“Rescue your own goddamned self”

Cherie Priest on Alien‘s Ellen Ripley:

It’s noteworthy to me that she’s not the captain. She’s not a princess. She’s not a mutant, a witch, or a vampire — and though any given one of these things is fine and dandy, it resonates with me that she’s not anybody special. Third in a chain of command that numbers merely seven, Ripley is resented for what little authority she wields and ignored when it serves the purposes of other crew members. She isn’t a force of personality or innate power. She’s not anyone’s romantic partner. She’s just some woman who happens to be on board when the shit hits the fan.

And she’s no spontaneous ass-kicking warrior.

She screws up a lot.

She takes the wrong tunnels, makes some wrong guesses, and loses her shit more than once — but she pulls her shit together, that’s the important thing. It’s okay to make mistakes, teaches Ripley, as long as you don’t let your failures paralyze you. It’s okay to be a compassionate survivor, and go out of your way to save the ones you can even when it isn’t particularly practical. It is fair and reasonable to cut your losses when no good can come of trying to salvage them. Pray if you think it helps, but don’t bet on rescue; because when the sun comes up on the distant planetoid and there’s an acid-blooded killing machine stalking through your galley, the time has come to rescue your own goddamned self.

And you know what? You can. You don’t have to be a fairy queen or a superhero; you can be just some woman who’s there at the wrong place, in the wrong time — and it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.