#Liz Friedman or no

[girl4music]

This is taken from Xena’s Hong Kong Origins (with Rob Tapert, Liz Friedman, Doug Lefler & David Pollison) on the Anchor Bay DVD's.

Here you have complete validation that even though they did not intend to start off with having Xena and Gabrielle be together as a romantic couple, or at least best friends in love, they eventually wrote to that natural progression in their relationship and they fully accepted and embraced them as a WLW ship - which I've said all along is what they did but I'm sure you'll appreciate the evidence.

[glossglamour]

house md has had two sapphic writers and a writer who has written slash fanfiction before........and No One thought to tell me this ??????

[greghatecrimes]

I've been on and off debating this for a few months, but finally decided to do it:

tattoo (my first) is courtesy of my amazing partner!❤️ little ramble under the cut.

(xiii is the roman numeral for 'thirteen'!)

Everything about this show-- but specifically the character of Thirteen-- has given me an ability to put things into words that I never imagined I would be able to express, let alone connect with other people over. It's been such a comfort for me over the past... almost year and a half, especially so now that I've been thrown headfirst into the reality of being chronically ill and getting diagnosed with a genetic condition over the last few months.

For the rest of my life the number thirteen will hold such lovely significance for me. A lucky number. A symbol of a character I relate to, take comfort in, and adore (and who happens to be one of the best-written lgbt+ characters of her era, let alone when compared to a lot of present day characters). And, most importantly, a symbol of my own personal healing and growth (especially because writing In the Dirt has been so incredibly healing for me so far & will continue to be).

Lucky thirteen, indeed.

[cosmoseinfeld]

STOP!!!!! one of the head writers on house is a lesbian. this explains everything.

[smallhatlogan]

reading this thing this lesbian wrote back in 2003 when she was really mad about AFIN and it's so interesting to see someone pretty much accusing them of queerbaiting even back then (when the word in the same sentence as Xena makes people get really mad nowadays) and also it's pretty funny how little fandom has changed

Extremely funny that the "well I fucking despise the actual piece of media in question but at least we have fanfiction" mentality was around even in 2003

[girlonthelasttrain]

I have him blocked so I don't know if people have ever sent him an ask on this topic, but rather than question the choices Robert Hewitt Wolfe made while writing DS9 thirty years ago I'd rather ask whatever the fuck is going on in any given episodes he wrote for Elementary less than a decade ago (don't ask him tho I actually don't want to know)

[greghatecrimes]

my hypothesis is that the latter of the two ("the softer side") is written so much better than "skin deep" because it was actually written by one of the Writers Room Lesbians (Liz Friedman)

skin deep was written by... you guessed it, three men.

Okay one thing I have to get off my chest about House

House MD has two major episodes with intersex patients and one handles it better than most discourse today and one was wildly intersexist and transphobic even by 2000s standards

[lucyflawless]

Okay. I'm in the middle of my Xena rewatch, and I'm on A Family Affair, and can we talk about the scene where Xena meets Gabrielle's parents?

Xena: So, how's she been?

Gabs' dad: Without you? Just fine.

Xena: I meant, after everything she's been through.

Gabs' dad: You should know. Seducing her away from home with your heroics, filling her head with strange ideas. How's she been? Changed forever.

Like! This is the most obvious metaphor for a parent/family that can't accept their gay kid, and by extension, their gay kids' partner. And I think it's really well executed. It hits close to home, but it feels like the person writing it gets it. Y'know. Which, given that Liz Friedman co-wrote this, tracks. She knew what the fuck she was doing here and it's so well done.

Anyway, I needed to just simply gush lightly about it. I will literally never get over the fact that this show portrays both the joys and the hardships of a lesbian relationship better than more explicit shows today. I'll never get over it!

[girl4music]

'The Furies' was a very ambitious episode,... definitely. But since they were going where they were going in Season 3, it made a lot of sense to have this very ambitious episode as the opener to the whole thing because the questions that come up for the whole thing are 'did Xena really kill women and children?' 'Is Xena the daughter of Ares?' 'Did Cyrene kill her husband?' These are very heavy questions to ask and themes to explore, and showing the characters having to work them out and answer or maybe not answer them was, as I said,... very ambitious because they were going heavy as much as possible but still wanted and were determined to throw in the light just as much.

I like 'The Furies' a lot for what it does in playing with the tones. In Xena's head - having been driven mad - that actually works a lot and gives real significance to the whiplashing tones of comedy vs drama and Lucy just nails it either way. So much range. So much versatility. You buy it completely that she's been driven to the edge of insanity but she's not so far over the edge that she cannot do what Xena can always do. Be three steps ahead of the game and defeat the villain. Not that I view Ares as a villain. But he still is a frequent antagonist.

So they set up the precedent quite well with 'The Furies' for where they were going and what they would be doing with the entire season and I think it's probably the best opener to any of the seasons as far as setting it up tonally... because really... it stands out in that on it's own. You may not have known what you were going into, but you were at least aware that it could go either way at any point and that's great.

Season 3 does go either way at any point. Dramatic as fuck or daft as a brush and when you go back and you watch 'The Furies', it does dawn on you that it was intentional that they did what they did with it and you're ready for the rollercoaster ride unlike in Season 2 where you're not prepared whatsoever for the emotional whiplash of it all. You see, Season 3 is successful in that it's going to hit you hard but when you look back on it, all the signs were there that it would and that's clever writing. Not just clever writing but also clever overall production execution. I love Season 3 of XENA with everything in me. I believe the way that they did this season in particular of the TV show is phenomenal television. It's up there with BUFFY Season 5 easily.

We got so fucking lucky with the creators/cast/crew of this TV show.

LIZ: "Apparently, I have no idea what I'm talking about."

ROB: "There you go. Nor do the studio though."

LIZ: "That's true. Well, they assume that people thinking they're lesbians is a bad thing."

ROB: "Ah."

See? They're 100% on our side.

Always were. Always will be. ❤️

[chthonic-cassandra]

More people should know about the Hercules episodes in which members of the creative team are played by common guest stars and Kevin Sorbo is secretly actual Hercules in disguise.

Kurtzman (Ted Raimi) and Orci are sleeping on bunk beds in the studio and showing up at meetings in their pajamas, trying to suggest a "Chimpules" in which Sorbo is replaced by a monkey. Liz Friedman (Hudson Leick) always wants to punch things and makes a lot of lesbian jokes. Rob Tapert (Bruce Campbell) keeps trying to leave to go fishing. It's a million in-jokes without any regard for the audience. I don't know how any of it got made. It's sort of amazing.

[greghatecrimes]

there's actually two lesbian writers! and one of them was a producer on xena: warrior princess (very gay 90s show) too :)

i just found out some episodes of house were written by a lesbian... so much sense

[greghatecrimes]

I don't think you can say house md was not homophobic even with the so called "rep" it's definitely a product of its time but you don't gotta lie and say it was more progressive than it was, you can just like the show while acknowledging it's problems. Yes, there was a bisexual character, who had countless biphobic jokes made at their expense. There was a whole episode where house and wilson talk about how weird it is for one of the nurses to date a trans woman who they call a tranny. There's a whole episode about them discovering a teen girl is intersex and house misgendering her by calling her a man the whole episode and telling her that her anger is due to the cancer she has when she becomes upset about being told she is "not really a girl" I love the show too, but every person that says the show is homophobic and transphobic is right, it's a product of its time, it still more bigoted than "progressive", and liking it even like that is not a crime or makes you a bad person. Let's not lie about what it is just because we like the show, plenty of queer people do but that doesn't make it less bigoted.

Respectfully: I don't think I'm lying at all when I say it was progressive for its time.

You're right, though, anon! It ABSOLUTELY could be bigoted, too, especially in the early seasons (specifically I'm thinking of the moments you mentioned, the one with the nurse House and Wilson discuss, and the entire episode "Skin Deep", etc.) and I can acknowledge that. I agree, it doesn't make someone a bad person to enjoy something like this show that is indeed a product of its time. But even just beyond the "rep" of having Thirteen as a canon bisexual character, the show did so much that was progressive for its time IRT: lgbt+ presence in media.

Just one example of many I could give is "The Softer Side". The entire episode "Skin Deep" is something I like to skip over, but it's not a "forgive and forget" type of thing. I don't approve of the episode and I want to hold the writers who came up with that entire thing and everyone who let it slide accountable. But three seasons later, we got "The Softer Side", written by Liz Friedman. The Softer Side's patient is a child who was born intersex, but was given gender assignment surgery at birth, and whose parents don't want him to know he's intersex. The episode handles his case with such care that I don't think a show today could really even come close to achieving. The issue was never that this kid was intersex. He's not being treated for a condition that was caused by him being intersex. Him being intersex has nothing to do with the diagnosis he gets at the end of the episode! The only reason him being intersex came up during his case is because his parents didn't want him to know, and thus told the doctors at PPTH to lie to him about testosterone he was being given (it's implied his parents had been giving it to him for at least a year/a short while iirc). And the team at PPTH (specifically Thirteen) thought that he had the right to know, that it would be good for him to know and understand this part of himself! They're supportive! The episode doesn't wave away the fact that he was given gender assignment surgery! It pushes for an acceptance of both masculine and feminine and giving people the freedom to decide for themselves, even when they are children (and not saying a child the patient's age is too young to know what he/she wants, etc.)

The way House MD and Liz Friedman handled this absofuckingloutely blows other shows portrayal of intersex people at the time out of the water. Does it make up for Skin Deep, or the t-slur comment? No. But it set a precedent for how other TV shows should handle such subject matter going forward. This is why I don't think the show as a whole is homophobic, despite having homophobic/transphobic/bigoted moments.

It's also worth noting that Liz Friedman, who wrote The Softer Side, is a lesbian herself, was a writer on Xena: Warrior Princess (an earlier example of queercoding), and was one of two LGBT writers who were in charge of writing all of Thirteen's plotlines.

[cosmoseinfeld]

there were at least two gay people working in executive positions on house.

[warlenys]

if queerbait is running towards a cake in a forest and falling through a trapdoor then the house md writers were taking handfuls of that cake and throwing it bit by bit down into the hole for us

[galathynius]

2023 reading log

the uncensored picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde / jan. 2-9 / 4 stars

buzz saw: the improbable story of how the washington nationals won the world series by jesse dougherty / jan. 9-11 / 4.5 stars

proposal by meg cabot / jan. 17 / 3 stars

sidelined: sports, culture, and being a woman in america by julie dicaro / jan. 12-17 / 4 stars

remembrance by meg cabot / jan. 18-19 / 3 stars

how sweet it is by dylan newton / jan. 19-20 / 3 stars

daughters of sparta by claire heywood / jan. 21-22 / 3 stars

highly suspicious and unfairly cute by talia hibbert / jan. 22 / 4 stars

gentlemen prefer blondes: the diary of a professional lady by anita loos / jan. 23-26 / 3 stars

hell bent by leigh bardugo / jan. 26-31 / 4 stars

all about love: new visions by bell hooks / jan. 22-31 / 4 stars

daisy jones & the six by taylor jenkins reid / jan. 31-feb. 2 / 4 stars

everything i know about love: a memoir by dolly alderton / feb. 2-9 / 4 stars

emma by jane austen / feb. 11-19 / 4 stars

fake it till you bake it by jamie wesley / feb 19-23 / 3.5 stars

my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell / feb. 23-26 / 4 stars

throttled by lauren asher / feb. 26-28/ 2 stars

the locker room by meghan quinn / mar. 1-5 / 1 star

come as you are: the surprising new science that will transform your sex life by emily nagoski / feb. 17-mar. 5 / 4.5 stars

pucked by helena hunting / mar. 5-11 / 3 stars

legendborn by tracy deonn / mar 12-23 / 4.5 stars

unadulterated something by m.j. duncan / mar. 23-25 / 4 stars

the fifth season by n.k. jemisin / mar. 26-apr. 15 / 4 stars

how to fake it in hollywood by ava wilder / apr. 16-19 / 3.5 stars

sharp objects by gillian flynn / apr. 19-22 / 4 stars

the homewreckers by mary kay andrews / apr. 22-25 / 3.5 stars

the kiss curse by erin sterling / apr. 25-26 / 3.5 stars

the wedding crasher by mia sosa / apr. 26-27 / 3 stars

let’s get physical: how women discovered exercise and reshaped the world by danielle friedman / mar. 25-apr. 27 / 4 stars

mile high by liz tomforde / apr. 27-may 6 / 1.5 stars

happy place by emily henry / may 6-7 / 5 stars

carrie soto is back by taylor jenkins reid / may 7 / 4 stars

the spanish love deception by elena armas / may 8 / 2 stars

neon gods by katee robert / may 8-9 / 1 star

love in the time of serial killers by alicia thompson / may 9-11 / 4 stars

the bodyguard by katherine center / may 11 / 4 stars

the intimacy experiment by rosie danan / may 11-12 / 3 stars

upgrade by blake crouch / may 12-13 / 4 stars

by any other name by lauren kate / may 13 / 3 stars

the dead romantics by ashley poston / may 15-17 / 4 stars

the ballad of songbirds and snakes by suzanne collins / may 19-28 / 3.5 stars

so many ways to lose: the amazin’ true story of the new york mets—the best worst team in baseball by devin gordon / may 13-jun. 4 / 4 stars

iron widow by xiran jay zhao / jun. 5-7 / 3 stars

the grace year by kim liggett / jun. 7-8 / 4 stars

the last magician by lisa maxwell / jun. 9-11 / 4.5 stars

little fires everywhere by celeste ng / jun. 12-14 / 4 stars

not a happy family by shari lapena / jun. 14-17 / 2.5 stars

the familiars by stacey halls / jun. 17-21 / 3 stars

the girls i’ve been by tess sharpe / jun. 21-22 / 3.5 stars

once more with feeling by elissa sussman / jun. 23 / 3 stars

the cheat sheet by sarah adams / jun. 24-25 / 1 star

how to sell a haunted house by grady hendrix / jun. 26-29 / 3 stars

little thieves by margaret owen / jul. 1-3 / 4.5 stars

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone / jul. 3-6 / 3 stars

the very secret society of irregular witches by sangu mandanna / jul. 11-12 / 4 stars

the lies of locke lamora by scott lynch / jul. 13-27 / 4.5 stars

seven days in june by tia williams / jul. 28-30 / 4 stars

bloodmarked by tracy deonn / jul. 31-aug. 2 / 4 stars

something wilder by christina lauren / aug. 3-4 / 3 stars

howl’s moving castle by diana wynne jones / aug. 4-5 / 4 stars

dark matter by blake crouch / aug. 12-13 / 3 stars

eat up! food, appetite, and eating what you want by ruby tandoh / jul. 30-aug. 14 / 4 stars

the silent companions by laura purcell / aug. 5-18 / 4 stars

mr. wrong number by lynn painter / aug. 19-20 / 2 stars

romantic comedy by curtis sittenfeld / aug. 20-21 / 4 stars

the last tale of the flower bride by roshani chokshi / aug. 21-23 / 4 stars

the hating game by sally thorne / aug. 23-25 / 2 stars

lessons in chemistry by bonnie garmus / aug. 25-26 / 2.5 stars

the godparent trap by rachel van dyken / aug. 27 / 2 stars

i’m glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy / aug. 27-29 / 4 stars

the atlas six by olivie blake / aug. 29-sep. 9 / 3 stars

wordslut: a feminist guide to taking back the english language by amanda montell / sep. 1-9 / 4 stars

practice makes perfect by sarah adams / sep. 10-11 / 3 stars

all systems red by martha wells / sep. 13-14 / 3 stars

do i know you? by emily wibberly and austin siegemund-broka / sep. 14-16 / 4 stars

same time next summer by annabel monaghan / sep. 17 / 3.5 stars

Ounder the influence by noelle crooks / sep. 18-22 / 4 stars

burn for me by ilona andrews / sep. 22-23 / 4 stars

the littlest library by poppy alexander / sep. 24 / 3 stars

the neighbor favor by kristina forest / sep. 25-27 / 3 stars

satisfaction guaranteed by karelia stetz-waters / sep. 28-oct. 5 / 3 stars

the ex talk by rachel lynn solomon / oct. 5-7 / 4 stars

change of plans by dylan newton / oct. 8-9 / 2 stars

coraline by neil gaiman / oct. 9 / 4 stars

you, again by kate goldbeck / oct. 9-11 / 3 stars

mrs. caliban by rachel ingalls / oct. 12 / 3 stars

summer sons by lee mandelo / oct. 12-19 / 4 stars

the death of jane lawrence by caitlin starling / oct. 19-24 / 3 stars

house of hollow by krystal sutherland / oct. 25-29 / 4 stars

white hot by ilona andrews / oct. 28-nov. 2 / 4.5 stars

twice shy by sarah hogle / nov. 4-5 / 3 stars

sexed up: how society sexualizes us, and how we can fight back by julia serano / nov. 2-10 / 4 stars

artificial condition by martha wells / nov. 11-14 / 4 stars

wildfire by ilona andrews / nov. 14-16 / 4.5 stars

between a fox and a hard place by mary frame / nov. 18 / 3 stars

revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights by molly smith and juno mac / nov. 18-20 / 4 stars

emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries by heather fawcett / nov. 21-24 / 4.5 stars

love and other words by christina lauren / nov. 24-25 / 3 stars

the boyfriend candidate by ashley winstead / nov. 26 / 3.5 stars

the seven year slip by ashley poston / nov. 27-28 / 5 stars

how to fall out of love madly by jana casale / dec. 3-10 / 3 stars

ordinary monsters by j.m. miro / dec. 10-21 / 3 stars

rogue protocol by martha wells / dec. 22-23 / 4 stars

what you wish for by katherine center / dec. 25 / 3 stars

the blonde identity by ally carter / dec. 25-26 / 2.5 stars

just my type by falon ballard / dec. 26-31 / 2 stars