: I think the problem lies in how most writers other than Nylund see the
: SPARTAN-IIs and also IIIs to an extent. See, Nylund didn't think the
: Spartan II project was the right thing to do, morality-wise. But he put
: all that aside and embraced, even celebrated, the SPARTANs as the people
: they are, not what they ought to be by the fairly narrow social standards
: of ordinary people. On the other hand, most other writers just can't get
: over how absolutely and completely terrible and condemnable the Spartan
: program was and how broken the Spartans are.

It does seem like a lot of them focus on that. I don't know much about it from a personal standpoint, but almost every interview and conversation I've seen with a writer or actor where they talk about a character of theirs that's seen as bad includes them sympathizing with the character or saying it's a matter of perspective or being misunderstood, or at least saying that they don't pass judgment on the character in a hard-and-fast way, and I've seen many say that you have to be on a character's side when you portray them, or at least not be against them, or else the portrayal will become a caricature and not work properly. This would apply directly to Halsey and a few others, and I think the basic principle applies to the Spartan II's, if you want to show them and show them right you have to get in their heads and not be overly concerned with anything they're not overly concerned with. Nylund is at a distinct advantage there because he seems to be the one that wrote at least half and probably a large majority of the characterization of the S-II's in the first place (we'll never know what ideas came from who until we get the Halo Bible, specifically the version of it that was current as of a few months before the first game was released).

: Unlike Nylund, other writers constantly emphasize the contrast between
: Spartans and normal people not to highlight how the Spartans are something
: above and beyond what any human could hope to be, but to pity and lament
: how humanity has been robbed from them. Often they'll just make their
: Spartan characters rebellious against the whole system (see: The Cole
: Protocol, Halo Legends, the Traviss books, some of the comics, etc.),
: despite this kind of behavior never being shown in Nylund's work. Or they
: simply write the SPARTAN-IIs as if they were normal people, which is
: completely missing the point of why people like them.

: Nylund was able to recognize that despite all the horrible things they had to
: go through, emotional brokenness wasn't the defining trait of a SPARTAN.
: They were still people and socialized with each other, despite being
: detached from mainstream humanity. They were different , not broken, and
: their interactions among themselves show this. Nylund's SPARTANs weren't
: uncomfortable being what they were; they enjoyed the ability to live up to
: their fullest potential, a chance they never would have gotten in an
: ordinary life.

: As an example to illustrate this attitude, in Glasslands, Karen Traviss
: thinks naming the Onyx shield world in honor of Kurt's pre-SPARTAN surname
: is the right thing to do. I'm fairly certain Nylund would've gone with
: "Ambrose", since that's what the few people close to him would
: remember -- and honor -- him as. Using an identity that had been long
: forgotten and buried in some archive, the name of a person that hadn't
: existed for a long time, as he had become something greater than he ever
: could've under that name, would actually be doing a disservice to Kurt's
: memory.

: I guess you could describe the S-IIs as the ultimate nerd heroes, which goes
: back to the topic of the gulf between them and the Fours. Why is that?
: They socialize well only within their own, very narrow peer group and feel
: detached from most people. They're smart and educated and can do things
: like casually calculate the velocity of a pin dropping. The gym scene in
: The Fall of Reach is like classic nerd wish fulfillment: John, who's still
: a kid, is harassed by a bunch of grown-up schoolyard bullies and then
: proceeds to absolutely wreck them. Can you see where this is going when
: most of the SPARTAN-IVs are apparently modeled after your average high
: school jock?

: The SPARTANs are special because they aren't your average war movie special
: forces operators. Writers should understand this and get over their
: (admittedly understandable) discomfort about how they were made, because
: SPARTANs (inter)acting like SPARTANs in and out of the battlefield not
: just with "normal people" but with each other is fertile ground
: for good science fiction.

I think this post shows a part of why some authors and fans reject the older view of the S-IIs: it's been romanticized. We can argue semantics and psychology over whether they're "broken", and we can throw around figures about how much they can lift, but I think the majority of the human population would call what happened to them wrong, but a lot of people see it or want to see it as justified in one way or another, or even as a good thing overall. This is just as repellent or even more repellent than the thing itself in a lot of cases, it's like burning down someone's house and then lying to them about it. To portray characters accurately and celebrate their strengths and lament their flaws, or simply show their strengths and flaws, is one thing, but you take into account past portrayals and different people's views of those portrayals and it gets messier.