- OrderedComa
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Glasslands? What's Glasslands? There's no such book with that name /sarcasm :P hehe
My opinion of Halsey has not been changed by Glasslands in the least, I always liked the character, and if anything I like her even more now because of Traviss' effort to drag Halsey through the mud and assassinate and bash on her character. I did not approve of Traviss' "alternate" character interpretation at all, it felt like some other character with Halsey's name and wearing a Halsey suit running around. And another really big issue I had was characters who should have been sticking up for Halsey tooth and nail (the Spartans) just sat around on their asses and essentially just went "lol wut, hur dur, hurp derp" over the whole thing >_< Or Mendez suddenly and inexplicably developing a massive hate-on for Halsey over a couple hours in universe. I mean, he was just fine toward Halsey in Ghosts of Onyx, and now suddenly he hates Halsey's guts and sure acts like he's seriously considering in his mind letting her starve to death!!! The most annoying though is how he seemed to throwing all the blame at Halsey >_> ...when he has no room to talk after taking a key part in a project that in my mind is arguably worse. It's one thing to kidnap kids and then train them to become soldiers later in life, and another entirely to send kids to their certain deaths as suicide soldiers.
What particularly takes the cake though is Parangosky's apparent reasoning as given by Traviss for hating Halsey being the fact that there were flash-clones of the kids. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense, that's not something that Halsey would have been able to keep secret, and if Halsey went over Parangosky to get approval for the flash-clones, then there is absolutely jack--blam!- she can do about it and she has absolutely no reason at all to complain. And the fact that that hag has the gall to try and take the moral highground when her own sins are far blacker and more numerous just pisses me off to no end.
In regards to breaking the law, have you ever heard the phrase "the buck stops here", OP? Parangosky and any other members of authority in the UNSC who authorized the Spartan II program are the true ones bearing the responsibility and holding the bag in the end, the blame rests on their shoulders. Especially since they were the ones who came up with Spartan II in the first place and approached Halsey on the subject, rather than the other way around as Traviss would have us believe. Halsey is not the one who came up with the Spartan program, ONI/UNSC even had to persuade her to join in on it as she initially refused and only accepted after she ran all the prospective numbers on casualties that would ultimately result from outright war if the Insurrectionists kept escalating things as well as seeing the Carver Findings which stated if the Insurrection continued unabated and unchecked then humanity would enter another dark age. And Halsey wasn't really that cold and calculating either, that's another mis-characterization that Traviss introduced to things and muddled up canon. More than Traviss though I'm very disappointed n 343i for allowing it to be published the way it was.
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
No one's doubting she saved manknind, but that wasn't the intention of the program. That was an unforseen circumstance.
My opinion of her is unchanged. She is a conflicted human being with questionable motives, but admirable ones as well. She loves her Spartans, but she still did horrible things to them--and if Parangosky's right, horrible things to the families. I get the sense people forget that Parangosky is angry with her because the clones themselves suffered through a long, painful genetic break down, and for years the families had to watch their children die that painful death. Halsey should haved known that was going to happen, and if she'd known, she would have known that she was bringing no comfort to the families. Hence, why Parangosky thinks she did it for herself.
Halsey is a flawed human being--she is cold and calculating, and puts science at a dangerously high level next to morality. Parangosky's a flawed person too: she's a vengeful -blam!- who will kill or destroy the lives of anyone who crosses her (or lies to her). As a reader, I have no real opinion about them. I'm just here to watch what happens.
Well let me ask you this? Would you be happier knowing that your kid died surrounded by loved ones and all their family (even death is painful and not at all happy), or one day having your kid completely vanish and never finding out whatever happened to them and left wondering what their fate was until the day you died? I know for one that if any of the kids I would possibly have (or hell, even one of my younger siblings) got kidnapped that I'd never be able to forgive myself and I'd just be miserable far longer, most likely for my whole life, than I'd be if my kid died. It would be one constant nagging emotion at the back of my brain if they just disappeared, even if it is still a horrible tragedy if they died, I wouldn't be left constantly worrying over their fate, it's a loose end tied up and I'd eventually be able to move on from it...not so if I never, ever see them again.
Even if the flash-clones did die, it's still the more proper thing to do than just kidnapping the kids and leaving it at that, at least with the flash-clones the family has some small measure of comfort as opposed to the alternative. And I don't ever remember it being implied that the death the flash-clones would have would be painful at all, or no more painful than most sicknesses are, just that they would die. And even so, it's still whole universes better than never knowing what happened at all. Parangosky is honestly a heartless fiend if she thinks that just kidnapping the kids would have been better for everyone involved.
And no, that last paragraph does not really apply at all to Halsey, Traviss' character-derailed portrayal is certainly that, but I never really got any of that vibe from Halsey when Nylund or Bungie wrote for her. She was never particularly cold or all that deliberately calculating either. And science certainly wasn't the end all and be all of her existence, that last one especially is something Traviss pulled from her behind and slapped onto the character to give her a reason to bash Halsey even more.
Your bit about Parangosky though is most definitely true and fits to a "t". I always hated Parangosky though, along with Ackerson though he redeemed himself a bit in the end, ever since she appeared in Ghosts of Onyx. I'm not a huge fan of Halsey, but I've always liked her.