From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #106 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Thursday, April 25 2002 Volume 02 : Number 106 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [Meredith Tarr > [Meredith Tarr > [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [cr ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:53:44 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Wednesday 24 April 2002 10:50, Cheryl Ande wrote: > cr wrote: > (snip) > > " In the space of a few weeks that Ming Tzu would have taken to come up > with the ransom money? OK we know the Patty Hearst syndrome but how long > does it last after the victim has been removed from the situation? Just > IMO...." > > Oh I don't think it all happened in the space of the few weeks of Tien's > kidnapping. I think he really became fasinated with Xena and probably > studied her career in Asia. As we well know she seemed to stick around > China for while after meeting Lo Mao since she met Akemi sometime after > that. I think he was in someway fascinated with the woman who destroyed > his father and since he was taught by his father that power was everything > why not try emulate the one who was more powerful than his father. Good hypothesis. And of course Xena did kill Ming Tzu in front of him - which (whatever his feelings for/against his father) was probably much more traumatic than anything he experienced in captivity. I can imagine him following Xena's further career with much interest. All sorts of Freudian things come to mind. > > > reconciliation scene in the dungeon is wonderful as she forgives > > > Gabrielle with humor and a silly request for a nose scratching. > > > > " I was saying in disgust "Ahhh, she just dropped you right in it, don't > > let her off so easy!" ;-) > > Well you know I always figured with Xena's need to be punished for her > past, present, future crimes, she probably felt she deserved to be dropped > in the dungeon and no one had a better right than Gabrielle to do it. You > and I might have wished she would have made Gabby grovel a little more but > I don't think Xena would have. She wanted to forgive Gabby. Yes, quite so. Gabby is Xena's weak point, I think. In fact most of the known world knows it. Gabby should maybe be walking round wearing a tee shirt that says "XENA'S WEAK POINT" in big red letters ;-) (Hmm, maybe that's why I don't care for Gabby so much..... I see her not as a character of her own but as Xena's biggest character weakness. Something Freudian going on in _my_ head, maybe. ;) > > That whole scene was a delight to watch. And really, Ming did almost > > _beg_ Xena to kill him. He asked for it in spades. If you're > > confrointing the person who you just tried to execute, and who just > > blasted your palace out from under you, it is *not* a god idea to taunt > > them with how you killed someone they revere. > > Tien ain't the brightest bulb in the pack that goes without saying. I also > agree that it was good thing Xena killed him. Ming Tien was not destroyed > simply because she blew up the castle. As you say given a couple of guards > he would been right back in the sadistic ruler business. In fact in Back > In The Bottle his ghost was still a pain in the ass. Yes, quite so. Hmmm, in Bitter Suite, his ghost was haunting Xena, but then he exploded. Does that make his later appearance in BITB a YAXI? I guess not, since Callisto, Ceasar et al were also haunting her in Bitter Suite - from which I conclude they weren't really ghosts but figments of Xena's own conscience. > " I was a little bothered that Xena lied to Gabs about killing him - not > that I care that she lied to Gabs specifically, in my opinion Gabs having > nearly got Xena dead wasn't entitled to know anyway - but just that Xena > told a lie." > > That's why wondered if Xena realized she had killed Ming Tien. The whole > scene after she killed Ming where she is talking to his corpse is odd. > Gabrielle isn't there and yet she is talking to him as if he is alive. If > she knew he was dead why have chat with him? If it's deception who is she > decieving? Gabby, I think. (See above what I said about Xena's weak point ;) And of course that was the point of Ming's 'ghost' in Bitter Suite - I don't think it was on Xena's conscience having killed him, I think she just felt guilty for having lied to Gabby about it. Hmm, Gabby didn't just oughta be wearing the tee shirt, she needs to be tooting a trumpet and waving a great big banner that says "You can get to Xena through me!!!" ;) cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 20:11:20 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Wednesday 24 April 2002 10:58, Cheryl Ande wrote: > As for the comedies she does has a nice dry manner as in Day In > The Life and Been There or even Fins. She however seems to like to be the > clown also and she has to be retrained by her director and if he either > isn't strong enough to do it or is prone to it also you get embarrassing > silly stuff. > > >CherylA Yes, my opinion too. I think it must be hard for a performer, especially in comedy, to tell how they're coming across to an audience, and particularly how far is too far. LL's quite excellent when using dry wit or irony, IMO. In fact I find more moments of humour in the 'dramas' than I do in the comedies. Her strong comic points are (IMO) her sardonic black humour / irony (as I said), and her ability to play several different characters (as in Warrior...Princess...Tramp). Her weak point is her tendency to ham it up. I can accept that much more readily from Meg than from Xena, though. For example her popping out of the cake in Soul Possession, which is way over the top, seems quite in character for Meg and therefore acceptable (to me at least). The same for Priestess Leia. I guess it's because Meg and Leia are comic characters who don't have a degree of personal dignity to maintain (unlike Xena). cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 21:29:50 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Wednesday 24 April 2002 19:53, cr wrote: > > > > That's why wondered if Xena realized she had killed Ming Tien. The > > whole scene after she killed Ming where she is talking to his corpse is > > odd. Gabrielle isn't there and yet she is talking to him as if he is > > alive. If she knew he was dead why have chat with him? If it's > > deception who is she decieving? > > Gabby, I think. (See above what I said about Xena's weak point ;) I was a bit obscure there - IIRC, when Xena started talking to (dead) Ming Tien, that was just about the moment that Gabby walked in. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 08:10:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Meredith Tarr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> Hi, > That's why wondered if Xena realized she had killed Ming Tien. The > whole scene after she killed Ming where she is talking to his corpse is > odd. Gabrielle isn't there and yet she is talking to him as if he is > alive. If she knew he was dead why have chat with him? If it's > deception who is she decieving? She was deceiving Gabrielle. She didn't want Gabrielle to know that she had indeed killed him after all, so she talked to him like he was still alive. It worked -- Gabby bought it until Xena confessed to her later that she had in fact killed him. The end shot of the episode, where we see Ming Tien's eyes clouding over and see Lao Ma's hairpin embedded in his skull is very powerful. Up until then we might think things have turned around for X & G, but we see the reality of the situation: Xena has lied to Gabrielle, we know Gabrielle has lied to Xena (about Hope), and even as they leave Chin we know their relationship is still in *big* trouble. Meredith meth@smoe.org Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/ ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 08:25:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Meredith Tarr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> Hi, We journey into _The Bitter Suite_ and a couple other episodes here... Thelonius responded: > (Hmm, maybe that's why I don't care for Gabby so > much..... I see her not as > a character of her own but as Xena's biggest > character weakness. Something > Freudian going on in _my_ head, maybe. ;) Maybe. :) IMO, Gabrielle's path followed that of the "hero's journey" far closer than Xena's did, at least as viewed through the lens of the events we saw take place during the run of the show. Gabrielle's character grew into someone completely unrecognizable from the annoying chatterbox Xena rescued from Potadeia. Xena herself, however, remained much the same from _Sins Of The Past_ to _FIN_. But then, everyone knows I always liked Gabrielle best. > Hmmm, in Bitter Suite, his ghost was haunting Xena, > but then he exploded. > Does that make his later appearance in BITB a YAXI? > I guess not, since > Callisto, Ceasar et al were also haunting her in > Bitter Suite - from which I > conclude they weren't really ghosts but figments of > Xena's own conscience. Right. I don't think we can take *anything* that happened in Illusia as having happened for real, outside of the bare fact that Xena and Gabrielle finally talked it out and forgave one another. I saw the "ghosts" haunting Xena in the Illusia version of Dahak's temple as manifestations of her own guilt. When they exploded she was able to let go of them, at least enough to move on and get out of Illusia. (I don't believe she really stopped feeling guilty about Callisto or Ming Tien or the others. If she had, she wouldn't have been so quick to run off to prison in _Locked Up And Tied Down_ ... but I digress.) Meredith meth@smoe.org ===== Meredith Tarr RWA meredith_tarr@yahoo.com Reply To: meredith.tarr@telethinking.com Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/ ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:47:29 -0400 From: "M. Cornwell" Subject: [chakram-refugees] OT: Arch News: the chemistry of mummies An interesting article __________________________________ Arch News: the chemistry of mummies The Chemistry of ... Mummies Recipe for the Dead The secret ingredients used by Egyptian embalmers are revealed at last (By Josie Glausiusz) Richard Evershed keeps mummy parts in his drawers. Not bandages or bones but tiny glass vials containing specks of brown powder, the sad residue of an ancient embalmer's art. On the vials are curious labels: Female Adult Ptolemaic: "resinous" lump hanging by thread off right ankle, says one. Horemkenesi: leg and foot, says another. Pedeamun: resin from top of head, reads a third. Retrieved from the remains of once-proud Egyptians, these remnants now resemble dried tea leaves. But it isn't clairvoyance that awaits them; instead, it's 21st-century chemical analysis in Evershed's lab at the University of Bristol in England. Evershed, a gray-haired man with the slightly bemused air of someone unused to sudden fame, is more than willing to show visitors the mummies in the Bristol museum, five minutes' walk up the road from his paper-stacked office. But clearly his heart lies with chemistry, not coffins. "Some people spend hours looking at them," he says of the dusty, dimly lit collection of sarcophagi in the museum. "I'm more interested in the bodies." Not whole bodies, of course. It was once acceptable to unwrap ancient mummiessometimes, as in the Victorian era, before crowds of paying spectators. Now such invasions are fiercely frowned upon, which is why Evershed, an organic chemist, follows a less aggressive path. He and his grad student Stephen Buckley have taken tiny samples from 13 mummies in museums all over the United Kingdom and subjected them to the most thorough chemical analyses yet. In the process, they've provided the first detailed inventory of the embalmers' concoctions and overturned long-held assumptions about Egyptian mummification. Some of those assumptions date back to the time of Herodotus, the Greek historian who traveled to Egypt in the fifth century B.C. Herodotus described an array of balms and unguents from myrrh and cassia to cedar oil, palm wine, and some sort of gumapplied by embalmers to the eviscerated bodies under their care. But Herodotus' accounts were secondhand; he does not appear to have witnessed mummification in action, and it is unlikely that the notoriously secretive embalmers would have revealed the tricks of their trade to a stranger. With time, popular notions about mummies only grew more muddled. In the 12th century, returning Crusaders brought news of the healing powers of ground-up mummy parts, and the powder soon became a popular panacea. In the late 18th century, investigators began to take a closer look at the cadaversunwrapping, dissecting, sniffing, and even chewing them. But such scrutiny was not only of limited scientific value, it destroyed the specimens. Evershed and Buckley's approach was less invasive and far more revealing. They began by removing minute samples of tissue or wrapping (some less than a tenth of a milligram) from mummies made between 1985 B.C. and A.D. 395, the end of the Roman period. They then analyzed the samples using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. First, they liquefied the samples and injected them into a glass tube filled with helium, which was heated. They then measured how long each chemical component took to vaporize and emerge from the other end of the tube. The more volatile the compound, the quicker it passed through the column. Finally, the components were channeled into a mass spectrometer, which sorted and identified their gaseous ions based on their behavior in electric and magnetic fields. The results revealed a witches' brew of fats, resins, perfumes, and waxes, each carefully calibrated to provide the best defense against decay. Indeed, the embalmers apparently honed their skills over thousands of years, testing and experimenting with different potions and preservatives. All the bodies were first treated with a natural salt mixture known as natron. This dried out the tissue until it was tough as an old sausage, but the humidity of a damp tomb could still soften the body, leaving it subject to bacterial decay. So preservatives were applied. The first of these was the simplest. Every mummy that Evershed and Buckley sampled had been coated in fat, mostly in the form of plant oils, though fat from cattle, sheep, or goats was also used. As the fats dried, the double bonds in their molecules cross-linked to form an intricate lattice that kept out both water and bacteria. "We've looked at a child mummy from Edinburghan unwrapped oneand it's completely shiny," Evershed says. "It's almost like it's had a number of coats of varnish." Vegetable oils may also have been used as a cheap base for costly, volatile spices such as myrrh that could mask the nasty odors arising from the recently deceased. Next, many of the mummies were coated with conifer resin and beeswax. Coniferous trees aren't native to Egypt, so they must have been imported from across the Middle East: cedars from Lebanon, Aleppo pine from Syria, oriental spruce from southern Turkey. As for the beeswax, like resin it would have repelled water as well as bacteria, and like resin it was used in ever-greater quantities as the centuries passed. "It looks like there was some evolution of the technique," Evershed says. "On the face of it, you've got what looks to be a fairly mundane collection of materials. But if you stand back and look at them, you start to appreciate why they were chosen. Perhaps they were gaining an increasing appreciation of what they were trying to do and were drawing on more materials in order to do it." Still, when it came to mummification, the embalmer's experience mattered less than the cadaver's money and class. Take two mummies in the Bristol museum, both of which Evershed and Buckley analyzed. One, a female, stands slightly lopsided in a glass case, her body still wrapped in bandages. In happier daysthat is, sometime between 945 B.C. and 715 B.C.she was "the Lady of the House Nes-Khons," according to her sarcophagus, the wealthy daughter of a lord of Thebes. At her death, probably around age 40, embalmers gave her the kid-glove treatment: Plant oils, coniferous resin, balsam, and wax were all applied to her body. Leaving aside the hole at the neck of her casing drilled apparently by thieves searching for amuletsshe remains intact. Compare this with the fate that awaited Horemkenesi, a middle-ranking foreman and priest at the temple of Karnak in the 11th century B.C. After Horemkenesi's body was unwrapped, his flesh was found to have been bored through by 3,000-year-old beetles. And no wonder. The only preservative the team was able to finddespite sampling his body parts in 15 different places was oil. Of Herodotus' recipe, Evershed and Buckley found few ingredients. Some, like palm wine, would have evaporated or disintegrated and left little trace. But the absence of others, such as bitumen, is harder to explain. Bitumen is the agent most closely associated with Egyptian embalming: The word "mummy" has long been thought to come from mumiyah, the Arabic word for bitumen. For centuries many people have believed that some mummies owe their black appearance to a thick coating of the material, which is found floating in blocks on the Dead Sea and seeps from the earth throughout the Middle East. Yet the Bristol team couldn't find a trace of it in their samples. Small quantities of bitumen may have been used to waterproof some Roman-era mummies, the two chemists concede. But "the idea that bitumen was widely and generally used is just rubbish, quite frankly," Buckley says. "Some mummies are not black; they're only black when they're unwrapped by people," rather as a cut apple browns when exposed to air. Given that beeswax was a primary material used in mummification, Buckley says, the real origin of "mummy" may lie much closer to home: In Egyptian Coptic, the word for wax is mum. --------------- Corrie - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: Click Here ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:08:18 -0500 From: Mark & Denise Subject: [chakram-refugees] E! has "Toughest Stars" ep on tonight The E! online poll of toughest start will be revealed tonight. LL as Xena was listed as one of the poll selections for "Favorite Classic Tough Chick". The time shown doesn't specify, but I'm assuming it is for Eastern Time. Here's the URL: http://www.eonline.com/On/Rank/Shows/ToughestStars/index.html Guess I'll be taping either this or EcoChallenge NZ tonight! Mark ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:51:59 +1200 From: NZJester Subject: RE: [chakram-refugees] Herc & Xena--3d worst anim At 01:13 PM 19/04/02 +1200, I wrote: >I got to see the Xena cartoon on one of the saterlight channels >that I pay for monthly >I've not seen the tape for hire or sale here Was just flipping channels today and what did I find on NZ TV3 but the Herc & Xena Cartoon end credits rolling up as I type Catch ya later Jester New Xenaland http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/newxenaland/ ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:18:34 -0400 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: NY Times article on Oxygen Lee Daily wrote: "From Studios USA's first involvement with Xena we have been complaining thatthey were clueless about the product (X:WP) and were Dilbertian in their marketing of the franchise. Why should they change at the end?" "Dilbertian"!! What a great word and so perfect to describe our friends at USA Studios. Yes they never got it right. Hopefully whoever owns them this week will do things better, Starting with a good run of DVDs with lots of extras and maybe a good series of books or better yet a TV movie or two if Lucy and Renee are so inclined. Now if Xena could be rescued from exile on Oxygen. By the way do you think Oxygen's ratings would improve if it got rid of the annoying ticker at the bottom of the screen? I'm sure it must drive the audience bonkers. I know it did for me on the tape of FIN. CherylA ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 22:17:23 -0400 (EDT) From: cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola) Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] E! has "Toughest Stars" ep on tonight SPOILER AHEAD.....> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Lucy was voted #2 in the classic category, beaten by Sigourney Weaver... Personally I think she should have made the main list of 25 because had there been no Xena......Angel, Buffy and Alias would never have been dreamed up. CJL ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 16:20:44 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Thursday 25 April 2002 03:25, Meredith Tarr wrote: > Hi, > > We journey into _The Bitter Suite_ and a couple other > episodes here... > > Thelonius responded: > > (Hmm, maybe that's why I don't care for Gabby so > > much..... I see her not as > > a character of her own but as Xena's biggest > > character weakness. Something > > Freudian going on in _my_ head, maybe. ;) > > Maybe. :) IMO, Gabrielle's path followed that of the > "hero's journey" far closer than Xena's did, at least > as viewed through the lens of the events we saw take > place during the run of the show. Gabrielle's > character grew into someone completely unrecognizable > from the annoying chatterbox Xena rescued from > Potadeia. Xena herself, however, remained much the > same from _Sins Of The Past_ to _FIN_. I'd partly agree with you there. IMO, Xena's character _did_ change.... I think she matured a bit. I don't mean she was immature in the Herc trilogy, but she was driven and impulsive. As time went on I think she became more accustomed to the sort of life she was living, maybe a bit more weary, though never entirely reconciled to her past, hence the developments in Friend in Need. Gabby, on the other hand, did change far more. And from my point of view got a lot less annoying ;-) > But then, everyone knows I always liked Gabrielle > best. You are permitted to. Specially since you run the list... ;-) > > Hmmm, in Bitter Suite, his ghost was haunting Xena, > > but then he exploded. > > Does that make his later appearance in BITB a YAXI? > > I guess not, since > > Callisto, Ceasar et al were also haunting her in > > Bitter Suite - from which I > > conclude they weren't really ghosts but figments of > > Xena's own conscience. > > Right. I don't think we can take *anything* that > happened in Illusia as having happened for real, > outside of the bare fact that Xena and Gabrielle > finally talked it out and forgave one another. > > I saw the "ghosts" haunting Xena in the Illusia > version of Dahak's temple as manifestations of her own > guilt. When they exploded she was able to let go of > them, at least enough to move on and get out of > Illusia. (I don't believe she really stopped feeling > guilty about Callisto or Ming Tien or the others. If > she had, she wouldn't have been so quick to run off to > prison in _Locked Up And Tied Down_ ... but I > digress.) > > Meredith > meth@smoe.org I don't know I agree with you there. In LUATD she specifically felt guilty about Crab Lady (can't remember her name...) She also had plenty of quite innocent lives on her conscience to feel guilty about. So no need to feel guilty about Callisto or Ming who arguably deserved what happened to them. Thelonius ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 16:21:09 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Thursday 25 April 2002 03:10, Meredith Tarr wrote: > Hi, > > > That's why wondered if Xena realized she had > > killed Ming Tien. The > > > whole scene after she killed Ming where she is > > talking to his corpse is > > > odd. Gabrielle isn't there and yet she is > > talking to him as if he is > > > alive. If she knew he was dead why have chat > > with him? If it's > > > deception who is she decieving? > > She was deceiving Gabrielle. She didn't want > Gabrielle to know that she had indeed killed him after > all, so she talked to him like he was still alive. It > worked -- Gabby bought it until Xena confessed to her > later that she had in fact killed him. > > The end shot of the episode, where we see Ming Tien's > eyes clouding over and see Lao Ma's hairpin embedded > in his skull is very powerful. Up until then we might > think things have turned around for X & G, but we see > the reality of the situation: Xena has lied to > Gabrielle, we know Gabrielle has lied to Xena (about > Hope), and even as they leave Chin we know their > relationship is still in *big* trouble. > > Meredith > meth@smoe.org Ah, those little white lies. Actually, so far as the relationship goes, I think lying to each other rather pales into insignificance alongside Gabs getting Xena captured and nearly executed by Ming. I do not think that is forgiveable and if someone did that to me I don't think I would ever trust them again. IMO. But anyway, just suppose Xena decided to tell Gabby the truth...... Gabs: "Xena, your not killing him made you exactly what Lao Ma wanted you to be." Xena: Well, errr, ummm, actually, he did get sort of.... ummm... Gabs [Looking at Ming T] Why isn't he moving? Xena: .... a little bit deadish, I'm afraid. Gabs: [Unbelievingly] You killed him? Xena: Well, he was going on about how he murdered Lao Ma and I sorta... slipped. It's not like I disembowelled him or anything. Gabs: [Peering at Ming Tien] You're kidding me. He's still alive. [Looks closer] What's *that* ? Xena: [Offhandedly] Oh, that? That's Lao Ma's hair brooch. Ming gave it to me. Gabs [sarcastically] And you killed him with it. How very appropriate. Xena [brightening] Yes, I thought so too. [Gets dirty look from Gabs] Gabs [scathingly] After you promised you wouldn't? Xena: [defensively] Well, actually, if you recall, I didn't promise anything. Besides, it's not as if he was a nice person or anything. Why shouldn't I kill him? Gabs: For the good of your soul! Xena: You leave my soul out of this! Gabs: After all we've been through you can say that to me? Xena: All *we've* been through? I didn't notice you in that lousy dungeon awaiting execution, thank you very much miss self-appointed voice-of-my-conscience. I think I'll look after my own soul in future, it's less likely to get me killed. [Stalks off alone] But on the whole, I prefer the irony in RenPics version. Speaking of which, I've just realised how significant that hair brooch theme is. When we first see it, Lao Ma tells Xena 'You could kill someone with this", Lao Ma gives it to Xena, then somewhere in the ep (I can't recall when) Xena gives it back to Lao Ma, I think. And Lao Ma, just before her execution, requests Ming to return it to Xena, which he does. I think that bequest of Lao Ma's was a strong message to Xena - she could hardly have said "Kill this man!" more plainly if she'd tattooed it on his forehead. Ming of course didn't know this. And Xena, as requested, used the hair brooch to kill him. I've only just appreciated the full significance of that hair brooch theme.... nice plotting. Thelonius ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V2 #106 **************************************