Editing Samus (section)

==Characterization And Shit==

Samus Aran is the protagonist from the Metroid video game series. When she was three years old, Space Pirates attacked her homeworld, a small out of the way mining colony called K-2L because of the presence of a crystal called Aflorite which could be used to fuel space ships. At first, they just demand Rodney Aran (Samus's father, leader of the colony) to hand all mined supply over to them while their ships blockading all travel to and from the colony, but when he refused they quickly sent in troops to destroy all shield generators and communications before bombing the majority of the colony then going in and killing everyone except for Samus in a horrifically violent manner, because from what little we've seen of Space Pirate culture [[Dark Eldar|they glorify sadism and bullying the weak]]. Oh and their leader, a sadistic space dragon called Ridley, tried to kill lil' Samus for trying to befriend him, but her mom pushed little Samus out of the way and was charred to death and promptly eaten in front of her, and her father snuck aboard their ship before using a repurposed damaged blowtorch to blow up all the stolen crystals (and himself) to destroy the Space Pirate's main supply ship.

Samus was left for dead, but for the grace of the Chozo, [[Eldar|an ancient, long-lived, highly advanced, psychic, slowly aging and dying out]] bird-like species of aliens. Their lowering numbers were due to spending a little too much time reaching enlightenment and not enough time making eggs; that and a run of severely shitty luck for the last century or so, what with evil glowing space rocks, their own creations turning on them, and the pirates thinking that their homeworlds are a cool place to kick it whittled them down quite a bit.

At any rate, they rescued her, raised her, enhanced her with the best parts of their genes so she could survive on their homeworld of Zebes, and trained her in the art of combat, giving her a suit of [[powered armor]] to fight the Space Pirates. After reaching <s>adulthood</s> the age of ''fourteen'' according to the manga that functions as her origin story (apparently the Chozo didn't know that much about human growth cycles), Samus went to work for the Galactic Federation for a while, and then left to work on her own as a bounty hunter. Well, that's what the writers call her; much like most countries, literal bounty hunting is illegal in Japan, so nobody at Nintendo realized what exactly a bounty hunter ''is'' until Metroid Prime's American developers explained it. So... while that's technically her title, she's more like a freelance soldier on retainer with the Galactic Federation. Or something.

She soon came into conflict with the Space Pirates again; they had seized her adoptive homeworld, killed off most of what little remained of the Chozo with maybe one or two dozen of the old bird people remaining (who all promptly fucked off into isolation), and were attempting to weaponize dangerous creatures known as Metroids, hovering jellyfish-things that drained life-force. She fought them, and came face-to-face with Ridley, the space dragon who had killed Samus' mother right before her eyes and boasted about eating her parents' corpses in front of her. She defeated him as well, and then destroyed the Mother Brain (the Chozo's defense AI who [[Men of Iron|went rogue and tried to kill them]], ultimately joining the Space Pirates) triggering the Space Pirate base's self-destruct sequence.

The Space Pirates tried several more times to weaponize the Metroids, using a substance called Phazon to mutate them (and mutate themselves, for that matter); Samus defeated them time and again, even coming face-to-face with an evil, Phazon-born twin of herself. She also squared off against Ridley time and again, as the Pirates resurrected him in increasingly-creative ways, first cyborgizing him, then upgrading his cybernetics, then upgrading his cybernetics and then mutating him with Phazon.

After making a costly but devastating assault on the Space Pirate Homeworld, the Galactic Federation decided that it would be cheapest to send Samus to destroy the Metroids once and for all, rather than having to pay her to deal with each new iteration of the Metroid threat. Even this plan was of limited success, because no matter how many Metroids Samus killed, there always seemed to be more (and this also seemed to be true of the Space Pirates themselves); even when the galactic population had been reduced to one Metroid, the Pirates managed to steal it, but finally, they were exterminated once and for all.

Unfortunately, the Metroids were needed to keep a population of dangerous, adaptible, mind-controlling parasites in check, and without the Metroids, the parasites were able to reproduce without limit. After getting almost killed by one of these creatures, only to have her life saved by an emergency injection of Metroid DNA, Samus wiped them all out, but given the number of times that the Metroids and Space Pirates have supposedly been "exterminated without a trace" and come back, the so-called "X parasites" won't be gone for long, especially as the Federation has already tried cloning Metroids and Space Pirates before. Samus put a stop to those efforts as well, but she earned the enmity of the Federation in the process; at the moment, it seems that she's on the run. At this point, all we can do is wait for her next mission.

As for Ridley, his history with Samus after she stopped being afraid of him goes like this:

* Blown up with missiles. (Metroid and Zero mission)
** A robot built like Ridley was blown up much the same way. (Zero Mission)
* Knocked off a cliff with lasers and then exploding. (Prime)
* Brought back again as an improved cyborg, shot in the mouth, fell down an impossibly deep geothermal shaft, and then blew up. (Prime 3: Corruption)
* Brought back as an even more improved cyborg except mutated with Phazon, shot repeatedly in vital organs, overloaded with more Phazon, and then blown up so spectacularly he disintegrated into little blue particles. (Prime 3: Corruption ''again'')
* Comes back as a partially regenerated Cyborg again to try and steal the infant metroid on SR388 with fewer metal parts than last time. Is shot to hell and back and repeatedly attacked by a metroid before having to abandon much of his cyborg parts due to heavy damage and get the hell off the planet. It could also be because his lost body parts eventually healed back though. His next appearance had a fully organic body with no cybernetics or missing limbs (Metroid: Return of Samus) 
* Manages to successfully steal the infant Metroid in the Ceres station because this time Samus just had her basic power suit and power beam. Is then chased down and blasted apart with missile and beam fire some hours later as Samus conducts a one woman exterminatus. And then the entire planet he was on blew up so fiercely it could be seen for light years. Safe to assume even he couldn't survive that. (Super Metroid)
* Cloned off of the little bits of him remaining on Samus' suit (by ''the Federation''), shot repeatedly in the head and mouth (a couple of times -- he didn't stick around to let Samus finish him off). Finally, he got all the life energy sucked out of him by a queen metroid and left as a mummified corpse. (Other M)
* Said corpse was hauled out of Bottle Ship into BSL and stuffed in a freezer where it shattered, but was cloned by the X-parasites. Samus blew that up, too, and absorbed the remnants to get her Screw Attack back. Then she crashed the station into the planet that it was orbiting, destroying them both. This time with no DNA left to clone Ridley from, and with Ridley being completely absent from Metroid Dread, this seems to be his final death, but knowing the giant lizard he’s probably got some backup clone body or relative that will start chasing Samus in the next game. (Fusion)

Which is still a better track record than [[Abaddon|Failbaddon]], because Ridley is costing the Federation assets that it cannot easily replace.

Ridley is highly competent and experienced at his role of being both muscle and a general, and is incredibly sadistic and ruthless. When not faced with Samus, he can deal extreme damage and devastation and was a scourge on Federal society for years. The problem of course is that he is faced with a protagonist equipped with the war gear of the most advanced factions to have ever been seen in the galaxy/universe whose suit can plug and play any piece of tech (or even someone's superpowers) like they're god damn USB sticks who has made it her life's goal to make him pay. So his constant, increasingly over the top defeats aren't completely without excuse.

Personality-wise, there's not much to say about her - she never speaks in the majority of the games and serves primarily as a silent protagonist for the player to identify themselves with. Fusion had some brief snippets of inter-monologue, some short conversations, and even some mentions of Samus's life before she was a bounty hunter, usually relating to her former CO, Adam. Other M attempted to expand on the relationship between Samus and Adam, but it [[Fail|backfired spectacularly]] to say the least.

:: In Metroid Prime, scanning the various logs of Space Pirates would reveal that the pirates refer to Samus as [[Awesome|"The Hunter of Our Kind"]], always in the reverential form, always scared shitless of every mention. Essentially she's shown there to be a completely ruthless hunter that will ALWAYS catch space pirates eventually, to such an extent that they can never escape her once she's on the trail. The pirates on that Frigate mention in their logs that they've pretty much lost all hope as soon as they discovered that Samus was tailing them. At the same time, we ''do'' still get little snippets of characterization here and there, with her mourning a little when finding brave Federation Marines dead at the hands of the Ing in ''2'', and frustration and grief at the corruption of her fellow Hunters in the finale.

Pre-Other M material (i.e. a number of manga, Fusion, and the handful of notes she makes to her logbook, as well as some scenes in Metroid Prime) paint her as a noble soul, [[Space Wolves|much more concerned with doing what is right than what is technically the letter of the law]] and [[Salamanders|deeply passionate about protecting those who cannot protect themselves with a noted soft spot for children.]] When Retro wanted to implement a bounty hunting mechanic into Metroid Prime 3 and explained the concept to Nintendo, Nintendo adamantly refused and clarified that "Bounty Hunter" was actually a mistranslation and she wouldn't stoop to murdering and capturing other sapient beings for pay, with Retro describing that it was revealed that she was more of a "Pro Bono" Hunter, who does the public good without expectation of recompense. She was also something of a fiery tempered hot-head who'd disregard regulations and plans to go off and do her own thing in her youth but mellowed out once she came of age. She seems to be an introspective and somewhat introverted person with at least something of a scientific streak as well as a pretty nifty hand at engineering, having designed her own ship.

tl;dr Like most Nintendo protagonists, Samus is very much an incorruptible spark of nobility in an often very dark universe (with Metroid perhaps being the grimmest with the relentlessly cruel space pirates, a deeply corrupt federation, the all corruptive phazon, the demon-esque Ing, the "zombie virus cranked up to fucking eleventy one" X-parasites, the "Xenomorphs on radioactive steroids" Metroids, and the Lovecraftian God-like Gorea just to name a few issues), an ever dependable hero who will go alone and smite the hordes of evil no matter the odds and come out victorious in the end even at personal loss to herself. So very much a [[Nobledark]] sort of hero. She's more of a Knight Errant in space than she is a proper bounty hunter. Indeed if you take a look at her, you'll see knight tropes ''everywhere''. A warrior who came from a child orphaned by a dragon and lawbreakers, raised by monks to be a hero of prophecy destined to wield an incomparable weapon to smite the darkness wherever it may be by traveling the lands, or stars in this case.