In 50 years we are going to be measuring the death toll of AI data centers in the same way we measured the death toll of radiation from nuclear bomb testing.
Step 2: LGBT people who exist where a child can witness them, and people who express support for LGBT people to a child, are classified as child predators.
Step 3: Adults who marry children are not classified as child predators.
And we've seen all 3 steps happen regularly.
It's very clear that their goal is for LGBT people and their supporters to be put to death.
The only acceptable amount of anti-LGBT is zero. No "I'm from a different time". No "love the sinner hate the sin". No "I disagree with the lifestyle but I still want them to have rights". Full support or fuck off.
Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.
It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
"It seems especially stupid to me now, as a very cynical adult, that certain [Gundam] fans want to cut Newtypes entirely. To demand a story in Gundam made only of professional soldiers, and to cut out this element. 'Can't Gundam just be about adult wars?' To me, this rings as the most pathetic childishness, for who - besides children - demand[s] to be adults so clumsily?"
-Argonbolt, On Gundam: UC 0079 Mobile Suit Gundam Review/Retrospective
Intellectual exercise: 10 novel reading order that I would maybe recommend to a new Halo fan who is interested in getting a grip on the Halo universe and catching up to the current state of play, following the most important storylines, and getting a solid grip on Spartans.
(This considers the Forerunner stuff to be totally outside its scope even though a lot of it is really good, RIP.)
The Fall of Reach
First Strike
Ghosts of Onyx
Nylund trilogy is the bedrock, you really want to start here and I really think nothing of major value is lost by skipping the novelization of CE. Nylund trilogy really wants you to have a good time and devastate you about the Spartans, and it does it well. If you don't get anything at all out of these, it's probably not worth your time to keep it up and you can just maybe grab a book that is about one character/topic you care about and be satisfied.
(The Fall of Reach is the zero hour stumbling block for every person who wants to approach Halo in in-universe chronological order, because it covers events ranging from about 2514 or so up to 2552 all in one book, but it is still always the best place I would suggest starting.)
Unfortunately, I do not plan to resolve the jumping off point at the end of Ghosts for a while.
4. Contact Harvest
Once you care, it's worth your time to go back to the start of the war. Sergeant Johnson is there, and this will flesh out the tension between Earth and the colonies as well as the Covenant as it looks from the inside. Staten has that casual command of the setting that comes from someone knowing it inside out and you can tell how much he loves Johnson and the Covenant. Also, the stuff about the two AIs that run Harvest's planetary infrastructure is fucking great. (Some of this early Covenant lore will be contradicted a bit later, but most of it is a really solid Halo experience.)
5. The Cole Protocol
Genuinely, it's quite good and brings you into the mid-war, and the outer colony perspective vs Earth and the UNSC going into the 2530s while the Covenant was tearing through human worlds. Gray Team is a very well-built group of characters that prove the rules of Spartan-IIs by breaking them in an interesting and thoughtful way. Also, Keyes and the Sangheili who becomes the Arbiter are here. (The latter is especially fun because he's kind of a ruthless bastard at this stage in his life.)
6. Glasslands
Anyone who knows me can tell you how obviously painful this is for me to say, but I do think Glasslands is worthwhile to go through even though it pisses me off and, if you enjoyed Ghosts of Onyx, it will probably piss you off too. Glasslands does some lifting to set up the post-war state of the galaxy, it explains how the UNSC started getting their hands on so much alien high technology, it tells you how Jul 'Mdama became radicalized (though the rest of that story is in a book I'm not putting on this list), and it gets the characters from Ghosts of Onyx off of Onyx. Unfortunately, this is at very high cost because it handles them all so badly. If you have to be introduced to how poorly 343i handled Catherine Halsey, it might as well be here with the most eye-watering example. It also hurts that this is the last place you see Blue Team and Team Saber in this list, but the truth is they stopped being relevant at the end of Ghosts anyway and nothing that has been written about them ever since is all that good imo.
But you at least know who Serin Osman is I guess.
If it isn't fun and hurts too much, read a summary and skip it.
6.5 Shadow of Intent
I realized that because New Blood is short and Shadow of Intent is a novella and also really short, we can squeeze this one in here. It's skippable if you're speedrunning, but it's an enjoyable romp with some fun space combat and good supporting characters like Stolt, the Unggoy ranger and Tul 'Juran, warrior princess. Let Staten tell you what Rtas 'Vadum (You remember him? Halo 2? Half-Jaw?) is getting up to after the war, hunting down remnants of the Covenant. You deserve this after contending with Glasslands.
7. New Blood
Buck from ODST becomes a Spartan-IV. It's not an amazing Halo novel and the way they have Buck tier-rank Spartan generations has done so much damage, but I think it's the best intro you're going to get to Spartan-IVs and the Spartans being their own branch of the military. Also, I find Buck the newly-minted Spartan-IV to be a fascinating character. There is so much about what the UNSC does to Spartan-IVs that should be alarming and he just sails right past it because he's excited to be "a hero." It's told from his point of view, however, so it can't call him out on it.
As mentioned, this one is also quite short and it helps.
You could also read Bad Blood if you would like to see Buck pick up after Halo 5 and enjoy reading him, but I couldn't bear to give it a spot in this list because I refuse to give up Envoy.
8. Envoy
I'm ecstatic to report that Envoy picks up Gray Team again. (There's a gap in time, but don't worry about it. You didn't miss a book.) It is an extremely well-executed story about civil war between Sangheili over having to co-exist with humans, humans trying to re-establish a home on a world they had lost, Gray Team's trauma about something they did at the end of the war, and a Jiralhanae war chief digging up an ancient weapon that nobody should ever dig up. The characters are well-done, there's a great character arc for Rojka (one of the Sangheili), the action near the end is tense and fun, and Envoy is actually about something. It has themes. It wants to talk about life continuing after traumatic loss, and most other Halo novels do not even try to do something like that.
9. Empty Throne
Empty Throne is about the Banished trying to take control of the Forerunner Domain after the destruction of Cortana, and everyone else scrambling to stop them. It's a catch-up book that runs around bringing lots of characters up to speed around the time of Halo Infinite, and it's a payoff for all the reading you've done. You know most major characters in this story already. Patenaude was frantically juggling so many pieces at once putting this together so the coats of paint are thin in a lot of places (like Gray Team, they feel a bit off) and I do think one of the subplots is kind of goofy, but it feels good to see so many old parts slotting into a new story. It's interesting to see the Banished reacting to Cortana's destruction of their home world, the consequences it almost had for Earth, and in general more motion in the rest of the Halo universe after it sat kind of static for a while after Cortana's ultimatum at the end of Halo 5.
10. Rubicon Protocol
After Empty Throne gives you a wide lens of what's going on around Infinite, let Kelly Gay tell you what went down on Zeta Halo in the months between the opening cutscene and Chief waking up on the Pelican.
Rubicon Protocol is painful and I sometimes had to take breaks from it, but I think it is ultimately pretty well-executed and the hurt has value. Infinite's campaign already tells you which of these Spartans die, but the time you spend with doomed characters doesn't feel wasted and you get to see what they died trying to do.
I particularly enjoy how it portrays Spartan-IVs dealing with being in the field in their armor longer than it is intended for, and the consequences of that. Also, critically, Rubicon Protocol remembers that the non-Spartan characters around them are essential to portraying Spartans (even Spartan-IVs) well.
There. 10 (...and a half) stories that get you through anything that I think really matters in Halo before Edge of Dawn.
i would like to very humbly put forward my attempt at a reading/watching/playing order for halo as a (more or less) whole story. its woefully out of date and much longer and more indepth than yours. something between chronological and release order and missing a lot of the books i would now be more likely to recommend and including several that i wouldnt be. but up until kilo-five i fully stand by even still
Halo expanded universe is honestly just really rock solid up until the release of Reach. I would say Fall of Reach animated is pretty unnecessary (didn't like it and didn't think it was very good) but yeah. (I know we've talked about our differences about Denning etc etc)
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