i hope that in 2025 u get to take more walks, read more books, connect with more people whom u love and who love u, achieve ur goals (even if ur goals are having no goals and just living in the moment), exercise fun hobbies, move from a place of self-direction, and weave together a beguiling assortment of beautiful little moments. remember that no feeling lasts forever. love u
and i actually hope u learn to forgive urself a little more and operate from self compassion rather than self flagellation. this is ur first time living - there is no rehearsal to any of this. u will live and u will learn. drink lots of water in the morning and dance to ur favorite music first thing. u are not uniquely horrible, but just learning how to live. u got this <3
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
okay this is going to be a big one since i have a lot of thoughts since my last rewatch of the VODs and the ACAB stream. this will be disorganized since I have a lot of misc. thoughts on Benrey.
The reason why I don't think benrey is the "master manipulator" is that he's really just fucking around in the AI reading. Just, forgetting the non-AI reading/AU for a moment. He knows he's in a video game and he's fucking around. He understands that the streamer/Gordon is the player character and he cannot realistically hurt him. Whether he understands that he's a part of the stream or not is debatable. He might if he can access other parts of the streamer's computer. He might be able to tell that he's streaming for however many people. Or maybe he thinks he's putting on a show for just the streamer. But it seems he wants to spend this time with him well.
It's obvious Benrey has a big fat crush on the streamer, and he's trying to make the most out of those moments they have together. But the streamer has designated that he hates Benrey and is actively pushing him into being the antagonist role. And frankly, Benrey didn't help himself by working with Bubby in the betrayal.
But he knows when the streamer acts like he really just had his hand cut off, he's playing it for theatrics. "What a drama queen", is probably what he's thinking.
And not only that, but Benrey seems to have processing issues rather than knowing what he's doing. and when he does 'gaslight' Gordon, he's just doing the kind of gaslighting friends do on an online video game? It's literally like a guy lobbing a grenade in a COD match to blow himself and his teammates up and asking "why did you do that?" to his buddy type shit (and even then I don't think he does this a lot).
I'll be frank, Benrey seems rarely fully cognizant for whatever reason, and the time he seemed most cognizant is when Gordon mentioned not having his passport in Darnold's lab. That activated his sleeper agent.
And my metatextual evidence is scorpy admitting he had 0 memory of doing HLVRAI and that he wasn't paying a lot of attention throughout the streams since he was too busy experiencing HL1 for the first time.
Benrey comes across more like a shithead friend who is fucking with the streamer in my opinion. He's playing with toys.
I think Benrey is slightly bitter towards the end in the way a kid forced to play as the bad guy on the playground does. He wanted to be a good guy with Gordon. He wanted to be part of the Science Team and have a big pizza party with Tommy, Bubby, Coomer, and Gordon. But he has to be the bad guy. And the streamer acts like he had actually hurt him. Maligns Benrey as if he were a real threat. When Benrey understands that he isn't a real threat.
Since his emotions about this aren't really clear, we can see him still playing into the villain role and just kind of fucking around with it. He really doesn't actually attack the player much.
I understand this interpretation lowers the stakes a lot, but I don't think HLVRAI needs high stakes when I think the emotional turmoil Coomer is in is really the most intriguing and important throughline. Sure, the streamer might not be in danger, but this is the AIs' whole world as far as we're aware.
On an slightly unrelated tangent: Benrey is a character full of oxymorons. Between his lust for the streamer and his aggression, his hypocritical self-righteousness at random intervals, etc. It seems that Benrey is put on a certain pathway that he is actively going against. I think that the side of Benrey that's authentically him is the one that's being a jackass to make the streamer laugh (he will repeat jokes that the streamer laughs at) and lusts after him. While the inauthentic benrey is in the role he plays as the antagonist.
For speculation and NOT canon analysis: I think Benrey could have been much more dangerous if he wanted to be. I personally think that his ability to change his model and alter the boss battle meant that he was capable of making himself far more powerful, to the point of being an unbeatable boss. And yet I think since he had to be the antagonist, he decided to make himself beatable. The passports were a fun mechanic for that. But his performance at the end is lacking because he doesn't want to be doing this. In every reading of HLVRAI, I always see him as a reluctant antagonist. His purpose isn't to fuck with the streamer. I think his purpose is to entertain him at any cost.
Let me make this clear: I think he's still antagonistic. I think he wants to fuck with the streamer. I think his goal IS to fuck with the streamer and be funny about it. But I also don't think he's some master manipulator about it. Guys. It's not that deep. He's being mean in the way friends are mean to each other on a TF2 server. He's giving more 'shithead younger brother' than 'evil eldritch entity'.
Maybe Benrey hopes that by being entertaining, the streamer will play again or do another run? Who knows. His motivations can't really be extrapolated from his monologue. It's all nonsense. Other than the fact that he wanted to be good. But he was forced to be bad. SO he's going to be bad.
I also think the exploitation of the streamer is never acknowledged by anyone else. But it seems like the streamer is actively denying the personhood of the AI's he's using to get donos and attention on the stream. He doesn't want them to be people. Maybe the implications are too much for him. Maybe he doesn't want to have to share what he gets with the AIs. I don't know.
MAN if you think you can hide these tags boy howdy you WROOOONG. I wholeheartedly agree. My issue is with AU being treated as canon. It’s like people keep forgetting the AI!!! Part!!!
My favorite AU is the Not a Game AU. I actually prefer that reading. And in that I think Benrey genuinely doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. For whatever reason? I don’t know. He’s playing touys, your honor. He was being a goofy goober, your honor!
Oh ya, totally one hundred percent this. Also 'issue is with AU being treated as canon' = real. for sure some things can feel like this ironic "it's canon ✨ to meeeee ✨" but i still know that it's not actually canon cause there's still... ya know... CANON canon.
plus not only that but imo since canon motivations and personality are still more or less the foundation on which any AU is built sometimes people will misinterpret canon so badly that the resulting AUs are like 'not only would he not say that and not only is it not even him anymore, but i can tell in your mind it wasn't even him to begin with' so just a complete miss in both directions
(also, yesss eldritch benrey, not a game yet unexplicably still functions like a glitch in the matrix benrey, looks like a typical ghoul benrey, combine synth benrey, mix and match and all that kind of stuff. most importantly no matter what he is he's always *mimicks picking up a cat and kissing its forehead* a dumb bitch)
A lot of AUs have this issue. And like, I’m not going to pretend to be better because my fic Brokeback Mesa exists (sorry women). It’s not even entertaining the idea of being canon adjacent. I’m not gonna lie I think I fucked up characterization hardcore style. Anyways. The point is I support people having fun regardless. But I also want to have a good discussion on this piece of media without fanon influence. And that isn’t to say fanon influence is bad. Sometimes when characters are nothing like the way they are in canon it’s better (Cough cough Forzen is literally just Benrey and that sucks cough cough).
I want to see more canon compliant work is all. Not the fanon canon, the canon canon. And more strictly canon inspired work! Especially in AUs! I love AUs!
Not only that but this is further complicated by the differences in characterization between vids and VODs. Gordon is a lot less hinged in the VODs as an example.
So then it comes to the question of what’s your source material? Which one? Or how do you implement characterization from both? How much fanon inspiration is being used?
(For me it was a moderate amount of fanon, but mostly canon inspiration from the VODs with some of the dramatic flair of the YT cut).
I’ve never seen Combine Benrey love that. I want to see that where is that?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I think one of the reasons Benrey is such an effective and infuriating antagonist is because he's a supreme master of feigned ignorance. Half the time, he sounds genuinely confused about the accusations you're making, even when the inciting events happened seconds ago. He won't acknowledge your anger towards him. You can't insult him, you can't get under his skin, he barely seems like he remembers shit that happened twenty seconds ago and it ends up with YOU seeming like the unreasonable one for calling him out.
Then, occasionally, when he thinks he can get away with it, the mask drops, and he reveals that he is entirely aware of exactly what he's been doing and how you feel about him, and he loves gaslighting you. If it wasn't a comedy series, HLVRAI would be a fucking psychological horror.
ok i found the post i was talking about where i have to respectfully disagree with OP
this reading doesn't really hold up unless you're reading this from a non-AI standpoint. by canon, this reading falls apart because the streamer has incurred no damage, only the avatar. And it also falls apart in the VODs due to Benrey just being significantly sillier and more airheaded.
i do like this as an interpretation outside of the AI-reading, or as an AU.
i just gotta add that i find this kind of alternative interpretation absolutely hilarious (/pos) because it basically implies he's smarter than he seems but his only use for this is to be an annoying little shit and it's giving:
okay this is going to be a big one since i have a lot of thoughts since my last rewatch of the VODs and the ACAB stream. this will be disorganized since I have a lot of misc. thoughts on Benrey.
The reason why I don't think benrey is the "master manipulator" is that he's really just fucking around in the AI reading. Just, forgetting the non-AI reading/AU for a moment. He knows he's in a video game and he's fucking around. He understands that the streamer/Gordon is the player character and he cannot realistically hurt him. Whether he understands that he's a part of the stream or not is debatable. He might if he can access other parts of the streamer's computer. He might be able to tell that he's streaming for however many people. Or maybe he thinks he's putting on a show for just the streamer. But it seems he wants to spend this time with him well.
It's obvious Benrey has a big fat crush on the streamer, and he's trying to make the most out of those moments they have together. But the streamer has designated that he hates Benrey and is actively pushing him into being the antagonist role. And frankly, Benrey didn't help himself by working with Bubby in the betrayal.
But he knows when the streamer acts like he really just had his hand cut off, he's playing it for theatrics. "What a drama queen", is probably what he's thinking.
And not only that, but Benrey seems to have processing issues rather than knowing what he's doing. and when he does 'gaslight' Gordon, he's just doing the kind of gaslighting friends do on an online video game? It's literally like a guy lobbing a grenade in a COD match to blow himself and his teammates up and asking "why did you do that?" to his buddy type shit (and even then I don't think he does this a lot).
I'll be frank, Benrey seems rarely fully cognizant for whatever reason, and the time he seemed most cognizant is when Gordon mentioned not having his passport in Darnold's lab. That activated his sleeper agent.
And my metatextual evidence is scorpy admitting he had 0 memory of doing HLVRAI and that he wasn't paying a lot of attention throughout the streams since he was too busy experiencing HL1 for the first time.
Benrey comes across more like a shithead friend who is fucking with the streamer in my opinion. He's playing with toys.
I think Benrey is slightly bitter towards the end in the way a kid forced to play as the bad guy on the playground does. He wanted to be a good guy with Gordon. He wanted to be part of the Science Team and have a big pizza party with Tommy, Bubby, Coomer, and Gordon. But he has to be the bad guy. And the streamer acts like he had actually hurt him. Maligns Benrey as if he were a real threat. When Benrey understands that he isn't a real threat.
Since his emotions about this aren't really clear, we can see him still playing into the villain role and just kind of fucking around with it. He really doesn't actually attack the player much.
I understand this interpretation lowers the stakes a lot, but I don't think HLVRAI needs high stakes when I think the emotional turmoil Coomer is in is really the most intriguing and important throughline. Sure, the streamer might not be in danger, but this is the AIs' whole world as far as we're aware.
On an slightly unrelated tangent: Benrey is a character full of oxymorons. Between his lust for the streamer and his aggression, his hypocritical self-righteousness at random intervals, etc. It seems that Benrey is put on a certain pathway that he is actively going against. I think that the side of Benrey that's authentically him is the one that's being a jackass to make the streamer laugh (he will repeat jokes that the streamer laughs at) and lusts after him. While the inauthentic benrey is in the role he plays as the antagonist.
For speculation and NOT canon analysis: I think Benrey could have been much more dangerous if he wanted to be. I personally think that his ability to change his model and alter the boss battle meant that he was capable of making himself far more powerful, to the point of being an unbeatable boss. And yet I think since he had to be the antagonist, he decided to make himself beatable. The passports were a fun mechanic for that. But his performance at the end is lacking because he doesn't want to be doing this. In every reading of HLVRAI, I always see him as a reluctant antagonist. His purpose isn't to fuck with the streamer. I think his purpose is to entertain him at any cost.
Let me make this clear: I think he's still antagonistic. I think he wants to fuck with the streamer. I think his goal IS to fuck with the streamer and be funny about it. But I also don't think he's some master manipulator about it. Guys. It's not that deep. He's being mean in the way friends are mean to each other on a TF2 server. He's giving more 'shithead younger brother' than 'evil eldritch entity'.
Maybe Benrey hopes that by being entertaining, the streamer will play again or do another run? Who knows. His motivations can't really be extrapolated from his monologue. It's all nonsense. Other than the fact that he wanted to be good. But he was forced to be bad. SO he's going to be bad.
I also think the exploitation of the streamer is never acknowledged by anyone else. But it seems like the streamer is actively denying the personhood of the AI's he's using to get donos and attention on the stream. He doesn't want them to be people. Maybe the implications are too much for him. Maybe he doesn't want to have to share what he gets with the AIs. I don't know.
MAN if you think you can hide these tags boy howdy you WROOOONG. I wholeheartedly agree. My issue is with AU being treated as canon. It’s like people keep forgetting the AI!!! Part!!!
My favorite AU is the Not a Game AU. I actually prefer that reading. And in that I think Benrey genuinely doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. For whatever reason? I don’t know. He’s playing touys, your honor. He was being a goofy goober, your honor!
Oh ya, totally one hundred percent this. Also 'issue is with AU being treated as canon' = real. for sure some things can feel like this ironic "it's canon ✨ to meeeee ✨" but i still know that it's not actually canon cause there's still... ya know... CANON canon.
plus not only that but imo since canon motivations and personality are still more or less the foundation on which any AU is built sometimes people will misinterpret canon so badly that the resulting AUs are like 'not only would he not say that and not only is it not even him anymore, but i can tell in your mind it wasn't even him to begin with' so just a complete miss in both directions
(also, yesss eldritch benrey, not a game yet unexplicably still functions like a glitch in the matrix benrey, looks like a typical ghoul benrey, combine synth benrey, mix and match and all that kind of stuff. most importantly no matter what he is he's always *mimicks picking up a cat and kissing its forehead* a dumb bitch)
idr the exact phrasing so Apolocheese if i am incorrect on phrasing but in the QnA wayne and baaulp i think agreed that tommy wasnt really. qualified to work there which is already funny
but then wayne said that he personally thinks either
A- tommy just. showed up and nobody bothered to make him leave
B- tommy works in HR
after five years my brain decided to get me back into hlvrai by inventing a What If They Were Dead au.
warnings for the content ahead! this is a darker, grittier version of hlvrai with a lot of mentions of death, severe injuries, fatal disease, and body horror. this is also a real life version of hlvrai where the characters aren’t ai and they aren’t in a video game.
the general idea for this au is that on the day Gordon arrives at Black Mesa for the big test, every character in the main cast (except for Tommy and Darnold) through a series of unfortunate events ends up dying. then, the Resonance Cascade occurs, and the energy it releases removes the boundary between life and death and puts almost everyone and everything in the facility in a state of undeath. for some, this turns them into essentially zombies, for others, they become horrible fleshy monstrosities, but for the lucky few that are the Science Team, they’re brought back to life! mostly.
all that said, have a character lineup!
i have a longer post going into detail about what happens to each member of the Science Team, but the basics are this!
Benrey (who started out as a normal human) jumps early off one of Black Mesa’s very unsafe elevators and sticks the landing so badly that he straight up dies.
Coomer is one of many clones, and because of all the issues with cloning he had to have numerous cybernetic implants to keep him alive. his body started to reject these implants, including in his brain, which swelled up and led to his very sudden death.
Bubby is still a pyrokinetic test tube baby, and although he had a period of time where he was able to survive outside of the tube, his body has deteriorated so much that when he tries to escape Black Mesa at the end of his life his organs collapse on themselves and he dies.
Gordon Freeman is notoriously bad at getting to work on time as well as making sure the helmet of his HEV suit is secure, so when the Resonance Cascade begins with him at the epicenter, he trips, his helmet pops off, and he takes a beam of radiation to the face before getting thrown back by the explosion and cracking his skull on the wall. and, you guessed it, he dies!
off to a cheerful start, aren’t we? but don’t worry, they all get brought back! with varying and somewhat terrible consequences.
the Xen crystal used in the test opens unstable gateways to Xen, a dimension that is both lifeless and deathless, which releases shockwaves all over the facility and creates a variety of undead monstrosities that take the place of the aliens from the original series. this ‘Xenergy’ that changes people is also what, through pure coincidence, revives the Science Team in mostly alright condition. it has consequences though- each of them can regenerate whatever damage they take and are prevented from dying, but it resets their bodies to a state before they died and they have individual problems that get worse over time.
Gordon is the least affected and can take any amount of damage without experiencing a reset because he was at ground 0 and absorbed a ton of Xenergy. however, this excess Xenergy is constantly arcing out of him and creating anomalies (see: duplicating pigeons, survivors acting strange, etc). Gordon is in complete denial, does not realize he or any of the other Science Team members died, and thinks that every scientist or security guard they come across that doesn’t look like a practical effect in a horror movie is still alive and fine (a small number are, but they don’t stay that way for long).
Coomer was brought back to the state he was in briefly before he died, so the Xenergy is constantly resetting his body- and as a consequence, his mind- whenever it starts to degenerate again. it goes so far to alter time and space when he does something like jump down a pit without a rope. this causes the ‘glitches’ he experiences throughout the series. there’s a way he can reduce the resets, and that’s by killing clones! Coomer is able to steal compatible parts from his clones to replace his own failing organs to give himself more time, which also gives him more awareness about their situation.
Bubby can regenerate damage and thanks to the Xenergy, he’s in good enough shape to walk around for a little while, but over time that changes. the longer he’s out in the air and moving around, the more he begins to decay and get closer to the point where he’s basically a beached whale and his body collapses on itself. he can mitigate this problem by consuming a key ingredient from the test tube fluid he was kept in- soda! between soda breaks it does get harder and harder for him to walk, so he’s often either leaning on something trying to play off his discomfort so he doesn’t look weak or getting carried by Coomer.
Benrey’s got the worst of it. his ability to regenerate damage is really high, he can survive being riddled with bullets and taking a laser beam to the helmet, but the Xenergy doesn’t keep his body in a locked state. as time goes on, he goes from pale and sunken to outright decaying. think Jack Goodman from An American Werewolf in London! he can’t find any way to stop or reverse this, and he has to watch himself as his body slowly falls apart.
there’s also the Sweet Voice, which both Coomer and Benrey have. Sweet Voice occurs when there’s an excess of Xenergy in the body, especially after regenerating damage or being reset, which then takes on a color pattern based on the electricity in the nerves and is expelled. it corresponds to an actual color spectrum from Xen, which is why it can be translated.
Tommy hasn’t been mentioned yet as he isn’t among the dead, but then again, it’s been a long time since he could be classified as ‘alive’. Tommy is actually working at Black Mesa for a sort of internship; not to be a scientist, but to get practice at running the ‘family business’ as he likes to call it. Tommy, G-man, and Tommy’s dog Sunkist are psychopomps- they guide newly dead souls to the afterlife. Black Mesa was the perfect opportunity for Tommy to get field experience on his own, as the company had a very high death rate and asked very few questions. his dad was already doing business with the mysterious Longevity Department, so it only made sense that Tommy practice his job in the facility. what he doesn’t expect is for a seemingly harmless experiment he was set to oversee to go so horribly wrong it upsets the balance of life and death and kickstarts a global apocalypse. he’s stressed, he’s overwhelmed, but at the very least he’s got a few friends that kinda sorta made it. he has no idea how to solve an entire facility full of employees whose souls are now trapped here, he’s just an intern after all! so he makes his new job keeping an eye on the Science Team and trying to keep them sane and alive and not zombified as they attempt to escape Black Mesa.
i’ll probably have a couple posts sometime after this going into more detail about everything, but this is it for now! my motivation for this is probably gonna wither away like every other project i’ve started so i’m gonna post what i can while i can.
if you have any ideas or questions, feel free to ask!!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
okay this is going to be a big one since i have a lot of thoughts since my last rewatch of the VODs and the ACAB stream. this will be disorganized since I have a lot of misc. thoughts on Benrey.
The reason why I don't think benrey is the "master manipulator" is that he's really just fucking around in the AI reading. Just, forgetting the non-AI reading/AU for a moment. He knows he's in a video game and he's fucking around. He understands that the streamer/Gordon is the player character and he cannot realistically hurt him. Whether he understands that he's a part of the stream or not is debatable. He might if he can access other parts of the streamer's computer. He might be able to tell that he's streaming for however many people. Or maybe he thinks he's putting on a show for just the streamer. But it seems he wants to spend this time with him well.
It's obvious Benrey has a big fat crush on the streamer, and he's trying to make the most out of those moments they have together. But the streamer has designated that he hates Benrey and is actively pushing him into being the antagonist role. And frankly, Benrey didn't help himself by working with Bubby in the betrayal.
But he knows when the streamer acts like he really just had his hand cut off, he's playing it for theatrics. "What a drama queen", is probably what he's thinking.
And not only that, but Benrey seems to have processing issues rather than knowing what he's doing. and when he does 'gaslight' Gordon, he's just doing the kind of gaslighting friends do on an online video game? It's literally like a guy lobbing a grenade in a COD match to blow himself and his teammates up and asking "why did you do that?" to his buddy type shit (and even then I don't think he does this a lot).
I'll be frank, Benrey seems rarely fully cognizant for whatever reason, and the time he seemed most cognizant is when Gordon mentioned not having his passport in Darnold's lab. That activated his sleeper agent.
And my metatextual evidence is scorpy admitting he had 0 memory of doing HLVRAI and that he wasn't paying a lot of attention throughout the streams since he was too busy experiencing HL1 for the first time.
Benrey comes across more like a shithead friend who is fucking with the streamer in my opinion. He's playing with toys.
I think Benrey is slightly bitter towards the end in the way a kid forced to play as the bad guy on the playground does. He wanted to be a good guy with Gordon. He wanted to be part of the Science Team and have a big pizza party with Tommy, Bubby, Coomer, and Gordon. But he has to be the bad guy. And the streamer acts like he had actually hurt him. Maligns Benrey as if he were a real threat. When Benrey understands that he isn't a real threat.
Since his emotions about this aren't really clear, we can see him still playing into the villain role and just kind of fucking around with it. He really doesn't actually attack the player much.
I understand this interpretation lowers the stakes a lot, but I don't think HLVRAI needs high stakes when I think the emotional turmoil Coomer is in is really the most intriguing and important throughline. Sure, the streamer might not be in danger, but this is the AIs' whole world as far as we're aware.
On an slightly unrelated tangent: Benrey is a character full of oxymorons. Between his lust for the streamer and his aggression, his hypocritical self-righteousness at random intervals, etc. It seems that Benrey is put on a certain pathway that he is actively going against. I think that the side of Benrey that's authentically him is the one that's being a jackass to make the streamer laugh (he will repeat jokes that the streamer laughs at) and lusts after him. While the inauthentic benrey is in the role he plays as the antagonist.
For speculation and NOT canon analysis: I think Benrey could have been much more dangerous if he wanted to be. I personally think that his ability to change his model and alter the boss battle meant that he was capable of making himself far more powerful, to the point of being an unbeatable boss. And yet I think since he had to be the antagonist, he decided to make himself beatable. The passports were a fun mechanic for that. But his performance at the end is lacking because he doesn't want to be doing this. In every reading of HLVRAI, I always see him as a reluctant antagonist. His purpose isn't to fuck with the streamer. I think his purpose is to entertain him at any cost.
Let me make this clear: I think he's still antagonistic. I think he wants to fuck with the streamer. I think his goal IS to fuck with the streamer and be funny about it. But I also don't think he's some master manipulator about it. Guys. It's not that deep. He's being mean in the way friends are mean to each other on a TF2 server. He's giving more 'shithead younger brother' than 'evil eldritch entity'.
Maybe Benrey hopes that by being entertaining, the streamer will play again or do another run? Who knows. His motivations can't really be extrapolated from his monologue. It's all nonsense. Other than the fact that he wanted to be good. But he was forced to be bad. SO he's going to be bad.
I also think the exploitation of the streamer is never acknowledged by anyone else. But it seems like the streamer is actively denying the personhood of the AI's he's using to get donos and attention on the stream. He doesn't want them to be people. Maybe the implications are too much for him. Maybe he doesn't want to have to share what he gets with the AIs. I don't know.
Is there any possibility that you might be able to make a similar character writing explanation for Gordon...?
OK this one is a lot harder. Since Gordon is kind of. Well he's sort of a massive hypocrite.
Gordon is straight up kind of mean. He's usually exasperated. And the moment he gets to have a normal conversation, he reveals how fucking bizarre he really is. Gordon thinks he's the normal one. He really isn't.
I genuinely think he's the most disturbed person out of the entire Science Team in a Non-AI reading. His kill count might not be the highest, he might not be the meanest, but when he does kill he seems to negate any wrongdoing by himself. (See: The DOOM Music Hallway Massacre) And yet asserts that when he kills people accident, oh, woe is me! I can't believe I've hurt SO many people!
We usually depict Freemind as the edgy one who is violent and insane, but HLVRAI Gordon is so much worse than him in terms of raw innocent body count in HL1, and his bizarre victim complex when he is a monster at some points. He'll just snap and kill people. And the whole time he's crying victim. And to be fair to him, this would be the most traumatic experience of his life and he's being bounced between 4 absolute weirdos.
People really do not call this out enough. I forgot who said this, but whoever said "Gordon is not a good man, he's a man who wants to live" I wish you everything you want in life and more. That's precisely it. When writing him, he has compulsions to do good, but ultimately he is selfish and looking out for what HE needs and what HE wants.
He's incredibly reactive. Especially to Benrey's antics. With other characters he has some leniency but with Benrey it's like his fuse is cut to a nub.
Gordon is a huge dork. I try to add the science background to him that Wayne neglected (GIR and HOLLY did a lot to add a love of science to Bubby and Coomer, and I think this just escaped Wayne in the moment, or he just didn't know enough esoteric sci fi BS to come up with something). it appears that he also is somewhat self aggrandizing. See: The bathroom Grenade Incident.
In spite of Bubby really being highkey the leader of the group (metatextually because Gir knew the most about Half-Life), Gordon seems to think himself as the leader. He assigns himself the position of main character in a Non-AI reading. This makes sense when he is The Streamer Controlling Gordon. But in another reading? Not so much.
With my preliminary reading of HLVRAI's Gordon down (And I know it's very controversial. I paid more attention to Bubby and Benrey this watch around to be frank so I could be totally wrong) I can get to his speech, behavior patterns, etc.
Cursing. He needs to curse every other fucking word. Holy shit. AUUGUH WHAT THE FUCK. SHIT. AUUGHHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING AUUUGHHH. Just pepper curses in there in high stress situations. Casual cursing too, but to a slightly lesser degree.
He judges people harshly. let him pass judgements. Make his ass a bit catty.
Gordon JUMP! Gordon SPRINT! Like, come on man, who are you kidding? Bro assigns himself moves.
he says embarrassing shit and overshares a lot. (See: The Suit Incident. Again)
I like to pepper some science nerdiness on top of his general geekiness. I say look into some quantum physics and learn enough to write a joke or two about it. For me I focused on science-fantasy methods of teleportation and no-clipping. Ex. Fermions being turned into bosons to make noclipping possible. This is a ridiculous notion of course, but it's rooted in the fact that bosons can phase through bosons, but fermions are grounded due to their spins. Absolute bollocks but an untrained person doesn't blink about it. They just see cool particle names. A physicist might want to strangle me though C: RTVS says that Gordon is actually dumb, but there isn't a goddamn way he graduated MIT and joined a top secret government agency on luck alone. He's way too weird and silly to get through like that. In this case? There is word of god, and I am an atheist.
On the Geekiness shit, I give him an extensive knowledge of video games and nerd culture. He likes Star Wars and Glup Shitto, he watched "The Clone Wars". He's into Battleship Galactica. Babylon-5. Lots of Sci-Fi shows with aliens. He can quote the cigarette scene from The Orville and if anyone brings up it's a Seth McFarlane show he shuts down. He hasn't watched all of them of course. Double points if it's a Sci-Fi video game from his childhood. That shit would have shaped his ass. You better believe that Mass Effect 1 came out when he was like 14 and that probably changed the trajectory of his like.
He's an emotional manchild. This man cannot regulate himself for shit. He can begin a crash out over FROOT LOOPS. Gordon is not stoic. Exasperated? Yes. Stoic? Absolutely not.
Bro, guy, man, DUDE.
He's not a relaxed guy. Chronic stress. When small things spiral he should get fucked up about it, frankly.
HUGE hypocrite. He needs to have his soap box and preach when he knows he is no better.
HE YAPS. This guy YAPS so much. He hates dead air.
He's pretty amicable to people's faces, usually. Might talk behind their back though.
Huge softie in spite of everything. The fact that he was angry at Benrey and still caught him, and tried his best with Tommy (even if he was infantilizing that grown ass man) is proof enough that he's a big ole softie. I think that if he's guilted on anything he just crumbles.
Pragmatist. He tries to be pragmatic, he really does. In spite of the chaos.
I write a lot of his negatives here, these are just things I think people miss other than the cursing and chronic stress. He's selfish, but when he thinks he's in charge of a group he does also think about their safety and what they need. He kind of sees himself as a freaky shepherd. While Bubby may be leading them, I think Gordon is a bit of a party-heart. He's what's keeping them together for whatever strange reason he is. Wet glue that sticks your ass to your seat is still glue, after all.
Expanding on that, he thinks his ass is the group dad. He's just the only one with a mote of responsibility, frankly.
He's got a very chill vocabulary. Highly casual but he understands jargon surrounding the office and can implement it, unlike Benrey who doesn't know what 'jargon' means, or Bubby who is capable of more cerebral language.
He's a wheezy laugher. He breaks easily. he also seems to laugh when he's nervous (sometimes).
im getting tired so this is it for now I think. If anything else comes up I'll add more. didn't want to leave you hanging!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i think its important to note for not a game and post-game aus in hlvrai is that, in canon, we are seeing the characters pretty much exclusively at their absolute worst. we basically dont get to see how anybody acts when not actively fearing for their lives or being fucked up by sudden sentience/destroyed programming.
like. gordon. we know that hes mean and jumpy and yells a lot when convinced that hes going to actually die at any moment, but really he seemed mostly polite and chill at the start, if a little easily frustrated. and that was because he kept having to interact with benry which is nobodys best environment. with love.
and benry himself is not in a great place either. if nothing else hes clearly unfamiliar with whats happening around him, which sucks for anybody.
and like. would coomer have had such a huge clone breakdown if hed discovered sentience from methodical lab testing? would bubby have cut off gordons arm if the us army wasnt willing and able to airstrike them? would tommy still be so immature if he wasnt constantly panicking with a gun in his hand? i truly dont think so.