Sgt. Edward Buck is Nathan Fillon meme man who was well-beloved in ODST, showed up in Reach, and became a Spartan for Halo 5. He is also gratingly, begrudgingly masculine, and I doubt they're going to ever cut into or critically analyze his red-blooded MASCULINE MALE persona.
But the way he describes the Spartan augmentations?
How he describes how emotional he gets after the augmentation?
How he says it's like a second puberty?
How he understands why the old Spartan augmentations were done at the onset of puberty?
The part where he says, "If you ever fall for a woman, make sure she's got balls?"
That last line was said a line from ODST, a rather shitty, misogynistic joke about his off-again on-again ONI girlfriend Veronica Dare, repeated in the chapter of the novel that summarizes the events of ODST (yeah, the book wasn't so good.) I doubt the author was actually going for something trans-positive here, but I'll be damned if I won't reclaim this quote from grimy gamer hands and make some Spartans canonically trans.
Like, all I'm saying is that if any book series were to have a magic press-the-red-button-and-change-your-gender button, it'd be the Halo series. Plus, now that Spartan IVs are consenting adults and not kidnapped children, it'd make sense and fit in-universe for a Spartan to be like, "Uhh doc? Can we add a few bullet points to the augmentation list?"
There's also an argument that the original Spartans IIs could be agender, but again, very bad representation. If gender is a personal identity, and the Spartan II program is a traumatic romp through the valleys of ego death, is it even meaningful to have a gender? Spartan IIs generally don't have any interaction or integration into the rest of human culture or society, and I doubt they even have any concept of normal human life.
Like, some characterization: The Master Chief is ruthlessly pragmatic, and his only soft skills have been depicted as those necessary to advance towards a goal. He would make a great ONI agent, because he would very willingly trade ten human deaths to prevent eleven human lives. He would have no issues solving any variant of the trolly problem. Like, has the man ever watched a TV show? Listened to a song?
twovests wrote (edited )
and Christ don't get me started on New Blood
Sgt. Edward Buck is Nathan Fillon meme man who was well-beloved in ODST, showed up in Reach, and became a Spartan for Halo 5. He is also gratingly, begrudgingly masculine, and I doubt they're going to ever cut into or critically analyze his red-blooded MASCULINE MALE persona.
But the way he describes the Spartan augmentations?
How he describes how emotional he gets after the augmentation?
How he says it's like a second puberty?
How he understands why the old Spartan augmentations were done at the onset of puberty?
The part where he says, "If you ever fall for a woman, make sure she's got balls?"
That last line was said a line from ODST, a rather shitty, misogynistic joke about his off-again on-again ONI girlfriend Veronica Dare, repeated in the chapter of the novel that summarizes the events of ODST (yeah, the book wasn't so good.) I doubt the author was actually going for something trans-positive here, but I'll be damned if I won't reclaim this quote from grimy gamer hands and make some Spartans canonically trans.
Like, all I'm saying is that if any book series were to have a magic press-the-red-button-and-change-your-gender button, it'd be the Halo series. Plus, now that Spartan IVs are consenting adults and not kidnapped children, it'd make sense and fit in-universe for a Spartan to be like, "Uhh doc? Can we add a few bullet points to the augmentation list?"
There's also an argument that the original Spartans IIs could be agender, but again, very bad representation. If gender is a personal identity, and the Spartan II program is a traumatic romp through the valleys of ego death, is it even meaningful to have a gender? Spartan IIs generally don't have any interaction or integration into the rest of human culture or society, and I doubt they even have any concept of normal human life.
Like, some characterization: The Master Chief is ruthlessly pragmatic, and his only soft skills have been depicted as those necessary to advance towards a goal. He would make a great ONI agent, because he would very willingly trade ten human deaths to prevent eleven human lives. He would have no issues solving any variant of the trolly problem. Like, has the man ever watched a TV show? Listened to a song?