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Good question, Meurel! This thread topic came at a good time for me, too, because I was just debating the subject, "why Xena as an obsession" with a couple of my friends yesterday. (I was sitting there wearing my X&G t-shirt, and they wanted to hear all about the convention!) Bill in particular wondered, though, with all the tremendously good science fiction there is out there, why my favorite show is still Xena: Warrior Princess.

Sometimes I feel that to answer the question, I have to go into a bit more detail than people really want to know about my life! I've mentioned before how safe I feel here, though, and the beauty of message board threads is that anyone who's not interested can just skip down, right?

I'm glad that you're not prone to depression, LK. I'm not, exactly, either; although I've learned a lot about depression over the years, I don't think that it's something that's present in my life (to say it was, I think would actually devalue the struggle that people with the physical/chemical/emotional disease have...I have one such friend, and her courage is amazing). However, I do go through a lot of emotional pain because I overanalyze everything. Put that way, it sounds like there's an answer--just stop--but it isn't that easy. I don't always ask my questions out loud, but I always have to ask them.

I grew up in a heavily religious home (my parents were missionaries in the Philippines) (Evangelical Free Church). It was never something I felt was forced on me, though. I was a precocious four- and five- year old, and my dad seized on that chance (and the fact that I already asked a lot of questions) to take the role as my teacher. I have trouble telling my friends about that now, because their first reaction is usually that Dad was wrong--that he was treating me more as a doll than a daughter, and he really did instill some pretty weird theological/philosophical ideas in me--but I know his intentions were good, and I can't get around the way that I loved the teaching at the time. I was completely daddy's girl. A lot of the way I did my life centered around my religion. Not just Christianity specifically, but also Evangelical Christianity. I lived my life as if I knew I was going to Heaven someday, I knew what that would be like, and I knew that I had value as a person because God loved me. Those are such simple sentences...but what do they all mean? What is Heaven like, and what makes it better than this life? What makes this life beautiful, or dare I even try to believe that it is (that I'm more than a wanderer)? Those were all questions I was constantly asking, but never articulating. At the same time, I was a very isolated, lonely teen. We were long back from the Philippines by then (we came back when I was nine, so I'm essentially just an American, not a missionary kid)....but I was just strange. I had my head constantly in a book, and I was always punishing myself for not speaking up at the lunch table because I couldn't follow the conversation and I didn't know what to say. Again, I kept going back to my faith in order to find joy and meaning and forward motion, and I was getting more and more desperate because I kept finding the exact same platitudes rather than any real answers. (No one at my church knew what I was going through. I maybe told Dad 1/10th, and kept all the rest bottled up inside.)

I've also built up a lifelong habit of using stories to fill in the ideas that I couldn't find directly in my religion. I felt a lot of guilt for that then, too (I felt a lot of guilt for everything then!) but now I've come to believe that stories are as much a part of this world as religious truths, and that if the stories are true (with that "story-truth" sense that Madeleine L'Engle describes) then it will all fit together and make sense. My first obsession was with the Ninja Turtles (and even today, if I'm writing about anger in my journal and frustrated by it, I'll write Master Splinter's "Anger clouds the mind. Turned inward, it is an inconquerable enemy..." in my journal).

Around age 22, when I came to Arizona, I all these faith struggles were coming to a head, and at the same time I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Suddenly there was something onscreen that did ask those exact same questions I'd been asking: "What do you do when you hate yourself?" "What is redemption?" "What is life for?" "How do you know what you've been put here to do--at least, how do you know the next step?" "What gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning?" Bill was saying how there are lots of shows that explore those issues, and I agree, but Buffy was the first show that I ever found that didn't just ask the questions, but also gave answers. I'd been so used to people telling me that there were no answers, and that verbally asking the questions was just pushing people away (and especially when I was still so isolted, I'd do anything not to push people away). There aren't any answers to such questions that you can just articulate in a couple of words. But there are answers--and sometimes story-truth is the only way to communicate the answers.

Then I finished watching Buffy and found Xena, and it was like leaving the kiddie pool for the real thing. Buffy hated herself for a single season (not-so-coincidentially, six, my favorite one), and then found the way out. (Angel hated himself globally and never did find the way out, although he got close on occasions.) Xena bore the justifiable weight of guilt for all six seasons, and found little bits and pieces of the puzzle of redemption along the way. She felt differently about herself all along; she saw herself differently reflected back in another's eyes. What is it to be lonely; what are the true costs that it is okay to pay for a relationship? What does it mean to find your destiny in another person when you can't find it in the abstract? (I could listen to Mr. Sears discuss Gabrielle as Xena's true mission, why that was possible, how it worked, for hours and hours.) What is love? What is belief in another? Where does your responsibility end and another person's begin--especially about shaping another person, as EX was responsible but also shaped by the actions of others? Xena took on every one of those questions, and didn't stop until they were done exploring the issue and plumbing out every bit of story truth available to find along the way. It's especially fun because the writers will admit that they were making it up as they went along and letting the story grow. They didn't themselves know the answers to all of those questions, but their story knew...and they trusted it, themselves, and each other enough to just put the story in charge and see where it went.

Funnily enough, now that I've internalized it to this extent, Xena does work for me as an antidepressant (using "depressed" in the ordinary, everyday sense, not in the sense of the disease). If I'm having a bad day at work or something, I'll pop in When Fates Collide or One Against An Army, and it makes me feel better. Or, for that matter, one of those tremendous X&G music videos. The relationship between Xena and Gabrielle seems to put most of these things in a different light, as well as (even still) healing the scars left by the loneliness in me. I'm not lonely anymore. I have so many close friends (and including all of you), and I don't have those moments where I'm asking unanswerable questions without anyone to talk to anymore. But it's like...the memories of that pain remain, and X&G help to heal them, every time.

I like the way you put this, Meurel

Also I find that in a religious sense, I feel understood. I feel that its okay, not knowing exactly what religion I belong to, as long as I still believe in the kindness and goodness in people around be. I believe in helping when able, and I believe that we all are here for a reason.

I'd like to hear more... (*ears perk up at religious insights from X:WP*). What episodes were particularly important in showing you those things? I love the concept within X:WP that things happen for a reason, even though it's more complicated than we'd think.

LK

It has also greatly strengthened my belief in the power of friendship, both because of the show itself and because of the great friends I've found through the fandom.

Me, too! Very nicely put.

Pops

So she had to experience the first one to know she was meant to follow the second one that's how I realized that you can't know what you are, what you'll be if you do not act, whatever you choices, you can be wrong , but in the end you'll find your path by trying every possible path you want to do.

I relate to that because it's one of the illusions I wish people didn't develop before adulthood--the illusion that you can "arrive" and be completely on the right path--when really it's more a rhythm. When work is going well, you have relationship problems; when you iron those out, then you have to make a change in your job...etc. etc. ad infinitum, and that's just life. You have good days and bad days, and you keep on moving forward and trying to discover who you are. Gabrielle realized that she had tried something that wasn't right (right for her or right globally...still not sure), but yeah, she still had to have tried it to get to the point where she knew the right answer. Brunhilda was the same way.