#nobody wants a historically accurate xena

[girl4music]

Xena’s the best off-the-wall fantasy show ever. Want to know why? Xena is a show that’s set in Ancient Greece. In one episode they had electric guitars and multi-coloured strobe lights without any explanation at all. This episode also happened to be a musical to popular 90’s music and Xena and the villain did a rap battle. Xena also played her theme on a guitar (lyre).

People stop asking for fantasy shows to be historically accurate. The whole fun of it is that it’s not. So stop.

[azgfggf]

For a while I’ve been trying to articulate why XWP means so much to me, and I think I’ve figured it out. It seems to come from a bizzaro world where everything is just. Equal. It feels like a real feminist show because the women are so respected.

I realized this when watching episode 6 (or seven maybe?) there was a scene where Xena was imprisoned, feet chained to the floor and hands to the ceiling. A group of men came in with the express purpose to harm, and in a moment of clarity I realized that I didn’t fear for Xena in the way I did for every other female in fantasy. Fantasy (as a male dominated genre) is full of sexual violence towards women, often used as story beats or just shock. It permeates women’s real lives and bleeds into what they read for escapist fantasy. For a long time I’ve felt as if nowhere is truly safe, because most fantasy media eventually has a scene or two where a woman is violated, or a costume that’s glorified lingerie, and I have to remind myself that this genre was never made with women in mind. But that scene ended with Xena beating the shit out of them, because they tried to beat her. Not assault or grab, just punches and kicks, like men would fight in fantasy. And she fucking won because she’s Xena and she’s awesome.

Again, in many episodes men want her. But they’re never violent towards her. In the show she is treated like a man would be treated in any fantasy setting. With respect. That’s true escapism for me, some world where that kind of violence either doesn’t exist or isnt prevalent. A world so easy to make, and yet so often thrown aside because of “historical accuracy”. In fiction. The specifically not historically accurate genre where you can pull anything out of your ass and people just kinda have to vibe with that.

I’ve also mentioned this before, but it’s so rare in fantasy for women to be…carefree I guess? Most of them are jaded from past violence, or future survivors, or meek healers, or old wise women. None of which are very allowed to be silly like their male counterparts. They’re always serious, always the voice of reason. Always so reigned in from what male characters are allowed to be. Xena has a dark past, but she’s still kind. The story is still light. Women are allowed to be happy without being victimized.

XWP is fantasy first and foremost, and it works wonders. There are POC everywhere, and nobody calls attention to it because, well, that’s just how it is in Xena-land. There’s no sexual violence toward any strong women, because, well, that’s just how it is in Xena-land. People fight on bamboo poles and race chariots in rivers and the steaks only go up to “Ooooo she has to marry the big bad” which never goes anywhere because we all know Xena is gonna stop them.

Xena Warrior Princess is always gonna be my favorite fantasy show, because it’s fantasy that’s finally geared towards women. A fantasy where women are safe, are capable, are treated in the same regard as men with no quippy girl-power one-liners because nobody needs to quip about the status quo. In a genre where women are so often demeaned and violated for minor story beats or shock value, seeing a work that actually feeds into a more female fantasy is what I’m obsessed with. It’s wonderful to see a magical world where women don’t have to live in fear. Or they do, like because cyclops’s n shit but everybody else does that too.

PS: this mostly applies to modern fantasy. Tolkien and Lewis were two authors I grew up on who I largely blame for my fantasy obsession today.

[butterflies-dragons]

ELEANOR

Art credit: Kinuko Y. Craft

Eleanor of Aquitaine […] she was one of the most kick-ass women of the Middle Ages and, you know, she had her own crusade, or she went on crusade rather and she married two kings and then was the mother of several more, she was a great character. 

—GRRM

She was instrumental in turning the court of Poitiers, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a centre of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. She was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the romantic songs of the troubadours, and the historical matière de Bretagne, or “legends of Brittany,” which originated in Celtic traditions and in the Historia regum Britanniae, written by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth sometime between 1135 and 1138.

—Britannica

ALYSANNE

Art credit: A young Queen Alysanne by Magali Villeneuve in The World of Ice & Fire.

You might consider Alysanne as the Eleanor of Aquitaine of Westeros, and model her on Katharine Hepburn’s portrayal of Eleanor in the film THE LION IN WINTER. Tall and straight, unbowed by time, she had high cheekbones, clear blue eyes. 

—GRRM

CATELYN

Art credit: Catelyn Stark by Natascha Röösli © Fantasy Flight Games

However, with Catelyn there is something reset for the Eleanor of Aquitaine, the figure of the woman who accepted her role and functions with a narrow society and, nonetheless, achieves considerable influence and power and authority despite accepting the risks and limitations of this society. She is also a mother… Then, a tendency you can see in a lot of other fantasies is to kill the mother or to get her off the stage. She’s usually dead before the story opens… Nobody wants to hear about King Arthur’s mother and what she thought or what she was doing, so they get her off the stage and I wanted it too. And that’s Catelyn.

—GRRM

BRIENNE

Art credit: Brienne of Tarth by Lauren K Cannon

“I enjoyed Xena the Warrior Princess a lot but I did not think it was an accurate portrayal of what a women warrior was or would be like, and I sort of created Brienne of Tarth as an answer to that. I was inspired by people like Eleanor of Aquitaine and not so much Joan of Arc, but the queens of Scottish history, from Lady Macbeth on down - strong women who didn’t put on chain-mail bikinis to go forth into battle, but exercised immense powers by other ways.”

—GRRM

Brienne is Sansa with a sword. 

—GRRM

SANSA

Art credit: The North Remembers by © Isabel Westling

At the same time, this is also the era where courtly romance was born: the gallant Knight, the fair lady, the princess, all of that stuff. That became very big, initially in the courts of France and Burgundy, but it spread all over Europe, including England and Germany.  And it still has its roots in a lot of stuff that we follow today. I mean, in some sense the Disney Princess archetype — the whole princess mythos — that we’re all familiar with is a legacy of the troubadours of the romance era of medieval France. Sansa completely bought into that, loved everything about that. She dreamed of jousts, bards singing of her beauty, fair knights, being the mistress of a castle and perhaps a princess and queen. The whole romantic thing. 

—GRRM

Read more about The Kick-Ass Ladies Club here.

[girl4music]

At its core, Xena is an action/fantasy so it is neither a drama or a comedy. That’s why it can do both so well.

Because it’s not restricted to being one or the other:

Its core is an action show in a fantasy environment so it can do both drama and comedy with no restrictions.

A lot of TV shows were just like Xena was in the 90’s.

Buffy was like this. Charmed was like this. X Files… Sliders… Even Star Trek. Like… it’s not uncommon.

It’s just not what TV art/entertainment is now sadly.

The major cult classics are mostly genre TV shows for a reason. People preferred the versatility back then. The experimentation. The campiness. The focus on the characters over the plot. The well-written themes. And the lessons and morals embedded in the scenes.

It was just… a different time and place for TV media back in the 90’s/early 2000’s and not everyone prefers it like this. Clearly, I do, but it’s not everyone’s thing. Some people prefer the keeping to one tone or one genre and the characters wrapping around that. That’s not me. It’s never been me and what I watch.

I’ve always been into supernatural/fantasy/action shows most of all because they’re really the only ones where they’re willing to be versatile enough in do both drama and comedy in one sitting of an episode. I call it “half an half”. I haven’t seen like reality shows, soap operas or sitcoms do this so I’ve never been into them.

Xena’s always been my “go to” example for a show thsts so versatile that it’s all over the map. Literally. Like…. Xena’s map is so historically inaccurate that it’s practically drawn by a 2 year old. That’s being nice. 😂

But that’s the fun and charm of it really. Nobody wants an historically accurate or a more “realistic” Xena. Everybody wants props like multi-coloured strobe lights and wired bras in an Ancient Greek mythology setting with absolutely no explanation for it at all because it’s a lot of fun and everybody wants fun.

As I said. You either get it or you don’t.