Lady Business

In a time without a Black Widow movie on the horizon, two fans in turmoil cried out for a heroine. She was Xena, a mighty female protagonist forged in the fires of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The action, the camp, the queer subtext. Her adventures will rock their worlds.

Clare: When I was a kid, my parents bought me this LEGO set called "Sphinx Secret Surprise." They bought it because I was crazy for Ancient Egypt as a little kid, but it was part of the Adventurers theme (as different lines are called in LEGO parlance), which was an homage/rip-off of Indiana Jones. Since I had no clue who Indiana Jones was, it sailed over my head. Even when I acquainted myself with the trilogy later, there was something vaguely mid-nineties about the whole proceedings, despite being produced and released in the eighties, all because I associated it with putting together this LEGO set.

While I sold all my LEGOs ages ago (although I kept a solid selection for Wolfboy and Little Fang), I still have the sphinx and the sarcophagus. They stand proudly stands proudly next to my curated collection of lady LEGO minifigures including a Warrior Woman minifig who looks suspiciously like Xena.

All of that is to say that seeing an Indiana Jones-inspired episode of Xena from 1997 made perfect sense in my head. Flashing forward to 1940 from… let’s go with ancient times?, Dr. Melinda Pappas joins Dr. Janice Covington on a dig for an artifact that will validate Janice’s father’s thieving reputation—the Xena Scrolls. ( Read more... )

In a time without a Black Widow movie on the horizon, two fans in turmoil cried out for a heroine. She was Xena, a mighty female protagonist forged in the fires of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The action, the camp, the queer subtext. Her adventures will rock their worlds.

Clare: Do not adjust your sets, folks! ( Read more... )

In a time without a Black Widow movie on the horizon, two fans in turmoil cried out for a heroine. She was Xena, a mighty female protagonist forged in the fires of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The action, the camp, the queer subtext. Her adventures will rock their worlds.

( Read more... )

In a time without a Black Widow movie on the horizon, two fans in turmoil cried out for a heroine. She was Xena, a mighty female protagonist forged in the fires of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The action, the camp, the queer subtext. Her adventures will rock their worlds.

Renay: Continuing its tenuous relationship with history and mythology, Xena: The Warrior Princess reaches into the Christianity grab bag again and pulls out the story of David and Goliath. Oh, writers, never stop telling your wild Bible fanfic! I am vaguely familiar with this story from my aborted adventures into Sunday School, but I have more of a secular background with David as the teeny underdog and Goliath as a tough adversary David has to defeat to show the even the little guy can triumph! So it was neat to see the show embrace the part of the story that I came to later, that the fight between David and Goliath was more about David's divine right to become King. Predictably, a lot of the religion stuff went over my head! ( Read more... )

In a time without a Black Widow movie on the horizon, two fans in turmoil cried out for a heroine. She was Xena, a mighty female protagonist forged in the fires of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The action, the camp, the queer subtext. Her adventures will rock their worlds.

Clare: Did everybody have a good summer of 1996? I hope you did, because the second season of Xena goes from zero to sixty in no time. Back in ye olden days, before Netflix and chill (ask your parents), season premieres had to be able to appeal to both regular viewers and reel in new viewers. (I mean, they still have to, but it was imperative back then.)

What makes Xena a compelling television show? Well, there’s Xena’s ongoing quest to to atone for her sins during her past as a ruthless, near-genocidal warlord. There’s snarky but kind Gabrielle, now with added bo staff action. There’s their beautiful love affair friendship. And then there’s the bizarro kind of Greek myth world they inhabit and its hysterically bad special effects. ( Read more... )