As an aside, I recently encountered an argument that the original Prime Trilogy is a metaphor for cancer.
Like, Phazon is radioactive and radiation is a "theme" in a lot of works made either in japan or with Japanese input, but Prime was made by an American company and we don't put so much stock in radistion that it counts as a theme in it's own right.
But Phazon is also corruptive and mutagenic. It gets in you and it
changes you into something
else. It steals and twists your body, turning it against you, and the way Samus looks near the end of the third game when she's almost completely corrupted when you get glimpses of her eyes at least... Yeah.
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Planet Phaze itself is even basically a metastasized tumor, a malignant mass that sends off bits of itself to infect, corrupt, and take over other bodies by means of reproduction.
So Phazon is cancer... And Metroid Prime is a the fear of cancer: She starts out in a very crablike form, of course, before trying to take over Samus' body and eventually twisting into a corrupted, dark mirror of Samus. In short, what will happen to her if the phazon corruption runs it's course.
Edit: When I was in middle school, some people compared my laugh to the Joker. This was just when
The Dark Knight came out.
Edit 2: I am so far behind on Metroid but regarding the Wheel of Time discussion, "Gendered Magic" is a thing in a lot of folklore mythology... But Wheel of Times gets it wrong.
Cultures with gendered magic tended to depict individuals who we would now call transgendered, intersex, or nonbinary as being
especially magically powerful because they're capable of using both, and magically powerful figures are sometimes depicted as blurring the lines.
I recall reading that there exist older versions of Arthurian legend that depict the prototype-Merlin as not an old man but a slender, waifish figure and the proto-Morgan as a bearded but otherwise feminine woman as shorthands for their magical power.
Naturally, such things tend to get buried.
Also, I keep thinking about the beginning segment and how shocked/angry Samus is to see Ridley... And how she's not on a mission in this game, she was just responding to the distress beacon. So the bit about how her ship tracked the target to Tallon IV... She's on this planet solely to try and kill Ridley.
Given that Ridley is canonically the one entity that Samus legitimately hates (at least until she meets Ravenbeak) and also the only thing she's afraid of... Yeah.
Edit: Raz, conisder the reason Jenova didn't take off as the breakout character was because most people
don't have my brain bug?