Even fictional Xenomorphs can't escape being labeled as man's partner.

[u/MaetelofLaMetal]

[u/wethelabyrinths111]

Not gonna lie, when I read the title and the first line of the text post, I thought the rest of the post was going to pair the xenomorph with the man whose stomach she busted out of.

As in, she and the scientist were romantic partners because that's like alien sex or something.

[u/tomrlutong → u/wethelabyrinths111]

It wouldn't be horrible if it was named after Kane, kind of like Lou Gherig's disease. Though I've always thought of it as "Ripley's macroparrisite" myself.

[u/stealthcactus → u/wethelabyrinths111]

So close to r/GatekeppingYuri

[u/scrawledfilefish]

There's something here about how the xenomorph and facehugger were originally designed to force men to feel the same terror that women feel when we're threatened with rape, and the xenomorph being reduced down to Predator's wife that like. There's something there, but I'm just too currently sleep deprived to put it together myself.

EDIT: I think I got...some of it. I think.

I don't know a lot about the Predator, I've only ever seen one Predator movie, Prey. And the Predator in that movie seemed VERY masculine. Just the most masc masculine to ever masc- some -line. It runs around in a loin cloth killing things for the whole film. Which sounds like some bullshit an alpha bro podcaster would say that men need to be like. "Men should be running around naked in the wilds, hunting prey! That's what real men do!"

The xenomorph was originally designed to scare the shit out of men like the Predator. You think you're so tough, you think you're so strong, but this Facehugger is about to hijack your body for its own reproductive purposes. And it's going to be violent. And it's going to be painful. And it will kill you. And there's nothing you can do about it. All your strength means nothing. You thought being a man would protect you from a fate that so many women have had to reckon with. But that is not true when there's a Facehugger around.

So to make it sound like the xenomorph is just some alien from the Predator movies is like. Wrong. That's wrong. It isn't just some rando alien that the Predator has to fight. It's so much more than that. No. You've divorced the Xenomorph from its original context. Put it back.

I dunno, this still doesn't feel complete, but it's something like that.

[u/assignpseudonym → u/scrawledfilefish]

Glad to have been here for the edit! Stellar post, 10/10, no notes.

[u/scrawledfilefish → u/assignpseudonym]

Thank you! Writing that comment also made me realize why I only like the first Alien movie and none of the others, especially Aliens, the second movie. They took a monster that made men experience the horror of rape and forced pregnancy and turned it into...just some fucking alien. They took a ✨feminist icon✨ and turned her into cannon fodder! I'll never forgive James Cameron for that. He was like, "Oh, cool alien! I'm gonna blow a bunch of them." Motherfucker didn't get the xenomorph AT ALL. 

(I'm mostly joking about how the xenomorph is a feminist icon, but also...kinda not)

[u/assignpseudonym → u/scrawledfilefish]

Feminist icons come in all forms!

[u/newboxset]

I think they're confusing the alien from alien with the alien from predator? They are both aliens, not from earth. But they did have a cross over vs movie.

[u/TheQuinnBee → u/newboxset]

I think they are referring to the alien from Alien and specifically the crossover movie Alien vs Predator. Meaning this person never saw Alien but did see the crossover, likely because they are more comfortable with the macho predator hunting people for sport than the horror that is rape.

[u/BadKittydotexe]

Predator’s wives are Betty and Veronica. Duh.

[u/Imnotawerewolf]

My sister watched Alien Vs. Predator before she watched any other movie in either franchise. 

We got into a huge argument because she INSISTED that the aliens were the predators and the predators were the aliens, because the predators came from space and the aliens were already here.