THE XENA E-XINE - Pre Convention Issue
Volume 2, Issue 5, May 3, 2001
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Today's issue includes:
1. Feature Article -- "Love Xongs in the key of G"
2. Xena quote/Xena Joke
3. Featured FanFic and Short Review -- "Down Home," "Quality Dying Time"
4. Xena News " Convention Mania!"; Lucy Lawless is a Punk!
5. Featured Xena Links: Xena la Princesse Guerriere; The X:WP Cookbook
6. Xena: Warrior Princess Episode Guide --Warrior...Princess...Tramp," "Intimate Stranger"
7. Feedback
8. PRIVACY/NO SPAM POLICY!
9. Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information
10. Credits
11. Archives
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ShamelessAdvertising
CDs
Original TV Soundtrack "Xena: Warrior Princess - Lyre, Lyre..."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004T9VK/thexenaexine
Video Games
Xena: Warrior Princess for the Sony PlayStation, by Universal
Interactive Studios
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00002R28Q/thexenaexine
Books
Life Lessons from Xena, Warrior Princess : A Guide to Happiness, Success, and Body Armor
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0836267672/thexenaexine
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1)Featured Article
"Love Xongs in the key of G"
by bacchae2 - May 1, 2001
When lesbian icons (that is, icons of lesbians) collide...
http://ausxip.com/articles18/lucy%20big%20hair.jpg
Remove (as I'm sure some enterprising computer wiz shall) Tipper Gore, or whoever the hell that is in the middle (and wouldn't we all love to be in that position?) between Lucy (lookin' tough) and Melissa (Etheridge) in the above click on pic, and we are more than tempted to envision a very promising inspiration for an uber in the making. The actress and the rock star... Someone get to work on that right away, will ya? It just serves to bring to mind the fact that we die hard Xena romantics hear a certain kind of ballad and zone off into the neverland of fantasy prone individuals. Thus, virtually every love song is about...them. (Yes, we really are that besotted.) Many of Melissa's more than most can be felt to serve this purpose. Because of the Power, the Passion...the danger. "Am I your passion, your promise, your end? Yes, I am!" She is a travelling bard, afterall. A troubadour. Her storytelling has always featured a subtextual sensitivity; certainly that was very much noted by those of us who recognized her as a sister before her coming out. Her recurring themes are of angels, devils, heaven, hell, the soul, darkness, destiny, the fire...and, of course, love, loss and passion. Wonder if ME was a fan of the series like her colleague k.d. lang... How piquant that Melissa's "Angels Would Fall" was au courant with the 5th season premiere of "Fallen Angel." ("The rope that's wrapped around me/is cutting through my skin/and the doubts that have surrounded me/are finding their way in/I hold it close to me/like a holy man prays/in my desperate hour/it's better, better that way"). I will always associate the two. Though I settled for Sarah McLachlan's "In the Arms of the Angels" for this webpage tribute:
http://community-1.webtv.net/bacchae2/Xenapics/page4.html
Melissa's raw rocker ethos infuses such Xenafull musings to bring forth potent imagery with lines like these:
"I'm the only one who'd walk across a fire for you"
"I could dance with the devil on a saturday night"
"I loved you past the point of dyin'/ain't that enough of me for you?"
"I need you in my blood/I am forsaking all the rest/just to reach you"
"I will crawl through my past/over stones, blood, and glass/in the ruins"
From the plaintive heartache of her now classic ballad, "Baby You Can Sleep While I Drive": "My intentions are true/won't you take me with you?...If you won't take me with you/I'll go before night is through" inevitably prompts the image of our Bard (as another Melissa song states: "she's got similar features/with longer hair"); and "I Will Never be the Same" ("caught in your eyes, lost in your name"); or "Talking To My Angel" ("Don't be afraid/close your eyes/lay it all down/don't you cry")...and "I want to lose all your demons and go/I want to tear off your chains 'cause I know/all the way to heaven is heaven/caught between the spirit and the dust/all the way to heaven is heaven/deep inside of us"...
To her strong sentiments in her cds, "Brave and Crazy" or "Never Enough": "Keep it Precious" (let's)--"Ride your way/do not break or bend/Just take care/my love, my friend." Or this haunting refrain from the cd, "Your Little Secret": "Carry my sword/I won't need it anymore/take off my shame/bury it low...this war is over/I'm coming home."
How can a fan of both the series and the singer not conjure up remembered images from the first ("Sins of the Past") to the last beat of their hearts in true time, together as one...? All of those fan produced videos of clips from the series lovingly collated to produce an emotional effect to the warbling of "The Wind Beneath My Wings," "Everything I do, I do it for you," or (I'm Everything I am) "Because You Loved Me." I simply cannot hear Sting's "Fields of Gold" without thinking of X&G walking, running, lying in those swaying grasses as the west wind moves like a lover's soul upon the fields of barley... Or the web pages we are compelled to create with our favorite photos and the perfect background music midis:
Anything for Love
http://community-2.webtv.net/Sub_Rosa/AnotherXenapage/index.html
Torn
http://community-2.webtv.net/Sub_Rosa/AnotherXenapage/page4.html
Thanks for the memories...
http://community-2.webtv.net/Sub_Rosa/AnotherXenapage/page3.html
And, often, it seems, our little fevered fannish minds thrum on the same melodic wavelength. I've mentioned to more than one bard how delightfully surprised I was to find them quoting a song in their stories that had instantly reminded me of X&G the moment I first heard it, or had an old song recur as the perfect accompaniment to "the ineffable mystery" at the heart of the dynamic duet. Some of them so pertinently perfect you could swear they've been written expressly for them.
When the uber Xena, Ryan, in S X Meagher's great online epic "I Found my Heart in San Francisco" keeps her promise of singing in bed to her newly espoused lover, Jamie, she gives us and her beloved a rush of goosebumps and tears by pouring her soul into the great marriage hymn from Bernstein and Sondheim's classic modern reworking of "Romeo and Juliet." I've always thought "One Hand, One Heart" ("not even death can part us now") from "West Side Story" was the ultimate musical statement for these, or any soulmates. It was delicious to find such a talented uber bard with the same thought. And it worked. Brilliantly.
Can't remember now if this was in a Western uber or Xena alt, but does it matter? Either way it's so womantic: LJ Maas touched me further by having her X sing to her G, while riding on horseback, if memory serves, the great recent country duet "No Place That Far" ("If I had to run/if I had to crawl/if I had to swim a hundred rivers/just to climb a thousand walls/always know I'd find a way to get to where you are/There's no place that far") which speaks of such heartfelt devotion (and Blind Faith) against all odds. Hmm, there's another song title. And, in another tale, an uber, she quotes Savage Garden's "Truly, Madly, Deeply" ("I want to stand with you on a mountain/I want to bathe with you in the sea"), another song that shouted X&G to me the first time I heard it. Also the very first Xena page I happened upon when I came online featured this song in a background midi to a "shrine" of favorite photos.
Sometimes even the Gab uber is allowed to sing! Though it doesn't happen often (as per the show itself, poor baby, bringing in a ringer, having her big number cut). Harper, the Gab uber in the epic ultra modern way-we-live-now saga, "The Speed of the Beat of my Heart," chimes out with Mellencamp's charming "I Saw You First" on a ride up to a mountain cabin for a lovely, lust-filled weekend.
Hey! Wouldn't ROC make the cutest little rocker in a biopic of Stevie Nicks or Melissa herself? The female duo singer/songwriters Kennedy/Rose make it hard not to think of our girls with a line like: "Warriors have laid weapons down/for love/love like this."
LL as X IS Stevie Nicks' "Rhiannon," Enya's "Bard Dance" is SO Gabrielle.
http://community-2.webtv.net/bacchae2/BACCHAETOBACCHAE/
http://community-2.webtv.net/bacchae2/LAWLESS/
Soft as a sigh...and a pair of green eyes: Enya's
"Lothlorien"
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/8898/lothlori2.mid
Alanis Morissette's exotic otherworldly melodies inspired by her own sojourn in the sub-continent, "Thank U, India" and "Uninvited" offer no difficultly in bringing to mind the epic India arc of Season Four. We'll take a moment to praise the amazing Mr. Lo Duca for fashioning a lush romantic sound for X:WP in his rather unprecedented Herculean task of writing the scores for an entire series. It is too bad he wasn't able to provide some new music to accompany the lyrics of Sappho (if they'd ever had the nerve to do the always proposed, never filmed ep the right way) since the ancient bardess of Lesbos sang her poems. We didn't need another sitcom-esque pop song foray frenzy into the over the top territory of "Lyre, Lyre," but another ambitious musical audacity like "Bitter Suite" would've been most welcome. And we're still shaking our heads over the sudden out of place inclusion of a Natalie Merchant song into an impromptu music video in "Antony & Cleo." But in this instance I'll quote ME once again:
"Over and over/WE ALL WANTED THIS/It's such an unusual kiss" --
http://www.primenet.com/~outback/fanclubs/spoil/retvalkyrie608r119a.jpg
So what are your favorite songs that never fail to make you think of Warrior and Bard? Let us know.
I'll leave you with this: my Farewell (to the series) Tribute page(s); songs (with lyrics and music) that could've been written for them...
Hearts
http://community-2.webtv.net/ejRAIN/YoullBeInMyHeart/
Eternity
http://community-2.webtv.net/ejRAIN/YoullBeInMyHeart/page2.html
Soulmates
http://community-2.webtv.net/ejRAIN/YoullBeInMyHeart/page3.html
Devotion
http://community-2.webtv.net/ejRAIN/YoullBeInMyHeart/page4.html
Bonding Ritual
http://community-2.webtv.net/ejRAIN/YoullBeInMyHeart/page5.htm
2) XenaQuote/Xena Joke
Priestess Leah: "A chaste life is not so bad, once you get use to it. You just have to follow the Hestian rules. Rule One: Know thyself."
Gabrielle: "Believe me. If I have to go the rest of my life without companionship, knowing myself will not be a problem."
From "Warrior...Priestess...Tramp"
*Submitted by Phil Tracy*
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3)Featured Fan Fiction
Bacchae'sFanFic Review
"Down Home"
by CN Winters
http://ausxip.com/fanfic13/down_home.html
This charming look at what the girls continued to discuss after they rode off at the end of "Old Ares Had a Farm" is short and deliciously sweet and even though it says "TBC" at the end it works very well as a short-short.
I give it ***** five stars!
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"Quality Dying Time"
by Temora
http://www.merwolf.com/academy/temora_qualitydyingtime.html
Reminiscent of some of Missy Good's heartwrenching scenes in her Xena novel "Bound," this is a must read for hurt/comfort afficionados. Xena and Gabrielle are trapped together, practically immobile, in a landslide and both are in critical condition, especially the bard. They can just barely touch each other, provide comfort by talking and spend the long days (!) thinking over their history together. It's painful and provocative. And the only way they'll get out of this one is by relying on an emotionally damaged little girl who figures she has a couple of new, and captive, playmates to further torture with her reticence to help them. Gab does the sensitive chats, remember, and tries to keep Xena's temper in check. Memorable. And well-written.
I give it ***** five stars!
StarRating
***** A must read for any Hard Core Nutball!
**** It is well worth your while to read.
*** It's better than getting pinched in the neck by Xena.
** Maybe a go-round with Xena isn't a bad idea...
* Shut off the blood flow to my brain now!
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4) XenaNews
Convention Mania!
By LadyAdrell
5/2/01
My first and only experience at a Xena Convention was at the Pasadena Con in January of 2000. It was overwhelming to say the least. The sights, the sounds, the people were all amazing to me. I was awestruck to see the people live and in person who I'd watched so many times on my TV. And now it's time to do it all over again! This year's Hercules/Xena Convention is expected to be the biggest ever. With both stars, Lucy and Renee, scheduled to make an appearance on Sunday, May 6, fans from around the world are making special trips to see them. To have such a rare opportunity to see both stars on one stage will surely be a treat!
Aside from the main attractions, other big names will be showing their faces at the Con. Bruce Campbell, Alex Tydings, Claire Stansfield, and Missy Good are just a few of the guests booked for the weekend. Each day is guaranteed to be slam-packed with fun with bloopers, videos, episodes, guest speakers, and enthusiastic fans! Creation has even set up a room in the convention center for forums and panels. Check out that schedule to see what is going on there during the course of the weekend. If the convention events aren't enough for you, there are always the fan events. With the Bards Brunch, the Exposure Lunch, and the Pup Dinner lined up again this year, there is a great deal of fun to occupy you outside of the convention events. You'll never be bored. Now that the time for the con is here, the excitement in me is mounting ever greater! The list of things to do is quickly being marked off. In a very short time the convention will be in full swing, and I am getting restless for it. Those fans that can't make it to Pasadena know that you're with us in spirit if not in flesh. I'll do my best to bring the convention to you in the next Xine so you can have a little piece of the experience too.
For more information and the con schedule of events:
http://www.creationent.com/hxcon_frame.html
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Lucy Lawless is a Punk!
Fans of the Warrior Princess can expect to see actress Lucy Lawless punking it up in the new Spiderman movie. She plays a punk rocker on the streets of New York. Xena may be ending, but that is not the case for Lucy's career.
Battle on Lucy!
Lucy Lawless on the set of Spiderman.
http://newsroom.corbis.com/scripts/foxisapi.dll/wmsql.wm.request?HIT_20055292_0DL0WXXSD2.14
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From fanfic bard LJ Maas' newsletter re Pasadena con:
"Courtesy of Creation, I'll be hosting a discussion regarding me & my work. It's going to be at 2:10 pm on Sunday in the little theatre, which I'm
told is in the main dealers room (to your left when you enter the building). You just have to show up, but it only seats 300, so they tell me it's first come, first seated.
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5)Featured Links
An interesting site because it is bilingual.....particularly liked the translation of subtext as"Entre les lignes" (between the lines?).
Xena la Princesse Guerriere:
http://www3.50megs.com/virus33
Here's another which is distinguished by its cool intro and subject matter.
The X:WP Cookbook:
http://www.poky.net/cookbook
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6)Xena: Warrior Princess Episode Guide
byBacchae2
"Warrior...Princess...Tramp"
Two Xenas were apparently not enough in the prequel to this silly, but fun, ep. The sole purpose of which seems designed to keep the star from getting bored, to give her some room to play around and do comedy and different characters (or display differing aspects of her personality?)As the demure Princess Diana and the vulgar, sex-crazed Meg (the future wife of Joxer and mother to Virgil), LL defines the other characters very well so you can always tell them apart quite easily. But, it's Gab who's perhaps most amusing (and adorable when angry) reigning (orreining) in maddening confusion when she finds herself unjustly consigned to a cell by someone she believes to be her partner. The whole bloody thing is anarchic in the extreme and confusing--in the best tradition of classical (and I do mean Classical--going back to Greece and Rome) comedy, filled with mistaken identity and other farcical business.
Subtext Rating: Peel me a grape. "Eat the fruit, baby." Cat fight. Always a substitute for something else...you know what. Mashing Gab's face into the plate of juicy grapes and then rolling around on the floor together. Followed by a sweet heart to heart with Meg. As ME would sing, "Somebody bring me some water"! It's hot in here, I'm burnin' alive. Joxer becomes Cassandra the woeful prophet when he says, "I'm wrecking one of the great friendships." He did his worst. But for an accident of birth we never would've seen him. I like Gab's take to Joxer better in response to his mistaken assumption that Xena is coming on to him. "Impossible. You're not her type." She knows from where she speaks of course.
**************
"Intimate Stranger"
The dream within the dream within the dream=nightmare. The real Gab would never say those awful things to her partner. Our first clue that they weren't playing by the rules here. A perverse ep. Turns everything around and upside down. The old switcheroo. LL has Hudson down. So to speak. Taunting Gab--"Little girl." It has real sexual tension. Callisto in Xena's body is pure predator. To what does the title refer? It implies a relationship. A very close relationship. That would be X&G since Callisto is the stranger in intimate waters. So to speak. It also implies a sexual relationship. One of intimacy. "She's my little friend now." And all that implies. Xena and Callisto are vixens fighting over Gabrielle at one point. But Gab could never really get used to the switch, looking at the face of the psycho who killed her husband. Oh, what a tangled web...
Subtext Rating: Definition: intimate adj 1: very close in friendship or affection; "a bosom buddy"; "an intimate friendship" 2: involved in a sexual relationship; "the intimate (or sexual) relations" [syn: {sexual}]
One Raised Eyebrow, Way Up.
A really very kinky ep. (Which has also spawned some kinky spin-off fanfic). Gotta quote Melissa E. again: "Not so black and white/the color of your sin/Take a walk inside my shoes/a path I didn't choose/Spend the night inside of my skin...I coulda been you/you coulda been me/one small change that shapes your destiny"
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7)Feedback
From Brain {sic} aka fluffsterbrian:
"Really enjoyed the Rooks' interview. As it typical of the honest and direct nature that anyone who has ever corresponded with him can certainly attest to, he was very forthcoming in the answers to the questions posed to him. He is one of the most talented Xena bards I have personally read, and his fiction is well worth checking out for those who've never had the pleasure.
Very nice work on the special section comparing the Xena trilogy version of The Ring with the Wagner original, and with the classic illustrations. The Norse trilogy really did represent a return to form for XWP in epic myth reinvention and storytelling. It was sweeping and romantic in the best sense of the words."
If you have any comments, suggestions for content, or articles to submit to this Xine, then please contact Lady Adrell at Ladyadrell@aol.com
(We are accepting submissions for featured articles. Send to above address.)
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8)PRIVACY/NO SPAM POLICY!
NO SPAMMING OR LIST SHARING!
You can rest assured that your subscription email address will be kept in the strictest confidence. We do not divulge, nor make available to any third party, our subscription list. Your privacy is paramount to us! Therefore, it receives the respect it deserves!
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9)Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information
If this Xine was forwarded to you and you would like to receive your own free weekly copy; you can subscribe at http://www.xenaexine.f2s.com or send a blank email to: xenaexine@listbot.com PLEASE NOTE: You are receiving The Xena E-Xine because you subscribed at http://www.xenaexine.f2s.com, or you requested to be added to our subscriber list.
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10)Credits
The Xena E-Xine Staff:
Chief Editor/Head Reporter: Lady Adrell
Editor/HeadWriter: Bacchae2
Assistant Editor/Research: Cindy
Research: Sue Winter
FanFic Critic: Staff
Website Analyst: Staff
Episode Guides: Bacchae2
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11)Archives
To read previous articles, please go to
http://exine.tvheaven.com/archive.html
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DISCLAIMER
"We're not queer, but we play one on tv."
http://ausxip.com/articles18/tv_guide_online.htm
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The contents of this E-Xine may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author's name and contact information are included, unless where otherwise stated. Example: Reproduced with permission from Lady Adrell or said author.
All contents Copyright © 2001 The Xena E-Xine, except where indicated otherwise. All rights reserved worldwide. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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THANKS FOR READING!
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