From: Janine

I’m not sure if you ever watched these episodes way back when, but Xena and Gabrielle had quite the following. A while back, I found a website created by some people all over the world. They wrote amateur-ish screenplays that began where the TV series left off, and included the romance that the series only hinted to.

I thought you and/or people you know might like a bit of light reading about another female kicking some arse. They made some pretty nice graphic art for this as well.

Also, thanks for posting that song on your blog today!

I am a dyke. I was breathing and had a TV in the nineties. Of course I watched Xena! Actually I was introduced to Xena by writers (and sweeties) Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett. I was at OutWrite, in Boston. I didn’t know anyone. I felt at a loose end. Melissa and Lisa took me under their wing. They invited me for a drink and dinner. “But first we have to watch this TV show.” I watched it with them; it was Hercules. Starring an evil warlord called…Xena. I was hooked. Then she got her own show in September.

It was destination viewing for me the first two seasons. Marvellous. It made my week, every week. I’d never seen anything like it on television. (I got the videos. A friend bought me the six-foot tall cardboard Xena cutout–it scared many a guest at night as they crept to the bathroom in the dark.) There had been no Alias, no La Femme Nikita, no Buffy, no Witchblade, no Sarah Connor Chronicles. Nothing. Sadly, the Xena producers’ need to have their demographic cake and eat it too, that is, their unwillingness to bring Xena and Gabrielle from subtext to maintext, ruined the show on an essential level. There could be no happy ending. We had to deal with crap episodes (I spit on Ulysses, spit on him!) and senseless plot arcs. And of course the characters themselves had no integrity because of the essential lie. But, wow, I still fucking loved it. A quick search of my website, particularly Ask Nicola, shows that I’ve talked about it a lot (20 times or more). I wish someone would make the film…

I’m glad you liked the Shakespear’s Sister song. Strictly speaking it’s seriously naughty for me to post it this way–but I couldn’t find a YouTube clip with decent sound quality so I thought, ah, fuck it. If I get sued I’ll put up a blog tip jar to pay for my legal defence.