I want to talk about the bubbling, probably-unintentional yet actually-intentional-by-proxy queer themes and coding in the Metroid series, but I kinda don’t want to write a whole thing about it.
There’s lots to discuss here, from the absolutely-queer origins of the series in the Alien movies to Samus’s GNC shocker reveal (which still seems to surprise younger Smash players to this day) to the poor-taste mid-'90s joke from her Super Metroid artist about her being a “newhalf” to the absolutely bristling transition narrative of Fusion, where at last Samus becomes the title character and everything she had feared and spends the bulk of the game haunted (and hunted) by her old toxic shell that she put on.
The easiest place to start, I imagine, is Fusion. Of which I thought often when reading Charlie Jane Anders’s City in the Middle of the Night. Which, to avoid specific detail, involves an intense Becoming of its own.
I’ve always wanted a follow-up to Metroid Fusion, but in hindsight it almost makes sense as a conclusion or coda to Samus’s journey, much as Steven Universe Future comes after the main plot beats of the original show but serves to wrap up and underline the themes that had laced through the whole series. There’s a poignance to Samus’s transition, and in many senses freedom from her old life, being the end of her story and a transition into the unknowable beyond; the ever-after.
i remember all the CONTROVERSY when someone wrote an article about samus being trans and i didn’t understand why people were super mad about someone’s self insertion, like they wrote the article on a site called THE MARY SUE! also, its fiction she can be whatever anyone wants
i dont headcanon samus as a transwoman because i put myself in samus’s shoes and im a 6 foot tall 240 pound afab, but it baffled me that people started a flame war over fanfiction! if you look for the article theres a bunch of hateful counter articles. its ridiculous.
ive always read samus as queer because any woman who looks like that and spends that much time alone must be avoiding men.
Right. I think it should be stressed also that there’s a difference between reading into the themes communicated by a work and projecting those themes onto the work itself, making conclusions about its material content. Sometimes that’s appropriate; sometimes it doesn’t really apply. Here I’m not sure it really applies as critical analysis, which was the semi-fatuous framing of that article, if I recall. Like, people would have flipped their shit anyway, because, Gamers, right. But I’m not really here talking about, SO CLEARLY SAMUS IS THIS AND THAT. It’s more a matter of, hey, this work… it’s got some real stuff going on with its message that maybe it doesn’t even know what to do with, but boy howdy it’s worth poking at.
A while back I colorized Return of Samus as a lark, partially to try to draw more attention to the game and make it more accessible to people, because it’s obviously the best one. And to preserve the ending punch, I made Samus black. Because why not, for one. And also as a tribute to the musical artist Sammus, who is neato. Some guy came along and decided to fix the scripting glitches in my patch, and made some changes that I didn’t agree with, that I put in very intentionally, but whatever. Then he started interrogating me as to why I made Samus black and asking me to do an alternate that had her as the “correct” race. And, I muted and soft-blocked him.
part of me wants to be slightly smarmy by bring other m into this, but i skipped the cutscenes the only time i played it so all i remember is that one of the characters is somehow a reincarnation of mother brain or something (which i guess might actually fit into this)
i threw other m into the trash when i got to the ‘fight’ where ridley pins you down and lashes you over and over again with tail and tongue in first person, while men stand around and do nothing
so we all agree that when she does her Morph Ball, she turns into a tiny sphere of energy, right?
Like, that’s really the only thing it can be. Although you can only see it in Prime, apparently.
The point is, every time she does it, that’s her body being totally converted into…something. Glowy orb stuff. And then when she deMorphs it prints her back out again. All at once? Or like water flowing through the inner contours of her suit?
Crazy.
That bit of body horror and physical depersonalization has been embedded in the series since the beginning, going largely unaddressed in any way, all because it was too much work to animate her crawling.
(you’ve all seen the “alternate forms” for the six other characters in Hunters, right? of course you have)
Chozo tech burbling
Chozo tech seems to basically be using magic to move energy around with 100% efficiency and freely convert to/from various forms of mass. I guess that explains how zapping alien grasshoppers and bats turns them into health and ammo refills. Missile Tanks make a lot more sense as specialized spare batteries than actual cartridges. Literal missile batteries. And maybe they go bad really quickly once you start using them, which is why there are so many scattered around and stashed in odd places, and why Samus throws them away after each mission. I hope she at least recycles them.
Come to think of it, the Federation is always trying to copy Chozo tech, and the missiles seems the easiest to reproduce. Samus should be able to stock up on things like that before missions, but I guess she’s just too self-reliant. Or cheap. Very thrifty to procure all enhancements on-site.
im trans but samus being like a 6’3 200 pound afab owns to me because people explicitly think women arent allowed to be that cool. she was the first videogame character i was like, wow!!! at. and so often when you have tall or strong women they get accused of being male or a million other things esp lately so like in my mind I dont mind the samus is trans truthers but i think tall powerful samus can be good for all women instead of just some!!
I have to imagine that in a post-Overwatch industry it’s a possible they actually lean into that kind of Samus, supposing the next Metroid isn’t developed by a J-studio
Samus kicks ass regardless of anything. She’s got big stompy metal armor and floats through the air like a space gymnast, she has a cannon that shoots missiles that cause earthquakes when they explode, she converts her entire body to energy because she’s not going to get her knees dirty crawling. She can get blown up, stabbed, electrocuted, shot, slammed into walls, and lit on fire and still be barely affected.
I hate Zero Suit Samus because it’s such an explicit feminization of a character whose defining characteristic was her extremely genderless armor. I like the idea of removing her armor near the end of a game to reinforce how important it is to her, but the “weaken a woman and parade her around practically nude (and in high heels!)” thing is super gross.
I guess she didn’t have high heels in the original, whatever. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but I think, with an idea of where they took that version of the character, it sucks in retrospect.
I think zero suit samus isn’t an awful idea conceptually because she obviously needs to wear something under her armor but like the heels and “look she’s a HOT LADY” are ultra gross. That part in Zero Mission is awful and I refuse to believe the galaxy’s toughest bounty hunter would choose to fight in the zero suit