#aaronetic

R.I.P. Robert Trebor. Thank you for your contributions.

As somebody that has never seen all of ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’ due to the fact I can’t stand Kevin Sorbo and I never could watch that show with him as the lead, I think that slow slew of episodes from Season 4 without him might actually be worth watching just for the ridiculous camp and fun of seeing so many of my favourite Xena actors playing the different characters. Especially if in 2 of those episodes, they do portrayals of the creators and crew members. That sounds like a good time indeed. I never actually knew that about it.

It’s no wonder Hercules was cancelled in Season 5 if this was what happened to the show but I’m sure I’ll love not having to watch Sorebutt all the damn time.

Also,… I have got to see that full hot tub scene with Salmoneous and Autolucus and Michael Hurst dressed in drag as Widow Twanky making a subtext joke about Xena and Gabrielle. Xena and Gabrielle are known for chilling in the hot tub 0 feet apart cause they're so gay.

I’m so excited for this series. Every week a new recap of every Season 1 episode of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ from veteran Xenite Aaronetic. Love his style and his humour.

“Apparently R.J. had his doubts as to whether or not people would be interested in seeing him but thankfully there was a whole line of fans who were as excited to meet him as I was. I thanked him for the 30 wonderful years of Xena and he couldn’t have been a nicer human being to talk to. Special thank you to Sears for encouraging Stewart to show up on the final day.”

Thank you, Xenites 🥹🥲

You have no idea how much this means to me.

If it weren’t for the writers, I wouldn’t even be half as invested in this show as I am. They’re everything to me.

Now can we Rob Tapert at one of these things or what?

Lucy, work your magic. Get him to show up and I’ll go.

Especially if R.J. shows up again.

I cannot believe I missed him!

PARIS: “I just want to say something quickly to the writer over here: Is that good writing is easy to learn.”

ADRIENNE: “That is true.”

PARIS: “It’s when it’s not well-written when it’s really hard to learn.”

ADRIENNE: “That is 100% true.”

🙌🙌🙌

Yeah, you Steven, sitting there with your humble ass - take that in. Feel proud. You are the reason why it hits.

Yeah, sure it’s team work. But you’re the one who provided the material for it to become team work.

Writers stop selling yourselves short.

You’re VERY important! The faces matter. Don’t get me wrong. They are able to provide the missing pieces, but remember you’re who gives them the SPACE to do it.

Your writing provides them with the capacity to do that.

Xena is full of straight white middle aged cis men.

And yet they fucking NAILED both female representation and WLW representation.

They got it so right even if they didn’t realize they did.

Maybe that’s the key. To not realize it but desire it. To accidentally manifest it just by being real queer allies.

So many people say “it’s because they had Liz Friedman as a producer” but it really isn’t. I mean she contributed a lot but she wasn’t the one rallying for it.

You don’t necessarily need a writers room full of queers.

Just people that understand and respect queer stories.

Because I really have seen some absolutely horrid ones from queer people that couldn’t write worth a damn.

Didn’t know how to apply the representation to the storytelling and ended up with forced diversity crap.

I stay well away from queer TV show creators like that because even if they are queer, they’re shite at writing and providing queer stories. They focus far too much on the representation and not enough on the storytelling with that representation. Xena never had that problem because the queer characters were the lead characters.

Xena is probably the most genuinely extremely well-written queer show because it was never contrived to be queer. There wasn’t any representation anxiety. I think they were more concerned with getting the straight characters stories wrong than the queer ones because they were already on-board with all of that. Even though it was well balanced, you do get to a point in the show where you’re missing the straight stories which is really weird because every other show always makes those stories the most priority. Xena doesn’t.

Xena and Gabrielle are the narrative and they don’t let you forget it. Except maybe one episode which - I… mean those 3 are an absolute hoot together anyway.

It sort of was just a really happy accident that they just collectively decided “You know what? Let’s just go with it and see where it takes us. Just let the characters evolve without inference and see if it works out for us.”

And it did. It worked so well that it’s still beloved now and being discovered and rediscovered by so many.

Almost 30 years later and this TV show is still thriving as far as fandom engagement goes if not financially. The conventions are still going. It’s seriously insane.

And I know they’ll never have anything like it ever again.

Aaronetic still covers Xena after all these years. He is so passionate. So this will be quite a treat to see. I’ve got my own little 30th anniversary tribute coming up too.

It’s always insane to me that people think ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ wasn’t a romance when, to me (and to many) it’s one of the greatest romances ever seen in TV art/entertainment. I can’t help thinking that maybe they would see it that way if either Xena or Gabrielle had been a male instead. That they just find it impossible to see romance between two people of the same gender identity. I don’t think it’s homophobia as much as it is homoblindness. Maybe there’s a better term for it.