LavenderMenaceToSociety

“If you’re in bed next to me, I will take your hand. If you are not, I will go find you. I will spend the rest of my life, if I get that lucky, seeking you out. Not because I promised you or because you’re there. But because I will want to. I will want to be beside you. Every day. Forever. Every morning, I wake up and I think, ‘God, yes, her.’ If that can be enough for you, it’s yours until the day I die.”

5/5 STARS 😭

Gabrielle: The Fire Dancer

If Gabrielle does anything best, it’s knowing how to stall to buy Xena time to do whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing to save the day. Here we see her put on a little performance where she plays with fire. Anyone who says Gabby’s element isn’t fire, speak up now or forever hold your peace. I definitely think it is.

All we really care about in this sequence is seeing Aphrodite watching her friend dance, totally transfixed by her. Because we all know she’s got a thing for her.

Gabrielle’s perspective is the show we get to see.

But then we have our own filter over the top of it.

Hence Gabrielle is “We”. We is Gabrielle in Xena.

As R.J. STEWART intended. She represents the audience. What it would be like to be with Xena.

Because if it were the other way around, the TV show would not play like a campy high-romance action fantasy. It would play like a depressing drama and there would be no doubts as to whether Xena was suicidal.

Thank the gods we see Xena through Gabrielle’s lens.

Thank the gods The Xena Scrolls was actually a thing and the creators embraced it as how the narrative of Xena should be shown and told. And not Xena’s way.

Love how Gabrielle always fixated on the most minute of details. Like how Xena was wearing Diana’s pink dress in ‘Warrior…Princess’ and Gabrielle tells her that she likes it while looking directly at her cleavage showing even more than it does in wearing the leathers.

She was not subtle about her attraction to Xena and yet she was completely oblivious that she was attracted due to her completely mistaking it for hero worship.

But if it was truly hero worship would she even pay attention to the colour of her eyes, the curves of her body or even her height? Facets of her appearance.

Only the mean right hook comment makes any sense.

Hero worship, my ass. Gabrielle, you gay as fuck for her.

Not to mention that time when she was under the influence of Henbane and all it really did was make her confess her feelings because drugs/alcohol doesn’t make you make shit up. It makes you reveal shit you suppress. It makes you completely uninhibited. Stuff you probably haven’t even admitted to yourself yet.

I really like that little moment in ‘The Quest’ while Gabrielle is racked with grief over Xena’s death where she confesses to Iolas that she loves Xena. The way Renee played that confession in body language was almost like that was the first time Gabrielle identified it herself. Finally realizing that her love for Xena was romantic - and sure, maybe some of that was because she admired her heroism. But that was barely relevant under the new context that she felt empty without her.

Why is it only when we lose the ones we love or almost do we recognize our own feelings and desires for them?

It’s not just ‘the kiss’ that makes ‘The Quest’ so iconic.

That whole episode was literally a gay/queer narrative and burgeoning romantic arc just based on this alone.

Just on the recognition that Gabrielle was in love and never really got to tell Xena that while she was alive and ‘the kiss’ was just Xena’s way of showing and proving that she feels the same and always has and that they don’t really have to say anything to each other about it.

Actions mattered more. That was always how they declared their love for each other. All in the actions.

Fighting and sacrificing for each other was their love language. Their love was always in the greater good.

This is what makes Xena so fucking iconic and even legendary as a queer show. Because WLW love stories have never been written this well. Established this well.

They made sure that you could not separate the main narrative from the characters and their WLW love story.

Vice versa.

Whereas many other “queer shows” just give you a narrative/plot/story arc and loosely and lazily interweave the queer characters around it.

‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ was the exact opposite.

Xena and Gabrielle and their love WERE the narrative!

It’s just that narrative could not be explicitly gay/queer.

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.

Tumblrites, the hour has come for us to practice one of our most sacred rituals.

It’s still insane to me that there is actually a fully canon (confirmed-in-the-text) lesbian character in Xena. No implied messaging within subtext or anything like that.

Just straight up sapphic and gay as fuck for Gabrielle and the only reason Gabrielle was not reciprocating her advances is because she’s insanely in love with Xena.

The Ring Trilogy is very maintext in this way.