Forum:This Seems Like a Good Place to Start.

Hello. This is Tuckerscreator  and I am here to present my forum defense article for my fanon article Paul Berendt Wittenburg. For those reading here who are unaware of the context, about a week ago my article was accused of god-modding, as well as several possible violations of physics, canon, and realism, and was nearly namespaced, but the vote was canceled, reversed, and I was thus given a 1 month period to edit my article, explain my points, and hopefully clear up any confusion. So below I have divided this article into several various sections to identify the main points and objections that were brought against me, and you are free to make of any of them as you will. I would encourage you to have read my fanon article beforehand, as well as the debate on the talk page, in order to be sure that you understand the full context, and I would also advise that you read my various points here in chronological order, otherwise you may find yourself getting confused. Any further questions, concerns, and objections can be placed at the bottom of this page, and I will answer them as best I can in order to further facilitate a reconciliation. To clear up confusion beforehand, I would like to say that some information on the current article may slightly differ, as there have been a few minor updates, that as usual any breach of civility is unadvisable, to make SURE that your questions asked are of direct relevancy to the main issue of god-modding and of physics, and that the titular character being discussed here will be referred to in my defense statement here alternately as either "Paul", "Joseph", or "Paul Joseph."

So, without further ado, here’s comes the first of my defenses.

Why would Paul Joseph chose to join a program that would effectively cause him to miss roughly 25 years of his life, even if he would only age 8 weeks during that time?
Growing up, Paul held little real loyalty to his hometown and nation. For anybody who has read "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Tchermashnya, his hometown, is a rural town some distance from Moscow that specialized in the lumber industry, but following the days of the Soviets, the Friedan rebellion, and the Interplanetary War has become largely a stop post for private markets and marketers, while the real focus for business in on the larger centers of education in Moscow, which the 26th century Russian Federation prides itself over. Russian education is commonly viewed then as the best of the best, and Paul Joseph, being a proud student, always wanted to escape his small town and go into the political realm, always having been fascinated with the goings on the outside world. He may enjoy the company of his friends and family, but he’s already begun severing bonds with them inside his head so that he can go into the big leagues without emotional baggage.

This backfires when his submitted essay on the Insurrection, which warns that they are well on their way to forming a common union, makes him unpopular to the schools he applied to and thus is rejected from them because of concerns about re-opening national pride in the their students, and thus sparking internal school rebellions. Paul is not happy about this because he always wanted to view his life on the constant way up, and dislikes the idea of attending a small school and gradually working his way up to a higher field. For this reason, he decides to join the UEG Space Corps Reserve, since by his reasoning his predictions will come true, the schools will acknowledge he was right and admit him and he’ll still be young regardless and still well on his track to the fast lane. He has no qualms about severing ties with his family beforehand, because he’s already done this in his heart long beforehand, and expects the political realm to be full of unfamiliar people anyway. His parents he views almost as doting but is still very eager to be able to leave their nest, and his friends Dmitri and Tavia he views as fun to have around but silly. It’s not until he’s returned from his journey and finds the Human-Covenant War going on that he begins to regret his decision, and by then it’s already too late.

I feel that it’s not unlikely that somebody could come to this kind of reasoning ESPECCIALLY when under the influence of heavy emotional distress from multiple rejections from many MAJOR universities. The Halo universe itself is no stranger to emotional decisions made by its own characters themselves. Kurt-051 wears SPI armor rather than the superior MJONILIR purely for emotional reasons and for morale. The Prophet of Truth chooses to declare a xenocidal war on Humanity less than seconds after discovering their true status as Reclaimers. Colonel James Ackerson tries repeatedly to kill John-117 purely out of jealously despite his massive value as a Spartan. Nevertheless, while these decisions ended up costing all of them their lives, and they are never shown regretting it themselves, these characters all are extremely well written and their reasons behind it make their actions seem plausible. If a brilliant Spartan Lt. Commander could make decisions solely on emotional basis, as well as a Minister of Fortitude well on his way to become the High Prophet of Truth and a member of ONI’s High Command, then so can a far lowlier kid of just 15 years old who gets rejected from his favorite colleges simply because his essay he felt could change their entire foreign policy towards the Insurrection had its views in the minority.

Does the UNSC REALLY have the ability for reaching 99% of speed of light in real space?
Reaching lightspeed is complicated, is difficult to justify with current science, and even hard-core science-fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, and Orson Scott Card tend to treat near-lightspeed travel as more of a plot device rather explaining the underlying science behind it. Arthur C. Clarke justifies this in his essay “We Shall Never Conquer Space”, where he poses that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for man to NOT reach near-lightspeed, as there is no real physical barrier that prevents us from doing so, citing the discovery of flight as an example. Given that Mr. Clarke is widely considered the Thomas Jefferson of all science-fiction, that many of his points he brings up are valid, and that other writers like Scott Card were able explain QUANTUM THEORY ON THEIR OWN long before quantum theory had even been developed, there seems to be little reason to doubt him in this claim.

To explain briefly how relativity works for those unfamiliar with it, essentially relativity is the term for an effect on matter as it reaches lightspeed. Einstein’s theory of relativity tells two things:


 * The speed of light is a constant of our universe, and no other thing can actually reach it or pass it, only merely come close to it. Any attempt to do the first two results in death.


 * The faster one travels, the slower time goes. As such, if one were to reach 99% of speed of lightspeed, their aging would effectively stop, or just REALLY slow down, because they are in a sense traveling faster than time.

To give an example, if there were a spaceship that could travel at relativistic speeds, and it had a camera inside that was filming the interior, to the people watching back on Earth the people inside the spaceship would appear to be moving VERRRRRRYYYY SLOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYY. 70 years pass, they come back, they’ve only aged 2 years, everyone else back on Earth has gotten 70 years older.

How the UNSC would reach lightspeed is depends on their method of propulsion and fuel, and on this we have little information in the canon to help us. We know that they use deuterium as a fuel source for fusion, and that the standard UNSC ship carries 2 reactors within their hull. Assuming current science and mathematics is accurate, and that their reactors are nuclear-pulse propulsion ones, which can run on deuterium, this would calculate them to be able to reach roughly 20% of lightspeed.

Still, this does not solve the problem, because 20% is still nowhere near 99% and the relativistic effects at that speed are still miniscule. Compared to the MAC, which can reach 50% of lightspeed, smaller versions reaching 30%, and yet while operating on a completely different principle, the UNSC ships still seem incredibly slow by comparison. To cover the point briefly, since this objection was raised, the difference between the two is that the MAC’s power lies not just in its speed, but in its incredible acceleration. On the other hand, Newtonian physics, as pointed out by Maslab on the now-deleted blog: "The Ultimate Post-War Weapon", prevent a UNSC ship from accelerating that quickly. MACs have never been self-propelled and doing so would be counter-productive, while UNSC ships would likely take good bit of time in order to move at top speed. Braking is another concern, and most sci-fi writers like Card or Clarke handwave this by throwing a "Parkshift", which allows ships to decelerate instantaneously without killing the occupants inside. Still, it seems unjustified for the UNSC to be able to reach those parameters. But for that, there is another answer.

We know that the Covenant can reach lightspeed. While it has never been directly stated in the canon, they know how to create antimatter which, harnessed as a fuel source would DEFINITELY allow one to reach 70% of lightspeed! Further more, it is also known that they also supplement their ships with tritium fusion reactors, allowing in for the remaining 29% percent. Naturally reaching these speeds, they must also know how to brake them, justifying a Parkshift mechanic within the Halo universe. One might argue that they simply are not smart enough to do these feats, as it has never been directly stated in the canon that could do so, but observe in Halo 2, where the Prophet of Regret is able to be present at Thel ‘Vadamee’s trial as a hologram, despite his Assault Carrier heading hundreds of lightyears in the opposite direction, and indeed being only a few minutes away from an arrival at Earth. This to me demonstrates that the Covenant DEFINITELY have the power to reach 99% the speed of light, and perhaps even faster, since Regret’s transmission to his hologram was obviously traveling faster than a single Covenant ship could ever travel. How could a hologram travel faster than light when this would a violation of Einstein’s theory? Slipspace’s physics allow for that violation, since we know that certain laws of our dimension indeed do not carry over to that one instead. Guilty Spark even states in Halo 3 the ability for "SUPER-luminary" communication, implying that lightspeed barriers can be indeed DISREGARDED through various means, rather than just simply gotten around of. And if that violation is allowed, then why are there no relativistic effects in Slipspace? Because if there is no ultimate barrier, there will thus be no time dilation because in that dimension the barrier does effectively not exist.

So how does this relate to the UNSC? One might argue that this proves nothing about the UNSC, that it simply means that the Covenant’s greater speed in Slipspace is simply due to their finesse in reaching near-lightspeed, while humanity can not and thus remains slower, but saying so is actually a misunderstanding. Here’s why: During Halo: First Strike, The UNSC Gettysburg makes its way back to Earth using a stolen Covenant Slipspace Drive fitted in by a team of Huragok. Once activated, the Gettysburg travels as far and as fast as any other Covenant ship. If the UNSC did not have the ability to reach near-lightspeed like the Covenant did, then they should STILL be traveling slower by INCREDIBLE ratios. But they don’t and this demonstrates to me the UNSC has the power to reach 99% of lightspeed.

The science behind how the UNSC does it is still undefined, because again the canon has little information on this subject and current science is still iffy. But based on the above example, if humanity didn’t have the ability to reach those speeds regardless then there is a MASSIVE plot hole in the books that goes out far enough to begin violating canon, physics, realism, AND godmodding… in a novel written by Nylund. It’s far from the only handwave in the Halo universe; both the Covenant AND the UNSC have artificial and anti-gravity technology, which current science dictates is impossible, and as a dramatic barrier it merely REINFORCES the absolute disparity between themselves and the Covenant’s superior technology thus gained from the Forerunners, as well as the barrier between the Forerunners themselves, who were implied to be able to reach even faster speeds. Thus forth, I would say that based on the above example that it is impossible for the UNSC to not be able to reach relativistic speeds

How does Joseph manage to access ONI data?
Paul Joseph, growing up, was acquainted with Admiral Parangosky granddaughter Tavia. After his arrival at Reach and his rescue by the UNSC, he is interrogated by ONI due to a close encounter with several beings that are being theorized to be a yet-unknown alien race that restored Reach to its pre-war state. Paul, not trusting the propaganda he has read all over the place on the public news outlets, demands to see Parangosky and find out exactly what was going on during all the years he was away. Parangosky, also on Reach to inspect ONI’s efforts at deciphering what happened, while normally unmovable to any sorts of demands, takes in interest in him only because of his importance in the close-encounter event, as well as his former acquaintanceship with her granddaughter, and hopes perhaps she might be able to pry a little more out of him by exploiting their relationship.

When she visits him, he is heavily disorientated, still recovering from the various medicines he was given to counteract the Covenant diseases he caught while imprisoned by them as prisoner-of-war. Growing bored from his incessant rambling, as well as from his constant demands for answers, she chooses to take the opportunity to inspect some of her files on her computer while she waits for him to quit his babbling and start discussing something actually important. Feeling he’s not getting the message through, and still mostly unaware, he points his (clearly-empty) Sniper Rifle at her and demands for more answers. She ignores this, and he continues to banter with her, taking pictures from the rifle, switching the settings to thermal, and pretending he is shooting a home video.

Later, after he has recovered, he watches the video he recorded in the Sniper Rifle, and notices something odd. The rifle was facing her computer, but of course he could not see anything on it, as anybody without the proper clearance on their Neural Interface will simply see a random picture on the screen while the ONI officer is allowed to see the real thing. But when he switched the setting to thermal, while he still wasn’t able to see what was on the screen, (the heat image for it simply shows a big black square), he was able to see the type keys she had clicked on as well as the locations she had hit with her fingers on the image’s hologram. This sort of breach ONI’s security wasn’t designed to handle, as most people can not simply waltz into a ONI facility and point thermal equipment in their faces, and even if they did, it would only show heat signatures EVERYWHERE on the screen and on the keypad, because the ONI officer would have likely been busy working for hours. It’s only because she logged at that moment that he got anything useful, and then because she got distracted that she didn’t type elsewhere and end up unintentionally spoiling his caught data. From this, he’s able to head to the ONI network on his own computer, access her account, and start reading without barriers, since his own computer does not produce the signal that keeps ordinary people from seeing what’s on an ONI screen.

Why does Joseph want to kill the Spartan-IIs?
Paul Joseph, having missed most of the war, initially does not have the same view of Spartan-IIs that everyone else does. He views them at first as simply sentient weapons that were wasted in the wrong direction. Remember, this is based off of the public information that says Spartans were invented to fight Covenant, when they were really created to fight the Insurrectionists. In any case, he first just finds them both distasteful and over-hyped.

After his breach into ONI data, however, his opinion changes and he starts to realize that they actually were a smart decision, and even feels a little pompous himself as it seems to reflect proof that his warnings about the Insurrection were indeed not unjustified. In any case, while still heavily disturbed by the discovery of their true origins as kidnapped children, he begins to respect them more for their prowess and perseverance.

His actions change when he finds that he can use his ONI access for other things as well, including infiltrating through the public nets. There, he finds data written by some UEG imperialists, nationalists from various nations who want to use the colonial vacuum from the aftermath of the Great War to gain more territorial power for themselves, now that their colonies are being terraformed by a mysterious source Paul had his close encounter with. One of their plans is to kidnap Spartans, but through it keeping the super-soldiers unaware that they are fighting for national expansion rather than just United diplomacy, since they are TECHNICALLY still on the same side. More proficient than Paul Joseph at more direct methods of hacking, they have already managed to find the location of the remaining Spartan-IIs, (though they remain unaware about Spartan-III) and are on their way to Reach to begin their operation.

Paul panics when he hears this, interpreting this to be just like the Insurrection, and can’t stopping thinking about their upcoming mission, especially when he actually meets the men who are planning the capture upon their arrival. He also realizes that ONI doesn’t know about it yet because the data that he stumbled on was from the nets back on Earth, and it’s only been just recently that they managed to reverse engineer faster-than-light communication from the Covenant. He considers telling Parangosky about the Imperialists’ mission, but to do so he would have to fess up to having hacked into her account, and could face a court martial and jail-time because it. As such, he chooses to keep his mouth shut and decides to take matters into his own hands.

In the end, he doesn’t remain fully adamant about it afterward. After his first attempt to kill Spartans goes badly awry, he decides to give up on it and leak out the information anyway regardless of whether or not he goes to jail. However, by then ONI has already discovered his account, locked it down, and placed it in a "stasis" mode where he can not perform any actions, rather than deleting it, since they still need his account as proof for court-martial. He gets around this by hacking into a Covenant transmitter instead, since their network is separate from humanity’s and uploads the data through there, creating a major security breach and leaking the data out to the world.

Where does Paul Joseph get his equipment from?
He gets them from his ONI account. It includes a MJONLIR suit, a T-Pack, and augmentative drugs. These drugs are prototypes being designed for Marines to begin using advanced armor, since they bring him to near the same strength as a Spartan, allowing him to use MJONLIR, though they take several hours to finish the process, are exceedingly painful to take, can have adverse health effects if over abused, and as a security measure, wear off and bring the person back to normal after 20 hours, again in a long and often painful process. The rest he’s able to pass off as necessary, since the remaining Spartan-IIs are also in the area, and the equipment is assumed to be for them, since they were also scheduled for a refit before their current systems began to break down.

Why isn’t Joseph found out by ONI? And why don’t the Spartans kill him as soon as he shoots one of them?
Paul’s first time hunting Spartans, he manages to snipe one of them, but when he tries to fly up higher to get a better aim, he gets hit by a return shot, shooting him out of the air. Crashing down and cornered, he manages to hold them off in CQC for a few seconds, but they outnumber him and pin him down so they can interrogate him. But they don’t manage to get very far before a dropship carrying Imperialist soldiers arrive, launching the very attack Paul was trying to move faster than, but mistaking the imprisoned Paul for one of their own, forgo their previous “subtlety” plan, open fire on the Spartans in order to rescue Joseph, and attempt to knock out and capture the super-soldiers themselves. In the ensuing confusion, Paul manages to escape their grasp, uses a dropped Fuel Rod from one of the downed soldiers to sink the dropship, and then flees before any of the Spartans can turn their attention to him. After this, he spends roughly about a week and a half trying to hide and plot out his next move before they can corner him. Eventually they do find him again, manage to pin him down, and plan to take him back to their flagship for questioning. However, Paul threatens to wirelessly access his account and send in a kill code to Cortana aboard the flagship, deleting her and stranding them and all the other soldiers aboard until further help can arrive. Upon hearing his threat to kill Cortana, John, abandoning his normallyy-stoic outlook, goes berserk, crippling Paul, stealing his helmet to deny access to his account, knocking him out, and then leaves him for dead as revenge, leaving him to wake up hours later still in his armor but without augmentations.

As for ONI’s actions in the matter, Joseph IS found out not long after he places his order for equipment. His account after that, as stated previously above, is then locked down and placed in a stasis form so that they can review his actions upon it as evidence for his court martial. In fact, by the time he is cornered by the other Spartans, he had already found this out and his threat for a kill code was really a bluff he knew that he couldn’t follow up with. Upon realizing ONI his intentions, he was scheduled to be captured and interrogated, but the attack by the UEG imperialists changed their minds, as it is the same kind of threat he warned them could happen. After the Spartans are found to have defected to an Insurrectionist force that previously promised them safety, since the attacks by the Imperialists have convinced them that the UNSC of now is not the same one that they had promised to protect, just as those same Insurrectionists warned them, Joseph is rescued from his location and hired by ONI to become their assassin. He is also not court-martialed for his actions, as the ensuing data leak on the Spartan project was blamed on Dr. Halsey instead so that public opinion remains with ONI but against Halsey and her work on the Spartan project.

Fhew!
And that’s about as detailed as I can get it! Please consider my above points and explain your reasoning here below. MAKE SURE that your questions and any canon concerns are of DIRECT relavency to the article, there's no good that comes from arguing about some random plot point if it doesn't affect the article's canon status. If the points that are given still don't hold up, then explain in your comment WHY the supporting examples don't work. And if it is indeed proven that the various points are indeed wrong, then here’s what I can do.


 * If Paul Joseph still seems unlikely to join the Reserve: I’ll change his age.
 * If near-lightspeed travel for the UNSC still doesn’t work out: Again, I’ll change his age.
 * If it still seems unlikely that ONI would hire him rather than try to dispose of him: Since he’s effectively protected under the whistleblower act, since he did not get the data illegally but by accident, I can let him be killed, I can let him be caught, or I can let them send him off to his university after all to keep him quiet, or instead by court-martialed for attempted murder rather than breaking in. Either way, he wouldn’t be hired then.
 * If it still seems unlikely that he could truly survive his first encounter with Spartans: Again, I can just let him be killed and the Spartans are captured.
 * If it seems unlikely that he could really access ONI data using the method I mentioned: Trickier, but then his campaign is canceled, he recovers from his sickness, is reassigned elsewhere, and then the Spartans are captured.

Any other objections can probably ruled off based on the compromises I mentioned above. Regardless, this is about as detailed as I can get it, please let me know if there’s anything else that remains unexplained, unlikely, or needs a further bits before it can become plausible.

I’d like to finish my above statement by saying that I hold no one responsible for the previous incident. Commander Tony and I have disagreed in the past, but every time I looked back and found that his actions were indeed in the right, and indeed has saved me several times from actions that could have gotten the ENTIRE community against me, and yet was merciful enough to not even give me a civility warning! Likewise, Spartan-118 and myself have usually gotten along in the past, and this instance was probably just the result of the wrong button being pushed, namely the "Let’s go kill teh SPARTANES!!!" button, and I fully expect us to get along just fine as before in the future. Subtank and Maslab, thanks for saving my skin, Maslab for staying respectful during his debate and for encouraging me to do research on fusion rockets, antimatter, and nuclear pulse propulsion, and Subtank for giving me a 2nd chance to explain everything and hopefully dissuade all the previous objections and concerns. And finally, to Specops306, who helped me as a mentor in this particularly dark time and as well as helping to point out some key holes in my arguments that I would have easily glossed over had it not been for his helping hand. I myself do not pretend to be an amazing debater, will freely admit that I have been in the wrong PLENTY of times during previous debates, and this experience has taught me to always be more clear when writing ANYTHING out, otherwise the whole thing can just massively pile up into a complete pack of chaos. In any case, I am perfectly fine with whatever consensus you may chose to come up with, as this is only one article and I can always change it, rework it, or otherwise delete it and start over. Thank you for reading, please consider my points, and I will thus await your final decision.

Tuckerscreator