User:Sabrestorm/Talk:SPARTAN Sara 020 Archive 1 - NCF Tag (Resolved)

Hello there. Just dropping by to let you know that that little message you put up top is unnecessary since the black box above it does the same thing ;) -- À la prochaine et Bonne Chonce 02:24, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Reply to CarpeJugulum (What's with the heldline you posted anyway?)
Thanks for the feedback, though I would have prefered it through a message and not through a tag. Here is my explination behind the 'issues'.

Complaint: Telepathy cannot and will not be caused by reinforcing someone's bones and improving their eyesight, which is what the S-II augumentations did, along with some other stuff.

Response: The novel Halo: The Fall of Reach states that there were more than just bone and eyesight augmentations. There were also mussle, mental, and reflexive augmentations, demonstrated when John is in the training room and kills three Marines. All the augmentations had never been performed simultaniously, and some of the Spartans were crippled and some died by the combination of the side effects, as well as some unforseen side effects of the combination of surguries. In Sara's case, she survived, but with decresed physical reaction time, a crippling factor, that her own body tried to compensate for by unlocking other areas of her brain. These areas have long been hypothisized to be focal ponts for telepathy.

Complaint: "Main ONI financer." Um, what does this mean? The program was funded using government money, not by individual members of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Response: It is heavily hinted in Halo Cannon that ONI (A military branch of the UNSC Government) was behind all three Spartan programs, including financial backing. The 'Main ONI Financer' happens to be a high level ONI brass, and therefore has a lot of influence and accumulated wealth that he poured into the Spartan II Program.

Complaint: There is no way anyone could survive full-on infection by the Flood. Your statement that they were "weak-minded when first released" cannot be used as an argument, because the Flood were first encountered ten thousand years ago in their war with the Forerunners.

Response: Without a direct connection to a Gravemind, the Flood are weak-minded. This is evident in both Halo: Combat Evolved and the accompanying novel Halo: The Flood, as well as The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor. Also, Sara is not the only human to overcome Flood Infection. Wallace A. Jenkens, a cannon charater, survived infection as well, though he was suicidal afterwards, hoping to kill the Flood that shared his body. His infection according to Halo: The Flood is also evidence of how the Flood are initially weak-minded.

Complaint: There's no way anyone, let alone some Intelligence officer, could simply waltz off with a UNSC fleet during the middle of a war.

Response: He didn't "waltz off with a UNSC fleet during the middel of a war". He built his power slowly for over 20 years with Insurrectionists and Deserters of the UNSC. I thought that would have been obvious, but if that part needs editing for further clarification, I'm willing to fix it.

Complaint: Why did John, Cortana and this 543 guy vanish? None of them are Flood.

Response: No one knows why they dissapeared along with the Antis'Grafen Hive. No one is even sure that the Hive survived the activation of the Grail either.

Saberstorm 04:27, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

Umm.. ONI was responsible for all three programs. It was clearly stated in the novels that the entire programs were under the jurisdiction of ONI Section 3. I should also add that ONI funded the projects via government money, as they are a government organization.

--SPARTAN-G023 Viae Cohors Gamma Sparti Limes Manipvlvs Myrmillio 04:31, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

For your telepathy questions, check some articles written by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, in Bangalore, India. It's hypothetical science, yes, but that doesn't mean it might not be possible. After all, the Flood have been stated in Halo cannon to posess telepathy upon forming a Brain Form, and Halo is science fiction.

Apparently, you also missed the part where it's stated that the S-II Augmentations were not purely physical.

Halo cannon specifically states that the Flood are weak and without direction without at least a Brain Form.

As stated before (as well as in Halo cannon), ONI was responsible for all the Spartan Programs. Considering how much mystery and conspiricy is hinted in Halo cannon when it comes to ONI ('oni' means 'deamon' in Japanese for cyring out loud), I don't see why it's so hard to believe that one very influential man in the top brass may have managed to gain the most control over it by footing a good portion of the bill using his salary, and maybe some black market profit as well. It also wouldn't be too hard for him to gather Insurrectionists and Deserters to make a good sized fleet. In Halo cannon it gives examples of such fleets existing and being ignored as the UNSC lost ground to the Covenant and pulled back towards Earth (check Halo: First Strike for an example).

Saberstorm 21:36, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

Hate to say it, but now we're getting into matters of opinion and preference rather than canon issues (though you are right in that I need to watch how I spell 'canon'). So, unless you can suggest a viable alternative, I'm leaving it the way it is until the admins show up.

Two quick things though...

1 - Of course it's illegal! That's why he's the bad guy! If you really want to know, there is an ONI officer barely mentioned in The Fall of Reach to be a major influence in the Spartan II Program who's methods and objectives for the Program were questionable. I was going to use that Officer, but he dies in Halo canon, so I made a second officer based off of him, and made him a little more devious.

2 - Weak-minded is the correct term because in the feral stage the Flood have no central conciousness. They can be influenced by an outside sourse until they create a Brain Form. If you play the campain on Cobat Evolved, you may notice (especially on Legendary difficulty) that the Flood become more cordinated in their attacks the closer you get to the end of the game. That's because when you first encounter them, they don't have a Brain Form, but by the end of the game there are at least 2.

Saberstorm 23:32, June 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * The tag stays up then. Please be aware you have 30 days to make amended changes before this article will be namespaced.

I am not trying to be stubborn. As I have stated in my article (above the black boxes, since I couldn't find a black box for it) that I am open to suggestions. But I'm not getting any suggestions here, just an argument over prefered canon interpretation.

I have tried to make some clarifying edits to my article, but until someone can offer a better alternative on how to write certian areas, please stop complaining about how I interpret Halo canon. Everything I have mentioned in this article is well within the bounds of what is possible in the Halo universe to my knowledge, and while I may not be a Wiki veteran, I have played/watched/read all Halo media.

So, if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears, but let's please stop it with the same old argument.

Ergo, if you were to write this article:

1. How would you describe a powerful ONI brass who's practically Palpatine incarnate (not a crossover, just a figure of speech) who has a great deal of influence into how the Spartan Program is run and wants to use it for his own political agenda? How does he mantain his control?

2. How does Sara end up on Harvest (or at least Halo) with mental abilities? She has to have those abilities because they are the key reason she survived the Flood, because she reversed the connection, and she can't be born with those powers either, as that would be out of canon. Her powers have to be gained through artificial means, they have to be limited to the mind (no moving objects around Star Wars style, this is supposed to be similar to the Flood's mental link), and her powers have to have a downside (currently, the downside is a reduced reaction time). Above all, she must still be a trained Spartain II Supersoldier.

Answer those two questions to my satisfaction, and I will make the changes.

Saberstorm 03:13, June 12, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, both Maslab and C.Tony! I wasn't going for stuborn, nor was I trying to sound like you were here for my enjoyment. I've been a fanfic writer for years, and I get tired of complaints when I don't get any better suggestions from the people giving feedback. Thanks to the suggestions that the two of you have given, I now have something to work with. Here are the edits I'm going to work on.

1. I am going to clarify the ONI officer's status. The two of you seem to get what I'm going for, so I'll follow your suggestions.

2. I remember The Fall of Reach stating that some of the S-II Augmentations required brain surgery, and I was using the fact you just stated, Maslab ("Increasing activity of the brain is going to reduce reaction times anyway") as the reason why she gained telepathic powers in the first place, thereby allowing her to be strong enough mentally to control the Flood. I'll re-read it to make sure and look into the other suggestion about Forruner/Percusor technology as a catalyst, since First Strike has that Slipspace Crystal thing that the Covenant want on Reach (I think it's Percusor; something else to check).

I'll make those edits as soon as I can.

Saberstorm 05:40, June 12, 2010 (UTC)

The telepathy was supposed to be caused by a screw up in the sugury. Also, she can't 'control' the Flood. Any agressive telepathic powers she has is just enough to plant thoughts and influence others. She also doesn't control the Hive any more than a queen ant or queen bee can control them. She mearly acts as their Gravemind, so to speek. She can guide them, but outright controling them makes her no different than the Flood.

The main idea was that she replaces the Gravemind for the Hive. Any suggestions on how to maintain that?

Saberstorm 16:18, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

So, like some kind of Forrunner virus or disease, or something like that?

Saberstorm

Having reviewed the article, I have found several faults, mostly attributed to unrealism more than non canon friendliness.

1. Telepathy. An extremely hypothetical science, and also highly controversial; so far, little evidence supports that it may exist. For the sake of realism and keeping things on a more Halo-esque track (military fiction rather than comic-book-action), I'd recommend removing it altogether. In addition, on the note of Brain Forms previously mentioned; they do not possess telepathy. Brain Forms overtake the host body, slowly absorbing it and its brain; thusly it can be better equated to the Brain Form "hijacking" the host brain through connected synapses, flooding it with its own impulses and thoughts until it became a full part of it.

2. You realise that the Flood takes the form of a virus; you cannot be "semi-infected." Once the supercell settles itself within a host body, it multiplies rapidly, changing bodily tissue to suit its own ends and making the host into a suitable tool for the Infection Form, and by extension, the Flood as an entity, to manipulate. Which is to say, either you are not infected, or you become a combat form.

3. The Flood as an entity is an incomprehensively powerful presence. It is essentially omniscient, having untold trillions of years' worth of knowledge and mental fortitude. To suggest that one individual could subjugate, or even defeat, a Gravemind form is equivalent to a single worker ant causing the downfall of an international superpower. In addition, keep in mind that as it is presented, the Flood hive-mind is not a physical entity; it is, rather, an underlying and non-corporeal presence, being present within the Flood as a species universally. Destroying Flood forms would not completely dissipate it.

4. Suggesting that Flood life forms could be capable of independant thought is virtually impossible; all non-host forms were simply vessels, lacking any sort of personal mental structures, acting through the sheer will of the hivemind manipulating them. Simply put, a puppet cannot gain independant thought.

5. In order to turn the Flood from parasites to photosynthetic organisms, one would need to re-write their entire genetic structure; a process that would take thousands of years or more, at least. One cannot coax the entire population of tapeworms on Earth to develop chloroplasts, and physical structures to facilitate photosynthetic trophism in each of their cells overnight. On a related note, it would be impossible for one former SPARTAN-II to accelerate the rate of evolution in a species; that requires one of two things. Either significant time for beneficial mutations and natural selection to occur, or artificially facilitated processes utilising Tier 0 technology (which would be impossible, given the Precursors vanished entirely).

Address these issues and make the article more realistic; those are the only issues that I can see.

I know you are an Administrator, 117649AnnihilativeRepentance, and I mean no offence, but you need to check your Halo canon.

1. Telepathy, while controversial, is possible in Halo. The Flood themselves are telepathic. In case you haven't noticed, that is an issue I am trying to rectify. Furthermore, Brain forms are not a single host, but multiple infected Flood bodies and corpses merged into a single Flood form.

2. Yes, the Flood is a virus. It is a confirmed part of Halo canon that it is still survivable, even if only by fluke. If a typical UNSC marine can survive infection, then why not a Spartan?

3. While the Flood do have counless millenia of experience, in the feral stage (especially after hibernation) they do not have the guidence of a Brain form or Gravemind to provide a focus for that knowledge. Sara didn't destroy the Flood mind, she simply changed it when she became the last sutable Flood form capable of being a focus pont for the collective mind. Graveminds do not have an infinate reach over the cosmos. There can, and there has been, more than one Gravemind, and ergo, more than one 'tribe' of Flood.

4. That is why Sara is so important to the Hive. As their 'Gravemind', she is responsible for their ability to think as individuals. Without her, they become Flood all over again.

5. As you stated, the Flood Geonome allows for supercell mutations. Sara didn't evolve the Flood. The Flood had the potential to evolve on its own (example: Pure Forms), and Sara's caused the mutation to go a different route than typical Flood evolution. Instead of becoming worse parasites, they became more symbiotic. This constant supercell mutation continued the longer the Hive stayed intact. Furthermore, The Art of Halo: Creating A Virtual Worldstates that the Flood a sporus species, similar to types of plants and fungi that use photosynthisis, which the artists used as part of their inspiration in designing the Flood. Photosynthetics is different from photosynthisis in that it is artificial photosynthisis, and therefore doesn't work the same way just differently. I also never said the Flood evolved overnight. Of course it took a while!

I'm tired of people complaining about the telepathy thing without giving me a better alternative. Hyper Zergling and Maslab have been very helpful to me in my attempts to edit this article, so unless someone has a better suggestion than them, I do not wish to discuss the matter any further until I have edited it to their satisfaction.

Saberstorm 17:09, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Also, thank you C. Tony for your help on the 'ONI' thing. I hope it works now.


 * This is not a debate, AR's comment states very clearly what needs to be done for this to be canon friendly. No 'if's, 'and's, or 'but's about it. If not everything that AR and everyone else said is addressed, this article is eligible for namespace in 15 days. You have been informed.

What part of "Hyper Zergling and Meslab have been very helpful" did you not understand?Saberstorm 00:42, June 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * What part of what I said did you not understand? I was not referring to your 'thank you' to Maslab and HZ.

End of the Flag
Now that the flag has been removed, I'd like to have some feedback on my article's quality, if anyone is willing.

Saberstorm 03:44, July 18, 2010 (UTC)