Yuku free message boards

I voted "fairly sympathetic." As I see her, Callisto was in so much pain that I can't *not* find her sympathetic, and she did certainly have a legitimate case against Xena (LK's comment about how having Xena, who killed her family, suddenly be turned around and hailed as a hero, might have helped push her over the edge is an interesting one, though I don't know the extent to which I buy that.)

However, at the same time, however monstrous Xena had been in her evil days, she did one thing Callisto never managed to do, and that was get past her own pain, step up to the plate, realize what she was doing was wrong, and take responsibility for her own actions. Now I think it's arguable that Callisto probably was in even greater pain than Xena--she was younger than Xena when her family died, and she apparently lost *everyone,* where Xena at least had her mother and one brother left. So it's plausible that that greater magnitude of pain could make it more difficult for Callisto to get past it...but on the other hand, I think there's also perhaps some truth to what Gabrielle said in "Fallen Angel" : "You wanted your parents to die so that you could have an excuse to be a b****!" At the very least, she seemed to have a definite love of and fascination with violence, and she seemed in some respects to use her status as "professional victim of Xena" as a "license" to engage in that fascination. (I'm thinking here of her smug and sneering comment to Xena in "Intimate Stranger": "No matter how evil you think I am, Xena, my soul is clean. Because it's all on you!") So while I *personally* find her fairly sympathetic and do think she had a legitimate beef with Xena, she also used that legitimate beef to justify all sorts of terrible behavior, and I have to wonder how much of what I find sympathetic about Callisto was due to Hudson's wonderful performance.

About Callisto "becoming what she hates"--I'm not sure I see that. I think Callisto's emotions for Xena are far more complicated than can be summed up in a simple word like "hatred." As I see it, Xena was Callisto's everything--even as part of her hated Xena, another part of her blamed Xena for all her pain, another part of her looked up to Xena almost as a parental figure, another part of her wanted to *be* Xena, and so on. I think part of her even strongly admired Xena for what she perceived as Xena's power and ability to act with near-impunity, and desperately wanted that same ability for herself. Call it "identification with the oppressor," if nothing else. So while part of her may have hated the road she was taking...at the same time, if she wasn't getting *something* out of it, I don't think she'd have bothered to go down the road in the first place, certainly not to go as far as she did.

ETA: Everhope, that's a really interesting point about Callisto possibly using Xena as a scapegoat for rage over a perceived abandonment by her family!