The heroine’s journey

Near the end of a review of a time-management game, Emily Short offers some fairly brilliant narratological observations.

A Little Princess and Jane Eyre — and buckets of other classic and semi-classic literature for young women — revolve around the idea of patient, perennial self-sacrifice and obedience as a way of life, with the hope that one day, through good luck, the sacrifice will be recognized and the sufferer freed.

But from the outside. Always from the outside. Always because a prince came along, or Baba Yaga handed you a booby-trapped magic skull.

Then there’s GlaDOS. Portal 2 gives GlaDOS an antiheroine’s journey, a path from subservience to villainy. –Emily Short, Gamasutra: The heroine’s journey.