#you know the saying that white straight men can’t write feminism or queer storytelling

[girl4music]

“Like so many of the stories that we’ve done, many many different elements came together to create a script. Mehndi was one of them and it’s something that I was a little aware of. I’ve done a little bit of reading on it. Not a lot. I believe Rob was the one who came to me, however, and said ‘Wow, this is fascinating’, ‘this is, you know, really great, what can you do with this?’

I had already wanted to grab a hold of the reincarnation idea and there are a few elements that fuelled this. One I’m going to have to reference is a song by Paul Williams, which was in The Muppet Movie. And there was a line in this one song that I felt, and I’d always felt this way, described the two characters perfectly. The line was ‘there’s not a word yet for old friends who have just met’. And I thought you know something? They are old friends. They just met. But they’re old friends. So in my mind throughout history and throughout destiny, these two characters’ souls have existed and have met, parted ways, met, intertwined, parted ways. And that fit in perfectly with the reincarnation theory but what was important for these two characters is that those two souls have throughout history intertwined, they’ve come together, they’ve parted ways, they’ve come together again, they’ve intertwined, they’ve parted ways. This has happened continuously and every time it happens in their lifetimes, they recognize each other. Not like ‘oh, you’re Xena, oh, I’m Gabrielle’. No no, they say ‘I know you. I know you and I have to be with you. I don’t know why but I do’.

Now bringing the Mehndi into it. Mehndi was perfect symbolism to this because when you think about it, Mehndi, um, if you’ve done it and if you’ve read up on what Mehndi means, it’s not just drawing. Mehndi has an entire meaning behind it. There’s a whole philosophy and spirituality based on Mehndi. The simplest part of it was the fact that Mehndi has a lot of lines that run parallel to each other and they will intersect, they will form beautiful designs, then they will part again and run parallel. Well, that’s lives. Xena and Gabrielle - those are the lives. Those are the threads of their lives. They run parallel to each other, they intersect, form beautiful designs. Then they might part but they still run parallel to each other. And what really counts is what’s between those lines. There’s the title; ‘Between The Lines’.”

Half the reason why they ended up taking the soulmates motif so seriously and literally was due to Steven L. Sears and his reincarnation idea and understanding of Xena and Gabrielle’s soulmate connection. So, in my view, half the reason why the love story is so damn profound is because of him.

Now he would be the first to scoff at that and say that I’m giving him far too much credit. But that is exactly why he is amazing and deserves that much credit.

‘Between The Lines’ took the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle to a whole other level because we do learn that they actually are true to life soulmates and all of what that informed and involved for them as individual characters as well as together as a couple. And so everything leading up to this episode now felt so much more intense and deep and poignant.

Substantial. And I wouldn’t have been able to write my character study thesis without it. Even though I don’t directly mention it - it’s sort of just embedded within the insightful interpretation that I’ve made about it because this episode doesn’t just tell a one-time storyline about the characters. It essentially informs EVERYTHING about them. Who they are and why - and especially how they are such a great team that navigate their soulmate connection to be just that.

It’s like these two people who seemed to be total strangers until this episode was seen were actually destined to meet and travel together and fall in love because their very soul that they shared fated it so.

And by the gods - I have yet to see or know a relationship that is that damn EPIC on-screen.

Xena and Gabrielle are the WLW representation you expect to be provided - considered canon or not - because this level of storytelling between female characters that can be interpreted as romantic just doesn’t happen anymore. There’s no time or room for it to in the TV art/entertainment industry apparently.