#WTFU: Wheres The Fair Use?

#WTFU: Where’s the Fair Use?

I talk about my experiences with YouTube’s faulty copyright system in my reviews and music videos.

A Little Elisa Maza Appreciation

Since we’re nearing the end of Black History Month, I decided I would like to input my own thoughts about it. Now having seen a lot of other posts about this on Tumblr and other sites, I can’t really add anything much about people who were helpful in the Civil Rights Movement or in establishing equality for black people that hasn’t already been said, and I wouldn’t know how to talk about those types of things, anyway. But there is one thing I do know how to talk about, and that’s cartoons.

In the mid-1990s, there was a cartoon on Disney’s afternoon programming block called Gargoyles. It was about a clan of gargoyles from 10th century Scotland who would come to life every night and fight crime in New York. The show sadly around twenty years ago, in 1996, the same year I was born. It was one of the more underrated and brilliant cartoons of the ’90s, but I’m talking about it today because it was one of the first well-known cartoon series to have a black woman as its leading (human) character.

Voiced by African-American actress Salli Richardson, NYPD Detective Elisa Maza was arguably the character that held Gargoyles together. She acted as the April O’Neal of the show, the character who helped the gargoyles adapt to the world, and she just so happened to have an African-American mother and a Native American father. Her mixed heritage suited the show’s allegory of tolerance and anti-prejudice.

But in general, Elisa could have easily had a show of her own. She was kind, helpful, funny, and hot as hell, but also strong and independent, not taking any BS. Her last name “Maza” was even supposedly a Sioux word for “iron.” Even when times were at its toughest, like in the episode when she was temporarily transformed into a gargoyle, she still triumphed and stood up for herself.

Of course, on of the major running arcs for her was her oft-teased romance with the lead gargoyle, Goliath. Adding to the show’s metaphor for racial tolerance, the relationship between Elisa and Goliath clearly represented how taboo inter-racial relationships were at the time and still are today. Not to say that they were romantic from the start; the two of them worked together as partners and friends for a good two seasons before they finally became a couple in the series finale.

Elisa Maza was truly one of the underrated female characters in cartoon history, mainly because Gargoyles didn’t truly attract a fanbase until after its series end, so this Black History Month, I’ve decided to dedicate an entire post to her: One of the first black leading females in a cartoon, but also just a really great character in general, Elisa Maza will forever live on in the hearts of ’90s kids like myself.

Crap is crap no matter how old the toilet.

TheHappySpaceman, from his review of One Direction: This Is Us (via flyingbrickanimation)

Daft Punk’s Electroma Deleted Scenes

Some unfinished scenes cut from my Electroma review.