Every now and then someone brings up Halo, and I end up coming back to the whole thing, remembering how much was lost, how much I care.
Usually it crops up because someone runs the claim that humans and forerunners were always different. That there was no retcon, and that idea was stupid anyway.
Always a depressing one. It's people who don't know what they had. Who insist it's always been shit. And have the audacity to be annoyed you don't join them in the sty.
I sneer, of course, and find anger at them. But mostly, it makes me sad. And I hate how they persist, in eroding the past. In allowing the new slop made overwrite what once was.
"Folk need heroes", as Johnson put it.
Modern writing has decayed rather fiercely. And with it, I feel even the capacity to understand, to 'see' good stories is gone. Depth is a thing of the past in so many respects. Motivations need to be outright stated, or as baseline as can be, to be understood. Hell, even that might be too much, as far more often I see justifications for any action at all no matter how outlandish or absurd.
It hurts. I ought do my part to fix it, but I struggle. It's something I need to do. A little piece of the world I know I could change, I could make a difference in. But it's hard. Taking that first step.
But I digress; I made this thread, or rather this line of text mostly to talk a moment in Halo that's always stuck with me. I think it's my favorite moment. I don't know when