Ares entire role on xwp is begging on his hands and knees to be Xena and Gab's third he is down FEROCIOUS it is SO FUNNY

From Xena Warrior Princess: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, PC Game, 1990s.

everybody watch xena warrior princess

nobody:

me: the Xena musical episode “The Bitter Suite” aired 3 years before Buffy’s “Once More With Feeling,” yet another example of Joss getting too much credit

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys 4x14 Armageddon Now (2)

Friends, I, a fully grown, married, adult, lesbian, am watching Xena for the first time.

Of course, I know Xena is a cultural touchstone for lesbians around the globe, but when you all told me there was "lesbian subtext" I somehow expected it to be, well, subtext. I expected the scripts to do elaborate "no homo" backflips.

Guys. This show is aggressively gay.

It is so gay.

It is gayer than 90% of lesbian intense gaze choreography films.

I'm only halfway through season two and I am already losing track of how many times they've kissed their lips have touched.

I miss them a LOT

New rule - you don’t get to comment about how Xena is queerbaity if you haven’t watched the show.

so here’s what I really mean by this.

We keep seeing you guys tagging your current wlw fandom experiences as “not as queerbaity as xena!” or similar. And I could do the thing there I throw chapter and verse at you about how, specifically, Xena is not queerbaiting, but for the sake of brevity, here’s why that makes us furious:

1) you really mean it.

2) you have no idea how good we, as a community you belong to, had it twenty five whole years ago

3) which means that in your conception of wlw rep and what’s possible, you’re left with shows that are actively queerbaiting you. That these queerbaity fandoms are the only shoulders you have to stand on when you’re looking to build your way to a newer, better future.

The fact that Xena is still so revolutionary today speaks VOLUMES about the current wlw media landscape. The fact that whenever we get new people in the fandom - myself included, just three years ago! - the universal wide-eyed response is, “I had no idea.” It says so much.

It is both astonishing and infinitely disheartening to me that the world has forgotten about Xena - or rather, that the world has been cajoled into forgetting about Xena, dismissing it as “ugh that lesbian show” by the greater media canon before modern gay rights was a thing. And there’s a lot more too that I want to say about how the fact that we are #blessed to live in the current era of truly unprecedented gay rights does not mean that we also live in the best era for gay representation in media - but that’s another (albeit very very related) post.

But the greatest travesty is that you, modern wlw viewer, have been convinced to dismiss it yourself and among your communities, sight unseen, and have become complicit in EXACTLY the erasure it received at the end of its run for - get this - BEING TOO EXPLICITLY GAY.

How’s that for irony?

And in doing so, you’re actively participating in the erasure of not just wlw media history, but also the possibilities of what actually good wlw media can look like in the future. You are actively pushing over the shoulders of literal giants on which all wlw media rep - even your current show, the one you’re tagging “not as queerbaity as xena!” - is standing on.

I’m sorry your show is hurting you. We can all do better. We can all demand better. But first - actually watch Xena, and see what better already has been.

only on Xena will an episode trailer that asks “Who is the father of Xena’s child?” include 2 pictures of women

…and the actual canon answer to that question is both those women

Another reason Gabrielle is so important to me is that trajectory female characters follow. You know the one. They come into the show and they wear trousers and shirts, they probably have short hair and they definitely have that don’t-give-a-fuck swagger. And lots of queer women headcanon them as lesbian or bisexual.

And then a few years pass and something happens. Maybe the showrunners get scared of the gay, maybe the actress does, or just thinks that looking so butch isn’t helping her career any, and bit by bit the character gets more and more trad feminine. She starts wearing more make-up. Her hair grows out. She cries more on screen and she almost certainly gets landed with a male love interest.

We saw it with Olivia in SVU and Starbuck in BSG. Maria Hill grew her hair out between Avengers movies and don’t even get me started on Emma Swan. And every time it happens, gender non-comforming women like me and lesbians and all the other queer women who saw themselves in that character get the message loud and clear. Character development - character *growth* - is all about erasing the butchness and becoming the Ideal Heterosexual Woman™

But Gabrielle? She’s the only character I can remember who goes in completely the opposite direction. She starts XWP wearing a dress, her hair long and her manner gentle and girly. In season two she marries a man. And then by the end of the show she’s got short hair, abs of steel and is a (softish) butch sais-wielding badass who only has eyes for Xena.

Gabrielle is awesome and important and I will love her forever.

the xena censorship kisses are so funny like oh im giving her cpr :) im transferring special magic water into her mouth :) im kissing her but im in bruce campbells body :) like ok why was there tongue

Live Reaction Footage of the mental gymnastics straight viewers performed in 1997 while watching this scene to ignore the lesbian subtext

Picking up your gf, literally

Harley helping the bats occasionally and then going home to Pamela? Yes please

Wow.

They really had an iconic writer from Xena: Warrior Princess reach out to them, but they said “Nah, thanks.”

WOW.

Robert Pattinson in interviews: Bruce Wayne is a slimy worm man. A stinky dirty bat. A mess. Emo. Greasy and gross. Seconds away from going feral and biting someone’s ear off.

Me, a Bruce Wayne fan: Yes, yes, this man gets it

DC: Look at these besties! Look at these pals!

The “besties” in question