Xenaverse Evolution

I started to write this as a response to Rogue Book's publisher Carrie Tierney's comment in my previous post, but as it began to lengthen, I decided to create a new post:

There is a lot of history to try to capture. I'm just sorry that the Xenaverse has evolved to a shadow of its former self. As someone who was there at the very beginning and watched the original arc of growth of the Xenaverse, all of the controversies experienced in real time with the original broadcast (straight vs. lesbian fans, the Gab/Dahak controversy, the Rift, the GabDrag, the Joxer Wars, etc....) the current fandom doesn't have the same energy. But then, why would it? I think that Xena fandom was unusual in it's original composition and it's growth.

The original Xena fandom was unusual because it arrived at the beginning of the Internet era, and as the 'Net grew, so did the Xenaverse. Chris Boese's Ph.D dissertation, "The Ballad of the Internet Nutball" and the current dissertation in progress by Star Juarez bear this out. Camille Bacon-Smith writes about the intersection of fandom and the rise of the Internet in Science Fiction Culture and describes a particular fandom's arc (I think it's Highlander fandom, but it's carefully not identified in her chapter) and there are similarities to the original Xenaverse.

The arc of any fandom tends to follow a similar path (inception, growth, maturity, decline to a lower energy steady state), but AFIN destroyed a lot of the original Xenaverse and changed what would have been the "normal" trajectory (even Kym Taborn created 2 "Group Therapy" issues of Whoosh after AFIN aired). I've written in the past that if the end of Xena had been more like the end of the 5th Season of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer ("The Gift") the fan base would have survived more intact. Joss Whedon not only understood his fan base better, but he respected his characters much more than RenPics and Co.

Hmmmm, sorry for the continued AFIN rant. This blog is supposed to be about collecting Xena: Warrior Princess, not eulogy.