For a closeted trans kid, Halo’s Spartans felt like representation

As a young child I dreamed of becoming a soldier. Trans women are not unusual to do this. It is possible to live in dissociation while wearing armor.

In the early 1990s when I was six, my family lived in a Navy community with mostly white residents. I played with the white boys on the playground, but I wasn’t white, nor was I a boy (a fact I would not realize for many years). We didn’t play Vietnam, we played Army. In a bizarre, gender-segregated tag game, we chased the girls through the park. My best friend bragged about his father’s Navy hat, citing years of service; he gloated knowingly about the “scrambled eggs” embellishment on the visor and how he would have a hat like that someday.

Growing up, I always wanted to become a soldier. Perhaps I had a closet. The armor I made for myself was to guard against the unwelcome feeling in my body that I had felt since the very first game I played. Word RescueAt age 4 I experienced MS-DOS and the sensation of flying when I played the role of the female character. Her hair would flutter as she did her jump animation. My young experiences taught me that such a feeling was unacceptable. Each padlocked box contained boxes that I had created.

I didn’t become a soldier. But I was a child who kept secrets to survive: as trans writer Kai Cheng Thom once referred to herself, a “soldier in [my] soul.” And I spent much of my childhood playing soldier in Halo.

Image: Bungie/Microsoft Game Studios

343 Starter Gamer

This was released in 2001 to launch the Xbox original Xbox. Halo, Combat EvolvedIts sequels became a sort of teenage rite of passage for urban and suburban millennial men across the United States and Europe. You can read more about it here. HaloFormula was the perfect fit for a particular type of masculine education: player-vs.-player combat, with futuristic weaponry and a male protagonist as well as a female sidekick. There were also hordes upon aliens to kill.

I first encountered Halo one school night in 2003. We were all invited along with several other eighth-grade math students to the game night that our math teacher hosted at a local tech center. This was something I’d heard about. HaloIt was available, however I hadn’t played it. After much begging and pleasuring, I’d never even seen an Xbox. My classmate, my brother, and my teacher loaded us into a 4-person Slayer game on Blood Gulch.

The first kill hooked me. I set out from my spawn location across the map, stumbling across a rocket launcher in no-man’s-land. A drivable vehicle had crashed into the base in front. It was the wrong side, so I was stuck in the backseat. I turned my back to the base’s entrance. A blue Spartan came traipsing out. My rocket launcher was ready. With the fury of an hallucinogen withdrawal, my vision of that kill burns into my brain. It was a difficult feat to place second in the leaderboard.

My brother and me pleaded with my parents. We got an Xbox, and a copy. Halothey were quickly realized. That I didn’t know at the time HaloI was able to play a single player mode, but all that mattered was the moment of multiplayer glory. Surprisingly, the single-player game mode was what caught my eye with its storyline that resonated close to home.

Image: Bungie/Microsoft

The Faceless Man

Take a look at the history of SPARTAN, the program that produces Halo protagonist Master Chief Petty Officer John-117: In the midst of a deadly war that all of society has oriented itself around, a group of special children are secretly abducted from their families, replaced by “flash clones” that die within months. Children are chemically castrated. Cybernetic modifications to their bodies remove human weakness and disrupt their biological impulses. Their human connection is destroyed by indoctrination. The metals are used to reinforce them and they learn how to make precise weapons of war. SPARTANs are dissociative and “hyper-lethal,” human but inhuman. They can be used as tools to perform the roles that they have been given. They can be child soldiers, but they will grow up and become soldiers. Their armor never cracks—those who break in the process are discarded. It is necessary to inform the wider society about the SPARTAN program.

In some ways, it’s AnimorphsWith power armor. In other ways, it’s a trans woman’s childhood in allegory.

I was a player in the HaloCampaign relentlessly every day. I worked through the various difficulty levels and perused fan websites like Halo.Bungie.org. In real life, I was an awkward teenager who hit puberty far too early, who kept running into adults and their gendered expectations, who didn’t understand why I was so angry and unable to fit into the social roles and relationships inhabited by young men and women. In HaloIn my armored soldier uniform, I shot familiar aliens using familiar weapons. My real life felt like it had not begun and would perhaps never begin, for reasons I couldn’t define as trans. The security center in Silent Cartographer was the last bridge on Assault on the Control Room. I knew exactly where I was during the game. I got lost in The Library.

The SPARTANs’ backstory is not present in-game. You can read more from Halo’s script, what you know about Master Chief is that he is a special soldier who is unfrozen right before a pivotal encounter with alien forces. His armor covers his head and entire body. He plays whatever role his AI and troops need. He’s a shell that takes orders, who takes weapons his commanding officer gives him or picks them up off the ground. We don’t know if he has friends or relationships other than the purely professional relationships he develops by necessity in the process of killing aliens, mediated by a chain of command. Game critic and developer Tim Rogers puts it bluntly: “Master Chief isn’t a Character Individual—he’s an icon. As one of his many responsibilities, he doesn’t take off his mask. Halo 3‘s producers said, ‘if he took off that helmet, it’d be you inside.’”

A child, like myself, found it a way to escape the fact that everyone could see your innermost thoughts. Deep down, I was an irritable mess. Deep down, I felt angry at how my childhood had turned out. The childhood I grew up in was filled with conflict at home and the expectations from my parents for success socially and professionally. My immigrant heritage and the distinct differences that separated me from white American friends made it difficult for me to be frustrated. The most important thing was that I was unaware Of my inner turmoil. To me, my inner world was nothing but a black box. Common childhood injunctions to “follow your passions,” the kind that my peers took seriously, felt impossible to understand: what passions? It was a metaphor, I believed.

Master Chief had no such problems. Because he was trained to be a soldier, he became one. It was impossible for him to connect with his peers. In fact, no one outside of the SPARTAN program could consider themselves to be his peers. When he said “Give me a weapon” at the beginning of the game, it was abundantly clear what would follow: shooting enemies. The problems of Master Chief’s life all walked (or crawled, or shambled) towards him, and the solution rested firmly within his right hand. Master Chief was not asked about his passions; it was as irrelevant for him as it is for me. Like me, Master Chief had held onto his childhood emotions. In all of the ways I had feared, he was perfectly suited for his task. His professionalism was praised; my fear of emotional distance was terrorized.

Image: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios

The Welcome Grave

Halo 2This was my first preorder.

After Halo 2’s release, my parents vetoed Xbox Live. My father considered online gaming a unnecessary expense, while I should be focusing my efforts on learning and being workforce ready. In retrospect, this wasn’t necessarily an inaccurate judgment; the chances of a 15-year-old becoming a pro gamer were slim (though not impossible: my high school’s Halo 2The tournament was won by MLG Bravo, a young boy that would go on to become an esports celebrity and broadcaster. Still, I spent sleepless nights cursing dashed ambition and visiting friends’ houses to get my fix of the game’s new “matchmaking lobbies,” where hormonal young men playacted manhood by spewing brash, offensive trash talk in between rounds of online multiplayer.

I was unable to access multiplayer on a regular basis so I decided to look elsewhere. Halo 2’s campaign mode. Master Chief, who was an Earth defender, inadvertently fuelled an alien civil war. Again, you can solve all your problems by firing at them and playing the part that was given to you. They portray the alien Covenant as religious fanatics. However, they produce an important character that rebels against their mission and alters the storyline. Master Chief, however, is a staunch supporter of the machine. As the mysterious alien corpse-being known as the Gravemind notes of our protagonist: “This one is machine and nerve, and has its mind concluded.”

It’s hard to describe how I felt. Halo 2’s story; after all, one hallmark of my time in the closet was that it seemed impossible to feel, like the world was wrapped in gauze. The only thing I can say is that I played them over and over again. These campaigns felt realer than my everyday life which was occupied with planning for the future: college, career goals, and then, presumably, the grave.

Image: Bungie/Microsoft Game Studios

My problem was not gender, but I knew it by 2005. A TV commercial that portrayed a gender-bending sexism was what I saw. That advertisement sent me down a rabbit hole of search engines, Googling “boy turns into girl,” looking for more transgender content. I was unfeeling and the prospect of gender change made a strong intrusion in my life. It gave me an opportunity to feel real emotion. I was obsessed with transgender media for reasons I couldn’t explain. It was addictive and I would binge watch it until the wee hours of the morning. I was terrified by it. It was certain that this horrible secret would be revealed and ruin my life and career.

You can play Halo 2 It was a means to escape feeling. Online reviewers pilloried the game’s cliffhanger ending and how it avoided concluding Master Chief’s narrative arc. I found these complaints to be absurd. Halo This was an action that had to be done and then repeated. It wasn’t a journey with a goal. Comfort food was more important than the familiarity and safety it offered. With time, I grew fond of all the aspects of the game reviewers disliked: the abject polygons of the characters’ faces, the Gravemind’s intoned proclamations looming in the background of the action, the convoluted alien civil war which is never fully explicated in-game. I was able to recall the locations of enemy spawning places. I read The Halo novels, committing lore to memory. “This is not your grave,” the Gravemind told me, “but you are welcome in it.”

After Halo 2I understood the series to be my refuge from the realities of transness. This was even though it wasn’t possible for me to define my identity as trans. The series was my refuge from the reality of transness. However, I lost touch with it over time. It always seemed to return whenever I needed to reflect on who and what I am. Halo 3 It was late high school when I encountered my college-application anxiety. I kept up with Halo 3: ODST, Reach Halo And Halo 4 After a time of unemployed postcollege, I found myself connected to the online speedrunning scene. Later on, HaloRuns was founded. Later, in the COVID epidemic, I briefly found my way back to speedrunning. HaloFixation was my default mode and I allowed my completeist instincts to drive me towards every success. This was the point when I started to transition genders. Speedrunning feat in which my former gamertag was visible Halo: Master Chief Collection–the gamer equivalent of a deadname, I suppose.)

Bungie. Halo’s original developers, the protagonists of each Halo game — the Chief, Halo 3: ODST’s Rookie, Reach Halo’s Noble Six — are nothing if not dedicated to their missions. Their presence is a meaningless void. They can be silent and strong. They are strong, silent, their personalities redacted and their presence itself a meaningful void. Halo 3Master Chief can be a hero in the service of a higher purpose. He is loyal soldier to his last. After defeating an alien enemy, and making a tentative peace, Master Chief is rewarded with a floating maroon in deep space. He will be able to stay aboard half his spaceship, which did not reach the Slipspace portal to Earth. He could die here. At this point, he doesn’t seem to be feeling much. “Wake me when you need me,” he tells his AI companion, and climbs into the armored cocoon of his cryo-chamber. Although it is not his tomb, he does feel at home in it.

Un Soldier for their Soul

Depersonalization is a common phenomenon in trans people, as attested by trans writer and Youtuber Zinnia Jones’ writings on gender dysphoria. In a 2018 blog post, she wrote of her attempts to don armor against the world’s injuries:

Depersonalization protected me even as it killed off the parts of me that made anything matter in this world, as if to shield me from some catastrophic personal collapse that was bound to happen… There have been times when, feeling shamed or humiliated and without access to that protective inner core, Reacting, I wrapped myself up in layers of clothing.… [emphasis added]

Lucian Clark, Azure and other trans writers have identified their trans senses of dislocation within the monstrous or in. warrior goddessesThey are defined by the weapons they use. Author and Warhammer 40,000Fanatic Natalie Reed has pointed out that the creation of a “Space Marine” is inherently a fiction about a violent patriarchal socialization process that strips boys of their emotions and turns them into “living weapons.”

In her essay “A Maze of Murderscapes,” S.R. Holliwell described her playing time in “A Maze of Murderscapes” essay. MetroidII while homeless in a women’s shelter in Providence, Rhode Island:

Digital objects [missile-doors, shrines, map tiles]My landmark buildings and city streets were… IFeeled like an object to me, representing something no one will ever knowMoving through the city, where I was regarded as an unknowable figure that fascinated me and might interest them. … A delight and mystery in having nowhere in particular to be and exploring the world around me. [emphasis added]

Holliwell’s remembrances point to the critical distance created by the armor of dissociation, how it can be alienating but also give one freedom to explore and become. This is the final section. MetroidSamus removes her armor, and she reveals herself as a gorgeous woman. “Gotcha,” she seems to be saying, “you didn’t know who I was at all.”

It’s important to note that Holliwell was not writing specifically of the trans closet in her essay. The dissociative armor of the trans closet itself is most incisively described in Isabel Fall’s “Helicopter Story” (originally, and I believe preferably, titled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” a provocative riff on a transphobic meme beloved by extremely-online young men in the early 2010s). Fall’s story follows a character named Barb, a female-to-helicopter transsexual, and explores “tactical gender”: our gendered passage through the world and its similarities to military indoctrination. This story, through its metaphor, explores how we defend ourselves, armour up and attack others; the patterns we use to move, show force whether we are loud or quiet.

Although the story was withdrawn from publication, it lives on in Internet archives. Barb writes:

My body serves as an instrument in my mission. It is not who I am. … When I joined the Army I consented to tactical-role gender reassignment.

The reasons for war don’t matter much to us. We desire to fight like a woman wishes to be gentle, and as a men wants to stand firm.Our desire is just as insatiable as the show-stopping queen but as subtle and vampy as the elegant lesbian.

Being a woman was something I desired to do. I wanted my eyes to be darkened and my feet to be sexy. … And at the same time I resented it all. I wanted to become sharper, more powerful, an innovative thing, magnificent and more formidable. Or was it that I hated women? Did it be because I hated the idea of being taught?

Now, I’m joined inside. Now I’m gear and shaftedI have opposing torques. Decibel killers muffle my noise so that I can be heard through walls.

[As a woman,]Being small was something I knew all my life. People could harm me. … No one stalks an attack helicopter. Nobody will ever punch you because of the little rape that he does to your neckline. Nobody can break your heart. With my dopamine systems tied up from the reassignment surgeries, I’m fully assigned for mission behavior. I can’t fall in love with anything except my own purpose. [emphasis added]

“This one is machine and nerve, and has its mind concluded. This one is but flesh and faith, and is the more deluded.” — The Gravemind, Halo 2

Fall was criticized for her story. Some supposedly progressive commentators suggested that such deviant intertwining of gender and war could only have been the work of an anti-feminist man. Fall’s story was removed by her request and she fled the web. This prompted a vicious backlash that saw her disappear from the internet. Vox spoke with her this summer.

The helicopter in this story is my closet. Which place do you have the worst feelings of dysphoria? It’s in the closet. I think so. I have never been to the outside world, other than in my closet. [in publishing “Attack Helicopter”]It was more secure inside, I believed. … To avoid my death, the story was removed.

Barb’s helicopter body is SPARTAN-117’s armor. The story of HaloThis is the same Fall feeling: the comforting, horrible and close-knit feeling. As Master Chief and the Noble Six, it is an honor to be a Hyper Lethal Vector. Reach Halo. It is joy in armor, protection and distance. This is the illusion of being invisible and unaffected.

One word is important: False. The Vox piece characterized Fall’s withdrawal as “the option of retreating to the relative safety of her legal, masculine identity.” This is an easy summary, but “safety” is far from the true picture of what the closet entails. As any hermit crab will tell you, armor does not allow one to grow alongside the person it protects. It constricts and smothers as well as allowing another to grow. Despite the closet’s promise of freedom, movement within it comes with limitations.

In “Helicopter Story,” Barb’s rising gender dysphoria poses a threat to her mission and existence. At no point in HaloMaster Chief, can you put down your weapons and start talking to aliens. It will be the same campaign: Master Chief will crash land onto the mysterious ring planet, battle his way through landscapes and spaceships, then make the noble sacrifice to save the day, and then fly off into faraway space. The trans closet functions for us as Master Chief’s narrative constraints function for him. We cannot control his choices.

No matter how strong his armor is, Master Chief will bleed no matter what. A closet does not provide safety. It is an illusion of security that allows one to continue to take damage after damage.

End of Halo 4, we see Master Chief’s face. I was told by one of my trans friends that this is when Halo will betray itself. that’s you in there.This armor has been worn by Master Chief since the inception of The Empire. Halo 2 — approximately four years and nine months, per canon — and this is the first time we see it removed. The technicians guide special machines to his body and unscrew, collect and then unclamp the tonnes of combat-grade plate metal. This armor isn’t easy to take off, much like real armour. As with real armor, this process takes time. You will need to help others.

The Master Chief, under that armor was someone I didn’t recognize.

Image: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios

Wake me when You Have Need

The last few years have been spent learning how to remove my armor. I feel more at ease in my own body and hormones have been helpful. Therapy, friends and loved ones have provided me with support. Master Chief continues his journey to a distinct male market-oriented manhood. Halo 4Explores Cortana’s relationship with Master Chief, his AI partner Cortana. Games reviewer Erik Kain writes in Forbes of its “beautiful, tragic love story,” driven by Master Chief’s emotion-driven need to find a cure for her incipient robot dementia, while noting the game’s “odd sexualization of Cortana.” Halo 5: GuardiansThe narrative of the game (which I have yet to play) has Master Chief as its central premise. He is now a rogue commander and must be stopped by military forces. Both games show Master Chief following Cortana’s lead and disobeying orders from his superiors. Even without the romantic subtext, it’s clear that the future of Halo One of the most complex connections between people is protagonists. These human connections tie them to certain canonical identities and relationships as well as character traits. 343 Industries is the creator of Halo Infinite, promises that the days of treating the SPARTAN as an empty orders-following vessel are over; henceforth, he will have ample characterization and a “human story.”

Maybe my disconnection from the narrative development for the latter Halo games is simple: Master Chief’s developers have decided to make him a person, and that person is not me. The person in question is a white soldier of the army, just as the white soldiers who populate first-person-shooter markets. AAA shooter fans tend to be young men. Developers need to target their audience with their content. They generally don’t make AAA video games about people like me.

Other kinds of people (mostly white men) are the ones who get “human stories,’’ marketable stories. Transgender people, like myself, get allegory and allusions. (Someday I’ll tell you how Reach Halo’s Noble Six is a he/him lesbian.) We get internet listicles of “trans-friendly characters” as human and real as Birdo. So trans people have to find ourselves in stories that weren’t written for us. We make memes of popular video game characters saying “trans rights” while deciding for ourselves which characters we will claim as part of the community.

Given that reality, I’ll take what I found in Halo’s story. I hold out hope that I can come around to John-117’s new personhood, that I can learn to accept him on his own neutered-white-male-cyborg terms. He will not be the person I bonded with in the Halo games, with their armored faceless man. While I was in pain, I tried to show compassion for those who survived. It extends to characters who are locked up. To this day, I’m attached to helmeted characters and stories that don’t tie them to emotional connections. My friend will be the amnesiac and dysphoric closed-off, protected, or guarded.

nat “stylo” is a musician, organizer, writer, and sometimes-gamer. You can find her on Facebook @stylo9000 stylo-999.tumblr.com.