The stories “Lessons Learned” from “Halo: Fractures”
Awful. Simply awful. Nothing about this story is good. Now, I’ve never read Halo: New Blood, so maybe I’m missing something, but the opening is completely disconnected from the main narrative.We also get some really bad expodumps that go on for bloody paragraphs, and it puzzles me as to who these are meant to be for. I mean, this story would make absolutely no sense to anyone who isn’t familiar with the lore, what with the opening scene only comprehensible to those who have read New Blood. Like, any newcomer would expect the story to be about finding out who sent Schien, but he’s never mentioned again after they arrive on Onyx.
I know this is a minor thing, but it incorrectly states that Jun is from Beta company, not Alpha company. Not a big deal, I know, but it doesn’t help the whole vibe of “the author didn’t give a -Yoink-”. Also, the prose is terrible. Take this sentence, for example; “As Tom sailed through the station’s shadow and emerged into the light from the distant sun, he knew he’d made a critical mistake. Jun hadn’t been moving as fast as he’d thought.” Rather than actually show us what’s happening- Tom’s slow realization that he’s made a fatal error, a desperately tense moment where the two try to grab each other a la Gravity, or anything like that- he just blatantly tells us, and it just makes Tom sound like a moron who just threw himself off the ship without even checking if he was going to make it or not.
The second half of the story manages to be both completely unrelated to the first half and even worse! Yes, because the author decides to tackle a controversial subject such as racism. And what does he choose to say about it? Will he note the utter irrationality and danger of prejudice, and how it hurts all involved- even the perpetrators? Will he examine the effect racism can have on the individual? Will he show us how prejudice ultimately comes from a misguided fear, and that, while people can have sympathetic reasons for being racist, that doesn’t excuse it, and that we should try to cure racists of their blindingly stupid ideology rather than simply attacking them? The author does none of these things. Instead he decides to say that racism… is bad!
To which I’d say, “No -Yoink-.” 99% of people above the age of ten know this. And the way the author presents his message comes off as extremely patronising and condescending, turning Tom into the Elite equivalent of a Straw Misogynist simply so he can learn his lesson at the end. The first meeting between Tom and Kasha is probably the only bit of this entire scene that makes any sense; it’s a bit awkward, and Tom is understandably a bit nervous, but he’s quick to realize that Kasha isn’t a threat and actually feels similarly nervous. It’s probably the only bit of the story that isn’t awful.
Then we get some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever seen. Lucy randomly blurts out “I feel like I should be shooting you” which achieves the distinction of being -Yoinking!- awful dialogue and totally out of character. And then Kasha says, “I have already chosen the spot on your neck where my blade belongs.” What? Simply awful dialogue that makes no sense in the given situation. Why would Lucy say this? Why would Kasha say she was just thinking about murdering her?
And then we get the whole “Let’s Tom an absolutely terrible human being to force him through a “character arc”” thing, where Tom is already thinking about killing Kasha already. Then we get another OOC moment from Mendez. He’s a badass Drill Sergeant that doesn’t take -Yoink- from anyone, so you’d expect him to tell all three of them to grow the -Yoink- up and stop behaving like moronic kids. Nope. He awkwardly tells a joke, as if two people under his command didn’t just threaten to murder each other.
Now Tom and Kasha talk to each other for a bit, and they seem to be getting on quite well. This totally contradicts what he thinks later, but there’s no time for that; it’s time to introduce an annoying strawman! Now, I expected a pretty basic story from this guy; his friend/SO/child was killed by an elite, so he hates all elites, and then at the end of the story he realizes he was wrong and redeems himself. Nothing blindingly original, but it’s better that what we got. What we got was “racist”. That’s it. That’s his entire character. And he’s the main antagonist of the entire story. He doesn’t even get a name.
Now, it’s implied later that the guy expected to be rewarded for attacking/ killing Kasha, which is the most nonsensical thing ever. He thought by murdering a security chief he’d be rewarded? Even in the internal logic of the story it makes no sense.
Then we get a pretty awful paragraph. First, we get a random recap of events since our arrival on Onyx, even though the story just showed all of that to us. We also get a moment that makes Tom look utterly unsympathetic: “He had no reason to leap to her defence like this.” Is this guy really debating whether he should just let a sodding hate crime happen when it’s clearly in his power to stop it?
Anyway, to wrap up the story- yes, that was the whole thing. Nothing really happened- Mendez comes back and punishes the soldier’s entire squad, even though they didn’t do anything wrong. This is after the story clearly stated earlier that nobody should be punished for things they didn’t do.
All in all, a simply terrible story that made little sense and relied far too much on unsympathetic strawmen to get its point across. And you know what’s worse? The story would have been a thousand times better- still not good, though- if they had simply made Kasha a brute. That would make the viewers rather weary of Kasha, too, as we’ve never seen a good brute character before. Not to mention it would be interesting to examine Brute culture as opposed to looking at the Elites for the thousandth time. But this story seems allergic to anything that hasn’t been beaten down into the ground a million times before.
Looking at the overall plot structure, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the author simply copy/pasted a chunk of the upcoming novel based on Onyx and then added the first half to pad out the length and to include an “exciting” action scene.
“Lessons Learned” is not only the worst Halo story I’ve ever read, it’s also one of the worst published stories I’ve ever laid eyes upon.