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So when's Abby getting her Xena PhD, Bama? You could qualify as a Xenite missionary right there.

(Yeah, I'm being silly--I'm up too late, as usual! Xena addiction won out over sleep, ).

Great question, and I'm looking forward to the posts so far--I think this could run into a very long discussion.

I actually don't think that Xena's "dark side" had any part in her attraction to Ares. Obviously I'm going to explain that, but I want to start with the reasons that I think she was attracted to Ares.

Well, first, the obvious... LOL.

Xena and Ares have this experience in common, of knowing themselves to be other than they want to be, and trying to change. That's not Xena's dark side itself, or Ares' dark side itself; it's the common struggle to move out of a role and abandon the reasons one was in that role. As LK said,

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So I think from that point on, the kinship Xena feels for Ares is not just rooted in their common dark side, but also in a shared spark of goodness.

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I think maybe in this area, it was easier for Xena because she was a woman--she didn't have the kind of image that Ares maintained. If she wanted to be good, she felt free to say so; she didn't have to verbally pretend she had other motives. Ares also would sometimes be in trouble with the other Olympians if he didn't act like the God of War. Ares had more barriers in trying to be good, I guess. But I believe that the fact that they were both attempting it at the same time drew them together.

Finally, Ares did understand things about Xena that Xena didn't. I like the way you described the history, Haephestus:

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I would imagine that Xena was in a VERY dark place after the events of the Battle of Corinth and it seems that it was Ares who got her back on track so to speak.

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Chronologically, I believe the Norse flashbacks after the Battle of Corinth. (I know it's not clear, but that seems like the most logical place to put them.) And, in the Norse flashbacks, Xena had re-discovered a reason to live, and the way she described it to Odin was in the same Nietzchean terms that Ares wholeheartedly believed. So I'd agree with you. I think that Ares was able to bring order to the chaos in Xena's head at that point, and she wouldn't ever forget that.

I've never seen Ares as the personification of Xena's dark side, any more than I've seen Gabrielle as the personification of Xena's light side. At various times, all three characters saw each other as personifications--or, for that matter, themselves, like Gabrielle did in GH, but I don't think they saw clearly during those times.

I don't see Xena's dark side as being like a drug. There are related aspects, like when she talks about how hard it is to break out of the cycle of anger and vengeance, but again it's more complicated than just an addiction. It might be addictive to be angry, but it's not addictive to do things out of that anger (more like a logical consequence, I guess).
When Ares fought to turn Xena back to her dark side, what he was doing was fighting to get Xena to do certain things. Ares never quite understood the difference between actions for different reasons. He thought if Xena became angry enough, she'd do what he wanted her to do, but then when that didn't work, he started trying different things. I think he was "bad for her" at that point because he was trying to get her to do things that were, objectively, evil.

LK,

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I personally don't think he made any real attempts to seduce her to the dark side after The Bitter Suite. After that, it was always much more personal.

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You may well be right, and if that's the case, then if he was still bad for her after he stopped trying to get her to do the wrong things...I guess it would have to be for a different reason. I don't think Xena saw everything that was going on in Ares' head, though. She expected him to act a certain way, so it took her a long time to see that he had changed, and even though it was perfectly in character for him, his macho image didn't help her understand what he was really doing.

Anyway, all that to say that I think Xena the person was attracted to Ares the person, and vice versa, and it's tragic that the roles they each had to play stayed between them. I still think it would have taken a very long time before they would have been able to be together. The role Ares had to play was opposite to Xena's idea of what was "right," to TGG, and that's not the sort of thing you can meet in the middle on.