#and that awakened this train of thought like a fucking sleeper agent (pun intended)

[two-dolla-bills]

No ok I've had this rattling in my brain for fucking years now and I think it's high time I say something. I find it soooo absolutely delectable that dreams and sleeping are, accidentally, such prominent parts of hlvrai. Like, yeah, we all know "There's a world in your dreams Dr. Freeman, and I need you to take me there," but that's just the tip of the iceberg for me. Coomer realizes that everything around him is fake and that Gordon, the player, is the only actually real thing. When Gordon sleeps in the game, in actuality, he's taking off the headset and going about his day in the real world with real people. From Coomer's perspective, Gordon's reality is a dream, but from Gordon's pov, the modded game Half Life vr is a type of dream.

The way I see it is like if Alice in Wonderland took place where Alice knows she's dreaming and that everything is fake, but to the citizens of wonderland, it's all real, because that is the only thing they have ever known since they first began living (aka when Alice closed her eyes and began dreaming). Once Alice wakes up, the dream world ceases to be, but Alice continues on like nothing happened because that's what it was to her. Nothing.

What got me thinking about this is the it's all a dream trope, more specifically, Overly Sarcastic Production's video on it. Tldr, there are multiple avenues through which an author can do an it's all a dream plot, ranging from inconsequential one-off to the dream world may exist in its own way, but doesn't exist within reality. To Gordon, his adventures with the Science Team are the equivalent of a normal dream that turns sour once you and the people in your dream realize what's going on.