#2020 freemance war

[angels-heap]

I mentioned this in my post but what even happened to freemance in 2020?

Hoooo boy. To make a very long, very weird story as short as possible...

Prior to the Half Life: Alyx announcement and subsequent emergence of the Half Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware (HLVRAI) fandom in 2020, freemance was by far the dominant ship in the Half Life fandom. It seemed like most active fans at least passively shipped it, the vast majority of fanworks featured it in some capacity, and people who preferred other ships or didn't like freemance just... didn't like it. They didn't act like they needed a reason.

However, after the aforementioned events led to a huge surge of new Half Life fans, freehoun (Gordon/Barney) became much more popular, practically overnight, for some combination of the following reasons:

Lots of new Half Life fans were discovering the series via HLVRAI, where frenrey (Gordon/Benrey) was/is a popular ship. Some of these new HL fans essentially transposed their preferred frenrey dynamics into freehoun fanworks, often with very little knowledge of (or interest in) the HL games and the relevant lore.

Large fandom did what large fandoms do and gravitated towards shipping the two hottest white guys, regardless of context.

Old and new fans who enjoyed ships other than freemance became more active and creative when they were no longer in a minority.

And this was fine! A little annoying at times, but had it stopped there, we wouldn't still be talking about this. Alas, around mid-2020, a couple of kids (independently, as far as I can tell) wrote "callout posts" about freemance and its shippers in an effort to justify their personal tastes... and all hell broke loose. These posts, and the many, many posts that followed, relied heavily on the following argument:

Gordon has known Alyx since she was a small child (he hasn't) and may have even been a father/uncle/brother figure to her (he wasn't), which means pursuing 24-year-old Alyx romantically would make him a pedophile (it wouldn't) because he's been "grooming" her since she was a child (despite having been in stasis for approximately 83% of her life) and is obviously imagining her as a child every time they smooch (and they think we're the weirdos?). This means freemance shippers are also pedophiles because they condone this behavior (no), and also they are anti-feminist/homophobic/racist for shipping Alyx with a white man who's actually 47 years old (Gordon is canonically 27 in HL2) instead of shipping him with a man and her with a woman or not shipping her at all (despite the fact that Alyx is canonically attracted to Gordon).

If this sounds insane to you, it's because it is. This is an Olympics-worthy reach. They 100% pulled this whole theory out of their asses. But these posts picked up traction quickly, given that a large slice of the fandom had little to no knowledge of actual Half Life canon and really wanted a reason to dunk on freemance beyond "ew boring straight ship." It was like this awful game of fandom telephone, and the wildest part was that a lot of these kids (and yes, it was mostly kids) actually believed these accusations, despite having never seen or sought out any direct evidence of them.

For the following 6 months or so, freemance shippers faced relentless harassment -- death threats, doxxing threats, accusations of child sex crimes, etc. Here's the long post I was eventually forced to make about the situation, which includes several examples. Check out my ship discourse tag for more highlights if you want to go down the rabbit hole. Things settled down a bit after the original shit-stirrers left the fandom, but the harassment continued on and off for a couple of years and it still crops up every now and then.

It makes me so sad to remember all the cool people I met in early 2020 who ultimately left the fandom due to the harassment. The overall fandom vibe was so rancid that even people who didn't ship freemance just couldn't take it anymore. I've stuck around because Half Life is an enduring fixation for me (and out of spite), but the fandom lost a lot of amazing artists and writers and I hope they're all living their best lives out there.

I don't know how to end this post on a non-cheesy note so I'll just say it feels nice to finally refer to this whole thing (mostly) in the past tense and I am excited to see new folks joining the fandom who are unburdened by the Freemance wars. Live your dreams. :)

[skaruresonic]

why is Gordon x Alyx even controversial? both of them are fully grown adults. What could possibly be the issue here?

The pithy answer is "antis," but the more honest answer is that an influx of fandom tourists came in and gentrified Half-Life, twisting a canon ship into the most bad-faith interpretation possible.

Strap in, because this is a batshit story.

In 2020, wayneradiotv released HLVRAI, also known as "Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware."

HLVRAI is to Half-Life what the Snapcube dubs are to the Sonic games: a haha funny meme series that is set in its own canon and only superficially resembles the original series. This would not have been a problem had HLVRAI not been conflated with Half-Life; for the longest time, the two fandoms were considered conjoined, and it was because of the ship wars that OG Half-Life fans had to beg AO3 to separate the tags over the course of three years. HLVRAI introduced an influx of young fans to Half-Life, but a certain subsect of new fans kicked up a ruckus because they found Half-Life's canon to be, in short, "problematic." Specifically, HLVRAI is set in a canon where Gordon Freeman has a child based on a throwaway line about an Easter egg of a baby photo in his locker. In reality, Gordon is stated in the PS2 manual to be "unmarried without dependents" and the Easter egg simply depicts a developer's child; this is worth noting in order to better understand how the fandom tourists thought about Half-Life canon.

Fans of HLVRAI shipped HLVRAI!Gordon with the character Benrey, who is an extremely spurious interpretation of Barney Calhoun, Gordon's buddy in HL2.

Benrey and Barney have nothing in common aside from sharing a face, yet fandom tourists who knew nothing about the games saw Freehoun (Gordon/Barney) as, like, a sort of "vessel" for Gordon/Benrey. As such, they started looking for reasons to justify it as The Ultimate Ship.

Being a Valhoun (Alyx Vance/Barney Calhoun) shipper myself, I was only on the fringes when the shitshow happened. At the time, the most prominent ships in the fandom were Freemance and, to a lesser extent, Freehoun. I remember Freemancers had just produced a Freemance zine before HL fandom all went to shit; however, after the dust settled, nothing like that happened again.

The fandom tourists, I kid you not, started calling Freemance pedophilia on the grounds that, and I quote: --- 1.) Gordon is "chronologically 47" in HL2, despite Eli heavily implying that Gordon hasn't aged during stasis and is still mentally and physically 27.

--- 2.) The games heavily push Freemance, which can, according to these geniuses, be taken as a problematic age gap ship at best. Freemance is also predatory because Gordon is preying on a vulnerable Alyx, according to them. In addition to ignoring how it's Alyx who makes the moves on Gordon, HLVRAI fans have repeatedly revealed their ignorance of her age. They think she's a teenager in HL2, despite her age being easily deduced from information offered in HLA's opening scene:

19 + 5 = 24. Alyx is 24 in HL2, only three years younger than Gordon. This tidbit was routinely ignored in favor of portraying her as a younger vulnerable party to a "much" older man (who in reality hadn't aged during his time in stasis). --- 3.) Upon first meeting Gordon in HL2, Alyx off-handedly remarks that Gordon likely "[doesn't] remember" her from Black Mesa. HLVRAI fans took that to mean Gordon definitely knew her when she was a child, or even babysat her, despite her words implying the opposite.

Don't ask me how that works. I don't know.

--- 4.) As an icky 47-year-old whom the game "ships" with a "possible teenager" (who despite living in a world subjugated by alien fascists must be "protected" from older white guys, apparently), Gordon Freeman thinks of the full-grown Alyx who flirts with him as the four-year-old he most definitely babysat back at Black Mesa.

--- Hmm, said the fandom tourists, isn't it sus how Valve keep trying to push Freemance in our faces? Maybe Valve are a bunch of pedos in disguise...? 🤔 If by now you're thinking these are some Olympic-tier mental gymnastics, you'd be right. The situation really was that absurd, to the point where antis straight-up lied about canon in order to justify shipping Freehoun. Which, to rub salt in the wound, wasn't even real Freehoun grounded in Half-Life canon, but some proxy for another ship. Fandom's response to this extreme contortionist act, understandably, was "Jesse what the fuck are you talking about."

And then, being the creatures of reason and intellect that they are, the fandom tourists started doxxing people over this shit. A mutual of mine had an anon report her to the authorities for merely writing Freemance fic. The situation got so bad that most of the old guard packed up and went elsewhere, mostly Disco Elysium.

To this day folks are still tentative about even posting what used to be fandom's most common OTP because that side of fandom is just so rabid.

[combines]

hello again!! as someone who comes from the 2020 fandom resurgence I am. SO SORRY. that happened a lot unfortunately. yeah we did NOT know how to act early on (ToT). I had the vibe it was a lot of people's first online fandoms.

the ship with two guys in it being dubbed butter pecan because of something something 'a lot of nuts' is again, so, so funny. Thank you for enlightening me on this, I know it's probably wild to be asked about this stuff like a decade after. This is like honestly a bit of a mystery in the fandom so it's insane finding out the source!! A real miracle the person who coined it so long ago is still active on tumblr

And speaking, it is and was INSANELY hard to dig for any 'fandom history' or even just any sort of Old post on here and I hate it.

another little question if that's okay- I'd assume that seeing the change in reception to freemance and freehoun kinda swapping around must've been bizarre as an older fan considering this was a fandom for a fps game in the early 2000's-early 2010's, in my head the vibes were kinda reversed where freemance was the big ship and freehoun was less well received by most

hiii again!!! i'm so sorry it took me a few days to answer this sdkfsmdk

i think it's super funny because both half-life: alyx and hlvrai came out within weeks of each other so you had this sort of resurgence on here of old fans returning/posting and getting excited for alyx and then a huge wave of people getting into hl in general because of the audience that hlvrai introduced. personally, i still haven't watched hlvrai because it doesn't really seem like my thing, but i'm still glad that there were so many people who enjoyed it to the point where they actually ended up playing and loving the games too!!

freemance definitely was the big ship on tumblr back in the day so yes it was very interesting to see that reversal!!!! honestly i don't think i was on tumblr too much during that time where hlvrai/freehoun really took off, and so the drama surrounding ship wars or whatever was mentioned to me secondhand. 2020 was just like the worst year of my life for personal reasons, as i'm sure for a lot of people, and i can't remember really any of it tbh LOL but you've got nothing to apologize for! i think you're definitely right, it seemed like a first fandom for many people, and that generally skewed younger. i think (hope) it's a better now at least!

tumblr's tagging/tracking/search is HORRIBLE i completly understand. i still think tumblr is the best place for fandom centralized stuff (pictures, art, gifs, etc) and until there's a new platform that does it better, i'll probably still be here, if super sporadically!

if you are interested in uncovering past hl fandom posts or just looking to follow some great people, i've tagged just some that were active in the hl fandom back in the day!!! :') i'm sure they wouldn't mind if you combed their archive looking for hl stuff/shitposts <3

@mbelyakova @littlewitchbee @temunade2 @loplins @angels-heap @anndromedea @skellagirl @bioticbear @cortnan @duamuteffe @protokol @cerviceps @axiolotl @clodiuspulcher @caramujotan @drgertiefremontphd @jauffre @owligator @saikkunen @utopianoverlord @failssafe @brogineer

[angels-heap]

Every once in a while I check in here to see what the discourse is for the past few days or weeks and every time it's getting weirder. It feels like "My buddy said that Kylo Ren had an 8-pack. That Kylo Ren was shredded." except instead of blatantly false rumors about your brooding boss, it's that I heard Gordon Freeman is actually Alyx Vance's dad (Eli Vance do NOT interact)

*sigh* I remember when I created this blog a thousand years ago (er, back in March) to share cool Half Life stuff, maybe make some fandom friends, and talk about freehoun, my favorite chronically under-appreciated HL ship. 

Fast forward a few months: the word “freehoun” instills fear into my heart, I’ve been reported to the child abuse authorities for writing freemance fanfiction, and I’m officially running The Discourse Blog. I did not have any of this on my 2020 apocalypse bingo card. (Not a dig against you, anon. It’s just been a really fucking weird few months and something about your ask led me to reflect on this wild journey.)

On a lighter note, I love that this is like the third time I’ve seen someone reference “I heard Kylo Ren was shredded” to underscore the absolute insanity of the freemance discourse. It really is such an enduring meme and applicable meme in addition to being the only piece of Star Wars content I have ever found entertaining. Hm. I have ideas.