#listen mans basically went to the atmosphere in minecraft

[candysworld5]

/The shapes are raining down like shards of sky, And fragments of a better life/ - Dream In, by Tunng

You know how sometimes people headcanon The End being over the Overworld, like how the Nether is below?

Yeah :)

[bees-aus]

HLVRAI ROLESWAP AU

[ Main tag: #SWAP AU ]

Roleswap AU is just like it sounds- an AU where everyone's roles are switched! However, what causes this AU to stand out from the rest is that roles may be swapped... but species and personality, in most cases, are not! In this AU, Gordon + Benrey are swapped, G-Man and Tommy are swapped, Coomer and Bubby are swapped, Forzen and Darnold, and Joshua and Josh (who works at Gamestop) are swapped!

Gordon Freeman

[ he/him ] [ Reference image ]

Gordon is a college dropout who had a dream of becoming a scientist, but really couldn’t handle it. In some cruel twist of irony, he ends up with a job at Black Mesa… as a security guard. It had great benefits and you didn’t really seem to do anything, so… why not? Sure, he’s a little bitter, but it’s steady, easy, has decent wages, and he at least gets to hang out around scientists. And at least he’s forced to keep up a workout regimen, which is probably the biggest thing he has going for his mental health. Also streams games in his free time. He’d been working there for quite a while when he suddenly got shifted to a different division- something about a big project needing heavier guarding. That’s when he met Benrey- who he thought was fishy as hell. And maybe he was excited to actually be able to do something once in this damn job. Of course, shit immediately goes wrong. Despite everything going to shit- Gordon is sure that his bosses will pull through and fix everything, so he does his best to try and do his job and make sure Benrey doesnt go anywhere he’s not supposed to. Benrey proceeds to completely ignore him, and use his inhuman powers to completely thwart every attempt Gordon makes to make the man listen. Ends up unwillingly becoming the final boss because of Tommy’s thwarting, and hes to be killed by science team, and then manually saved by Gman, Benrey and Tommy.

Benrey

[ they/them + he/him ] [ Reference image ]

Just like canon, Benrey is very much not human and a pain in Gordon’s ass. He’s the head test subject for all of the Xen projects, since his inhuman status prevents him from being killed or injured by most radiation and xen lifeforms that would kill humans. Doesn’t really care about his job, but Tommy roped him into it and he owes him one. Plus, the pay is decent to get things for his son, Joshua- who definitely takes after his dad. When the game starts, he starts playing it for funsies. However, it becomes a lot less fun when he realizes the game is becoming all too real. He hadn't worried about his arm getting cut off- not until it didn't grow back, due to it being a scripted event. Not only that, but Tommy lets him know that when the game ends... they all might die. So he helps bounce ideas off Tommy of how to stop it- with some consequences. They end up causing Gordon to be roped into being the final boss, and has to save him with Tommy and G-Man's help.

Joshua

[ he/him + ??? ] [ reference image ] 

Just like Benrey, Joshua isn’t human- and appears even moreso, since the kid has no interest in trying to appear human. Which Benrey at least tries, for his coworkers sake. About 6-8 mentally, his physical age isn’t really disclosed. He’s currently in his “molting phase”, as Benrey calls it; causing him to shed everywhere and try and itch himself on everything. As well as chewing. And hissing. And clawing the furniture. Despite that, they’re surprisingly well behaved when prompted, and listen to Benrey… decently well. Has an interest in Gordon, though that interest seems to half be trying to chew on all of Gordon’s clothes. Mainly watches Westerns at home or hangs out with Tommy or G-Man while Benrey is working. Has a strange love for cowboys. Calls Benrey “Bany” or “beedee”, Gordon “Hoofs”, Tommy “Eggs”, Gman “Chicken”, Coomer “Murphy”, and Bubby “Packy” as their main nicknames. Can’t read, but is a master Heavenly Sword player, amongst other games. Loves Minecraft in particular.

Tommy Coolatta

[ any pronouns ] [ reference image pending ]

Tommy is the son and successor to one of the more influential interdimensional buisnessmen, G-Man. When his father decided he was done, Tommy stepped up to the plate and took over the business willingly for several reasons- including simple pursuit of knowledge. He met Benrey long even before he took over the business, which is why he trusted him to help him with his project and appointed him to Xen experimentation- with pay, of course. He became self-aware when the "game" started, and though he tried not to interfere much, he got scared when he realized that when the game ended... they might all go with it. So, he decided to confide in Benrey- as they'd been friends for a long time; before Tommy had even taken over his fathers' position. Together they came up with a plan to try and delete the final boss- and it was this that caused Gordon to glitch and take over the role.

G-Man

[ he/him + xe/xem ]

After his son decided he was ready to take over the family business, G-Man decided to retire. He'd never really had time to simply... not do anything before. So he decided to indulge and start learning about more specifics instead of being involved with everything in a broad sense. One of his personal projects was creating a pet for himself- the "perfect" cat, a black oriental shorthair named La Croix. Though he claims she's perfect, she's... well, completley evil. But don't tell him that. Anyway, one day Tommy called him up and asked him for a favor- a client wanted Black Mesa to develop portaling technology to Xen, and he didn't really have to time to teach the humans. So, begrudgingly as a favor to his son, he posed as a scientist hired by Black Mesa to help fund and lead the research team. Much to his chagrin, that also involves working with Benrey, who he never really cared for. When all hell breaks lose, he's forced to accompany the rest of the team through the game for Tommy's sake- and because he actually decently likes the Coomer and Bubby fellows.

Dr. Coomer

[ he/him ]

Coomer is on of Black Mesa's experiments on creating the perfect security and scientist hybrid- if they could just have one person in both roles, it would be so much easier! Unfortunately, their testing didn't go so well. He's the most successful of his batch- and successful he is! He's got the brains of a scientist and the brawns of... well, certainly a lot more than your average security guard. Plus the psychokinesis. Really, he's the perfect package... if only they could properly replicate him. They decided to place him in the Xen department due to his multi functional abilities, and the fact that he got along rather well with the lead scientist there- G-man. Also, he's the only one who can really keep Bubby in check.

Bubby

[ they/them + he/him ]

Another one of Black Mesa's experiments- this time, in cybernetics. He was originally purposed to be withstanding of Xen atmosphere and basically work as a living space probe, but the idea was quickly scrapped. Still, they had a perfectly good brain, so... they simply stuck him in the scientist department instead. Though he's rather small and frail, he's by no means any less dangerous. A good portion of his body is advanced tech; a whole arsenal of tools store and hidden away in his body. Like a living swiss army knife of doom. Some of these features include giant, insectoid blade legs, a mini flamethrower, lasers, science tools... you get the gist.

Darnold

[ he/him ]

Darnold was Gordon's roomate back in college. Though he wanted to graduate in mixology- when Gordon dropped out, he got a new roommate, and things started to go south from there. Long story short, he decided to join the military for help with college and getting his degree. Unfortunately, Darnold is not a brave man. He did not want to be on this mission. He doesn't know why he ever even thought of this. This was a horrible idea. Oh fuck, oh no- But it's a bit too late now, once he's separated from the rest of his squad in an alien infested laboratory. When he finally meets the rest of science team, he quickly surrenders and dips out- but unfortunately, gets taken hostage by an evil cat named La Croix. Once G-Man manages to calm his pet, he books it, escaping the facility, quitting the military. Fortunately for him, Black Mesa's hush money (that Tommy provided, of course) was more than enough to let him get any degree he wants.

Forzen

[ he/him ]

When Darnold and Gordon both dropped out of college... Forzen was the one who decided to pick up the open dorm, and also the empty spot in Darnold's mixology class. Turns out, he was pretty damn good at that. Good enough that he decided that's what he wanted to do instead of join the military- fuck those guys. He went on to get a full, successful degree, and get hired as the official Black Mesa Mixologist. Though he's still a huge, buff, brute-looking man- he passionately works making his elixirs (all of which are lovingly named after beyblades, of course). He's pretty annoyed when a bunch of weirdos come knocking on his department, but he obliges because he has the perfect elixir to test on whatever the one-armed dude is- though they all quickly leave after a pretty heated discussion about TF2.

[dzpenumbra]

9/14/22

The apartment is mine. At least pending a background check and I have no criminal record so... I should be all good. The process has been fuckin weird though. They wanted a deposit up-front before processing my application. I mentioned that yesterday. It feels sketchy. But... I mean... more than that... it feels indicative of a really bad time in history. I mean... we're in a housing crisis, right? And we have been for well over a year. And this woman was kinda acting as though the absolute only thing that mattered was money. And like I needed to provide her some kind of security that I wasn't just gonna skip out and go rent another place. Bro, there aren't any other fucking places, isn't it glaringly obvious? It was just really weird to me, still is. Like... what is the message I'm supposed to get from "we need a 2k deposit before we even look at your application"? I honestly don't know what message I'm supposed to be interpreting here. The best guess I have is "if you act now, you can guarantee this apartment." But... like... how do they know they want me there?

The whole process has been very impersonal and distant. I don't like it at all. I haven't liked any bit of this. I put in a ton of effort to be very deliberate about how I was going to apply, what information I was going to share and how. I still haven't spoken to this woman. The whole thing has just been frantic and completely controlled by this landlord's demands. It's felt very... well I said this morning that it felt like what I imagine applying for a job in Silicon Valley would be like. Very cold, impersonal, all over-inflated lies on paper, people giving prepared responses and code-phrases, spewing out buzzwords and shit. All I wanted this whole fuckin time was to sit down and have a chat with whoever was going to be deciding to give me a roof over my head and make a first impression. Now, I just have a place to live. It's weird. It feels like I just got a dorm on a college campus or something.

Welp, guess that's just what living in an apartment building is gonna be like. Guess I've been living in a small town for too long, it's been over 10 years. Maybe I just forgot that we're all doing this "I don't have to know you, you don't have to know me" thing. As though it's advantageous to not know me. Whatever, I don't wanna dwell on it, we'll see how it plays out. That's just the note my day started on.

My brother reached out to me to touch base about a project I gave him. He's a super talented musician. I asked him to make a ton of streaming music for me, a playlist of good atmospheric background stuff I can put on loop. He got back to me, apparently he made some. I haven't listened to it yet. Because I asked him if he wanted to talk about the plan going forward and what the next steps were and he blew me off until "maybe tomorrow" because he "had a lot of reading to do". ... Yeah. And only other friend blew me off on setting up the Minecraft server and went to spend the night at his girlfriend's house, because obviously that means he can't like... do ANYTHING AT ALL with me. It's weird how people act in those relationships sometimes. I don't know. I'm holding back, I don't want to engage with this frustration. I'm mostly pissed here because I just overcame a life-crippling obstacle today and I kinda wanted to celebrate a bit, but instead I was blown off by literally everyone I know. So, that sucks. At least my Mom was willing to chat and send some good vibes. She even offered to get me takeout, but I didn't wanna put her out driving in the rain.

I don't know, man. I really think I just need people in my life who want to share their life with me, and share my life as well. All this keeping me at arms length shit that so many people do, it's fucking with my head. I'm pretty sure it already has.

I am afraid of intimacy because I have basically never had it. I have in fleeting moments, and moments of illusion, but it has been unfathomably rare in my life. It is pretty much my entire life goal, too. I've been thinking about that a bunch, which seems like a good thing to do just... in general... I just haven't really spent much time on the future, I've always figured it's gonna just happen anyway, why bother trying to control it? But that hasn't worked out great for me, so I'm gonna try to compromise a bit. I really feel like the whole point of life is to learn. To live, obviously, because... you know... you're alive. To try to seek a fulfilling life-experience, pursuing passions, feeling life to its fullest. To learn as much as you can. To pass that learning on, and exchange it with others. To share life with others, share yourself with others.

Like we're all just sensory organs for the collective human race. Who is an extension of the animal kingdom. Which is an extension of Life itself. We're just walking lumps of sensory equipment - cameras, microphones, kinetic sensors, whatever the fuck taste buds are and however the fuck your nose works, damn I didn't realize I didn't know how smell works, I should probably learn that. We gather information, we interpret our environments and our experiences. We process that information and store it as memory, we collect, and stitch a narrative and framework of world understanding. And we share this information, this narrative, this framework, every time we interact with others. This is a contribution to the language of Life itself. The information then spreads and mixes, much in the same way as a viral video or a meme. It saturates and becomes part of culture, which is the impact you have on the world, on history. Your impact, your contribution, is only worth what you put into it, and what you can put into it. In order for one to contribute to society beyond just one degree, 1). they must try 2). they must be received 3). that information must be spread.

I am not a hermit by choice. I simply avoid social gatherings. I have consistently welcomed individuals into my life over the past several years, very openly and very eagerly. My door is always unlocked, quite literally. I have offered a room in my house to several people. I just keep getting rejected. Like... I shit you not... I had a fight with a friend that I used to live in Boston with because we weren't really talking very often and I bashfully and anxiously requested that he check in a little more often because I was getting a bit stir-crazy. This was the pandemic of course, lockdown, and I live alone and wasn't talking to... anyone at the time really. He fought with me over it, he ended the friendship over it. I have talked to him once since when he came to get his shit that I stored for him for free in my spare room. I did not choose that outcome, in fact, I was reaching out to connect even more, to connect as much as I could, and it ended up severing the only social contact I had.

My only social problem recently has been that I am just not present on social media... and I really suck at just going to random social places in person by myself. I always have. If I'm going to the skatepark or something, I could maybe make it work, but... I don't know, it just really puts me off, has for like over 10 years. I wish I could define it better. I guess I just feel really sad with it. I don't like being in a place dedicated to social interaction and just sitting there by myself. People never approach me, it never goes the way people hint it's going to. Like I always got the advice "go to the bookstore coffee shop and just sit there and draw for a while". You know what happens? I listen to shitty castrated jazz. I drink super-overpriced coffee. I eat decent food. I draw by myself for an hour and a half. People give me a wide berth. I pack up and leave. Every time. I can just do that shit at home and listen to my own damn music. The whole point of going was for it to be social, and no one ever approaches, so why bother? I gave up on that shit super quick. Skatepark is a bit different, but it's mostly kids honestly. There's basically no one my age, and if there is they tend to be worlds better than I am at skating. It's rarely an in-depth conversation, usually small-talk.

But if I go to a social location with a friend? That's when shit pops off. That's when people start socializing. If I have someone to riff off of, it works pretty damn effectively.

This was actually a pretty defining moment when I really noticed that my ex was not the right person for me - even though I didn't know it at the time at all. Took me years to really process it. I had just gotten back from a friend's wedding, which she did not go with me to... which is still weird since I offered to pay and everything, but there was some side-action way back that was a bit sketchy so... who knows exactly what was going on there... I digress... Not a place my 4:30 AM brain needs to go today. I wanted to get back to living life. I was just sick and on meds all the time and a complete wreck. She was just frantically working all the time. I had us go on a date to the closest major mall that had IMAX. We were going to see The Last Jedi, because I'm a big Star Wars fan and I got her into the series too. That should give a timeframe around when this was. I remember walking through the mall with her and sorta strutting around and being goofy. It had been years since I had done that, I missed it, I was finally reconnecting with it. We went up to the ticket counter and I asked for tickets, but I very intentionally put my inflection emphasis on the wrong word. I asked for two tickets for The Last Jedi. It's a subtle joke, not even really a joke, more just... something out of place. It shakes things up a bit, puts the other person on their toes, disorients them, which is a good way to get a giggle while making a little bit of an ass of yourself. My ex immediately brought full attention to the joke, started giggling and diffusing the situation basically. That moment right there, that reaction right there. That was really helpful in me learning what I really need in my life. I need someone who will go with the bit. I need someone who will say "yes, and". And who is beaming with excitement to do that. That will change my life.

I just kinda need that in my life all around, in any form. I need synergy. I need harmony. And resonance. Long periods of extreme isolation get you to a place where it seems like it's a myth. Or an extremely endangered species. This is to the point where I doubt I ever really had it at any point, and end up doubting that it exists, and then not bothering to waste the energy trying to hunt down Sasquatch.

But I need it. It's the key piece in bringing my life's purpose together, and the one piece I can't create myself. So I just need to reacquaint myself with venues of social interaction nowadays. My Discord is dead, I type on here every night, I sometimes read Reddit but have no friends there, my Twitch has 2 chatters unless one is streaming, the Twitch rooms I visit are too big to meet people in. So... I just don't have a place to meet anyone. I'm open to suggestions if anyone reading this that somehow got this far down wants to put out there, if they've ever had any luck. I'm sure I've asked before. I'll get back on the dating apps when I move. Oh yeah, the move date is gonna be mid-November, so that's good news. I've got some time to get my shit packed and say my goodbyes to the area.

Alright, meandering train of thought has come to a halt for a bit, it's as good a time as any to head to sleep. Here's my first real bit of celebration for my new home. YAY! Okay, I'll try to get someone else to give a shit about this tomorrow. Goodnight, moon.