Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: L.N. James

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: L.N. James
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	L.N. James
Date(s):	July 6, 1998
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Xena: Warrior Princess
External Links:	full interview is here, Archived version
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Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: L.N. James is a 1998 Xena: Warrior Princess fan interview at Whoosh!.

Series

For others in this series, see Whoosh! Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

For me, it's been the completely compelling relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. It's just one of those things that seem so unlikely at first glance because they're so different. It isn't until you scratch a little of the surface away and really get down to some of the basics about what draw these two human beings together that makes it really interesting to explore. So, inspiration-wise, it's really the need to understand these two people on a level that the series doesn't expand upon. Plus, writing fanfic for me has been a really enlightening experience into human nature and relationships so that, in and of itself, is inspiration. More on that later...

... let me just explain a bit about my own introduction to the online world of XWP fanfic. When I first posted my stories (first one posted in Feb 1997), I wasn't in a place (for privacy reasons) where I could put my email address on the stories I wrote. Naturally, that limited feedback quite a bit! I got essentially no feedback on any story I wrote until about my fourth story ('Far Away/So Close') and the feedback I got was from an email list I finally discovered and joined. So for many months, I was just kind of out there in limbo writing and posting and wondering if anyone was reading the stuff. To my delight, I found that people were and yes, I did eventually get support and encouragement from readers and some fanfic writers. It wasn't until August 1997 with my story 'Welcome Home' that I was able to put an email address on my stories for the web at large and since then, I've heard from all sorts of cool people supporting and encouraging and critiquing. It's been good stuff..[g]

I suppose my definition of an Uber story is any story that preserves the basic fundamental aspects of Xena and Gabrielle and transforms them into different incarnations, sometimes similar, sometimes different but always recognizable as X&G. I'm personally not so hung up on the 'how' part of Uber (i.e. whether the Uber characters were directly born from descendants of X&G). I'm more of the feeling that Xena and Gabrielle's 'essence' can transcend time and space and always find a way of ending up together, regardless of the 'how'. I'm much more interested in the 'why' these two souls are able to find each other, what draws them together, why they have to be together.

I'm also of the mind that I don't think there needs to be a direct reference or link back to Xena and Gabrielle. For example, one classic, excellent Uber story by Della Street called 'Towards the Sunset' was enough to convince me that I didn't have to read the names Xena or Gabrielle in the story or refer back to them to know this was about their 'souls' meeting up in another time and place. I still 'felt' the same way about the characters and their relationship as I did with X&G but it was subtly different..and cool.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't like Uber stories that incorporate X&G in some way (like dream sequences or flashbacks or realizations). I just think it isn't a necessary element to my definition of Uber. I think a few people agree with me in that the feedback I receive from my current story 'Chicago 5am' tends to be along the lines of "You know, I was never a big fan of Uber before I read this story" and so far, I haven't mentioned Xena or Gabrielle once in it or made any allusions to their heritage. Just an interesting observation.