The Gargoyles Saga

Community
Name:	The Gargoyles Saga
Date(s):	1998-?
Founder:	Greg Weisman
Type:	Virtual Season
Fandom:	Gargoyles
URL:
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The Gargoyles Saga is a Gargoyles controlled massive shared universe/virtual season that begins after the show was cancelled.

Gargoyles itself was created by Greg Weisman.

It follows the show after cancellation, and while it uses Weisman's "master plan," he himself is not involved in "The Gargoyle's Saga."

Staff and Contributors

The extensive list of fan contributors: Staff and Contributors.

About

In 1994, Buena Vista Television released the animated series Gargoyles. The show followed the adventures of a band of Scottish gargoyles in present-day New York after sleeping in stone under a magic spell for a thousand years. Gargoyles quickly became a hit with fans and lasted for two more seasons. Unfortunately, in early 1997 Buena Vista Television cancelled Gargoyles, despite the millions of fans who loved it.

So we brought it back... to the internet. Based on show creator Greg Weisman's bible of the Gargoyles universe, the TGS staff now present you with several spinoffs featuring our Defenders of the Night.

In the fall of 1997, roughly eight months after word seeped back to the fandom that Gargoyles would not have a fourth season -- that the almost universal disappointment of Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles, which had been the show's third season, would be the last we would see of our beloved saga on television -- the fan-written continuation of the series, The Gargoyles Saga, began its first season, picking up where Greg Weisman left off.

TGS was and is not the first of its kind. Forever Knight fans picked up the ball after that series ended in 1996 with their Virtual Fourth Season . Highlander fans wrote Highlander: The Fanfic Season, which ran concurrently with that show's sixth and final season, and the staff is working on a second fan-written season. Similarly, TGS is already hard at work on its second season, with the second season premiere to debut at the 1998 Gathering, by the time this essay sees posting.

The Relationship to Greg Weisman

This project was created in Febuary [sic] of 1997 with the intentions of following the Master Plan provided by Greg Weisman, creator of the original series. However, Mr. Weisman is not directly involved with The Gargoyles Saga or it's subsequent spin-offs in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, please do not assume that we have direct contact with Mr. Weisman because we do not. Besides, he can't legally look at or give ideas specifically for this series and it's spin-offs. Due to the time lag involved in the planning/writing process Mr. Weisman's current revelations about what might have been on Gargoyles may differ from our own vision. We hope you understand the complex nature of the creative process and enjoy our spin on events.

Official Fanfic Policy

It is inevitable that our characters and story arcs will be used in independent fanfic in the near future. If you plan to do an independent fanfic involving our characters and/or story arcs, please give credit to the TGS staff by mentioning us in your disclaimer. This is all we ask. Also, keep in mind that we are not permitted to look at any independent fanfic that uses our characters. Therefore, you cannot suggest that a character of your creation be used in future episodes of TGS and/or it's subsequent spin-offs. We also cannot reveal any plot threads for the future of TGS, so don't even try to ask us for hints on what the future will hold.

Also, if you are a fanfic writer and are not involved with the writing process of TGS in any way, please do not be upset if you see an idea of yours in a TGS episode and wonder where your credit is. As a rule, the staff of TGS does not look at or refer to any fanfics when formulating ideas for any episodes for the series. If you happen to see an idea of yours or an element you used in a fanfic used in a TGS episode or in a spin-off episode, then please consider it mere coincidence and nothing more. The last thing we all need (all refering [sic] to the staff, the fanfic writers, and the fans) is a fight concerning idea use.

Permissions and Stepping Lightly

A fan, LJC, described their experiences with this shared universe in Sharing a Fanfic Universe.

... after writing the third Rowan/Owen story, I got a piece of email one day from an ardent 13 year old fan -- who shall remain nameless -- asking if he could use my characters in his story.

Unfortunately, his request was couched in a request that I change what I had written -- because the story he was writing wouldn't work if I was going to continue in the direction I was heading. He wanted me to change my plot points to facilitate his story.

I reacted badly, to say the least.

I gently explained that he could not use my characters in this plotline, since it would contradict what I was planning in a future story. But thank you for asking -- why don't you create your own original characters instead of using mine?

Thus began a two year long argument that never successfully concluded to either of our satisfactions, I'm sure. The young man had already written his story -- and started work on a sequel--assuming my original copyrighted characters were, because of the walk-on in one of the Athena tales -- fair game. In fact, he had written to ask my permission to use them only as a courtesy, never once expecting that he would get turned down.

[...]

Obviously, Ryan and I had differing opinions regarding the matter. And, from what I hear, so did Jewel and Dave. Not to slam Ryan, who obviously is a big fan of his fellow writers and only meant to honour them by these references. But it created one hell of a mess. And of course, this poor kid had assumed -- because he knew no better, and he was going off of the only examples he had so far responded to, other archived online fanfic -- that all fanfic was one big shared world story, and that my plots and characters were there for him to continue, just as we had as fan writers chosen to flesh out and continue the stories told on the show itself.</ref>

Fan Comments

During the past year, I've gained something of a reputation as a critic of TGS. I even wrote a review of the first season on my site, citing what I think worked about the first season and what didn't. However, I don't plan to restate the same things I've said before in my reviews of TGS; I plan to make a case for both sides of this.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for TGS as the heir to Gargoyles until the film, if it comes out, and a subsequent television resurrection, is the staff of the series: the fans. A sound argument could be made that none save the writers and creators understand a given series better than its most rabid fans; the people who have every episode on tape, watch them on a regular basis, analyze the characters for fun, organize and attend conventions across the country.

Secondly, on a more specific level, the TGS staff is composed of some of the most skilled and talented writers in the fandom. Individually, many of the staff have produced stories that very much carry the feel and style of the original series. Many are accounted among the most popular and the best by fanfic readers.

Thirdly, the stories themselves are of a consistent, good quality. Characterizations are generally on-target, the plots are rarely more cliche than the average television show. The writing itself is generally good, and there are none of the typos that make many fanfics at best tolerable, at worst completely unreadable.

Finally, TGS, through being a text-based medium (as opposed to an animated series) has much greater latitude in the amount and kind of material that can be presented. Already, the staff has taken advantage of this by producing not one but four series; in addition to continuing the main storyline, three of Weisman's six planned spinoffs (Timedancer, Pendragon, Dark Ages) are also running. So it has already demonstrated its ability to see much of the show's potential through.

So is TGS fit to carry the Gargoyles torch onward into the future?

To answer that, we need to examine TGS' shortcomings as well as its virtues. Above, I discussed what TGS has going for it; now, it's time to discuss what is going against it.

It seems to me that the real barometer for TGS' suitability to follow the original is the quality of the main series; specifically, how well it follows the feel and style of the original. Does it capture the pacing? The careful, thorough integrity of the universe? The hundreds of little touches that caused Gargoyles to transcend merely being good and becoming great?

One of the key strikes against TGS is its pacing, and, related to that, its focus. In any recent television series of quality, stories break down into basically two things: plots for individual episodes, and ongoing plot threads and storylines. For example, throughout the entire first season of Gargoyles, a key plot thread was the lingering remnants of Goliath and Demona's former love. In Awakening, we saw Goliath and Demona as a couple; through that five-parter, they were separated, reunited, and finally driven apart irrevocably. Yet Gargoyles mate for life, and Goliath could not simply let her go; as late as Vows, Goliath still had not given up on her altogether.

Working from that example, I'm going to point out that most series are about the lives of the major characters, covering the time of a certain period in which they are brought together. Gargoyles was about the lives of the clan members and their closest friend, Elisa, after their abrupt transplantation from 10th century Scotland to 20th century Manhattan. Yet TGS' first season was focused so heavily on the Unseelie Court and Maddox that it seemed to be a series about the Manhattan clan and friends against the Unseelie Court, with little relief from Maddox and co. as villains, particularly after the (in my mind) premature removal of the Quarrymen. Given that the cliffhanger indicates that the first part of the second season will focus on this storyline as well, it becomes quite obvious that this and its aftermath will dominate for some time to come.

On a more personal level, I have to wonder why so many new characters were introduced. Not even one-shot minor characters, but recurring characters who have their own plotlines, resulting in plot threads that get abandoned when the primary story goes into high gear. I've spoken to some of the writers, and learned some of how this happened, but the means do not justify the end. In Gargoyles, the writers and story editors did not start a plot thread without knowing that they could finish it later; Reawakening and Hunter's Moon, being season finales, both ended with plot threads largely tied up, and The Journey, Greg Weisman's final episode, similarly left a feeling of resolution. Yet TGS has left the reader hanging many times; what about Sharon? Liz, Lex's friend who has apparently been forgotten? Sara Jasper? Characters that were introduced -- some with more reason than others -- and then forgotten later on, by all appearances. The end result of this is that TGS is left with something of an incoherent feeling due to all the plot threads; the Gargoyles tapestry seems rather frayed.

In the final analysis, is TGS really enough to carry on Gargoyles into the future? Ultimately, I think each reader has to make that decision for her or himself, whether TGS' strengths overcome its weaknesses to that degree. For me, I'm sorry to say, it does not; TGS lacks the tightness, coherency, and power of Gargoyles, and I find it far less compelling than the original series. I can't consider it canon; to me, it seems to be only another shared fanfic universe, only far more coordinated and hashed over than most.