ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE OLD HALO ARCHIVE, MONTH YYYY
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Review and analysis of Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund
When the Spartan-II program goes public for the sake of morale, the Office of Naval Intelligence loses their strongest covert operation. They decide it’s time to make more. Enough to make them expendable.
Today, the community-driven campaign of Star Wars Representation Matters, run under the hashtag #SWRepMatters on Twitter, is focusing on the representation of women in that galaxy far far away. For me, this conversation is difficult to divorce from romance, because it is in romance that Star Wars has failed me as a woman the most.
Since we’re going to get into a bit of the reeds with some negativity here, let’s start with a positive.
I like Satine Kryze. No, I love her. I adore her. She is my second favorite character in all of Star Wars. And that’s a big deal because I was ready to reject her entirely.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MY TUMBLR, April 2015
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Partner piece to First Strike review and analysis.
Remember last time on Arbiter Watch how some updated canon put to rest an old theory regarding the identity of the Arbiter? Well, this time around, some updated canon resurrects a theory long dormant. Welcome again to this companion series to my reading journals, where Thel ‘Vadam(ee) is everywhere if you just look hard enough.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE OLD HALO ARCHIVE, APRIL 2015
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Review and analysis of First Strike by Eric Nylund
Alpha Halo was not the end of the war. The Covenant continue their genocidal campaign, the Master Chief, Cortana, and a team of survivors must race to Earth and stop the Covenant’s advance. This novel follows up on the events and characters of both Fall of Reach and The Flood and sets the stage for Halo 2.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE OLD HALO ARCHIVE, NOVEMBER 2015
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It’s through Locke’s visor, watching Locke’s feet, by which I first land on Sanghelios’ soil. The water of the river rises past our calves and suddenly everything is familiar. I’m reminded of a creek that runs through Chester Bowl in Duluth, Minnesota, a short walk from my childhood house. The sounds of Locke and Osiris making their way through the river echoes memories of family. Brothers finding new ways to traverse rocks from one bank to another, a mother pulling back portions of the creek bed to discover something new, and a father standing at a waterfall’s edge to take in the view downstream. Immediately, Sanghelios feels like home.
March 5th is the anniversary of the finale of Star Wars Rebels. In celebration of that, I have a list of five superb qualities about this beloved show.
With four out of five installments running as big-budget monster B-movies, it can be easy to forget how much of a character-focused story the first Jurassic Park was (the movie that is, not Crichton’s original novel). As a kid, I enjoyed it for the dinosaur thrills, but returning to it as an adult, I’ve been impressed with how Steven Spielberg, David Koepp, and Michael Crichton weaved together character growth. Most recently, I’ve become obsessed with the surrogate father status that Dr. Alan Grant has with Lex Murphy. I’d long appreciated it from Alan’s perspective, but Spielberg subtly crafted an arc for Lex that both compliments and improves Alan’s.
Back in 2016, when I rewatched Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek: Into Darkness in anticipation for the Blu-Ray/DVD release of Star Trek: Beyond, I began noticing parallels between scenes in the first two Kelvin timeline films and Beyond. Parallels that place Leonard McCoy in a critical position in both Spock and Kirk’s lives.
Of course, it’s been long established that these three characters are important to each other. The “heart, mind, soul” triumvirate has been a part of the canon since 1966. Yet, due to the events of the first of the Kelvin films, certain character dynamics have been altered. McCoy is still a critical part of the crew, but it’s not until Beyond that we’ve seen him be a critical part of Spock and Kirk’s personal lives, and he does so by filling a position left vacant by the events of the alternate timeline: parental guidance.
The Enterprise’s Captain and First Officer have gotten the short end of Fate’s stick when it comes to parental figures. Each of them have had one distant and up to three dead parental figures each, and the scenes given to Leonard McCoy in Beyond ends up taking the place of and even paralleling the scenes in Star Trek that were given to said parents.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MY TUMBLR, MARCH 2015
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Partner piece to The Flood review and analysis.
Welcome again to the companion series for my reading journal, where I take a look at where Thel ‘Vadam shows up in the Expanded Universe. In the Definitive Edition of The Flood (piece coming soon to Halo Archive), we get a somewhat detailed look into his actions at Alpha Halo and realize that maybe the destruction of Halo wasn’t his error after all.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MY TUMBLR, January 2015
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No, I am not referring to the intergalactic horror show that caused the ESRB to declare Combat Evolved an Mature-Rated game without even seeing the gameplay. I referring to the book, Halo: The Flood by William C. Dietz, the novelization of CE.
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