#it always has been !!!!!!!!!!!

[girl4music]

Happy 29th anniversary to the pilot episode of XENA.

Original air date: September 4th, 1995.

Directed by Doug Lefler. Written by Robert Tapert.

Lead starring Lucy Lawless as Xena.

and Renee O’Connor as Gabrielle.

I will watch and write meta about other TV shows.

I will watch and write meta about other TV ships.

But nothing I watch or write meta about in this world will ever come close to matching my fan passion and loyalty to the TV show ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ and the TV ship Xena and Gabrielle. They are my one true love.

What ‘Sins Of The Past’ does once you’ve seen the whole TV show and watch the episode back over is it shows you how intertwined these soulmates already are as the event of them meeting saves their lives and once you are aware of the wheres and whys of this - the show itself completely changes into something more valuable than you initially saw and understood. I recommend people go back and watch it and only view it as a love story from the very beginning because the way it hits you when you do is just mind-blowing.

They set up a beautifully complex and layered WLW love story between Xena and Gabrielle without really realizing that that’s what they were doing because it’s such a very natural and authentic queer storytelling of two strangers that find home in the soul of each other.

"There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met” is a lyric in a song written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher from ‘The Muppets Movie’. Writer and co-executive producer, who wrote many of the most formative episodes of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’, Steven L. Sears affectionately ascribes that lyric to Xena and Gabrielle because he believes it perfectly describes the incredible soulmate connection that the two main characters share right from the very beginning of the TV show. And I would have to say that I agree with him on that because no matter what alternative Universe, Uber timeline, reincarnated lifetime or afterlife it is, they meet each other and they develop an attraction to and affinity for each other that seemingly goes way beyond basic friendship and romance and they have a dynamic that is so strong, so substantial and so damn profound that the studio gave up on censoring them. It’s a dynamite chemistry that can be felt so viscerally that you can watch the episodes countless times over and still pick up on fresh new things about the way these two characters are with one another and how they balance and complement each other so perfectly that they’re basically the human representation of yin and yang. And you can read my Xena and Gabrielle: Character study thesis to learn what I mean by that.

Their relationship is incredibly well-written in that it’s so carefully and conscientiously slow-burned and evolved from friends into lovers that it will make it impossible not to ship them together. Believe me - even if you’ve seen Xena before, you haven’t seen it like this. You haven’t seen it as a WLW love story from the beginning to the end. But once you do, you will be attached to it in ways that will make you just like me.

That is… Lifelong dedicated to and enamoured with it.

This is a TV show that finished airing in the year 2001 but it’s been my everything since I first discovered it at 5 years old just flicking through the UK channels bored out of my mind or so my parents have told me.

I cannot even begin to imagine of who I’d be without this TV show and TV ship in my life and I know no other will ever come close to it or them for me for the rest of my life. So all day today I am spending my time celebrating not just the TV show’s anniversary of its pilot episode but also Xena and Gabrielle’s anniversary of meeting and becoming the greatest love story ever told in TV art/entertainment history. They’re iconic and legendary in the LGBTQ community for a reason. That reason is that they’re the first and, honestly, still the best WLW/queer representation that can ever be witnessed and engaged with on the TV screen. The factors as to why that’s true are many,… but mainly… it’s because they were allowed to exist and evolve together as the only lead main female characters in such a way that no other WLW ship on TV ever would or could do so again. They may have been severely censored as an explicit romantic and fully maintext confirmed and committed couple on screen but the creators never let that prevent them from providing a depiction of an all-encompassing love that was much like a romance and still went beyond a romance. Xena and Gabrielle’s love went way beyond the boundaries of romance. I’m not ever saying it’s not that. I’m just saying that it’s more than that and that’s exactly what makes it even more romantic than anything else ever created at least in the TV format and paradigm it was.

Since then, the landscape has changed so drastically that TV WLW/queer ships are never given what they got. Which was a 6 seasons, 22-24 episodes-long epic journey of them just being each other’s absolute EVERYTHING. You can see, hear and feel every single moment of that in who Xena and Gabrielle are as both individual main characters and as a main character dynamic because they do not ever neglect any real and raw aspect about them. The only thing you do not ever get to see between them - although it is heavily implied often - is sexual intimacy. That really is not a loss because everything else that should or needs to be there is there way more than it is with any other WLW/queer TV ships in any other TV shows because they’re lead main characters. In fact… they’re the only lead main characters that are credited throughout the entire run of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ and, honestly, sometimes I do wish TV ships in other TV shows would censor themselves every now and again so that they would be forced to dig deeper into the nuances and details as much as they did with Xena and Gabrielle.

I know many would disagree with me here but I’m adamant that the censorship helped them more than it hindered them because what you got instead with them was such a powerful representation of true love that didn’t have to rely on sex to represent it. I know that they couldn’t be shown to be sexually intimate because it wasn’t allowed to be sexual. Nowadays it can but I find that sex is used too much now when it shouldn’t be because a real life WLW/queer ship is more than sex and that’s why Xena and Gabrielle is still better representation even in this day and age.

It’s a combination of queer censorship, unbelievably strong chemistry between the leads and the creator/cast/crew’s sincere intention with queer storytelling that gave us the truly EPIC WLW love story that we got with XENA and I wouldn’t have it any other way because, for me, that is everything I could ever want.

So if you love this TV show and TV ship, please join me in celebrating the timelessly magical experience it is by writing meta about what these things mean to you.

XENA: “You know, I’m sending you home in the morning.”

GABRIELLE: “I won’t stay home. I don’t belong there, Xena. I’m not the little girl that my parents wanted me to be. You wouldn’t understand.”

XENA: “It’s not easy proving you’re a different person.

*Gabrielle eyes her curiously, Xena throws a bundle of blankets at her, gestures to the other side of the fire*

You can sleep over there.”

XENA: “You know, where I’m headed, they’ll be trouble.”

GABRIELLE: “I know.”

XENA: “Then why would you want to go into that with me?”

GABRIELLE: “That’s what friends do. They stand by each other when there’s trouble.”

XENA: “All right, friend.”

[riku-wo]

Y'know what?? eff you!!! *makes my art whimsy again*

[thehallstara]

yall are falling into the trap of history that has been walked for millenia and you don't even realize it

[laurenkmyers]

as someone who was introduced to buddie and 911 through your live blogs, your gifs and your fics only to see you get quieter and quieter as the clownery went on was so sad...but now? to see the sheer joy in your posts as buck is (finally) given the queer arc he deserves? now *i'm* crying. this is what queer happiness looks like. and i'm glad to be here to witness it.

"this is what queer happiness looks like"- please know i'm an emotional wreck right now over this.

but in all honesty, thank you- this post has made me cry more than you know. because i love this show and these characters and the fandom and have done since the pilot. it's been a tough old ride, with many breaks and pauses along the way.

but we did it. <3

[hustlemeanokay]

And people continually ask me why I want to leave the US. Why I could possibly want to move and live outside of this country.

Maybe it's because I'm not even that fucking surprised that this complete and total fuck-head won. Because this is the type of person that fills our country. These are the bible thumping, 'merica flag waving, thinking they're all right because they're all white, wanting things to go back to a time where women weren't even allowed to have their own fucking bank account people and they'll want all of this and fucking call it patriotism.

The sooner we can get the fuck out of this country, the better.

[c1airidryl]

Sometimes it's fun wearing makeup and being treated like a Hot Girl TM. And it's like omg all you people treating me with kid gloves on all of a sudden. If only you knew the wretch I truly am 99% of the time.

[fan-of-random-bs]

Explanation of my last post:

I'm an asexual who makes a lot of sex jokes. Yesterday, I was playing truth or dare, like you do, and there were some questions about romance and attraction. I answered them truthfully, and someone else said that I made to many sex jokes to be ace. Like what the fuck dude? My humor doesn't decide my sexuality.

[eliseliedl]

i want to do so many things but i'm too depressed to do shit.

[feltpool]

Day 26

[sailoreddy]

[clfixationstation]

oh god, I just remembered the election plotline in rwby volume 7 (which was definitely not influenced by the US 2016 election at all)

yeah I have nothing else to say about that, I just really like rwby volume 7 and I'm hoping to not see a repeat

[sthrena]

[merkerlerspeaks]

I've always felt that I wasn't meant for kids. Biologically I can rarely understand it and it's like any moment I can understand it, that understanding just magically disappears after a while.

But adoption? I can understand adoption. I honestly really feel like it is in my future to adopt some day. Maybe later on in my life things will be different, but if I it's hard for me to understand having biological kids, maybe I'm not meant too.

[starlooove]

Omg i finally found the words for it thanks to that post; I was wondering about how miles was facing a weird type of treatment from people and at the time it felt like he was…dodging the racism.

And a part of me was kind of happy but it still felt off and after that I realized he wasn’t dodging racism, it was just that the people acknowledging him at all were ignoring his character in general.

They were making him the straight man in comparison to the rest of the cast, which y’all do with damn near every black character u can’t racially stereotype (Sam Wilson, Duke Thomas, any black woman ever). Y’all also ignore that he’s afro latino and use the B in Spanish to say he’s not connected with his culture at all which is so so so far from the truth it’s sick. I think y’all need to rewatch the first movie bc ur forgetting that he wasn’t fucking with visions and still had connections to his old community, and the song “what’s up danger” is about and FOR him

[hmsharmony]

Going to disappear for a bit. I may have a couple things queued, not sure. I don’t have it in me to see posts justifying the murder of civilians simply because they’re Israeli.