#didn’t mean to write a mini-essay I’m just so fukcing fascinated

[citrus-cactus]

The concept of soulmates in Gargoyles is so interesting.

On the one hand, you have Demona and Macbeth, whose repeated meetings while dealing with the Hunter and eventual fate-sealing pact was something that they (for the most part) were manipulated into by outside, otherworldly, and unknowable forces (including one closed-loop time travel paradox… the idea that they, specifically, were necessary for the Archmage’s plans was one that cannot be attributed to any individual, including the Archmage himself). They are fated to be together, are quite literally bound together by fate: sharing each other’s pain, effectively immortal, because the only way for them to die is for one of them to kill the other. And thus they have been carrying on throughout the centuries, hating each other, thorns in each other’s sides, and yet one of the only constants the other has after 900+ years of living. One of them seeks to end their arrangement while the other is driven to survive at all costs—and thus they are destined to go on existing while remaining pawns in someone else’s game. They are neither able to escape the fate that they (by their personalities) or others (by their machinations) made for them, nor can they ever truly escape each other… no matter how much they (either secretly or openly) might want to.

And then you have the Coldtrio. Three sides of a relationship triangle comprised of two lovers and a schemer, who were (perhaps) close enough in proximity at the time of their death that their remnants lay mingled for a thousand years, and became the piles of rubble Demona and Xanatos scavenged in order to make their gargoyle version of Frankenstein. Their three souls were corralled into a single magic-and-science animated corpse made from their shattered body parts, three minds vying for control of the body they were forced to share, doomed to exist in a sort of cyberspace limbo and continue the relationships they had in life. Desdemona/Coldfire even used the word “soulmate” to describe what the three of them were to each other… even though one of her “mates” was her love and the other was someone who coveted her from afar and would do anything to “have” her, even against her wishes. Even after they became three separate entities again, both she and Othello/Coldstone felt they had an obligation to track down Iago/Coldsteel and attempt to put an end to his endless scheming.

It’s just fascinating that both of these examples touch on the concept of a soulmate, but then the show takes the extra step of mixing in these less-than-noble but very real emotions of petty jealousy, suspicion, and hate, adds a healthy dose of immortality and dramatic irony to the proceedings, and then spends a significant amount of time telling stories meant to explore the consequences of all that.

Having a “soulmate” in the Gargoyles universe, it would seem, is not something to wish for. At once tragic and horrific, the polar opposite of an ideal, akin to snakes eating each other’s tails. To have a soulmate is to lose a significant part of your autonomy, becoming a participant in an endless cycle of violence in which you are either the pursuer or pursued, tormentor or tormented, one ingredient in a cocktail of clashing personalities shaken together, poured into a glass, and then purposefully dropped on the floor to become shards in someone else’s feet. The part of you that yearns for release will be powerless to enact it because the other parts of you will always have a say, and the sum total of yourself becomes something that is both unwilling and unable to ever truly stop. And then it all comes to a head in "High Noon," when the Weird Sisters—manifestations of fate, vengeance, and grace— very blatantly involve themselves in both.

I just think that’s neat, is all.