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(mean old man who has tasted the bitterness of the world too much but trying to be nice)
Dearer than I?
No, not dearer than you...
Rough animatic I made back in January (not me forgetting to post it here until now lolol)
Sniper doesn’t understand why Spy would go to him of all people to talk or spend time with. Spy is 20 years older and the two have completely different interests yet the Frenchman shows up at his doorstep or appears next to him when he’s sitting by a fire. It freaked him out at first and Spy almost had his head separated from his shoulders when he first popped up behind him. It soon became second nature to set out an extra chair when he was outside and wait for the spy to gracefully sit down in it, though sitting gracefully in a folding lawn chair wasn’t quite possible and watching Spy look disgruntled by how awkwardly he had to sit was laughable to the sniper.
He bought a cheap bottle of wine that he’ll offer Spy when he drops by and learned early on that Spy will only accept a glass if he needs to vent or if he’s exhausted, and even then he’ll complain that it’s too sweet or it has a horrendous taste. Sniper doesn’t try to look for different brands or years or even types. He buys the exact same bottle once it starts running low because he enjoys watching the exaggerated way Spy will curl his lip and grimace, or how he’ll glare at the bottle in Sniper’s hand before he even pours it.
“Your taste is disgusting.” Is what he always says upon seeing it.
“You keep drinkin’ it.” Is how Sniper always replies.
He’ll pour the wine into a coffee mug and Spy will take the mug and hold it like it’s a bomb. He won’t comment on the mug though, not even the worn lettering that says #1 Sniper or the chip on the lip of it. He can still smell the coffee Sniper had in it from earlier that day, the smell ingrained in the glass, it’s a disgusting comfort to him.
He wont tell Sniper to buy a different bottle of wine. He likes how Sniper’s eyes light up when he shows his distaste, or how Sniper will try to hide his grin when Spy takes that first sip.
They’ll stare at the stars. Spy will smoke a cigarette and Sniper will eventually convince him to give him a puff.
He’ll say he doesn’t understand why Spy has them imported when it tastes and smells the same as the cheap ones that are sold at a quick stop in town. Spy will rant to him how the cigarettes are made and how dare he compare his fine cigarettes to those half-rolled sticks of barely blended tobacco. Sniper will roll his eyes and half-heartedly argue with Spy about it before the two somehow end up on a completely different topic. Sometimes the topic is still an argument, other times it’s the two simply discussing things they understand and the other doesn’t, occasionally it’s just friendly banter. Typically it’s still just arguing.
Spy will leave after finishing the wine or his cigarette, even if their topic of conversation isn’t fully discussed. Sniper will watch him go, sometimes yelling at him to get back there if he felt like Spy was losing an argument, but he won’t run after him. Sniper will stay outside until Spy is no longer visible before turning in for the evening, knowing the same thing will happen again in just a couple more nights.
Hello dear friend! If you would like a request from me, poease can I get some wholesome Sniepr/Spy? I love the way your style has evolcved and I love the way you draw them :) ! Thanks! :)
hi!!!! :D !!!!!!!!! i want you to know that this touched me so much that it almost made me cry :'D !!!!!! it makes me so happy to hear that you like my art! thank you so much for your kind words! i am more than happy to do a request from you! i drew this little scenario i came up with into a sort of comic-esque format, though i am unsure if it still counts as wholesome... i tried my best anyway :') !!! i hope you like it! :-) (see the rest under KEEP READING!)
Anonymous asked:
Why do you think Bubby's so obsessed with space?
Listen. For the past, what? Thirty years of Bubby's entire life, they've only known not only the circular encasing that was their tube but the labatory room where they were created and are currently being studied. (Hell, aside from a professor, call them an interior designer or architect.) They know everything—every measurement, every minute detail of the room—off the top of their heads.
With that being said, as a young child, although they understood the concept of space, thanks to the knowledge they were pumping into them, they didn't want to believe it. They considered space to be similar to that of a fairy tale, as they're stubborn and have only been subjected to Black Mesa and what it has to offer. Sort of like object permanence, since Bubby can't see space, even though it's constantly present, they don't believe in its presence.
So whenever Bubby fell in love with Coomer and Coomer busted them out of their tube to go sit on the top balcony roof of Black Mesa to see the stars, it struck a chord with them. Not only was space real and beautiful, it showed them that there was more to life than this shitty laboratory; they didn't have to be confined and restricted to such a small space.
TLDR; Bubby adores space for a multitude of reasons. It not only makes them think of a special time they had with their future husband, but it also gives them comfort. In contrast to being confined to a very stuffy tube that regrettably doesn't grow as they get older, space itself is constantly growing allowing for a multitude of ideas and possibilities.
stanley messing w/the vending machine to try and unlock a new ending
This took a while, enjoy
Thank god tumblr has a bigger image limit now because heres 25 pngs of a scene from the hlvraifm au agaaaaiiinnn!!!!
This takes place, obviously, in the same scene the first Passport Inspection mention takes place in! Aka the scene where Gordon gets called a nasty little sewage boy. Yes that still happened it's just implied here to keep things short LMAO
THIS SCENE DRIVES ME INSAAAANE THOUGH- it's where Mind's barrier between what he's saying out loud vs what he's saying in his head starts getting noticeably blurrier and @shineyfish wrote it SO WELL.
Sorry if the sign language isn't accurate- I tried to use references and make sure I got the positions right, if someone wants to give pointers lmk! :D
OKAY, WE FINALLY HAVE A PIRATE EPISODE! HERE YOU LITTLE MONSTERS GO!!! <3
Mind is written by @shineyfish
WARNINGS: violence(obviously), drug mentions, smoking, and unintentional self-harm.
Doomed by the Narrative: Side B - Round 1
So I'm sleepy as hell but when the energy comes back I'll make a whole propaganda piece for Benny vote Benrey he's doomed as hell
Alright, here we go. Spoilers for the entirety of HLVRAI, which I highly recommend watching. And for the annoying fandom people who are like sixteen who think I can't interpret Benrey sympathetically because something something innacurate (because they'll probably see this if this circulates in the fandom even though i have them blocked some of my moots follow them), I'm soooo sorry you hate fun that must be soooooo hard for you lol
Gonna be separating stuff by lines and bolding important sentences to make it easier to keep track of where you are, since I have ADHD and I need that fjkdnskjfndsj
Now, I'm going to start this off by arguing that Gordon is the narrative in HLVRAI. And if not that, he is the central point of the narrative. I say this because in Act 3, we learn that whenever Gordon goes to sleep, the world just fucking stops. It basically ends until he wakes up again. And like... Why wouldn't it? He's the player character! HLVRAI is, in-universe, a game, and all the characters are AIs. Gordon is literally the only person who's not an AI. The world exists for Gordon to play in it. We are literally seeing EVERYTHING through his eyes. The code is not the narrative. Hell, the GAME isn't even the narrative. GORDON is.
So, the plot of HLVRAI is basically the plot of Half Life, with four very silly AI and an incredibly neurotic man with several unmedicated mental illnesses slapped on top of it, and this man is herding them along like sheep whilst filled with the fear of death while the team could get crushed in half and then come back fine (AND THEY DO). Team keeps dying, main character is filled with anxiety and fear, shenanigans, betrayal, and existential crises ensue. It's the funniest thing I've ever watched in my life, 10/10, it's also a masterpiece of writing despite being improv.
Alright, so Benrey… Benrey.
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Now, through HLVRAI, Gordon has this consistent rivalry with Benrey. Well, maybe rivalry is the wrong word. Throughout the series, Gordon kinda dislikes Benrey. Constantly murdering him, pinning him to the wall that one time, being a dick to him... And Benrey is (and I say this with love) annoying as hell. He's constantly following Gordon around and asking for his passport and jokingly not allowing him entry to anywhere (and also in act 4 he starts flirting with him like crazy).
And the thing is... Gordon was like that towards Benrey from the start. Benrey wasn't super antagonistic towards Gordon- he was just doing his job. And yeah, it's nonsensical, but HLVRAI is nonsensical. This is a series where one of the characters canonically slurps up piss and has clones he needs to kill to get more powerful. This is a series where a man was grown in a fucking tube. This is a series where the team wipes out the US military except for one guy who just wanted to graduate, and it's because he left to go watch IrateGamer videos. Benrey's motivations- inhuman creature chasing around his crush so he can get his passport- are tame in comparison to the shit the others do all the fucking time. (At least unless you count his monologue as factual.)
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But anyway, back to Gordon and Benrey. Gordon and Benrey's personalities clash horribly under the circumstances- Gordon DESPERATELY needs everyone to STAY FUCKING FOCUSED THEY ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A WARZONE THOSE ARE NOT FUCKING ROPES THEY ARE GOING TO FUCKING EAT YOU DO NOT DRINK THE GREEN GOOP, but he's surrounded by four deranged guys (AT LEAST three of which are a decade or more older than him) who keep running into danger and coming back over and over.
And while Benrey isn't as danger seeking as the rest of the team (only in theory and if you don't have my lore), he's still very capable of being very annoying. If being annoying was a job, Benrey would- okay in this economy he would still be working minimum wage but he would be fuckin fantastic at his job. And he loves annoying Gordon specifically.
So, what we have here is an incredibly stressed out man who is in desperate need of some fuckin help, terrified of dying, trying desperately to keep the TEAM from dying, versus the most annoying inhuman Thing you've ever seen who just does not care about mortality because he always comes back. They were fucking DESIGNED to bounce off each other in a bad way- hell, their color schemes are opposite! Benrey's text color, shirt, and pants are all shades of blue, while Gordon walks around in a bright orange suit. Blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel- even down to their fuckin COLORS, they are OPPOSITES.
Now, as a reminder: in this analysis propaganda thing, Gordon is the narrative. And Benrey is doomed by the narrative. So under these circumstances, with these clashing personalities, with Gordon under this level of stress, with Benrey being the chill individual he is... They were kinda destined to be nemeses.
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Yet under different circumstances, I believe with my whole heart that they could have been friends. Throughout the series, despite how often Gordon says he hates Benrey, he laughs at his jokes so much. And when Benrey gets in danger, he yells for him to get out of the way. Fuck, there's a part in Act 2 where he says Benrey's Sweet Voice is beautiful. There's a part of him, somewhere, that genuinely cares about Benrey, even if it's buried under layers of stress and fear.
In fact I have some level of proof that they could've been friends- in the cast commentaries, there are noncanonical intros to each one that are basically the characters chatting, and the fourth one is basically Benrey and Gordon fucking around in a bathroom.
Gordon has just killed Benrey semi-permanently, the tension should be astronomically high. And yet... it's not. Benrey sounds happier than at any point in the whole series, and Gordon sounds like he is smiling. The entire scene, he sounds like he's just smiling. They're just being silly together, even as the music is (presumably) meant to sound at least a little threatening, it's just not. The scene's just cute.
And my second piece of evidence: there's an additional stream to HLVRAI called the ACAB stream where the team basically goes to rob a bank. And Benrey at this point is supposed to be dead, but instead he invades the group, briefly fills their brains with bees, and reunites with them.
And Gordon doesn't try to do any shit to him. He explicitly tells Benrey he WON'T FIGHT HIM, even when Benrey dares him to 1v1 him. And their relationship seems... lighter. Less stressful. Benrey's still being a menace, yeah, he chases Gordon with a knife at one point because he's a little bastard, but Gordon isn't scared of him. He's laughing, they're being just... really silly!!
My point is: GORDON COULD'VE BEEN FRIENDS WITH BENREY. If they'd met a little earlier, if it'd been less stressful, if Benrey had been more helpful, if, if, if. If circumstances had been different, in any way, they could have been good friends.
The circumstances in which the narrative took place doomed Benrey to not be able to be Gordon's friend.
Which in turn doomed Benrey to be the villain.
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In Act 3, Benrey and Bubby conspire to get Gordon jumped by the military. Why exactly is unconfirmed, and I'm not dragging my not-based-in-canon headcanons into this. And at first, it's going well (for them, not for Gordon).
But then they cut off Gordon's arm. Which Bubby seems shocked by... and so does Benrey.
If you haven't watched HLVRAI, Benrey isn't very emotive with his voice, to very comedic effect (and it's even funnier when he IS emotive with his voice). But he sounds shocked by this. He sounds like he didn't fucking expect the soldiers to do that.
Now, even if it hadn't gone wrong to the point of CUTTING OFF GORDON'S FUCKING ARM, this definitely would've fucked up Gordon and Benrey's relationship. But the arm thing definitely sealed it. Like, his mental health gets SO MUCH WORSE after the betrayal. He's undeniably traumatized. I'm not going to explain HOW much worse it gets, because that's off-topic and would probably trigger at least one person reading this, but... Holy fucking shit it's bad. So yeah, Gordon was justified in hating Benrey after that. Yet that shock in Benrey's voice implies to me HE DID NOT WANT THE ARM THING TO HAPPEN.
Was Gordon justified? Yes, absolutely. Did Benrey mean to do that? I don't know. Leaning towards the answer being no.
And this gets sold to me by Bubby.
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When Gordon finds Bubby in his tube and asks him about Benrey, Bubby has this line where he... defends Benrey. He tells Gordon that the soldiers told him to help as well, which, at least to me, implies that Benrey was not, in fact, the orchestrater of the whole thing, the mastermind behind it all. Rather, the FUCKING US MILITARY made the plan and got Benrey to go along with it. Benrey didn't organize it with the soldiers (in fact, the jump is a part of Half Life canon, so he definitely didn't), the soldiers organized it and got him to help.
And, let me just set your expectations: Bubby is, and I say this with love, one of the most selfish members of the team. He's an absolute piece of shit, he's a coward, he SUCKS and I LOVE him. This isn't to say that he doesn't care about the team- he does, just look at his relationship with Tommy. But even so, he is INCREDIBLY SELFISH.
So let me ask you this: what reason would he have to defend Benrey here?
He could just not! He could've just thrown Benrey under the bus! Pinned all the blame on him, rather than the military! Said he was the one who made the plan, he was the one who decided for him to get his arm cut off. And like, those could've been reasonable conclusions for him to come to! And it's not like Gordon wouldn't have believed him! He would've! It could've gotten Bubby MORE on Gordon's side! It makes every sense that the most selfish member of the team would've pinned all the blame on
And yet he didn't. He chose to defend Benrey even so. He has no reason to. He has every reason not to. Yet he does.
And Gordon tells him that sounds like a fucking fantasy. For understandable reasons, like, let me make it clear: I'm not blaming Gordon for being angry at Benrey. He had just gotten his arm cut off by the guy, he'd been annoyed at him the whole time, he's justified in being pissed at him.
But still... even when being told by the most selfish guy in the team that Benrey's not the villain, the narrative continues to doom him to that fate.
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In the second half of Act 4 Part 1, they're heading to a space dimension called Xen to kill... "a single powerful being." (When an NPC tells Gordon that, he looks over at Benrey.) This will end the Rescas and most likely save the world.
And Benrey doesn't want them to go. He keeps telling them to go back. They should go back, they're "going further into hell", they should sleep, they need to go sleep, they can't go in that room because there aren't any beds.
Yet they continue anyway.
He seems to know what will happen on Xen. And what happens is that Benrey becomes the final boss. He grows to massive size and follows the team around still, though he doesn't attack until they get to the final chamber, and even then his attacks are very sloppy.
And most believe that the reason he protested so much was that he knew that he was going to be the big bad, and didn't want to be that.
Further evidenced by one specific line.
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In the finale, when Benrey has become the final boss and in the middle of a... very... strange monologue, Benrey says "i was supposed to be nice, but you made me bad, so i'm gonna be bad. friend."
Not "I want to be bad." Certainly not "I want to hurt you."
In fact, Benrey seems to NOT want to hurt them, AT ALL- there's a point where one of the characters is trapped by his skeleton friends, and he tells them to let him go. And there's one point in the boss fight where he yells at them "STOP SHOOTING AT ME, IF YOU SHOOT ME I HAVE TO SHOOT BACK! I DON'T WANNA DO THAT!" He explicitly TELLS THEM that he doesn't wanna hurt them!!
That's not what made Benrey the final boss. It wasn't a decision out of malice. He didn't do it because he wanted the team dead. If he did, he could've just fucking killed the team. He was 40 feet tall. He could have just fucking crushed them.
So why?
"You made me bad."
The narrative.
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Benrey never had a choice.
He is the complete opposite of Gordon, the fucking narrative. And while under different circumstances they could've been friends, this was the wrong place and the wrong time for them to meet. Even if the betrayal had never happened, even if Benrey had just been an annoying guy the whole time, at no point during the Rescas could Gordon have ever seen Benrey as the good guy.
From the very first scene, where Benrey approached Gordon and asked if he had his passport, the tone was a ball of stress bouncing off a wall of chillness. And like that, they couldn't have been friends. Under the circumstances of an apocalyptic situation where Gordon was trying desperately to survive while Benrey, a presumably immortal, unkillable, constantly annoying force kept pestering him, they could not have been friends.
And the game is shaped around Gordon. Gordon is the fucking narrative.
Benrey couldn't have been anything other than the antagonist.
He was doomed from the start.