owomonsterwrites - Tumblr blog

[owomonsterwrites]

oh man this FUCKS

[owomonsterwrites]

It's finally done. After 5 months of slaving over this piece and gallons of paint "accidentally" eaten, my baby is finished.

I'm likely gonna redo most of the top left quadrant later since it was rushed, but everything else looks pretty good in my humble opinions :)

[owomonsterwrites]

Some Halo sketches I’ve been doing at work, figured posting them would be better than not !

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He's REALLY mad this time, guys

[owomonsterwrites]

Another Arbiter, except I finished this one

Thel and Sangheili in general are hard af to draw, my older attempts at drawing them are... Rough. I at least drew a better Arbiter head in 2023 (that will be posted in due time)

[owomonsterwrites]

Florida bans on trans care have been overturned! 🏳️‍⚧️

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Some Charbiter, and I figured if John gets cat ears then why can’t Thel <3

[owomonsterwrites]

You’re telling me the rings KILL people?!

Original meme under the cut:

[owomonsterwrites]

Chief Sam shenanigans

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IT THE BLORBOS, COURTESY OF THE LOVELY @pumpkinata !!

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HES LOSING BAD. embarrassingly bad so might as well throw his dignity out the window

[owomonsterwrites]

Happy Pride, beautifuls!

🥰💖🌈

[owomonsterwrites]

Halo art dump

The first one is chex because i have strong opinions about the ending of restoration :thumbsup:

[owomonsterwrites]

Broken Out of Time

A commission piece for @bloodgulchblog -- a Pilot/Chief fluff piece. This was really fun to write.

----

"Joy."

John sinks down into a crouch, hunkering further down behind the worn boulders they'd been using for cover. The elements of his HUD jitter as Joyeuse shifts attention, which he also feels in the connection between his NI and armor, which some part of him translates into fingers trying to tickle his neck. It's uncomfortable.

"Joyeuse," he says, firm. "Where'd Esparza go?"

She makes a humming sound. John takes stock of their surroundings while she plays nice with components of his armor, cycling through the various scanning functions to locate their wayward civilian.

"I thought you were watching him," she replies-- with enough grace to sound slightly abashed and guilty.

He grunts and detaches his pistol from the magclamps on his thigh.

"And I thought we were watching the birds," he returns evenly.

They were watching the birds, to be fair. Zeta Halo differed from his previous experiences on Forerunner structures in that it had a functioning… ecosystem… of sorts. With the remaining UNSC forces securing a tight foothold, he'd felt he could start relaxing his stranglehold on procedure and start-- something. Appreciating things. As it turns out, false suns feel just as warm as real ones.

"It's a little disconcerting to see birds use brass shells for mating displays," Joyeuse says. "Fernando doesn't have any proper IFF markers. I don't know…"

And he'd-- what? Relaxed enough to let a civilian sneak off into unknown territory and get himself lost? He twists around, staring intensely at his surroundings, waiting for details to seep out of the long grass and compacted dirt, like remnants of Esparza would suddenly make themselves known.

And they did-- eventually. Boot prints. Impressions of knees in the dirt. Headed further away. John carefully follows the tracks and picks his way down the rocks, closer to the thin bubbling creek that coalesces into a river in the distance. Joyeuse casts out another round of scans.

Ah.

John forgoes scaling the remainder of the terrain in favor of dropping down right behind his charge. Or, he would have, if Joyeuse didn't throw out the mental equivalent of an arm across his chest.

He freezes in place. Esparza lays prone in the grass. She highlights a handful of silhouettes. Ah.

Esparza must have snuck off to obtain a closer look at a different set of wildlife. Zeta Halo also possessed a number of rodent-like creatures (that the marines and personnel made quick work of eating). He sees them now, dipping their naked heads into the water for a drink.

Briefly, he wonders if the rings are capable of seasons. Then he shunts that thought aside and hunkers down beside Esparza.

"Hello," John intones.

Esparza jumps in his skin and bites his tongue on a yell. John stifles a surge of mixed emotions -- guilt and pride, mostly, with a tinge of amusement.

"Wear a bell," Esparza says, shaking his head.

"You snuck off first."

He blinks at John, expression scrunching up, radiating surprise.

"Guess I did."

John shifts his position in tiny increments. He doesn't want to disturb Esparza, nor does he want to disturb the animals they're watching. But this particular area has even fewer sightlines than the outcropping and it's-- rankling him, might be the word. Yeah, the sergeant uses that word a lot. Now it's in his vocabulary.

Joyeuse's good humor at the phenomena is a burst of sunlight down his spine.

"My house was on a prairie," Esparza says suddenly. "Country home. You know. So we got a lot of critters like that in the evening."

One of the rodents stands upright.

John casts back for a memory, maybe something to relate to Esparza (as he can learn to converse, Cortana would be--), and makes a listening grunt.

"My kid learned pretty quick about the circle of life though," he finishes. "Or…"

He trails off, stymied by the ground shaking seconds before the vibrations sink into the Mjolnir. Two of the rodents bolt off into the grass. The third lunges into the water and paddles determinedly to the other bank. This puts it within throwing distance of them for all of a second before it vanishes into the ground.

Joyeuse had been correct about the burrows, then.

Esparza opens his mouth and snaps it shut as the air around them rapidly shifts. A crimson Banshee roars overhead, followed by an UNSC aircraft.

"Let's move," John says.

He instinctively reaches over to Esparza, but his charge is already on his feet and retreating. More guilt and pride assaults him but he stuffs it down in favor of hurrying back to the Warthog on which they came. Joyeuse automatically switches over to friendly radio chatter and yeah-- that's contact.

Banished making a move on the local FOB.

"Can never catch a break, can we, big guy?" Esparza laughs.

John waits excruciating seconds for Esparza to buckle in before flooring it.

No, they can't. But the lulls are nice while they last. He thinks Esparza understands when their hands overlap on the shifter.

[owomonsterwrites]

stumpy. stumpy. perhaps. chief (and a friend of your choice if you want!) watching a meteor shower. please.

Ephemeral

She knows the Mjonir's camera fidelity is high, that its night-vision and low light modes are the highest tech available, but that doesn't stop her from wondering what the night sky looks like to the human eye. What it truly feels like to see the wondrous natural phenomena of a meteor shower unaided.

She knows what it looks like to her: Inky indigo-black speckled with lights above the harsh silhouettes of Zeta Halo's flora and geography. Flashes, mere moments to humans and a small eternity for her to study the meteors' trajectories and potential chemical composition.

She knows that all it is is debris burning up in the Ring's atmosphere. That the event itself is cosmically insignificant, and that the meteoroids are just dust and ice and gas flickering out. Echoes of a comet coming to their end, or rather changing into something new. Ephemeral.

She knows all these things, and yet… Watching them is exhilarating. It's peaceful. The soft vocalizations of the humans near her, near Chief, provide her with context and a sense of something more. A familiarity resonating deep within her core. Humans often stared up at the stars together and wondered. She thinks Chief probably did at one point too. For now, he tilts his helmet for her and lets the outer patrols take care of the watch.

Fernando is next to Chief with the marines spread out around Fob Hotel. He was the reason she was able to cajole Chief into sitting still long enough to watch. His frowning countenance and her own pleas for something new after so long underground, with only cylixes to talk to, wore the big guy down.

They were learning how to twist his arm, and he didn't put up much of a fight. He was calmer. Without having to dig, she could see his vitals evening out. There was still a tension in how he held himself. Ready to react, never fully disengaged, and it wore on him. She was still so new but time and experience with Chief was showing her the grooves he had worn into himself.

Fernando helped. He was an unstoppable force of worry and civilian reasoning in the face of the most stubborn, immovable Spartan alive. He was so human that it reminded Chief of his own humanity.

She knows they need each other. That's why she nudges Chief and silences proximity alerts when Fernando starts leaning against him. Their pilot yawns but stays quiet. He makes a valiant effort to keep watching, but humans have a hard time resisting the siren call of sleep when they feel safe.

She knows this. She knows this moment is just like the meteor shower. Ephemeral.

[owomonsterwrites]

Carter-A259 is the Dad That Stepped Up

Carter, Carter, Carter. Carter. The slept-on member of NOBLE Team.

He’s also the oldest SPARTAN III by a decent margin. Unlike the rest of Alpha Company, taken at four, five, and six, Carter is a whole-blown eleven. There were members of Alpha without any adult teeth. There were members of Alpha who DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO READ.

Enter Carter. Carter is the oldest and most mature kid there. Think about that. Think about the maturity gap between four and eleven. Between six and eleven. That’s five years between him and the second-eldest child. Five hundred scared children, and in a best case scenario, the instructors tolerate them. What exactly do you think happens?

Carter steps up. He’s probably one of the few people to actually stand up for rest of the kids. He’s probably the one they go to for support, at least in the early years. There’s a distinction between him and the others that just wasn’t present, really, in the original IIs.

Is this good? Fuck no. Carter’s a fucking tween, he shouldn’t have to parent anybody! Is this still how it goes down? Probably, yeah. It still matters that it happens.

Fast-forward ten years. The youngest Alpha-IIIs have graduated. Carter is twenty-one. Jun, Rosenda, and Emile are… around sixteen (their ages don’t actually line up with the data on Alpha Company, but lets assume they do.) Thom is fifteen. They get pulled from the lineup, and then Operation: PROMETHEUS happens.

Three hundred of Carter’s surrogate children little brothers and sisters die practically overnight, and he can’t do anything about it. He wasn’t even there. How do you think that would feel? Especially when one considers the reason he was pulled from the active company: he could handle children was a leader.

Carter is described as being a “born leader” but in all honesty, that’s complete bullshit. His superiors only think that because admitting the truth would be too depressing, even for them. He is a good leader - a really good leader - but only because he had to be. Because there were five hundred children looking somewhere for guidance and he was the tallest one there. Carter stepped up.

Three years pass. Carter (24); Jun, Emile, Rosenda (19); Thom (18). Carter has been assigned various missions. I imagine this is where his calculated stoicism hardens into what we see in Reach. Yet, right now, he’s about to get possibly the worst assignment of his fucking life.

NOBLE Team is entirely comprised of teenagers. They have him wrangling TEENAGERS. As a job!

This is, of course, when he meets Kat (14) and the others - none of which are people we know yet, all of whom may presumedly be from either Alpha or Beta, which puts them firmly in the 14-19 age range. Ain’t that bitch?

And they die. Holy shit do they die! Every member of NOBLE Team other than him and Kat are replaced many times over!!! Now he doesn’t have to worry about missing the deaths of people he cares about because he’s right there and he can watch it happen! Horrific.

Seven years of this pass. Carter (31); Jun, Emile, Rosenda (26); Thom (25); Kat (21). This is about the time when Jorge (fucking FORTY) gets assigned to the team. Apparently. The dates are so weird with these guys, because there’s dialogue implying Jorge is the least-recent addition to the team, but that gives Jun and especially Emile barely any time (less than half a year???) to have settled in. If that’s the case then holy shit, Carter and Kat are way bigger badasses for surviving that long. That’s eight years of suicide missions with high turnover rates! What the fuck.

Anyways. Jorge shows up. Carter’s no longer the oldest. Jorge has leagues more experience, and is one of the original SPARTAN IIs. Everyone on the team (including Carter) probably thought Jorge would take over as leader. Carter shakes his hand, expecting to reorganize the command structure, and then this guy fucking calls him ‘boss.’ Carter has spent his whole life being an Older Brother with Single Dad responsibilities and the second an actual adult shows up the dynamic doesn’t change! He just has another guy he’s responsible for!!! What the fuck, ONI.

And let’s not forget about Kat. Oh, boy, let’s talk about Kat.

Kat, of course, is the only other member of the original NOBLE Team, which aside from being INSANE, also explains why the two are so in sync. Thank you, Jorge, for that single, ambiguous line of dialogue in the Long Night of Solace intro cutscene. Kat does, in fact, have Carter “dialed-in.” They’ve worked together for eight years and are also the only constants in each others’ lives. Carter has seen her grow up and probably helped. She’s his second in command. She’s the XO to his CO. He willingly cedes operational control over to her very frequently, to the point where she’s in charge of NOBLE Team for an entire third of Reach.

Now, whatever you think Kat and Carter are to each other* you cannot deny that they have the strongest connection out of any two members of NOBLE Team. Jorge’s death is likely more distant for Carter. It happened instantaneously in space, which still hurts, but fucking hell. Kat dies literally right in front of him. She has a hole in her head and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Eight years (eight years!) and it all ends in a heartbeat, like her life didn’t even matter, and he couldn’t stop it from happening. It’s an abrupt, untimely, undeserved, and unworthy end for Carter’s closest friend and family. In the end, all he can do is be the one to carry her body to the escape pelican. How do you live with something like that?

That’s why, when Six and Emile (and Humanity’s last hope, I guess) are about to be slaughtered, Carter does as any good father/brother/commander would. He takes a deep breath, assesses the situation, and steps up.

*my vote is for ‘everything,’ because relationships (of any variety) between people who didn’t have childhoods can be very blurred and messy, especially if their bond is formed around the traumas of war and bloodshed during their formative years.