#that's Xena's husband

[vertigoartgore]

Parks and Recreation's promotional photos for the (fake) music album of the legendary jazzman Duke Silver (Ron Swanson's other identity).

[lucyllawless]

#xena definitely owns multiple "happy wife, happy life" t-shirts

[nandorelentlessdelacruz]

Good Omens fans, I fell your pain.

I'm tired too. About queer matter I feels like I'm stuck between:

Vanilla teen stuff like Heartstopper

Awful movies with bad acting and poor script like Happiest Season (2020)

Ships with homoeotic subtext that never become canon or never get a happing ending [add giant list}

Is it even possible to have the drama, the complicated romance and the couple end up together? I'm getting old waiting for this

[girl4music]

I know I said I wouldn't be uploading anymore exclusive bonus content unless I got recommendations but this made me howl.

LUCY: "Her mother was always trying to marry her off to... well just about anybody in the end and... uh, for some reason Xena wasn't having it and kept rejecting the offers of her mother. The suitors that her mother put forward. So Xena remains a single girl... as ever.

She's alright with that."

Look at them. They are dying to burst out laughing. Especially Lucy.

[drowningparty]

Thinking so hard about Gabrielle in Seeds of Faith. I always love the scenes where Gabrielle and Ares are alone and he tries to tempt her with power. Obviously she never falls for it, she's too smart for that, but I like how much Ares respects her abilities & how much she's grown. Ares sees her potential to be a great warrior, even giving her a taste of godhood b/c he knows part of her does want the power to change the world and make it a better, kinder, safer place, and she's already spent all of S4 learning sometimes words aren't enough.

No one else is willing to see that side of her b/c no one else wants to believe sweet Gabrielle would choose violence, even though she's destined to eventually take Xena's place and succeed her as a warrior who fights to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Even Xena refuses to see it, reprimands her for getting too 'dagger-happy' b/c she still wants to think of Gabrielle as the peace-loving bard, even though she's not that woman anymore. Ares sees it, he's been paying attention. He thinks she could be a god. She could be anything.

[fazedlight]

All I'm saying is, if you see your dead arch nemesis (who you are responsible for creating and murdering) beckoning you in the forest...

Perhaps you should not follow her into a misty cave.

[crazyeyesalti]

opinion time

okay so xena is amazing and badass and worthy of praise etc... but there are times (especially in her interactions with gabrielle whilst xena was pregnant with eve) where I can't help but think "damn... you're a lil bit of a hypocrite huh"

[smallhatlogan]

extremely subtle subtext in 1997

[reysdriver]

just found out my long-term boyfriend (Malcolm from Survivor) is married to someone else (I have never even met him) when I've spent my whole life loving him (his first season aired when I was like 8 years old)

this is devastating news; I may disappear because of this

[bardicious]

Ships that are variations on the same thing:

Gabrielle/Xena

Will/Hannibal

Charles/Erik

Aziraphale/Crowley

Bashir/Garak

And I love them for that.

[arytha]

i sit here and go "oh era's setting is kind of complicated when i want to explain it" and then i remember Xena's entire visual novel involves quantum mechanics and i just awkward-puppet-glance-meme.jpg

[raisinchallah]

xena warrior princess was the closest we ever got to a mass attempt to make straight men into femslash fujoshis that is making straight men appreciate and engage with f/f relationships in the way that women play with their tortured tormented gay barbie dolls in great works of literature it all starts with the placement of women in battle against and beside other women and this being a place of bonding camaraderie and love and by placing this in ancient greece it begins to attempt its bold rewriting of history and working as a grand femslash manifesto by yurifying one of the great root yaois of the western canon but also this ultimately understands that in the same way many of the most high octane and insane homoerotic relationships between men often appeal most to women that xena is positioned with a foot in the hot babes breasting boobily genre of previous attempts at lesbicious homoeroticism between women aimed at men of things like barbarella and lesbian vampire films while also understanding that women watch these films but also that this is the girl power 90s and that lesbians will be tuned in and so also engages in a tongue in cheek fashion with the feminist rewriting of mythology and constructs a world a beautiful mirror of yaoi world the world of men where all the most important relationships are between women and men are evil exes or mediocre husbands or enemies to vanquish or silly jesters kept around to laugh at much in the way women can be set dressing or romantic rivals for the main relationship in great works of homoerotic literature about men sadly this did not seem to work as a manifesto to inspire grand change within the genre as the only straight men converted to this cause were the straight men writing for xena and the straight women believed it was unfeminist to make women lesbians and that by seeing xena as a great work of homoerotic television it was undermining its feminist message and television decided that only the worlds most boring lesbians and bisexual women would be allowed to write for tv thus unable to truly construct a grand second generation of xena inspired works with even more homoeroticism rather than less thus leaving it somewhat of an evolutionary dead end in that regard tragically

[skullsnpineapples]

Xena Warrior Princess really gave Gabrielle a husband and didn’t even wait a couple episodes to draw out the separation of Gabrielle and Xena they go, nope this is too long for them to be apart, and murder her husband 7 minutes after their wedding happens on screen.

[doctorprofessorsong]

I've been working on how to articulate this for a bit, but the core of it is this:

I love that queer media now includes stories that are visibly and unmistakably queer. When I was a kid, we got nothing but implied queerness and by my teens we had hard fought indie films and eventually LOGO. So I have nothing but love for queer characters living lives openly on screen.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, reading a character as queer or seeing your queerness in a story that doesn't feature someone saying "I'm queer" is still beautiful and valid and tbh I'm sort of at the limit of my patience when it comes to people diminishing these stories because someone doesn't look into the camera and come out.

Queerness isn't one experience. It's a wide range and there's room for both types of stories. In fact, for those of us who may be percieved as straight or who are in the closet, sometimes a queer coded character may resonate stronger because we, too, are in this dance of performance and assumptions and it's not always easy to be seen.

Queer media is more than media that has out characters in similar gender relationships. Queer media is about finding ourselves on screen. And sometimes our stories are muddy. Sometimes we aren't out. Sometimes we are only seen by the people who can read between the lines. Sometimes we don't even know our own queerness for decades or longer.

Stop upholding heteronormativity by erasing queer coding. Why the fuck do you want Dean Winchester to be straight? Why do you want to interpret the Doctor who has a wife and a husband and has been in female presenting and male presenting forms as cishet? Next your gonna tell me Xena and Gabrielle were just best friends.

Anyway. I'm tired.

[theosconfessions]

Love is Embarrassing

The Final Choice- For Real

i know ive been saying this since the dawn of time but you guys. i appreciate every single one of you who have participated in scars bachelorette challenge. we've been on this since december and its so crazy to me that its over... or should i say the bc is over. the story is not. she bonded so much with all of them and she had such high romance bars with all of them by the end.but eugene won ..not only because he got her pregnant [which lmao i knew it was coming .she was def gonna get pregnant by someone.. its not a kline bc without that happening] but because he never stopping showing up for our girl. shed get home from dates and eugene was hanging out waiting to play some games with her. including the lame llama one she loves. they just have a really special connection. elia- they bonded from the jump i mean not only sexually but he was the only contestant to call her out on her bullshit. which i loved.and its what the klines need more of @fl0ptrait thank you for creating such a doll for scar to meet and fuck haha! he was always right there fighting for her xena- was a fucking CHARMER. like that girl knew how to speak to scar to make her swoon and swoon easy. i think she had the quickest romance jump from the beginning of this challenge. i think while her interest may have wained in the end of the challenge bc lets face it scar threw some curveballs she really really did want to romance the shit out of scar .. and i was here for it @bubblepopsims luxor- what can i say this guy surprised me on the first solo one on one date. partly bc scar freaked him out to begin with haha! but also because of how suave he can be. like he was calm through the whole thing but making his intentions known once he got to know her. HOWEVER this isnt the last time we're seeing luxor and he will be in the stephens continued thank you to the lovely @simvanie eugene- THIS BOY... mannnn he never gave up on her and lets face it if the baby were elias hed be like i mean thats okay. still pick me though to be your husband haha! theyre not married YET they will be but these two just mesh.and i think they always have . scar was just too blind to see if way back then.and it too this challenge to make it known to her what a catch eugene was @duusheen many cute babes to come bonus shots under the cut of their reactions.. i dont know when my next bc will be or if i will do one but man you guys made this such a great experience. the stephens continued will be picking back up as well as finnies globetrotter and his part of the stephens soon <3

[girl4music]

We really need to unpack how similar Gabrielle’s Dark future is to Xena’s Dark past and how Gabrielle walked freely into the Dark but was ultimately capable of not falling into the darkness even though she does go through a lot of what Xena went through. Xena lost her brother and that sent her down a spiral of violence and eventually all out bloodlust when betrayed by Caesar.

Gabrielle loses her entire family sans her sister, her husband, her own child (that she herself killed 3 times!) and yet she still remains good or in the Light. I’m not saying it doesn’t faze her or negatively impact her. It does in very irrevocable ways - but the fact is that she remained unmoved by it in the way that she never went down that same spiral of violence as Xena.

But the question is why? What makes her so special?

Maybe it’s not so much HER that’s special but rather the love Xena and Gabrielle shared that is. Perhaps the reason why she never fell into darkness is because the love she had for Xena - and in return - the love Xena had for her - is what kept her on the right path in life.

Which is poignant because Gabrielle did that for Xena too. She is what kept her on the straight and narrow.

So Xena was wrong. Gabrielle was better off with her because Gabrielle was always meant to be a warrior and was always meant to lose her blood innocence.

So if she was without Xena, she would have spiralled because there’s no justifiable reason for her not to.

As I said - she’s not special so she’s not shielded from darkness or that of the consequences of falling into darkness. It’s probably just because love was her Light and that had far more of a grip on to her than the Dark.

A written thematic narrative like this would be too much if not for the way Lucy and Renee portrayed it as leading characters. Allowing their characters’ relationship to ebb and flow naturally and organically through the characterization and the story being told.

See what I mean about how it all HITS better as a love story? Everything in the show feels more valuable. The romantic aspect doesn’t ruin the show, it enhances it because the love between them is the heart of it and the main driving force behind every narrative choice.

I wish more shows with WLW representation in did it this way because then it wouldn’t feel so contrived. It wouldn’t feel like it’s put there because it HAS TO be but rather - it’s put there because it feels right to be. They really did NAIL WLW representation in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ whether they realized they were providing it or not because they stayed focused on depicting two women in love BECAUSE OF the story and not in addition to it or despite it or regardless of it.

BECAUSE the story WORKS and HITS best that way or the individual character stuff doesn’t make sense. If not for the profound love between Xena and Gabrielle, how could either of them possibly have overcome and triumphed in their own individual character storylines? What possible justifiable reason would be for them to if not to fight for the love that they have for the other?

If there’s only ever one victory in this show it’s LOVE because there’s not a chance of any victory without it. Both these characters would be lost to the darkness without being a northern star to and for each other.