That was the funny, context free version of this post.
This is the earnest unfunny one.
Firstly, Halo has pretty much no textual opinions about queer people beyond Halo almost never mentioning queer people, and if you think I'm trying to discuss this as "canonical" or not you will be completely missing the point of this exercise.
The exercise is: of this group of characters I care about, who? I've been talking about Spartans and gender identity. What happens if I reach into the box of action figures and grab?
Text about John-117 is rich, but John doesn't feel right for it. John is so confidently, singularly, stupidly clear about who he is and what he cares about in the world and I don't think gender questions matter to him.
Text about Kelly and Linda is so thin there's too little to kick off of, and for whatever it's worth I think Kelly would call herself a woman. Linda maybe doesn't care enough to devote time and effort beyond defaulting in the same way John does, but there's so so so little said about her.
Fred, however. Fred has more key details. (And I'll be clear I'm mostly not even involving late novels like Last Light et al in this because I think they get Fred wrong vs original characterization.) Fred who could come in first place but doesn't want to. Fred who masks strengths and prefers not to be in charge, not to be the one most scrutinized, and only takes the job out of necessity.
All Spartan-IIs are uncomfortable in the world because they've been cut into a shape that doesn't fit, but most of them seem like they would be happy and satisfied if the circumstances around them didn't make them uncomfortable.
Fred is the one who, with what very little we have, seems to be possibly uncomfortable inside, with the self. Fred is the only one of the still surviving, still serving IIs who doesn't strike as confidently and comfortably what they are if you remove the issue of "what they are" being incompatible with regular human life. Fred could have something more. Fred could have something else.
And that's something I think a character can explore in a noncanonical space if they have the time, and that could be interesting.
Even if you decide to play with this reading, how likely is Fred to ever find this out and name it and do anything with it? What does it mean to finally have room to learn about yourself after being totally subsumed in weaponization for decades of your life? How does that feel? What do you even do?
How important is it that your siblings believe you, and love you, and you have never been something else to them?
When you beat the par score in Cortana (the mission), the achievement you get is called Orpheus.
Just like Orpheus, Chief went to hell (flood-infested High Charity) to find his love and bring her back. And just like Orpheus, he still lost his love in the end. Oughā¦ ššš
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