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prinnamon · 7 months ago

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arlen's mind notes! mostly ground that was already covered by @spiderh0rse's arlen's mind notes, but i'm enjoying documenting my mindverse journey too.

EPISODE 1

unlike barney, Arlen relies on An Actual Alarm Clock instead of trusting his roommates to wake him

barney snores loud as fuck and is an extremely heavy sleeper (arlen tries and fails to wake him. in Mind of Ryan, Ryan claims to have done the same.)

arlen doesn't remember what he did last night, but his back hurts

says he doesn't give a fuck about barney

arlen wonders if he's the person who hates mornings the most in the world. sure, i believe it. maybe he really is the specialest boy in the universe.

"washes" his hands in the backed-up flooded sink water. thinks this is acceptable. disgusteng.

the vending machines eat his money. he is very upset that his snack and soda are gone (stolem). at least he tried to eat something for breakfast, but as a mindverse character, he is simply not allowed.

KATE! WE GET TO SEE KATE! i hadn't realized she'd be physically present. i'd assumed she was a Phantom Girlfriend like Lauren from Barney's Mind who we'd never actually get to meet.

is a little groggy and dismissive of Kate. immediately starts worrying that he sounded like an asshole.

"why do we need… a ramp… and stairs here?" arlen. buddy. c'mon.

"what the hell's going on here? what are they gonna do when they come to these stairs?" ok, he has a point about this one actually. why is there only a ramp in one spot

also, though, why does he find this worth remarking upon? he's not new here. that's first day/week talk.

jokingly predicts the alien invasion pretty accurately. expects to be the sole survivor. is looking forward to that outcome.

hates work. me too bud

walks into work, sees people having tech problems, and tells them "try a reboot if you have not." if i was one of his coworkers i would strangle him for that. you get here late and you honestly think we haven't tried turning it off and on again? perish at my hands loser

"i'm not a computer expert. i just press keys and then it works." ipad baby 🫵

sees Gordon driving in. does not recognize him but immediately clocks him as someone who "thinks he owns the place"

falls asleep on the job. maaaybe talks in his sleep, but it's always unclear in these series whether the dialogue is meant to be seen as spoken or internal.

wakes up with a headache.

shoots the vortigaunts reflexively before they even move to attack him.

extended string of "that did not just happen. did that happen—? that never happened."

his name is TJ. his dead coworker's name is CJ. i want all of the guards he encounters to be named something along these lines. PJ. DJ. AJ. it would be so funny

he has a radio that actually lets him communicate with sector G's management, holy shit. only character with functioning radio equipment???

hears that Sector F has sent in similar reports to what he just encountered and immediately starts running to see if Kate's okay. so for all that talk about how everyone aggravates him, he does really care, at least about her.

EPISODE 2

arlen is one of very few who actually takes a moment to really get close and examine the aliens he kills, trying to figure out what's up with them instead of running straight by.

he says "i know i just saw something" often.

extremely aware. has not given any aliens an opportunity to attack him yet. which isn't to say he's shooting them immediately for no reason; he has some pretty obvious clues to the fact that they are hostile, like the dead bodies and the headcrab zombies.

the extreme awareness continues even when there's nothing to be aware of. at this point, he's just on constant high alert.

calls things "gay" if they are of no use or interest to him

"i want a soda, and i have a gun." [shoots vending machine; it breaks and soda cans fall out] "and now i have a soda, too." probably most charming bit so far

Sprite drinker. *excitedly tabs over to a spreadsheet called "mindverse character soda preferences"*

shooting crates open in search of treasure chests. buddy. what???

forgot about Kate. feels bad for forgetting about Kate.

a couple times, he's taken a sort of "serves them right" position about people he's found dead. wonder if he really feels that way or if it just helps him cope.

doesn't shoot the houndeyes right away! waits for them to explode his ears with their psychic attack before he starts blastin'

thinks the soundwave made his kidney explode

Kate is his entire motivation for trying so hard. "i'm worried about her, and if i don't do this, i'll forever wonder if i could've helped her."

thinks it's incredibly unfair that aliens get to break the laws of physics and he doesn't!

would be pretty embarrassed if he survived an alien apocalypse and then died from a heart attack.

EPISODE 3

"calm. calm. calm. I'MGONNAKILLEVERYBODY. calm. calm." takes second place for my favorite line.

straight up that is an arcade and not a restroom. awesome but where do i piss.

"i'm not sure whether to be more upset that we're wasting money on something like this—an arcade—or that nobody ever told me about it." feels very left out and excluded.

has been trying to get the company to issue him a new gun for two months since his broke.

sees or possibly hallucinates a floating headcrab.

sees the barnacle ahead of time. guns down the nearby zombies before he can see what it does to them, but is curious enough that he gets close enough for it to wrap around his neck and choke him for a second. this stuns him, hurts really bad, and leaves him with headache #2.

says "i'm not evil! it's me! tj arlen!" as if the military would just hear that and be like ohhh okay! hey everybody, no worries, we got tj here!"

is so scared he mispronounces his own middle name

killed two people (out of necessity) and seems dead certain he's going to hell now

EPISODE 4

brands himself a "homicidal maniac" after, again, killing exactly 2 people in self-defense.

never before considered the idea that he might actually kill anyone.

slams his nose into the wall in his panic as he runs from more grunts shooting at him. gets more upset than i've heard him get in this entire series. thinks his nose is broken!

aware that he would die if he fell, but evidently not afraid of heights. just enjoys the view.

NOT having fun. does NOT like murdering people. …DOES like watching blood splatter against the wall (immediately feels bad and wrong for thinking that)

forgets how much the situation sucks for just a moment to be impressed with his own ability to shoot down a turret from a distance.

he says "god hold me" instead of "god help me." i have not heard that one before.

wishes kate was here… not that he was with her wherever she is but that she was with him where he is. would feel more comfortable and confident in his ability to get through this if he was with her. shows that he thinks of her as trustworthy and competent, probably more so than himself.

has played minecraft. associates exploding creatures with creepers

recognizes the gman even at a glance. wants NOTHING to do with him and will NOT ask for his help.

after his first encounter with a bullsquid, he gives up trying to make sense of anything that's happening to him.

says "back to my life as a mole" when he has to go back in the vents to progress

"explosions are fun! especially when they murder people." i think he's just saying words recreationally now because this is directly contradictory to the previous characterization in this same episode. i highly doubt the last four minutes were enough time for him to spiral into madness etc etc.

i will admit he is killing and quipping with a little more enthusiasm now and saying things like "i wonder if there's anybody down here to kill." concerning.

EPISODE 5

recognizes the tram, but has never learned how to operate one.

casually steps backwards off of the moving tram. is not hurt in the process. smooth moves

dismayed to realize he may now be a conspiracy theorist. quickly rationalizes his way out of it so he can go on feeling content that he's not One Of Them.

briefly entertains the idea that he's dreaming.

bullsquid spit RIGHT in his eye! horrible! he sounds like he's in more pain than when he broke(?) his nose, which is saying a lot, and there's a visual effect to show how badly it's messing up his vision.

broke his arm before. his eye hurts worse than that.

particularly terrified when he sees an alien grunt. probably in no small part due to having just watched it absolutely eviscerate another guard. reeeally wants to believe it doesn't exist.

creeped out when rachel, another guard, won't talk to him. she does just kinda stare at him and then follow him around. i'd be a little creeped out, too.

rachel gets killed, and he finds a blood-covered radio and a note among her things that. auuuugh. dumps a whole bunch of exposition which i found it really hard to focus on. he reads it while walking. okay i don't want to but i've gotta re-listen and try to parse that because it sounded plot-critical

arlen learns from this note that the marines and special forces are trying to apprehend gordon freeman, who needs to be warned. he learns that the marines were ordered to kill black mesa employees and that the special forces were ordered to do the same as well as kill the marines.

the radio he picked up allows him to communicate over a secret secure channel, since the special forces are monitoring the default channel.

somehow he knows the special forces "are like ninjas" despite not having encountered them yet

thinks he's as good as dead if the special forces are after him.

calls in over the radio and manages to reach his friend (jordan/jordon) from sector g. jordan asks after rachel. when he learns that she didn't make it, jordan tells arlen to take up her mission and warn gordon freeman.

yet again, he's fixing other people's fuck-ups! he feels this has been the story of his life since he started working at black mesa.

has absolutely no clue where he is in the facility until he lands in loading bay d, which he recognizes immediately

knows right away that it's freeman in the hev suit despite not having been told what he would look like. maybe this means he actually did know gordon beforehand? mneh. i will make my own canon about this since it feels inconsistent

EPISODE 6

HEV training flashback! …why does Arlen receive HEV training instead of guard training?

"door, why you no open?"

wonders how Black Mesa can "keep bitching about how they're underfunded" when they can afford training holograms.

his high school had a "positive parent" initiative with a $5 membership fee.

he considers his high school "the poor kids' school."

surprised and dismayed by the fact that there are scientists monitoring his training. would rather no one be watching. (arlen what do you think happens in that scenario if you hurt yourself)

"this isn't like i'm going to be training to be a black op." arlen? hello?? a black op???

says he's receiving this training in case they run out of scientists to do a certain job. and holy SHIT that's ominous to me. like the administration knew there might be a shortage of survey team members. like they knew that losing them was a possibility and were preparing backup survey team members. it's just. aaaaa it's so fucked up do you understand how fucked up it is. am i explaining it right

jokingly ponders whether they're invading an alien planet. is pretty correct except for the part about the purpose being so that they can cure cancer. nah i think they did it just to do it. but good on him for his miniscule amount of faith in the administration at least having benevolent intentions

you can't say that white baby.

"you know you're a sad case when you talk to yourself this much." AHA. so at least some of your dialogue IS spoken and not just internal.

says the long jump module goes around his arm. i don't… i don't like that. is that true? i thought it went around their torso somewhere. like a jetpack. does it go on their arm?? is he getting that from somewhere or just making it up??? i guess it looks a little small to go around your whole body, but i feel like you'd tear your arm out of its socket every time you used it if it was a thing on your arm. i've decided he's wrong about this. he's doing it wrong

he does like the long jump module a lot. wants to keep it. not above stealing it if he can get away with it.

tries and fails to step on the cockroaches he sees. hates them. manages later to smash one with a crowbar.

happy for the opportunity to break crates at work.

makes reference to slenderman. lists a number of things he think slenderman does. says he never found him scary.

extremely happy that he gets to do weapons training as part of this but wonders why the hell scientists need to be trained with weapons

tries for way too long to shoot through the glass that says "UNBREAKABLE" in big yellow letters.

he hates swimming because he does not like to be wet. actually thinks it's awesome as long as he's wearing a waterproof suit

UNDERWATER MUMBLING 🙌

INCOHERENT WHIMPERING 🙌

was sick the day they told people how to use the trams. gives up.

ponders kicking barney out of the dorm for the night since he can stay with lauren instead.

barney hates snakes. arlen would happily use this knowledge against him.

EPISODE 7

back to the present. he lives!!!

he wakes up somewhere completely different. looks like a wind tunnel. his radio, flashlight, and weapons have all been taken.

moving hurts. very bad.

seems to remember everything that has happened to him. upset to learn that the aliens weren't a dream.

his wound. isn't bleeding. at all. i guess

he was shot somewhere in the torso, because apparently his shirt is over the wound and tight enough to act like a bandage.

i'm gonna go ahead and say gman intervened to prevent him from dying. or, uh, gmind. cia guy. you know him. but anyway, the special forces had a clean shot at him. and there's no way they would have moved what they thought was his corpse to that random tunnel and left him alone without checking at any point to make sure he was dead. a certain somebody is definitely lookin out for him.

his priorities: get a gun, get a car, get Kate, get the fuck out.

lets out a little startled yell each time he fires the shotgun.

starting to like the adrenaline rush (of killing? of being in danger? i assume he means the former, but he kinda doesn't specify!)

would like to capture an alien and keep it as a pet. it would make him feel badass. that's his new back-burner priority.

still terrified of alien grunts but just says "holy pancake!" this time instead of letting out an extended scream like he did earlier.

houndeyes remind him of dogs. wonders if he can "train one to be a dog."

"they're like creepers in minecraft, only they don't self-destruct." so they're nothing like creepers then, man. why are you like this. why do you say the things that you do.

the pain had faded into the background. when he gets to a first aid station and gets some morphine, it finally registers with him again how much pain he was in.

i can barely hear him during this section over the music and gunfire, but he repeatedly shouts "evasive maneuvers!" which is very funny. it's like audibly going "stealth!" while trying to hide

the military is deliberately blocking the parking garage in an effort to prevent people from leaving. sucks!

dead survey team member? whuh huh?? what are you doing here???

has zero idea how to pick up women. no clue how he ended up with kate. seems like he earnestly Does Not Remember.

sees that the metal detectors didn't go off when bullets (metal) passed through them and naturally assumes they are inoperative. decides to step through to test this theory. they go off. nice going, dipshit <3

EPISODE 8

hit in the head with a brick. the turrets have been beeping nonstop for fifteen minutes, despite not thinking it'll work, he snaps and pops out of his hiding spot to shoot it.

admonishes the scientists for not taking the guns on the ground.

glass in his arm from when the houndeye soundwave shattered the window! not as bad as when he cut himself on dried shredded cheese. makes a "sharp cheddar" joke. awesome

shocked by the vortigaunts' ability to speak. ready to hear em out until it starts attacking. listens to the next one and argues/converses with it! does not kill em afterward!

starts wondering if the other aliens will talk to him. hesitant to kill them now.

bemoans the fact that the security guard team is a glorified IT department, fixing every problem around the facility.

"i did NOT go to engineering school! if your fucking elevator will not work, i can't help you."

has apparently had his pay reduced for not fixing things he doesn't know how to fix. awful hellworld stuff. not that people aren't justified in sleeping at all jobs, but i can especially see why he sleeps at this job.

balancing on a distressingly small ledge.

got called to the biology department to solve a computer issue. after three hours, he was finally able to determine that a power strip was plugged into itself instead of into the wall.

simmons and walter cameo!!! arlen calls simmons "simms." maybe they know each other decently well. neither walter nor simms has heard from kate, unfortunately. but they do have health goo! arlen loooves being injected with health goo <3

running still really hurts.

simms fucking DEAD! oh, false alarm. no body, so arlen assumes simms got kidnapped.

arlen fails his stealth check and gets kicked off a ledge instead of pushing the soldier off. oopsieeee. yknow gmind really has his work cut out for him protecting this guy because arlen really is the struggler

EPISODE 9

unfortunately growing accustomed to this cycle of fighting for his life for a while, being knocked unconscious, and waking up somewhere else with no weapons.

wonders how he's still alive! if he was the army, he'd have killed him by now for sure.

earlier, he thought he was meant to die. now he realizes he's so lucky not to have died by now, maybe he's meant to live. maybe even some alien overlord is looking out for him. …naaaah. probably not. :3

breezes past a human head and leg on the ground and says shortly thereafter he didn't see any bodies in that room. wow. blood splatters and human remains are really just blending right into the scenery for him, huh.

he has a headache again. and his side still hurts from where he was shot. and his legs hurt from falling. he's got a lot of problems right now.

"walk up in the club and be like. what up. i got a pet rock"

proud of having blown up a helicopter, but concerned that it makes him an even bigger target.

"i'd rather be freezing than burning!" me too, man. i miss cold.

"and i thought i needed medication before this." tj arlen you will always be famous

EPISODE 10

he's still amazed at the ease with which he guns down military grunts. concludes that they must be expecting him to be unarmed.

it is not 2016. i will bite you.

at some point, he had fingerless gloves. now he doesn't. anyway i thought that was interesting.

time is getting weeeird for him due to the duration he's spent unconscious.

he considers morphine his "drug of choice." was that true before everything, or did it become true during the events of the game?

"okay. i understand now. everything these past few days is just my interpretation of what happened. it's why all the clocks don't have hands." so much fucked-up and inexplicable shit has happened to him that he no longer has any faith in the accuracy of his perception of reality. awesome! 😁

"it feels like i've been here for years, but if i really think about it—GRRAAHHGH. …if i really think about it,"

regretting not having tried to hotwire the car he found earlier.

maybe he should give up trying to find kate.

maybe he's in hell. wonders if he could have avoided this by being more religious.

believes religious texts are written by governments.

"but really, i'm not enlightened or better than everyone else. i just like to think i am but pretend i'm down-to-earth and a good-hearted person. was that what i was supposed to realize? i guess not, 'cause i kind-of already knew that. i'd be lying to myself if i said i didn't." feels like much of his life before all this was sorta. operating under several layers of playing pretend. deep down, he knows he's not better than anyone else, but he tries to tell himself he is, but he tries to seem humble to others?

says Kate doesn't truly matter to him. feels he should have valued her more. i don't think i believe him. im clinging to what he said in episode 4, that he wished she was there. he's always talking about her! and someone who really didn't care, i dunno, i don't think they'd be so worried about whether they cared enough.

bad relationship with his dad. complicated relationship with his mom.

suddenly talking like he thinks he's the worst guy in the world—like he brought all these bad things upon himself by being a bad person, by acting wrong in other areas of his life.

ah. yeah. the morphine is likely not a new thing. had a drug problem before this. hurt friends and lost relationships he cared about because of it.

this whole self-awareness thing sucks. he wants to go back to lying to himself even harder.

ready to stop existing. how can he stop existing.

making fun of the vortigaunts. starts entertaining himself by rhyming random words, then by narrating his situation and rhyming as he does so.

disappears down a pipe. he went out like super mario. godspeed buddy o7

EPISODE 10 (POST-CREDITS)

HE'S IN A FUCKING TUBE?

WHAT IS THIS.

what the fuck happens in azure sheep

sick gurgles, though

they let him out of his tube

kate saves his ass!!!

different kate model. i like this one less. give her back her glasses how will she see. give her back her vest she needs that.

arlen says "where are we going now?" and kate very faintly responds "heaven :3". i'm in shambles. that one word is all the characterization i'll ever get for her beyond how much arlen wants to save her but tbh it's so cute. that's enough., That's enough. WHO VOICED HER THOUGH BECAUSE KATE'S VA WASN'T IN THE CREDITS. WHO SAID THAT!?!?!?

what a strange first thing to say upon reuniting with your partner. weirdgirl kate reigns supreme.

i realized the other day that, despite featuring arlen, mind of ryan directly contradicts the canon of arlen's mind. if barney was around for ryan, who drove into work from off-site, to try and wake up, barney couldn't have been sleeping in the dorm with arlen. so yeah, there's not just the "too few beds and too little space in the dorm for three people to sleep comfortably" issue, there's "ryan straight-up claims he slept last night at the same off-site location as barney which is not possible in the same world as the one in which arlen's mind takes place." and i know the real answer to all this is "dravenmario wanted to pay homage to the series that inspired him, not necessarily be fully canon-compliant with that series," but i still. i dunno. thought it was mildly interesting and worth noting.

next i'll probably watch shephard's mind or chell's mind (the one by CyhAnide, although i do eventually plan to check out the Rychotech one).

#arlen... he took a while to grow on me. his slur to episode ratio is pretty high and i found the first few episodes difficult to focus on.#partially a fatigue issue. i was watching late at night. i also don't think i'm the biggest fan of the mod azure sheep #i could not piece together the plot #i like kate though. or the idea of her at least. smiles #prinna's posts #prinna's machinima notes #arlen's mind #arlens mind #tj arlen #tod arlen #mindverse kate #kate mindverse #mind machinima

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