Just a thoughty mcthought…when @okbjgm brings Xena back to the screen (it WILL HAPPEN), aside from us old-timers, new fans will include the Clexa and the Earps and the WayHaughts and the Shoots and what all…because you WILL watch Xena and you WILL love it….so get to know one another. Check out the Xena fandom, check out all the others and get ready to make more friends.
And if you haven’t yet, check out the original series, it’s fantastic and might just surprise you. If nothing else, you’ll get to visit the Mother of Ships (the MotherShip?), the OTP of OTPs – and maybe find something very familiar and wonderful.
@hedaswarrior shared this today and I’m reposting with a little commentary:
This is a great video and a great reminder (to me, anyway) that Clexakru is, in almost every way possible, Xena Fandom 2.0. If you were around in the day, you know we really weren’t any different: loyalty, art, memes, fiction, etc. We loved our girls. We were one of the first major fandoms to utilise the internet to the fullest (for the time) with message boards and sites like Whoosh! preceding the modern Wiki pages. Xena and Gabrielle were (and still are) the only shared lead queer women to have their own genre series. We live in a white/straight/male dominated world that will never give us a gay Superman or a lesbian Wonder Woman. But we had Xena. Six (mostly) glorious years of near-sapphic insanity that has influenced just about ever other campy cinematic romp that has come after.
Clexa is about as close to another Xena/Gabrielle that we’ve ever had. 14 years after Xena’s demise, we were given another blonde/brunette pairing with swords and leather and the building of a new mythology (that so many Clexakru insist Clarke and Lexa are soulmates could be thanks to the original soulmate pairing of Xena and Gabrielle). It would have been lovely to have six years of it and it shows how little content creators have truly learned from the likes of shows like Xena that a poorly considered ‘plot’ was placed before an important and progressive relationship.
I do have a feeling this fandom will keep Clexa going as long as they can and I’m impressed at the creation of the first Clexa convention, Clexa Con, something quite similar to the Xena conventions that have been going on for some 20 years. Sadly, the last ‘official’ Xena convention was in 2015, but Xenites are now holding ‘retreats’ – surely a hopeful sign of undying loyalty to a global community borne out of love for a fictional pairing. Like Clexakru raising money for The Trevor Project and raising awareness over the treatment of minorities in media, Xenites have also done their part over the years, raising millions for charities. If you are feeling down and looking for a little hope, look no further than a Xenite.
In twenty years, a new fandom will likely look to you for the same. Cheers.
My original reply was eaten, and maybe it is just as well, since it was about novel length. I’m just going to list some authors and their works and some links. I know finding lgbtq literature is absolutely the worst sort of experience, but if you’re having trouble with bookshops or online, definitely look into a local library, librarians can be great help. FAR better than Google.
Jeannette Winterson: Written on the Body, The Powerbook, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Ali Smith – Hotel World, Like – her short story collections are magic
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet
Nicola Griffith – Ammonite
Katherine V. Forrest – Curious Wine
Malinda Lo – Ash (fantasy YA)
Nancy Garden – Annie on My Mind (classic YA)
Stacey D’Erasmo – Tea
Jackie Kay – Trumpet (also look for her poetry)
Alison Bechdel – Fun Home, Dykes to Watch Out For
(I’ve mentioned Emma Donoghue more than once, so won’t repeat here)
Definitely read Virginia Woolf – Orlando is classic as is Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (the book upon which the recent film Carol is based).
For non-fiction, and if you’re interested in Woolf and her contemporaries (especially Vita Sackville-West), read Diana Souhami’s Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter – beautifully researched story of the favourite mistress of Edward VII and her daughter, Violet, who carried on a mad love affair with Sackville-West for most of their adult lives. It’s heartbreaking, funny and full of irony (Keppel was the grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles, who became mistress of another Prince of Wales though they later married).
Another great non-fiction read is Hermione Lee’s masterful biography of Woolf. There is nothing dreary or boring here and I consider it required reading for young writers, anyone who identifies as queer and neurodivergent.
Now, all this said, perhaps the best place to look for quality lesbian literature these days (for free) is online through sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3) – look up Lexa/Clexa fan fiction (The 100) and you’ll find some wonderful writers who are pushing the boundaries of what fan fiction can be (other fandoms are surely doing so as well, but I’m mostly familiar with Clexa at this point). Authors like @chrmdpoet, @unicyclehippo and @possibilistfanfiction, @coeurdastronaute, @steklir – just to name a few – explore the broader qualities of ‘alternate universe’ tales that include not only lesbian pairings, but non-binary, neurodivergent individuals with compassion and care.
I also want to mention two writers of fan fiction from the older Xena universe – where I first discovered fan fiction and got my mind blown on the quality of work being produced. Vivian Darkbloom’s Mel and Janice series as well as her White Trash series are classic examples of how good fan fiction can be: novel, epic, hilariously funny and very moving.
Brigit M. Morgan is another author who wrote above and beyond, with her tragically unfinished Apocalypse series, she offered a bold, mature and breathtaking look at Xena’s story, especially following her death in one of the most cinematic takes that could easily have been made into a follow-up film. Her shorter fiction goes even darker in places, with blunt trauma examinations of celebrity and drug addiction. If you enjoy Clexa fan fiction, it would be worthwhile to follow up on these marvelous precursors – you’ll find so much of what current fan fiction is built upon.
So, I hope that helps a little. Good luck and do share what you find!
ETA: I’m really ashamed of how white this list is – which just goes to show how that as difficult as it is to find lesbian literature, it is somewhat harder to narrow it down to those who are so often left out of even that incredibly small category. I’ll keep looking and hope others post their findings, too.
After being hidden from the wrath of the gods by Ares’ 25-year enchanted sleep, Xena and Gabrielle awoke and battled Olympus itself to save the soul of Xena’s daughter! In the aftermath, half the gods are dead, and Xena’s allies are in exile: Ares powerless and banished, Aphrodite missing. And while Xena and Gabrielle are in Rome’s favor, the world they’ve returned to is not…
I think these folks are making me a fan of Xena this time around. As the girls find themselves in a world they aren’t familiar with and those they’ve loved are lost to time, yes it’s only been twenty five years but in this era that’s a long time, trying to find their way things are more interesting for me. Also women seemed to have been vastly underrated in this time as they’ve been more relegated to wives and mothers instead of feared fighters. So that we get to see this right off the bat that the women known as the Harpies are still around and as deadly as ever is great to see.
It’s also interesting to see that while Xena is the star it’s Gabrielle who has the more convoluted history here. As Queen of the Amazons who once she was in that enchanted slumber is seen as having abandoned her people and her visions of what’s to come make her infinitely more interesting to me. Her own inner struggles with all of this is highlighted nicely by Genevieve this issue.
The characterization is really very good. There are many little moments that really do wonders in not only setting the stage for this world, the girls return and the legacy they’ve both left behind and are currently forming as seen through the eyes of the Harpies that make you wonder how the two will be able to reconcile everything and make matters right. Right in the sense that in this time Rome isn’t a welcoming saviour but more of an oppressive entity that is to be rebelled against. While both are currently in Rome’s favour it’s going to take a lot of backpedaling and reassurance to prove they aren’t the enemy.
There’s a real sense of excitement to go along with that redemption the girls feel they have to have. Plus with a new cast of characters they’ve not met or worked with before finding their way among those they can call friends and allies is proving much harder than they probably anticipated. Even if at least one among them is the daughter of a man who left her mother to follow Xena, ah love and triangles still abound and that’s fun to see.
Ariel’s interiors are nice and when we see these new characters who don’t have actors having portrayed them they are much stronger in being represented. My advice would be to not try to make Xena and Gabrielle try to look like the actors and just let the imagination and talent flow and she’ll find that it’ll come much easier. So long as the general look and feel come across it’ll be that much stronger on the page. Otherwise the flow of the story with the use of pages and panels is nice.
This could be the start of a revival for one of the most fearsome women to grace the small screen.
Yes, buy this, read this, it’s a great return for Xena and Gabrielle.
The Doctor Is Out 