- anton1792
- |
- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: StealthSlasher2
Who says I'm referring to Jul as one of your "sympathizers"?
No one. How did you arrive at this conclusion? What I said was, is that at a deeper level, the pragmatists like Levu who we thought where truly on the Arbiter's side are really no different than Jul. All that stays their blade is the fact that they cannot wage war anymore. Given more ships, weapons and resources, and it sounds like these Pragmatists would be on Jul's side. The Arbiter's list of true followers grows ever smaller.
Posted by: StealthSlasher2
Like I said, because of the character perspective focus, we're only able to see the thoughts and behaviors of Elites like Jul, Telcam, and their particular lot from their perspective as well as from the perspective of the Stanley team.
Look at Jul again. he actively seeks only the people that agree with his standpoint and tries to discreetly locate like minded individuals. You said it yourself and that can be observed. Jul was fearful of publicly announcing his intent. Combine that with his search for likeminded individuals why would he be in a situation where he goes head to head with someone of the complete opposite position ideologically? He doesn't. Instead he ends up further down the line to the extremist wing of the same side of the spectrum and ends up in Telcam and company's employ almost right away. Where is there room and motivation for him to go and seek out people opposed to his opinion?
There was plenty of room for him to encounter someone of the opposite belief, particularly before he finds 'Telcam and his bunch. It also does not require him to become a public figurehead and go "head-to-head" with someone as if it were some sort of outwardly formal (Or informal) public debate. As he searches discreetly, would it have been impossible for him to mistake someone as having a different belief to what they truly held? He tried his hand with Levu, and was unsuccessful. Except that Levu is really no different than Jul, so no true moral conscience is found there. It is entirely possible for him to have prodded someone else and found them to have an actual conscience over what they did. That does not happen. I mean, he travels quite far and wide - from rural areas to urban cities at places like Ontom, and we see no indication of it. None.
Posted by: StealthSlasher2
Quite simply, in this book, none of the characters directly deal with those people and thus they're not mentioned.
And so I ask myself why this should be the case. There was nothing stopping it from being conveyed through either Levu or Raia yet she chose to give these two characters exactly the same pragmatic beliefs. So I ask why, in the post Halo 3 world, this should not be made apparent. I take a look at the author, who by her own admission admits to sometimes having to strip down and rebuild chartacters, who only looks at the bare facts and nothing else. I think she has only done two things when looking at the Human-Covenant war - Saw "30 year war" and "Genocide" and then said, "Right, I've got it". Look at Philips, who says somewhere in chapter 4:
"Look, I know the Sangheili. They despise us. There's no forgive and forget, not after nearly thirty years of killing each other. The only reason they split from the Covenant and allied with us was because the Prophets were trying to exterminate them. Hardly the basis for a lasting marriage, is it?"
When you ask yourself the question, " Of exactly what value was the utterly flattened UNSC war machine to the Elites in Halo 3?", this "re-construction" of the Great Schism, the events leading up to it and the alliance in Halo 3, is utterly fatuous. So one Frigate, The Forward Unto Dawn, changed the outcome of the Space battle over the Ark, and the Elites knew this was a likely outcome from the start did they? How exactly did the UNSC help the Elites fight the Covenant? How could they? If the Elites utterly despised Humanity, and saw how worthless the UNSC war machine was in those last days (Which it obviously was. I think that the UNSC would be pulling all assets back to stop Truth from activating the Portal, which they thought was the Ark at that point), why did they even think about allying with them? It makes no sense. This tawdry re-application of the Great Schism sticks out like a sore thumb and suggests that the author did not bother with the finer details and just focused on the "30 year war" part and the "Genocide" part.
[Edited on 11.03.2011 12:03 PM PDT]