid, since he never did anything particularly bad, and also has never done anything particularly good besides being a talented and successful actor...I think people confuse overcoming adversity with redemption.) Most frequently with public figures in our society, I think there's just a general sense that someone has "done their time" (literally or figuratively) and deserves some measure of public forgiveness; not that they've truly been "redeemed."

Another issue that you allude to is that, realistically, different individuals' perceptions of whether or not an individual has been "redeemed" will differ. It's highly subjective (unless we're talking solely in the Judeo-Christian sense, where I suppose the sole arbiter of this would be God, and the rest of us can only speculate). This is a massive problem with many redemption arcs in fiction. Too often, because the author/creator decides that a character has redeemed him/herself, every other character just goes along with that, and the audience is expected to as well. It's just taken as a given, essentially a decree from the author with no room for debate or nuance (the author as God, I suppose). Too often in fiction, "redemption" is presented as an absolute, when in reality, there can never be any objective answer as to whether or not an individual is truly redeemed. I'd like to think that any potential "redemption" for Demona someday would lead to disagreement among various characters about how morally complicated her legacy is, as opposed to just whitewashing her because of some good acts.

In a way, perhaps the most compelling approach to this question of WHO actually gets to decide when someone is redeemed is the approach taken by the Ishimura clan in the appropriately-titled "Redemption Chapter Two: The Lost." As Kai notes to Yama, self-judgment can be the harshest of all (as we see from the Magus spending the rest of his life in a hair shirt); but at the same time, it is probably also the most fair form of judgment. After all, no one else knows our hearts better than we ourselves. And, because self-forgiveness can be the toughest, it is also potentially the most meaningful and soul-cleansing.

GREAT analysis of Better Call Saul. I agree with all of that.
Craig
posted @ Wed, Nov 29, 2023 4:27:49 pm EST from 24.46.162.209

And Weisman has had things planned out before Avatar The Last Airbender had even started production or Zuko's story being finalized, but if I had to hazard a guess regarding Demona it's that for lack of a better example or phrasing?

Pretty much her own Crossroads of Destiny which is reluctantly helping on the side of the angels, doing something to screw the Resistance and Earth over greatly before whatever happens to lead to her epiphany.
Antiyonder
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 9:44:44 pm EST from 71.84.183.196

I find Star Wars so often used as a punching bag here almost hilarious considering Greg also worked on the franchise, albeit for one season. And as bad as Vader's redemption is, I've certainly seen worse both within the franchise and outside of it.

But enough about bad ones, let's instead focus on ones that were well done. Ed's covered the points needed to make the switch to the side of good feel authentic but I'd also like to include that it's important to show why he or she became evil in the first place and what level of evil did they engage in while they were on the wrong side of the show's conflict as it was.

When it comes to redemption in fiction, one that gets mentioned a lot is Zuko from Avatar. He covers the all 6 points pretty well (though not necessarily in that order). One thing that works in his favor is that flashbacks show he was a pretty good kid in-spite of his haughtiness, the more toxic elements of his life were mitigated by the influences of his mother, his uncle, and probably his cousin. But a big factor one why he is the way he is throughout the first two seasons is a combination of loss and because every time he tried to do the right thing it would blow back on him spectacularly. He speaks out against sacrificing green troops in battle and he gets scarred and banished, he stands up for that Earth Kingdom village who subsequently kick him out the moment his identity is revealed. A combination of growing resentment, bad luck, harsh living, pursuit of what he thought he wanted, and general teenage angst pushed him into making that fateful decision at the end of season 2.

What makes his journey so well done is that the first half of his season 3 arc is dedicated to showing what's happened since he got everything that he thought he wanted and why he couldn't be satisfied with this "victory" after everything he's been through. His teachings from Iroh broadened his perspective beyond the philosophy of Fire Bending and the mindset that goes with it. His time wandering with the crew of his ship gave him a better appreciation for the common soldiers that served under him. His time as a refugee showed him the great lie of his country's history and what exactly it means to live under an oppressive regime. And most importantly, getting everything he thought he wanted just showed how hollow what he wanted was. His father was never going to give him anything close to the love and approval his uncle was willing to give. The position of prince of the Fire Nation wouldn't sit well with him after learning everything that was wrong with his home. All the struggles and hardships over the first two seasons that built up his anger and resentment and drove him towards villainy also helped build up his character and built him up to being a better man. In the end, being the good, obedient henchmen under his father was as false as when he played the role as penniless Earth Kingdom refugee.

A large part in why this worked was that as a main character time could be devoted to showing his ups and downs like that of Team Avatar. It masterfully demonstrated that he was a good kid just as capable of noble acts of heroism as he was capable of destructive means of self-service.
Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 8:42:41 pm EST from 64.85.245.77

BISHANSKY - I find Demona going through a "Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking" scene state very appropriate, in light of her links to Macbeth.

I hadn't thought about the implications of the "toy store"; I'd always assumed it was more linked to the Weird Sisters' "little girl"-disguise than to Demona's massacre. I'll need to rewatch "City of Stone" Part Two and pay closer attention to that scene.

ED - A very good essay on redemption (I was amused, by the way, at your inclusion of one of the Second Doctor's most famous lines). One side-comment, when you cited the uncertainty case of Prince Hal; many commentators on the "Henry IV" plays have shared that uncertainty, arguing that the "I know you all..." speech suggests that Hal was deliberately hanging out with Falstaff and his gang, carousing, and carrying on the behavior of an "unthrifty son" as a way to make his reign as Henry V all the more dramatic, staging the "madcap prince" role and the Rejection of Falstaff for that purpose: "Yet herein will I imitate the sun,/ Who doth permit the base contagious clouds/ To smother up his beauty from the world,/ That, when he please again to be himself,/ Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,/ By breaking through the foul and ugly mists/ Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.... So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,/ And pay the debt I never promised,/ By how much better than my word I am,/ By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;/ And like bright metal on a sullen ground,/ My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,/ Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/ Than that which hath no foil to set it off."

On Demona bringing up humanity's iniquities - she did do that in "Temptation", of course, to try to bring Brooklyn over to her side. (The example she cited that most stands out to me; the domestic quarrel incident. Demona either overlooked, or hoped that Brooklyn overlooked, that in her last encounter with the Manhattan clan, she'd been engaging in violence towards her mate herself, and with a far more deadly weapon than a thrown flower pot. It's a great piece of irony.)

One other thought I've had about "Gargoyle Quest", and mentioned before, but have decided to explore in more detail here. The teasers we've gotten about it state that the Three New Keys to Power will enable Demona to control humans, which evokes her scheme in the "Religion 101" radio play, suggesting that Greg's planning to adapt elements of it into "Gargoyles" officially. I've decided to analyze that, looking over which elements of the radio play are likely to get into "Gargoyle Quest", and which aren't.

1. Obviously, we won't be seeing elements from "The Spectacular Spider-Man" in it.

2. The radio play was set in New York throughout, while what we know about "Gargoyle Quest" indicates that this one will be another world tour (if much shorter than the Avalon World Tour, most likely, as there'll only be five issues).

3. The radio play had two "Keys to Power" - the Spear of Destiny and the Crown of Thorns - rather than three. The Spear of Destiny is a plausible "New Key to Power", in light of "Dark Ages" #2, but as I've mentioned before, I think it unlikely that the Crown of Thorns will get in; it's too explicitly Christian, and could attract unwanted controversy. (Likewise, I doubt that we'll have Demona reciting a twisted version of the Lord's Prayer, for the same reason.) The Spear of Destiny, on the other hand, can be handled with a fair amount of independence from the Crucifixion, much like the Holy Grail (which was originally depicted as just a wonder-working object, with its connections to Jesus Christ and the Last Supper coming later on - hence it's safe to include in "Gargoyles").

4. And I wouldn't be surprised if Demona in "Gargoyle Quest", as in "Religion 101", would be talking gloatingly about using the Three New Keys to Power to make Elisa commit suicide (though, as in the radio play, I seriously doubt she'll succeed in doing so).

5. As to whether the Mayan gargoyles will show up - I'll leave that to others to speculate on.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 8:12:09 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

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Designusdt
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 7:36:01 pm EST from 103.178.187.139

So following up Greg B's post and the 'Voices' discussion the other week, I've been working on this post for a while and now seems like the most opportune time to put it up.

Apologies for the double post and apologies also for its extreme length -- I hope it's at least somewhat coherent despite having been written piecemeal over quite a period; and I hope it has some useful contributions to the ongoing discussion.

So without further ado -- redemption.

We talk a lot about redemption and it's a major thread in the 'Gargoyles' universe. But what specifically is redemption, what are the steps to it and how can we judge the effectiveness narratively of a redemption story?

The Magus is an interesting character in this respect as I don't think there is any ambiguity about the fact that he ends the story redeemed. (I mean, to adapt Patrick Troughton's Doctor: some corners of the internet have bred the most terrible things and these must be fought. But I haven't seen any mainstream view criticising the Magus like this). In many respects, when I look back at the Magus, the character I remember is a heroic one, his actions in "Awakening" utterly eclipsed by his role in "Avalon".

So let's take a moment to look at his journey.

First of all, let's remember that we were presented him as a misdirect in the first place. He's presented as the shifty ne'erdowell, it appears that he's the one making a deal with Hakon and then it turns out that it's the Captain. Does this association tarnish the Magus in the eyes of the audience even after he's cleared of that crime? Perhaps. I for one never found that the stigma stuck to him but I can imagine that some people, having been introduced to a character who was essentially a red herring, still felt he was shifty.

But there are two major areas where he was unambiguously in the wrong.

The first is his bigotry towards the gargoyles. Clearly, he was horribly prejudiced.

I don't necessarily think it's productive or important to establish the source of that prejudice but if we wanted to. As (I think) Greg B pointed out in a post a few weeks ago, some people are just bigoted with no particular reason. However, if we wished to psychologise further, there are circumstances that make his attitude at least comprehensible.

Especially in the court of Katharine, all the social cues were to treat the gargoyles as dangerous threats - as outsiders. And these weren't new to Katharine: Malcolm had treated them this way, if jokingly. This is strong social proof, especially given his feelings for Katharine, that the gargoyles are untrustworthy (even if he disagreed with Katharine, which there's no evidence he did, it would probably be impolitic to say so). Plus, let's look at his tutors - the Archmage wasn't exactly an advocate for the clan. We also don't know how much water has flowed under the bridge. If his experience of the gargoyles was predominantly encountering the likes of Iago, Hyppolyta or even a tinderbox Angel on the cusp of becoming Demona, it's quite possible he could other justifications in his mind for disliking the gargoyles.

But even if we just take him on face value as displaying old-fashioned motiveless malignity, it's clear that he, Mary and Katharine all tread a similar path at this point in time and I do think there's a sense of "there but for the grace of God..." about what follows. If Mary and Tom were swapped out for the Magus and Katharine in the drama that followed, would Mary's choices be any different? It's hard to imagine they would be. To use Matthew's great phrase, I think we all have the capacity to be "selectively monstrous".

Of course, the Magus' true crime, the one that really damns him, is murdering five gargoyles.

And I say murdering because I think we need to stare down the truth of that choice. It's very clear to everyone concerned in that scene that there was no intention or expectation that the castle would rise above the clouds. That choice has a terrible gravity that the frenetic pacing of a Disney Afternoon action adventure show could never truly dwell on - it's impressive enough that it's there as subtext. But imagine if we had a cliffhanger in the comic now where some otherwise sympathetic character offed Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington, Hudson and Bronx in one foul swoop... well, devastating doesn't begin to cover it.

So yes, this is a major crime. An act of evil, however comprehensible the motives.

Being bigoted is a sin of omission - a lack of compassion and understanding. But this is clearly a sin of commission -- the cold-blooded murder of five gargoyles that he KNEW were innocents. You could even argue that it's a darker crime than Hakon's. For Hakon there is a kind of grim soldier's pragmatism to destroying your enemies when they're vulnerable. The Magus has been living under the shelter and protection the gargoyles provided for, at least, his adult life and yet betrays everything in that moment.

And yet, I don't think it plays like that. I don't feel the darkness of that as much when I reflect on the Magus' life.

Part of that is that the Magus' motives are still on some level sympathetic - we understand that lashing out from grief. Also, in an episode of some stupendously bad and myopic choices, it doesn't even rank as the most startling -- that has to go to Goliath committing effective suicide and abandoning his clan's eggs to their fate and to the humans who betrayed them. The sense is strong that the Magus' path is not just some unthinkable act of madness but a tragedy borne of dire circumstances that a lot of people could relate to.

It's clear even in "Awakening" that he feels regret and pain but Goliath is so utterly broken that the chance of any kind of reckoning is really taken from him. I suspect that the Magus saw himself as having killed Goliath in much the same way as the rest of the clan. It's interesting that Tom is the one who ventures out into the world to see if Goliath had awakened. This seems typical of Tom's optimism but I don't see that sensibility in the Magus.

But as a result, there is a sense that Goliath and the Magus made some measure of peace in 994. Not forgiveness, of course; but there's no capacity for Goliath to process the wrongs done and so it's almost let go.

The other major difference between the Magus' experience and Goliath's is time. The Magus lives with his choice to murder the gargoyles for, in his experience, around 42 years. Goliath lives with that reality for, conceivably, not even 42 minutes of his conscious life. He reawakens to a world where the spell was not an act of murder but of preservation - he is indebted to the Magus for removing them from a world of fear and darkness. The Magus gives us, in essence, the whole show that follows and the positive consequences of what the gargoyles do. A very different complexion on the situation.

All of which brings us back to the concept of redemption. What is it really? I've seen a lot of art try to grapple with it but I feel it's become a bit of a shorthand for villains generally reforming and doing some good, sometimes to pander to a fanbase. However, I think it's a fair bit more complex than that.

Although I'm not religious, and although the concept of redemption clearly transcends any single moral code, I think it's evident that the concept of redemption is intimately bound up with, in particular, Christian doctrine. My understanding of the Christian concepts of redemption and salvation are essentially that they are to each other as throwing is to catching. The choice of Jesus to sacrifice himself on the cross is an act of redemption on behalf of the human race - the throw; Christians take this message into their heart and change their ways to reflect the best values of the Christian gospel - the catch.

I'll look in due course at the extent to which, in a non-Christian context, the 'salvation' part of the equation is necessary for 'redemption' to take place. For now, let's keep drilling down into the component parts of what we refer to as redemption.

I think there are several key components to whether a character could be viewed to be redeemed - and, of course, everyone will have their own perspectives on whether they are or aren't, in- and out-of-universe. I also don't think these stages necessarily follow sequentially although I think all are necessary:

1. Remorse - The most obvious pre-requisite is that characters feel remorse for their actions. However, this is far from sufficient. Demona clearly regrets the Wyvern Massacre and probably regrets the choices she made leading up to it. But one suspects that, in a therapy session, the specific focus of her regret would be logistical rather than moral. Even then, I'm not sure it's necessary. It's unclear that Matrix is even capable of remorse and yet is, at least notionally, seeking redemption.

2. Restitution - Trying to make amends is important but, again, this doesn't necessarily count as a step towards redemption. This is one of the fundamental issues with the series 'Angel' (and which, to its credit, it did attempt to address quite effectively in its second season) - while the word 'redemption' suggests a transaction, the concept underpinning it fails if it's purely a transactional endeavour. There never could or should be a simple equation that would say X number of lives saved makes up for Y number of lives destroyed.

For a 'Gargoyles' example of this, look at Xanatos post-"The Gathering". Yes, he regrets what he calls "the feud". (Side note: what I find hilarious about that scene is that he would never in a million years consider himself as feuding with anyone - he'd find that innately petty. So what he's really telling Elisa in this moment is to stop grousing about all the awful things he's done to her and hers over the years!). But everything he says is couched in the language of pure transaction: of a debt to be repaid. Now, Xanatos is a complex character. I think there is a reading to be had of this episode that he doesn't really have the self-understanding to face up to the feelings of powerlessness his newfound fatherhood brings and so he instead processes them in a manner he can control: in this case as a transaction to be conducted, albeit one he struggles to put a value on. We've seen this side of him before, notably with Petros, where he will come up with utilitarian justifications for decisions that seem to be based on non-utilitarian judgements: "He might be useful later". But whichever way you slice it, David is not a redeemed figure by any means just because he has started to make some (in the scheme of things, small) degree of restitution for his crimes.

3. Rehabilitation - Evidently, if a character can be accepted in society after committing terrible crimes, this suggests some measure of redemption but I think it's a false metric. I guess the closest equivalent to this in the 'Gargoyles' universe is Dingo in "Strangers". He's a superhero and is acclaimed as such. His criminal past is forgotten by much of the public, if not the authorities. Restitution and redemption need not be sequential: Xanatos offers restitution without showing rehabilitation (bribing judges, stealing artefacts and goodness knows what other misdeeds are still on the table); meanwhile, Dingo is rehabilitated without really making significant steps towards restitution (or he wouldn't be vulnerable to blackmail). The difficulty with this is that people are rehabilitated for all sorts for reasons, including the expedient - rehabilitation is only an effective proxy for redemption if the social group accepting the character is deeply moral and just. One of the things that always bothered me about characters in 'Buffy', notably Anya and Andrew although there are several, is that their horrific acts were brushed under the carpet once they had a utility to the 'good guys'. Largely, being rehabilitated is something grounded in an external locus of control: simply not doing any more bad things is not intrinsic motivation to do good. I can see 2198 Demona being rehabilitated -- but I could also see her doing horrific things again. As Sir Humphrey Appleby says, it is necessary to get behind someone in order to stab them in the back...

4. Insight - I think this is the trickier one and this is where we get into the difference between narrative redemption and real-world or theological redemption. It's perhaps possible to argue that characters can seek redemption without any kind of deep insight and while that may be true particularly in the real world -- throw a stone and you'll hit a historical figure that did terrible things but is redeemed by some act of tremendous historical significance. But in a story, I feel it's dramatically unsatisfying. Put it this way: if there was a meteor heading towards the planet and Demona found some way to save the world, sacrificing herself, would we consider her redeemed without any other character development on her part? I'd say most would say no (again with the Troughton caveat: some corners of the internet breed the most terrible things etc.). A big difference is that we expect a lot more from our fiction than a simple recount of events. Unlike historical figures, in narratives, we get to know the characters on an intimate level and so there is no hiding place from the audience.

Now the form that insight takes can be different. It tends to be as a form of epiphany, probably because that's the most dramatic way to render such a thing. Certainly this appears to be Demona's trajectory. It also fits the narrative shape of films and novels well as gradual transitions are harder to dramatise in shorter form content.

I believe it was the psychologist Daniel Kahnemann points out that, as humans, we do not tend to reflect on events in a consistent manner but our memories, impressions and judgments are hugely skewed towards the beginning of something, the end of something and some kind of major high point within -- the "peak-end rule". Therefore, I think it's possible to craft a story that dramatically gives the rush of a redemption story without necessarily committing to any true redemption.

David Brent in 'The Office' is a great example of this: an odious, egotistical character who confuses popularity with respect, Brent idolises the genuinely vile, bullying sales rep, Chris Finch. In the final episode, at the Christmas party, Finch and a colleague exchange jokes about David's date looking like a dog and instantly, instinctively, Brent turns around and tells Finchy to "f*** off". It's difficult to convey if you haven't watched it but I find this moment hugely powerful with all the action in 'The Office' modulated down so that the tiniest changes carry vast emotional charge. In this moment, the power is not that we think Brent has permanently changed and certainly not that he's redeemed in the eyes of those around him but that we, as the audience, get to see a glimpse of a path before him that could be better. This is then helped by the structure which is that the story ends there. (Or at least for 13 years until Gervais ill-advisedly spun the character off into a film that proved the character learned nothing).

I would consider the ending of 'The Office' a great example of a redemptive moment but not a true redemption journey. Now, a redemptive moment out of the blue is more than many people get in a lifetime and can be incredibly powerful - I'm a huge fan of both 'The Office' and Merchant/Gervais' next series 'Extras' which has a similar (much higher-stakes) moment of redemptive insight.

Scrooge in 'A Christmas Carol' is another example of this. His change is late on but fundamentally we're only with him for a tiny amount of time after though the story ends suggesting that the change sticks. However, even though Scrooge's life is predominantly made up of incidents that are pretty horrible, we feel confident that his epiphany has provided him with a deep insight.

But these are close-ended stories and that gives a certain leeway to allow the audience to assume the best. Greg's approach is quite distinct: "never the end". In this case, like life, the only final ending is death (and, as we see in the case of Robbie, perhaps not even then).

I think we need as an audience to feel that the character who has committed the wrong has grappled with every aspect of that wrong and is fundamentally and deeply changed (and improved) not just despite but because of the wrong choice. And the nature of this grappling shouldn't be easy. Which leads us to...

5. Purgatory. Perhaps unfairly, perhaps fairly, but as humans it's difficult to imagine us feeling that a character has made amends without feeling a degree of pain that is, at least, commensurate if not disproportionate to the original crime. In the case of the Magus, the effect of his actions are far less heinous than the intent of his actions and so that equation is very heavily tilted towards the Magus' punishment - a life of regret and pain - being disproportionate to his crime. Of course, had he actually flat-out killed five beloved characters, I'm not sure that would have landed. And finally...

6. An agent of forgiveness. This is perhaps the trickiest one of all. In the Magus' case, Goliath is able to offer forgiveness in a direct symmetry with "Awakening". That said, I'm not sure the Magus' redemption requires Goliath's acclamation -- indeed, I'm not sure Goliath really understands (at that moment, anyway) the nature of the Magus' journey insofar as he refers to a "great debt" - a transactional view on a character journey that to me is far more transcendent than that.

Would it be possible for a character to feel redeemed to the audience even with no agent in the story to mediate that?

Possibly - an example of that is the comic version of 'The Walking Dead' (perhaps the show version although I never rated that and haven't watched much of it). In the comics, the character of Negan is introduced by committing the absolutely brutal murder of one of the longest-running characters and in the issues that follow is shown to be capricious, rapacious, coercive, violent, spiteful and cruel -- surely textbook irredeemable. In the space of 75 issues, he is never forgiven but equally he never seeks it - he saves the community from a greater threat than even he himself was and lives out his days in exile. In #174, his bravado breaks down and you see the depths of his remorse and he does enough acts of flat-out heroism that he achieves at least restitution. He's rehabilitated insofar as he's trusted to live outside prison, if not inside the walls of the community. And he certainly has an insight into himself and others even though these are not necessarily promising - at one point he suggests the lead character rally his people by exploiting a "them and us" narrative which is effective if not entirely ethical. As the story ends, his purgatory is ongoing and it seems he has maintained his exile for years though there is some indication that one character at least visits him on occasion.

What's interesting about this example is that writer Robert Kirkman originally scripted Negan's death and the artist Charlie Adlard talked him out of it.

Adlard's email to Kirkman has since been published and I find to be particularly thoughtful and compelling:

"[Killing Negan] just feels a bit forced. As I said, the more I got to know Negan — especially over these last few years — the more I wished he'd stayed around till the end. I wish redemption would've worked for him... Because the majority of us find the death penalty — therefore an eye for an eye adage — abhorrent, we carry it out in fantasy. Hardly any western villain gets away with not dying at the end. We, as an audience, always demand the ultimate punishment for our fantasy bad guys. It's a shame we didn't break the mould with Negan... the baddest of bad guys, but very far down the road to redemption and forgiveness, who pays the usual ultimate price — death. Imagine, if he lived, what we could say about our society?"

I think Adlard hits upon something really important and thought-provoking and I generally agree with his analysis.

In this sense, I think Negan is a very effective example of a redemption story, albeit one that can only be adjudicated by the audience. Forgiveness is never really offered by any of the characters except in the most tentative terms -- at best, a kind of dreadful understanding underscored with contempt. But the audience is left with the sense that the character has changed and that there's a kind of tragedy that this will never be fully recognised - perhaps never should be fully recognised.

Or, of course, the reader may feel that no redemption is earned. Since it's only for the reader to make that judgement, it leaves the story satisfactorily open to interpretation.

I also think it's possible for a character to be forgiven and yet not truly redeemed -- for example, in 'Babylon 5', G'Kar forgives Londo for acts of genocide against his people but could you make the case that Londo is not just reformed but redeemed for genocide? I think it's at least murky because there's no single agent that advocate for billions dead. The choice of forgiveness in this case speaks more to G'Kar's compassion and spiritual journey than what Londo deserves, even though he is without doubt filled with regret and remorse, has a much deeper self-knowledge and ultimately endures a rather dark and distended purgatory. In this case, if he is considered redeemed for his sins, this is in the eyes of the audience rather than something that I think can be adjudicated by any one character - it's explicit in the text that the Narn people can never offer forgiveness to Londo.

Magwitch's arc in 'Great Expectations' is one of my favourite in all of fiction but fundamentally the placement of him as a villain in the first place is largely a kind of category error. Through the eyes of a young boy, he is a frightening figure indeed and of course he does take pains to leverage that fear to his own advantage in a way that is rather cruel. But ultimately he is a largely a victim of circumstance and although there are acts he does that are clearly wrong, he is also evidently a good person in contrast with what Pip is at times becoming. His is a sort of redemption story but it's weighted on the fact that one feels that Magwitch was pretty hard done by to start with. Like Londo and G'Kar, Pip and Magwitch are both moving and evolving characters and that interaction brings a mutual understanding.

This is also why, though I have sometimes seen Prince Hal's story in Henry IV Part One been mentioned as a redemption story, I struggle with that. It's certainly true that he turns his back on his criminal ways but it's not clear to me that he ever really grapples with any of the issues underpinning that - indeed, his rejection of Falstaff seems so abrupt that it feels like a judgment of the head not the heart. And no forgiveness is sought or penance made. If anything, his choice distances himself from human feeling and acceptance in a reversal of what one might expect.

The problem with using forgiveness as a metric to judge the progress of another character down a redemptive path is that forgiveness is, by its nature, an act of disproportionality. In forgiving you let go of a debt or a hurt that has been created. Of course, people may work to earn forgiveness but it's ultimately the forgiver's choice. And yet redemption is an act of self-work that is then, in essence, sanctified by someone else: the exchange of the remorse, restitution, rehabilitation, insight and purgatory for forgiveness. The work itself is not the redemption - the redemption itself is a reward and one that's pretty intangible at that.

So if we take these six aspects: remorse, restitution, rehabilitation, insight, purgatory and forgiveness... I think the Magus manages all six. And well. It's a hugely effective, comprehensive redemption story that feels satisfying in every respect.

Does he show regret? Yes, almost instantly. And genuinely too - he clearly realises he's done wrong. He makes restitution by defending the eggs. This, for Goliath, is recompense enough - "you saved our children". He is rehabilitated and treated as a trusted and even loved figure by all the key characters.

But he also has a deep insight into the extent of what he had done. Yes, he covers the transactional part by referring to how he "owed it to Goliath to tend the eggs" but he identifies the choice he made as "unforgivable". It's also left to audience interpretation the degree to which his sense is justified that, without the Grimorum, he had nothing to offer Katherine. I think we naturally feel that he's mistaken -- certainly, that seems to be the thought behind Elisa's interactions with him. It could be a function of his low self-esteem but in many respects, I suspect he's right. One wonders how he could have fully grappled with the enormity of his actions, accepted full responsibility, and yet still built a happy life with Katherine.

This in some respects is rather kind to Katherine who I think most would consider redeemed for her wrongs of "Awakening". She was as bigoted as the Magus and her bigotry carried more sway by dint of her position. In the Magus' position, would she have hesitated to act as he did in cursing the gargoyles? Who can say but personally I suspect she would have acted exactly the same. And Goliath himself talks in transactional language of owing the Magus a great debt. I don't get the sense that either Goliath or Katherine have the kind of deep understanding the Magus has developed - a 4+ decade purgatory.

Goliath provides the final measure of forgiveness needed to release him from the cares of his mistakes. We feel genuine sadness at his passing -- which also, gives us that end-state to frame his whole story in a positive manner.

That brings to an end my ramble about the Magus but let's take a moment to apply to same framework to two other cases in point Greg B has raised - Jimmy McGill and Demona. In keeping with Craig, I'll spoiler tag the Jimmy sections.

[SPOILER] For Jimmy, I would describe his end as redemptive in nature rather than a redemption.

Jimmy manages some level of remorse, restitution as long as he's in prison, insight, a clear form of purgatory and some degree of forgiveness from Kim (who ultimately he cares about more than anyone else.)

To be more specific, yes, he ends by showing remorse - notably for the death of Howard which he seems not to have previously mentioned. What's not shown is remorse for his previous crimes which are almost uncountable, going right up to the edge of murder (and certainly advocating for murder previously if not being willing to push it himself).

But Jimmy was often exploiting people who were in themselves corrupt in some way - Saul Goodman was designed to be the mote in the eye of the powerful but unjust. The Kevin Wachtells who will drive a man from his home out of caprice and stubbornness; the hypocritical family of Jesse who we sense (probably one-sidedly) are ripping him off. He exposes their greed and tears them down - "roll around in the dirt with me!" as he says to Kevin in Season 6.

I think in many respects his great movement in the final episode is not that he suddenly becomes a changed person -- if he ever got out of prison, I think history shows he would likely reoffend relatively quickly. But he now has an understanding of himself and his brother. When Oakley says the correct legal point that the confession he makes about his brother wasn't a crime, Jimmy replies: "Yeah it was". This is because he's operating with an understanding about a broader morality that Chuck was never able to understand or aspire to. In this sense, he has a deeper insight and a confidence and surety about himself and a level of maturity and insight his brother, for all his genius, could never attain.

Yes, he's in prison but now the mask has become the man and he's seen as Saul Goodman even though beneath it he feels like the matured James McGill - no longer put-upon Jimmy. But for a man whose identity is in constant flux throughout the series, this is to some degree the Kahnemann issue again - just because we end our association with Jimmy there doesn't mean he's actually fundamentally changed.

For one thing, it's clear he does what he does largely for Kim rather than necessarily an intrinsic wish to make things right.

For a second, the "big show of remorse" is textbook Jimmy - Chuck called him on this back in the beginning. This is different in that it comes with an enforced imprisonment which largely (probably) prevents him from backsliding. But even his final encounter with Kim, where she bends a rule for the first time it seems since Howard, shows the embers of the scam burning - a tiny glimpse of red in the grey. This shows in many respects that Jimmy understands himself well enough to provide what he needed - and in some respects, his carelessness as Gene was almost a perhaps-subconscious way to get him to this point. Without Chuck and with Kim compromised, nobody else could stop him - certainly not the prosecutors who could barely keep him from having ice cream hand-delivered to his cell.

To give context, there's a scene in "Smoke" where Jimmy is mourning Chuck's death and lets the water just run and run away, a visual metaphor of how the forces of the law and societal rectitude are going down the drain after Chuck's death. Fire and water are counterpointed in their symbolism throughout BCS's run. Water almost always symbolises justice and rectitude and the legal world - nowhere better exemplified than Kim hiding out in a company that literally sells sprinklers and Nacho washing off the oil in an almost baptismal manner before going to rescue his father. We also see impure liquid as dangerous (urine in 508, the coffee filter in 401 being dumped as Jimmy turns on Howard, the fish dying of its own waste if it's not taken care of, Gus' wine, let alone melting ice cream as ant-food). The world of fire and danger and the desert is the opposite that Jimmy and Kim are attracted to. The fire literally burns up Chuck (prompting so much of Jimmy's guilt because he basically understands the significance of that). Similarly, we see Gene at the point where he's been made surrounded by overflowing water in the middle of a snowy town - water all around, if on ice because the law is about to melt and flow into his life. All of which is to say that the state of water and fire in the final configuration is, I think, important to understand the characters.

Ending with the fire not the water to me says that the character's nature is still unchanged on some level - Kim uses a deception, if a fairly mild one to even see Jimmy. But he's also wise enough to know the danger he could cause if he were ever freed. None of the prosecutors could stop him. He needed to be the architect of his own demise. It's a redemptive moment DESPITE the fact that he's not provably a redeemed person. I'm not saying that Chuck is right that "people don't change" and that Jimmy's the same as when he's five but there's certainly a strong argument in the text of the show that this COULD be true and the actions of the characters suggests Jimmy believes it. He believed it to be true of Howard that Howard would "always" be the way he was -- but then this disdain for the idea that Howard could improve himself and develop also led to THAT moment. Fundamentally, the closing statement of "Better Call Saul" is not that Jimmy is redeemed but it's a meditation on whether it's ever possible to find that "Time Machine" and change both your personality and your path -- and I don't think the show ever truly answers this even as the final episode tracks all the tantalising ifs and buts.

(This is also why, as much as I adore the universe, I don't think I'd probably want a follow-up. The "Schrodinger's Cat" quality of the ending would be ruined if we found out that in 20 years' time Jimmy was either redeemed or irredeemable).

So Saul's story may have redemptive qualities but to me it's the perfect reflection of the man as we've known him. He's definitely made steps but I don't think anyone will say Jimmy is a redeemed man -- and I'm not sure even Jimmy will ever truly know if he's a changed man. That's both the tragedy and the genius of the narrative. [/SPOILER]

Finally then...

Let's look at Demona.

To be fair, the idea of redemption and Demona feels like a big stretch. Greg has teased the idea of the Space Spawn situation being potentially Demona's "last chance at redemption" but I actually wouldn't take very seriously copy written to sell a show. He's also been very cagey about whether she's even capable of reform and that fighting "on the side of the angels" is not the same as being a good guy.

Let's analyse those six aspects then: remorse, restitution, rehabilitation, insight, purgatory and forgiveness...

1. Remorse. I do think Demona is capable of showing remorse for her crimes... she already does to some degree. But the key thing is the nature of that remorse. "What have I... what have they done?" is her perennial self-deception. To face what she's done and the chaos that she's caused may be too huge for her (or really anyone) to process. A prerequisite of this is developing an empathy for the human race that has been so calloused over by generations. It's difficult to see where this would come from. Clearly a good part of her animus towards Elisa, besides her entanglement with Goliath, is that she represents so brazenly an affront to her conception of humanity as uniformly evil. Unpicking that line of thinking would mean re-evaluating not just a single event but so many parts of her actions. I'm not saying it's impossible but I just don't think Demona is emotionally strong enough to every really fully grapple with remorse.

2. Restitution. Demona has had periods of restitution before. Up to 1057 most notably and there may have been other times. Of course, Macbeth didn't know her background and in the context of a warriors' society full of warring tribes the crimes he knew about played differently. I certainly wouldn't put it past Demona to be an ally against a major threat such as the Space Spawn or perhaps Mab. But just because she can team up with the clan at times (and I think these will be very rare occasions to be clear - I don't see her befriending blonde pacifists anytime soon) does not mean she is permanently changed. Quite how she could possibly make restitution for the crimes she's committed, the lives lost -- lives impossible to count since she probably doesn't even remember them all -- is mind-boggling.

3. Rehabilitation. Clearly to some degree she will be rehabilitated as an ally in 2198 but that's not really true rehabilitation -- I mean, Stalin joined the Allies in World War II but he was still... Stalin! It's difficult to conceive of anyone trusting her out of anything more than expediency unless she had some kind of heroic end and the trouble is, the idea of her having some heroic end seems... unearned to me. Demona is not a heroic figure. She never has been and while I don't think it's a problem for characters to surprise us and change, in terms of "what does Demona deserve?" I just don't know she deserves a big swan-dive, save-the-world death. Better I feel either the Saul or Negan scenarios: either she could be rehabilitated but has made steps (such as an 86 year prison sentence) to ensure that is never tested; or she appears to be rehabilitated but only the reader can really bear witness to it. I could definitely see a status quo one day where the resting assumption is that Demona has set aside her quest for vengeance but not one where we feel she is accepted and forgiven by any but a tiny few.

4. Insight. It feels almost inevitable that Demona is going to finally have that long-awaited reversal of her mantra: "What have they... what have I done?" It occurs to me that to the extent that her journey has been guided by the Weird Sisters, we have seen the ascendancy of vengeance in "City of Stone" and fate in "Avalon", we've not yet seen grace and this is the moment where the Sisters have the greatest capacity to guide Demona onto a different path. Of course, quite where her insight takes her is difficult to say. There's a potential that she just embraces a deeper and perhaps even more dangerous level of nihilism and sees that the gargoyle race is as tainted as humanity. Often in real life, people mediate their reform through finding religion or at least some kind of grounding practice. One of the things that is interesting about the parallelism of the Sacrifice and Demona stories in 'Dark Ages' is that we see a positive spiritually-based path grounded in connection with all things and a darker path built on defending self-interest. Embracing what I would assume to be a gargoyle religion may give Demona some kind of framework for making sense of her life and I wonder if the current 'Dark Ages' plot may give us some insight into that.

5. Purgatory. At the very least, I think we all expect a good dose of Lady Macbeth. But Shakespeare just had to get to final bows - for Greg, it's "never the end" so I don't know that insanity is going to cut it for Demona. Then again, I don't feel like she could or should ever truly "move on" from what she's done - that would be as anti-climactic as if 'Macbeth' had ended with someone suggesting to Lady Macbeth a soap bar and her going, "Oh yeah, these hands are really clean now ." And then there's a tricky question that Charlie Adlard's views on 'revenge' prompt which is that is wishing for Demona to have some kind of extended purgatory simply fulfilling a revenge fantasy of sort on the part of the audience? I do think it would be difficult to even consider any softening of relations with Demona valid without the sense that she has genuinely suffered even a fraction of the suffering she's caused though. But the obvious corollary of this is that death is the only way to give her a grace note and that is problematic for the reasons Adlard elucidated (plus risks being quite pat - the "Nooooo!!" play).

6. Forgiveness. This is such a tricky one because I don't know there is anyone who could truly forgive her. She lives so long that she outlives so many of the people who could attest to and judge her crimes. Macbeth is perhaps the closest but she was old before their alliance was forged. Anyone younger (including Angela) could be accused of being naive to her true nature. I think it's also the case that one major Christian style clearing of the slate is unlikely. I could definitely see a Raskolnikov/Sonya relationship with a character with Demona being nudged, backsliding along the way, to be better. But this is not the same thing as ever being able to feel that she has the forgiveness of those she has wronged - and I don't think this is possible or deserved. In this sense, I feel if you want to use the Walter White and Saul Goodman comparison, she's far closer to the Walt end - kind of irredeemable but someone who might try to make things right by at least her own twisted interpretation of what "right" is.

In this sense, redemption for Demona seems almost impossible in any meaningful sense, but I can see paths for her to grow in all six of these categories even if she never quite "achieves" any individual one.

After all, if 'Gargoyles' has taught us anything, it's that it's not about arriving at some final destination but the discoveries made on the journey itself.
Ed
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 4:39:31 pm EST from 86.157.188.113

Todd: I think it’s really difficult to infer too much from “Trick-or-treat”. While the buzz is new and people are suddenly impressed by the idea of Goliath, there’s going to be a bit of a honeymoon but that doesn’t mean many people don’t still exist who distrust the gargoyles or at least want to see them in captivity. Humans get hyped about things but it doesn't mean that those feelings are permanent - indeed, I've noticed following major events (including terrorism, the pandemic) people arguing the world has changed and humanity has learned something significant only to see things snap back to much the way they were previously.

Jurgan: It’s an old-fashioned term for stamina, authority, hinterland although in this case I guess Ford's referring to narrative rather than personal depth.

Kate: That's an interesting point but I think we see time and again that Demona really is a very petty and small-minded individual in many ways so while I'm sure she'd be angry at humans for the wars and climate impacts, I guess she'd view it as just appendix K of her gripes.

Greg: I definitely agree there's a Lady Macbeth phase in her future. As for murdering children, I agree that "City of Stone" makes it look like she did. Frankly, it's impossible to imagine to me that she hasn't killed multiple children over the years for one reason or another.

Craig: Love your points about the last four BB episodes and the SW rant.
Ed
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 4:00:32 pm EST from 86.157.188.113

Great discussion. To riff a bit on what's been said by Bishansky and others:

Return of the Jedi is truly aggravating. It's not only creatively bankrupt, but as Bishansky says, morally offensive. Sorry, I just rewatched all the Star Wars movies over the summer out of masochism, so I'm going to rant briefly.

I have nothing to add on Vader's completely unearned redemption arc that hasn't been said, but I agree with everything that has been said. In addition to that, Lucas has claimed that the Ewoks are a metaphor for the Vietcong and the Empire is meant to be American imperialism. This is such disingenuous hogwash. The Ewoks were designed to sell toys, and Lucas is the biggest capitalist going. Literally no adult viewer of RotJ ever once thought, "Oh, this is a scathing indictment of U.S. interventionism"; they were thinking, "Dammit, I'm going to have my kids Star Wars teddy bear toys now." It's really shocking how toyetic this film is compared to the first two, with all the various Muppet creatures thrown on-screen.

The dialogue is also such a massive step down from the first two films. Dialogue repeats verbatim from Empire Strikes Back; dialogue even repeats within this film (Vader repeatedly saying that Luke underestimates the power of the Dark Side). Han's reaction to Leia, the love of his life, being kidnapped, is, "I hope she's alright." Talk about passion and devotion! It's as if they just used a first draft script with filler dialogue that was meant to be punched up later.

Having the climax center around another Death Star is so lazy and cheap. Luke's plan to rescue Han doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Yoda completely reverses his opinion of Luke from the prior film for no reason (and Yoda's CONSTANT reverse-grammar speak begins here, whereas in Empire it was just an occasional affectation). The Emperor is a cartoon, constantly bragging about what he's "foreseen" (none of which ends up being true, making him seem weak and incompetent). The Emperor during the final fight is particularly infuriating, as there are at least two points where Luke is 100% ready to kill Vader, and the Emperor interjects to "encourage" Luke and all he accomplishes is to bring Luke to his senses. He's such a clown.

All I'll say in RotJ's defense is that the Jabba puppet is really amazingly rendered and operated, and the land-speeder chase is pretty darn cool. That's it.

I'm going to include Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul discussion in spoiler tags, for Todd, in case he intends to watch them someday.

[SPOILER]
What I loved about the ending of Breaking Bad is that, in the final four episodes, each one gave us some permutation of one of the main possible four endings people expected: Walt gets caught ("To'hajiilee"), Walt gets away ("Ozymandias"), Walt dies of cancer ("Granite State"), and Walt dies Scarface-style in a blaze of glory ("Felina"). Better Call Saul did something completely different but equally ingenious by essentially making the final four episodes an epilogue. By wrapping up the main plot in episode 9, it was anyone's game what was going to happen next, and that made the final four episodes so thrilling and unexpected. I could have happily just watched four relatively uneventful episodes like "Nippy" of Gene slowly slipping back into committing minor crimes and cons, and I would have been fine with that as an ending. But of course, the true ending we did get was absolutely masterful. Of all characters in Breaking Bad, who would have guessed that Saul Goodman would be the one to finally decide to take responsibility for his actions and accept consequences? Although there is almost no chance of him getting out of prison before he's an old man (as Jimmy well knows), the final line of BCS is a perfect twisted cap to the Breaking Bad universe: "With good behavior...who knows?" More than almost any series in recent memory, Breaking Bad and its prequel are really one big morality play at heart, and showing consequences was always baked into the DNA of those shows.
[/SPOILER]

As to Demona, I can't venture to guess what Greg's long-term plans may be, but so far, we haven't even seen her express the slightest desire for redemption; I imagine that until she at least WANTS it, and acknowledges the wrongness of her actions on a conscious level to herself, anything beyond that is almost impossible to conceive. With 1000 years' worth of human blood on her hands...it will be a HEAVY moment for her to admit that she's been wrong. That's a LOT of guilt to take on all at once, really unfathomable to any of us. (And yes, I do believe that she is subconsciously carrying the guilt now, but that's different from truly admitting it to yourself and living with it.) I do think there's a "fallacy of sunken costs" thing at play from a moral standpoint, where if Demona changes now, she has to accept the weight of all that has gone before, and she understandably does NOT want to confront that. I can't say that I would, either. I don't think simply teaming up with the humans to defeat a greater threat in 2198 is enough to trigger that, and I do truly wonder what will be (if anything).

As to Demona killing children, I think it's almost an inevitability that she has. She disfigured 12-year-old Gillecomgain for no reason, and she was perfectly happy to kill all humans including children in "Hunter's Moon," so why wouldn't she have killed some kids in the past 1000 years? (Interesting point about the toy store, Bishansky. That seems pretty deliberately placed.)
Craig
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 1:31:52 pm EST from 24.46.162.33

To add something I wanted to bring up last night, I wonder if we'll ever see explored Demona rationalizing her hatred for humans that doesn't just involve the times that she's been wronged by them. I don't think she's a total narcissist, and there's plenty of things to actually get mad at the human race for (climate change, constant warring and so on). Though maybe that's unfitting of her character, and also for a series that's still currently set in the 90's.

Greg> I think I skimmed her wiki before for something else. There was some comments from Greg I recall about how she'd act in the future, but I'm not sure if that's still applicable. Would have to read the section again.
Kate
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 1:13:31 pm EST from 72.49.138.52

ED> Great post, there's nothing in there I have any disagreements with.

I do have some ideas as to what Demona's epiphany might look like, it's what happens after the epiphany that I wonder about. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a period where she's in a similar state to Lady Macbeth near the end of the play.

"Out, damned spot: out, I say. One; two. Why
then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord,
fie, a soldier and afeared? What need we fear? Who
knows it when none can call our power to account?
Yet who would have thought the old man to have
had so much blood in him?"

"The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?
What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more
o’that, my lord, no more o’that. You mar all with
this starting."

"Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh, oh, oh"

"Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look
not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he
cannot come out on’s grave."

"To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate. Come,
come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done,
cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed."

"I’ll come back to some of this train of thought a little later."

Looking forward to it.

"if Kim Wexler taught us anything it’s that there’s darker and more interesting paths than just death."

She was in her own personal Hell. Of course that was a normal life to a lot of other people. But... discussing hosepipe flange diameters and getting “yep-yepped” in bed after making a miracle whip potato salad. Sounds like Dante's Ninth Circle to me.

"“Murderers are basically misunderstood” is… not something that I would want in subtext, or even text."

That was pretty much my response to the person in question. But they stuck to their "it's a show for children" BS.

Very recently, when discussing this very topic, the question came up over "is Demona also a child murderer?" Well... during "City of Stone", her trail of destruction passes in front of a toy store, the one where Goliath and Brooklyn have an encounter with the Weird Sisters... somehow the creepiest part of following the Trail of Corpses. Now granted, they couldn't have been direct about that one... but the fact that it passes in front of a toy store and there are no intact statues nearby... well, it doesn't look good.

TODD> "but the gargoyles are now guests of honor at a Halloween party and many humans are clearly accepting them"

As Greg has said many times, he doesn't like monoliths in groups. And for a long time, we just really saw one response to the gargoyles. That was mostly due to real life issues with the third season we got, the time it took to publish the comics, etc.

"But I would like to see how she'd rationalize the fact that there are many humans out there now clearly willing to live in peace with the gargoyles, that it no longer feels like 99.99% of them want to see the gargoyles gotten rid of. (The fact that two gargoyle-human alliances that Demona was a part of - Castle Wyvern and Macbeth's reign - both ended in darkness would probably be one argument she'd use.)"

I imagine that's all in her head. But she believes what she believes, and we know why. Like you said, she was there when two alliances were forged. She personally forged the second one. Of course, she destroyed both and... I kind of wonder if the events of Quest are going to be a huge set back for gargoyles after the outcome of Goliath's hearing. Albeit it not in a shallow Marvel Comics' "how many times do the X-Men need to publicly save the world before someone stops and thinks that maybe not all mutants suck" kinda way.

JURGAN> "Have bottom?" What does this mean? I mean, I guess from context I can figure it out, but I've never heard this phrase."

It's a phrase I stole from Harrison Ford, himself: https://youtu.be/mpaR3KDt_no?si=NA-sweCxRQ8EJRzu

KATE> I'd recommend scrolling the ASK GREG archives or checking the GargWiki Demona entry because there's a lot to unpack there.

But I wouldn't be worried as he's demonstrated himself to be a skilled storyteller and he's had almost thirty years to think about things.
Greg Bishansky
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 8:08:17 am EST from 67.189.167.107

Great discussion as always
Concrete Solutions
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 5:05:32 am EST from 158.62.41.213

Loving the discussion happening here with Demona. I have some thoughts but I'm generally bad at wording things, maybe I'll type something up soon.
I will say that it's a breath of fresh air to see criticism of ROTJ. The OT has been treated as undebatably good up until recently, I've seen way more people openly discussing the flaws with the last movie. Specifically on Darth Vader though, even if you ignore the prequels and all of the terrible things Anakin did in them, it would still be hard to deny that Darth was probably beyond redemption. It's a frustrating writing trope that these big bads get redemption arcs and I'm sick of it. I've heard some worrying comments from some fans that Greg wants to redeem Demona in some way, I'm not super up to date on what he's said about her but I really hope that isn't the case. If someone could clarify that'd be great.
Kate
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 2:03:11 am EST from 72.49.138.52

I have thoughts, don't really have time to get into them now, but I have to ask:

"given the movie some bottom... "Gargoyles" is allowed to have bottom"

"Have bottom?" What does this mean? I mean, I guess from context I can figure it out, but I've never heard this phrase.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]
posted @ Tue, Nov 28, 2023 1:00:57 am EST from 73.98.83.6

Thanks for starting a promising discussion on Demona, Bishansky. At this point, I won't engage in any speculation over Demona's epiphany - though I agree that reconciliation with the present-day clan is extremely unlikely to happen.

One element that I'd like to see explored in "Gargoyle Quest" is that, in "Trick-or-Treat", gargoyle-human relations had taken a step forward. It's a relatively small step - the Quarrymen are still around, for one thing - but the gargoyles are now guests of honor at a Halloween party and many humans are clearly accepting them. Clearly this hasn't changed Demona's goals, and I think that, given how much of her campaign to wipe out the human race is driven by her inner turmoil (especially the "What have I - what have they done to you?" element), I don't think that would change her outlook. But I would like to see how she'd rationalize the fact that there are many humans out there now clearly willing to live in peace with the gargoyles, that it no longer feels like 99.99% of them want to see the gargoyles gotten rid of. (The fact that two gargoyle-human alliances that Demona was a part of - Castle Wyvern and Macbeth's reign - both ended in darkness would probably be one argument she'd use.)

As for "the clan will forever be changed" (if I'm remembering that quote right) - it doesn't necessarily mean deaths. The events in "Enter Macbeth" and "Hunter's Moon" didn't inflict any casualties on the clan, but still gave their situation a big shake-up (losing their home, in both cases, and having to relocate - not to mention in "Hunter's Moon" becoming public knowledge). Not to mention, in a more upbeat manner, "Re-Awakening", which had the clan becoming Manhattan's protectors. I won't even attempt to speculate what similar possible non-lethal changes might be in store for the clan in "Gargoyle Quest", though.

Incidentally, the mention of Han Solo originally being meant to be killed in "Return of the Jedi", but that plan was called off because it might hurt toy sales, reminds me of that remark of Alan Moore's I mentioned here some months ago, about how super-heroes can't get "death stories" like the heroes of ancient and medieval legend, because then they couldn't bring out more issues of their comic books. (And, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could testify, even when you manage to kill off the hero, you may wind up having to bring him back.)
Todd Jensen
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 7:59:23 pm EST from 174.72.60.154

Greg: Excellent thoughts.

I think the path to a convincing redemption story is very tricky. I’m working on a, by now, very expansive post on the topic of redemption so I’ll come back to some of this train of thought a little later.

But I think it’s fascinating to ask the Vince Gilligan question of Demona: what does she deserve?

The fact is, Jimmy was a terrible person in all sorts of ways but we also saw enough of his humanity, enough of his kindness and human spirit that we want to like him and find him redeemed. We didn't want the man who looked after his brother even when he was unthanked and even scored to completely die.

Even in ‘Dark Ages’ though, theoretically as morally unblemished as she will ever be, Demona (or Angel) isn’t actually a very sympathetic character. She’s cliquey, irascible, jealous, disrespectful to Mentor’s orders… and it’s not like she got better over time. Her arrangement with Hyppolyta leading to Verity's death is almost a microcosm of her deal with the Captain leading to the Wyvern Massacre. (One wonders if there's a third in this sequence?)

We’ve seen her in a more naive mode in “Vows” (I mean, still stealing and lying, albeit in collusion or conflict with the Archmage) and we’ve seen her seeming relatively benevolent when things were going her way in Macbeth’s Golden Age (albeit still wanting to be feared). But it’s a difficult case to make that there’s some deep well of goodness there that deserves to be tapped.

Given all this, what does she really *deserve*? Hmm.

One big point of divergence I will say between ‘Gargoyles’ and the Gilliverse is the open-ended nature of the former and the close-ended nature of the latter. Of course, many redemption stories end with a death as a final closing point which makes it easier to draw to a conclusion but Greg’s intention to develop the character long-term probably complicates things in certain ways - it’s far less easy to do a quick “Noooo!” and wipe the bloody hands clean. But it’s right that it’s hard.

Incidentally, you mention “fearing for the lives” of characters. While I absolutely believe that Greg can and will kill off more characters as time progresses, one of the things I’ve come to appreciate is that killing characters is not his go-to as a rule. I think there was a certain breed of writer in the 90s where the willingness and wish to kill characters became a kind of boast. Joss Whedon, JK Rowling, lots of people would talk freely about their interest in killing characters and they would indeed have a high death count.

I was struck by Greg’s response to the ‘Serenity’ movie and in particular the two deaths which he described as ‘structurally right and sound’ but also felt like a waste of the potential of so many stories (I’m paraphrasing for efficiency but I don’t want to come across like I’m putting words in Greg’s mouth — I’ll link the ramble below so people can judge whether I’ve represented Greg fairly). At any rate, my sense is that Greg — while absolutely willing to kill — has a more Xanatosian approach to the characters which is that death is not necessarily the most interesting or fruitful path to take. Yes, I fear for the characters, but I don’t know that I fear for the characters’ lives in any individual arc. Sure, in the long-term, deaths of major characters will become inevitable and it’s certainly something he has a track record in but if Kim Wexler taught us anything it’s that there’s darker and more interesting paths than just death.

In this respect, I find Greg closer in sensibility to Vince Gilligan. I’m not sure I can track down the interview right now but he’s talked about trying to get the exact right amount of juice out of a story without overdoing it but also exploiting what is there. He’s also very keen to build “brick by brick” as he calls it, developing out of what went before. I think this fanatical attention to the potential of a story and to finding the right size for it feels much more in common with Greg’s tapestry-building instincts.

Finally, on the idea that Demona should have been welcomed back to the clan in “The Reckoning” is truly bizarre and the worst kind of moral message a children’s show should send. I’m not of the view that media for children need to have moral messages but when they do, they should be well considered. “Deadly Force” being a prime example. “Murderers are basically misunderstood” is… not something that I would want in subtext, or even text.

Matthew: I don’t know… I feel like most people are selectively monstrous given the circumstances. (Lovely expression by the way). I don't think many parents, however liberal and pacifistic, would even hesitate to put the survival of their child over another's. Of course, I don’t think if you’re referring to the status quo in the television series, there’s any real movement at this point to redeem or reform Omni-Man. Obviously in the comics he has an interesting journey although it's been a while since I've read them and I don't recall all the specific steps in his arc.
Ed
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 4:36:13 pm EST from 86.157.169.177

Meant to pop in earlier last week and then got distracted...a lot. Oh well.

The nature of redemption is a tricky one, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Return of the Jedi. It's important to note that when the film was made Vader/Anakin was just the Emperor's personal attack dog, the public face of the Empire's brutal regime. It wouldn't be until the prequels and extended materials were released that the sheer depths of his villainy were explored, which is where his sympathy points pretty much vanished. It doesn't help that different writers and actors have had wildly different interpretations of who the character is and how sympathetic or evil he's meant to be.

Actually, one point I really liked from the first EU novels (I think it was a Timothy Zahn one) was Luke telling Leia about Vader's final moments and Leia telling him that while she's glad he remembered what a good man he was in his final moments, she can't ever forgive him for torturing her or being party to the destruction of her home. And Luke having to realize that no one else besides him is going to know the full story of Anakin Skywalker and that the galaxy will only ever know Vader as a monster.

When it comes to Demona, I always liked that as she went further into villainy across the series, Macbeth moved further away from antagonism, a nice contrast between the two. As for her future redemption, there's still a huge amount of information and time before she gets from one character arc to the next, I don't know what would be the deciding event that begins the end of her hatred for humanity. It could very well be her interactions with Angela but I've always felt that villains who don't want to kill their own kids but have no problem killing other people's kids (cough! Omni-Man cough!) aren't emotionally complex but selectively monstrous. But I do have faith that we'll see a good example on Demona's eventual redemption.
Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 4:18:19 pm EST from 64.85.245.77

So I just finished watching "Better Call Saul" with some friends from the Gargoyles fandom who had never seen it before. The ending, choices, responsibility, consequences... comparing it with the ending of "Breaking Bad"... and, honestly, the ending of "Return of the Jedi". And, of course, us being "Gargoyles" fans it inevitably went to this epiphany that Demona is fated to have, what that is, what that looks like, and what could happen afterwards and ultimately what can't happen afterwards.

I've always found "Return of the Jedi" to not only be a bad movie... but a morally atrocious movie. Much of this falls into the "redemption of Anakin Skywaler". The mass murdering Anakin Skywalker. The participator in genocide Anakin Skywalker. Child murderer Anakin Skywalker. The Anakin Skywalker who should be burning in Space Hell instead of being a Jedi Force Ghost. The guy who did absolutely NOTHING to even attempt to make up for any atrocities and didn't apologize for a damn thing. But he throws his boss down a hole (a boss who is so evil, he's a cartoon in the worst possible way!) and saves his son's life and suddenly... he's redeemed! And I say all of this as a guy who isn't necessarily all about crime and punishment. I believe in rehabilitation for most. But I acknowledge that some people are monsters.

This is probably a big part of why Demona has inspired such passionate debate... because we're talking philosophies, what regret and redemption mean to us. And how easily we are capable of forgiving, or how little we're willing to budge. I talked about people's capacity for change and forgiveness on Voices from the Eyrie for our Avalon Part Three podcast when we talked about the Magus. How the Magus suffered and did what he could to atone, and even on his deathbed didn't believe he deserved Goliath's forgiveness. And what he did was peanuts compared to what Demona had done and continues to do.

It didn't help that some of the most read pieces of fanfiction after the show ended, in the early days of the fandom, had Demona change and show regret easily. Angela waving a finger in her face and then later on hugging her and soon after, she's back in the clan. Those became the model for the vast majority of the other fanfictions out there. It became true for a lot of fans. But I also think it displayed naivety and a failure to grasp what Demona actually is, what she has done, and just how messed up her psyche is.

I felt so vindicated when the Gargoyles 2198 contest ended and we got that write up of just where Demona is when that spin-off starts. And that Angela isn't going to succeed at redeeming Demona the way Luke Skywalker redeemed Darth Vader. I have some thoughts as to what this might mean in Demona and Angela's future, but I'll table those for the time being. "Gargoyles Quest" is coming and I am fearing for the lives of characters. When Marvel and DC say that things will be forever changed, I chuckle and laugh. When Greg Weisman says the clan will be forever changed... I worry.

On the other hand, I've had people tell me that Demona easily changing and being forgiven is okay because "this is a show for children". I can only conclude they're not aware of what Greg Weisman puts into his shows and his character work. Also, I hate that argument because what do the best children's stories do? They prepare children for the world. For what they're going to see, to meet, to encounter, to overcome. Not present something candy-coated for easy consumption between commercials for breakfast cereal.

Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul was determined to make sure that Saul Goodman got the ending he deserved. Walter White had gone out on his own terms, and achieved what he wanted despite being cursed and hated. But it was still a blaze of glory. For Saul Goodman, there was no blaze of glory. There was accepting consequences and living with them. Atoning for them. Paying for them.

Now I'm not saying Demona needs the Walter White ending or the Saul Goodman ending. But she definitely shouldn't get the Anakin Skywalker ending. She can't get the Anakin Skywa;ker ending. It would be morally reprehensible and a crime against storytelling if she did get the Anakin Skywalker ending. She needs to get the Demona ending... whatever that is. I trust in Greg Weisman's ability to give us the Demona ending... but will we ever see it? I have no clue. Given enough time, episodes, comics, stories etc. If we're lucky.

I know some would say that comparing Gargoyles to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul is weird... but, for me, prestige storytelling is all about choices, consequences, how the story is presented, unwoven, and ultimately what they're trying to say. That they have ambitions beyond selling product, and how they're executed. On paper, the Marvel cartoons of the 90's, Power Rangers, and other things might have been Gargoyles' peers, but in execution... I consider its peers to be among the greatest that television has ever had to offer. The works of showrunners and creators like Vince Gilligan, David Chase, J. Michael Straczynski, and others.

If "The Reckoning" had ended with Demona coming back to the clan, and taking her place with them again. I'd have thrown my remote control at the television and I wouldn't be the fan of this property that I am today. Which is why I was glad to see she was still the character she should be when "Hunter's Moon" aired the following week. Someone argued with me that "The Reckoning" should have been allowed to end that way because it's, and again I quote, "a show for children" and that the only reason it wasn't was to maintain status quo. But as we know, "Gargoyles" has no status quo.

Famously, Han Solo was supposed to bite the big one in "Return of the Jedi". Everyone was for it, Harrison Ford, Gary Kurtz, others... it would have given the movie some bottom, some stakes. Because, as we discussed on our podcast, Avalon Part Three... that was a war. War has cost. That cost has to be painful. But, as Harrison Ford would later put it: "George didn't see much value in Dead Han toys". And while Greg Weisman has often had to work with toy companies... I just don't see him making a creative decision (that isn't forced on him) to accommodate them... if he was more concerned about selling toys than telling great stories, Wally West would have survived the second season of "Young Justice". This is why "Gargoyles" is allowed to have bottom, allowed to have consequences and why he and his team deserve the comparisons and to stand on the same platform as the great showrunners and storytellers of the television medium... because those are their peers.

What is the ending that Demona deserves? I don't know what it is. But I know what it isn't.
Greg Bishansky
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 3:41:42 pm EST from 67.189.167.107

Third
Phil - [p1anderson at yahoo dot com]
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 10:16:49 am EST from 50.192.123.171

Second!

Nine days to go until the next chapter!
Matt
"And, thus, given no choice, we waited..." - Alesand, "The Reach"
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 8:23:39 am EST from 204.184.178.1

First.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Mon, Nov 27, 2023 7:31:41 am EST from 174.72.60.154