#thank you followers for being patient with the 2020-esque ship discourse resurgence today

[angels-heap]

lbr even if Valve shipped Gordon with a random woman he couldnt have met pre rescas, m/m shippers would still say its wrong

... yeah.

I've thought a lot about this, actually. If HL2 was exactly the same except Alyx was replaced with some random woman in her mid-20s who met up with the cast post-rescas, people would still criticize the technical stasis-related age gap (and/or invoke the whole "I see them as found family so any shipping of these unrelated characters is literally incest" argument). If, I dunno, mid-40s Judith Mossman was canonically into Gordon, people still "wouldn't see it" or would write her off as "evil" or would say the age gap is creepy because she's the older "predator" inappropriately pursuing "a traumatized younger man who has no idea what's going on."

Hm, it's almost as if age gap discourse doesn't matter or make sense when sci fi time travel shenanigans are involved! And people who don't engage with media they claim to like beyond shipping the two hottest, youngest available white guys will always find a way to pretend a canon M/F ship is problematic! 🙃

Blargh. I don't think this counts as "making up a guy to get mad at" when there are so many documented cases of this happening in other fandoms, but... you get the idea. I long for the days when people didn't weaponize progressive language to win ship wars. That is all.