(no subject)

[camwyn]

Ok, here's the explanation for that last post:

I'd been thinking about a certain bit of dialogue towards the end of HL 2- 'you who have destroyed so much, can you name one thing you've created'. And while I do in fact have a response ICly, something else occurred to me. Pretty much since the Trinity tests, if not earlier, physicists have been linking themselves with Hindu mythology. 'If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One. I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.' 's Bhagavad-Gita.

Anyway, it occurred to me that sometimes you really do need destruction, and to let someone else do the creation. When the world's been fecked up like the Combine did to Earth, you have to destroy- a LOT. The Combine couldn't have fallen if the Nihilanth and his slave races hadn't been defeated first, either ICly (at least, that's the impression I got from a certain Vortigaunt's talk), or OOCly in terms of playing through the events of game 1. Siva's presence, or at least Siva's capabilities, had to be unleashed on the world in order to set things right, both for Earth and for the other worlds and races enslaved by the Combine...

... and then it occurred to me that according to most of the Saivist Hindu doctrines I know, Siva is pale-skinned, red-haired, and accompanied by an attractive but highly destructive dusky skinned female. Gordon's basically a redhead and after game 2 he gets followed around by Alyx "I never have to reload and I can attack zombies by kneeing them in the gut" Vance, who's biracial- Black dad, Japanese mom.

Red hair, pale skin, pure destructive force, and a chick companion who bears a slightly freaky resemblance to Parvati/Durga/etc.

As I said, HINDU SYMBOLISM DOES NOT GO THERE.... but it'd be kind of cool if it did.

Comments

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

...do we still have someone playing Destruction of the Endless in milliways_bar?

[blackjack-svr.livejournal.com]

I am now overcome by a need to know if these similarities were intentional or if they happened by accident.

[camwyn]

I'd be willing to bet they're accidental. Someone would've mentioned something at the Combine OverWiki.

(side note: one of the other elements that caused me to go 'well, SOMEBODY has Siva's influence on him' is the fact that Siva's son Ganesh is hailed with the title Remover of Obstacles. Opener of the Way, anyone?)

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to bet they're entirely intentional. But then again, I'm an avid fan of Neil Gaiman's works, where every damn thing has fifteen bazillion layers of symbolism.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

You know, Dog DOES remove a bunch of obstacles...

[camwyn]

He's not exactly Nandi the bull (Siva's traditional mount), but on the other hand, Siva's consort is supposed to ride or be accompanied by a guardian tiger. Dog fills that particular niche.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

So if Alyx is Durga/Kali, what does that make her father? And just how creepy are his occasional hints that she and Gordon should hook up?

[camwyn]

I haven't accounted for Eli yet, alas. But the hints are kinda creepy on their own, in that whole 'um, shouldn't you be a little more put off by the idea of pairing your daughter with someone you haven't seen in twenty years?' kind of way.

Not that I object to the pairing, but still.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

...Wait. "Redhead"? Gordon? All the art I've seen of him is dark brown or maybe black hair.

That said, the part about "sometimes you really do need destruction, and to let someone else do the creation" makes sense and also reminds me of a thing...

(Okay, as a prologue, yes, despite a long history of having been a heavy-duty DC fan, with the occasional pick-and-choose of Earth-side Marvel and no real interest at all in cosmic Marvel, what's currently out has taken my tastes to Bizarro World, such that I've almost given up on DC, still pick-and-choose Earth-side Marvel, but am getting probably the most enjoyment out of the witty space adventure of modern cosmic Marvel. Anyway, this is what brings me to talking about...)

So, there's a character known as "Drax the Destroyer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_the_Destroyer)". Occasionally written as cosmic Marvel's poor-man's Hulk, he's recently undergone this weird resurrection-type thing that's made him a bit smaller, but quite a bit smarter, and also made his genetic profile different enough to dodge some (ultimately bogus) criminal charges. Stories since the rebirth have occasionally had characters acting intentionally coy about whether this Drax is really "Drax the Destroyer" (because if he admitted it, they might have to try to arrest him), while also talking about how Drax may not be "the Destroyer," but has been known to do some destroying from time to time, and teaching people to destroy, etc.

So, yes, sometimes you really do need destruction, and for that, sometimes you need Siva, sometimes you need Drax, and sometimes you need the One Free Man. :-)

[camwyn]

He's close enough to redheaded in most of the art I've got from Valve that anybody in my family would peg him as being one. Auburn, anyway. It makes marginally more sense with the green eyes; unless you're Harry Potter you don't normally see dark hair and eyes that blatantly green together. I could' of course, be wrong.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

The closest I've seen to that is maybe the original HL box art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Half-Life_Cover_Art.jpg), which, to me, looked pretty obviously like the orange ambient lighting of the rest of the cover reflecting off his oddly-shiny brown hair. The walking with crowbar concept art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gordon_Freeman_-_Valve_Concept_Art_-_Walking_with_a_crowbar_-_cropped.jpeg), HL2 box cover (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:421px-HL2box.jpg), and Ep2 title art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Half-Life_2_Episode_Two_title.jpg)? All dark brown/black. It may not be normal, but it does seem to be the case.

Also, now you've got me imagining what it'd be like if Gordon and Harry were related somehow. :-)

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Extremely casual research suggests Durga doesn't have a father as such. Not having played any of the series, I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but it would amuse me if you could find a role for Hanuman, who is underappreciated.

I had assumed the hints were more out of desperation than anything else; if he wants grandchildren, she doesn't have that many options, does she?

[camwyn]

About the only other candidate is Barney Calhoun, I think, since Barney was listed as having all of two years of community college under his belt as of the Black Mesa incident. A case could be made for him being relatively young, at least compared to the other named NPCs.

I'll let you know if I find anybody who seems to correspond to Hanuman. Doubt it'll happen, but you never know.

[(Anonymous)]

"Eighteen inches carbon steel, headcrab tendon."

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

(That was me. Stupid crashy laptop.)

[camwyn]

...thank you, you just made me shoot milk out my nose. Which is impressive given that I was drinking root beer.

[camwyn]

Okay, I'll cede the point on the hair color. The reason I mentioned 'anybody in my family' is because while most of us have dark brown hair, it takes about fifteen minutes in the sun at the start of any given summer to turn most of auburn or even visibly red (thanks to an Italian grandmother whose genetic lottery included pale freckled skin, hazel eyes, and blatantly red hair). I'm sort of used to seeing people tapdance back and forth over that line. My own hair tends to look black because I customarily wear it in a ponytail, but worn loose and given a little sun it goes reddish fast.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

hahahaha Excellent. Though that'll be a bitch to swing about, when it comes time to learn wingardium leviosa. "Swish and fl---wha!!"

[camwyn]

"Mr. Freeman, this is a school for wizardry, not mere ritual practise. Sooner or later you are going to have to speak your incantations aloud."

[slarti.livejournal.com]

hahahahaha

Although I imagine that yes, they'd want him to speak them for the sake of showing one's work, metaphorically speaking, there are, as I recall, upper-year classes on non-vocal incantation, which he may just be a natural at.

[camwyn]

If only for the sake of passing his OWLs. The forms must be obeyed, after all. As far as silent magic goes, he'd be absolutely terrif-


.... is a resonance cascade what happens when a location gets splinched, or is it more of a Horrible Horrible Portkey Creation Accident?

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Probably more the latter. Black Mesa at least seems to stay entirely where it is, and the experiment they're attempting seems, IMO, closer to the "maybe there's a portal involved here, not that it's ever well explained" nature of a Portkey, and also that it's prepared in advance of the teleportation, rather than the immediate here-then-there bamfing of Apparation.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Oh, and now I also have the image of the G-Man actually being Voldemort wearing a cheap rubber mask.

"Limitlesssssssssssssssssssssssssss potential."

[camwyn]

Which leads to Gordon's first words spoken in game canon being:

"...your nose is collapsing."

[slarti.livejournal.com]

And, ideally, when G-Voldie looks down to see what Gordon's talking about, Gordon swings the crowbar-want into his face.

I suppose the horcrux thing would explain how the G-Man is seemingly unkillable.

[camwyn]

Well, sure. What's the briefcase for except to make sure he has someplace to stash the horcruxes once he gets to them ahead of Gord?

It's already pretty clear that Nagini's not going to fit in here. Wanna bet Lamarr is the last living Horcrux?



... DEAR GOD BRANE WTF ARE YOU DOING.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

So that's why Barney always wants to kill him.

Oh, and... I regret nothing. (http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/5435/gordonfreemanvalveconcedr4.jpg)

[camwyn]

*quietly thumps head against wall*

*mumbles something about HL 2 being the result of G-Voldie pulling an Aku*

*thumps some more*

[slarti.livejournal.com]

"But a foolish theoretical physicist wielding a magic crowbar stepped forth to oppose me."

[camwyn]

Yeeeah, that sounds about right.

God, this just goes to show that Harry Potter really is the second most easily cross-bred of my fandoms; you can put it to just about any other fandom in existence and produce a reasonably viable offspring, if you're careful about it. (The most easily crossbred is the Mythos, largely because so many authors've deliberately included Mythos genetics in their work already, so in a twist HP himself would appreciate, the crossbreeding is actually inbreeding.)

(I've already thought about the logical suggestion from there and it begins with a tremendously anti-human centaur coming out of the Forbidden Forest to very solemnly state, "There is more afoot than our grievances, I fear. Harry Potter, the stars are right.")

[slarti.livejournal.com]

haha Nice. That does work well with the centaurs being into astrology.

Also, yes, assuming you've got a good angle for it, it's surprising what can result (http://spacemaori.livejournal.com/207707.html). (Not my work; as is apparent in the comments, I enjoyed it and recommend it.)

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

No. THE most crossbreedable fandom is Sandman.