Examination of Female Characters - Part 5
So, here I am with my fifth article examining Halo’s treatment of female characters (see also parts one, two, three, and four). This time, I’m looking at the first Halo novel: Halo: The Fall of Reach, by Eric Nylund. This is actually one of my least favorite of the novels. I know a lot of people think Halo: The Flood is unquestionably the worst, but aside from the slight boringness of parts that go over Master Chief shooting his way through rooms, I think it’s enjoyable military science-fiction. In Fall of Reach, I think the characterization is weak all around and has protagonists of such dubious morality I find myself rooting for the Insurrection. Nevertheless, it has several female characters. These include Dr. Catherine Halsey, Déjà, Kelly-087…
Blog Sorting for Dummies
Halopedia is not a finished product. This is always a description of a wiki. Halopedia is perpetually in a state of development. This is true not just for its content, but the site itself. Halopedia has for the past few years been Wikia’s guinea pig, testing out new layouts and features for them. One example of these are the blogs, and an unfortunate result of Wikia’s testing has been difficulties with categorization, specifically sorting the blog categories alphabetically. I believe I have found a solution to this issue, for those of us annoyed by the glitch.
Each individual blog article is included on the blog namespace, and the title thus begins with “Blog:”. I believe originally this prefix was ignored and all articles were sorted by th…
At Least Partly Right
One of the more important aspects of any body of fiction is the names of its main characters. Names have significance in etymology and in reference to famous persons who previously bore such names. Halo’s main character names were likely carefully chosen to fit into the intricate mythology set up by Bungie. Below I have collected what we know and what I suspect regarding the names of John-117, Cortana, the Prophets of Truth and Mercy, the Arbiter, the Monitors, Kurt-051, and i love bees’ Melissa.
The most obvious name is that of the Halo trilogy’s protagonist: John-117. John-117 has been suspected to be a reference to various biblical verses, such as John 1:17 and John 11:7, in addition to those of the Book of John (aka Revelation): Revelatio…
Examination of Female Characters - Part 4
And I’m back with part four in my series to judge whether or not Halo is sexist with its female characters. See also parts one, two, and three. Continuing the look at Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe started in part three, I will now cover everything from Palace Hotel to The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole.
Palace Hotel, by Robt McLees, is the ninth story in the compilation. Taking place during the Halo 2 campaign, this story’s prominent female characters include Cortana, Corporal Palmer, and Parisa. Cortana is same-old same-old, acting as Master Chief’s smart and snarky advisor as he wanders the Mombasa metropolis. Corporal Palmer, leader of a small unit of Marines, takes exception to her reasoning …
Examination of Female Characters - Part 3
Continuing my examination of the female Halo characters (parts one and two can be found here and here), I will now focus on the short stories featured in Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe. I had intended for part three to focus on the original Halo novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach, but I just (finally) picked up Evolutions to read on my spring break vacation to Mexico. With the stories fresh in my brain, this seems the best piece of literature to use. Part three will cover stories from Pariah to The Mona Lisa. To reiterate, this article series is to answer whether or not Halo is sexist, and comments like “I think the female characters are hot!” are inappropriate.
The first story is Pariah, by B. K. Evenson. Focusing on the Spartan-II So…