sweatheart

[image description: a painting of a building’s fire escape with a rainbow flag tied to it. the flag waves in the wind. end description.]

The whole point of Xena’s character, of course, is that she really kind of enjoys murdering the shit out of people and it takes conscious force of will on her part to hold herself back from doing so when it’s not moral, and Lucy Lawless plays that so well. And I appreciate that. Not a lot of female characters who are allowed to just go fucking feral with bloodlust.

Xena basically frames hatred and violence as a sort of addiction, and I actually think that this is a more sophisticated treatment of a redemption arc than most other stories I’ve seen on the subject.