Meta: There's No Such Thing as Ghosts (RvB Out of Mind, Recovery One, s6)--DFvQ

CW: suicide, character death

RvB was by no means the only Halo machinima web series to emerge in the mid-00s; in fact, my initial entrée into the genre was Lost: Halostyle (YouTube 2005-2009, also called Lost Cause; Leslie/Druko shippers unite!). What sets RvB apart, besides being one of the first and its relative consistency, is that there’s a considerable tone shift between the absurdist farce of BGC (s1-5) and the plot-driven angst of Recollection (s6-8). This tone shift is facilitated by the first two miniseries, Out of Mind (between s4 and s5) and Recovery One (between s5 and s6). Retconning the events of BGC and establishing a darker tone seem to reflect a desire for the show to be taken seriously both literally and figuratively, which makes sense as Rooster Teeth was becoming more established as a company in this period.

 

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Meta: Memory Is the Key (RvB Relocated, s7)-- DFvQ

CW: PTSD, torture, DID, suicide, self-harm

It is fitting that the arc where memory becomes so central is called Recollection, which can mean both remembering and collecting again the various Re-names of this era’s seasons (in order, “Reconstruction”, Relocated, “Recreation”, and “Revelation”). The fragmentation of Leonard Church, revealed in s6, retroactively serves as the catalyst for all the events of the series, and reintegration of the fractured self becomes a major theme throughout RvB’s run. The Meta re-collecting Church’s fragments in the search for metastability is what ultimately ends any serious adherence to the rivalry between Reds and Blues and leads to the destruction of Project Freelancer by its own ghosts, or should I say AI.

 

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