I think it’s more likely the show won’t be canon

TheKiltdHeathen wrote:

WerepyreND wrote:

Being "just as outraged" is exactly the problem because these two cases are not equivalent, one is decidedly worse than the other.

Yes, they are. You have decided that one is worse for what I can only assume are non-existent issues relative to the Halo Universe.

The Halo universe doesn't exist, the real life concerns of minority representation or lack thereof do. The idea of replacing minority characters with majority white character much worse than the alternative given that even now it can still be difficult to get minority characters past the front door, especially in bigger budget productions.

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Stating "representation was never an issue" doesn't inherently make it so.

You're right, simply stating something doesn't make it so. What makes it so are the many minority characters that I gave you that have been added to the Halo canon and have been major characters. Representation is not an issue.

And what I've been saying is that having representation in the present doesn't inherently make up for a lack of representation in the past. Moreover representation isn't a binary state, its an ongoing process. We don't live in a bias free society and because that industry is largely still dominated by and largely caters to white males, we can't just add new minorities and call it a day claiming we have solved the issue of representation for all time.

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I've never said "ethnicity isn't important", only that it isn't necessarily a defining feature with every character.

Oh, and now it's "not with every character".... Changing a character is changing a character, and on this level it should not be done. Period.

It was always "not with every character." I've been very upfront from the beginning of this thread that characters are defined by more than just their ethnicity, but that does not mean that ethnicity cannot be important to some characters while not being important with others.

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Playing fast-and-loose with the canon has been the default state of the franchise from day one.

No, it has not.

Bungie did not even want the Fall of Reach to exist in the first place. Conflicting visions have been in place from the start and have manifested in many forms from Contact Harvest to Halo: Reach.

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First come first serve being the sole deciding factor for how someone or something is portrayed is one needlessly restrictive

This is just incredibly asinine. The Keyes have been visually portrayed in 16 individual installments. It is absolutely not as though they are one-off characters that can be recast without backlash.

I mean with 16 iNdIvDuAl InStaLlMeNtS surely you can handle one outlier the same way you can deal with Halsey in 'The Package'. Just chalk it up to artistic license and.. oh wait, I forgot that seem to apply to everything but ethnicity....

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Especially when you seem perfectly willing to make exceptions everywhere else.

Please do point me to where I've been doing this. Especially since I've been quite vocal in saying that it would be just as bad to change any major character.

*Broadly gestures at Halo* When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Portrayals of objects, characters(re: voice, features besides ethnicity, personalities, etc.), species, timelines. One of things that started off this nonsense was your frankly bizarre claim that up till this point Halo had "managed to keep the visual canon consistent" despite all evidence to the contrary. You can say that "well I still understand broadly what it was supposed to be" like you did with the Scarab example, but then that just leaves me with the notion that the only thing you think is distinctive about a character like Keyes who has existed in both visual and non-visual mediums is his ethnicity.

And well what can I say but yikes...

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It isn't hypocritical to say that Johnson is tied to his ethnicity when he was originally a reference to a specific actor's take on a specific character.

It is absolutely hypocritical, because ultimately Johnson is not that character. Johnson is Johnson. Just as Jacob Keyes and Miranda Keyes are the characters they've been portrayed as in 16 games, comics, and films. Just as you don't think who Keyes was "originally" matters, neither does Johnson's "originally" matter if we're going with this ethnic-swap-anyone-and-everyone. And if you only limit it to one ethnicity? Fun fact, that's racist.

Who said anything about "ethnic-swap-anyone-and-everyone?" Thus far we have had 3 changes that haven't yet result in 343 hurriedly rewriting novels, redrawing comics, or remodeling assets so I guess you can pump the breaks on that hyperbole there friend.

Something being unequally applied does not inherently = Racist. Trying to treat everyone equally is a noble goal, but it ignores the fact that we sadly do live in a society that is full of inequality. Treating everyone "equally" on paper doesn't account for society's biases, unconscious or not and ends up favoring whoever the dominant group is(in my country's case, white and male). To use one example, Affirmative Action is "unequal" tool that is used to try to address the inequality that is present within the selection process of a given school or company. The issue of recasting Keyes vs recasting Johnson are not morally equivalent issues when you actually bother to add any context.

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I also still stand by the statement that it is far more questionable to recast historically underrepresented minorities with white characters than the other way around.

Or, you know - and here's just a crazy ****in' idea - MAKE NEW CHARACTERS. LIKE THEY DID WITH LOCKE, TANAKA, PALMER, ANDERS, EMILE, KAT, IONA, AZIKIWE, etc.

That's great, but that accounts for potential bias with regards to older characters how? If we are not willing to examine the potential biases that went into creating old characters, the progress we do make as far as representation goes is never going to be as good as it could be.

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New Characters are not only completely possible, that should absolutely be the route to go, rather than throwing canonical consistency to the wind and pissing off a good number of people.

The "canonical consistency" you claim you want is not what makes a good narrative. Having an actor who looks more like how Keyes was portrayed in 16 iNdIvDuAl InStaLlMeNtS doesn't mean anything if they can't effectively fill the role laid out for them in this particular project. Delivering a great performance that captures who Keyes is is worth much more than if they merely capture how white he is. I really don't care if that "pisses off a good number of people" when those people seem really dis-proportionally fixated on one particular thing about a character who are not willing to lend that critical lens towards other aspects of the franchise.

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Their physical appearance may be incongruous with their previous portrayals, something which has happened constantly within the Halo franchise,

Never to this degree, and you know it.

I guess we are going to continue sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring things like the 343 era design or messing with timeline via the animated Fall of Reach(looking at you Fred and Linda.) or any number of other things but somehow I doubt you spent days whinging about those changes. I wonder what the difference could be? It is a total mystery...

WerepyreND wrote:

TheKiltdHeathen wrote:

WerepyreND wrote:

Being "just as outraged" is exactly the problem because these two cases are not equivalent, one is decidedly worse than the other.

Yes, they are. You have decided that one is worse for what I can only assume are non-existent issues relative to the Halo Universe.

The Halo universe doesn't exist, the real life concerns of minority representation or lack thereof do. The idea of replacing minority characters with majority white character much worse than the alternative given that even now it can still be difficult to get minority characters past the front door, especially in bigger budget productions.

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Stating "representation was never an issue" doesn't inherently make it so.

You're right, simply stating something doesn't make it so. What makes it so are the many minority characters that I gave you that have been added to the Halo canon and have been major characters. Representation is not an issue.

And what I've been saying is that having representation in the present doesn't inherently make up for a lack of representation in the past. Moreover representation isn't a binary state, its an ongoing process. We don't live in a bias free society and because that industry is largely still dominated by and largely caters to white males, we can't just add new minorities and call it a day claiming we have solved the issue of representation for all time.

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I've never said "ethnicity isn't important", only that it isn't necessarily a defining feature with every character.

Oh, and now it's "not with every character".... Changing a character is changing a character, and on this level it should not be done. Period.

It was always "not with every character." I've been very upfront from the beginning of this thread that characters are defined by more than just their ethnicity, but that does not mean that ethnicity cannot be important to some characters while not being important with others.

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Playing fast-and-loose with the canon has been the default state of the franchise from day one.

No, it has not.

Bungie did not even want the Fall of Reach to exist in the first place. Conflicting visions have been in place from the start and have manifested in many forms from Contact Harvest to Halo: Reach.

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First come first serve being the sole deciding factor for how someone or something is portrayed is one needlessly restrictive

This is just incredibly asinine. The Keyes have been visually portrayed in 16 individual installments. It is absolutely not as though they are one-off characters that can be recast without backlash.

I mean with 16 iNdIvDuAl InStaLlMeNtS surely you can handle one outlier the same way you can deal with Halsey in 'The Package'. Just chalk it up to artistic license and.. oh wait, I forgot that seem to apply to everything but ethnicity....

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Especially when you seem perfectly willing to make exceptions everywhere else.

Please do point me to where I've been doing this. Especially since I've been quite vocal in saying that it would be just as bad to change any major character.

*Broadly gestures at Halo* When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Portrayals of objects, characters(re: voice, features besides ethnicity, personalities, etc.), species, timelines. One of things that started off this nonsense was your frankly bizarre claim that up till this point Halo had "managed to keep the visual canon consistent" despite all evidence to the contrary. You can say that "well I still understand broadly what it was supposed to be" like you did with the Scarab example, but then that just leaves me with the notion that the only thing you think is distinctive about a character like Keyes who has existed in both visual and non-visual mediums is his ethnicity.

And well what can I say but yikes...

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It isn't hypocritical to say that Johnson is tied to his ethnicity when he was originally a reference to a specific actor's take on a specific character.

It is absolutely hypocritical, because ultimately Johnson is not that character. Johnson is Johnson. Just as Jacob Keyes and Miranda Keyes are the characters they've been portrayed as in 16 games, comics, and films. Just as you don't think who Keyes was "originally" matters, neither does Johnson's "originally" matter if we're going with this ethnic-swap-anyone-and-everyone. And if you only limit it to one ethnicity? Fun fact, that's racist.

Who said anything about "ethnic-swap-anyone-and-everyone?" Thus far we have had 3 changes that haven't yet result in 343 hurriedly rewriting novels, redrawing comics, or remodeling assets so I guess you can pump the breaks on that hyperbole there friend.

Something being unequally applied does not inherently = Racist. Trying to treat everyone equally is a noble goal, but it ignores the fact that we sadly do live in a society that is full of inequality. Treating everyone "equally" on paper doesn't account for society's biases, unconscious or not and ends up favoring whoever the dominant group is(in my country's case, white and male). To use one example, Affirmative Action is "unequal" tool that is used to try to address the inequality that is present within the selection process of a given school or company. The issue of recasting Keyes vs recasting Johnson are not morally equivalent issues when you actually bother to add any context.

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I also still stand by the statement that it is far more questionable to recast historically underrepresented minorities with white characters than the other way around.

Or, you know - and here's just a crazy ****in' idea - MAKE NEW CHARACTERS. LIKE THEY DID WITH LOCKE, TANAKA, PALMER, ANDERS, EMILE, KAT, IONA, AZIKIWE, etc.

That's great, but that accounts for potential bias with regards to older characters how? If we are not willing to examine the potential biases that went into creating old characters, the progress we do make as far as representation goes is never going to be as good as it could be.

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New Characters are not only completely possible, that should absolutely be the route to go, rather than throwing canonical consistency to the wind and pissing off a good number of people.

The "canonical consistency" you claim you want is not what makes a good narrative. Having an actor who looks more like how Keyes was portrayed in 16 iNdIvDuAl InStaLlMeNtS doesn't mean anything if they can't effectively fill the role laid out for them in this particular project. Delivering a great performance that captures who Keyes is is worth much more than if they merely capture how white he is. I really don't care if that "pisses off a good number of people" when those people seem really dis-proportionally fixated on one particular thing about a character who are not willing to lend that critical lens towards other aspects

Ok, first of all you being an arrogant -Yoink- is not supporting your side at all (and go ahead and report thi . I know you will, and I don't give a -Yoink- but what I said will still be seen).

Second, Halo needs to follow some common sense. A person being magically a different race is going to confuse a lot of people and does not need to he applied for the sole purpose of a diversity quota that you believe should exist. That needs to be fixed aside from changing established characters.

l Chaos I wrote:

*snip*
I'm not gonna watch this mess.
*snip*

This summarises my feelings quite well; it wouldn't surprise me if the show tanks. Some of the canon breaks also go against the core themes of the Halo franchise, with the most clear one being the human raised by the Covenant. One of the themes of Halo is the dangers of religious/ideological extremism. The Covenant were absolutely merciless in their genocidal campaign; no one was spared because humans were viewed as little more than vermin to be destroyed. Having a human be raised by the Covenant takes away from this theme and the overall feeling of terror that the Covenant instills.

JNDreher wrote:

*snip*
Why can't they just write great characters, have them be whatever demographic they like, and leave established characters alone? The Halo universe is plenty big and diverse enough to accommodate any demographic in any facet of the story. If they did that, most people would like the characters, regardless of what majority or minority demographic they were a part of.
*snip*

Because it is easier to needlessly race-swap existing characters than it is to make new and interesting ones. The worst part is that it is actually quite disrespectful when you think about it. The message from the creative team is essentially, "we can't come up with good original characters who are not white, so we'll just change the race of these existing characters."

TheKiltdHeathen wrote:

A flaccid wave-away. If this is the big takeaway to your argument, then likewise representation in a fictional universe matters less than one iota, and is (drumroll) a useless and pointless motion. And, similarly, replacing minority characters wouldn't matter because "the universe doesn't exist". Nice shot to your own foot.

You've impressively missed the point again. I was specifically responding to this comment "non-existent issues relative to the Halo Universe" as if the Halo universe exists outside of the real life context it was created. The point isn't that "Halo is made up so anything goes" it is that "Halo only exists in the context of the culture it was made in and that makes these social issues important." You can't make a non-political argument about a piece of art made by Humans.

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Except for, y'know, everyone of Fireteam Osiris being a minority representation except for Buck. And literally every other Major Character of a minority ethnicity (in terms of US demographics) that I've given you.

And that is great, doesn't mean that those barriers don't still exist.

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Firstly, yes it does. That's literally how progress works, and despite asinine attempts to do so, we cannot change the past. Secondly, relevant to a medium like Halo, changing an established character that has remained the same into broad inclusion (ref. Halo Reach) solves absolutely nothing when the Universe allows for new characters to be added with absolutely zero penalty.

Imbalances in the past have this nasty habit of manifesting in the future. And given the barriers I've previously mentioned, it tends to hold back said progress. When you have such a large roster of white characters from the past occupying such key areas it can be that much harder for those new characters to make any headway.

I'm glad you mention Osiris, because I personally rather like them and I'm worried they are going to get shunted to the side because their debut was hampered by Halo 5's mishandled narrative part of which is that they have to share the space with 3 other 'new' characters(to most people) who are deeply tied to the MC's character, but don't really have the screen time to flesh themselves out. Shortchanging the real main characters of the narrative and now we haven't seen a peep about them in Infinite.

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Already addressed above. Secondly, Fall of Reach was published - regardless of whoever thought it was a bad idea - and again, there have not been contradictions to this degree. And you very well know it.

Eric Nylands own blog post calls them "the powers that be" and whether you attribute that to only one person it doesn't really change the fact that Halo has never really had a unified vision.

You keep saying "and you know it" and you are right. I do know, because I remember the changes to the timeline that Halo Reach brought that 343 spent the run up to CEA
having to patch up with the data drops, I remember when they released updated versions of the Fall of Reach to rectify things like first encounters with Elites, but none of that seems to matter to you.

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And I am. You can mock the repeated reminder to you of visual consistency all you like, but it is being dealt with the same way; it should not happen, should never have happened, and is non-canonical idiocy. It is "artistic license" (despite your fervent attempts to yet again cast racist shade), yet when coupled with the other gross mishandlings of canon becomes one big bundled slap in the face. Something that you refuse to understand or acknowledge.

This is you "handling" a visual inconsistency I would hate to see you when you don't... I can't help you if you've stuck your head so far in the sand it is poking out the other side of the Earth. I'm not going to list every single instance of inconsistency within the franchise because 1.) It would take too long and 2.) You've outright ignored every example I have given you and it doesn't seem worth my time to compile a comprehensive list of canon inconsistencies when you are the one making the absurd claim that "Halo had been visually consistent up until this point" in the first place.

As for the rest of the "mishandling" I'm going to keep reminding you and everyone else that we've only heard the barest of details regarding a series that had barely started table readings. You are being "slapped in the face" with all the force of a dry tissue. Does that mean I think it is going to be good? Given the history of translating video game properties to live action I would bet on the answer to that being no, but the mere idea of it hasn't bothered me for almost two weeks like it has the rest of you.

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Well, that was a big nothing. Can you be more specific? Because everything - let me make this clearer for you - HAS NOT CHANGED TO THIS LEVEL. Scorpions weren't suddenly flying, or aranged like an M1 Abrams. Warthogs never became electromagnetically propulsed. The Battle Rifle didn't become a rocket launcher. Etc, etc. You're sitting on a big fat pile of nothing here.

If you think changing ethnicity of these certain characters in one instance of the canon is equivalent to flying Scorpions that says more about you than it does me. But hey while we are on the subject of phenotypes you must of been hopping mad when that happened the Arbiter a mere 4 years ago right. Oh who am I kidding.

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You've been maybe able to provide two examples of this. And yet in neither did the characters in question - Cutter and Stacker - change ethnicities, genders, etc. And beyond that, ample technical reason for those changes was given.

The text of your own post has me pointing out the divide of 343's Halo aesthetic as a whole and myself and others have already mentioned the numerous at the time unexplained inconsistency in the Reach timeline, the first example of gave you was an unexplained depiction of a Scarab. I personally never even mentioned Stacker so you are going to have to bring that up with hotshot

It is annoying that they brought Captain Keyes and Miranda Keyes in as African Americans though if it is not canon I could get over it. but the still should have just made new characters or if Sargent Johnson ever showed up they could have used David Sapani as him since he looks like he could be Johnson. On the issue on a human raised by the Covenant. I think that it's fine if they say like it was a project by the prophets to see if humans could be in the Covenant.

JohnDang55 wrote:

King slayer7553 wrote:

It is annoying that they brought Captain Keyes and Miranda Keyes in as African Americans though if it is not canon I could get over it. but the still should have just made new characters or if Sargent Johnson ever showed up they could have used David Sapani as him since he looks like he could be Johnson. On the issue on a human raised by the Covenant. I think that it's fine if they say like it was a project by the prophets to see if humans could be in the Covenant.

Covenant are highly religious, they will not endorse such an action that contravenes that.

As for my previous post I made on this topic I went in told others in Australia about it and they shared the same sentiments I had.

True they probably wouldn't do it but that would be the only way I think they could make it make the most sense.