twovests

twovests OP wrote (edited )

Reply to Halo Takes (part 1) by twovests

and Christ don't get me started on New Blood

Sgt. Edward Buck is Nathan Fillon meme man who was well-beloved in ODST, showed up in Reach, and became a Spartan for Halo 5. He is also gratingly, begrudgingly masculine, and I doubt they're going to ever cut into or critically analyze his red-blooded MASCULINE MALE persona.

But the way he describes the Spartan augmentations?

How he describes how emotional he gets after the augmentation?

How he says it's like a second puberty?

How he understands why the old Spartan augmentations were done at the onset of puberty?

The part where he says, "If you ever fall for a woman, make sure she's got balls?"

That last line was said a line from ODST, a rather shitty, misogynistic joke about his off-again on-again ONI girlfriend Veronica Dare, repeated in the chapter of the novel that summarizes the events of ODST (yeah, the book wasn't so good.) I doubt the author was actually going for something trans-positive here, but I'll be damned if I won't reclaim this quote from grimy gamer hands and make some Spartans canonically trans.

Like, all I'm saying is that if any book series were to have a magic press-the-red-button-and-change-your-gender button, it'd be the Halo series. Plus, now that Spartan IVs are consenting adults and not kidnapped children, it'd make sense and fit in-universe for a Spartan to be like, "Uhh doc? Can we add a few bullet points to the augmentation list?"

There's also an argument that the original Spartans IIs could be agender, but again, very bad representation. If gender is a personal identity, and the Spartan II program is a traumatic romp through the valleys of ego death, is it even meaningful to have a gender? Spartan IIs generally don't have any interaction or integration into the rest of human culture or society, and I doubt they even have any concept of normal human life.

Like, some characterization: The Master Chief is ruthlessly pragmatic, and his only soft skills have been depicted as those necessary to advance towards a goal. He would make a great ONI agent, because he would very willingly trade ten human deaths to prevent eleven human lives. He would have no issues solving any variant of the trolly problem. Like, has the man ever watched a TV show? Listened to a song?

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twovests OP wrote

Reply to Halo Takes (part 1) by twovests

Note: I really do mean the eugenics thing to be a bit concerning, I'm not being edgy for some poorly-thought-out humor. The tones aren't as overt as you might think -- and certainly not very well discussed -- but they are certainly there? In the Halo 4 intro, Halsey says "Your mistake is seeing Spartans as military hardware. My Spartans are humanity's next step. Our destiny as a species. Do not underestimate them."

Halo 4's release was built up with many, many books laying out the lore, expanding upon The Assembly revealed in Reach's datapads, The Librarian revealed in Halo 3's terminals, and the entire Forerunner society. Genetic augmentation was a way of life for the Forerunners and their caste-base society, and Halo 4 reveals that the Librarian intentionally encoded fucking magic into human's DNA, a kind of Machiavellian genetic Rube Goldberg Machine such that they would eventually develop AI, find the Halo rings, and Reclaim the Mantle of Responsibility.

Furthermore, that Genesong allows Master Chief to survive "The Composer", i.e. a magic death ray. The transhumanistic storyline definitely involves some genetic modification.

I personally like to think of these ancient genetic meddlings as commented code that needs to be uncommented, and so far removed from eugenics that I don't have to feel :\\ about it when playing Halo 4. A simple genetic hotfix against the composer, and a deus-ex hot, loaded, and ready to fire for whatever other fresh hells are to be seen in the rest of the series. And I also like to imagine that the majority of the transhumanistic storyline will focus on technological improvements, and that we will eventually see the Assembly and the Janus key again.

But my understanding is that the plot and tone shifted greatly with Halo 5 -- a game I have yet to play -- and that it is expected to shift even further with Halo Infinite.

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twovests wrote

Reply to looking for 80s/90s Extreme Wizard art. by hollyhoppet

FWIW Andrew Hussie (author of Homestuck) went on such a WIZARD SLEUTH, so if you search "Homestuck shitty wizard" or "Andrew Hussie Wizards" you might find a lot. Be careful not to contract the same late-2000s viruses he got though.

Here's a good resource: http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/chipperz/wizards.html

Also, the recently-defunct SkaianetSystems Homestuck project involved some incredibly shitty wizards, just don't read the text because it's got a lot of awful Homestuck lore. https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Skaianet_Systems_Incorporated

Images have some overlap with that angelfire link

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