I feel like I'm swimming upstream in polluted water when I read other works out there for purposes of trying to see how something I would want to write might fit in.
It's bad.
A lot of what I skimmed over were Mass Effect clones, but somehow further right wing than Mass Effect already was, with the names changed and the numbers filed off.
A lot of what's left involves "humanity fuck yeah" space imperialism, grizzled tough guys with cold piercing stares and powerlifter physiques well into old age and their adventures with brilliant and hot scientist women that are defined more about who their father is/was and less by their actual job, that try to prove they are Independent Strong Willed Women but of course swoon for the timeless grizzled ego insert's blandly stoic charms. Also, a space bureaucracy usually interferes with the grizzled tough guy's very important imperialistic mission and his only chance to save humanity is to go rogue with a ragtag bunch of renegades and kill those filthy aliens before they threaten colonial interests. Or something.
I got some pretty harsh negative feedback for my inclusion of ideas in my own work. The idea that billionaires wanting to colonize Mars aren't actually going to save humanity by doing that and it would be an insatiable resource sink that would further accelerate Earth's decay was especially incendiary. Maybe I should have already become a rich and influential writer first before trying something like that, but that seems like it might have involved writing one of the above reactionary works instead and hoping another off-brand Mass Effect got more traction instead.
I'm demoralized, but I'm also nearly done with the third book in my self-published trilogy. It's a weird place to be.
EDIT: I may as well post a link to the website my wife and my friend helped set up. It has the first five chapters available for free and some other stuff.
https://www.tulpatrilogy.com/
Coming of age during the Bush years, so much reactionary propaganda was mainstream, not least of which were the Halo games. Reading the novels was a splash of cold water on my face, as it made Text what was before subtext: that human society was controlled by a military junta, that they subjugated everybody that wasn't part of the imperial core, that our hero is a kidnapped child twisted into a killing machine by some mengele-tier mad science, and that all this is necessary because of this ominous external threat, and that the only solution is extreme violence against that threat. Halo has some bad politics, and we've been marinating it in for two decades now.
ONI and the controlling powers of Earth are never cast as morally acceptable or good in my eyes (it's not for nothing that the black-ops branch of Earth's governance is named 'demon' in Japanese). It's made pretty clear that Halsey and her program are deeply evil, regardless of their outcome. It's not made explicitly clear, but it seems pretty self-evident that the anti-Earth human rebels are in the right and that their hatred of the colonial government is fully deserved.
Halo 5's promos seemed to be indicating that the main source of conflict was going to be ONI and the UNSC vs chief, but they backtracked on that.
I thought there was real promise in a story like that. Especially since from what I recall it's ONI propping up Covie remnants to weaken the Elites and the Arbiter's new government. But Halo 5 ended up touching none of that if I recall.
Yeah, the franchise is struggling with what it wants to be, I think. The UNSC is basically a mirror of US foreign policy, which means it has the potential to be a critique of imperialism, but the games keep going for safer discourses, for now. Wouldn't be shocked to see the series slowly turn to the problems presented by UNSC and ONI as John becomes increasingly distanced from the people pulling his strings.
I hope they do, it seems to be a large part of the story outside of the games. They really need something to spark the franchise up again. I thought 4 was ok in terms of setting up something after the main trilogy, but for me at least 5 shit the bed. Only played it once and sold it immediately to buy MGSV. I'll be interested what the reviews for Infinite look like when it finally comes out.
It would actually be interesting for Halo's politics to be seriously explored and acknowledged, but it's been such a staple of pop culture that all we get is Armored Man Cool.
Counterpoint, tho. Red v Blue had some really good politics. And I feel like that endured as a trope better than anything Bungie's writer's room churned out.
Can't stand the dialogue tho
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When I read those books as a kid, I knew the human society was very fascist but I didn't read it as like an endorsement, just kind of a background. I wouldn't be surprised if something in one of those books was like "And the fascism is awesome" but I was able to enjoy that universe without feeling like I was rooting for the hellish society.
I think some of the earlier books talk about how bad the junta was, but it gets kind of swept aside due to the whole external forces committing genocide thing. Which is honestly kind of realistic, like if literally Covenent showed up literally today and started glassing the planet, it would be a little weird to fixate on how bad this country is, even though that's no less true than it was yesterday.
Obviously we'd come out of an alien invasion even more fascistic, but fascism is I suppose better than being completely wiped out by other space fascists.
I don't translate this into "sometimes collaborating with fascists is good" because it's such an outlandish scenario it's stupid to even factor that into literally anything.
It would be so fucking cool if a Halo game decided to have a revolution against the UNSC, but that'll probably never happen. I can hope though.
Every government in media being authoritarian monsters was key to me realizing the same about real life. For that the Halo novels get my thanks for making John-117 the victim