- TheAsterisk
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- Noble Member
This is a real wall-of-text, so steel yourselves before reading it. (Quotes rather than from-memory responses will probably help keep it all straight, too.)
Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Oh no, not some Brutes, most. In a lot of parts of the book the Elites always point out how they don't trust Brutes, they say they are just essentially barbarians, and that they don't trust them.
In which case, enslaving some or making a few servants might not be that far off of examples from human history. Consider the history of human enslavement, and all that joyful crap. Conquering armies have long used prisoners and defeated armies as (effectively, if not always in name) slave labor. The Romans in particular made a big show of it. They had their public executions and gladiatorial spectacles, sure, but they also marched people about and made them carry out menial, laborious tasks just to sneer at them and reinforce Roman primacy.
However the majority of Elites we follow in Glasslands want to just kill humanity. Be done with it.
The majority that are followed as characters, yes, but then we must wonder whether those we follow are representative of the Elites in general.
Part of the problem is Traviss's often-disorganized narration; I'll get to that at the end.
So what was learned in the Great Schism? Honestly now.
Well, we saw a fleet attack humans again and again, without any need for the Prophets, for one, at Onyx and elsewhere.
Try to keep in mind that the fights taking place during the Great Schism were largely four-way brawls- pockets of UNSC versus Elites (and allied Hunters, Grunts, etc.) versus Covenant, with the Flood thrown in for a little more chaos. It's really only later, and at the Arbiter's urging, that a small band of Elites who have chased Flood to Earth agree to ally themselves with humans for a little while. (Even then, Hood and R'tas looked ready to takes swings/shots at each other in that Halo 3 cutscene.)
I mean, the Brutes and Elites didn't get along to well since the beginning of their relationship and it all came pouring out during the Great Schism. Brutes killed the Elite Council, Brutes ate Elites they just killed, Brutes and Elite ships fought each other above High Charity and Delta Halo, Brutes and Elites continued to fight each other well into 2559.
I always got the feeling, though, that much of the Elites' posturing on the matter were just smug reassertions of their "obvious" superiority to all the other races. Arrogance and dominion. See my first point, please; if correct, this point and that one each reinforce the other.
However Brutes are now clipping some oriental trees, act as the Elite's personal UPS delivery drivers and do some heavy lifting.
But humanity, oh they are such vermin and filth and must be cleansed away! Sounds a lot like the Prophets that the Elites, you know, fought against.
Where are the lasting lessons? Do I expect the Elites to just turn around and say, "Sorry"? No. But do I expect the Elites to at least reconsider everything they've done instead of trying to finish what the Prophets started?
No.
So, the apparent inconsistency strikes you as incredible? A bit too much to believe?
Human history (and, yes, I reference that, as it's pretty much all we have in the real world to work with) is full of stuff like that.
Consider, for example, that the United States government- formed on the basis of a rebellion prompted by arbitrary taxation and an overtly authoritarian imperial government- put down three distinct tax-prompted rebellions with military force within its own borders before 1800 (one, two and three, ladies and gentlemen) and adopted a much stronger, more centralized form of government in response.
The bases they'd have to ally with humans are (1) pragmatic, (2) ethical (kinda) or (3) realization that the human view of Forerunners was correct, and that the Covenant and ancient Elite views were dead wrong. For (1), we've seen canon accounts of Elites choose death where more useful and survivable roles were available- refuse medical treatment, refuse to use human weapons, commit a sort of ritual suicide, etc.- so they're pretty firmly not pragmatic. The second cause, a sort of penance or redemption, requires that point three be accepted at least in part. As for part three itself, the only evidence they all have access to is that the Prophets were charlatans. Considering the Elites' reverence and worship of Forerunners extends far earlier in their history than the Covenant or Prophets, and considering that it's essentially only the word of the Arbiter, some of his men and a bunch of humans that the Forerunners were just desperate mortals engaged in a hopeless and lost war, I would expect many of the Elites to disregard the truth of Halo, the Forerunners, etc., as plain lies.
If that's a stretch for you, think of the wonderful folks who believe steadfastly in creationism, or against evolution, or what have you, and argue vehemently in the face of science. It doesn't matter that we can hold up evidence, they just shrug it off. "Well, those fossils were obviously put there to test your faith!"
Further considering that these Elites have all lived in a society that was held together socially, politically and militarily by religion, it's pretty predictable they'd react out of baseless faith rather than listen to reason.
To put it another way, think of the Elites' society as Europe during or just after the Reformation. They all may have just agreed to get rid of their Pope, but if the Arbiter keeps running around shouting that God is a lie and that Heaven is a delusion, there'll be Hell to pay pretty soon. At the least, he'd better whip up some verifiable evidence in a hurry.
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Posted by: Xd00999
I believe that is what one may call a plot hole. Parangosky is ONI's brain, the fact that anything as big as the clones could get past her is beyond me. They handwave it by saying that Halsey hid it in the budget. How can you hide 75 clones in the budget?!? That's not lunch money!
There's a simpler explanation, you know.
Parangosky is simply lying, and Halsey knows it, but just can't do anything about it from her position. She is already actively covering her behind, and setting up Halsey as the fall guy, so that she can avoid most of the crap when it finally hits the fan.
She doesn't do the same for Ackerson because (1) the S-III project is not (yet) public knowledge, whereas the S-II's have been used for propaganda, and (2) Ackerson is regarded by many at this point as a war hero. (Like it or not, that graphic novel may have an impact here.) Picking out a war hero as your scapegoat for a program not yet known would be unnecessary at best, politically unwise at worst, and simply won't serve to cover Prangosky's backside like lambasting Halsey will.
By the way, if you go back and read the Nylund novels (I think it's in TFoR, but it may be FS, so grant me some room to work with old memories), it's kind of Cortana's fault that Ackerson is dead, as she forged a request from him to be reassigned to a forward command. He ultimately dies in that capacity on or near Mars. So, Cortana might be made into something of a "bad person" by Parangosky, et al later on, too.
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The biggest problem in Glasslands is Traviss's hodgepodge narration style. Sometimes it's first-person, sometimes a close third-person, sometimes omniscient third. Mixed in with that, she depicts characters' thoughts inconsistently, too- sometimes via first-person narration, sometimes via omniscient third, sometimes with just a block of text that may or may not be in italics, and sometimes through nebulous dialogue. It makes for an absolute mess wherein the author's intent and narration can very easily get mixed up with characters' thoughts and opinions. The two should really be cleanly distinct, but aren't, and then bad things happen.
One particular result is the feeling that Traviss has designated Halsey as an evil wretch. I don't think she actually has, but her awful, shoddy narration style makes it hard to keep the author a distinct concept from the characters, and several of the characters definitely have taken that stance on Halsey.
That kind of narration trouble and lack of separation between author and character is the kind of thing I'm accustomed to seeing in fan fiction, but stumbling into it in a proper Halo novel is more than a bit disconcerting. Irks me, if I'm honest about it. (Say what you will about Nylund's narration- dry, boring, detached, etc.- but it always struck me as classic sci-fi narration, and there was little if any ambiguity to it. All the mysteries came from the content covered.)
TL;DR Narration is to Glasslands as dialogue is to a George Lucas script. Content seems mostly okay, though, once you figure out the intended organization of the book.
[Edited on 11.27.2011 3:31 PM PST]