#sorry i have very intense feelings about glados as you can tell

[mrpsychokiller]

i FEEL like some of glados characterization is lost when the jokes about her circle around fitting the "dommy step on me sexy + intelligent + evil/cruel" archetype not like she isnt evil or intelligent or sexy but i do think i greatly enjoy her character more when i get to remember she is a little silly. she is mean and cruel by making up the most elaborate and stupid sounding insults ever. she has an extreme grudge against you which she insists shes not mad about while mentioning the fact every two minutes. shes madly obsessed with a woman who never responded to a word shes ever said. most of the shit she says is just straight up ridiculous. shes constantly battling intense feelings of loneliness while refusing to admit to anyone she could ever want company or affection. she is described by the creators as "throwing fits like an angry child". glados IS a little bit pathetic and silly and a very funny and very sad character. shes a woman of multitudes

[ask-glados]

“Drunk” GLaDOS

// A while back, @myinventions​ and I wrote a funny little RP on Discord about Tesla making a mistake while editing GLaDOS’s source code, which leads to her glitching out and acting “drunk” and rather unlike herself. XD It’s just a silly little scenario for fun, and since it’s old, it may be a little different than how we RP GLaDOS and Tesla now, (it’s a little on the cheesy side and I would probably write GLaDOS more restrained now, but since he’s literally changing the source code that makes up her behavior, it’s technically an in-universe explanation for her to act a little out of character haha) but you know what, I thought I’d share it anyway because it’s still funny and cute and has lots of TeslaDOS fluff. X3 Enjoy!

—————

"Alright. -- and... saving file."  Keeping her close to him, he entered the save command.

[saved]

As soon as he saw the command successfully completed, he wrapped both arms around her protectively. "Done."

Her hologram sparked and glitched out for a few moments, while her chassis gave a sudden jolt as well, sparks flying off it. Her hologram then looked at him with a goofy grin.

”Wow... I had no idea remorse could feel so... good... heehee...” She stroked his cheek. ”You know something? You’re sooooo handsome. Do I ever tell you that? Because you are. Heehee~” She sounded a bit loopy, almost drunkenly so. ”And you’re not just a pretty face, either. Noooo... Beneath that beautiful face is a beautiful mind... A beautiful genius mind comparable to my own... heehee~”

Observing the sparks and glitches, Tesla went still. What had he done? Was she really alright? Expecting the worst, as he sucked in a breath and braced himself for what was to come... he was in for completely different results.

His eyebrows raised in surprise as he saw her face... and his jaw dropped the moment she opened her mouth. What...? He didn't know whether to feel more startled over the fact something must have went very wrong when he saved that file, or perplexed at the possibility of her ability to sound drunk, or grow intensely bashfully to her very bold compliments (so unlike her usual self). Act naturally, Tesla... 

"GLaDOS! Darling!" He stammered. "How... very... flattering! Yes, flattering of you to say so!"

”You don’t give yourself enough credit, dear Nicki~ teehee~ You really ARE the master of electricity, aren’t you? Because your very presence overloads my circuits. Heehee~” 

Her form continued to spark and glitch intermittently.

Had she just... called him by his first name? A nickname derivative of his first name no less? Something... must definitely be wrong.

But before he could even hypothesize where he went wrong, Tesla's face suddenly flushed to a shade of hot red. His electric blue eyes could only stare at her - speechless by the intensity of her words. "I-- you -- do I --- overload your--" He stammered - stumbling over his words as his blush deepened - struggling between returning a flattered grin and maintaining his calmer demeanor. "Ahhh... thank you, kindly, Cara Mia! I-- could say the same about you."

She leaned in closer to him. ”Silly man. You don’t have circuits... though you could have fooled me. Heeheehee~” She began kissing his cheeks over and over, dozens of times, to the point where it was completely ridiculous and almost annoying.

"Oh? I don't? -- oh, that's right. I don't!"  He chuckled in embarrassment. The suddenness of her... forwardly affectionate nature rendered him a bumbling blushing mess. "Oh! -- Oh my!" His eyelashes fluttered as he was growing overwhelmed by her kisses. He tried to glance back at the computer monitors. "I - I love you, too, sweetcore, just - we do have to get back to science, now..."

”Oh, science... That’s what I love most about you! How you’re all about SCIENCE!” She suddenly grabbed him and pulled him toward her, giving him a passionate kiss on the lips. Her sudden movement threw them off balance, causing them to topple onto the floor, Tesla on top of her. She stared at him for a moment, then laughed.

"Precisely! So how about we get back on track and... -- !!!!!" His eyes widened as she seized him into passionate kiss. Not even before he could return the sentiment they were suddenly tipped off. 

"-- AH!" Flailing his arms in the air, he was fortunately met with a soft landing, and then laughed in unison with her. Delightful~.  He just had to focus... and... not grow too hopelessly distracted by the irresistibility of her unusually minx-like behavior.

Gently but firmly pinning her down - for just a few moments until he could catch his breath - he blushingly stared intently at her. "If I may be so bold, my dear, but what on earth happened to you??"

“I don’t know, you tell me... After all, you’re my master programmer now, heehee~” She giggled as her form twitched and glitched erratically.

His face scientifically couldn't possibly be more blushing red than it was right now, could it (when she puts it that way...)? But now, without a shadow of a doubt he knew this was his doing. "I can fix this." Leaning forward he kissed her nose and winked at her before letting go of her, rising to his feet, and returning to the computer ­­monitor to see where he had made the mistake...

She giggled at his kiss, then got up and followed him back over to the monitor, which was displaying an endless list of errors in her source code. She hugged him from behind, resting her head on his shoulder, looking on at the screen with him. ”Oh, dear. You seem to have made a mess of me. Haha.”

He sighed, almost dreading seeing her face when she saw he was the cause of all those errors. "‘Oh, dear’ is right. I'm --  so sorry, GLaDOS..." he whispered, concerned with her growing sparks and glitch-twitches. "Like... I said... I can fix this!" He said stubbornly "I just need... to retrace my steps. And .... -- worst case, do you have a backup of your systems anywhere?"

”Technically yes. Though, it’d be far more efficient to just use the ‘undo’ command.” She kissed his cheek. ”Though, I don’t know why you’d want to undo any of this~ Teehee~”

“Undo Command?” He raised an eyebrow and turned to face her, “What’s that?” Turning to face her, he cupped her face in both hands. “And, for the record - while this - (‘accidentally turning GLaDOS into an endless cuddle machine’) version of yourself is adorably fun to be around, it isn’t you. And I don’t want that to change, I want your personality and beautiful self to remain intact while we just give you back your rightful functions.” He kissed her forehead. “Know that.”

”What do you THINK it does, Niki-poo?” She giggled. ”All it requires is a *little* press of the Control and Z keys.” 

”Oh, I love it when you talk like that. You’re sooooo gorgeous, inside and out. A beautiful man and a shining example of the magnificence of your human species.”

He was still so surprised to hear her call him an endearing derivation of his first name (but it sure started to grow on him). 

“That’s — that’s it? It’s that simple?” 

He laughed heartily, bashfully hugging her. “Oh, you. I can’t believe you’re real. I can’t believe... you really love me... so, so much...” 

He quickly kissed her lips before returning to the screen to try out the undo command. Seeing his changes instantaneously reverted he gasped - like it was the greatest invention since sliced bread. Looking back at her he pointed to the screen, excitedly. “Did you see that??” 

He then nodded, “Alright. Let’s get you back to normal first and then try this again.”

[saved]

With anticipation he looked back at her... Did it work...?

She giggled at him. ”You’re so cute when you get excited like this.” As the changes were saved, both her chassis and hologram twitched for a moment, her hologram’s form refreshing and rescanning itself. Her hologram let go of him and stepped back, holding her head and looking dazed. “Ungh... what just... happened...? Wait, did I just... Oh god.” She looked at him, wide-eyed, as her face turned bright red. In one swift motion, she swung at him with an open palm, slapping him across the cheek, though the force behind it was only half-hearted. ”What did you do to me, you moron?!” Though, she was clearly only yelling at him out of embarrassment.

Tesla watched her carefully, intently, in hopes he didn't make any mistakes again in simply trying to revert her back to normal. "GLaDOS. Are you -- !!" Slap. She was back to normal, alright. He rubbed his cheek gingerly, cringing as she scolded him. I... probably deserved that, he thought to himself, looking back at her shame-faced. "I'm so, very terribly sorry, GLaDOS!" he sighed loudly, "I-- It was an accident, I swear! I -- I'll be much more careful... promise!"

She leaned toward him menacingly, getting up in his face and pointing a finger at him, as if scolding a child. "You are going to forget everything I just said or did while in that... state. Got it?" She prodded his chest firmly with her finger.

He took a step backwards out of reflex, nodding, and weakly replying "Yes, ma'am." After witnessing the blazing fire in her eyes, he averted his gaze while he endured her reprimanding. 

After a long pause he asked quietly, "...Are you finished?"

She backed off and let out a sigh. “Yes. Now, let’s try this again. But this time, I’m double-checking your work.” She went back over to stand by the stool in front of the monitor.

[ask-glados]

GLaDOS Liveplay [Part 2]

Something I forgot to mention in the last part is that in The Final Hours of Portal 2 eBook on Steam, the developers said that the reason behind the 50,000 year time skip was because they wanted to separate Portal 2 from the events of the Half Life universe. I personally think connecting the two universes could be pretty epic, so I don't understand why they're so against it. 

Here’s the quotes from the eBook:

So, apparently they have giant laser beam generators somewhere and they just portal those lasers over to each test chamber, for some reason. That's Aperture for ya, lol.

This test chamber is actually another one from Portal 1. When you walk in, GLaDOS moves the old High Energy Pellet Launcher out of the room and replaces it with a Thermal Discouragement Beam (a laser). She replaces the receptacle too.

[from Portal 1]

GLaDOS gets her first dose of that solution euphoria as you solve the first test, and she suddenly sounds more laid back. She tells you to pace yourself because she needs to keep you busy while she fixes up the facility and figures out how to replace you with less dangerous test subjects. She doesn't want to keep you around too long because you might try to escape the testing track and kill her again.

She definitely sounds more relaxed now, her initial rage wearing off as she becomes more comfortable in running the facility and being in control again. Also, apparently she was planning to replace the High Energy Pellets with Lasers back in Portal 1.

GLaDOS is still trying to corral all these panels back into line. They even appear to have little hints of personality to them, some of them spinning around playfully, and they all have round circular lights that seem to indicate an AI core. In fact, a lot of things around Aperture seem to have AI cores. It's even mentioned by GLaDOS in CO-OP that she made Atlas and P-Body out of cores she took out of scientific calculators, so apparently Aperture just puts AI cores in everything. I'll point some of them out as we go along. It'll be like a game of 'spot the AI core'!

This also ties into another thing I wanna comment on. I’ve seen people theorize about the panels and other things in the facility being like a part of GLaDOS’s body that she can feel through, and I disagree. Throughout several chambers, you can see these panels goofing off and acting as if they have a mind of their own. I think it’s only her chassis that acts as her body, and while she IS hooked up to the rest of the facility through wires, I don’t think stuff like panels being broken actually ‘hurts’ her. Let me put it this way: Her body is her chassis, and all the things in the facility connected to her chassis are like tools she’s holding. It’s like a million arms she has spread out across the facility, holding tools. So if you break one of those tools, it doesn’t hurt her, it’s just taking that tool away from her or ripping it out of her hands.

Now, she's moved past telling you how much you made her suffer and trying to make you feel sorry for her, and has moved on to try taking hits at your self-esteem and trying to make you feel guilty for it.

This elevator room looks much better since GLaDOS is fixing up the facility. There's less broken screens and you can see a much clearer view of their weird portaling laser thing, lol.

GLaDOS fixes up another test chamber just as you walk into it. She can barely keep up with you with how fast you're solving them.

And naturally, she takes another shot at your self-esteem. She doesn't actually think you are fat, she's just trying to get under your skin and upset you, because she knows that ‘weight variances’ can upset humans. She even says so in CO-OP:

"Did you know humans frown on weight variances? If you want to upset a human, just say their weight variance is above or below the norm."

She actually has protocols on how to mess with test subjects psychologically that involve taking shots at their self esteem to keep them compliant. Notice she is following the protocols listed for "orphans" when it comes to Chell. 

"Shame-based psychology." "Opportune moments to obliterate [self-]esteem." "Scorn [and] flattery used in an ironic context and naked contempt." “You’d perform this test better if you had parents.”

This is from an interactive website ApertureScience[.]com that was run by the developers before Portal 2's release. [ half-life.fandom[.]com/wiki/ApertureScience[.]com ]

She can still barely keep up with you since she's multitasking — trying to rebuild herself and the facility, as well as keep you at bay in test chambers. Once again, she tells you to slow down.

Another attempt to taunt you and lower your self-esteem.

She's still barely keeping up with you to clear your path in time and have the chambers ready.

Now she's just being petty and trying to make you feel discouraged and depressed.

Once again, she's trying to guilt-trip you by saying how she has to do all the work around here while you get to have fun with the test chambers. This is always something she's bitter about — how she does all this work and no one gives her any credit for it. Obviously, it's because she terrorizes people, but she doesn't realize that. She thinks she should be treated with intense respect, regardless.

An interesting thing to mention about the "wing of glass" she mentions here is that there is actually a deleted Cave Johnson line where he mentions building a wing of glass.

"Now, the lab boys were adamant that I do not give you any hints on these tests. To be honest, they think I'm spoiling the results just by talking to you. Hizenstein Uncertainty Principles and so forth. I’ll give ‘em something more practical to be uncertain about: their next paycheck. Anyway, overruled. If you think I'm affecting your decisions, in any way, don’t be afraid to speak up. I’m not made of glass. That reminds me: Caroline, do we have a wing made out of glass yet? Let's get on that, Caroline."

I think that makes it that much more hilarious that Caroline is now here in AI form, cleaning up his mess years later. XD

[ tcrf[.]net/Portal_2_(Windows,_Mac_OS_X,_Linux)/Unused_Lines ]

She's still trying to keep up with you and move the panels out of your way in time. She's slowly but surely catching up.

She's still taking shots at your self-esteem, and she couldn’t even bear to be subtle about it, so she literally explains the insult just to make sure you got the metaphor.

And she’s still trying to make you feel guilty for killing her.

The Companion Cubes were created to test how test subjects could gain an emotional attachment to an inanimate object. At the end of the Companion Cube chamber in the first Portal, you were forced to "betray" your inanimate "friend" by incinerating it. So, here GLaDOS tries to get under your skin by destroying the cube multiple times and calling it worthless, implying that you don't deserve friends and that any friendship you thought you had in any Companion Cube is worthless.

Also, a neat little detail: if you listen closely, the Companion Cube plays the tune of "Cara Mia."

She's still having trouble fixing up the facility, but she's getting there. She's been working on fixing the nuclear reactor core, which was nearing meltdown back at the beginning of the game, as mentioned by the Announcer in the Relaxation Center. The reactor core splits atoms to boil water into steam, and that steam turns the turbines, which are what power the generator to create electricity, which is why you see the lights flicker when the turbines start giving her trouble. The turbine's fan blades are likely heavily corroded, rusted, or gunked up after all this time, so she has to leave to attend to that. She manages to find a quick way to taunt you by pretending to give you a sped-up hint that she knows is beyond a human's hearing comprehension — just another way to flaunt her superiority as a supercomputer to you.

What she actually says is a quote from the very first paragraph of Moby Dick:

"And methodically knocking people's hats off. Then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

This could be a subtle fat joke because whale = fat. But Moby Dick is also a tale about a man's obsession with revenge against a whale who bit off his leg, and GLaDOS is clearly obsessed with revenge, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was a favorite book of hers that she decided to quote from. Also, if you look at the context of this line in the paragraph it comes from, it's talking about this guy saying that when he gets angry enough to "knock people's hats off," he knows he has to get to sea and hunt that whale to vent that rage.

GLaDOS isn't there to comment when you beat this test because she's busy fixing the turbines, which ends Chapter 2, and also Part 2 of this Liveplay! I really hope you're enjoying it! :D