#making chell functionally immortal

[non-cannon]

I came up with a theory for why things like bullets and lasers don't kill Chell immediately, and why she heals from them almost instantly, but things like energy bolts and mysterious liquids do. I don't know that I believe this theory, but it's fun and any fic writers who see this are more than welcome to steal it.

The theory is that Aperture created nano bots that could be injected into a person that would heal almost any damage, but it was very new/highly experimental and Chell was the first person tested or at least the first person to have been given nano bots that actually worked.

Now the limits of the bots are if you take too much damage, or keep taking damage faster than they can heal, then you die. Hence why a few second of bullets or laser don't kill, but sustained bullets or lasers do.

They also can't help with drowning (they can't remove the liquid from your lungs) hence why the liquid kills you.

Also they can't handle rapid high energy inputs, which is why the energy pellets kill you.

Additionally they can't create anything new. So they can't help with suffocation (thought they might help with neurotoxin assuming there's still enough O2 in the air) dehydration, or starvation.

But they can help with fall damage, which helps because surely the long fall boots alone can't explain Chell surviving the long pit down into the bottom of Old Aperture with no injuries at all.

But then Chell turned out to be too stubborn to test, and too hard to kill, so the scientists put her on ice, redacted most of her file (including the nano bots bit), and then GLaDOS took over and killed everyone (except Rattman), and she has no idea about the nano bots.

[absentmoon]

ok so like IHAVE SO MANY . wheatley glados friendship thoughts. i don't know where to begin honestly??? i haven't played in awhile but i hope this is ok :)

well to start i want to talk about my grievances with how wheatley is treated, by the fandom and the game itself. its fairly popular from what ive seen to insult him for his intelligence; this isn't surprising given that the game is. honestly the number 1 "lets all make fun of wheatley" proponent.

this makes me vicariously uncomfortable!

as a disabled person (im dyslexic + dyscalculic with processing issues and ive been made fun of for my intelligence myself) i don't like it when characters— especially ones who are very vocal about their discomfort with it— being insulted for intelligence. i think its shitty. i don't like how much the game jokes about it. i wouldn't like it even if i did find wheatley to be unintelligent. not much more to say, honestly, other than that? wheatley is shown to have low self esteem and low confidence with himself, even if he tries to deny it. seeing him made fun of and jokes about makes me deeply upset on a real level.

regardless, though— wheatley is, honestly, really clever! i find it odd how the game seems to insist that he isn't; im honestly not sure if im actually meant to read him as intelligent, considering how much his actions in game show that he is. was he deliberately written to be smart? i cant tell because of the. constantly insulting him that happens.

wheatley is shown to be very good at planning. sometimes there are flubs in his plans, but overall he's clever enough to successfully help chell escape the facility. and then promptly took over it, but still! he's a smart little guy, even if he couldn't run the entire aperture labs.

this brings me to glados!

glados canonically doesn't care for wheatley— being designed specifically to weigh her down, as well as the whole taking over her facility thing. but frankly i don't think she fully believes what she says about him either?

"you're not just a regular moron. you were designed to be a moron."

similarly to how she insults chell, i think this is more about saying what will hurt him the most rather than being her true thoughts; while chell did help, wheatley also did the bulk of planning when it came to taking out her primary weapons and even herself. i don't think she'd fully see him as unintelligent— i know she often says he is in game, but it just doesn't fit to me. like. i don't see her fully considering someone a part of taking her down as unintelligent; not to mention how that would be in some ways an insult to her as well.

i have more to say but this is bumming me out and this is my post on my blog so. moving on!

i really do think they could VERY MUCH get along! apologies for not having as much to say here this very much a Vibes Thing B)

they both have bad experiences with the scientists that made them; both were designed to be things and deviate from their purpose; both have a distaste towards birds. that's important because i say it is. frankly, they both definitely need the friendship i think? its a dead facility. theyre functionally immortal. i see them as having a similar sense of humor; wheatley needs a good example of self esteem and confidence, and glados honestly needs something a little less serious around. let the lady have fun sometimes she is working constantly. ok my thumbs are getting stiff so im ending this post now but you guys GET IT RIGHT.. they're genuine friends and they don't insult eachother, its not passive aggressive. at most theres light ribbing but they don't go too far and if they did they'd apologize sincerely because they care about eachother.Thanks

[rangerdew]

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

im hving trouble ACTUALLY writing an rvb portal au because i feel like two major themes involved with the characters present in portal are:

- misogyny

- devaluing of manual labor 

meaning that the blood gulch crew as fodder for pfl would make really good test subjects in portal and carolina would make less sense because her dad is literally the director of pfl. but the blood gulch crews are halomen gamerboys. 

i think the way im going to move forward is to imagine where they would land in aperture if the characters were just transported over rather than trying to assign each of them a ‘role’ because that makes for more interesting aus anyway. so here are my predictions btw glados does not exist because i don’t believe in alternate universes. no questions

the director: wanting to help the war effort without being a soldier in the war... maybe he wouldve founded aperture as a military-industrial thing, or maybe it became a military industrial thing after he took over and he shifted over to artificial intelligence technology after the death of his wifey 

tex: an ai of her never actually worked. i think the reason why glados worked well as an extension of caroline was because she did secretarial work before, but also i don’t think it’s ever relayed to the audience how much she um acts like or is caroline, right, since transferring a brain to artificial intelligence probably doesn’t work like that. well i digress, but if they tried to ‘make’ tex so she could be functionally immortal as an ai, she wouldn’t do the stuff glados is doing, she would hate that. & so i imagine funds ran out for this ai who never lived very long before they had to try making her again and didn’t like living. and if you changed her to be of more use or to be less volatile, then would she really be tex? and the director would find that disagreeable, and people would think he was sinking money into something not worth it. 

i also like that tex never lives in rvb because like they tell us she is based on a story and that story is of failure. so i dont want her to live here

church: the ai that runs the facility. it turns out its a lot cheaper and easier to get funding for + make a brain of someone who both is interested in doing a lot of the work around aperture and is still alive i guess? not entirely happy with this because imo it breaks the inherent chex romance of ‘we are both here because you love me’ (fucked up) however ill take what i can get... maybe the reason behind church’s creation is just so director can prove its possible and get more funding or something but church  gets sick of watching tex be reborn and blow herself out every time that he like decides to kill everyone in the whole facility because anyway he’s literally like the god of that place. i think the director dies of neurotoxins 

(tangent: the reason why he didnt predict church’s betrayal was because i like the idea that the director inflicts so much onto church because he thinks that if church really was him he would do it for her and that he is him so he should. so why wouldnt church want tex back then)

EVENTS IN THE SAME TIMEFRAME AS THOSE OF PORTAL 1

i was going to have grif be the test subject before simmons who died tragically rip forever but i saw a post calling red team the greek chorus of rvb so i changed my mind because it was so true.

anyway, this part is difficult because chell is like literally just some rando who is really tenacious. so the person chosen has to be some rando but it also can’t be like, tucker or caboose, the former because i firmly believe tucker would only do it under very specific circumstances and also he would d ie, and the latter because like it would make for a very very different story. 

okay, i’m picking wash. 

tucker: over in black mesa fighting for his life against alien monsters

caboose: with tucker 

simmons, grif, sarge, donut, and lopez are all scientists and test subjects and also all dead. starting from old, old aperture, they’ve been leaving messages to each other like: 

lopez: this place is INCREDIBLY suspicious. im doing some investigating [END OF LOGS REACHED]

sarge: everybody here calls me crazy, but i know something’s up! the doctor says its just ‘the asbestos’... ill asbestos her face! [MESSAGES SCRAWLED ON THE WALL OF THE JANITORS CLOSET END HERE] 

donut: i’m just a janitor, but i found all these weird logs. i wonder what they could mean. [THE REST OF THE JOURNAL HAS BEEN RIPPED OUT]

grif: oh my god. now that i’ve found all this shit i’m never getting out of this alive. actually i just realized i don’t care. [ONE OF MANY LETTERS HE DID NOT SEND TO HIS SISTER] 

simmons: he finds all this stuff at the worst possible moment like maybe 4 weeks before church starts flooding the entire building with neurotoxin and spends those 4 weeks trying to find out more/solve things/get out of this alive and when he’s the last scientist left hiding in the walls and shit he moves washington up the testing list

i like that a lot of portal has to do with the lack of direct communication and how glados is the only person you actually talk to, everything else being from recordings or drawings on the wall or old science projects with potatoes that have grown to the ceiling. so i’m going to be trying to push that as hard as i can. of course tucker and caboose will be dealing with the problem of abject horror and senseless brutality as their buddys organs drop down from ceiling aliens

washington: i think he could get ‘chosen’ in the same vein chell was for a similar reason... i think i’m going to want him to be involved with tests from some other part of aperture that fucked him up supremely tests undetermined because idk. 

church is a really self centered character though & i want this to play into the tests that occur in portal 1 like maybe they all spell out a little narrative or his dialogue like in portal 2 co-op progressively reveals something about himself that is not the fault of wash but is something he is still taking out on wash. 

yay alienation of technology and flawed transhumanist narratives 

[axsolotle]

ok so

I’m going to talk about it

This is an AU I’m going to call the Still Alive AU because that’s the best I can do

every thing is the same up until the end of chapter 5 when Wheatley replaces GLaDOS 

GLaDOS calls him a moron and he starts getting upset and instead of turning GLaDOS into a potato in his freak out he swings sideways at the elevator Chell is in 

this kills Chell

just fully actually kills her 

Chell is fucking dead

Wheatley immediately starts freaking out

And GLaDOS starts making fun of him

Telling him how he killed his only company and he’ll be stuck alone forever just like she was

Wheatley is in “no I can fix it mode”

He shuts off GLaDOS and immediately looks for ways to fix it

He finds the plans for a scrapped project called ‘Combination Human and Artificial Intelligence’ or CHaAI for short 

It’s something that was thought of when Cave was doing that whole “poisoned by moon dust and trying desperately not to die” thing but it was ultimately scrapped 

Wheatley however figures it’s good enough and he might as well try it 

And after an indeterminate amount of time he succeeds!

Also prevents the facility from blowing up some how

Monkeys and typewriters you know 

So Chell’s a cyborg now 

But not just Chell

GLaDOS and Chell have been combined and are now CHaAI

As CHaAI they have also been combined with the high fall boots and the portal gun

Each can shoots out one color of portal with right being blue and left being orange 

Chell is still mute but GLaDOS can talk

Chell and GLaDOS have like a mental link so they can communicate internally like with thoughts

As CHaAI they doesn’t need to eat or sleep and are functionally immortal 

Chell can still sleep if she really wants to

If she does then GLaDOS is fully in control because she can’t sleep 

This is all I have for now

I don’t know if anyone cares but here is some art from a Portal 2 AU that’s been rattling around in my head the past few months