Wakaba and the Potodeian Liberation Army. What is there left to say?
Yeah, I realize that's way out of context.
I have to back up farther than I thought, actually. Some British fans initially founded the "Army of Xena," or AOX. They thought it'd be funny to come post on our board. They were hysterically funny. Unfortunately some communication styles kind of blew up -- I don't want to say much more because I don't want to talk about the Drama, and it honestly wasn't anyone's fault, just different expectations. The kind of horseplay that a lot of our British fans enjoyed (and a lot of the Americans and other nationalities too) wasn't as well suited to our board, which was very heavily moderated and people weren't used to being teased in any capacity. So the AOX was eventually no more -- at least not on our board; their own site went strong for quite awhile longer and might still be up for all I know.
Before the AOX fans left, they did the worst thing possible that they could to our forum members: they gave them ideas...
The Potodeian Liberation Army, or PLA, was the next to be formed, and it was formed while the AOX was still around. I think it was part of the ongoing friendly battle that the forums had as to whether Xena or Gabrielle was better. Something that never quite made sense to me. Oh. ::blinks:: Definitions. "Xenacentric" or "Gabcentric" means, respectively, which character you identify with the most (not necessarily which you like better). (For the record, I'm completely Xenacentric. I love Gabrielle, but there are only rare moments when I understand her at all.) "Xenasexual" or "Gabsexual" means which character you're most attracted to, and in my experience, people only put that in their profiles if they were looking for dates. Anyhow. I think it was assumed that the people who favored Xena would join the AOX and the people who favored Gabrielle would join the PLA. It worked that way for awhile, but changed completely by the time I was more-than-peripherally involved. For one thing, if two people in opposite armies started dating each other, one tended to swap sides.
The AOX left, time went on, the PLA got bigger and more established, more time went on, the PLA got bored (always dangerous), not a lot of time went on, and the XTW was formed, which stands for Xena's Temple Warriors. The XTW versus PLA games never got as heated as the AOX versus PLA games had (in my personal opinion, because really the army members were more likely to make out with each other on the battlefield and then issue awards for "Fighting like Meg" the tavern wench than to compete).
One of the things about the armies was that it didn't take too long to get involved, if that was what you wanted. That was one of my favorite things about Xena fandom in general. Out in the world, I don't have a snowball's chance in Tartarus at being popular. Loved, yes, popular, no. I'm kind and genuine and deep, but I'm weird, and I think I just accepted a long time ago that I'd relate to people one on one and that I'd be needed in small groups but I'd always be the last one picked for teams. But Xena fandom was full of people just like me -- full of people yearning for leadership roles who'd never had that opportunity before, and who did have it with each other. Anyone who was interested in the PLA's freeform "I'm bored let's post about random stuff" type of play could have a role in the army.
When I first met her, Wakaba was coming into her own in PLA leadership. I'm not sure if she ever led the army, but she had a couple of long stints as second in command, and led a lot of missions. She also took it upon herself to be the kind of group-mom for some of the kids in the army -- she's the type of person who'd be on IM at two in the morning with a thirteen year old Swedish girl who couldn't sleep.
Belle held a position of PLA leadership for a long time, until she was invited to be a board moderator and had to get out of the army. (She royally scared Leknaat when that happened. LOL. Belle made this awesome Xena video to say goodbye to the PLA -- complete with GI Joe action figure footage right alongside some of the more violent Xena episodes. But she posted it under a thread with the header "my goodbye," and Leknaat thought that meant she was leaving the forum.) So even though she wasn't technically a PLA member after she became a moderator, Belle retained the same posting style common to Army members. And by that I mean stuff like, "let's see if we can get 10,000 posts in a weekend" -- which Belle did accomplish once -- or "let's roleplay our Animagi forms and trip in the mud" -- which had me laughing so hard I had to stare at the fan to calm down -- or "let's start random polls" -- which had the board knowing things about me such as that my typical bedtime around that era was 4 in the morning.
To be fair, it wasn't really my fault! In preparation for going to Alaska with Lucia and Haley, I had moved in with one of my friends. It was cheaper for me to rent a room in her house than try to pay on a six-month lease, she got the rent money, and I was always around to babysit. However, she and her two kids are all very light sleepers, so out of courtesy, I couldn't talk on the phone in the house when everyone else was asleep. What I'd do would be to take my phone out on the porch swing behind her house. Then I'd keep Wakaba company, who only lived about 45 minutes from me but worked night shifts. Her workplace was right around the corner from where I was living, so sometimes I'd drive out and keep her company on her break too -- those Circle K conversations about nothing are pretty dear to me, but that's a subject for another post. Mostly, though, what she and I did was to talk on the phone. And inevitably, we'd hit a point where Wakaba would tell me that I had to work in the morning and really ought to go to bed. I'd tell her goodnight, and she'd have one more joke or story or just not want to be alone in her echoing workplace, and an hour later, the cycle would repeat itself.
I got the idea for the above banner one fairly-typical evening. I was trying to go to school online and keeping up a job and beta-reading for another Xena fan (no, I never slept). I'd finished with most of my practical online chores, and it was about the time when Wakaba usually called. However, I wasn't finished answering forum posts. So I took my laptop along out on the swing as well. And in the space of only a tiny bit of time, I had Wakaba verbally tell me to go to bed, Belle personal-message me to tell me to go to bed, and someone in the thread I was posting in tell me to go to bed. And they were all Americans (so in the same general time zone framework), and none of them went to bed -- plus, Wakaba wouldn't let me off the phone for a good two hours anyway.
So I made that banner. I'm actually particularly proud of the "never ever let us get bored" part. Wakaba's standard opening line on the phone was "I got in so much trouble, Else," to which I would respond, "what did you do?"
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