superchunk said:
Its not weakness or subservience.
Anyone who has a person as a leader as the story describes Adam is to her would act the same.
1. It states many times he was the closest thing to a father to her.
2. It states he was always viewed as infallible and a great leader to her.
3. It states she felt a big resentment to her childish actions of the past that put her out of his grace.
This all fits perfectly with her actions and decision to follow his command exactly. Sure there are gameplay decisions in the various unlocking of items, but that is just the game. The idea of her following his commands is the story and the overall all logic and that is a perfect fit to how the history is laid out.
The only parts that are misplaced is the breakdown with Ridley. That was truly out of character and should at least have been put after Ridley killed her closest friend as a emotional gesture.
There is nothing else in her demeanor, performance, or story characterization that cannot be part of a woman worrior that is Samus. I think too many people expect a butch badass with a rough and tough voice/balls to the wall gunner. To me that idea fo Samus is sterotypical when woman are portrayed as the soldier and I prefer this version (less the breakdown).
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1. Actually, that's almost exactly what subservience is: following orders, particularly with someone who has no actual authority over you.
2. Samus objected to his orders many times and left because she disagreed with him. He was not infallible to her. This creates the problem that she feels like she owes him something because later in life she's decided she's wrong for having disagreed, even if disagreeing was the only moral thing to do from her eprspective. This portrays her as inherently subservient to his wishes and given to filial piety in a way that is problematic in the context of prior portrayals of her character.
3. Being out of his grace should have jack diddly shit to do with how she behaves when it comes time to kill shit.
4. You think it makes sense that she wouldn't activate the Varia Suit when she's going through a volcano area? Or that it makes sense that she wouldn't activate the Gravity Suit when going through an area with intensely harmful gravitational fluctuations, which makes it much more difficult for her to fight? You think it makes sense that she would hold back on using the ice beam when her power beam isn't hurting creatures made out of fire? That doesn't make sense, and if taken in the context of the story it means that she isn't just subservient to Adam, she's completely subsumed her will in favor of his own. Tha'ts not just problematic, it's fucking horrific. That's some Stepford Wives-level shit right there.
5. The way the history is laid out is not in keeping with past portrayal of Samus's character, Samus's relationship with the Galactic Federation, or even Samus's relationship with Adam as portrayed in Fusion.
6. Samus's breakdown made perfect sense in the context of this game, which speaks more to how horrendous the context of this game is in terms of her characterization.
7. There is nothing inherently wrong with a female character who is presented as a blank emotional slate, especially when the few hints we get about her suggest that even though she is a human with human sorrows and regrets she is still an unstoppable bad-ass bounty hunter who wipes out entire species and blows up planets on a regular basis.
There is no defensible position from which you can expect people to find this characterization in keeping with her character as we've come to know here, and there is no defensible position from which you can expect people to not find this characterization problematic from a femininist perspective.
