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Gargoyles

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Comments for the week ending October 13, 2019

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Tonight is the Hunter's Moon.

Just eleven days until the 25th anniversary of "Gargoyles".

Todd Jensen

I remember seeing a snippet of that movie, near the start, when it aired on television many years ago. (The early 90's, at the latest.)

The bulk of my knowledge of El Cid comes from a short retelling of his story in a book about knights written by Julek Heller and Deirdre Headon; it interspersed retellings of the adventures of various legendary knights (mostly from the tales of King Arthur, though it also included Siegfried, Roland, and Lohengrin) with essays on the actual life of knights (their armor, weapons, castles and siege engines, heraldry, etc.). It was published in 1982; there was a fashion back then of doing large illustrated books about legendary beings (like "Gnomes" or Brian Froud's "Faeries"), and I suspect this book was part of it.

Todd Jensen

The few things I know about El Cid are from that Charlton Heston film I watched several years ago.

So probably not all that much.

Matthew
Insert Inspirational Quote Here:________

El Cid has featured in an oddball (but fun) webcomic called "Kid Beowulf", which covers the adventures of Beowulf as a boy; the third "Book" of the comic has Beowulf meeting El Cid in Spain (well, kind of meeting him; their adventures affect each other, but they don't come directly face to face). The comic's been set up as a kind of tour through medieval hero-tales; the second "Book" featured Roland and his fellow paladins from Charlemagne's court.

(The story's clearly a mishmash of different ages. While Beowulf was most likely legendary, his story seems to have been set in the 6th century A.D. Charlemagne and Roland lived in the late 8th century, and El Cid, as Phoenician pointed out, was in the 11th. To top it off, in the third Book, Beowulf teams up with a young Boudica - the future British warrior-queen whom a certain gargoyle beast on Avalon was named after - who lived in the 1st century A.D. And according to the author, the fourth Book will feature Romulus and Remus, who were from 753 B.C. The story hasn't yet explained this blend.)

Todd Jensen

S2V2 -- yep, Todd -- the original cover you mentioned was when it was still an exclusive Disney Movie Club title (and thankfully available through their short-lived eBay account) back in June 2013. The second cover was when the title was later released exclusively at Walmart in fall 2014, alongside other rarely released favorites like DuckTales Treasures of the Lost Lamp and the third volume of TaleSpin. Eventually they had wider releases, with Gargoyles S2V2 showing up on Amazon in January 2015. :)

Tangent -- I too was book browsing today and picked up a copy of The Poem of the Cid at a bookshop, with the bonus that it was a parallel text translation, so perhaps I should refer to it as El Cantar de mio Cid. I'm not fluent in Spanish (let alone medieval Spanish), but I have tried to make an effort to find bilingual texts of stories that weren't originally in English, if only for the healthy perspective of it all. But some quick browsing in a poem I otherwise have little knowledge about shows that the historical El Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, was a contemporary of Macbeth, with their lives overlapping about a decade or so. So yeah, that's fun, slowly expanding my knowledge of the 11th century d:

Also, Fifth d:

Phoenician
"The suspense is terrible, I hope it lasts" -- Willy Wonka

BRAINIAC - Yes, I was thinking of that moment from "Sentinel" as well.

I noticed a few copies of the "Gargoyles" Season Two Volume Two DVD at the library today (three in all - plus one of the Season Two Volume One DVD), and they've got a different look from the copy I have. Mine has a picture of Goliath, Hudson, the trio, and Bronx on the front cover; the copies at the library had Goliath in a dramatic pose against a red background, much more like the Season One and Season Two Volume One DVDs in style. Disney must have redesigned the Season Two Volume Two DVD to make it better match the other two - which was nice of them.

Todd Jensen

Just remember, his name is NOT Tiny.
Brainiac - [OSUBrainiac at gmail dot com]
There is balance in all things. Live in symmetry with the world around you. If you must blow things up and steal from those around you, THAT'S WHAT RPGS ARE FOR!

Maybe not in those words, unless she felt in a teasing mood.
Todd Jensen

TODD> I'm sure Elisa would consider Goliath cute and cuddly. ;)
Algae
Some people have a bad day. I‘ve had a bad life. If I want something, it’s taken from me. If I win a fight, I lose the war. Threats only work on someone who has something to lose. But me? I already lost it all.

Sorry for the double post, but I wonder if anyone here has seen this page:

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-oral-history-of-gargoyles-disneys-groundbreaking-animated-series

My favorite part of the interview was Greg's remark about "Gargoyles" being influenced by "Gummi Bears", only, instead of "cute, cuddly multi-colored bears" they'd have "cute, cuddly multi-colored gargoyles". Granted, he was talking about the original comedy development, but I laughed aloud as I imagined how Goliath would respond to the "cute, cuddly" part.

Todd Jensen

While looking up those books on gargoyles in the local library catalogue, I discovered a short children's book on gargoyles by a Hayley Mitchell Haugen (part of a series of children's books on mythical monsters), published in 2007. It included a couple of pages on the "Gargoyles" series, which included a bit about Greg Weisman (it said that he had fond memories of the architectural gargoyles at Oxford University), and even had a paragraph on the Gatherings. (Its summing up of the show was a bit imaccurate, though; it made it sound as if the gargoyles turned to stone in the daytime because of a magical curse and stopped turning to stone in the daytime once they awakened in the modern world - apparently the author got the natural stone sleep confused with the Magus's curse.)

It also included Station 8 in the "web sites" section of the bibliography, and "God Bless the Gargoyles" and "Night of the Gargoyles" in the fiction section.

Todd Jensen

TODD> I remember God Bless The Gargoyles getting a nod back in TGS.
Algae
Time to make... my move.

These are a few books on gargoyles (the general kind, not linked to the show) that I've come across, and recently began wondering how Goliath and his clan would have responded to them.

GOD BLESS THE GARGOYLES by Dav Pilkey. A children's picture book, which tells how gargoyles were built as guardians and protectors of churches - but as the years wore on, humans forgot that purpose, came to fear and scorn them, to the heartbreak of the gargoyles. A flock of angels come down, however, to comfort the gargoyles.

As a children's picture book, it'd be rather young for the clan (though useful for Hudson and Broadway's reading lessons), but I suspect they'd find it resonating with them. (I remember that it was one of the books for a "children's storytime" event at a few of the Gatherings.) I suspect that, in the Gargoyles Universe, many anti-gargoyle citizens, following the events of "Hunter's Moon", would be trying to get it banned from school libraries. (By coincidence, the book was published in 1996.)

NIGHT OF THE GARGOYLES by Eve Bunting. Also a children's picture book, much more wildly humorous in tone. Gargoyles come alive at night and engage in lively frolics, told with a lot of gusto. The only person aware of them is a night watchman, who tries to tell his boss about it, but the boss won't believe him. (I strongly suspect the night watchman of being an "alternate universe" version of Vinnie.)

The gargoyles in the book are portrayed as not fond of humans, though they restrict themselves to making fun of the hapless watchman. I picture Demona railing at them for doing nothing more than that - "Have you no ambition? You're even more of a disgrace to our kind than that fool Goliath! Laggards and slackers!"

THE LAST GARGOYLE, by Paul Dunham. A children's fantasy (middle grade) about a gargoyle in Boston, the last one left. Here, gargoyles are carved by skilled human craftsmen as protectors, defending humanity from malevolent ghosts called Netherkin. They usually do this, not in their gargoyle bodies, but in a sort of projection of themselves called "wisps", who usually look like human children (this turns out to be connected with a detail about their origins that gets revealed near the end), though some take other shapes; they can animate their gargoyle bodies to do direct battle with the Netherkin, but use it rarely because they have to sleep for a long time afterwards. (The book mentions gargoyles living in New York - more likely a reference to all the architectural gargoyles in New York than to the series - who look down on the gargoyles in Boston as like "pour cousins".)

I don't know what Goliath and his clan would have made of this book, but I think it would have incensed Demona, with its depiction of gargoyles as human creations. (The other two books above also take that approach.) She'd probably consider that concept even more of an insult to her kind than all the gargoyle massacres through the centuries.

Todd Jensen

MATTHEW> I say go for it! Feel free to hit me up if you need a beta reader. There's a link to my ff.net page below.
Algae
Some people have a bad day. I‘ve had a bad life. If I want something, it’s taken from me. If I win a fight, I lose the war. Threats only work on someone who has something to lose. But me? I already lost it all.

MATTHEW - I'm probably not the best person to provide feedback on this, given that DC Comics isn't one of my strong points. But from my own experience, if you've got a big story idea and don't start writing it down, it'll keep gnawing at you - so I'd say, do it
Todd Jensen

Speaking of creativity demons, I rediscovered an old fic idea I had awhile back. It involved several heroes from the DC universe, how they've changed as they've grown older as well as their children (some from the comics and some original characters).

I'm not sure whether I should pursue this or not, it's been some time since I've done any creative writing that wasn't a review or essay. But this has been gnawing at me for the past couple of days and some feedback would be appreciated.

Matthew
Insert Inspirational Quote Here:________

I've also read the adaptations of the Netflix series by Stephen Davies, and liked them as well. (I forgot to mention that they included [SPOILER] the Thunderbird and a Black Dog, both of which have "Gargoyles" connections - see "Heritage" and "The Hound of Ulster" respectively [/SPOILER].)

A sequel, by the way, to my creativity demon from a couple of weeks back of Castaway doing a rewrite of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" as "Goldilocks and the Three Gargoyles", which ends with three gargoyles eating Goldilocks with their porridge. I recently had a vision of Brooklyn commenting on the porridge part, "That's cultural stereotyping!"

Todd Jensen

TODD> I've seen the Hilda Netflix series, which from what I've gathered is fairly faithful to the books. It's good stuffs.
Algae
Some people have a bad day. I‘ve had a bad life. If I want something, it’s taken from me. If I win a fight, I lose the war. Threats only work on someone who has something to lose. But me? I already lost it all.

Well, I haven't read the books, so I guess that's why Todd had to discuss the SECOND as well.

(also, you scooped me by a few minutes)

Brainiac - [OSUBrainiac at gmail dot com]
There is balance in all things. Live in symmetry with the world around you. If you must blow things up and steal from those around you, THAT'S WHAT RPGS ARE FOR!

First. (Usually someone else has posted something here by now. I hope that's not an omen for the future of the comment room, either in general or for this week.)

I've been recently reading Luke Pearson's "Hilda" graphic novels which inspired the Netflix series (I haven't watched that yet since I'm not a Netflix subscriber - and due to various circumstances, am unlikely to subscribe in the near future - but it's seemed appealing to me), and noticed one or two elements that would probably resonate with "Gargoyles" fans. The first book featured a troll as a major character, using the notion that trolls turn to stone in the daytime but return to life at night (I suspect that if there were gargoyles in Scandinavia - all gone now, obviously, they might have inspired troll legends the way the Japanese gargoyles inspired legends about the tengu or gargoyle beasts inspired the "black dog" legends of the British Isles), and [SPOILER] had the troll, while initially appearing to be threatening, turning out to be far less so - also evocative of (most) gargoyles [/SPOILER]. (It also involved using bells to keep trolls at bay - an actual folklore motif which probably helped inspire the denouement of "Ill Met By Moonlight".)

In the second book, "Hilda and the Midnight Giant", Hilda and her mother are forced to move, with Hilda resisting the idea for a long time, but at last, after their original house gets destroyed, comforting her mother with "It's just wood and glass and a bunch of stuff anyway", which evoked Hudson's advice to Goliath in "Enter Macbeth".

Todd Jensen