From the StudiosUSA Netforum - May 7, 2000

More questions submitted by fans and answers collected by Dave Gentile
Click here for the begnning of this interview

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Gent. Thanks for posting Ms. Good's replies to the questions posted here. There seemed to be a detour of sorts in responding to the question of Tapert's now infamous quote about 2-11-year-olds from the first official Xena magazine. The answer was posted as: The fact is, Buffy's going through the same double standards right now - they can show Buffy and Riley rolling around like muskrats, but can't show Willow and Tara kissing. Is this right? In my eyes, of course it isn't - but these are business people who have to deal with the reality of the world and the fact that a whole lof of people have a serious problem with gay relationships." While that's a perfectly nice quote and completely true, comparing the double standard the Willow/Tara relationship is facing has nothing at all to do with Tapert's quote about not showing a lesbian relationship so as not to offend the mothers of 2-11 year olds. Unless I missed something. Either way, it was confusing.

But that's just me.

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GentDave Member posted May 05, 2000 06:24 PM

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mezzolvROC, I could include that in another batch of questions, if you want, but I don't think she knows exactly how RT views that statement, since they didn't discuss it.

>>> Yeah - that's it - I haven't discussed it with him. Speculating that there is no good answer to that. (g)

---- Hello GentDave, I got my brain out of neutral and came up with some questions! Ask Ms. Good, if the episode turns as well as we expect it to, is there a chance they'll let her write a second episode?

>> Entirely up to them. (g) I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Any chance you'll get to go to New Zealand to see the episode filmed?

>> ONly if I planned a vacation round the same time and maybe got real lucky. (g)

And now that your a published author and television writer, will you get a big head and start treating all the little people, your readers, like flotsam and jetsam under your feet? (okay, that was only a joke! I would just once, like to hear somebody ask a really blunt and embarrasing question, that cut through the b.s.!)

>> I had a parrot when I was younger called Jetsam. He was evil, and only loved my mother, and took great delight in biting the rest of us. When I got my first Labrador Retriever, Camber, he stood up and looked into the cage, and the next day, Jetsam keeled over dead. My father and I secretely celebrated.

What was the question? Oh. Right - well, nah, I don't think so.

However the episode it turns out, I think its really something special to have it happened to a really gifted writer! Thanks.

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ASHTTON Member posted May 06, 2000 01:27 AM

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I'd like to ask Missy how does she prepare for writing for Gabby and Xena?

>> I don't. They talk, I take dictaction.

What type of motivation does she use?

>> I try to keep them internally consistent to the logic I think each character has.

Has the process of writing a XWP script been easy or hard because of set deadlines?

>> Hasn't been a problem - I seem to type fast, TPTB seem to recognize that. (g)

How many drafts has her script been put through and is it almost done?

>> It's on second, and I have no clue. That's up to them - if they want to take what it is now, and redo it, then I'm done with it. If they want me to make changes, then I'll be involved a little bit longer. It's hard to say.

Does she feel proud of her script?

>> Yeah, I am. It said what I wanted to say - whether any of that will be in the final product, no on knows.

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AlciBIades Member posted May 06, 2000 02:58 AM

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Alright, at the risk of seeming a jerk, I'll ask the question that's been bothering me about MG's fiction for some time: How does she justify her (increasingly) graphic violence when measured against her well-known aversion to explicit sex? Why is it that she can describe the human body being dismembered, but not in the act of sexual love?

>> I think I"ve always had violence in the stories - some stories more than in others. Warrior had Xena killing 200 people, and Jess ripped a man's throat out with his teeth. But I try to have the violence be commeserate with the story it's telling - Dark was about war, so I knew going in it would be more violent than some of the preceding ones. The violence comes from the story, where I consider the sex a part of X and G's life, just like any of their other activities. I don't know if that answers the question - when I"m doing a story, it unfolds as sort of a mini movie inside my head, and I just describe what's happening. Sometimes that's very violent, sometimes less so. It's not a conscious decision to put more graphic violence in, or take it out.

I ask this question being of the opinion that XWP is becoming more gratuitously graphic in its violence as well.

IMHO, AlciBIades

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debra New Member posted May 06, 2000 09:28 AM

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? for Ms Good: So, having only stumbled on Ms Good's writing about 9 months ago, I am curious as to what motivated her to begin writing her particular style of X&G stories?

>> I had a story idea after watching the quest that involved X and G saving a creature they found being beaten to death in some village. I decided to put it on paper, and from then, the ideas just didn't stop, so I just kept putting them down. There wasn't really a motiviation, per se.

AS best as I can determine Ms Good started writing after S2 and has written over 6,000 pages of some outstanding X&G that have all the adventure, action etc that the good shows have with the added bonus of the 'subtext being maintext'. To have contributed so much for so long and so thoroughtly I'm thinking there must have been some pretty strong motivation to have done so.

>>> I enjoy writing - I think that's really the only motiviation there is.

My attraction to Ms Good's writings is that they embody the X&G that I saw in S1&2 and then took the other tangent of developing the intimate loving 'soul-mates' that RenPic hinted at.

>> (g) I had the easier job of it - they went halfway, and declared them soulmates, then had to figure out how to not have them also be lovers.

I know many people are probably more familiar than I with the background, but for those of us who are relatively latecomers, a little history would be both helpful and enlightening.

Thanks Dave for doing this.

debra


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