#I never really liked HL2 even as a kid but I will say this

[angels-heap]

Is it bad that i find Freemance (Gordon and Alyx) kind of squicky? I don't know, I really used to like it and the possible romantic relationship between them is super cute! But the fact that Alyx was a child when she knew him, and that Eli makes the weird comments about them when he has known Gordon for so long and that his DAUGHTER. It just really doesn't sit right with me anymore. I wouldn't want any of my friends to date my daughter if i had one! But i don't know anymore :-(

I’ve answered this question a few times before (sometimes more politely than others), but I’ll bite one more time, since your message sounds genuine and I hate to see people stressing out over this. 

In short, no, it’s not “bad” to find something squicky. That’s the beauty of the term; sometimes you just don’t vibe with something and “squick” is a great way to express that without needing to justify why you don’t like the thing. There are HL pairings I find squicky that aren’t necessarily objectively bad. Nobody’s saying you have to love freemance to be a HL fan.

That said, though, I can tell you’re feeling conflicted about this and I’m hoping I can help by clearing up some common misconceptions about the ship:

1. There’s nothing in canon that says Gordon knew Alyx when she was a child. What little information we do have actually suggests he didn’t. We know he worked with her father in some capacity, but given how dangerous and secure Black Mesa was, I highly doubt Eli was bringing his 4 year old to work regularly. Also, Alyx canonically doesn’t know much about Gordon in either HL2 or HLA, which strongly implies that if they ever did meet pre-canon, it was brief and not at all memorable. Anyone who claims that Gordon and Alyx were close pre-canon or had some sort of uncle/niece relationship is either confused or lying because nothing in the games supports that conclusion. 

2. Yeah, Eli’s jokes are a little cringey at times (and it appears Alyx would agree with that assessment, which is clearly intended to be humorous on Valve’s part), but I don’t think that’s an argument to sink the ship. Eli was probably at least a decade older than Gordon when they worked together at Black Mesa. Presumably, they didn’t work together for terribly long, considering how young Gordon is; HL1 was originally meant to take place on Gordon’s first day of work, but that was retconned to an unspecified earlier date to explain why he knows these people in HL2. Regardless, now Eli’s 20 years older than that with a daughter who’s around Gordon’s age. It’s not like Eli’s trying to set Alyx up with a same-age colleague; actually, Gordon arguably has more in common with Alyx than he does with Eli at this point. Also, it’s not unheard of in the real world for parents to try to set their kids up with respectable acquaintances and yes, even co-workers. Valve wouldn’t have written that in if it was socially unacceptable. 

3. We know Eli knows about the G-man and his relationship to Gordon and he also comments on the fact that Gordon doesn’t seem to have aged. He definitely knows (or at least strongly suspects) that Gordon’s still 27, which makes him a perfectly acceptable potential partner for his 24 year old daughter. Regardless of when Gordon was technically born, he’s still physically and developmentally in his 20s. He and Alyx have a similar amount of lived experience and complementary skillsets.

4. Eli, Barney, and other random NPCs don’t start teasing Alyx and Gordon about possibly being interested in each other until they’ve been working together for a while. Regardless of whether or not Gordon/you (as the player) reciprocates, it’s quite clear in the games that Alyx is developing a thing for Gordon as the story progresses, so it’s not like this is a case of creepy meddling friends/relatives (or game developers) trying to force a weird relationship on unwilling participants. 

5. This is a dynamic that could never happen in real life that neither party had control over, which means there’s nothing predatory going on here. Time travel/stasis is also a very common trope in sci-fi media. Everyone in HL2 has been through a lot and seen some shit. Alyx getting together with a 20-something year old dude who got yoinked out of time for two decades probably doesn’t even crack the top 10 for “unexpected shit that’s happened since Black Mesa” at this point. The characters clearly love and respect each other and we have every reason to believe everyone’s intentions in encouraging this relationship are pure. 

If freemance still doesn’t appeal to you, that’s totally fine! I’m not expecting to convince you to love it and that’s not a prerequisite to participate in the fandom, but I hope this helped counter some of the misinformation you may have heard elsewhere. As always, I’m happy to discuss this further in other asks or DMs if you still have questions! 

[tigerdrop]

hey i just wanna say the long posts genuinely make my day. also can you talk more about gordon freeman character because the way you write him makes me quake in my gay little boots

i would love to talk about gordon freeman. thank u for the opportunity

the first thing i need to communicate about gordon is that this dude sucks. and i say this in the fondest way possible. he is a bitch from the moment he drops into the world until the moment he goes out. if you dont believe me, give it another watch! gordons mouthy and rude for no real reason, at least so far as “being a regular dude on his way into work” goes, and this dude goes around calling his coworkers names with zero provocation. (of course, we all know that the reason is because its a funny guy improv stream that borrows a bit from freemans mind, but im talkin from a character sense.)

but my argument isnt just that gordon freeman sucks. its that he sucks in a very specific way that i find insanely endearing. i love this dude. i love to hate him. hes awful in a very mundane sense - weve all known a guy like this, at least if youve spent too much time online - and its cathartic to watch him suffer because of it.

gordons a smart guy. as written, hes gotta be - hes a recent MIT grad, on his way to work at a top-secret research facility to do weird shit with crystals and theoretical physics. but the thing about smart guys is that theyre often......selectively intelligent. we can see this in the way that he has a hard time navigating his surroundings, and needs the science crew to guide him through it and keep him alive.

this is one of those things that is a natural consequence of somebody going through the game for the first time, but that i am interpreting as “gordon is kind of stupid sometimes”. its uncharitable but its not like he doesnt deserve it. he likes to boss around the crew as if he knows what hes doing, when he often very much does not, and is fond of demeaning their intelligence. hes real bad about this with tommy in particular, treating him like hes a kid whos playing at being a scientist when tommy is actually a decade older than him. all i am saying is that gordon ought to stay humble. hes awful cocky when he perceives himself as better than others.

which, i think, tracks with how cocky he gets when he gives up on the whole “well-meaning citizen” thing and just unloads bullets into people. he puts up a front of being a Nice Guy, you know, just some dude caught in a bad situation who doesnt like seeing his companions obliterate every NPC they come across, but that doesnt stop him from cackling like a fucking madman and mowing down aliens (and soldiers) every once in awhile. when he stops seeing himself as helpless and starts seeing himself as the one in control, the gloves come off. he gets mean. and i think thats very sexy of him

this, among other things, is why i am insistent that gordon freeman is a control freak. he desperately wants to be in control of the situation at all times, shepherding around the science crew primarily by bitching at them, but its of limited success. its futile. sisyphean. tommy, coomer, bubby, and benrey exist almost to torment him with exactly the thing that would make him suffer the most: a gaggle of people running around causing problems for him, but he cant go anywhere without them b/c hes reliant on them to make it out alive.

its perpetual suffering, and its cathartic to watch. and funny, too. and if youre a little weirdo like me, its very, very enjoyable. how twisted up he gets when nobodys listening to him! how sweaty and frazzled he must look. its cute, and it also makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him and tell him to just be a little nicer. he wants control but he doesnt know how to attain it, he doesnt know how to play nice like a real leader. i think its a neat contrast to gordon freeman as we know him in HL2, where he literally is the leader of the resistance and has to live up to it. this is gordon freeman but if he was moe through helplessness.

“helpless” is, i think, a great way to describe him. a core bit of imagery in half life is this sense of railroadedness and helplessness, with gordon freeman being put into play like a chess piece and having no choice but to move forward. and this iteration of gordon leans into that by being totally dependent on the science crew in order to make progress and Not Die. and hes also subject to the whims of benrey, local eldritch weirdo who has basically made it his life mission to fuck with gordon.

gordons anxieties dont help with that. if he wasnt so fun to stress out and fuck with, the science crew probably wouldnt do it so much! too bad for him that they like fucking with him so much that he was driven into a panic attack (multiple times, even, depending on your interpretation). hes got that real neurotic mindset. always worrying about shit that could go wrong, and attempting to exert control over his surroundings in an effort to control the anxiety.

IMO the real way to nail the Neurotic Gordon Freeman Experience is to combine the ever-present anxiety with his pervasive sense of self-loathing. he openly states that he has no friends and nobody seems to like him, and to that, i really gotta say, i wonder why. he doesnt really seem to factor in that hes kind of a bitch, and has way too high an estimation of his own intelligence relative to everybody elses. its really one of the worst ways to be: aware that people dont like you, but unaware of exactly why. if he was like, 10% nicer, he probably wouldnt have had half as many issues getting through black mesa, but also, its funny to see him squawking his way through the game. so, you know.

its stuff like that that makes me headcanon him as a dude with low self-esteem in general. convinced that hes not likable, not attractive, out of his element......impostor syndrome, except that theres some truth to it. this is a guy who truly does not realize how good he has it: he really is just an average shitty dude, and yet, somehow, benrey took a shine to him. some poor motherfucker out there actually likes him and wants to suck his dick. thats dedication

also, i keep bringing up “repression” when i talk about gordon. and hopefully, what ive been talking about helps explain why. he has a strong desire to be a regular dude, not just murdering his way through black mesa, but if hes pushed hard enough he leans into it. gets bossy. picks up a cigar off a dead soldier and takes a long drag, before smacking forzen around with a pistol and ordering him around. gordon freeman is a regular, kind of anxious guy who likes competitive swimming and streaming on justin.tv and making anime references, and he is also a guy who takes a filthy pleasure in making a trained soldier his bitch. and i didnt make up any of this shit - this is purestrain canon, baby. this is a guy with problems

to me, this screams the kind of guy who represses a lot of shit b/c he doesnt feel like its morally decent. you run into this guy a lot online: the wokeboy, the online leftist, the guy who spends too much time on social media websites. (like reddit. i think he would actively use reddit and he would never get any appreciable amount of karma but he never stops posting. its sisyphean! cathartic.) from the way he talks about “bootboys”, i think it tracks. he knows about imperialism, he knows about feminism, but at the end of the day hes your average american white dude who struggles with internalizing it.

a lot of those dudes struggle with sex and gender issues. (dont we all.) when youre trying to be a Good Person(tm), you spend a lot of time thinking about your own relationship to sex and kink and all that shit. and i maintain that a too-online dude who buries a lot of his control freak tendencies would also try to bury a lot of weird sexual shit in an attempt to seem Normal and Well-Adjusted and not like a little freak. i justify this by the sheer number of times gordon blurts out weird sex shit as a joke. there are only two outcomes to making that many piss jokes: either youre secretly a piss guy, or you lathe-of-heaven yourself into becoming one. i will stand by this

ive talked a lot about why this dude sucks. now, let me talk to you about what makes gordon so much fun to write. first things first: hes funny! a subjective evaluation, yeah, but both in- and out-of-character, hes aiming to be funny. and being the straight man to everybody else plays into that whole “helplessness” thing.

secondly: underneath it all, there is a good dude under there. gordon worries when his companions get hurt, he tries to clean them off and patch them up, and hes got his lil leftist heart in the right place. you could even read a lot of his bossy, bitchy demeanor as him wanting to make sure everyone gets out okay and doesnt hurt themselves. when it comes to animals and anti-imperialist sentiment, gordons a pretty good guy.

hes the kind of guy who would probably see a dog on the street and get excited and play with it, but would get really prickly about the correct way to put dishes in the dishwasher. control freak tendencies.

finally, subjecting such a miserable, tormented guy to even more psychological anguish is really, really fun. you feel a little bad for him, but he kind of deserves it. so many problems he goes through are purely of his own making, and if gordon would just relax and quit trying to hard to maintain control - of himself, of the people around him - and own up to having Problems and Issues, he would be a happier guy. but thats why its fun to bend him until he breaks. being a little control freak myself, putting gordon freeman thru psychosexual torment is cathartic.

when it comes to writing his thought processes, the fact that he is canonically some kind of psychotic (yes, i am boldly claiming this. suck me) and i am also canonically some kind of psychotic makes it easier to write what i think his thought processes are. i just give him my brain issues of “getting lost in thought” and “overthinking fucking everything”. a touch of paranoia helps. even if i dont explicitly label him as schizophrenic please know that i am writing him as a paranoid little nutcase at all times because, uh, you write what you know.

paranoid. anxious. of the mindset that everyones out to get him (which isnt helpful when everyone is out to get him). repressed and deeply Not Normal but trying so very fucking hard to be normal and well-adjusted. a control freak with sadistic tendencies who also really, really likes getting bullied by his best frenemy. a hapless little nerd who sounds really cute when his voice starts to break from nerves. and, most importantly, a dumb jock. do not ever forget this.

thats gordon freeman, babey. hope that helps

[enigmatic-elegance]

Late Night Thoughts

Was not able to sleep. Went on a late night nostalgia trip, looking over old screens from back when I did HL2 RP. Old forum posts, old memories, things pretty much forgotten by most, save for those of us who were there. It’s going to be a long and disjointed post, going gods know where. It helps me a lot to reflect time to time, and to think things over. Putting it here on this blog is a means to put it to writing. I’d not be hurt if no one read it. As I said, it’s largely going to be just thought. Anyways.

I came from Half Life 2 RP. Which is hilarious because the reputation it has to those who know it. And lord is that reputation deserved. The majority of HL2 RP servers, using a script called ‘Dark RP’, was a nightmare. A total mess. I mean.. I remember joining a few servers as a kid and being a mixture of lost and really afraid.

Voice chat was active on these servers, you see. So people didn’t type much if at all. It was just..people on mic screaming and memeing and making racist remarks. I didn’t get it. Turns out, yep, that is 90% of the shit that HL2 RP is. Well.. I didn’t give up immediately.

I found a server at random. It was called taconbanana. Great name, right? I remember joining and seeing a billboard high on a rooftop on the map that advertised their forum. I was a kid, I didn’t really care one way or another. In my first 10 minutes on the server I built a stack of spawned crates (in garry’s mod, the platform we used to RP on, you can spawn props in the world). I used those crates to climb up over a wall in the city center, was stopped by an admin, and given a 5 minute ban.

Could have been the end of that. I didn’t really understand though, but.. what I saw on that server was pretty cool. and no voice chat either, people were just typing to each other. So.. I went to the forum during that ban, signed up for an account, and read all the rules.

That was back in.. oh gosh..04? I remember I was like 12 or 13 when it all happened. I went back into the server, made my first character in roleplay ever. Ryan McGovern. What.. a shitty.. name. BUT, he was pretty much.. me. No real special characteristics in the RP verse just..a dude. And I went with him into the city and walked around. I watched folks RP. I opened a little store. I sold milk and paper and TP. The Combine, the ‘police’ of the HL2 world, came into my store and put me against a wall as they raided my shop.

I was in love.

The world was gripping, always being a fan of HL2 personally. The RP was serious, well done, and totally immersive. Everyone was in character, and it drew me in.

I was absolutely hooked.

In my time in TnB, I grew. I grew as a writer. I grew as a person. I grew as an RPer. That whole server was my advent, into roleplay, into the thing I love.

I met on that server some amazing people. Most of whom I have lost touch with after I left TnB years back. A few I still have contact with, and we chat time to time. Those whom I don’t have contact with.. I hope they are well. Some great people. David H., Operator, Zo, Dave Brown, Lord, Garfy, GregG, Anubis, Spartan, I could go on.. these are the folks that shaped me.

I eventually became a CmD. Commander. I still remember the full designation by heart. CCA.C18-BASTION.CmD.43636

Katie ‘Kit’ Sommers was the woman’s name. My character, designation 43636. With her.. I took up post as a Commander. My first leadership role in any RP sphere. Or..anywhere, really. In the year I did that.. I might well say it’s one of the best years of my life. The stories we created were vast, sweeping, beautiful.

We were so engrossed in our RP that we had a whole list of military and police codes we memorized. We addressed each other by designation, issued weekly training. Some would call it TOO obsessive. Maybe.. but to me it was involved. You felt alive in this world, at many points it was more real to me then my own life outside it.

In that game, I also encountered the beautiful romance between Kit and Lucas. It is, to this day, one of the best romances I’ve ever been a part of. It was beautiful.. and the day that Kit died, I wept like a child. But she died in a way that was -perfect- for her. Gun in hand, comrades at her sides, warmth in her heart. Kit perished with humanity in her, despite the extensive brainwashing that made her the machine she had become. She had humanity.

This image was a posed screen representing one of their last RPs as a couple, before her death. I think they both knew her time had come, even before us players did. I still feel myself choke when I think back on it. I will always love them, and always love and miss Kit as a character.

Could never bring her back though. She was only for one world, one storyline. She died beside her brothers in arms, and that is exactly where she deserves to rest.

Heh.. her office in the nexus. Took about an hour to build it every time the server had a wipe. Context..this room at it’s base is just an empty stone room. Every single prop, the catwalk, the railings, the chairs and bed and the room on the left side (that you can’t see well).. built it all. She had one cool office.

So when did it stop? I never really..officially quit. I can’t explain it really one day I just logged in less. And less.. and less. Soon, I was removed from Commander for inactivity. I stopped logging in..and never returned.

Why? I don’t.. know. I really don’t. I was happy, I had a great crew, I loved the world and RP. I just stopped.. and watched it go away. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved it? Maybe I was depressed, didn’t understand it yet? Maybe I just felt it was time to roll on. But I did.

Wandered for a while.

Found WoW.. a few times. I’d join, RP for a bit, then leave for a few months. In that time.. damn.. some of the worst points in my life. My world had taken a bad turn, and I had no escape.

But I found WoW. I like it here. I still like it here. And I don’t want to just walk away from it like I did with TnB, and HL2.

I don’t want to just.. move on.

Sometimes, I need to look at myself. See where I am, and what I am doing, and how I act. Everything.

I like what I see right now.. but I know I can improve.

I find myself getting annoyed by little things that don’t matter. Things I should let go of. I could work on being more tolerant of other’s ideas, even if they are not things I’d personally do. I could strive to be more open, more friendly, more trusting. Even with all I have striven for, there is always more.

I want there to be more. I want to improve. I want to always look back on myself and see a better man now then I once was.

With TnB.. I was a teen. A child. I didn’t get it. I didn’t know.. I didn’t know how to lead, how to guide, how to uplift, how to coexist. But I know more now. I’m not perfect but I know more. And in that knowledge.. I have tried to be..something? To the people of this server and to my guild.

I don’t know what that ‘something’ is.

But as I was looking through those old screens.. thinking of the old RPs I did.. the old memories I made. I think I realized what I was doing.

I was remembering the positive people who changed my life. Made me who I am. Showed me RP, and gifted me this outlet. Who gave me memories worth remembering, worth laughing about, worth tearing up over.

And I hope I can do that for others too.

I hope I can be worth it. Worth the effort, worth the trust, worth the investment. I hope people will look back on the stories we write in 10, 15, 20 years.. and I hope they smile and laugh and cry.. I hope they feel the same sad swell in their chest as I do right now looking back on my old RPs too.

I know it’s cliche to say.. but life really is too short to live it with anger, regret, or agitation. I want to fill those places with memories worth remembering. Stories worth telling, like this story was worth telling to me.

When I started CC, I had no clue what the fuck I was doing. Still not convinced I do. But I know I still have not been the best I can be for all of them. And I can be more. I can do more. I can provide more. I want to.

I’m not going to walk away from this. I want to live these memories.. a little longer.

[jaythelay]

It actually makes sense why some people prefer the Leak of HL2's story, atmosphere, characters, music, all around design...

You see, most of the time in games, you just have, you know, the game, but rougher, still figuring stuff out, potentially before a big shift, potentially not. But otherwise they're sculpting the same clay vase.

Valve just threw out the pot while it was still drying, took some pieces of it, put it into a new one.

People reaaaally liked finding the broken pieces in Valve's trashcan and putting it back together, because it's really it's own vase. It's not even completely fair to compare the 2 in any regard, just a lustful "if only" based on entirely incomplete works.

Really what people are saying is they either wish they got to see the Leak's original vision complete, or genuinely find HL2 to feel a bit rushed and weaker in artistic aspects to HL1 and the Leak.

I'd say the primary thing is that, HL2 just doesn't have a feel to it like HL1 or the Leak. It really does feel like they were told they have to throw out a massive chunk of their work and were rushed within a year to get it released.

I don't think there was a disdain for the leak, so much as, Valve was still experimenting, and lost hope in whatever original vision actually forming. It'd been 3 years, it just leaked, let's treat it as a kick in the ass to actually form Any vision before release.

Lemme put it to you this way, Nobody really thinks Half Life's Alpha is any better, the Leak is an Alpha aswell. HL Alpha showed a vision that wasn't AS radically different as the Leaks. It felt closer to a slightly crumpled clay Vase that was later remade much clearer, with more expertise and knowledge than before.

The Leak doesn't feel iterated upon, it feels abandoned, and like there was truly something there, that HL2 just doesn't bother with, it's like all the soul was sucked out just to have something to form. Like an artist mad, just wanting to make something by the end of the day.