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| Re: Cortana Letter *SP* | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 11/18/07 6:15 a.m. |
In Response To: Re: Cortana Letter (scarab) : Its something in the Cortana letters that always stood out to me. Not even : just in the context of the Halo story. Its simply the idea of it. Imagine : if we ventured out for real and actually did find lost colonies already : out there. Its such a mind-f**k. It goes against everything we think we : know. Science and religion would have to adjust. True, but there's no hint whatsoever in the games or the novels that treats these themes in a big way. It's deep, deep backstory. : But in the Halo context, I thought that Earth might find lost colonies. I
I thought about both but resisted framing Halo's story that way simply because I thought the idea a bit overdone. : There was a time when I thought that the lost colonies were a sign of a
: In that case 'lost colonies' would be the normal experience for any reseeded
There are still a lot of logistical nightmares to work out, I think, before one reaches a reasonable explanation that integrates this theory into all the other things we know about the Haloverse. For instance-- if humanity became a spacefaring society, established colonies, lost contact with them, and each individual colony was indexed and reseeded separately, and the reseeding process essentially deleted each individual colony's collective memory of their origins, then this would jibe with your suggestion. However, there are some problems with that. According to the comic, when the Librarian reaches Earth and the Sentinels are building the portal, humanity is primitive and the Array has never been activated (at least not within the living memory of the Monitors, and none is mentioned by the Forerunners). The firing of the array, then, does not explain the loss of contact with previous spacefaring colonies, or explain the discovery and subsequent loss of such technologies. Another cataclysmic event would have to explain that, and this is an issue upon which the backstory is silent. : Which changes are changes in themes and which are changes in implementation? I think it's a shift from what was once perhaps a major theme to one that survives in an implementation so minor as to barely matter. The major themes, as such, are faith, immortality, chaos, individuality, duty, and other such ideas and concepts as embodied in some of the major characters: Arbiter, Truth, Gravemind, Cortana, and the Master Chief. (You can also do some mix'n'match amongst those, too). Ultimately, whether Sparks was being literal or figurative when he says "you are forerunner" is beside the point; it's a description of a relationship that exists whether its nature derives from genetics or choice. In fact, it's probably more meaningful if the relationship was chosen rather than merely discovered, and keeping all the elements of the story straight is much easier as well. Everything hinges on the idea that humanity was special to the Forerunners because they might help reveal some of "their own mysteries". In other words, the Forerunners ascribed some importance and interest to humanity in a self-referential way. So let me ask you, as an individual human: are the only individuals that matter in your life, that reveal something to you about yourself, related to you by blood? Perhaps some of them are. Maybe even most. But all? Is this the most meaningful, or the only meaningful relationship we can imagine between the Forerunners and humanity? To me, it's actually a depressing concept. It's a Tarzan story. You start out with nothing, in dangerous and unfamiliar world, and you work your way up to the top of the food chain by being clever and brave. Then it turns out that you don't belong in the jungle after all, that your kind is off somewhere else having tea and crumpets on white tablecloths and yet still, somehow, inexplicably on the top of the foodchain. Likewise, the idea of a humanity that emerges from its cradle to find older, more advanced socieities and the things they left behind (Forerunners, Precursors) as well as contemporaries with dangerous agendas (Covenant) and a galaxy-spanning hegemenous swarm (the Flood) and has to fight for its survival is a more interesting story than the idea of humanity that already did all of that, ruled the galaxy, blew themselves back to the stone age and then has to do it all over again, seemingly without having learned a damn thing in the process.
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