One of the biggest things to address in an Eve-centric story is figuring out what she does. What is the message she delivers? What is the purpose she serves? She’s not just looking to do penance, she’s on a mission. That meant defining the God of Light, understanding Eli’s message, & looking ahead to see what sort of problems she’s uniquely suited to fix. 

I’ve noticed a lot of Eve-related fan fiction avoids this issue by taking Eve off her path as Messenger, by having her discover the cult is corrupted in some way, or she becomes disillusioned with it, & returns to Xena’s original path for her, the Amazons. I’ll talk more about this next week, but I think the most feasible path for her is that of the Messenger of Eli. Among other things, this gives her the opportunity to engage the word at the same scale #Xena did, in a way that an Amazon or a wandering pacifist doer-of-good-deeds would—& she would have to be a pacifist: returning to violence would be a defeat for her character, & very difficult to justify, & there’s no way the former Livia would not be challenged everywhere she went, unless she had a pretext for not responding with violence, & the stature to enforce that. After all, St. Paul was a former practitioner of violence, & was protected from retribution by a church that supported his efforts.

Plus, the idea of Eve going it alone goes against her character. She’s not like her mother, a ronin-style wanderer. She’s spent her life in a community & thrived in that, & we see her building a new one for peace throughout season 6. Being part of an organization is more her style. That said, she has the instinct of an iconoclast, someone who upends tradition & bucking the status quo for what she thinks is right. The community is necessary, but she’s not afraid to defy it, especially in the form of the Roman government.

Essentially, I see her role as a uniter, someone who brings people together, & her organizational skills makes her a perfect recruit for Eli’s mission. Eli himself was a bit of an anarchist, a student who took to the streets driven by his beliefs. Eve thinks on a much higher strategic level, & like Paul, has the temperament for turning a cult into an empire-wide force. But that is yet to come for Eve. It helped me to imagine her arc through season 6 & beyond, into a future spin-off, & work backwards from there. Her casual gestures in this story would one day be seen as humble signs of the legends to come. 

Next week, I’ll go into more detail about this Elijian faith she serves, to understand what exactly she’s fighting for, & how we’re to think about it. Is it idealistic, practical, foolish? Or is it an imperialist, colonialist, nationalistic form of evangelism that most Xena fans would have difficulty rooting for? Spoiler alert: most fans should be okay with it, as I understand its workings. 

I chose this thread’as picture of Eve on a ship, gazing at the horizon because that’s how she 1st appears in my story (though looking much more frazzled), wondering about her future. She lived her life focused like a deadly laser beam, & now that beam has dissipated in the clouds surrounding her, the future a blinding haze yet to reveal the path forward. This week’s music video is not in the story itself, but is the song I listened to first each day as I worked on this project, & helped get me into Eve’s state of mind at this moment. Its images eventually became woven into the fabric of the story itself.