#but still married to callisto *platonically*

[filmmakerdreamst]

Gabrielle, Xena, and their wlw legacy 25 years later

“Before I met you, no one saw me for who I was. I felt invisible. You saw all the things that I could be. You saved me, Xena.” – Gabrielle, “The Ides of March”

The story of Xena is remembered as many different things. A heroic saga, a tale of redemption, a campy romp. It’s a series that truly had it all, and that’s why it remains iconic a quarter of a century later. Yet it is perhaps best remembered for the series-long slow burn subtextual love affair between Xena and her “traveling companion” Gabrielle.

While Xena and Gabrielle never became a canonical couple throughout the show’s run, producer Liz Friedman was (and is) an out lesbian and she, along with many of the writers, are on record as having worked to push queer themes throughout the series. Though studio executives refused to allow an openly queer relationship to flourish in late 1990s all-ages programming, looking back, they got away with a lot. While the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle remains the most talked about element of the show with good reason, something that stands out during a rewatch is that Gabrielle’s story is a queer narrative from the very start.

In the pilot episode, Gabrielle and her fellow villagers are taken hostage by henchmen of the villainous Draco. Despite being “only a bard,” Gabrielle is a brave young woman, and tries to stand up for the others, but to no avail. She is, after all, a storyteller, not a warrior. At that fortuitous moment, Xena arrives and defeats the warlords effortlessly, and it changes Gabrielle’s life forever. Not only is her life spared, she has found a new purpose – Xena.

Gabrielle is immediately smitten and attempts to follow Xena out of town when the other villagers, knowing her reputation as a ruthless killer, demand that she move on. Xena is jaded and prefers to travel alone, but Gabrielle trails her. She is committed to proving to Xena that they need each other. She even saves Xena’s life by thinking on her feet and keeping her cool under pressure so that Xena finally, grudgingly feels compelled to hear her out. When Xena threatens to send her back home, Gabrielle immediately replies, “I won’t stay there,” and makes an impassioned plea to Xena to allow her to accompany her on adventures.

“Gabrielle doesn’t elaborate on the details of her alienation, but any queer viewer would be able to relate.”

Even from the very first episode, Gabrielle knows she does not belong in her hometown. She knows she does not fit in, and the heteronormative plan that has been laid out for her by the people in her life seems akin to torture. She doesn’t elaborate on the details of her alienation, but any queer viewer would be able to relate. Xena is moved by this, and she finally agrees to accept Gabrielle into her life. For both of them, this proves to be the most important decision either of them would ever make.

This is all within the very first of the one hundred thirty-four episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, and it truly set the standard for what we would see going forward. Gabrielle would have some romantic interests outside of Xena over the course of the series, but there is no questioning that her life revolved around the Warrior Princess from the moment she met her. Xena struggles with myriad romantic attachments throughout the show, conflicted over her past loves like Marcus, and the god of war, Ares, who sees the bond between her and Gabrielle as a threat and consistently attempts to break them up. For Gabrielle, she is briefly married, but her husband is little more than a plot device who is then almost immediately killed. She is trailed after by Joxer, but has no interest in him. In contrast, she is dedicated to Xena, and rarely questions the strength of their connection. Though it isn’t always explicit, by the end of the series, it’s difficult to view their relationship as anything but a love story.

Looking back, what was mandated a platonic relationship by censorship comes across more like a highly successful polyamorous relationship, in which the two grant each other space and understanding while remaining fully committed to one another. By the end of the story, they appear to be in a more monogamous arrangement, with Xena ultimately choosing Gabrielle as her one true partner, but it’s important that they allowed each other to express outside interests without anger as they grew together.

Indeed, though Xena’s affairs are many, Gabrielle’s strongest outside interest is with the Amazons. This, of course, is not without its own subtext. In the episode “Hooves & Harlots”, Xena focuses on trying to solve a murder mystery while Gabrielle trains and bonds with the Amazons. The Amazons emphasize sisterhood and they give Gabrielle a greater understanding of who she is as an entity separate from Xena. In “The Quest,” we learn that if Xena were to perish, Gabrielle would go to live with the Amazons rather than rejoining her old village or even pursuing her career as a bard. Though the Amazons are also never confirmed as queer despite the obvious queer elements of their story, Gabrielle’s emphasis on surrounding herself with a community of other queer people is important. In the Amazon episodes, the Gabrielle-specific subtext is as strong as it ever gets. In “To Helicon and Back,” Gabrielle politely notes that Xena will have to leave because a pending ceremony is Amazon-only, and Xena graciously agrees with only a trace of apprehension, quipping, “Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.” Xena supports Gabrielle and encourages her to form close bonds with other women, but they always come back to each other.

In “The Ides of March,” the villainous Callisto teams up with Xena’s cruel ex Caesar to usurp rulership of Rome from its tenuous democracy. Xena has seen a prophecy warning her to never set foot within Rome lest she risk her own death, but when Gabrielle is captured, she feels she has no choice. They nearly escape, but she is paralyzed by Callisto in the middle of a fight to free Caesar’s prisoners. Gabrielle spent much of the last season on a quest for peace, but when she sees Xena fall, she does not hesitate to unleash her full rage on the Roman guards. She fights valiantly while Xena begs her not to, fearing the cost to Gabrielle’s spirit. After they are both captured, they are imprisoned together and sentenced to death. When Xena weakly apologizes to Gabrielle, asking her forgiveness for making her break her vow of non-violence, Gabrielle insists that it’s meaningless, as nothing has ever mattered to her besides her life with Xena. The two of them are crucified together, and they die gazing into each other’s eyes. Though they return to life in the next season, we see that even in death, their souls were just as intertwined as their lives had become.

Gabrielle’s struggle with violence and the inner peace she ultimately achieves in concern to it is generally what people focus on when talking about the importance of her story, but that all happens alongside her journey to acceptance of herself as a queer person. She and Xena are not an immediate item but rather a slow burn love story in which they both must prove their love and devotion while struggling with their own inner demons. Yet still, at any time throughout the series when the two become separated, Gabrielle is not well until she is reunited with her partner. Xena, for her part, grows to depend on Gabrielle in a way that is, at first, completely alien to her. Though Xena has had many loves, none of them went to the lengths that Gabrielle went to in order to be with her. Leading up to her catastrophic death in the final episodes, her commitment to Gabrielle is agonizingly apparent. Even in death, the two of them will never be separated.

Without Gabrielle’s queer subplot, textual or not, Xena would not have been the show it was. Xena’s story involves a lot of conflicting feelings and ends with her making amends for who she was before ultimately letting go of it all and finding her own peace. Gabrielle’s story is about holding on to her faith and her kindness regardless of what she goes through. Together, these stories combined to be one of the greatest love stories in television history. Though the comics would later portray their relationship as openly queer, the fact that it didn’t need to be canonical within the show to be as important as it is to queer audiences only further proves the impact of the series, the vitality of Gabrielle’s story, and the poetic beauty of her complicated, but all-encompassing, love for Xena.

- Gabrielle, Xena, and their wlw legacy 25 years later by Sara Century

[my-name-is-apollo]

I know this has already been discussed many times, but was Artemis a lesbian? Wasn't she supposed to be a virgin goddess?

So this is not an simple topic to talk about. It's hard to apply modern sexualities onto ancient figures. Especially in this case. And of course, one is free to make their own interpretations. But I can talk about how it is in the myths.

You're right about Artemis being a virgin goddess. There's this whole arguement of "a virgin was someone who was just unmarried!" and while, yes, that is technically right, they're forgetting that for the greeks, an unmarried girl was not supposed to have sex either. So virginity eventually meany a girl who hasn't had sex. Some might say that only penetration was considered as sex, hence Artemis could have had sex with a woman and still stayed a virgin. Yes that could have been the case, but we have evidence that she didn't have sex or want it.

Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 6 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th to 4th B.C.) :

"Nor does laughter-loving Aphrodite ever tame in love Artemis the huntress with shafts of gold (khryselakatos); for she loves archery and the slaying of wild beasts in the mountains, the lyre also and dancing and thrilling cries and shady woods and the cities of upright men.

Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 16 (trans. Fowler) (Greek satire C2nd A.D.) :

APHRODITE: Let them pass too, because they are grand. And why do you never take a shot at Artemis?

EROS: Why, the great thing is that I cannot catch her; she is always over the hills and far away. But besides that, her heart is engaged already.

APHRODITE: Where, child?

EROS: In hunting stags and fawns; she is so fleet, she catches them up, or else shoots them; she can think of nothing else.

And Sappho herself, who's so famous for loving woman, wrote

Sappho, Fragment 34 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric I) (C6th B.C.) :

"Eros, loosener of limbs, never approaches her [Artemis]."

So, it's pretty much clear that she didn't want romance or sex. And that's how I see Artemis too. But I admit there are some times when it looks like she might have loved her companion romantically (Britomartis, for example) but it was pushed aside as platonic because two women in love didn't sit well with men in ancient greece. In that case, okay go ahead and make her romantically attracted, but don't limit it to girls. Because she canonically loved Orion. It's very clear because they both had decided to get married. So going by myths, wouldn't she be biromantic? Why erase that? If it's your headcanon or an AU then fine, you do you. I have zero problems. But stop claiming that Artemis is a lesbian in Greek mythology and invalidating others who see her as aroace. (this especially relevant to the PJO fandom. So many of them got mad when RR said that he interprets Artemis as aro and ace. They jumped on him saying how she's a lesbian icon and how he robbed them of representation. Please, it's spelt out in the hymns that she was uninterested in sex and romance. That's a reason she has been seen as an ace icon for years. It's not lesbophobia)

Lastly, about Artemis' hunters: A lot of people think see her as a lesbian because she lived in the forest with a group of nymphs. But I hope they know that those nymphs were mostly very young girls (in one hymn to Artemis, they're 9 years old). They are with Artemis because they've not reached the age of marriage. Because it was Artemis' job to protect girls of that age. So the idea of Artemis having a gay paradise with her nymphs in the woods is uncomfortable to me. (although, I believe some of her companions like Callisto, Britomartis were older).

TLDR; according to poets, Artemis didn't feel romantic or sexual desires. But if you're going to make her romantic, remember that she fell in love with a man too.

[jupitermelichios]

So I know everyone talks about how whether DC or Marvel has the best queer representation (the answer’s still marvel 100% due to Chris Clairmont and his confused but dedicated allyship, but DC are starting to catch up)

You know what we don’t talk about enough? Which studio has the most characters who are clearly not cishet, but haven’t been allowed to come out. Not characters that you want to be queer, the characters who everyone legit forgets aren’t queer.

And now I want a list of all these characters, so that when i get my fucking genie wish and become an editor for big two cape comics, I know who to target.

I’ll start us off:

Marvel: Kitty Pryde

Chris Clairmont is on the record (in a guest appearance on X-Plain the X-Men) as saying that if he had his time over he wouldn’t make Kitty canon queer... because he had way too much fun sneaking her relationship with Rachel (and Styr-9) past the censors. It’s word of god not canon, but when it comes to the x-men you don’t get much closer to literal word of god than word of Clairmont.

Marvel: Gambit

There is basically no textual evidence for Gambit being bi, and yet there is not a queer x-men fan in the world who doesn’t constantly forget he’s canon-straight. I have seen multiple posts of people claiming that he’s canonically queer, despite definitely not being, just because of the sheer force of his disaster-bi energy.

Marvel: Cable

Look, we all know at this point that Deadpool is queer. But the only reason that that’s such a big part of his character is thanks to Cable and Deadpool (Nicieza is pretty homophobic and yet somehow managed to write both Cable and Deadpool and the definitive Red Robin comic, both featuring very clearly queer main characters). And if Wade’s queer because he’s dating Cable, then Cable must be... come on Marvel, you can do it, just apply a tiny bit of logic...

Marvel: Wolverine

I’m just going to leave this cover here...

Marvel: Steve Rogers

Tony’s queerness has reached the nebulous ‘we’re making jokes about it in the hopes that you’ll all stop thinking he’s queer’ status of canoninity, but Steve is still officially straight, despite the fact that him and comics Tony are definitely dating. Or were. There was a messy breakup or six. Disney decided to get around that in the movies by... aging up his kid sidekick into a gorgeous adult man who Steve will do literally anything for and then framing them like a 1940′s propaganda romance movie... Good job guys!

(That’s not fanart btw, that’s from the one AU where Tony got rule63′d and her and that universe’s steve are married)

Marvel: Storm

Boy a lot of these are Clairmont’s babies. Like I said, confused but dedicated allyship. Storm regularly does things like challenge heavily queer-coded character Callisto to homo-erotic knife fights. And whatever the writers thought was happening in the panels below. It’s really past time she came out.

DC: Wonderwoman

This is the big one. The biggest one in fact. Multiple writers have said that they consider her to be queer, but word of god is not canon, and she’s still somehow in the closet. Despite being based on two different queer women. And doing shit like this all the time. And yet somehow she’s still not canonically a lesbian, even as we move further and further away from a time when Steve Trevor mattered to anyone at all.

DC: Dick Grayson

Despite what 70 years of comics have tried so hard to tell us, Dick has never canonically slept with Midnighter. Or the Tiger King of Kandahar. Or Wally West. Or Roy Harper. Or Clark Kent. Or any of the other men he’s been heavily implied to be romantically interested in over the years. And despite the fact that his relationships with woman always end in disaster. The only comfort is the Dick is 100% the sort of person to have just assumed that all straight boys jerk off thinking about their male friends and never once stopped and questioned his sexuality for more than 10 seconds.

(there is absolutely no reason why this team-up with DC’s flagship gay character had to happen while all the men are naked, except that the creative team on Grayson understood exactly what people want from a Dick Grayson comic).

DC: Tim Drake

Did you know Tim Drake is not canonically queer? And has never once felt anything like sexual attraction to any man, including Superboy? And his crush on Dick Grayson is not in any way a crush, he was just platonically stalking and fantasising about him? Tim, like his big brother, is one of the characters who is only getting queerer with time. Part of that is that they wanted to make it clear he’s a millenial, and ended up doing an accidental Cock-Ring Ken on him. (See also Harper Row, who they made butch, with a turqiouse undercut, and then were astonished when people thought she was queer. They did eventually give in, but only once she was firmly out of the main character roster). I think Tim’s queer. You think Tim’s queer. All the characters in DC comics think he’s queer. Everyone except the editorial team at DC think Tim is queer, and it is an absolute crime that they won’t let him come out.

[minority-media]

Xena: Warrior Princess is Gay Culture

I never understand when people use Xena as an example of queerbaiting. Did they even watch the same show? How did they come to that conclusion? Xena is many things, and it can definitely be problematic—Gabrielle’s India arc, I’m looking at you—but it never really fit under the queerbaiting label. Maybe if the show had ended around season three or four. Yet, even then it lived so deeply in the realm of subtext and then actual text in season six.

Spoilers for the entire show below.

In season two they kissed for the first time. There had been cheek kisses in the past, or ones that nearly hit the lips, but this was the first time they really kissed. The first time it could be interpreted as the two having a relationship. It was a huge thing at the time with gay representation being so little and there being no other way to interpret it. Their lips didn’t fully touch—it had cut away before it got to that point. But they got damn well near. The reactions at the time were incredibly varied and the show continued on. Gabrielle and Xena could be very well interpreted as a couple and the show seemed to encourage it. The 19th episode in that season, titled Ulysses, was the last time either one of them had a “boyfriend of the week” for nearly the rest of the show.

Season three seemed to continue this. It was stressed multiple times that Gabrielle was the most important thing in Xena’s life and vice versa. This also features The Rift arc, in which the two of them had to deal with their clashing ideologies and also one of their kids murdering the other. It got…dark. It was an entire arc focusing on the two of them, how much they loved each other, how much that could hurt, and how they reunited under uneasy terms at first and how that progressed. It was a serialized arc during a time where there wasn’t much of that. By the season finale, Gabrielle sacrificed herself to save Xena. It was a deeply dramatic moment and a deeply romantic one as well.

Season four was the best season in the show. It had an overarching plot and was very tight and well put together. It also featured Gabrielle trying to find her way as well as Xena realizing Gabrielle was her way. When they reunited it was deeply emotional and very much not platonic. This season was also the first time they introduced the concept of the two women being soulmates. From then on, it would be constantly repeated. The season finale was one of the best episodes in the entire show and my personal favorite.

Season five was the worst season in the show. Sure, it was still gay and fun but it was really not up to par with the previous seasons, especially following up season four. It held the worst episodes in the show and ripped tears in the canon of the show. It was also the season that Gabrielle became a dad.

Strap in, because this is going to be a wild ride.

So, Callisto used to be Xena’s nemesis but Xena killed her “for good” in season 3 when Gabrielle “died.” At the beginning of season 5 they introduced the concept of heaven and hell into the show and Callisto became an angel because of Xena. So then there was Eli, who was basically the Xenaverse version of Jesus who wanted to spread word of The Way. While this was going on Xena finds out that surprise, she’s pregnant! Everyone is deeply confused seeing as Xena is very much married to Gabrielle by this point. Gabrielle has a brief panic, thinking Xena had cheated on her, that is quickly assuaged. Ares stabs Eli through the chest and later in the ep Eli’s ghost/angel speaks to Xena as well as angel Callisto. Callisto reveals that she impregnated Xena as a gift for giving her salvation. Xena eventually gives birth, Gabrielle becomes Dadrielle in the eyes of the viewers, and then their child ends up becoming a Roman warlord through some time skips.

So that’s one way to deal with an actor’s pregnancy. It’s deeply convoluted but also deeply gay. This is a child born of two women, raised by two women.

Season six was definitely an improvement. It was also so deeply gay. Xena and Gabrielle have a whole sleeping beauty type two-parter, the title of soulmate becomes even more prominent, there are more kisses, and there’s an entire episode dedicated to their relationship in the style of a mock documentary. It’s one of my favorite for being genuinely hilarious and also superbly gay. The interviewer asks them for the “nature of their relationship” as to whether the two are a couple. Xena responds with a sly grin and Gabrielle giggles into the palm of her hand. As Xena begins to explain, the video begins fizzing out with static as the interviewer panics at losing such a good story.

Xena is a gay show and Lucy Lawless pushed for a lot of the gay moments that made it to the final cut. Sure, the words “lesbian” and “gay” are never explicitly said—in one episode they came rather close with the word “thespian” being a fill-in—yet they didn’t need to be. It was clear and obvious to anyone watching the show that they were a thing. It is not queerbaiting and by the end of the show it is not even subtext. It’s just there. Xena and Gabrielle were gay before any other show was willing to do it, even Buffy. Xena did it first.