XenaQuest: This was my first Xena story, I wrote it in mid-January 1998. At the time, I was already an avid reader of Xena fan fiction. To be honest, a lot of the writing out there was so good, it was intimidating. But there were an equal number of bad stories. I just so happened to be reading one of those bad stories, when I stopped halfway through it and said to myself, Hey, I can write Xena and Gabrielle better than half of these people, and the rest is history. After one year's worth of stories, I can still only write better than half of the bards out there, but I am happy with what I wrote.
Anyway, back to XenaQuest. I had noticed a number of stories that would have a suitor come into the story, alternatively having sex with Xena or Gabrielle. Or valiantly saving their lives at some crucial moment. I recognized this as a thinly-veiled attempt by the author to put themselves into the story. Understandable, but distracting from the more interesting story of Xena and Gab's relationship.
So I came up with the idea that I, Ogami, would travel back to Xena's time a la The Terminator. If you know the movies, then you know that no clothes or weapons can be transferred via the time ball. This became a crucial detail at the end of the story, but the initial result of it was that I would enter the story naked. My intent here was to have as un-heroic entrance as possible, again to contrast those stories that deliberately put the author in them. (Just picture Joxer's pasty skin from Fins Femmes & Gems, and you get the idea.)
XenaQuest II: This story was written after I wrote the short story Loosed Ends, replaces the Hercules episodes Armageddon Now I & II, and is set during the Xena episode Maternal Instincts. I originally never planned to have a sequel to the original XenaQuest. I had turned the Xenaverse into, quite frankly, a disaster. How could I undo that mess?
The answer came with the above-mentioned Hercules two-parter with Callisto. There an evil twin of Hercules named the Sovereign had been trapped by Hercules in a "dimensional pocket" between universes. At the end of XenaQuest I, Ares had been lost through time and space because he jumped into the "time ball" that was programmed for Ogami. So, I was able to dump Ares into that time pocket with the Sovereign, and the rest was history.
This story resulted in a clean wrap-up of the 3rd season's "Rift". Solan survived, Hope and Dahak were destroyed, and Xena and Gabrielle got down to the domestic life. Perhaps a story not possible on the television show, but a nice image nonetheless. Anyway, this story is one of my favorites, in that it moves very quickly. Boring story sections are skipped over, leaving the reader to assume what happened, and get on to the good stuff. This story is still one of my favorites, mainly cause I think I wrapped up the Rift better than the show's writers did.
Loosed Ends: I wrote this story a few days after seeing The Bitter Suite. Although the musical sequences were movie-quality, the opening and ending of the episode left too many loopholes open to be ignored. The open of the episode, of course, consisted of Xena dragging her soulmate across the Greek countryside to her death. While Gabrielle was miraculously healed of her injuries after visiting Illusia, the memory of what Xena had done should have resulted in their permanent parting. Since that was impossible for a television show, this simply meant that this dragging should never have been filmed.
The other loophole was the close of the story. Where did the Amazons go? Didn't Xena invade their village, assault Amazons, break the interim Queen's arm (Ephiny), and abduct their reigning Queen (Gabrielle)? The writers made no explanation for this, and simply hoped the matter would quietly go away. Well, it didn't. The audience quietly went away. As of this writing (January 1999) the U.S. ratings for X:WP have dropped by almost two points since this time last year. That means that roughly 1/3 of the audience has stopped watching the show.
But I am really digressing here. At the time, I had no idea what a huge impact the GabDrag (as it came to be known) would have on the show's audience, and fandom. So I wrote this little short story, which tries to follow the exact sequence the writers set up at the close of the episode. Xena and Gabrielle talk about the dragging, and what it means to their relationship.
Shortly after I wrote this story, I became increasingly bothered by what I saw as the makings of an abusive relationship. Xena tried to beat her companion to death, sang a song of forgiveness, and Gabrielle forgave her beating. A lot of people didn't seem to mind. After all, Xena is a barbarian. Yet I imagined what their reaction would be if a man had done these things to Gabrielle. Would they be so forgiving then? So I ended up writing an essay on The Bitter Suite called XenaGate, which focuses exclusively on the GabDrag. (This essay, by the way, became the chief piece of evidence for a later story called The Trial of Xena.)
Trivia Note: I close this story by having Dahak pose as a little dog, with eyes aflame. The reason for this is that they had this little white dog in Illusia in this episode. At the same time, over on Hercules, Autolycus and Salmoneus were in hiding with some showgirls (and the Widow Twanky), and this same little dog turned up in that episode, too! He really got around, so I figured it must have been Dahak snooping around both shows.
Bard, Know Thyself: Well, the 3rd season was shaping up to be pretty depressing, but there were some bright spots. One of them was Warrior..Priestess..Tramp. The priestess Leah was asking Gabrielle about committing herself to celibacy, and getting in touch with her inner self. Gabrielle quipped that if she had to go without companionship much longer, "knowing myself won't be a problem". Thus this story.
This Sapphic story assumes that even by the 3rd season, Xena and Gabrielle were still platonic friends. This is a wink to the "maintext" interpretation of the show, and allowed me to have some fun regarding their sex life. A fun little piece.
Verse & Vignette: The premise for this was simple, to open each chapter with a snippet of love poetry (not written by me, of course). The key here is that my writing style would not be lofty. Xena and Gabrielle, while in love, would still be down-to-earth and matter-of-fact with each other. But the poetry would take the story to a new level, I felt, and make it more meaningful. It was an interesting contrast and, based on the feedback, very successful.
While writing the story I realized that each chapter opening of poetry could also be preceded by a good subtext picture from the show. So shortly after releasing the text version of this story, I upgraded it with some of my favorite pictures from the show. This story was good enough to be noticed by Xenadom's resident story reviewer Lunacy, who gave it a "VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!" review. This was astonishing, for only months before I was reading other people's stories based on her recommendations. Now I was being recommended. I still can't thank her enough for the ego boost this gave me.
Fruit Feet & Grins: You could say I was pretty disgusted with the "comedy" episode Fins Femmes & Gems. No plot to speak of, a pointless appearance by a naked Joxer, and a half-hearted attempt at slapstick comedy made for a weak episode. So, I endeavored to give Xena and Gabrielle new naughty obsessions, and give Joxer one that would take him out of the story. I admit to really disliking him at the time I wrote this story, although my views on his usefulness softened somewhat after seeing his contribution to the season finale Sacrifice II.
This story had a more important thing to make fun of than Joxer however, and that was erotic Xena fan fiction. Some of these stories are interesting, some are quite hot, and others are just plain silly. It was the silly erotic stories I wanted to make fun of, and I think I succeeded here. The point of this story is not just to make you laugh, but to make you pee-your-pants laugh. It helps if you've read some erotic Xena stories beforehand, as that really sets the mood.
The Trial of Xena: I wrote this story in May 1998. My first "dark" story, it has almost no affection between Xena and Gabrielle. The reason is The Bitter Suite, and its effect on the Xenaverse. For some months I had been building arguments against the Rift of the 3rd season, and the horrible dragging of BS. These thoughts had been honed and refined to the point where I felt I could carve a story out of them, and I did.
The Trial of Xena took the next logical step of BS, that after the episode the Amazons should have hunted Xena down and brought her to justice for her crimes against the Amazons, and Gabrielle. But this presented a problem. Were I to follow the show's example strictly, they would find Xena guilty, and put her to death. I had to find another solution, as we already had a depressing ending with the 3rd season finale. My story had to be uplifting, but at the same time, condemn very strongly how Xena was being portrayed in this new season.
Another factor was a large portion of the fanbase's growing dissatisfaction with Joxer. A bumbling fool, Joxer was tolerated by the author until his appearances in such episodes as Forget-Me-Not and Fins Femmes & Gems. Tolerant of him through the 2nd season, (I still consider For Him the Bell Tolls one of my personal favorites), I began to side with the Joxer-haters. While I liked the guy, he was being used too often on the show, to little or no point but to fill space. How could I deal with him?
The solution came to me like a stroke of lightning. Dahak had somehow taken over Joxer's body, (and thus would be responsible for the aforementioned episodes), and the entire GabDrag was his fault. When he was defeated, I killed two birds with one stone, and thus pleased two factions at once. (Joxer-haters and Rift-haters.)
I opened The Trial of Xena by calling it a horror story, and perhaps the reader may think this refers to the gory details. It does not. The reason it is a horror story is that everything Xena was accused of doing during the trial was true. On the television show, she was under no one's mind control when she made the decision to murder Gabrielle.
Continuity Note: I strive to keep my characterizations true to what is portrayed on television. Thus it was with great satisfaction that I saw that in the 5th season of Hercules, the writers had Dahak take over Iolaus' body to come into the world. This is exactly what I did six months earlier in this story! The only difference in my story was that Dahak was exposed earlier than he expected, and so he did not have all his fancy powers to use against Xena and Gabrielle.
Loophole Note: An important part of this story is Ares' role in the GabDrag. I found a huge loophole regarding his supposed deal with Gabrielle made in The Debt (revealed in Forget-Me-Not) that she would owe him a favor in times to come. Well, this made absolutely no sense if several episodes later, he tells Xena in BS to kill her before even collecting on it! The real reason for this discrepancy, of course, is that the writers didn't have their scripts together. But it gave me an opening for my story.
Fun Note: At the time I wrote this story, I wanted to name the judge as Judge Judy, after the television judge of the same name. I decided against it because I figured non-American Xenites would never have heard of her, and choosing the name would have lent a silly air to a very serious story. So, I wrote her as Judge Judy, but I called her Judge Malath instead. Ironically, it was revealed at the 1998 Emmy Awards that Lucy Lawless' goal was to meet Judge Judy there! Just a happy little coincidence for my story.
Subtext: This story is truly the pinnacle of my Xena writing, as it takes elements I am most familiar with (time travel), and mixes them with my fascination with Lucy Lawless and Reneé O'Connor. The plot is quite simple: Gabrielle and Reneé O'Connor, tied together by some kind of cosmic destiny, magically switch places with each other. Reneé is transported to Xena's universe, and Gabrielle gets pulled into the 20th century.
This is my most controversial story, in that it delves into Lucy and Reneé's private lives. I knew I was walking on eggshells when I did this, so I made myself some rules. One was that the only personal information I would use would be from authorized personal interviews that the two had conducted. If these things about their personal lives (like Daisy's Tamagotchi) were considered suitable for public consumption in interviews, then I put that information in my story. Hearsay and rumors were not used. Another thing I made sure of was not to permanently change anything by story's end. This meant that Gabrielle would go back to Xena, and Reneé would go back to her boyfriend. (Now her husband in real life.)
My most technically demanding story, it had a ton of trivial details to sort out, and so I was assisted by four beta-readers in making it. Two were friends from the U.S., while the other two were Australian volunteers who would help me get my "Kiwi" lingo down right. With their help, it became a box of birds. (Same as "day at the beach".)
Special Note: I've been asked about a scene in this story where Lucy admits to Gabrielle that she had once "been with a woman". People would ask me if I knew something they didn't. The truth is, this simply refers to the role she had in the short lesbian movie Peach, and nothing else. Sorry to confuse anyone!
The Gabrielle/Xena Trilogy: I had set my previous story in the 2nd season of the show. Not out of dislike for the 3rd season, but because most of my references were from that season. The Trilogy however, was another matter. This story could not have been written until the 4th season of the show. Following my preference for "alternate Xenaverse" twists, the story replaces the 1st season's premiere Sins of the Past and has Xena and Gabrielle meet instead within the confines of the Amazon Nation, all tied in to the revelations of the 4th season. Sounds confusing, but I think it came out right.
Given the length of the third chapter, perhaps I should have made the story a four-parter. I named it the Gabrielle/Xena Trilogy as a nod to the Hercules/Xena Trilogy, and consider this a fitting close to my career as a Xena bard. (January 1999)
Hail to the Chief: Okay, I couldn't stay retired for long, apparently. In early 1999, President Clinton embarked on a "limited" war in Kosovo, and I thought it an appropriate topic for an "Uber" story. Uber fiction is a genre of Xena fiction wherein Xena and Gabrielle are reincarnated in future representations of themselves. I decided to pick the most unattractive women possible to play them, Janet Reno and Madeline Albright. Helping my concept was the fact that Lucy Lawless herself compared Xena to Madeline Albright. To my delight I found a picture portraying precisely that:
http://members.tripod.com/Ogami_Xena/Albright_Xena.jpg
Xena Protest II: Not exactly a story, but rather my take on the controversy regarding the censorship of the 4th season episode The Way. It was Hindu fundamentalists who protested that episode, so I wondered what would be the result of Christian fundamentalists protesting Xena. I've gotten nothing but positive commentary on this "story", which I point out is theologically correct. At the time this piece was written, there were only three Xena episodes that followed Christianity. (I am especially proud of the silly picture I created of the Teletubbies with little Chakrams on their sets.)
Flesh and Blood: My first real Xena and Gabrielle story since the Trilogy, I wrote this after refusing to watch Ides of March. There had been so much pain and death in the 3rd and 4th seasons that I felt compelled to write a life-affirming story, based around the song of the same name.
This story visits Xena and Gabrielle around episodes from the last four seasons, spanning Chariots of War, Altared States, Warrior..Princess..Tramp, The Quest, A Comedy of Eros, End Game, and Ides of March. I feel this is a fitting tribute to the show I fell in love with, as well as a reminder of why we all watch.
I consider this my climax of sapphic Xena writing, and was proud to release it at the end of the 4th season. Being a panelist at the 1999 Atlanta Dragoncon, I spent about $30 to print copies of this story and distribute them for free to attendees.
The Warlord Who Shagged Me: I thought I had retired with Flesh and Blood, but Lisandra inspired my muse with this story idea. This was my first collaboration, and it went pretty well. In the movie sequel Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, the secret agent went back to the 60's to stop Doctor Evil. By making one little adjustment to his time vehicle, I had Austin instead go back in time to ancient Greece, where he would interrupt the 4th season finale Ides of March.
Lisandra and I had a fundamental disagreement on the role of Mojo. I came to see that I could use her point of view to add to my vision, so there was no conflict. Her insights led me to new ideas, and it was a far richer story because of it. A collaboration can be a source of much inspiration. (Not from teamwork, but from disagreement!) Very illuminating, and a real treat to write such a silly story. (July 1999)
Season Five note: Fallen Angel has two neat events which tie in to The Warlord Who Shagged Me. First of all, Eli admits what Gabrielle said to Xena in my story, that the way of peace is not for her. The other is that Callisto has a direct hand in Xena's pregnancy, just like in my story, too! What wonderful vindication. (October 1999)
Rubdown: And here we reach my final Xena story, a rewrite of the 6th season episode Who's Gurkhan. I could understand the writer's need to "power down" Xena in this episode, but that doesn't mean she loses all sense and skips making a plan. Here, I gave her one to my liking, and consistent with her abilities in prior seasons. I also tried to give Eve some character, to explain why she was written so badly. A satisfying renewal of the Xena and Gabrielle I remember from the second season. (October 2001)
Series Finale note: Many fans expressed shock and dismay at Xena's brutal and sexually offensive treatment in the conclusion of the series, A Friend in Need II. Yet that story and Who's Gurkhan were penned by the same author. Like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, I must point out the obvious. These two episodes had the same precise themes, yet few noticed.
Writing these stories would not have been possible without the stunning acting abilities of Lucy Lawless and Reneé O'Connor on the television show, and I thank them humbly. You brought these characters to life, and without the two of you, fan fiction would never have been possible. Writers like Joanna, Ella Quince, Anima, BL Miller, and Shaych showed me that there was a whole universe of stories out there besides what was presented on television.
I believe that the Sapphic Internet stories written during the first and second seasons were probably the best stories ever written for the show, on or off television. The philosophy of Xena and Gabrielle not as fellow travelers, but a couple in love, was a stirring one for many Xenites, myself included. We saw hints of that love on the television show, but it really blossomed (so to speak) in romantic fan fiction.
Most importantly, I would like to thank all of my readers from the bottom of my heart, for it has been your compliments that have kept me going as a writer. I have made a lot of good friends in my time as a bard, and I value your friendship. I know there are better fan fiction writers out there, but your praise has been very gratifying nonetheless. Thank you.
Xena has been off the air for a year now, yet this website will endure at Geocities. The number of Xena websites out there diminish on a weekly basis, yet I will endeavor to maintain current links. For these sites and these stories say something about us. There was a message the show started with, even if the show's own producers apparently didn't believe in it. There are some things worth believing in, worth hoping for, and worth writing about. That is what we celebrated, and that is what we will take with us when the Xenaverse is only a memory.
Ogami
March 2005
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