#but it would make a good character moment to have eli and gordon find barney in really bad shape and hes a little boss fight

[sweet-voice-boba-tea]

Manifesting Winter Soldier type Barney sequence in Half-Life 3 🙏

[whatamonsterousau]

~Valve Monster AU~

Howdy, I figured I would go into detail about the characters considering that’s probably really important for people to know! In summary before we begin: monsters are real and make up basically the whole cast in this au, currently got two games in the mix, might add more someday. Let’s begin!

Half-Life

Gordon Freeman : Demigod, not something he’s entirely aware of, nor is he aware of whatever kind of power he might have as a result of this. Which means as a result almost nobody else is aware of this.

Eli Vance : That’s a Human Person! That’s just a fuckin’ dude!

Azian Vance : Kitsune, spends like 90% of her time in a human form. Not that she prefers being human, more that she’s worried other humans would prefer her as human. Most in the lab knows though, they all trust each other.

Alyx Vance : half-kitsune, Magic is weaker than her mom’s but she’s stronger (among other things) than a regular person and can make weak illusions at a moment’s notice. So overall, seems human at a glance, 100% not human. (Or would it be 50% not human?)

Barney Calhoun : Not directly recognized as a monster, but his lineage used to have Valkyries which are considered nonhuman.

Isaac Kleiner : Witch!! Potions on the side of science!!! Finding where the “normal” laws of the world end and where “magic” begins! Still pretty scatterbrained tho.

Lamarr : She’s a will-o-wisp and Kleiner’s familiar! She’s very lovely but isn’t afraid to spook people by taking surprising forms. Especially Barney. love Iand magic) is stored in the flying fireball!

Gina Cross : A pixie! Not the kind with wings or anything, she’s just very short and some nonhuman qualities about her. And maybe magic at her fingertips that she’s more than willing to apply to experimental items. Also, by proxy, she can’t be possessed, which is good for working with ghosts.

Colette Green : Decended from giants!! She’s tall and durable, but careful when she has to be. It doesn’t get in the way of her throwing herself into her work, but it can be tiresome.

Arne Magnusson : A tommyknocker, overall he’s much more comfortable underground. Likely nocturnal too. Overall not a fan of cities.

Wallace Breen : This man is also a human person, just a shit one.

Adrian Shepherd : Changeling, though this wasn’t discovered until he joined this military. Bit of a shock to his family.

G-Man : Ghost, and a powerful one at that. Might be acting under someone or something as a representative.

Left 4 Dead

William “Bill” Overbeck : Undead of some kind, technically always falling apart and decaying. Hates it, but can’t seem to die, so it’s better to just recooperate and keep going.

Coach : Selkie, and balancing a life out of the ocean with his husband and son and in the ocean with his family. He’s having a nice time. At least until the au really kicks off but ehh—

Francis : A ghost, more specifically some kind of vengeful spirit? Well, he tries to be nice but it isn’t his fault he catches on fire sometimes.

Nick : Vampire! Overall he. Probably gives the most general difficulty to the team just trying to vibe by existing but that’s okay they love him anyways.

Louis : Witch! Nephil though they’re not allowed to learn too much magic and too powerful magic because of the nephil thing. Too much magic misuse makes the half-Angels fall, even if there are good intentions. :pensive:

Rochelle : A flower Nymph! Seeing as she is a walking plant, more or less, she’s probably the most obviously not a person, which sucks for her but she can manage.

Zoey : Jersey Devil, the cryptid. In the au there’s more than one, probably not just really centered to any kind of Jersey, and she’s one of the younger ones. She can take a human disguise kind of form that works on anyone who can’t see through magic.

Ellis : Werewolf, in a pack with his friends. He doesn’t have any obvious bites, but he’s not a born werewolf. Here, lycanthropy is a really easily spread disease, so if you like. Donate blood or something that could lead to infecting someone else.

Thank you for reading if you took the time to read and I hope you liked it ^^

[portal2divorce]

@this-should-do hello this is exactly what I was hoping for! thank you so much

I wrote. a bit. and this doesn't even touch on everything OP talked about but it Does exist now so.

I have, to put it mildly, mixed feelings about the way Gordon’s reappearance is treated in HL2. none of the other characters appear extremely surprised to see him. I figure the out-of-universe explanation is that players would be a little weirded out by emotional reunions with characters they’ve effectively just met, these are people to whom Gordon has effectively died multiple times. Eli and Kleiner were shocked he had managed to crawl out of the test chamber alive. They’d probably go on to conclude he didn’t make it if they never heard from him after that, or, if Kleiner did make it to the Lambda labs, he’d believe himself responsible for sending Gordon to his apparent death.

but to Barney, Gordon has died over and over. He’d probably have known Gordon was in test that turned out to be responsible for the Resonance Cascade, and if he hadn’t, he’d have found out quickly enough by the panicked scientists throughout the facility. to then see what he had every reason to assume was Gordon’s dead body, escape, and then find out Gordon had lived through that after all... only to then slowly, agonizingly come to the conclusion that while Gordon had apparently escaped the facility, he hadn’t escaped with his life. all while Kleiner is firmly in denial and the world goes to hell.

and then Gordon becomes The Freeman, the symbol of resistance and the savior of humankind who will someday return. Barney’s dead friend becomes a legend. the world won’t let him rest, but he seems like their only cause to rally behind. is it better to raise the last generation of humanity, to raise Alyx, whom he’s become like an uncle to, on stories of a Gordon who was a funny, if strange, if perfectly normal Black Mesa research associate who regularly raced him through the ventilation system? or is it better to let her believe the myth of the Freeman, who lived through the Resonance Cascade and its fallout with nothing but a crowbar and his own cunning? is it better to give her hope that he will return and be the catalyst for the Resistance’s unstoppable push to put humanity back in power? would Alyx then be disappointed if she ever met Gordon?

oh well. It’s not like she ever will.

would mourning Gordon Freeman make it easier to believe in the messianic figure which has risen in his place?

For Barney, it’s apparent it hasn’t. Someone has clearly been telling stories about a certain theoretical physicist who went crawling around in vents, that left Barney owing him a beer. one who is a man of few words, but of many ideas (including the reckless and stupid ones). as the years go on, his memories of Gordon get more and more idealized, but at least they know something of the real him. Maybe it’s good that he’s held on to that idea of Gordon, even in a world that has beaten so many of his beliefs and morals out of him. Because when Gordon comes back, it’s not as the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way.

It’s as Gordon Freeman, disoriented, stepping off a train into a city he’s never seen in a world that he scarcely recognizes. And despite everything, 20 years later, Barney still manages to recognize him.

in such a vastly different setting, Gordon looks exactly the same. maybe that’s a part of why Barney goes for such an almost painfully casual greeting, ‘hey Gordon it’s me don’t ask why I’ve aged 20 years you didn’t forget your old pal Barney while you were off being dead did you?’ and cracks a (dark, horribly pessimistic) joke about his ‘beating quota.’ I feel like there are three things that could be going on: Barney, for a moment, is desperately trying to pretend the Resonance Cascade never happened; he’s just somehow slipped back into old habits; or he’s trying to act like things are normal, just for a second, just for Gordon’s sake. the man hasn’t aged a day but he’s probably scared and he’s in a very dangerous situation even if he doesn’t realize it yet. Maybe it’s a combination of the three.

It’s probably something Barney never expected. it might be something he hoped for. for better or worse, the world has changed irreversibly, and Gordon Freeman has not changed one bit.

(except he has, because the last day or two of his life before being put in stasis was undoubtedly the most traumatic shit he’d ever been through in his life. but whether or not he’s used to living like that, he’s certainly not used to living the way humanity has for the last 20 years)

(this is also where I start seeing Portal parallels left and right so if anyone wants to give me an excuse to ramble about that I will give it my best shot)

this all is just part of why I find Gordon and Barney’s dynamic, friendship, relationship, etc. to be one of the most interesting ones in Half-Life and one with so much potential to explore many of the questions raised by the games. there are so many contrasting points that can be identified. Like Gordon’s ~24 hours of intense horror and bloodshed and then stasis compared to Barney’s 20 years spent in soul-crushing dystopia while the man can probably get no more than three hours of sleep in a row. There’s Gordon getting picked up by the G-Man and going ‘shit, did I just sell my soul?’ while Barney’s role as an undercover Resistance member in the metrocops likely has him firmly believing he sold his right alongside any moral integrity he once had.

yeah that’s it for now. have a good night folks.

Before i get into everything, I want to preface this with the fact that I wrote this in one sitting starting at 9 and ending at 1:40. It is long (so very long, approx. 2.2k words) and rambling, it is largely unedited except for spelling and grammar and I refuse to read it over, and my eyes are burning. @portal2divorce , I hope this is what you wanted when you left that looking emoji on the post where i mentioned wanting to write about my thoughts on barney and his relationship with gordon and how it changes after the rescas and hl2.

Anyways barney is a bitter old man who I want to learn to be a little less bitter and heal in the end because, if I may borrow phrasing from that one captain America/bucky fic I’m sure were all vaguely familiar with, these fuckers deserve a softer epilogue.

I will also be putting this under a read more becuz i remember that those exist now and im on the web instead of mobile rn becuz i wrote this all in word cuz i knew it was gonna be so long, so i can do that

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