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ReConsideration 567

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Interval 5.0 – Slightly back in time, showing off both the kids powers and some character connections. In both the HL and Fear universes there are side-characters who appear (in games and fringe materials), and one name was common to them: Green. Dr (Rose) Green at Armacham was featured in a trailer for the first Fear game, tormented by Alma and finally left for babbling insane by her. Colette Green is in Decay and seen briefly in the other hl1 games, so I brought them together as sisters. Both of them are used in the Origin program. The EC in its shinier areas, before the disasters, was still a reasonably scary place but one which would be ideal for training children… or military androids… for survival. Young Paxton is a little monster. It's entirely possible that both Geoff and Pax were using Vortal senses to find their hidden friends, but either didn't realize it or didn't say so. There were many things that they kept from their instructors, given Rose's assertion that the other scientists thought the brothers didn't have a telepathic link. They definitely did. Thing was, it wasn't on a level that was detected by their devices.

Interval 5.1 – Paxton wakes, and the repercussions are felt by the kids. Mel's relationship to him is solidified as well as Geoff's quiet command. I come back to the Paxton-the-boy, Paxton-the-mind idea a couple times. As seen through his brother's eyes, Paxton develops different features through their lives. Note the order in which they're said: mind, brother, boy. "I can taste their fears" is from Fear, obviously. Paxton's cannibalism is shown very, very prominently in the introduction to Fear 1 and at the end of Fear 3 again. However, it's mentioned in Fear 2's background information that he had nightmares of this act – it was never clear whether he was actually trying to kill and eat people as a youth, or if they were merely implanted suggestions by his mother (or even Armacham themselves). Paxton has survived some terrible things, he's not entirely sane, and he's not a very nice guy when it comes down to it. However, he does present himself with such grace and confidence that I wanted to portray him in a way that made his ego something he's had to build, to protect himself (rather like Wilson's, later). His small scar (left out of the model in Fear 3 unfortunately) is formed in the earlier chapter, reinforced here and later on as well. "Still Alive" is a recurring theme until GLADOS is destroyed, and obviously refers to the ending song of Portal 1. The use of air vents is common early on. If you've ever had dry heaves? Poor little Paxton's gut hurt like that.  He is at his very weakest, his most human and vulnerable, in this interval. The idea of murder as a savage, bestial thing comes up here, and Paxton loathes it.

Interval 5.2 – Judith's impression of things is still a bit different than the rest. She's jumpy, scared, but still one of the few adults left alive. Alyx and her tinkering skills shows up here, she's a lot like young Gordon (who we see in a future Interval) in that she can basically MacGuyver a toaster into a Howitzer with ease and the right tools. The distinct sound effect that HL1's teleportation has, is something that I imagine all the people of the world would get a little nervous on hearing. What would it be? A headcrab? Easily dealt with. A bullsquid? A bit harder. This is spoken about later in the story too. Geoff and Paxton sitting on a cot: images somewhat inspired from Fear 3's flashbacks. The two children sitting in their otherwise dull cell, no privacy but also no one else to interact with. I imagine they'd have had quite a few discussions in the canon world, but here they actually had separate rooms and more interaction. They'd still have sit-down talks (or sit-down telepathy, more like) on a regular basis. With Pax's mention of hide and seek, I bring in 'games' as a theme. Paxton's memories are nowhere near as clean and neat as he'd like them to be, which is why he uses Mel's mind as a storage facility. Even though he seems to be absolutely up on everything, at least while he's trying to give a solid impression, and he is still extremely intelligent, he doesn't recall everything he's ever done and said, he forgets things just like normal folks. Melissa, however, does not. "Paxton Fettel did not like being terrified". He is going to have to learn to be bait, that'll come in later again.

Interval 6.0 – Investments and Armacham. Aristide's first appearance, and the impressions from those around her. Aristide's voice is heard on numerous voice-mail messages scattered around as back-story in Fear 1. Through them, we get a good impression of what's been going on, as well as where she stands on it. She gets the last word in, at the end, in the form of knowing that the "first prototype" had performed admirably, even though they'd lost the second. She is a heartless, manipulative bitch, and this becomes more and more obvious in both the game and this story. With the kids on display, they are showing off their dossier-based highlights to the visitors. In Fear 2, the back-story is told through small information packets and brochure-like items you read along the way, which hint that Armacham's sales department is extremely sadistic. They're marketing people, slaves, in the form of their Replica line soldiers. I imagine they'd treat essentially all of their "products" the same way. Melissa actually comments on this later on. Wilson's 'vacation' appearance with the pony tail will come back again, as well as his sort of obsession with clothing and tailoring. He's very proud of his appearance, and he's the one who encourages his prime to ditch the old blue suit. Wade's disgust with how things are run is apparent. The demonstration of Geoff and Paxton's fighting prowess even as young children explained by the subliminal training – common to their production line soldiers as well as ELLs – comes back again later. "He uses whatever is available to him" is also a recurring line as well as idea. Perseus is mentioned in Fear 1 as the project for Paxton's replicas to be used as telepathically-controlled units under a single commander in the field. The connections between Perseus and Medusa as well as Icarus should be fairly obvious. Paxton's swiping of Shakespeare collections and flirtation are hinted at in unused dialog from Fear 1 – "they taught me warfare. I learned Shakespeare on my own".  "It's not a game" is also a recurrent theme. First time we see Breen, and he's not at Black Mesa. The boys' fighting together here is a reasonably common occurrence in their history together. It's mentioned later on, how they basically obeyed without question and without shame, did whatever was needed, and let their keepers wipe their minds after. This is no exception. They'd come quite close to killing each other numerous times.

Interval 6.1 – digging through the rubble left from the Borealis facility's sudden appearance and disappearance, I studied up on craters a little. Communication lines not working properly is found in Fear, whenever Alma or a psychic moment is going to happen. "you make static clog the lines" as said by Cave earlier, Alma's appearances are generally prefaced by the player's comm line going wonky. "that this was either an act of nature, which they wouldn't cover, or an act of terrorism, which they also wouldn't cover" I like that line. The leftover items from Borealis are very confounding to those poor scientists left to discover them. The fact that the facility vanished from its Ohio location was never obvious – a baseball diamond was there, little more. I would imagine that it's Gman's doing that no one remembered the place, he was there, right at that moment, anyway. Whether he'd wiped everyone's minds about it is unclear, the idea more is that since it's traveled through time (as well as space, a bit) it didn't exist in that intervening time. Their time-travel worked. But it wouldn't have done much good, if they'd walked out of the place. They'd all have been gunned down by Armacham security anyway. Outside, now we see how the prior demonstration of Geoff and Pax's abilities was going to be continued – Aristide hints that there should be a bigger, outdoor demonstration. The Events occur about a week before this demo would have taken place. The visuals of the Replica storage tanks (and in fact all the Armacham stasis units) is actually from HL2's lab settings. The orange-amber colored liquid in a tall tank is ironically the same color as Mel's eyes, and 'trapped in amber' is, not coincidentally, how her memory works. The idea of insects being able to use many-faceted eyes and Paxton's use of his Replicas' own eyes seemed logical as a connection. "He preferred dragonflies to wasps, bees to ants" – other bug references appear, but bees and ants are common, and Melissa is Greek for honey-bee. "These were mundane tasks", Paxton was never expected to make coffee or assemble furniture. He had to learn how to do most of the normal things that kids learn, just like everyone else, but he seemed aware of learning them. The white turrets with their laser targeting systems and adorable chatter are from Portal, all dialog just seems to suit the idea of them protecting children or whatever (as seen in a Valve trailer) and yet shooting things full of holes, so fun.

Interval 6.2 – Back to Black Mesa, showing a little about the Vortigaunts arrival to Earth. Also, that they share telepathically what they've learned individually. Vortikind didn't have a very easy transition to Earth, though this isn't the first time they've had to flee a place. Xen, after all, was not their original home world. Their bodies and minds were evolved for long-distance travel, herding beasts on a distant world. Physically observing them easily shows that they're capable of most of the same tasks as Humanity, though the fact that they only have two fingers on each hand does mean they have to deal with certain objects a little differently. The ostrich and emu farm thing is actually a local nod to the farms here near me, with big birds running around in pens and corrals. Their legs aren't exactly the same as Vortigaunts, but with the double knee they have, it's closer than merely human legs. Mars and Martin both explore their own facilities with the same gusto. Barney's scar was gotten in this era, like Paxton's. I hint in a faceposer image that Barney wasn't 'aware' of it, but he certainly was in the story. He's so cute. Eli's treasure of his wife's pendant and the family photo is first shown, this will become extremely important to joining him back up with his daughter. "the writing of a scientist, the words of a mother" is a line I like quite a bit.

Interval 7.0 and 7.1 – Gman and Gordon, in the tram car. Trains and trams feature prominently in Fear and Half Life, not only as methods of transportation within the game world but as introductions and outros. Half Life 1 begins and ends on a tram car, HL2 starts on a train, and Episode 1 ends with one crashing, Episode 2 begins with that same train car crashed. In Fear 1 there are more typical vehicle rides (helicopters and cars and elevators) (Elevators are also a very terrifying recurring theme, I'll get to that at some point, though I do mention earlier that Geoff avoids them because they are traps. He has good reason to think this, as in Fear 1 we see a pile of dead bodies being dropped onto one which is why he's unable to progress upwards…) but in Fear 2 there is the single most amazing transportation-car fight ever made. Hurtling through huge transport tunnels on an extremely clever bar-supported tram, and of course, crashing it. In Fear 3 is an on-foot travel through an elevated and broken train section, and in Fear 1's expansions there are some bits occurring in subways. The choice of a tram car as a kind of way-point for Gman to 'store' Gordon may come back later. We see Gman on several Black Mesa tram cars during the course of the original games. The long winded title of Gordon's thesis work is straight from the Valve background materials. Also, all of Nihilanth's disturbing words come directly from the game. It implies that not only is Gman not what he 'appears' (you are man, he is not man), but that it knows he's there waiting. Nihilanth knows that it's time has come, and is making a last-ditch effort to invade Earth while it can still fight. It wouldn't likely have succeeded, really. The hint that Gman took the Xenian crystal that caused the Resonance Cascade from Nihlianth's chambers has been tossed around on SPUF for some time, "I've been told they went through some effort to get it". Gordon's mind is very lucid, but he's so very tired as well. "If what he was doing was pondering, it was narrowly close to sleeping" is certainly one of my favorite lines. I avoided describing any of the bulk of HL1's actual gameplay, hinting at many of the important parts as he groggily summarizes how his life has suddenly taken a sharp turn for the weird. Some of these events are also alluded to by other characters in further chapters. This is also the first time we really hear Gman's speech – and he's doing his whole over the top sinister routine. Even to his clone Wilson, who we don't yet know is his clone until the last paragraphs. I tried to keep it intentionally just vague enough, not coming out and actually saying that  "That was as much as he'd get" is a very painfully recurrent theme for Wilson. The "complication" of Paxton is mentioned, but not specifically stated as 'about' Pax, nor exactly why it would be important. Wilson's difficulty in finding the tram can be pieced together with later Intervals' information. While the Gman's voice actor was the same in both HL1 and HL2, the treatment of Gman's voice was considerably different in the newer ones, and I have to admit, far more pleasant. His voice (as mentioned in the Concerned gmod comic) is unnerving, hesitant and halting, with breaks of breath in the wrong places, swallowing and such interrupting words or phrases. There's a reason for all of that, I'm sure, and it's not just 'he doesn't know how to speak'. In Repurposed his pauses and breath catching are certainly there for a different reason, and his speech wouldn't have been as high-pitched and grating as in HL1's anyway. His more deep, resonant sounding HL2 voice is the one I've chosen to pattern the character's after.
This section covers Intervals 5, 6 and 7

Interval 5 - Research and Development
5.0 [link]
5.1 [link]
5.2 [link]

Interval 6 - Release Forms
6.0 [link]
6.1 [link]
6.2 [link]

Interval 7 - Interlude
7.0 and 7.1 [link]

Any questions just ask :)
© 2012 - 2024 lethe-gray
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