#no straight xena

[gabs-magical-abs]

If you like:

Hot sword ladies

Women with fucked up pasts

Evil women

Women

Women with big theatre energy

Women kissing women

Musicals

Incredible character arcs

Hot women doing hot things (killing people)

Then you should watch Xena: Warrior Princess

[marley-manson]

man i just love so much that fundamentally xena is a show in which the main theme is exploring the often complex ethical implications of various kinds of violence (including the stance of 'violence is great actually') and it's overwhelmingly women who commit that violence and whose acts of violence are focused on as a source of drama

and then on top of that the women - and there are a shitload of them - are all gay/bi

like if that doesn't sound like the greatest piece of media ever made, we are very different people

[whenfatecollides]

Xena Warrior Princess 6.18 When Fates Collide

[girl4music]

I once heard the term “straightbaiting” in regards to ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. As in, what we queer people get in another show where there’s queerbaiting. But with Xena it’s just with the opposite sex instead. And that’s accurate because the central relationship in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ is Xena and Gabrielle. The show revolves around both of them as main characters and their love relationship - be it platonic or romantic.

Every other episode in the earlier seasons they would bring in a male love interest for either one of them (later in the show they would also get female love interests as well as male love interests; Gabrielle - Najara, Thalassa, Brunhilda. Xena - M’Lila, Lao Ma and, ugh, Akemi) but none of these love interests lasted. They would either die, leave or otherwise just never show up in the show again. They were either always temporary fill ins/stand bys until the other main character returned or used as a relationship conflict between Xena and Gabrielle, basically stating and showing how unnatural it was for either of them to have any sort of love relationship going on when it’s not with each other. And whenever this happens, the show itself feels shaky and off-kilter: unbalanced.

In a sense,… not straight. It feels not straight for it to be straight. It feels fake. It feels abnormal. Wrong. Exactly the way a queer person is supposed to feel when it’s queerbaiting in a primarily straight show. Straightbaiting in Xena feels like that to a straight person because Xena is genuinely a queer show and, therefore, in that show,… Queer is right. Queer is normal. Queer is real. And even with the female love interests - it still feels that way because, again, the central and most important relationship is X and G!

So ‘straightbaiting’ is absolutely the most accurate term to describe what the experience of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ is rather than queerbaiting because it’s not Xena and Gabrielle that is the bait. It’s everyone else. And this is especially true with the male love interests. Except maybe Ares. But that’s a whole other topic altogether that takes understanding Rob Tapert’s mind, who is genuinely team X and G all the way but just has hang ups with X and A. I won’t go into it here.

But yes, it also boggles my mind something awful when anyone watching Xena today could call it queerbaiting. It’s honestly the entire opposite. You can’t watch episodes like ‘When Fates Collide’ and ‘Who’s Gurkhan’ and hell, even Season 2’s ‘The Quest’, without realizing that the creators are genuine with how they write Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship. It’s not a joke. It might have started out as one but pretty damn quickly they changed course and it became serious. So serious that almost every other relationship for Xena or Gabrielle feels like a joke. Feels like it is the bait that keeps straight people tuned into watching a queer show about queer characters the way straight characters acting queer are the bait for queer people to watch a straight show.

And I cannot put it anymore concisely than that. That IS ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. It is a straightbaiting show. So much so that Lucy and Renee have laughs about it. These are two straight women taking the piss out of the show’s attempts to keep its straight audience. Laughing about how unnatural it all feels for Xena and Gabrielle to have “straight” love relationships, proving my point completely true without knowing it. And I’m emphatically saying this as a queer woman myself that headcanons Xena as bisexual. Still queer but not gay. It feels extremely wrong for Gabrielle to be doing this. But it doesn’t ever matter because it doesn’t ever last. What lasts is the central relationship. That of X & G.

So regardless whether the nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship is platonic or romantic, the creators are purposefully telling and showing you all love interests or love relationships besides theirs fail in comparison. And that’s not a very “queerbait-y” thing to do, is it? That’s actually the opposite of queerbait.

[jennyandvastraflint]

"You must be wrong. I don't eat meat." gotta be some smooth ass code of Lao Ma communicating that she's not into men to Xena... 😂

[lonesomedotmp3]

last night right before I went to sleep I was judging the 911 posts you were putting on my dash (sorry I was planning to keep this to myself but it's become necessary context) and then I fucking. dreamt about that stupid show 😐 girl!!!

[arbitrarygreay]

This show is a GIFT

(For potential link rot purposes, it's Eve cussing out Nigel from 6x13)

[thesearchforbluejello]

Rapid follow up with: first of all, I thought when fandom talked about this show being hella gay they meant it was subtext. It is, in fact, text. At least, as much text as a 1990s prime time TV show could be.

Now, I don't know much about the show at all, and the bits of cultural-phenomenon-analysis stuff I've seen recently have said that it WaS aN AcCidEnT??????????? I find that so hard to believe. There is straight up (pun very much intended) a Prince Charming moment in this episode. This is as much subtext as somebody screaming through a megaphone.

[outplacedwriter]

I'm re-watching Xena for the nth time and OMG, ROC had NO RIGHT being that charming and hot

[smallhatlogan]

xena talks about borias like he was such a good and noble dude and then in every borias flashback he is so condescending and generally shitty towards her. like no respect for her at all. i don't care if she's slightly more bloodthirsty and less reasonable than you, you can't treat her like that dude

[coriphallus]

love the funky little drama going on about people's interpretations of companions sexual preferences. im sorry but youre on the headcanoning-people-as-different-sexualities website, are you lost??

[todayisafridaynight]

*head in hands* whats the opinion on the yakuza tv series brother

i cant have an opinion on a thing when the thing aint even out yet brother

[snowangeldotmp3]

whats sins of the past whats her deal whats up with her 👀

sins of the past is the most indulgent thing i have ever even thought about writing. it's the xena ronance au. nancy is xena. robin is gabrielle. steve is joxer.

if you aren't familiar with xena, basically: former warlord (xena) tries to atone for her sins and along the way she meets gabrielle, a bard who seeks adventure. they laugh they fight they dance they kiss (...kind of...) but there's a lot of build up before they actually kiss.

there is a scene in the season 1 finale of xena where gabrielle fucking. dies. (this will not be the last time she does, either) and xena will NOT allow that. so xena invents cpr and revives gabrielle. it's a very good episode. a lot of it is about xena learning to open up and atone for her sins and gabrielle taking none of her shit. and also gabrielle getting into some Wack situations. gabrielle ends up following xena (after xena explicitly tells her not to lmao) they are just so very ronance coded (to me) that i think it would be very fun to at least explore!!

and now, a snippet for u !

Nancy purses her lips, eyes narrowing, scanning Robin. Robin stands her ground, tries to stave off the anxiety rising in her stomach, the need to fidget with her fingers or shift her weight under Nancy’s intense stare. She’s not going to fuck up her only chance to get out of this town.

[girl4music]

“Like so many of the stories that we’ve done, many many different elements came together to create a script. Mehndi was one of them and it’s something that I was a little aware of. I’ve done a little bit of reading on it. Not a lot. I believe Rob was the one who came to me, however, and said ‘Wow, this is fascinating’, ‘this is, you know, really great, what can you do with this?’

I had already wanted to grab a hold of the reincarnation idea and there are a few elements that fuelled this. One I’m going to have to reference is a song by Paul Williams, which was in The Muppet Movie. And there was a line in this one song that I felt, and I’d always felt this way, described the two characters perfectly. The line was ‘there’s not a word yet for old friends who have just met’. And I thought you know something? They are old friends. They just met. But they’re old friends. So in my mind throughout history and throughout destiny, these two characters’ souls have existed and have met, parted ways, met, intertwined, parted ways. And that fit in perfectly with the reincarnation theory but what was important for these two characters is that those two souls have throughout history intertwined, they’ve come together, they’ve parted ways, they’ve come together again, they’ve intertwined, they’ve parted ways. This has happened continuously and every time it happens in their lifetimes, they recognize each other. Not like ‘oh, you’re Xena, oh, I’m Gabrielle’. No no, they say ‘I know you. I know you and I have to be with you. I don’t know why but I do’.

Now bringing the Mehndi into it. Mehndi was perfect symbolism to this because when you think about it, Mehndi, um, if you’ve done it and if you’ve read up on what Mehndi means, it’s not just drawing. Mehndi has an entire meaning behind it. There’s a whole philosophy and spirituality based on Mehndi. The simplest part of it was the fact that Mehndi has a lot of lines that run parallel to each other and they will intersect, they will form beautiful designs, then they will part again and run parallel. Well, that’s lives. Xena and Gabrielle - those are the lives. Those are the threads of their lives. They run parallel to each other, they intersect, form beautiful designs. Then they might part but they still run parallel to each other. And what really counts is what’s between those lines. There’s the title; ‘Between The Lines’.”

Half the reason why they ended up taking the soulmates motif so seriously and literally was due to Steven L. Sears and his reincarnation idea and understanding of Xena and Gabrielle’s soulmate connection. So, in my view, half the reason why the love story is so damn profound is because of him.

Now he would be the first to scoff at that and say that I’m giving him far too much credit. But that is exactly why he is amazing and deserves that much credit.

‘Between The Lines’ took the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle to a whole other level because we do learn that they actually are true to life soulmates and all of what that informed and involved for them as individual characters as well as together as a couple. And so everything leading up to this episode now felt so much more intense and deep and poignant.

Substantial. And I wouldn’t have been able to write my character study thesis without it. Even though I don’t directly mention it - it’s sort of just embedded within the insightful interpretation that I’ve made about it because this episode doesn’t just tell a one-time storyline about the characters. It essentially informs EVERYTHING about them. Who they are and why - and especially how they are such a great team that navigate their soulmate connection to be just that.

It’s like these two people who seemed to be total strangers until this episode was seen were actually destined to meet and travel together and fall in love because their very soul that they shared fated it so.

And by the gods - I have yet to see or know a relationship that is that damn EPIC on-screen.

Xena and Gabrielle are the WLW representation you expect to be provided - considered canon or not - because this level of storytelling between female characters that can be interpreted as romantic just doesn’t happen anymore. There’s no time or room for it to in the TV art/entertainment industry apparently.

[shukuchiisms]

~~

[sapphic-book-nerd]

I just know Xena Warrior Princess would’ve had me in a chokehold if I was a 90s lesbian.

It’s so campy and gay, I love it.