Seems like “Tadaima Okaeri day” in my blog, huh? I’ve just added Volme 4&5 wallpapers, the 5th Volume of the Twitter Extra Papers (very short this one, sensei hasn’t uploaded many pages) and now, thanks to @mizukixgaku, I can add the Drama CD Booklet. She’s been reeeeally kind, because she could have kept the raws to herself and release them once real life left her and her group time to do it, but instead she was the first to answer to my post asking for the raws and shared them with me so I could release it (my raws are the worst). Been so long since I cleaned non-digital pages!!
I also have to thank Adamay for always helping me with my translation requests and Toshirodragon for taking the time to check my gramatical doubts. You’re the best!!
I was gonna include those pages in the twitter extras, but considering that it’s about 20 pages, it has its own front and back cover and all, I thought it was better to release it alone.
Drama CD Booklet
The story is really cute, hope you enjoy it. Stay safe ;)
I’ve been rewatching Battlestar Galactica recently (I swear this is relevant; also, minor spoilers for BSG ahead), and though it is a very different story than the Halo series, there are some common themes: humanity is at war with an enemy bent on its destruction and apparently religiously motivated in doing so. In BSG, it’s not aliens, but a race of sentient machines called Cylons. There’s a scene in season 2 where Commander Adama has a Cylon prisoner brought to his quarters, and asks the prisoner point-blank why the Cylons hate humans. The prisoner references one of Adama’s own speeches in answer, saying:
You said that humanity was a flawed creation, and that people still kill one another for petty jealousy and greed. You said that humanity never asked itself why it deserved to survive. Maybe you don't.
And indeed, in that very arc and throughout the show, the treatment of that Cylon prisoner becomes a commentary on the worthiness of humanity.
These days, when I think of Locus, I think of that same question: the question of humanity’s worthiness to survive.
We know little of Sam Ortez’s experiences in the Great War beyond a few details. First, that he took part in one of the worst battles in the Great War (if I had to guess, I’d say the Battle of Earth, but “worst” is kind of a relative term). Second, and far more intriguing to me: that he at least once found himself in a situation in which he sympathized with a captive Covenant soldier--going so far as to intervene on its behalf.
In doing character analysis for RvB I often hammer on the fact that the world these characters grew up in was not our world. Red vs. Blue is set in the wider world of Haloverse and while their canons aren’t necessarily perfectly aligned, the Great War itself is indisputably RvB canon. By the time the show begins the war has raged for nearly three decades, and humanity is facing the very real possibility of extinction.
Imagine living under the constant threat of annihilation for twenty-eight years. Not just of yourself and your family, but of your entire species. I don’t think many of us can fully imagine that; in fact, I rather hope we can’t, but insofar as we can conceptualize this, I think it should inform an in-depth reading of pretty much all human characters in Halo, and by extension Red vs. Blue. Imagine living with that fear so long it became background noise.
When Locus looked at that captured Covenant combatant, for a moment he didn’t see the divide between their species, but what they shared--in this case, fear. In that moment, Sam Ortez saw, not an enemy combatant, but something small and afraid. And he sympathized.
But the Covenant did not win. Against all odds--and in large part, because a splinter group of Covenant warriors chose to turn and sympathize, or at least collaborate, with their enemies--humanity survived. Whether or not they deserved to.
Perhaps that question, then, was never resolved to Locus’s satisfaction by the turning tide of the war.
Locus’s struggle with identity is central to his character, and yet I’ve come to see it as a symptom of something even bigger: his doubts as to the worthiness of humanity itself. In a war for the very survival of humanity, Sam Ortez found himself sympathizing with one of the very species bent on wiping out his own.
Years later, on Chorus, we see in action Locus’s failure to sympathize with his fellow humans--to the point of helping to orchestrate a planet-wide genocide.
What destroyed Sam Ortez’s belief in humanity? I don’t know, but I lean toward thinking that whatever horrors he witnessed during his service to the UNSC, it was not Covenant atrocities that scarred him most deeply. It was human ones.
It’s not as though the UNSC had no skeletons in its proverbial closet. Marine Corps Private Samuel Ortez could’ve encountered rumors as to the dark secrets of the Spartan programs; he could’ve witnessed the UNSC’s failure to defend the Outer Colonies; hell, he could’ve been from one of those colonies. Maybe he bore witness to Insurrectionist attacks; maybe he witnessed the use of excessive force in suppressing those attacks. Really, take your pick.
Something persuaded Sam Ortez of humanity’s unworthiness to survive.
And who better to reinforce this persuasion than his old partner Isaac Gates? A true sadist--a man whose greatest pleasure lay in the suffering of others. So long as he remained in Felix’s company, he had before him at all times a shining example of the worst humanity had to offer. The worst, and also the best, because where Felix failed utterly in kindness, compassion, and basic human decency, he made up in raw skill.
Felix was not a good person. He was not a good human. That was the point. His very presence reinforced Locus’s acquired worldview, as well as his altered sense of identity. I think the choice of bounty-hunting as a livelihood after leaving the military was no accident either, and dealing with the likes of the Lozano family probably went pretty far to solidify Locus’ view of humanity as well. When he and Felix take the Chorus job--and these people are already killing each other. In his mind, they’ve already proven their unworthiness. In his mind, his job is to speed them to a conclusion already decided by their own actions, their own corruption.
If humanity was unworthy to survive, then what made Locus and Felix, as individuals, worthy? For Felix, the answer was simple: power was its own end and its own reward. If he was the fastest, and the strongest, then he could kill and he could win and if he survived, the simple fact that he had done so proved he was worthy.
That was never quite enough for Locus. He needed an identity to justify not only his actions, but his very existence, when even the idea of being human has become repellent to him.
“I’m a soldier.”
What he chose was, interestingly enough, a label that did not distinguish him from his enemies--Covenant, Chorusan, it made no difference, and it didn’t need to, because his alignment in the fight was irrelevant to his survival. Being human was irrelevant.
But of course as Wash points out, Locus isn’t really a soldier, not in the sense that this generation shaped by all-out war knows a soldier. Soldiers, Wash would probably say, are the people who fought for humanity’s survival. You, he tells Locus, are just a killer. An instrument of destruction--and he’s not wrong, because at the heart of Locus’s mercenary identity is the idea that human beings are not worth saving. Perhaps nothing is.
Locus’ turn at the end of the Chorus trilogy, then, is not simply a choice to break his bond with Felix. It is not simply a matter of switching sides. It’s not even a matter only of choosing not to kill, though it’s clear now that that is a choice Locus has made and attempted to uphold. His turn is a choice to actively fight for the survival of humanity--he goes out of his way to seek out Grif, to find the Reds and Blues, to rescue the Freelancers. Even Temple himself, and his allies, Locus would prefer not to kill.
I’m not overly interested in the question of whether Locus can be redeemed, as the very concept of redemption is so highly subjective. But his shift in philosophy, his change in worldview--that I find interesting, especially now, when he has the chance to put his changed values into action, and he does. Wash and Carolina’s stories are redemption stories, and yet neither of them are about earning redemption--they’re about a second chance being freely given, and the subsequent character growth comes about because they were given that chance.
Locus’s story is different. It’s not a story of being offered redemption, but a story of changing his fundamental beliefs about the world. It’s a story of becoming an instrument of destruction--then deciding that something is worth saving after all.
*sigh* fandoms bitching for who gets development or not, fandoms bitching for who gets shipped or not... I know we all cant always agree... But could we at least not live arguing about it? Sadly i know the answer... Also sadly... If i dont reblog some of you... From now on it would be to not light more the fire and my shitty mood
thank you for the kind words on my hashtag struggle piece of the month aka thing I stare at for like 10 hours a day and do nothing with. Hopefully maybe this week is the day I do something with it LOL
Me - "So we agree... and people should keep their promises, and redemption and restoration are possible even after harm has been done"
Friends - "Yes"
Me - "Great. I'm still friends with the boy I courted for 4 months even though he broke my heart, but it was overall amicable and we promised before the relationship started that we would stay friends no matter what happened and we still hang out once a year"
