However, the StarCraft series ( Blizzard Entertainment, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 2010, 2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2017) offers the rare opportunity to reposition the engagement with the monstrous-feminine by allowing the player to embody the monstrous-feminine herself.
Most games position the engagement with the monstrous-feminine by allowing the player to embody often white, male protagonists who fight against and kill these monsters. While initially discussed through literary and film scholarship, the abject and the monstrous-feminine describe horror tropes commonly remediated in video games. The discussion concludes that Kerrigan’s connection between the player and monstrous-feminine character is a significant paradigm shift for the female monster and how agency and empathy allow players to understand the monstrous-feminine in a new perspective. The author then explores the obstacles Kerrigan must overcome and how this struggle reifies her disruption of and resistance against the symbolic order. The article begins examining Kerrigan through the lens of the monstrous-feminine and the abject before discussing how her hypersexualization ostensibly contradicts her monstrosity as an empowering force. Kerrigan’s subjectivity as a player-character complicates her in ways that require a different application of the monstrous-feminine from those characters from literature, film, and video games that position them as enemies to overcome. This article explores the representation of monstrous-feminine agency through the character of Kerrigan in the StarCraft series with emphasis on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm.
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