“Reading Journals” are one of the main, and currently the only, sub-series for Gaming’s Place in Literature. These Journals are used to explore individual novels within a game’s expanded universe. The general format will be to write about the book’s writing style and quality of story before diving into a genre analysis. Exceptions to this format will likely occur.
One of the things that I deeply missed when stepping into Halo was the critical literary analyses. When I first found The Flood, it was when the pop culture was still feeling the after-effects of the Tolkien boom from the Lord of the Rings films. My family and I had stockpiles of books analyzing the films and the literary world of Middle Earth. A particular treasure of mine was a collection of essays from TheOneRing.net, which peeled back layers and layers of Tolkien’s work. I wanted to read pieces like that for Halo.
Today, not only have I found such pieces, I have been writing them as well. I created a Tumblr blog in 2014 initially as a place to explore Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as it applied to the character of Thel ‘Vadam. Starting in early 2015, I began writing for the community site Halo Archive, most of my articles examining the different novels or short stories produced by the franchise. I’ve also written for the online magazine Christ and Pop Culture.
The passion and critical exploration I used for Halo is exactly what I am bringing to this new series on Patreon. Expanded universes are now a staple of gaming franchises, tie-ins and novelizations are being written by big names in the genres. It’s time these books, and other pieces of game-related fiction, were given the same examination as other pieces of literature.
Upkeeping a blog can be stressful (I say on the blog that gets the least of my attention). Heck, writing is stressful, even if you love it. Even if you love the subject matter. Being aware of the craft of writing means that you are second-guessing your word choices, that the smallest typo will haunt your waking moments, that sleep will elude you for the sake of lethologica –
lethologica
(noun)
the inability to remember a word or put your finger on the right word
– and desks will be flipped for the sake of research roadblocks. If you’re a freelancer, this goes double. Views, comments, likes, and reblogs become measures of success which can determine if you’re able to snag a contributor position on a site or gather Patreon supporters (shameless plug). Exposure becomes your lifeblood and suddenly timing and topical seasons are everything in order to get your pieces circulating. A source of joy becomes a source of stress.
The Jungle Book’s climax was certainly one of mass destruction. One that Andrew Todd of Birth.Movies.Death. found to be frustratingly similar to Man of Steel’s.
[I]t’s incredible to me, so soon after that film’s release, that more people apparently haven’t made the connection between Man of Steel’s D—head Superman and The Jungle Book’s D—head Mowgli. – THE JUNGLE BOOK Has A MAN(Cub) OF STEEL Problem
I respectfully disagree that there is a connection to make.
Spoilers Ahead
As a whole, The Jungle Book is a wonderfully structured film. Cause and effect build organically against each other, with the environment and character motivations weaving together in an elaborate dance. So it is a bold statement to say that the second meeting with the elephants – the Pit Scene as I will call it – is the best-developed scene in the entire movie. And that’s a statement I’m going to stand by.
By best-developed, I mean that this scene has so many threads that interconnect with this one event to create a very pivotal moment. This scene could not exist as such an impressive feat of storytelling were it a part of a lesser movie.
Spoilers Ahead
Gaming’s Place in Literature seeks to examine game-related fiction through different lenses of literary analysis.
Master Chief is not the protagonist of Halo: The Flood. He’s certainly the protagonist of Combat Evolved, but in the novelization of the game, he hands the driver’s seat over to one Lieutenant Melissa McKay.
The base definition of a protagonist is simple: “the leading character’ of a story [X]. However with a cast of thousands, and multiple viewpoint characters, it can be difficult to pinpoint who the protagonist actually is. Quickbeam, a content writer over at TheOneRing.net, gives us another method of locating the main character in a story: the narrative.
“[A] character-driven story like LOTR is not strictly about sacrifice (or heroism, or the impermanence of beauty, or all those themes that are intrinsic). I must admit the novel is woven of many threads but the groundwork of the tale, the telling of it, spins on a single proviso: Who is transformed the most between the opening and the closing page, taking the reader through his transformation?” [X]
The telling of the tale, as Quickbeam so graciously highlighted, is also called the narrative. This is the way a story is told, the grand combination of themes, characters, plot, and writing style. Now not all narratives work off the same proviso or condition as Lord of the Rings does. While we do see character transformation in our protagonists throughout the Halo series, Halo 2 being an easy example, one of the groundwork pieces for Halo as a whole is sacrifice.
Continue Reading on Halo Archive
Gaming’s Place in Literature seeks to examine game-related fiction through different lenses of literary analysis.
The Flood is a Halo book that’s known to get some flak from the fanbase, and I can understand why. Coming off of Nylund’s close look into the way the Master Chief thinks, the more action-oriented style can feel shallow. There are parts where Dietz slows down the story to describe in detail how the Master Chief dispatched the Covenant squads, which is particularly dull when you’ve played the campaign and recognize the scenes. I’m not sure we needed the description of our first Warthog jump in the tunnel system that “is not a natural formation.” Furthermore there are some interesting continuity choices that Dietz makes, such as everyone and their Sangheili zealots knowing that John was a child soldier.
With all these issue in mind, I will defend this book vigorously. Dietz had a lot of obstacles to overcome that were different from Nylund. Frank O’Connor has explained that Dietz not only had to transfer a well-known story from one medium to another, but also had to do so in less time that Nylund had (X). Therefore, even upon rereading, I remain both impressed and delighted with what we were given.
Continue Reading on Halo Archive
