From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #143 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 Wednesday, May 29 2002 Volume 02 : Number 143 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] <> [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] favorite sayings? [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] favorite sayings? [cr ] [chakram-refugees] Amazon funeral song [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Re: When In Rome [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Amazon funeral song [mirrordrum > [mirrordrum Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> On Tuesday 28 May 2002 13:20, Lilli Sprintz wrote: > <> > > <> > > > > Cheryl says, > > Gabrielle now allows Crassus to be lead to his > death....For Gabrielle it is one more nail in the coffin of her innocence. > She has become a willing accessory in murder. > > This was one of the hardest things I saw going on in that season. In a > matter of speaking, I was one of those (being careful here to not tread on > toes) people who saw Gabrielle as a wimp. > > When I saw her taking action later in Seasons 2 and then 3, I cheered. But > "no death penalty" is in my bones, and I fear I am in conflict. In real life, I lean towards your views. But Xena is fantasyland, and I draw a line between them..... It doesn't worry me when Xena kills an evildoer. Even though XWP is not so simplistic as most TV shows - and I cringe at the over-simplified sagas where the heroes and the bad guys are portrayed in black and white. Still, Xena creating mayhem with the baddies appeals to my taste for drama and action. What do they call it? Catharsis? So I can divorce XWP from reality... I guess that's how I get over the inconsistency. > I wasn't > really sure it was Gabrielle's, or anyone's place, in that place, to choose > for Crassus to die. Goodness...did I just say that? What would have > happened if Gabrielle hadn't "killed him" ? He and Ceasar and Pompey would > have stayed allied, perhaps a bit longer and done more injustice to alot of > other folks. Need I say "Gaul" being part of that? Does anyone out there > have information about what the real trinity (being careful also with > religious people here, but they did think they were gods, didn't they), > did in history? There's all sorts of things come in here. Crassus (in XWP-land) was a ruthless character who would quite happily have had anyone killed if it suited him. If, therefore, he gets executed by a couple of equally ruthless characters (Caesar and Pompey) in mistake for Vercinix, how can that be regarded as unfair? Yes, Gabby was stuck with the responsibility for letting him be executed, or letting him live and very probably kill a lot more innocent people down the track. If she had let him live, would her conscience have been any clearer? - - or would it have been worse? It's not a decision most of us would want to have to make. > Which is why I was so upset as I watched Gabrielle lose hers, as i and > others have presumably lost ours. I wanted to see her keep on laughing, > making jokes, doing the right thing for the right reason, and keep on > hoping that there was, indeed, some reason for trying something other than > a violent end. There, I said it. There may well have been.... but that was on some other show. (And I'm not being flippant). XWP was a 'dark' show.... happy endings are not very common in the Xenaverse. > So, both issues that season were difficult. And if I had killed Hitler > before he had a chance to do all he did , would I have felt bad about it? > I hope not. You would. You'd feel awful about it. And so would I. BUT, if I were the only person able to kill Hitler, I would feel even worse if I didn't. 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:44:37 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] favorite sayings? On Tuesday 28 May 2002 15:36, mirrordrum wrote: > At 10:23 PM 5/27/2002 -0400, meredith wrote: > > Macon: "Why? I'm a killer. Why'd you come back? What'd you > > expect?" > > X: "From you-- nothin'. From me, nothin' less." > > i like that one a lot. > > i think mine may be from . when gabrielle first really sees > warlord xena and asks her what's going on, how can she do the things she's > doing and xena replies "this is war. what did you expect, glamour?" > > that's the line lucy ad-libbed, yes? > > favorite funny callisto line is from when hope emerges and says > "hello mother." > > callisto: "awwww, the mother and child reunion. i'm all misty-eyed." > > md Ooooh. Callisto was full of lovely lines. "Come out, come out, wherever you are. I promise it won't hurt. (Much)." "You don't just kill me and walk away!" And from the same little conversation with Velasca: V: "You must have a death wish!" C: "You know it's funny, I think I do" 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:38:59 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] favorite sayings? On Tuesday 28 May 2002 13:32, Lilli Sprintz wrote: > > Hey, this makes me feel like getting in a little thing about saying our > favorite lines from Xena. > > Any others? Yay! My favourite - from the ending of The Debt, to Ming Tien: "I've learned to clean up after myself". Delightfully sinister. 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 23:07:19 +1200 From: cr Subject: [chakram-refugees] Amazon funeral song Trivia question - how many times in XWP have we heard that haunting Amazon funeral song? It's at Marga's funeral at the end of Dangerous Prey, and IIRC it's at Ephiny's funeral at the end of Endgame. Any others? And, is it reserved for Amazon Queens? In which there seems to be an incredibly high mortality rate, btw... I'm trying to recall... Terreis (not a queen but next in succession) Melosa Velasca (pretender to the title, but dead anyway or at least entombed) Ephiny Chilapa? - we never heard what happened to her, but she wasn't there by the time of Coming Home Marga Varia - not dead but demoted/deposed by Gabby I rather think Gabby should abdicate..... 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 20:29:02 +1200 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Re: When In Rome On Tuesday 28 May 2002 06:45, KLOSSNER9@aol.com wrote: > /I thought they *very* neatly worked around the biggest YAXI - which is > that /Crassus died in Syria (or so says history). In the Xena version, he > was /rescued at the last moment by Xena (presumably unreported by history, > which /last heard of him about to be killed by his Syrian captors). And > he was (in > /the Xena version) executed in Rome, but _only_ Caesar and Pompey knew who/ > /he was and they both had very good reasons not to spill the beans. > Very, /very nicely done, TPTB! > > Crassus was killed not by Syrians but by the Parthians, who were the > successors of the Persians (and ancestors of the Iranians), at Carrhae, > which is in modern Iraq, not Syria. Well now, there's a point in favour of the Iranians (or is that Iraqis? ;-) I was going by my obviously hazy memory - thanks for correcting it! - but the point I was getting at was that he was killed 'overseas'. > Crassus was the richest man in > Rome. As part of the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey, he > was the rival of the other two; each wanted to be dictator. Since Caesar > and Pompey were both successful conquerors and Crassus hadn't > conquered anything, he used his fortune to get the best army money > could buy. (snip) OK, this is Renpics bending history again, since their Crassus was a ruthless and fearsome-looking general. > The bit in the episode which was really anti-historical was the idea that > Crassus would not have been recognized by anyone except his fellow > politicians. Politicians in First Century B.C. Rome were like modern > American politicians, except they didn't have television. (snip) Drat! I stand corrected. I guess after One Against an Army, even a token attempt by TPTB to make their story square with history looks like an improvement to 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 16:26:06 -0400 From: mirrordrum Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Amazon funeral song At 11:07 PM 5/28/2002 +1200, cr wrote: >Trivia question - how many times in XWP have we heard that haunting Amazon >funeral song? It's at Marga's funeral at the end of Dangerous Prey, and IIRC >it's at Ephiny's funeral at the end of Endgame. Any others? i got just a tad tired of it. others who got it were marcus in season 1, perdicorpse in 2, joxer in i believe & eli got it in . >And, is it reserved for Amazon Queens? you mean like eli and marcus? eli, amazon queen of the desert. sort of like priscilla? heh. the things they never told us about eli. > In which there seems to be an >incredibly high mortality rate, btw... I'm trying to recall... > >Terreis (not a queen but next in succession) >Melosa >Velasca (pretender to the title, but dead anyway or at least entombed) >Ephiny >Chilapa? - we never heard what happened to her, but she wasn't there by the >time of Coming Home >Marga and gwyn-tier who got it at helicon. xena probably dirged for all the fallen after they all regained what was left of their scattered senses. >Varia - not dead but demoted/deposed by Gabby yeah but she got a battlefield re-promotion and was still standing when they left. >I rather think Gabby should abdicate..... helicon's ablazin'. she shoulda abdicated *before* so many of them got killed. i may be a gabfan but i know a not so much amazon queen when i see one. these honorary degrees are all very well once in a way but not if you're expected to be able to do something with them. that's the trouble with that "right of cast" (or caste or whatever it is) thing. so whimsical. and i may say that my estimation of terreis, who i suppose would've succeeded to queenship when something happened to melosa, dropped rather swiftly when she gave gab her RoC. "that's the sort of thing only an amazon would do for another amazon." piffle! at least gab had the good sense to want to pas hers on to ephiny. excellent choice, imo. ramble. md ========================================================= 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 16:38:25 -0400 From: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #142 - ------------------------------ From: Lilli Sprintz Subject: [chakram-refugees] <> <> <> "Leaving this go for a minute...it was the loss of innocence that also hurt that season. .... Which is why I was so upset as I watched Gabrielle lose hers, as i and others have presumably lost ours. I wanted to see her keep on laughing, making jokes, doing the right thing for the right reason, and keep on hoping that there was, indeed, some reason for trying something other than a violent end. There, I said it." But it was this lost of innocence that makes Gabrielle an interesting character. For her to maintain her innocence - that happy chatty nature - nothing of importance could have happen to her. Gabrielle would have to stay forever the sidekick watching from the sidelines while Xena battled the bad guys and her demons. This what happens to a lot of sidekick characters but once TPTB decided to explore Gabby's character and had her experience life's pain and ambiguity Gabrielle grew. What is more the viewer began to see that Xena became the story of two women not just the hero and her little friend. Xena's growth as a charcter is dependent on Gabrielle's growth as a character. How Xena reacts to watching her friend gp through her suffering changes Xena. Xena becomes a more compasionate person over time because she watches Gabrielle cope with death, murder and loss of her ideals. Gabrielle does lose her innocence but not her goodness and Xena takes notice of this. Gabrielle becomes a good woman - being naive about life does not equate with goodness. I have a little story her. I was working a Catholic home for disabled children back when East Of Eden was on TV. One the nuns said one of the other nuns was watching the miniseries. I told her that I was surprised because one the characters was a rather evil prostitute. The sister then in passing mentioned that to the nun watching the series. That sister looked at her and said "Yes the woman is a whore. Sister, to oppose evil you must know what evil is." So it is so with Gabrielle. A preptually innoncent Gabrielle is useless - she can't help Xena fight against evil or her own demons if she hasn't a clue about those experiences. On another note I doubt if ROC would have found playing a chatty teen-ager for six years very interesting or challenging. Certainly LL, RT, and Steven Sears had a lot of respect for ROC as an actress and I think for that reason they felt they could expand her role and that meant Gabrielle would have to change. 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:23:48 -0400 (EDT) From: cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola) Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #142 Regarding Gabrielle's loss of innocence... Cheryl A's commentary was right on to me. While we all liked chatty Gabby,we grew to love Xena and Gabrielle because of their depth of character. True, I didn't stumble on to the show until Season 4 and backtracked through reruns on USA to catch up, but maybe that is what pulled me in.... by season 4 the characters had matured and I found myself drawn not simply to the given week's story line, but to relating to X&G's journey together (not in the travel the world sense, but their emotional and spiritual journey). For me, without that depth I doubt I would have continued to watch. I am sure some fans preferred the lighter Xena episodes, which play well off the old Gabrielle, but the show's staying power came from taking them both to new levels, some tremendously loving, some dark and depressing. Yet, in the end it was because of our love for the characters that we felt such angst after FIN. Like that finale or not we all felt very deeply and I thank Rob and the entire cast for giving us rich, human and sometimes fraile characters to open our hearts to each week. JMHO, Cheryl J ========================================================= 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:55:34 -0400 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #142 meredith wrote: "I agree with the chemistry being better, but that certainly didn't take much. However, this still can't save the episode from sitting in my bottom 3 for the entire series. The annual "see, kids? Xena and Gabrielle can't POSSIBLY be anything but JUST FRIENDS!!!" episodes really pissed me off." Well I think I see it in two entirely different ways. First I can justify the relationship with Rafe as part of Xena's character. Xena does like the boys (see Borias, Caesar, Hercules, Iolus, et al) but I do believe she is in love with Gabrielle. Every once in a while Xena still gets a hankering for male companionship but she doesn't really want any kind of serious relationship so she picks the unavailable (Ulysses), the unsuitable (Rafe) or the just plain doomed (Antony). Gabrielle knowing that Xena will never stray far accepts these matters with the realization that Xena will in the end stay true to her. Now for practical purposes - you know there are plenty of fans who actually do see Xena and Gabrielle as just friends. There are also male fans who may have a few fanatasies about the warrior princess themselves. Episodes like King Con are for those fans - it gives male viewers some one to identify with and for female viewers who aren't into subtext a light romantic episode. It allows all factions of the Xena views an episode they can identify with. 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 22:14:16 -0400 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #142 > Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:20:50 -0500 > From: Lilli Sprintz " When I saw her taking action later in Seasons 2 and then 3, I cheered. But "no death penalty" is in my bones, and I fear I am in conflict. I wasn't really sure it was Gabrielle's, or anyone's place, in that place, to choose for Crassus to die. Goodness...did I just say that? " I think we often think that every decision Xena makes must be viewed as the right decision. So when she makes one that we, as fans, disagree with we must somehow make it fit into our moral code. Well perhaps to you Xena did make the wrong decision and Gabrielle was wrong to follow through with it. It is a perfectly valid point of view. If Xena could have thought of a way to rescue Vercinix without rubbing Caesar's face in it then certainly Xena may have avoided her later problems with Caesar (such as her and Gabrielle's crucifixion). Did Crassus deserve to die? Well as presented in the show he was a very bad man and committed crimes that should have been punished. Certainly the Gauls suffered greatly under the Romans - Rome certainly pursued a genocidal war against them. So I can see his death as a kind of justice. But the point is really moot. Crassus was for all intents and purposes a dead man when Xena rescued him from the Parthians (they in fact did killed him). Xena actually gave him a fighting chance to survive. If Caesar had traded Vercinix for Crassus her would have lived. If Caesar or Pompey would have stopped the execution Crassus would have survived and in all probabilty Xena and Vercinix would have been recaptured. So in reality Crassus's fate was sealed by the pride and ambition of his allies and less by his enemies. 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 22:25:39 -0400 (EDT) From: cjlnh@webtv.net (Cheryl LaScola) Subject: [chakram-refugees] Bruce Campbell Bruce sighting on the season finale of CHarmed (right now on TNT)... He is an FBI agent... ========================================================= 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: Tue, 28 May 2002 23:59:26 -0400 From: mirrordrum Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> At 05:35 PM 5/26/2002 -0400, Cheryl Ande wrote: >@ >@ >@ >@ >@@ >@ >@ > > The plan depends on Gabrielle's willingness to be >part of a plan the well result in murder. > >This is of course is where the suspense comes into play. Will Gabrielle >follow Xena's plan? Gabrielle herself must decide what to do - trust >Xena or let own scruples guide her. Gabrielle does follow through but just as >she is about to give Crassus a way out of his execution, she learns that he >was responsible for murder. Gabrielle now allows Crassus to be lead to his >death. > > For Gabrielle it is one more nail in the coffin of her innocence. it seems to me retrospectively that, like xena's "dark side," the concept of gabrielle's "innocence" became both misused and simultaneously overly reified or concretized during the first 3 seasons. this was probably necessary to maintain a tension between the characters of x & g. however, imo it not only became a thing in itself but the "thing", the concept, lacked a real coherence or consistency of meaning or reference. it started out as blood innocence but then it became representative of all the things she did that were foolish, downright stupid, caring, naive, compassionate, well-intentioned and so forth. in , gab tells xena to wake up, "the sweet, innocent little gabrielle is gone" (or words to that effect). she's right, at least in the sense that she's no longer unsullied, pure, totally virtuous or simple. gabrielle does remain naive in some respects. she continues to trust people in a way that would be good irl but in the company of xena and her world of misfits, rogues, loonies and ne'er-do-wells, is frequently disastrous and, imo, a bit hard to swallow. i thought that raised some good questions through both xena's and gabrielle's conflicts and then waffled at the very last minute on the resolution. i suppose on some level, the real question is whether one's moral scruples, whatever they're based on, are worth as much as the lives that might be saved if one abandoned them. gabrielle decides that they're not in this case (i.e. this episode). she takes on the role of judge and jury and altho xena pushes her to do it, gabrielle has to take the ultimate responsibility for crassus' death. and she does. whether or not i agree with her decision, i say good for her for *making* the decision. to me, her innocence isn't "lost" nor even degraded in that decision. rather, she steps through a door toward moral maturity and responsibility by making the decision. it may haunt her the rest of her life, but those kinds of decisions tend to do that. look at xena. to me it's more a question of moving toward something than away from something that, in reality, hasn't been around for quite some time. she's already spawned a demon, killed two people, including her own daughter, betrayed her best friend/partner/lover (whatever), been responsible at least in part for the death of solan, and has felt hate, anger, jealousy, corrosive grief and guilt. and the gods alone know how many limbs and noggins she's cracked with her stick. she's not innocent. > She has >become a willing accessory in murder. she's certainly complicit but she's been complicit in every undertaking of xena's to which she's party that results in loss of life. that's why the flour power thing and the whole urging on of the amazons from the barricade scene in was so irritating to me. horse feathers. >Although Xena latter tries to take the blame for Gabrielle's, Gabrielle will >have none of it. and this is where i balked. i get my back up when xena is caused to do the "protection" thing in these circumstances. i give her more credit than that. you can't take, or try to take, away people's responsibility for their actions and you can't and shouldn't try to protect people you love from making moral choices. i don't think xena would do that. if she's going to exert influence, i think she'd not only expect gabrielle to follow her lead (we know she does) but i would hope she'd be supportive when gabrielle does out of personal conviction what xena wants her to do. i don't think she'd try to make it easier. you can't fix people's pain by assuming you run their lives or by saying "i love you." didn't work in this ep and it didn't work in . in sum, i liked the ep, i liked the dilemma, i didn't like xena's "it's my fault i should have protected you" spiel at the end. nope. > She knows that she alone is responsible for her own actions >and she now must wonder what kind of person she has become. This episode >leads nicely into the fourth season where Gabrielle tries to find some remedy >for her battered soul. i agree with you here. >Xena is also in rare from in this episode. > >Favorite line: When a bloodied and battered guard announces Xena. >Caesar upon seeing Xena sputters: What...How did... When did... >Xena: I know there's a sentence in there dying to get out. i liked the "why are you called" or was it "why do they call you the warrior princess" "because 'caesar' was taken" interchange. >Introduction of a great new character: Pompey played with smarmy enthusiasm >by Jeremy Callahan. "smarmy enthusiasm." purrrrfect! and i must say i've been enjoying your thoughts and insights on the season 3 eps very much! most thought provoking. md ========================================================= 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 #143 **************************************