Some Thoughts On UTY Aspects

some thoughts on UTY aspects

clover is a mind player (mind's association with justice, right/wrong, logic, the superego, morality, etc. mostly basing this assumption on terezi since we don't have many other mind players to draw from)

dalv is a space player (associated with isolation and creation, the "reclusive artist" archetype is 100% space-coded plus the corn he grows accounts for the association space has with nature and gardening)

martlet is either a breath player (scatter-brained, air-headed bird girl who is a self-admitted freeloader and struggles to hold down anything stable or concrete) or maybe a hope/rage player? (something about her faith being shaken in every route you play, in neutral her belief in clover's goodness being wrecked by flowey, in genocide her belief in humanity as a whole being crushed by clover and in pacifist her faith in the royal guard & judicial system being destroyed after everything she sees on her journey to the point she resigns)

starlo is 100% a heart player (his entire character arc revolves around him being lost in a persona he creates for himself, clear-cut heir of heart tbh)

ceroba is a blood player (does this even need an explanation? the woman whose entire story arc is based around continuing her family's legacy, saving her daughter and depending on route avenging her best friend? yeah okay)

axis is somewhere in the heart-mind dichotomy (he's an "emotionless" robot whose entire characterisation revolves around him being very emotional and aggravated, you literally win his boss fight by turning him on for fuck's sake)

even better tbh

i think we need more fan works that address the internalized homophobia that the three heathers would have given the type of shitty teenage mean girl culture they were part of.

i think it'd hit chandler the hardest, actually

buffy summers is aro/ace i think but you guys aren't ready for that conversation yet

i do firmly believe that gordon's status as this idealised beacon of hope and revolution is due to the presence of a hope player in his session (most likely alyx) but at the same time i think the very concept of revolution and war against oppression is more rage-coded? hope, the aspect of blind faith embodies adherence to the system more than defiance of it. if anything one could argue that a totalitarian empire is hope-coded because of the way they manipulate belief and blind faith in the system

but i understand that hope and rage are very nebulous aspects in the fandom's perception and a lot of people have some fundamentally different ideas about how they work

plus we're talking about retroactively applying symbolism from one piece of media to another so obviously things won't line up 1:1

Gordon Freeman's classpect: and why you're all wrong about it

well forgive me for the hostile-sounding title there, but as it stands i'm yet to see a single other person with this take.

the unanimous agreement for gordon's title seems to be heir of hope - which i will give credence to as making a lot of sense at face value. the heir is the class of the typical 'hero' and hope is the aspect of belief, faith, deficiation, angelic symbolism. on paper, it works perfectly for a man held in such high regard as a saviour and liberator.

but what of gordon's personality? what little of it we see, of course.

the heir of hope argument applies a classpect to gordon not as a person, but as a concept.

gordon freeman the concept is an heir of hope, for sure.

but gordon freeman, the man?

gordon freeman, the scientist who was late to his first day on the job? whose brief glimpses into his personality include blowing up a man's casserole for no clear reason and solving every problem with a crowbar?

the gordon freeman who has been jumping from trauma to trauma for twenty years under the machinations of a sinister interdimensional bureaucrat?

hear me out here.

gordon freeman is a bard of void.

now, i should probably explain my thoughts on the bard class and the void aspect before going any further, since this entire take hinges on my very specific take on both things.

in my eyes, the bard (the passive destroyer) is somebody who initially ghosts adherence to their opposing aspect, until a traumatic incident or dire crisis suddenly pushes them into an influx of their real aspect. they change their tune from passively destroying their aspect in themselves to passively destroying through their aspect. bards are capricious, unpredictable people who are often cowardly, avoidant or lazy in their ways.

the aspect of void, the antithesis of light, deals with the eldritch and the unknown. void is shadow, void is doubt and obsfucation, it is by its very nature unknowable and exists in the dark corners of one's mind. void is narrative irrelevance given (a lack of) form.

so, how does this fit into gordon freeman's narrative?

let's get into his head.

gordon freeman is a man who, prior to the black mesa incident, has lived his life adhering to knowledge and science. he's studied, got a degree, probably quite passionate about science. the statistics, the thirst for knowledge and understanding, all of this paints a picture of light.

light players are the ultimate students, as the extended zodiac says, they are the knowledge-seekers who wish to understand the world around them and comprehend the most fortuitous path better than any other.

the guy shows up late to his first day on the job. a man with more degrees than should be feasible and he can't even show up to work on time. this is the first hint of gordon being a bard, it's an incredibly lazy and capricious action that also hints at his passive destruction of light through his lack of fortune.

and it's that fateful test that changes everything - you all know the one i mean.

the one that suddenly inundates him with void. suddenly, gordon's world is unknowable, incomprehensible, he is a slave to the plot and forced to keep driving forward a narrative to which he ultimately has no say in. it's another example of the traits of a bard, who generally do seem to be reduced to narrative devices. (we see this a lot with gamzee.)

gordon is consumed among the alien and eldritch, and emerges from black mesa's ruins anew. a man whose existence is defined by contradiction, doubt, obfuscation, and everything that void stands for.

we see it again and again throughout the series. his very existence within the combine's rigidly defined, meticulous and mechanical empire defies principle. he is the anticitizen, his presence within their world is a contradiction just by his very being. he is undocumented, an anomaly that shouldn't be. and that scares the shit out of them.

and it should! because, as a bard of void should, gordon destroys their empire through void. his very existence is enough to spark the revolution (which in itself is tied to the aspects of hope and rage) and the destruction he brings about is through his nature as the anticitizen. the contradiction, the hole in their logic. he casts doubt upon the system that they've forced into place and he does so while continually being surrounded by the eldritch and the unknown.

he does so while in servitude to the eldritch, actually. i think that g-man himself is a player of space (to be more specific, i think he is a lord) but i think that there is also a lot of void symbolism within the g-man's character and his 'employers' more specifically.

and you know what really cinches my argument?

gordon freeman, player of void, embodiment of the unknown and the obsfucation, of the silence and emptiness, of the doubt and darkness?

he never utters a single word.

i will revise this entire thing once i wake up tomorrow because it's currently 10pm for me and this is going to look incredibly lazily worded/formatted when i get up in the morning

but for now i suppose you can all take this rambling mess of uncoordinated madness and tell me how wrong i am

what’s with these fellas and really wanting me to download some modded gacha schlock