I've been replaying parts of the HL2 series over the last few weeks, and I was recently struck by one of Alyx's lines from Episode 1:

"Hey – an airduct. I've heard stories about you and airducts. Doctor Kleiner says whenever he locked himself out of his office you and Barney used to compete to see who could get in fastest without using a key."

I feel like it's significant here that Alyx heard this story from Dr. Kleiner, rather than from Barney himself. If Alyx had grown up around Barney or he'd "practically raised her," as so many people like to claim, why wouldn't he have told her this himself? Why wouldn't Alyx have said as much to Gordon?

For silly fandom ship discourse purposes, I feel like this is pretty compelling proof that Alyx and Barney barely know each other in canon. Contradictory headcanons are fine and good (and I've indulged in plenty of them myself), but anyone who tries to claim that Valve intended for us to see Barney as a huge figure in Alyx's life or an "uncle" or otherwise part of her "found family" is straight up pulling that out of their ass.

For broader fandom speculation purposes, this only reinforces my belief that we're not likely to see Barney again, even if we get another HL game at some point in the future. Valve doesn't have any grand backstory in mind for him. He's a glorified tutorial agent who's served his purpose. At least in canon, he's barely a blip on our latest protagonist's radar.

And maybe that's for the best.

Y’all really let the biggest asshole be popular on this corner of tumblr, bro

I saw a piece of Meta about Croc the other day and was vibing with it until they said "maybe he had a wife in the past—" and I literally

Because I literally forgot not everyone headcanons him as gay/bi/queer+male-attracted in some way. I was startled.

As much as Id like to believe that this isn't the case I know it probably is. The stranger things fandom has a long standing problem with racism. Like Ive seen ppl online say some vile racist things about Lucas, Erica and Argyle which is so gross.

Im not trying to start any trouble within the fandom or amoung shippers Im also a steddie enjoyer and you can ship what you want. Im just sharing these posts I came across.

As a black girl in the fandom I have seen first hand some of the racist things ppl online have said about characters of color.

That being said the tumblr stranger things fandom is better than the twitter, instagram and facebook fandom which is where most of the racist shit spawns.

I'm a little uncomfortable by some people calling the new octolings "sassy" despite the fact that nothing about them really give me that impression. The octoling soldiers have always had this air of confidence and intimation, but i feel like some are only calling them sassy cause they have darker skin now. I don't feel like going into it but as a black person it makes me extremely uncomfortable when people call black female characters sassy simply for how they look or because they seem confident. I'm not trying to police anyone but please watch what you say and pay attention to how you characterize darkerskinned characters.

Why is it that 9/10 times when I’m suggested grelle fan art it’s an anti? 🤔

Hey there! Regarding the reschedule reblog: I'm a little bit baffled. Is the not-reschedule such a hot topic in fandom? I mean, I get it for meta and characterization purposes or potential character arcs, but ... for me it just read as a easy and crude plot point /outside motivation to throw a quick wrench in the friendship of Lucas and Dustin and Mike, have Lucas sway more to the jocks and to get Erica back in the loop. And if I remember correctly: in the series that plot point never gets addressed again? Wich enforces the feeling that the series never intended it to be an actual plot point? They just needed a somewhat plausible reason to split up the friends (while they did not really care if some of the characters come off as ooc).

I wouldn't necessarily call it a 'hot topic'. I agree with you in that it was mostly just a minor thing to help move things around narratively.

What we're talking about is that some fic writers make a whole thing about having Eddie apologize to Lucas for not rescheduling the campaign in favor of the basketball game. It's not a bad thing to write, but to me that doesn't fit with the character, it's not Eddie's fault that Lucas has to back out last minute.

As a long time DM, my group doesn't reschedule sessions unless we're missing more than two players. One or two call outs and we make it work, and that's probably where Eddie was coming from. Why punish the other players, who are excited to play, for one person's absence?

I agree with others who say he could have been nicer about it, but for Eddie, someone who has a clear dislike for jocks, I can see why it would rub him the wrong way that someone he's brought under his wing is putting something else above what Eddie sees as the highest priority.

…

You ever look at a season of TV and go, "Well this is gonna be divisive."

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.

first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.

it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.

and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.

you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.

and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.

your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.

in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.

in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.

so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.

you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.

once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.

and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"

you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?

hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!

you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.

we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?

you motherfuckers have no concept of what "land back" or "decolonize" even mean. you're too busy demonizing entire groups of people, terrified, shitting yourselves, that they'll do even half of the horrors to you that you've done to them for decades or centuries. this shit comes off as hella racist for real. you hate arabs so much. you hate first nations people so much. you hate black people so much. even if you sympathize with them, you can't fucking bear the idea of them gaining freedom, independence, autonomy, safety, because you're so, so scared they'll hurt you back and cause chaos in the streets. these same people who just want to rebuild. who just want to go home. who just want to see their families again. who just want food. who just want medical care. who just want dry, warm shelter. you're so focused on the ideas of colonization, of "us vs. them", of one people displacing the other for a state to exist, that you cannot comprehend coexistence, and your only idea of peace is if an entire group of people were just gone and dead.

grow the fuck up. for the love of GOD, grow the fuck up.

Ugh I'll never understand why people like/d so much Tony Stark in the MCU. I just go -. - (indifferent) in the movies and usually can't stand him in fic, bc they exaggerate everything I don't like in fanon. Sorry I don't care about the rich guy demanding everything is about him. Yes he has good intentions or whatever, I still don't care for his chara much.

my adventures with superman turning deathstroke the fucking terminator into an anime twink is the single greatest thing i've seen in the history of animation i have not been able to stop laughing

Jason: the Batfam member I see most as my brother is Tim

Dick: What!!! That's no fair, I should be your brotherly-ist brother!

Dick: No offense Timmy.

Dick, turning back to Jason: But I am the one who has been your brother longest, I helped you kill that druglord, I even gave you some of my cookie dough last week!

Bruce: uhhh, back to the druglord thing-

Steph: You shared your cookie dough with him!

Jason: Sorry Dick, but there is one thing that makes you brothers more than anything else, not blood, or time, but...

Jason and Tim at the same time: Contempt

Jason: I have contempt for Tim, like all siblings should. Really the only thing I love more than hating Tim is shit talking other people with Tim. That form of contempt is how siblings bond and I will just say, surprisingly I love bonding with Tim even more than I love terrorizing Tim

Tim: aww, I didn't know we were that close

Jason, panicking cause he doesn't wanna ruin their dynamic: *punches Tim in the gut and runs out*

Tim, shouting after him: You can't take it back now, you ass

Jason: *turns around while running to give Tim the middle finger*

I want a Steve who genuinely doesn't want to play DnD because it's just not his thing! He enjoys watching and thinks some of it seems fun, but just isn't interested in the time commitment, or the math, or various other parts of it.

HOWEVER he does demand, like a child when they find out someone is writing a book, to be put in every single campaign as a random npc. He doesn't want to sit down for hours roleplaying, but he does want that seductress in the tavern to have good hair and be named Stevana.

And this isn't like, something the others don't know about, it's very obvious who it is each campaign. Sometimes Eddie even convinces Steve to do the voice for the character if it's a fun one and Steve isn't at work. Steve enjoys how much it both amuses and gets on various Hellfire members nerves, especially because his characters are always... Pretty out there.

Gareth and Jeff tend to be amused by Steve's characters, unless they are actively getting in their way and even then Jeff at least normally just finds them hilarious. Freak continues to want to study Steve like a bug. A crowd favorite for the CC members but a point of annoyance for the Party was the character that Steve pitched that was infatuated with that quest's main villain and would appear randomly just to say something really suggestive about the big bad, inconvenience them somehow even in a really minor way, and then dip. They were definitely supposed to be rescuing Stefano at one point but he was basically kidnapping himself at several points. Dustin is perpetually annoyed because Steve won't play with them for real, but he WILL play a random bimbo that starts them on a quest and enjoys flirting with the older members characters.

(Will and Lucas are... Maybe a little disappointed he's never flirted with their characters but also, Steve would never do that lol.)

Eddie is fine with it, he thinks this is a great compromise. He gets that Steve doesn't want to do hours long storytelling sessions, but this way he still gets to enjoy time with Steve doing one of his favorite things - creating characters and writing the most annoying stories possible. He loves that Steve is participating in even just a small way, and honestly only having him participate for a little bit at a time is better for Eddie's ability to stay on task anyway. He knows Steve wouldn't have fun being a player but he also knows Steve loves being a problem.