Freehoun vs Freemance

Freehoun vs Freemance is a ship war in the Half-Life fandom, between fans of two Gordon Freeman pairings: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman, better known as Freehoun, which pairs him with Barney Calhoun, and Alyx Vance/Gordon Freeman, better known as Freemance, which pairs him with Alyx Vance. Although both pairings were largely created in the early 2000s, the worst of the ship war took place from 2020 to around 2021.
==Background==
When Half-Life 2 released in 2004, Freemance quickly became the most popular pairing with fans of the series. Alyx and Gordon were teased as being romantically interested in one another throughout the games, especially during HL2: Episode One (released in 2006) and HL2: Episode Two (released in 2007,) when it practically becomes canon.
The bond they formed resonated positively with fans and even by characters in the game, with Eli Vance, Barney Calhoun, and Dr. Kleiner all being supportive of the idea of them being in a relationship. Although the series didn't have a shippy fandom in the beginning, many of the fanworks which were, were for Freemance. Fanfiction and Machinima were the most common fanworks for them, with Machinima made in Garry's Mod.
Meanwhile, the scene for Freehoun was less known and much smaller. It was Gordon's second-most popular pairing, and the second for the series overall after Freemance, but the lack of interaction the two had, as well as their status as a slash pairing, led to it being tight-knit and largely on more slash-friendly websites such as DeviantArt and FanFiction.Net compared to YouTube, Steam and Newgrounds, which hosted much more Freemance. The term "butter pecan" was even coined to refer to Freehoun because, "people usually 'prefer' vanilla or chocolate instead, which would be…. you guessed it! Freemance[.]" (2020) The two were implied to be friends in Half-Life 1 and Barney was often there to support Gordon as he helped liberate Earth from the Combine in Half-Life 2.
The series became dormant for more than a decade afterwards, with the fandom growing smaller over time, until the unveil that Half-Life: Alyx, a prequel to Half-Life 2, would be released in 2020. This and Half Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware, a fan-made livestream show that used mods of Half-Life 1's engine to tell a story, revived the fandom. 
===Half Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware===
After HLVRAI got traction online, many fanworks were made by fans, and this activity eclipsed the smaller Half-Life fandom on sites such as Tumblr, Twitter and Archive of Our Own. This created a lot of tension between the two fandoms, which, despite sharing a canon, seemed almost like two wholly different fandoms. The tension was exacerbated by Covid-19 and the generational gap between the two groups, with HL fans generally being older while HLVRAI's tended to be younger. HLVRAI fans also tended to be more "online" than HL fans, creating fanworks at a much higher rate and being more up-to-date on then pressing fannish issues, such as Black Lives Matter and pro-ship/anti discourse.
The most popular pairing in HLVRAI was also its juggernaut ship, Gordon Freeman/Benrey, aka Frenrey. Gordon is played by the creator of the livestream, WayneradioTV, who primarily makes him out to be much like himself in terms of his reaction to things and his personality. "Benrey" is a corruption of Barney, who is played by Scorpy, and he takes on a bratty, antagonistic role as the livestream goes on. He took on the appearance of the security guard NPC, which is used multiple times in the HL game story itself to refer to different security guards, who was later used in canon as the basis for Barney's design in the HL1 expansion Blue Shift in 2001 and HL2 in 2004. This led to them having more of an enemies to lovers-tinge than Freehoun and largely a different appeal, though they shared the same two characters as a basis, (or multiple, in Barney's case.)
Because HLVRAI uses HL1's engine, Alyx isn't present in any form, both in the livestream canon and in fanworks. This led many of these newer fans to be unfamiliar with her and create headcanons for her that weren't implied in Half-Life 2, such as that Gordon Freeman babysat her pre-HL1, explained more below. 
==Ship War Proper==
Many HLVRAI fans became interested in the HL canon after the livestream show ended, and Freehoun was naturally appealing. This created a boom in Freehoun works which the fandom had never seen before, and it eclipsed Freemance content on slash-friendly sites. However, it also created a new-found resentment over Freemance. It caused many to leave the fandom. (2024)
The ship war has been compared to Portal's, another Valve game, due to both of them seemingly having moral implications and a focus on headcanons around characters who aren't white. (2020) 
Most meta on the ship war cover multiple topics.
=== Anti-Fremance ===
==== The Twenty (or Three) Year Age Gap ====
After the events of HL1, 27-year-old Gordon is put into stasis by the G-Man, the main antagonist of the series. The beginning of HL2 establishes that Gordon has been missing for the twenty years he's been in stasis, and that every other character has since aged in that time. In HL2, Alyx is implied to be around 24 years old, which would've made her around 4 in HL1. Barney's age is unknown, but it's known that he was in "Martinson College" for two years in before dropping out, implying he was also in his twenties in HL1 and thus is in his forties in HL2.
The twenty-year age gap is the primarily reason why many HLVRAI fans were uncomfortable with the idea of Freemance. However, fans from both groups have said that Barney and Gordon have the same age gap by HL2. The idea of Gordon being a "pedophile" for liking Alyx back has been said more than once, which is not supported by canon and was not the intention of Valve. (2020) (2020) (2020)
==== Gordon Freeman Babysitter Headcanon ====
Another prevailing headcanon in early HLVRAI fandom was the idea that Gordon babysat Alyx during his time at Black Mesa and is like an uncle figure to her. (2020) This is unsubstantiated by anything in canon, however, and takes inspiration from how Wayne portrayed Gordon in HLVRAI. In that, he's more of a willing father-figure and implied to have a child, which was an Easter Egg to a developer's kid in the original HL and not Gordon's. (2020)
==== Threats to Freemance Shippers ====
There were many HLVRAI fans who tagged threatening posts in the #freemance tag, with jokes about murdering and hurting shippers. Geoneotv was often thought to be the "ringleader" of these posts, as they hosted a pro-freehoun and anti-freemance Discord server that encouraged these posts. The harassment largely stopped after Angels-Heap, a BNF in the HL fandom which has written for both pairings, exposed that she was getting threatening and racist anonymous messages in her inbox. (2020) Even though Geo is not known to be responsible for these anons, they did encourage a hostile environment for Freemance shippers on Tumblr.
==== Misinformation ====
Misinformation about Half-Life canon was widespread in 2020, as the influx of new fans to the series often didn't play the games and relied on wikis to learn information, or word of mouth. (2020) At least one HLVRAI fan said that fans aged-up "little girl" Alyx to ship her with Gordon, which isn't true. (2020, referring to BNF in the HLVRAI fandom Geoneotv)
=== Pro-Fremance ===
==== Alyx Being Black ====
Alyx was and still is one of the most important Black women in video games -- one of the first in a supporting and present role. Black Lives Matter was often a talking point because of this on both sides of the ship war, as was the concept of "Any Two White Guys," with how fast HLVRAI fans transferred from Frenrey to Freehoun, while it was seemingly harder for them to accept Freemance. One post on Tumblr by drgertiefremontphd, with over a hundred notes, says, "i literally cannot believe i just saw someone trying to pull BLM into their ship discourse defense of two white boys kissing[,]" which later got expanded with a reblog to talk about the characterization of Alyx in the fandom, or lack-there-of, so she was "removed from the equation" of shipping, was a product of misogynoir (2020) -- compounded by Alyx being a Black woman.
==== Alyx Being Younger Than Gordon ====
Removing agency from Alyx and reducing her to her age by some fans is often discussed as well. (2020) (2022)
== Further Meta ==
* Many posts can be seen in Angels-Heap's .
* (2020), a fancomic about June 2020 in the HL fandom.
* (2020), comparing the HL stasis discourse to Fallout 4, where the player character is in stasis for 200 years.
* (2020)
* (2020)
* (2020)
* (2020)
* (2024)
== References ==
Category:Half-Life