This Is Why I Love Hlvrai

this is why i love hlvrai

No but I fucking adore how like... versatile HLVRAI is. Like, there are thousands of directions you could take canon and they all can work. Is it all a game, is it real, or something in between? Is Gordon a real person, is he an AI? Is Gman Tommy's biological father or adoptive? How did Coomer end up with cybernetics? What the fuck is Benrey's whole deal? How was Bubby created, how human is he?

WE DON'T KNOW! And that's part of what's so beautiful about the series! You can interpret HLVRAI any number of ways, all of them work! You can't really go "Your interpretation of the series is completely wrong," because except in a few select cases, there's evidence for a LOT of stuff! Nothing is off-limits, and the series can be as silly or as serious as you want! You can look into the depth in some places, you can choose to not look deeper into some places, and no one's gonna shoot you for it!

If you wanna say the world is a game and Gordon is the player character, you can do that! If you wanna say Gordon's an AI shaped by the player, you can do that! If you wanna say Tommy's got it hardwired into his code that he's good at killing, you can do that! If you wanna say Benrey did not want to be the final boss, you can do that! If you wanna say Coomer's clones were made because of the cybernetics, you can do that! If you wanna say Bubby was made with Xen DNA, you can do that! You can do anything! There are no rules! You can say a lot of shit is canon even with little evidence, you can just ignore parts of canon that made you uncomfortable, who's gonna kill you for it? No one! No one can, and no one will, because the canon of HLVRAI is by nature loose and undefined! And if they try, they're frankly a loser!

I just... I have never encountered a series as versatile as this. It's most likely because of the fact that HLVRAI was told through improv Twitch streams. But I love seeing differing interpretations of the characters. I love seeing how people draw them differently, see them differently, who they focus on, who they analyze, what they headcanon, how they interpret moments, etc. It's amazing. Like, some of my headcanons are very, VERY loosely supported by canon. Like, supported by a few threads. But who's gonna get mad about that? It doesn't matter! The canon of HLVRAI is loose, squishy, malleable, moldable. You can pinch away parts and build up others. And I think that's beautiful.