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ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴀʟ ᴛʜʀᴇsʜᴏʟᴅ

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Compilations of Phantoms acting like reptiles?

Ayanga | Ethan Freeman Thomas Borchert | Greg Mills David Thaxton | Hugh Panaro

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Scenes from the opening ceremony of the 35th Naadam Festival held in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

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# Liu Yuning's 2025 Tour #Liu Yuning Shenzhen Concert

𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙯𝙝𝙚𝙣·𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮❹ "Traveling between the banks of the Milky Way" Through the picked up stardust, you can get a glimpse of all living beings in the parallel universe.

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Liu Yuning's 2025 tour - Shenzhen July 19/20 backstage photos

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I watched Jaws for the first time last night and this was all I could think of the whole time

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The Prisoner of Beauty 折腰 (2025) Dir. Deng Ke, Gao Cong Kai – Ep. 32

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Finished my Xena rewatch, with my first-time-watcher partner. We ended up watching mostly in order (we did consider spaghetti order, but I am lazy), except we pushed When Fates Collide to the very end.

Which I think was a good choice, because:

It resolves AFIN, in a reasonable way

Has a hell of a lot of weight for a series finale. "I'm willing to burn down the universe for you" in the most literal sense.

Final drop of I have many skills, my beloved

It's been really fun rewatching the series with fresh eyes, especially realizing how Gabrielle has grown, and consciously appreciating how absurd Lucy's acting abilities are. (How many actors can play three distinct characters in an episode, and keep them believable and legible, even as the characters are pretending to be each other? My god.)

10/10 show, I miss you my battle dykes ❤️

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‘The Lost Mariner’ is pretty much the last time we see Gabrielle used as the ‘damsel-in-distress’ before the show starts taking her seriously as her own heroine.

I don’t miss it but I do love the ‘guard dog on watch’ vibes from Xena. Weapon out. Threatening glare.

Gabrielle is much more cautious about the way she goes about protecting Xena so THAT SCENE in ‘The Ides Of March’ hits as hard as it possibly can. But Xena is just full on “touch her and you die” with the way she goes about protecting Gabrielle all the damn time.

It’s that classic trope you see over and over again between the hero and their obligatory love interest.

Only in this show - both those characters are women. And not only that - but they share the “hero/damsel” role so that the trope is all but abolished by Season 4 when it is made clear that Gabrielle is the successor.

That was the benefit of having her be both a sidekick and a love interest character. That’s why it hits so hard. Because it’s precisely that multi-dimensionality that cancels both those insulting and harmful tropes out.

And they set it up so damn well through ‘Lost Mariner’, ‘Dreamworker’, ‘Blind Faith’ to pay off so damn well in ‘Ides’. It’s not just the entire season that makes ‘Ides’ hit as hard as it does. It’s Gabrielle’s full character arc because we both see it happen and don’t expect it to.

See Gabrielle’s whole “hero” role had to be subtle in order for ‘Ides’ to pay off as well as it does. If not for episodes like this one… if not for her playing ‘damsel’ for so long and so many times, it wouldn’t have done.

Likewise… if Xena hadn’t been forced to play it too.

It’s brilliant. It truly is one of the greatest pay offs ever.

So I am perfectly okay with tropes - negative ones - as long as they get subverted at some point in the story. Making it more so feel like a clever set up for something much more substantial and worthy of all my time and attention than the typical hero saves the damsel thing because in Xena - there is no such thing as a “damsel”.

It’s an archaic idea that has no place in a feminist show except to prove that it’s debilitating and defamatory. Showing a lead female character breaking out of that is one of the most motivational things I’ve ever seen in TV.

Few things will ever be as emotionally powerful as what Gabrielle does for Xena in ‘Ides’. Or romantic. And it’s all because she had to initially play the role of ‘damsel-in-distress’ until the point the dynamic role-reversed and it was Xena left defenceless and at the mercy of men.

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In this completely serious scene, they decided to use a human to make “dog sounds” and it’s ridiculous

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LOL!!! They trolled so hard and took no prisoners with this meta.

I suspect this was aimed at TTEOTM specifically. Li Susu, how could you?! Poor Tantai Jin!

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Everytime I see something gay in a tv show and I say to myself ‘wow that might be the gayest thing thats ever happened on tv!’ I have to remind myself that the actual gayest thing that has ever happened on television was the time on Xena Warrior Princess that Xena got Sappho to write Gabrielle a poem for her birthday and they used Sappho’s actual poem.

Which means that in the Xena universe, one of Sappho’s most famous remaining poems was one dedicated to Gabrielle from Xena.

And that’s pretty fucking gay.

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I've reached the Green Dragon episodes of Xena and I'm now completely convinced that the moral of the show is "being gay makes you good". I mean, that was already the overarching moral of the Gabrielle-Xena relationship, but now Lao Ma-Xena too? Xena was evil because she wasn't being gay enough, but then a woman kissed her to feed her air while she was hiding in a pool of water and bam. Got gayer, got gooder.

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Nothing could be dryer than a jolly caucus race.

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