#Queen Metroid

[sepublic]

Fun fact! When I first played Samus Returns, I wasn’t all too familiar with Metroid lore, particularly when it came to the Metroid life cycle. I’d played Fusion beforehand so I knew the Omega was the final stage, but hadn’t paid enough attention to the background when you find the Metroid breeding lab to internalize the amount of stages between; Plus Samus Returns redesigned them, so there was still something pretty new to look forward to. I wondered how the Omega would look in that game, and knew Ridley was the final boss. So after encountering the Omega Metroid, I thought that’s it! That’s all there is to see of the Metroid life cycle, what cool creatures!

Imagine me being surprised when the number goes up at the end of the game, leading to actual larvae being fought; Something I’d waited for the whole game since that form is so much more iconic. But after one increase, I don’t expect another and there’s just one more; I may or may not have suspected this to be the infant that is doomed in Super Metroid.

And then I dropped through a destructible block and was utterly blindsided by the shot of the ginormous Queen in the background. I wasn’t even entirely sure what I was looking at, at first; What the hell is that, and then I realized it had to have been some particularly powerful, actually final stage of Metroid. Way too big to be an Omega, but wasn’t the Omega supposed to be the final form?

And it was only after doing research upon completing the game that I understood what this thing was, and how it was neglected in Fusion because the Queen is an atypical stage (hence why a skimmed online source would call the Omega the final stage), plus Fusion didn’t want to reuse a final boss for what would be a shorter endgame segment. Because of that tasteful restraint, I got one of my favorite shocks ever and I love it.

[kosmonauttihai]

Queen Metroid with hatchlings, just being critters.

Mixed media: acrylic, puff paint (some of the carapace edges), glow-in-the-dark paint (hatchlings), air-dry clay (limbs), and polymer clay (teeth) on cardboard and cardstock + translucent red plastic from a candy wrapper, green tissue paper, and some kind of decorative plastic mesh glued over holes cut in the cardboard + photographed with fairylights behind the painting + some digital editing.

[the-starry-lycan]

AM2R, anyone?

[munch-k]

Maytroid 2023 Day 6 - QUEEN METROID

[mhexart]

Mother dearest

[alligator-with-a-top-hat]

The front of a Queen Metroid I sprited in PICO-8. Largely inspired by its appearance in Another Metroid II Remake, but with details taken from the original Metroid II. Bonus Samus Returns-colored Queen included.

[metroidbosshowdown]

The fates aligned to give us a deathmatch between two bitter enemies: the super powered X-parasite SA-X, up against its greatest nightmare, the Queen of the Metroids. Will they annihilate each other, or will one emerge the victor? You decide!

[zovis]

[batgirlteeth]

updated version/redraw of a samus piece i did last year! keep on stretchin! no abberation + closeup under the cut

[cansadazz]

visual assault ‼️

[oyabuncongress]

Le Black Woman♥️

@itschynagodiva ♥️♥️♥️

[sepublic]

Regarding what makes Queen potential rare amongst Metroids... I like to think that it has to do with SR388; The first Metroid was created in a lab by splicing together the DNA of various SR388 organisms, and was programmed to undergo mitosis when exposed to beta-rays.

When designing this original Metroid, the Thoha made sure to render various other traits included in the source DNA dormant. But prolonged exposure to the natural environment of SR388 caused these traits to reactivate. After all, the Metroid's DNA came from organisms that evolved on and were nurtured by SR388, shaped by its environment across millions of years to display various traits; Some of which the Thoha found conducive to creating an Ultimate Warrior to exterminate the X.

But the other traits they tried to suppress re-emerged by the world that created them, and this included a heightened aggression. This led to the Metroids turning on their creators, even as physical traits began to show up, causing them to gradually develop into Omegas. But in the wild of SR388, beta-rays did not naturally occur, and the ability to undergo mitosis is lost during the Alpha stage due to the body becoming too rigid. The Metroids would inevitably go extinct, and so to survive another dormant trait was activated; The creation of a Queen capable of emitting its own beta-rays, with which it used to produce its own Metroids through an egg-laying process.

And the Queen would mutate from the original Metroid that the Thoha had used to spawn all others from. This is because its birth came from the direct splicing of other creatures' DNA, whereas the rest were created from mitosis; During that process, some dormant DNA was lost, namely the DNA used to become a Queen. But Metroids birthed directly from the Queen retained that dormant Queen trait, and could express it under the right environmental stimuli; Namely the nurturing cradle of SR388's conditions, as well as a need to create more Metroids in the absence of beta-rays.

So Metroids created from the beta-ray process don't have Queen potential; Metroids hatched from a Queen do. The 'original generation' Metroids created from the beta-ray process under Thoha supervision would eventually grow into Omegas, with all subsequent Metroids coming from the Queen and carrying her trait. In addition to the Queen trait, they also retained an imprinting trait that would cause them to be fiercely loyal to the first creature they saw upon hatching from an egg.

When the Galactic Federation rediscovered SR388 following the Mawkin's abandonment of the planet, they acquired a larval Metroid birthed from the Queen herself. When the Space Pirates captured this larva, they exposed it to beta-rays to clone others, but these lost the Queen trait. Having already imprinted on the Queen, the Federation specimen -colloquially referred to as 'Metroid Prime' due to spawning an offworld population- rejected the telepathic control of Mother Brain, unlike its progeny which did not hatch from eggs and lost these dormant traits.

Mother Brain theorized that Metroid Prime's resistance to her authority was due to having naturally grown in the wild on SR388, unlike the others who only knew the control of laboratories; This was one part of it. Fearing Metroid Prime could somehow inspire the rest to rebel, she isolated it, but nevertheless kept it alive in case it could yield further data due to its unique origins. When the Space Pirate base on Zebes began to self-destruct, various Metroid specimens were evacuated, Prime among them, and transferred to Tallon IV. There, Metroid Prime would escape containment, and through Phazon consumption, mutate into a powerful beast.

When she became Dark Samus, she seized command of the very Space Pirates who had captured and exploited her as a means of revenge and pragmatism. With Phaaze offering an unlimited source of Phazon, Dark Samus attempted to create more 'Metroid Primes' like herself, but these mutations failed. The reason was that they lacked the Queen trait; The Metroids she used had been spawned via beta-rays, instead of being birthed naturally by the SR388 queen.

She did not realize this, but nevertheless intended to return to her home planet one day. Dark Samus saw the Metroids spawned via mitosis as aberrations, due to only having memories of the Queen and her fellow Metroids existing in the wilderness. She hoped to reunite with her mother and original family... While also exposing them to the miracles of Phazon. Had she done so, Dark Samus would've figured out the mechanics of the Queen trait through trial and error.

The Infant was hatched from an egg laid by the Metroid Queen; Thus, it carried the Queen trait. When its DNA was given to Samus, the Queen trait was retained due to all of the DNA being injected directly, and not replicating via beta-ray mitosis. Raven Beak would be fascinated by this, and saw firsthand on SR388 that environmental stimuli played a role in awakening dormant Metroid traits. Not wanting to lose any in the process of cloning, he made sure to awaken Samus' through various trials, believing that activated DNA would be more likely to pass on.

[molagboop]

Ok I'll talk more about Raven Beak's suit.

You know how Samus' suit just up and explodes if you get her killed? At least in Mawkin powersuits, that's an intended feature for specific warrior classes.

If you were to kill Raven Beak in some way other than allowing a Metroid to juice him like a lemon, his suit would explode. That's a security feature: the Mawkin are very proud of their technology, and firmly believe that their secrets of warfare should never fall into the hands of Others: partly because they're so proud, but also for the good of the galaxy. They don't want their secrets being used by bad actors to wreak havoc.

Raven Beak is the Mawkin Warlord: as such, his suit is juiced up to the nth degree. If he were to fall in battle and his suit didn't explode, the Mawkin would be waist-high in the swamp. If, for example, the Space Pirates were to get ahold of his suit and reverse engineer it, the Mawkin would be held responsible for unleashing the means for the Pirates to create devastating weapons based on their designs.

Mawkin suits are highly optimized and possess combat capabilities and weapons that far exceed most other tribes. Raven Beak's suit has custom "firmware". His suit and the suits of a number of high echelon warriors and intelligence agents are designed to combust in a very particular way.

When the wearer's vitals fall below critical levels, the suit cannibalizes its own upgrades. The excess matter that accumulates as a result of this reaction is highly volatile, and the speed at which this all occurs helps to catalyze a fantastic explosion that ensures no technological footprint is left behind. No user data, no biometrics, no upgrades, no suit. Typically, the more upgrades you have, the grander the explosion is: that's more matter for the dying suit to push together like a play-doh ball made of dynamite.

Upon death, the Shrouded Talons' suits are designed to destroy not just the tech, but the body as well. If a unit is decommissioned, the intelligence wing of the tribe logically does not want the agent's identity to be discerned. Leave no trace and there's no trail to follow, as it were. There's a reason the Talons aren't common knowledge in intergalactic intelligence circles: they take cleaning up after themselves very seriously.

[brennanamuffin]

She

[coldgoldlazarus]

These are the same thing, to me...

[elliot-geltz]

I love how we know more about what Doom Guy does in his off time than we do about Samus.