#stand-ins

Bts Murderbot - tattiawna ig (x) Thanks Skarsjoy, and SwedishDelish.

"Spotlight on my stand-in, Natalia Jonas, for #Murderbot Season 1. It was a pleasure collaborating with you to make Murderbot magic happen.

A special shoutout to all Murderbot Season 1 stand-ins!

🎸I know she loves you And I can’t interfere So I’ll just have to sit back And watch my world disappear 🎸

So, I know that “Married with Fishsticks” is not on many people’s Top XWP episode lists. In fact, it is regularly cited as one of, if not the, worst episode(s) of the show altogether. Me, I can draw profound meaning from even the tiniest details, as I’m sure you know by now if you’ve read my other theories. So, I thought I’d try to redeem this thing. 😆 Here goes…

Remember how in my theory “Soul Orbits,” I found it very interesting that the same actors played Borias/Khrafstar and Meridian/Satrina? Sure, the XenaVerse has many dopplegangers running around and re-uses many actors, but I thought that the same people being used in those specific roles had deeper significance. 

Believe it or not, I find Aphrodite and Discord’s presence in this episode telling as well. In my head-canon and fics, the goddess of love secretly took care of the bard all through The Rift Arc and beyond, but Gabrielle didn’t learn about that until after the show ends. There’s also that small matter of soon GIVING UP HER ENTIRE FAMILY for our favorite bard that Aphrodite will do, but I digress. Suffice it to say that she counts herself as a friend of Gabrielle’s while Gabrielle isn’t yet sure of the goddess’s motives at this point of the show.

Too, almost no one else seems to remember this, but Discord was in “The Deliverer.” She’s the one who was most concerned with Dahak’s temple and wanting it destroyed. Ares listening to Discord and Xena listening to Ares could have saved Gabrielle a lot of heartache, but again, Gabrielle never knew about that. Or, didn’t know until much later, since she is the one who wrote the scrolls which became scripts for the episodes. 

So, Aphrodite and Discord were friends to Gabrielle who had ulterior motives. Of course, their sniping that she witnessed and then got caught between played into a part in her fantasy world too.

Hagar represented the worst in Khrafstar, Joxer, and Xena, along with the life that had been planned for Gabrielle before “Sins of the Past” ever started. I think that the second version of Perdicas was a sweet guy and so not directly correlated with Hagar. (More on this later.*) But the life that Gabrielle would have been expected to live with her betrothed—endlessly, thanklessly cooking, cleaning, bearing him a bunch of children—that’s what Crustacea had but fled and Gabrielle got roped into… kinda like her marrying Perdicas.

Gabrielle was more or less okay with her housewife life, as long as she drank the Kool-Aid of Hagar’s memory-eraser, just like she drank the Kool-Aid of Dahak’s cult. This is where Hagar is like Khrafstar; he duped the bard with manipulation disguised as goodness, which could have led her to the similar destruction of her soul.

But in her dream world, Gabrielle stopped short of going through with both those mistakes.

It’s interesting, too, though, because except for that third expectation of child-bearing, she got that kind of life with Xena. How many times did we watch Gabrielle resent doing all the menial tasks and not getting credit for her contribution? Off the top of my head, “A Day in the Life,” “Fins, Femmes, and Gems,” and “If the Shoe Fits” come to mind. But after Gabrielle confronts Hagar about his treatment of her, he starts to change, just like Xena did. He even echoes a lot of Xena’s sentiments to Gabrielle after “reforming.”

Continued in Part 2.

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*If you didn’t know/notice, then the first Perdicas actor too was in “The Deliverer,” playing the man who captured Gabrielle and later told her that her legs were to be broken. So, maybe there’s something more to that casting and the Hagar-Perdicas connection too. Hmm... You guys can figure out that part, if you wanna. I’m too tired and need to move on to the main point of this theory/analysis. X’)

MacGyver Season 3 BtS Instagram Live Story Screenshot Compilation: Day 81 (October 23).