Something I noticed about Cal while reading the sexy Alti thread.
In Return of Callisto, she claims "Love is a trick that nature plays to get us to reproduce. I want no part of it." This phrase seems to imply that not only does Callisto reject emotions and positive support, she also sees reproduction as something reprehensible, or at least something that distracts from her lifestyle of vengeance. She had no qualms about using Solan as a target to cause Xena great pain.
Unlike Alti's later appearances, Callisto barely used her sexuality to get her way through the entire series, preferring animal savagery and dazzling people with her unanticipated fighting skills. She outright rejects Theodorus and later kills him absently, mocks and debases Hercules, and beats the stuffing out of Ares. Her fanatical obsession with Xena was what probably led her to close herself off from both sexuality and accepting emotional feelings from anybody, even someone who was not Xena.
Yet by Intimate Stranger, she wants "satisfaction" from Ares and it's implied that she did have sex with him, funny that Xena never commented on her body being used for it. She later said that she used him to achieve her own ends.
In Sacrifice, Callisto caresses Hope's cocoon saying "You should have been my child." In the scene she's not really commenting on loving Hope herself, she's marvelling over Hope's power and her potential to end her misery. I wonder if Callisto would have submitted herself to Dahak to birth Hope herself. There wouldn't have been love, but there would have been a definitive need of both parties to use her sexuality and motherhood to accomplish a goal. Dahak wants his daughter in the world, Callisto wants revenge, and later to die. At the price of surrendering her refusal to reproduce, she would have found power in the devil, borne his child, gotten revenge on Xena and Gabrielle, and probably died.
Of she used sexuality once to achieve power from Ares, do you think Callisto would have done it for Dahak?
In Return of Callisto, she claims "Love is a trick that nature plays to get us to reproduce. I want no part of it." This phrase seems to imply that not only does Callisto reject emotions and positive support, she also sees reproduction as something reprehensible, or at least something that distracts from her lifestyle of vengeance. She had no qualms about using Solan as a target to cause Xena great pain.
Unlike Alti's later appearances, Callisto barely used her sexuality to get her way through the entire series, preferring animal savagery and dazzling people with her unanticipated fighting skills. She outright rejects Theodorus and later kills him absently, mocks and debases Hercules, and beats the stuffing out of Ares. Her fanatical obsession with Xena was what probably led her to close herself off from both sexuality and accepting emotional feelings from anybody, even someone who was not Xena.
Yet by Intimate Stranger, she wants "satisfaction" from Ares and it's implied that she did have sex with him, funny that Xena never commented on her body being used for it. She later said that she used him to achieve her own ends.
In Sacrifice, Callisto caresses Hope's cocoon saying "You should have been my child." In the scene she's not really commenting on loving Hope herself, she's marvelling over Hope's power and her potential to end her misery. I wonder if Callisto would have submitted herself to Dahak to birth Hope herself. There wouldn't have been love, but there would have been a definitive need of both parties to use her sexuality and motherhood to accomplish a goal. Dahak wants his daughter in the world, Callisto wants revenge, and later to die. At the price of surrendering her refusal to reproduce, she would have found power in the devil, borne his child, gotten revenge on Xena and Gabrielle, and probably died.
Of she used sexuality once to achieve power from Ares, do you think Callisto would have done it for Dahak?
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very well put, you certainly deserve your Xena Studies Ph.D!
