(Spoilers for HLAGE. Seriously, go watch it. Also long post warning)

I really love the way this series explores the boundaries between the figures of Wayne, the Player, and Gordon. It may seem simple on the surface: Wayne is the actual real-life person behind HLVRAI, who is fully aware that the "AIs" are really his friends goofing around. He streams to produce a YouTube comedy series. To create HLVRAI’s story, he acts the character of the Player, who has just picked up a special copy of Half-Life. To the Player, the AIs truly are AIs. He streams because that is what streamers do and solely exists in the story/universe created by Wayne. And, of course, the Player gets in-character as Gordon, the main character of Half-Life and the person the AIs perceive the Player as. Gordon solely exists in the videogames the Player plays. Wayne explains this distinction himself:

But I’d argue that these beings are not always so separate. The boundaries between them blur greatly, to the point where separating the three can be difficult. And in a story about a video-game streamer encountering AIs who try to take over his real-life body, this boundary-blurring pushes HLVRAI to the next level.

I like to conceptualize this dissolution of boundaries as the Wayne-Player-Gordon entity. The vast majority of the time Wayne is not a true part of this entity, but his involvement is still important, and I'll get to his part later! 

Player-Gordon

In both HLVRAIs, the Player and Gordon take center-stage. The Player needs to get in-character for the advanced AI to work, and he’s very good at it. It’s difficult to tell if he reacts to certain things as the Player or as Gordon. When the AIs start killing NPCs, is his incredulity due to the brazenness with which his co-workers commit murder, or is it due to him not expecting the AIs to be this chaotic?

Additionally, because Gordon is a silent protagonist in the original Half-Life, a blank slate, the Player can project his own personality onto him. He’s kind of mean; he likes Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days; he wants to be a streamer. So how much of Gordon is the character the Player acts as, and how much is he the Player himself?

I’d argue the distinction is almost obsolete: Gordon basically is the Player. Really, the main difference is that the AIs view him as Gordon. To them, he’s a real member of their universe, so in order to not break their minds with the realization their world is fake, the Player must become Gordon. This situation benefits the Player, too: becoming Gordon immerses him fully in the story, allowing him to believe it’s real, even when he knows in the back of his head it’s just a videogame. In this way, Gordon as the Player’s in-game self can be conceptualized as the Player-Gordon entity. 

We can actually see certain things affect Player-Gordon as a whole - mainly when his hand is cut off in HL1VRAI and when he starts forgetting his friends’ names in HL2VRAI. You would expect an act of violence against the virtual body of Gordon to not affect the Player, but it does. He reacts mentally and emotionally as if he really has just lost his hand, even though he should theoretically be able to assure himself it’s not real. And why would the Player be forgetting characters’ names? This memory loss does not seem to come from being too immersed. In fact, he starts experiencing effects (blurred vision and possibly headaches) before he learns that the water causes memory loss. It’s as if something in the VR experience is targeting Player-Gordon as a whole - reaching through the virtual Gordon to affect the Player outside the game. Corroborated by this hearted comment:

Wayne-Player

And then there’s Wayne. As stated before, he doesn’t quite interact with the Player the same way the Player does with Gordon. However, because the dialogue is improvised and the story streamed live, his genuine reactions shine through at times. For example, Player-Gordon’s reaction in HLVRAI to the Science Team trying to shoot a bunch of moths was a result of Wayne’s genuine surprise, and in HL2VRAI when a cop attacks him for no reason, Player-Gordon’s confusion and anger is due to it being an unintended technical difficulty. Wayne’s reactions here fit very well as Player-Gordon’s reactions, blurring the lines between them. 

But that’s not the main point of this section. Instead, I’d like to examine the way Wayne streams the series on his own Twitch channel affects how the story is told - especially in HLAGE. 

In HLAGE, Gordon does not exist the same way he does in HLVRAI, and not just because the main character of Half-Life: Alyx is, well, Alyx. The Player is not trying to get in-character at all. This time, he’s simply focusing on completing a challenge, talking to Twitch chat and his friend Baaulp along the way. Very importantly, these are Wayne’s Twitch chat, composed of his real-life fans and viewers, and Wayne’s friend Baaulp, who is a cast member of HLVRAI. Both the chat and Baaulp refer to the Player as Wayne.

Of course, Baaulp is not his true real-life self in HLAGE. He’s putting on an act to maintain the illusion that the gnome is really a sentient AI and not a TTS that several people are feeding lines to. However, he still exists as the Player’s friend as well as Wayne’s, blurring the boundary between Wayne and Player. 

HLAGE is presented through Wayne’s Twitch account in order to heighten the viewer’s immersion. When you are watching a livestream on a real person’s account that tells the story about a streamer who shares the same name and friend as said real person, it’s easier to believe that the events of the livestream are truly happening as presented. 

Even in HLVRAI, the Player is at first referred to as Wayne in the video description and captions. They don’t start referring to him as Gordon until later. Screenshots courtesy of @girlradiotv.

In this way, Wayne and Gordon have similar relationships to the Player. If Gordon is a facade for the Player’s in-game self, then Wayne is a facade for the Player’s out-of-game self. Or, Wayne is to the viewers as Gordon is to the AIs: a way of conceptualizing the Player’s existence to others so that the illusion that everything is real isn’t broken. 

The Complete Dissolution of Boundaries in HLAGE

If you’ve watched the finale of HLAGE, you know this is where things get wild. In this series, Wayne-Player-Gordon fully manifests. Not only does it manifest, it is forced into being, holding great implications for the future of HL2VRAI. 

As stated before, Gordon doesn’t exist in HLAGE the same way he does in HLVRAI. Or at least, he shouldn’t exist. Gordon is not a character in Half-Life: Alyx, and the Player is not attempting to immerse himself in the game or appear like a member of the game’s world to any AIs. 

But then enters the gnome. The gnome is aware that he is in a game. He talks to both Twitch chat and Baaulp, and he makes frequent references to the challenge the Player is trying to complete. He is under no impression that the Player actually exists in his world. 

And yet he still calls the Player Gordon. The Player resists this at first, telling him he’s got the wrong game, that they’re in Half-Life: Alyx, but the gnome persists. Eventually the Player gives in. This culminates in the Peppa Pig movie, which claims it was made by Gordon, and in which Peppa Pig speaks directly to Gordon. The Player does not comment on not being Gordon; he immediately accepts it by saying "I didn't make this." 

Through the insistent use of that name, the gnome and Peppa forcibly turn the Player into Player-Gordon. Even without intending it, the Player is still Gordon to the AIs. The AIs then trap the Player in the game, rendering him unable to leave. Like this, he is fully immersed, he fully exists in that world; he is fully Gordon as much as he is the Player. 

And then there's Wayne. When the gnome takes over streaming, his Twitch chat becomes front-and-center. No longer regulated to a small box in the corner, it now takes up a third of the screen. It has become a part of the show itself. The chat asks for Wayne, demanding for him to be returned, desperately trying to contact Baaulp, while the gnome responds "Who is Wayne? Who the fuck is that." Chatters are banned for asking for Wayne or Baaulp. These actions affirm the existence of the Wayne-Player entity. Wayne’s Twitch channel has been taken over, and Wayne himself is nowhere to be seen. Just as the Player is gone, Wayne is gone, too. And they have both been forcibly associated with Gordon. 

Darnold replaced Eli Vance.

eli vance was a character created for hl2 and retconned into being scientist 03 in hl1, and that alyx was kept in a nursery/dormitory in black mesa as a baby. darnold used the scientist 03 model in hlvrai, did not mention having a daughter, and is using eli's hl2 model for hl2vrai. eli vance seeming to not exist, or being overwritten by darnold, means that alyx doesn't really have a context to exist in the plot or to be known by any of the other characters.

Wayne played as Alyx in the Gnome Run first, and the Gnome took away her voice.

wayne attempted to roleplay as alyx for the early parts of his gnome run but quickly dropped it due to the gnome calling him gordon and breaking the fourth wall. there is a brief mention from the run narrator that this will cause wayne to "desync from the animus", implying that the player character/vessel is alyx in a more than superficial way, that it has her being and personality within it. by act 3, the gnome removes all voices from the game, including alyx's. it's also pointed out that wayne, playing alyx, does not have a shadow, and in the finale wayne watches alyx's shadow walk independently in front of him.

This is a simultaneously less refined but newer version or generation of Half-Life 2.

half-life 2 exists as a packaged and sold game in the hlvrai universe. it is referenced by gordon and gabe newell multiple times. however, what gordon is playing in hl2vrai has sprung up naturally from his copy of half-life 1. this means that it could be shaped by events that happened after half-life 2 came out, like the gnome run or the next few things.

Alyx was the most advanced, present NPC in the released version of Half-Life 2.

alyx follows the player through large chunks of half-life 2 and its episodes, and the most work was put into making her seem alive and fleshed out. she has by far the most screen time of any character in the half-life franchise. in the context of hlvrai, where the games were created using some kind of otherworldly power or knowledge to make the games more outstanding, this feels important. alyx is the most realized character in half-life, the most lifelike, so it could be that she is also the most attached to something beyond the normal world.

Episode 2 and Half-Life: Alyx both end with her witnessing the death of her father. HLA ends with her being taken out of the in-game timeline, and there has been an in-real-life 18 year limbo for her character after Episode 2.

this requires thinking of alyx both as a living person with internal thoughts and feelings and perception of time as well as a written, fictional character in an unfinished story, BUT. she has been in a weird limbo, facing the arctic and some strange, unknowable finale, waiting, out of time, filled with grief and anger and fear, for far longer than she's been anything else and i really think that's a part of it.

Something specific happened to her because she heard "the sound of the hollows/the song they sing at the edges of the mind."

everything in her fucking life got morphed and changed into something she can no longer recognize, so she feels like she needs to cling on to the science team for some sense of normalcy, some sense of familiarity. who could she even begin to relate to but them? who else went through anything similar to what she did? who else could she talk to about all of it without sounding insane? they provide some feeling of being heard but of course, they could never understand exactly what she went through. nobody else got their arm cut off, in fact, two of them were the ones who did that to her in the first place. she thinks it helps to be around them, she thinks it's some weird kind of exposure therapy and that the discomfort she feels around them will go away if she just keeps ignoring it, but it doesn't.

she wants it to go away, not just so that she'll have friends she can talk to, and a feeling of having conquered it together and making it out the other side (like she assumes these sorts of things are supposed to go), but also because she's wracked with guilt. she feels so deeply and unalterably guilty for all of it— she was the one who caused the resonance cascade, after all, and she was the de-facto leader of the group, so she feels responsible for all of it. she can recognize that she was treated unfairly at certain points (like, y'know, the whole forced amputation thing), but in retrospect she feels like she had it coming, like it was her responsibility to foresee those events and stop them before they happened. sure, nearly all of them attacked her at some point, but they were all under stress too, it was understandable. if you really think about it, bubby and benrey were right to cut off her arm, i mean, they were scared! <- (gordie inner monologue). so if she left them after all of it, that would make her a horrible, awful, cruel person, in her own eyes. so she has to go to all the stupid little outings and parties, she has to excuse herself to have meltdowns... she has to look in the eyes of the people who hurt her so profoundly and she has to sit through the flashbacks and the emotional turmoil because if she doesn't, she'd be worse than them, in her trauma-addled brain.

it feels like atonement, to her. necessary atonement for the shit she thinks was entirely her own fault. and if she ever feels the nagging desire to cut them off, a voice reminds her that she'll forever be known as some cruel son of a bitch who almost ended the world and then abandoned the people who carried her through it. and then she'll be alone. because who would want to be friends with someone so spiteful and miserable.

(this turned out longer than i thought it would so im sparing you the experience of scrolling past it. true darnold pepper heads will read on. i know this to be true)

Ehh... I think they're more different? On the SURFACE it appears similar- otherworldly deity + human, the deity loves just fucking with the human, deity very clearly also wants to fuck the human, deity causes human a LOT of harm. But those are pretty surface level.

The thing about Frenrey is that Gordon is combative with Benrey from the very start. Gordon still wants Benrey to live and stuff (until the betrayal), but he's also extremely fucking irritated by him, because Benrey keeps being weird and confusing. Part of the delight of the ship is seeing Gordon try to use any semblance of reason on this weird security guard who's very clearly just fucking with him. It's this post as a ship.

Meanwhile with Billford, Bill and Ford match each others freak pretty well. It's not combative until Ford learns what Bill plans to do. Up to that point, their relationship is friendly and warm and fun. Not to say there's nothing wrong with it- there are red flags on basically every single page where Bill interacts with Ford. But they are partners who enjoy each others' company.

Another big difference between the two is the TONE it's going for. Like, HLVRAI has darker moments (lookin at you act 3 part 2), but overall it's a comedy series first and foremost. And the dynamic between Gordon and Benrey is no different. It's less funny to me in Act 3 (remembering specific moments where hes talking to benrey expressing his despair and hatred and there's no music playing at all), but it overall remains funny.

Meanwhile, Billford is, for the most part, played completely straight. There's funnier moments there- Bill crying in the bar over Ford, Ford using the fucking divorce joke on Bill before shooting him with a gun- but there's a certain point in TBOB where it just... stops being funny. Because Billford is an abusive relationship. The coding is as subtle as a slap to the face. And there is no way for me to look at stuff like Puppet Hour, or the torture scene, or Bill calling Ford his property, or just the line "LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME MAKE YOU DO" and feel anything but nauseous. (Which is the appeal of it to me- exploring this horrifyingly abusive relationship and the impact it had on both.)

Both ships are "one guy is driven insane by weird inscrutable alien deity thing," but it feels VERY different to me. One is hilarious, seeing this fucking guy who has to keep these four alive be driven absolutely bonkers by this weird alien security guard thing. The other is a horror ship, an abusive relationship where we see this interdimensional deity slowly taking more and more and more from a man desperate to prevent the apocalypse, until he has nothing left. Comedy vs horror, yknow?

1. Benrey shows up on Gordon’s doorstep like a wet cat and domesticity scenarios happen.

and

2. Benrey learns that humans can’t respawn or regrow their limbs and he’s genuinely caused Gordon great pain.

And like obviously write whatever you want, im not the fandom police and I’m sure these have good angst potential or something, but I do wish more of fannon would engage with the actual themes of the series and dynamics of these characters.

Because Benrey couldn’t show up on Gordon’s doorstep, he’s trapped in a computer and there’s nothing outside of Black Mesa. And Gordon can respawn and fix his player model, he just doesn’t to maintain kayfabe. And I find that so much more interesting.

Because think about it. The physical stakes in this series are nonexistent because nothing that happens to Gordon in the game can have any real effect on his real self. But the emotional stakes are through the fucking roof because the existential stability of these AIs are on the brink of shattering and Gordon cares so fucking much about them that he roleplays super hard as a way to preserve the illusion and Benrey’s shenanigans jeopardize that.

And from Benrey’s perspective that has to be annoying because he knows that none of this is real, it’s just a game and he’s just messing around bro why are you freaking out over everything? Like I personally don’t even think that in the intended story of this hypothetical Half-Life VR game that Benrey is supposed to be this extra-dimensional threat, I think he’s just more aware from the jump and better at manipulating the game’s systems. He really was just using PAC3 for that final boss.

This dynamic fascinates me to no end and there are so many creative ways to expand on this metanarrative and it frustrates me to seen it get put to the wayside for plots I’ve seen elsewhere. Benrey and Gordon are not on equal footing with the rest of the cast and they are not on equal footing with each other and that’s so interesting.

1. Benrey shows up on Gordon’s doorstep like a wet cat and domesticity scenarios happen.

and

2. Benrey learns that humans can’t respawn or regrow their limbs and he’s genuinely caused Gordon great pain.

And like obviously write whatever you want, im not the fandom police and I’m sure these have good angst potential or something, but I do wish more of fannon would engage with the actual themes of the series and dynamics of these characters.

Because Benrey couldn’t show up on Gordon’s doorstep, he’s trapped in a computer and there’s nothing outside of Black Mesa. And Gordon can respawn and fix his player model, he just doesn’t to maintain kayfabe. And I find that so much more interesting.

Because think about it. The physical stakes in this series are nonexistent because nothing that happens to Gordon in the game can have any real effect on his real self. But the emotional stakes are through the fucking roof because the existential stability of these AIs are on the brink of shattering and Gordon cares so fucking much about them that he roleplays super hard as a way to preserve the illusion and Benrey’s shenanigans jeopardize that.

And from Benrey’s perspective that has to be annoying because he knows that none of this is real, it’s just a game and he’s just messing around bro why are you freaking out over everything? Like I personally don’t even think that in the intended story of this hypothetical Half-Life VR game that Benrey is supposed to be this extra-dimensional threat, I think he’s just more aware from the jump and better at manipulating the game’s systems. He really was just using PAC3 for that final boss.

This dynamic fascinates me to no end and there are so many creative ways to expand on this metanarrative and it frustrates me to seen it get put to the wayside for plots I’ve seen elsewhere. Benrey and Gordon are not on equal footing with the rest of the cast and they are not on equal footing with each other and that’s so interesting.

@newtafterdark had the fantastic idea of metalhead gordon and i’m here for it