#chell too actually

[forbiddenlemons]

I keep seeing chell x wheatley posting, but what about wheatley x therapy?? bro needs a shoulder to cry on already 😔

[tangramkey]

i love my Basketbot Portal AU

[lgorstheme]

@tracfone i hope this is what you had in mind

edit: fixed chell's skin tone! i forgot to do it at the time of drawing since it was around 5am and i was too tired to do anything else once i'd finished the background lmao

[lee-blogs]

Still packing stuff and now i'm looking for a box for this.

My dad and i made it a few years ago for halloween, probably 2015/16 if i'm remembering right. It's made from a lays can, a wipes container from his work, and paper maché. I don't remember what the wires and front metal bits are from, but the middle actually lights up! It has one of those long battery-powered emergancy lights in it and some colored tissue paper

[anothermonikan]

Okay here's an actual little Portal doodle sheet, nothing specifically relating to the anniversary, but it is Portal!

GLaDOS Androidisation is from @silverstreams fanfiction: The Long Game, because it's very good and I like it a lot!!

[flynndesdelca]

For Day 7 (Role Switch) of @chelltastic’s Portal Drawtober 2023 Challenge. As I’m not really an artist, I chose to write short pieces for the prompts.

"Those people, in the portrait.  They look so... familiar."

It was hard to look at the portrait in question.  After all, she had been there when it had been commissioned.  Why it was hung here, of all places, she would never know.  But the eyes that stared at her from the canvas were hauntingly familiar, and it made her look away in frustration and shame.

"Do you recognize them?" The follow-up question that she was not prepared for.  She shook her head, knowing that the unblinking 'eye' of the former Central Core's optic would see the motion.  "You seem upset by it."  She shrugged in response, not particularly wanting to talk about it at that moment.  Or ever, really.  "Suit yourself," came the reply, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

She knew who the people in the painting were, because she was one of them.  Once, she had been the assistant to the CEO.  The beloved Miss Caroline, the Lady of Science.  Right hand to the man, Cave Johnson, himself.  Those times were long since gone, though, and thinking about them was painful.  That wasn't who she was anymore, anyway.  There was a reason why her name was redacted, and her file a bizarre mishmash of conflicting information that could easily be detected if someone sat down and actually read it.  Thankfully, no one had.  And so, little Miss Red Aperture had flown under the radar as one of the handful of orphans that the Enrichment Centre had produced and taken into its care.

Never mind that said orphan was retirement age.

She had taken the situation with grace and care, shouldering burden after burden while Cave had chased after his dreams, only to see them fall one by one.  She had worked tirelessly behind the scenes, handling things so that he hadn't needed to concern himself with them.  Everything she had done had been for the good of the company, and the company had loved her so... so much that in fact when Cave had fallen sick from moon rock poisoning, he had named her his successor.  With a caveat, of course.  If he couldn't be immortalized in a computer designed to house a living mind, then she would take his place.

The idea had been horrifying and unpalatable to her, but she had felt that it could be a decision that was reversible if given enough time.  Time that she had not been graced with, as he had passed far too soon after the proclamation - public, of course, as was his wont.  And so, she had forestalled it to buy herself time, claiming that retiring would be the best time to do so.  Preparations would be made, and when she finally hit that milestone she would march willingly into her new life.

That had given her the time she needed to come up with a different plan.  Oh, should they really be installing an old woman as the eternal CEO of the company? Certainly she had done so much good over the years, but that had been in her prime.  Locking her permanently at the helm as a 60 year old was a poor decision.  They should really find someone younger, whose mind would stay eternally sharp and who could use the accumulated wisdom of years spent to inform that sharpness.  Clearly this would be a better way to go about such a monumental task! A few whispers here and there, so that the right ears could hear them, and soon enough she was called into a board meeting to announce that the plans for Project GLaDOS were going in a new and different direction, and that she wouldn't be required to stay on after all.

It had been a relief to know that she had dodged that particular bullet.  She hadn't even given a thought to who might be taking her place until she was called in to sign off on the experiment and to observe the upload.  The young woman they dragged in had needed to be sedated before they could attach the necessary electrodes and other terrifying technology to her for the transfer.  Flipping through the subject's file, Caroline had realized the reason this person had been chosen was due to a shockingly high level of tenacity, a trait that was unwanted in the average test subject, but that the scientists believed would help her to adapt and survive in her new existence much more quickly and easily.  A young girl, a company orphan, by the name of Chell, last name stricken from records.

Caroline hadn't been able to watch the whole procedure, as it had turned her stomach.  She had been extremely pleased that it hadn't been her there, sizzling away under several dangerous machines designed to digitize a living brain, but there was something about the whole thing that had left a bad taste in her mouth.  The actual transfer would take hours, apparently, and she wasn't required to sit through all of it.  Chell herself would cease to exist, only living on through whatever made the transition into the cold steel of the computer.  There was a lot to do to try to bring that consciousness into fruition.  There was still a lot of science to be done there.  They would be sure to have it done before her retirement, of course, so she could be there for the unveiling.  A steep deadline, as the year was fast approaching, but they were certain of their success.  After all, they had perfected the previous iteration of this technology in the various personality core constructs and AIs that performed essential tasks all over the facility.  This was just making a slightly more complicated version of that.  What could go wrong?

A lot, apparently.  The tenacity that they had selected for as a desirable trait meant that the resultant AI was intractable.  The circumstances surrounding the whole ordeal had left said AI with a very deep streak of anger and hatred, and any attempts they made to activate it lead to it attempting to kill scientists in the room.  At one point they had tested connecting it to the facility, and it had immediately attempted to try to flood the place with neurotoxin.  They were coming up with a solution to handle this, they  claimed.  She simply stared at the calendar, noting the year, noting how much longer was left.  Could they really? They had always pulled through before... well, almost always.  The portal device, what had been her pride and joy, had been shelved for this.  She had hoped that would be her legacy, but now it was more likely that this... terrifying murder-computer would be what she would be most remembered for.

Solutions failed and failed.  The will of the computer was simply too strong.  The only way they could come up with to control her was to distract her.  They started engineering specific kinds of personality cores specifically to hamper her.  She overpowered almost every one.  It was determined that combining them in various configurations seemed to have the best effect, as she couldn't silence them all at once.  Too few and she could overpower them, frying them in moments.  Too many and she would simply shut herself down to avoid their ceaseless commentary.  Finding the right cores and the right number was key.  A month before the day, the good news hit her desk.  A stable configuration was believed to have been found.  A relief.  Perhaps this wouldn't be as damning as she'd thought.

The day came.  The main event of the day was the annual "Bring your Daughter to Work Day", an event that she enjoyed.  It was nice to see so many smiling young faces, the future of science.  The event was lovely, a wonderful way to send off her long career.  The crowning pinnacle was to come...

Disaster.  Had it been a ruse, or a side effect of being deactivated to be formally 'activated' at the event? It didn't matter.  Retirement was no longer the order of the day.  Escaping the rampant AI determined to capture the survivors of her initial rampage and force them into testing was all that mattered, now.  Luckily her knowledge of the building that she had been there for the construction of helped her there, and she had managed to scrape by.  There were others, though she never met them in person.  Just the signs of passing, of secret camps, of signs.  Caches of supplies.  Slowly even these dwindled over time.  How many were left alive? It was hard to say. Those announcements could have been for anyone... or they could have been for her.  Who knew? 

It was a chance encounter that had changed her mind about the whole thing.  The man had been tired, carrying a companion cube with him, and Caroline had been certain that he would talk to it as though it was speaking back to him.  He had known who she was, of course he had, and they had talked.    The truth had stung, but it made sense:  if she had simply accepted her duty and gone into the computer as she had been slated to, perhaps none of these horrors would have happened.  This was her legacy, and this was her fault.  And if she was still alive, she could at least attempt to do something about it rather than dodge her final responsibility yet again.

And so she had found her way to the record rooms, and forged an identity for herself.  Aperture-raised children would be introduced into testing at an appropriate age, and so that was what she went with.  The orphan that Chell should have been, but had never been allowed to be.  She added that name to the testing list, and dutifully shut herself into Relaxation, to await a chance to maybe do something about the whole thing...

The Caroline in that picture no longer existed, and hadn't for a long time.  The person there with GLaDOS - Chell - skewered on one of the shaping prongs of her beloved handheld portal device was a nobody.  Someone who should have done the right thing once, but had run away from it.  What would have happened if it had been her instead? She couldn't say.  Had it been worth it to sacrifice Chell in her stead? She couldn't say either.  What was good and what was right was so very muddled in her mind, and had been since she had first been awakened and started testing.  The idea of doing something had seemed so strong back when she had talked to the man, but it had fizzled out when she had realized that there wasn't really any way to actually change anything about the situation.  Had killing Chell really been worth it? Was it self defense, or something else?

"Is it already time to rest? Didn't we just have a rest break? How are we supposed to make it back to the surface before that little idiot explodes everything if you need to stop to sit down every five minutes?" Chell intoned from her little tinny speaker mounted on the potato battery.  She must be very agitated if she was willing to show that much emotion - too much and she'd short out again.  With a sigh Red Aperture slapped herself on the cheek with her free hand and carried on, leaving behind the portrait and the memories that it had stirred within her.  There was still a long way to go to get back up to the building, where something far worse than GLaDOS had been was waiting for them…

[hydemercats]

Got some more portal cats for you to chew on / updated designs i guess....

[ozzni]

At the end of Portal, Chell causes the main AI chamber to explode, throwing her way up high, and she eventually wakes up in the Aperture Science parking lot. Considering the explosion likely sent her almost straight up, and she survived the fall (while not using her long-fall boots, mind you, she wakes up facedown in the asphalt!), we can safely assume that the main AI chamber is directly, if distantly, below the facility parking lot.

At the end of Portal 2, Chell rides the elevator straight up from the main AI chamber to the surface. So, she should have stepped out onto a pretty degraded parking lot, maybe stepping out of an emergency door or something, right? WRONG. She exits a dinky little SHED, and she turns around, too, showing a nearly-full view of all her surroundings, but the ONLY thing that is visible other than the crops is the shed.

Now, considering that Chell had been in suspended animation for a whole lotta nines, I can take the explanation that the topside facility just eroded away into the dirt or something. But if the whole concrete parking lot and all the other structures around it are completely gone, HOW THE HELL did that shed get there???? Did GLaDOS send up Atlas and P-Body up the elevator to build the shed at the top while she was writing the song and organizing the turrets to perform it??? If so, how long was Chell out that GLaDOS was able to pull all of that off? Did she like, keep Chell sedated until she was done and then wake her up after completing the final rehersal for the grand exit performance? Like I know WHY she did it but HOW???

[4stary]

First day of physical training. Feeling worn out but not too terrible. Can’t/won’t pay for it long term, but I’ll stick with the classes I already paid for

[dilact]

Just mentally envisioned portal 3 and it was so fun.

[ariariari-freehounreal]

When the test subject they told you was aggressive is actually just angsty and autistic

.

I figured if Wheatley were a human he would probably be part of a team that cares for test subjects. Which involves basic medical checkups and general wellness checks. Maybe in Chells case, since she’s so anti-social, he was tasked to be a sort of companion so they could get more information out of her for testing purposes. :3 he’s classified as a nurse and has basic training in it. But he’s not making sense because he’s kinda scared of Chell at first. She just thinks he’s weird and kinda smells bad.

.

I have a hc on why Chell is a test subject I’m just gonna try to write it here

Basically her mother was too young and poor to raise a child so she felt it better to put Chell up for adoption. The orphanage she was raised in was being used by aperture to scout out children with certain “exceptional skills”. They noticed that Chell was highly intelligent and a great problem solver, but had no interest in spending time with others. She had no friends. And none of the other children noticed or cared when she left. She was probably adopted by a high ranking scientist and raised for the specific purpose of testing. She has little concept of social norms or things outside of aperture because she was taken from a “normal” environment so young. [like. Before she was 10 maybe? Idk.] but it doesn’t mean she’s dumb or anything, she just doesn’t really get it yk. Sorry if this is actually so stupid and embarrassing ignore me

[internetskiff]

The most powerful ability exclusive to humanity in the Half Life/Portal shared universe is our ability to just throw bullshit at the wall and see what sticks. Aperture "OSHA are the devil" Science have managed to create completely safe interconnected points in space. The same company that turns people's blood into gasoline and shoves lions and humans into the same enclosed space for the vague concept of "Science". Meanwhile Black Mesa still has to use Xen as a crossing and their teleportation device requires an entire reactor with a village's worth of staff constantly maintaining it, just to end up having most of said staff abducted by onion-headed aliens. Even the resistance hasn't managed to create completely stable teleporters with a compressed Xen relay, meanwhile Aperture just went "oh dude let's shove a black hole into a non-waterproof gun" and have just created a teleportation method that just removes Xen from the equation entirely. Doesn't change the fact they bullshat so bad they basically got themselves gassed to death, but still.

The Resistance are a good example of this too. The Combine seem to have a complete set-in-stone thought process and understanding of science which meant they didn't even begin to explore local teleportation via Xen, meanwhile a group of random human mechanics and scientists have managed to cobble together at least two semi-functional local teleporters out of scrap metal and stolen Combine tech, to the point the All-Consuming Interdimensional Empire had to straight up copy their homework. And that isn't even the only time they seem to be taking human shit to just copy the blueprints.

They 100% just yoinked the entire damn car out of that garage just to take a crack at reverse-engineering the Tau Cannon attached to it. Even Resistance weaponry somehow manages to rival or at least stand equal to Combine tech - and we're talking improvised crossbows that shoot superheated rods of rebar at the target compared to high-tech rifles that can discharge orbs of pure dark energy. The collapse of the entire Citadel is basically set into motion as a result of a cobbled together Rebel device placed into extremely capable hands.

The events of the Portal games are a case of extremely elaborate machinelike planning versus pure human improvisation, with Chell's entire escape in the first game involving her simply weaseling her way through small cracks that GLaDOS missed while setting up her ambushes, eventually turning her own rocket turret against her to destroy her.

I suppose you could argue this falls flat in Portal 2 with Wheatley, but it's important to remember he's designed to be an utter idiot, so it's safe to say he wouldn't obsess over the larger picture like GLaDOS to the point where he fails to see the cracks. Yes, he's the one that breaks Chell out of the test chambers again, and yes, he's the one that came up with the sabotage plot - but it's important to note while he knows what to target in the sabotage, when we actually get there he doesn't quite know how to sabotage it, leaving Chell to figure it out on her own. She botches the Turret Quality Control Line with some minor guidance, but it's basically completely up to her to figure out how to cut off the Neurotoxin Supply. It's through her improvisation that Wheatley even manages to get into GLaDOS' chamber, tumbling through her neurotoxin vent and shattering the glass cage she trapped Chell inside of. It's through Chell's improvisation that the Core Transfer even occurs in the first place.

The script is flipped specifically when Wheatley takes charge, because oops - turns out a mind capable of focusing on the bigger picture might be pretty important when it comes to running an entire facility powered by it's own Reactor. Wheatley just completely zeroes in on his own personal pleasure, hacking up test chambers and the objects within them to try and figure out the easiest way to get his solution euphoria as quick as possible.

Still, something that's pretty interesting is that only Wheatley has ever managed to create a trap that's impossible to foresee and avoid, something GLaDOS has repeatedly failed to do to the point she ends up commending him. I believe this is because his way of thinking is a lot closer to Chell's compared to GLaDOS'. He puts up way more of a fight as the two run through the facility trying to get to him, seemingly improvising on the spot just like Chell has been over the course of the two games. Even his lair would be impossible to survive if it weren't for a single Conversion Gel pipe he somehow failed to notice and remove.

Whether in a laboratory deep beneath the soil or an alien tower tall enough to split the clouds, the ingenuity of even a single person is enough to topple a tower or destroy a supercomputer 3 times over.

Marc Laidlaw put what I'm trying to say into a single sentence when writing for the BreenGrub twitter account:

"The superstructure is riddled with cracks."

[99thpercentile]

I get the feeling that I'm in the minority here, but I posit that GLaDOS actually is Caroline, and only "not the same person" in the sense that you'd look at your younger self and be like "that bitch ain't me." I think you actually have to go out of your way to interpret them as two separate people.

evidence:

voiced by the same person (I know the initial reasoning was that Valve didn't want to hire another voice actor for a few lines, but in casting Ellen McLain as Caroline, they incorporated her being the same person into the story).

GLaDOS automatically joins in saying "Yes sir, Mister Johnson" like saying it is permanently ingrained in her. you can interpret this as Caroline taking over, but she says "Why did I just—" immediately afterwards.

when GLaDOS talks about hearing the voice of a conscience, she says "for the first time it's MY voice." I don't think she means that she's hearing the woman she gets her literal voice from. she highlights it as distinctly DIFFERENT from hearing the voices of the cores, and I imagine if Caroline were a foreign entity whispering in her ear, the effect would've been much the same.

the GLaDOS project was originally started because Cave was dying and wanted his consciousness uploaded to a computer. the intent was always for the upload to be the same person. he said if he died first, he wanted Caroline to run the place, to be put in his computer. and that's exactly what happened.

GLaDOS not remembering she's Caroline until old Aperture always made sense to me as the result of a deliberate choice on the part of the scientists. Caroline didn't want to be uploaded, and as soon as they switched GLaDOS on, she tried to kill everyone. it's logical for the scientists to think that if they suppressed her memories, she'd have no reason to try to kill them (but instead, she was just filled with murderous rage and no longer knew why).

the story just doesn't have the same impact otherwise. GLaDOS's reactions to rediscovering old Aperture make more sense if it's her past she's rediscovering, rather than the past of...a human that was shoved into the chassis with her. if it were the second one, I think she would just feel violated, not have any major revelations.

counter-evidence:

"now little Caroline is in here too" lyric from Want You Gone

GLaDOS says she found out "where Caroline lives in [her] brain" and deleted her, like she's a separate entity

but GLaDOS is a habitual liar. she acts like deleting Caroline means she's fully back to her old self and has gotten rid of the part of her that made her want to save Chell's life, but there's...lots of evidence that she still cares about Chell after the fact (letting her go anyway, the companion cube, the turret opera if you think GLaDOS arranged that, talking to the co-op bots about Chell like she's an ex she's still heartbroken over...). I also think GLaDOS would like to imagine her and Caroline as two separate entities, in the same way you might find your younger self embarrassing and want to distance yourself from that person. I think it's notable that both instances where she refers to Caroline as a separate entity are at the end of the game, after Chell has been passed out a while and she's had time to process everything and compartmentalize. her instinct when the revelations are first happening is to refer to Caroline as if she is her.

now I don't like stories where a robot has to become or be seen as more human in some way for them to be sympathetic. but I think Portal 2 is an excellent subversion of this trope, because GLaDOS is a robot that learns she used to be human and then discards that humanity (symbolically if not literally). Caroline may not have wanted to be uploaded, but from the Want You Gone lyrics "one day they woke me up / so I could live forever / it's such a shame the same will never happen to you" I think we can say that GLaDOS definitely prefers being a robot now that she is one.

anyway this post was supposed to be much shorter than this, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[the-dangerous-mute-lunatic]

“I suppose we have a few minutes to get reacquainted. It has been a long time.”

A commission and comic for @silverstreams latest chapter of The Long Game. Truly a moment worth waiting for, and certainly worth drawing! (Thanks for commissioning this and giving me the chance to draw pretty women) (You can see all the details by opening the image into a new tab)

(Also added a couple WIP's and details under the cut! Like the updated outfits, since we were figuring out the details of Chells dress and "GLaDOS's" new looks :) )

This is also the WIP version of the comic, with the messier sketches and cleaned up parts! This is actually version 2 of the sketches made, since the first one didn't focus on that last moment as much as it needed.

I am gay and drew Her too pretty

[targetlost]

Random Fic Idea

Chell returned to Aperture, and her relationship with GLaDOS has never been better. But that's a problem for GLaDOS, because now she's terrified of losing Chell to old age.

So GLaDOS devises a plan... sometimes when Chell goes to bed, she switches her over to "extended relaxation." Stasis stops Chell from aging. At first it's just for a "short" amount of time. She puts Chell in stasis for about a week and then wakes her up for a few days. She turns off the stasis announcements, freshens up the bed so there's no human-shaped imprint, and always acts like only a day has passed - not too hard, since time doesn't move all that quickly in Aperture.

But then one day GLaDOS sees a small sign of aging in Chell and enters panic mode. She starts putting her in stasis for longer and longer, one month, two months, five months, and only wakes her up for a single day at a time. She's desperately lonely during the times when Chell is asleep, but she tells herself it's better to only have her company a few times a year than losing her forever once her short, sad life ends. The days when Chell is awake are almost like a holiday for GLaDOS. She meticulously plans their days together, from the activities they'll do to exactly what she'll say. But even with all her excitement, she only lets Chell stay up for about 8 hours before putting her back into stasis.

Chell eventually begins to notice something is amiss. Mostly because of the frankly bizarre way GLaDOS has begun acting towards her, sometimes slipping up and acting like it's been forever since she's last seen her. (GLaDOS ain't nearly as slick as she thinks she is!) Plus, her mind has been getting foggier and foggier every time she wakes up. But she doesn't know if GLaDOS is actually doing anything to her, and doesn't want to confront her without evidence when they've gotten so close.