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bell hooks
That’s precisely it! That’s what makes Xena and Gabrielle so real in a fantasy world. They’re all about what it takes to work at love so sometimes their relationship isn’t healthy, but it’s the transparency in their communication that is what transcends your normal definition of “true love”. They come to understand themselves better through each other. They’re crazy for each other but not in a romantic, all-encompassing, the-skies-will-fall-down-if-I’m-not-with-you-way. They can spend time apart and feel just as fulfilled in their lives so long as they have one another to return to. It’s like they belong to each other without owning or possessing each other. They’re a beautiful representation of true love in its purest form. And they’re the reference I had of it was I was young. No Prince and Princess happily-ever-after shit. WORK. They would overcome every obstacle in their way, solve every problem just by being with each other. Communicating, respecting, and understanding. They were honest and self-effacing. And they were real.
Truly one soul in two bodies. They were a romance, but that was never the most important thing for them.
It helps when you divide labor by interest and ability rather than by your genitals.
I love that you used her speech in ‘Restless’ for this character study video. I know a lot of people don’t really understand what she’s saying in that scene. But the way I interpret it is that it is an identification and declaration of her humanity (or her queerness, if you want to involve the gay allegory. I don’t but I know some Buffyverse meta writers/analysts that do).
“I walk, I talk, I shop, I sneeze.” = I may possess animal instinct like any other animal does but I am not a barbarian.
“I’m going to be a fireman when the floods roll back.” = I am a hero when it is most needed and when I am under pressure.
“There’s trees in the desert since you moved out” = everything moves, has it’s place in time and nothing is permanent.
“And I don’t sleep on a bed of bones” = not everything I do amounts to destruction and decay because this is not all I am.
In other words: she’s answering Sineya’s question in an affirmation of her own personhood. Something Sineya doesn’t and never had.
She’s saying “I am not a killer. I am a human being that has to do what they have to do when they have to do it and though I may not have fully accepted my calling yet, I at least acknowledge that it is part of me without letting it define my entire nature and identity like you did. ”
It’s an incredibly powerful and insightful speech when you can decode the visual and experiential symbolism of it. The profound poetry. She is not alone in a desert of her own making like Sineya is. See the whole point is that the SLAYER has no choice. Slaying is chosen for them. But Buffy creates the choice. And Sineya is jealous of that. It’s quite horrific actually because it is abject racism. But then that’s just the honesty of it really. Of course it would be racist to depict an African tribal woman as nothing but a mute murderer in a time and place where powerful sharmanic men made the FIRST SLAYER out of a literal demon and a white American woman has her psyche intact enough to socialise with other people - can even be like other people. None of this insight hits you until you have seen the ENTIRE BUFFYVERSE. All of it informs 'Restless" and showcases just how, probably unintentionally, significant and exceptional of an episode of TV art/entertainment it actually is and why I get so disappointed when YouTube reactors have such a negative reaction to it. I mean I get it, I get that they don’t quite understand it. I mean you really can’t on a first watch, I’ll admit. But it still bruises the ego a little bit. I’m only human after all. Just like Buffy. 😆
I see a morally ambiguous middle-aged woman who's a menace to society and suddenly my knees just give in
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