NY Times 5 March 1998
"Circuits" Section
(devoted to the computer):

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In the Service of a Warrior Princess
By J. D. BIERSDORFER

THE syndicated television show "Xena: Warrior Princess" had its debut on
the airwaves in the fall of 1995, arguably about the same time the
popularity of the Internet began to explode across America, and the two
entities have been intertwined ever since.

Xena's weekly dose of evil-battling swordplay, skimpy action wear and
refreshingly saucy feminism is eagerly awaited by her fans, and even the
tiniest of plot points and nuanced lines are dissected with glee across
Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms and unofficial but enthusiastic Web pages.

"I think the Internet has given some really hard-core nutballs, as I
call them, a kind of community where they can bounce off ideas," said
the star of "Xena," Lucy Lawless, who has been known to venture into
cyberspace herself.

"I truly think that the show would not be where it is today without the
Internet fandom," said Betsy Book, a Web designer in New York. "It
enables fandom to grow so quickly. The ultimate fandom granddaddy, 'Star
Trek,' took two decades to develop. The Internet sped all that process
up." Ms. Book, 27, is also the Web-master for Whoosh (whoosh.org), a
monthly on-line magazine that bills itself as the journal of the
International Association of Xena Studies, a group founded by a
California lawyer, Kym Masera Taborn.

Whoosh, one of the most elegantly designed and irresistible "Xena"
comfort stations on the information highway, is a thorough compendium of
episode summaries, breaking news, gossip and thoughtful articles written
by fans and Xena Studies association members. Treatises like "Xena and
Heathcliff: Classic Byronic Heroes," by Cathy H. McLain, appeared in
issue No.6; "The Female Hero, Duality of Gender and Post-Modern Feminism
in 'Xena: Warrior Princess,' " by Rhonda Nelson, appeared in No. 13.

One of the most popular "Xena" sites on the Web is Tom's Xena Page
(www.xenafan.com). Created Tom Simpson, 24, the site is jampacked with
800 megabytes of downloadable sound clips, image files, vid eo snippets
and other digitized souvenirs, and it is the first stop on "Xena" fan's
Web crawl. "I average about 5,000 hits a day, with 7 gigabytes of files
downloaded daily," said Mr. Simpson, who jokingly referred to his site
as "the Wal-Mart of Xena fandom."

Like Whoosh, his site also contains a sprawling section devoted to the
home-grown literary efforts of the "Xena" faithful. "Fan fiction is the
most popular area," he noted. Each site has a trail of links leading to
the others, but they are linked by more than just hypertext - Ms. Book
and Mr. Simpson are engaged to be married. Although they met through
"Xena"-related E-mail, the romance developed later, when Mr. Simpson,
moving from Utah last year, asked Ms. Book for help in finding an
apartment. Both now work at iVillage, a Web-design company in Manhattan,
so how can they avoid the common intrusion of work into home life?

"Spend no longer than 10 minutes a day talking shop," Ms. Lawless
advised. She should know - she is engaged to marry the executive
producer of "Xena," Rob Tapert, in the spring.
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(p.s.: I used Textbridge Pro 98 to scan & OCR the piece; it was more
than 99% accurate with only 5 errors due to some poor print quality near
the edge. Highly recommended, IMHO.)

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