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reasons why I am never allowed to drive the warthog anymore:

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Alright who wants to draw rtas

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"does he usually talk about me?" and then the LOOK miranda gives him sends me every time. peak comedy

god I'm so glad Mr. Chef wasn't a silent protagonist like I was expecting he is so fucking funny

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RETALIATION!

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RETALIATION!

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i forgot where the guns are in crow's nest :(

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@noctiris has discovered the grav hammer

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Yes Halsey fucked up but she careddddd okkkkk. Thats her flaw she cares too damn much and KNOWS how badly she fucked up but god damn if she isn’t going to try and help

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(Stole it from Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/DMLAwLhIcTG/?igsh=dXA3aXVwb2IxdHFv )

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You would think the deepest Halo lore is found in the recesses of all these many novels but you'd be wrong.

The deepest, rarest Halo knowledges are all like. Fuckin loot crate exclusive lore cards.

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I love John Halo. A small robot pops out of the room you just fought tooth and nail to get into, separates you from your AI companion who knows everything, you fight through a tower full of flood to get a key and just never questions it. He would have literally killed everyone if not for Cortana

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If I can find it in my heart to forgive Sangheili and Spartans for fighting for things that suck because they were preyed upon by the institutions they trusted, I can find it in me to forgive Catherine Halsey for the same.

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Nobody asked me but if you're ever stuck on understanding why Chief does things "it's what I'm for" is probably a good starting point for a guess

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What's so bad about kilo-5?

The in-universe answer is that even when Kilo Five is railing against the Spartan-II program, they're still ONI and still think a lot of awful shit is Okay And Necessary. I cannot fucking stand the ODSTs in particular. Yeah Halo does war crimes all the time, but it's incredibly difficult for me to enjoy it when the protagonists are a group of characters that do shit like casually beating a POW around with a cattle prod. That hits way different for me than, for example, how Halsey is legitimately tormented by what she did.

Philips isn't the worst because he actually does feel bad sometimes about things they do, but I don't care if we see that character again. Black Box and Osman have benefited a bit from being used by other writers for other things in the years since. Naomi is a pretty generic Spartan and then she becomes mostly a cudgel the author uses to beat one of her points into your head in the most exhausting way, Devereaux barely exists, and the ODSTs I've already told you became Fucking Intolerable to me.

The out-of-universe answer is that, in addition to more common Halo fandom complaints about how the author fucks up existing characters and lore to suit her whims, she is a smug, self-satisfied, military-worshipping Thatcherite dipshit with deeply compartmentalized thinking and it shows. To be clear, the books do show Jul 'Mdama as a victim and do not go "oh yeah, torturing POWs is great!" but at the same time, it's clear she doesn't see why this would really throw someone off from liking her gaggle of protagonists. The writing lionizes ONI in this weird way. I struggle with how much gloss and polish is put on the idea of ONI's "necessary" evils while trying to also punish the evils that the author herself takes more issue with. Like, trying to give us a scene where we're supposed to be chomping at the bit to watch Margaret Parangosky, Margaret Parangosky, tear into Catherine Halsey for doing horrible evil things?

My dear Margaret you are the head of the organization that courted her in her teens, hired her, encouraged her to devise extreme measures, and then threatened her and the children she now cared about if she stopped. My dear Margaret you are about to cheerfully monitor a project designed to poison and starve an entire planet.

The author clearly has no problems with how she framed that scene. Character perspective is one thing, like how "akshully the author is a racist because she has the ODSTs use slurs for the aliens" would be a dumb take because that is just writing characters being wrong about a thing (the author is a racist because of her takes on irl politics, lol but I won't get into that again). But the scene with Parangosky is a great example of her framing something as satisfying and good when it's actually fucking wild. "Parangosky is a vile old murder grandma, but she's the GOOD and COOL evil one you're supposed to root for here!" says the author, and I'm just.... No???????

There are some interesting ideas in the Kilo Five books and I will keep pulling garbage out of the dumpster, but I fucking hate them. It makes me want to chew through drywall.

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every time someone hates glasslands as much as i do for the same reason, an angel gets its wings

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if you hate master chief I'm sorry but you're wrong

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"hey autumn why do you like catherine halsey so much"

because the navy came after me when i was a teenager, too. and i didn't join (though, under pressure from instructors, i was planning to for a while) but i was fielding calls from recruiters for three years as they tried to get me to join the nuclear program because of my asvab score and rotc extracurriculars. you know. and so i can see an alternate universe version of myself who fell for the propaganda and wound up doing terrible things for the u.s. military.

anyway, 10+ years on and out of a shitty right-leaning small town with some experience and knowledge under my belt, i can look back at the version of me who almost got got and have sympathy for her. it would've been so easy to fall in and i'm lucky i didn't. and tbqh i think part of the reason i dodged that was because i could already see myself in halsey and how she acted and what her values were and i didn't want to walk right into the same trap of trying to justify awful things for some nebulous concept of the greater good.

anyway, halsey's a fascinating character and i like her a lot, and for me at least it's easy to see the chain of abuse and manipulation that led to her doing the things she did. and it doesn't justify those things in the slightest, but it does make her interesting to read about.