Xavia

(Periodic reminder that this is just where my brain went and others have probably made these points ten times over, especially with a fandom this old. If there’s ancient meta that says these things better than I can, please point it out to me.)

The title “Red vs. Blue” has both a built-in antagonism and a preoccupation with armour colour. The series attempts to unpack both that antagonism and that division into sides by calling each of these terms into question. What does it mean to be Red? To be Blue? Why does it have to be a matter of one or the other? The “vs.” in my dissertation title asks similar questions: does the relationship between creators, characters, and fans have to be adversarial, or is the conflict (and even difference) between them artificial? What does framing these positions as necessarily in conflict afford and prohibit?

Even in the first episode, the nature of the conflict between Red Team and Blue Team is called into question in the “why we’re here” speech between Reds Grif and Simmons (which I will definitely have FEELINGS about in a later post):

Simmons: Seriously though, why are we out here? As far as I can tell, it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. No way in or out.

Grif: Mm hmm.

Simmons: The only reason that we set up a Red Base here, is because they have a Blue Base over there. And the only reason they have a Blue Base over there, is because we have a Red Base here.

Grif: Yeah. That's because we're fighting each other.

Simmons: No, no. But I mean, even if we were to pull out today, and they were to come take our base, they would have two bases in the middle of a box canyon. Whoopdee-fucking-doo.

Grif: What's up with that anyway? I mean, I signed on to fight some aliens. Next thing I know, Master Chief blows up the whole Covenant armada and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, fighting a bunch of blue guys. (1x1)

Part of the point of the series, especially in the early seasons, is to lampshade all the weird things about Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), the game on which it’s based and that it uses to film via machinima. From a Doylist perspective, the multiplayer maps are contained to prevent wandering and to facilitate PvP battle as a game (e.g. capture the flag, last man standing, king of the hill, etc.). RvB, however, takes a Watsonian perspective and asks what the story behind these conflicts is; what is the strategic advantage of a box canyon in the middle of nowhere? Audiences and players need them all to be in different coloured armour to tell them apart because of the limitations of the medium; why do soldiers in an army (which often prides itself on uniformity) need to be different colours? Players can individually choose whether to be human or Covenant based on preference; why would humans be fighting each other in the storyworld?

What we and the characters learn throughout the series is that (spoilers) there is no war between Reds and Blues, in fact they’re simulation troopers meant to help train Freelancers, ostensibly for the war against the Covenant. Deception is thus a major theme of the show, one that is already woven throughout the first season. There are several moments of deliberate deception that further the plot and that create character backstory. When Tex arrives in Blood Gulch to help the Blues, she arrives with a cloaking device and a voice filter that helps her pass as a man. VIC, who works for both Red Command and Blue Command without their knowledge, even furthers that ruse by using he/him pronouns for Tex. Tex’s gender is revealed to the audience and the Reds at the same time when her voice filter malfunctions just as Church reveals to the other Blues that she’s his ex-girlfriend. It’s never explained why Tex was passing as a man, but we’ll come back to Tex’s gender because I predictably have trans feels about it. Later in the season, Blues Caboose and Tucker go through the transporter in order to coat their armour in black soot to match Tex’s armour, giving the illusion that they have more special ops forces than they do. Between this and the introduction of Omega, a wrathful AI who can jump between hosts and overpower their personality, most of the deception in the season actually stems from Tex, a Freelancer who was implanted with Omega. Even in the earliest episodes Project Freelancer is responsible for the Reds and Blues’ misfortunes.

Omega, also called O’Malley, isn’t the only one capable of possession; about eight episodes in, Church is killed and becomes a ‘ghost’, allowing him to possess others. He uses this trick often to either pass as others (such as Sarge, leader of the Reds) or to give himself corporeal form (i.e. Lopez, a robot on Red team). He even paints Lopez blue after possessing him to make it clear what team he’s on. But what’s so funny about s1 is that most of the deception is accidental, because they’re just that incompetent. The arrival of Sheila (the Blues’ tank), Caboose, and Donut (the Red rookie) kickstarts the events of the Blood Gulch Chronicles (s1-5). The other Reds and Blues instantly dislike their new recruits and haze them with a fake mission. Caboose is tasked with guarding the flag at attention indefinitely until “the general” arrives, and Donut is tasked with going to “the store” to buy headlight fluid and elbow grease. Neither of them is expected to succeed, but through a comedy of errors where Donut thinks Blue base is the store and Caboose thinks Donut is the general, Donut is able to take the blue flag. And because he’s still in regulation red armour (which is what Sarge wears), Church mistakes him for Sarge and assumes the Reds have orchestrated a brilliant plot to take them down, causing him to call for back-up.

This is the most prominent mistaken identity in the season; it’s much more common for the characters simply to be mistaken in their understanding of each other. Tex is assumed to be a man until the aforementioned reveal. When Donut returns to Blood Gulch after being hit by a sticky grenade/”spider”, his new armour is pink, causing the Blues to assume he’s a woman (an assumption Caboose still has well into s5). Because of the misconceptions and also the uniqueness of their armour, many of them are very insistent about what colour they are: Donut’s armour is “lightish-red”, not pink; Grif’s is orange, not yellow or gold; Simmons’ is maroon; Tucker’s is… aqua? Teal? w/e, NOT GREEN. Considering how often they’re mistaken about who’s who, this insistence makes sense (they don’t seem to see the bodies under the armour anymore than the audience does).

There are other moments where misunderstandings arise simply because they don’t know each other well enough yet. Until Lopez’s faulty speech unit is installed, Grif assumes he’s just a quiet human. He also assumes Simmons is Latino (a nod to his voice actor) when he’s really Dutch-Irish. Caboose, barely following Church’s explanation about his relationship with Tex, believes Church is a gay robot. In later seasons, Church asks Tucker if he’s Black when he reveals his first name is Lavernius. Sarge’s name is revealed to legally be “Sarge”. And then of course there’s the discovery that Kai is supposed to be a Blue not a Red, but that’s another post.

In a fake war where the only difference between the sides is their loyalty to the idea of an armour colour that isn’t actually theirs, being able to identify someone by their armour is crucial, especially since that’s all we ever see of them. And what RvB parodies so beautifully is how superficial that is, how easily it can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes, such as Sheila blowing up her teammate Church, Caboose giving up the flag, and Donut being the target of 17 seasons of homophobia. Ultimately, the only thing we know for sure about the war between Reds and Blues is that Reds hate Blues, Blues hate Reds, and both of them want this box canyon in the middle of nowhere. Whoopdee fucking doo.