Love Eternal
Hi friends! I'm a newer fan who got into the show & binged it about 6 months ago. I'm now rewatching it with my sister, and feel like I've been hit over the head with a sledgehammer again (in a good way). The love between Xena and Gabrielle is just so awesome and emotional, so I wanted to make an art piece that could convey that at some level. Their relationship really is nothing like I've seen on a TV series before, and I think ironically, the censorship and the ways the crew tiptoed around it made them feel more real. More of a natural progression, I guess. I went in completely blind apart from knowing the show was campy, involved a girl with a chakram, and many horses (shoutout Argo), so I was totally blindsided by their, honestly, really overt romantic love.
I'm gen Z so I wasn't there to feel the impact the show made, but it clearly did, with a relatively smaller, yet dedicated fanbase 31 years later. Also, there were plenty of moments throughout the show, but season 6 being so blatant was like gay whiplash after season 5. Crazy stuff.
As for the actual drawing, I'm not the best at capturing likeness, but I tried really hard to get the resemblance down. I wanted the expressions to have a sense of comfort and peace. The limited color palette was also a challenge, and some things get lost, but I'm ultimately happy with it.
The text, as I'm sure many of you know, is from the episode Many Happy Returns, where Xena gives a poem from Sappho to Gabrielle. It's pretty neat that the text actually is pulled from an existing Sappho poem. Thanks for looking, and listening to my rambling, if you read through the post. Have a good day. :)