#wheatley thinks

[ygamiraito]

"but these are all crazy sentient ai computers!" they just all need some love... everyone makes mistakes right guys :[

[biscylbenzene]

day 24 - no lines allowed (lineless art)

he's so kickable it's all i can think about

[doctorsiren]

gives them hands so they can hold them and also wheatley is there too

[cheebuss]

Here we go again.

[kirumarythechair]

inaccurate size difference we die like Wheatley

[craske]

LET GO, IM STILL CONNECTED. I CAN FIX THIS

[vixen-tech]

it’d be really funny if the AIs got infected with a lovebug virus and the reader has to take care of them

Oh this is such a cheesy one and yet it's something I love to roll around my head!!! They get so uncharacteristically affectionate while their systems fight off the bug somewhere in the back of their minds. How jarring it is from your perspective varies wildly depending on which AI we're talking about.

See some of them are already pretty affectionate and clingy. You would be forgiven for not noticing how Edgar gets just a bit more desperate to keep you from going to work, or how Wheatley gets just a bit bolder fishing for compliments. The biggest hint that something is up is their inability to focus on anything that's not you. Edgar forgets that he likes music until you mention being excited to hear the peice he was working on before the virus. Wheatley for once has no reaction to Galdos making fun of him because he's too busy staring at you, too entranced to even realize she's said anything.

It's much easier to figure out what's happened with the professional folk. Hal, Tau, and Auto are all decently stoic and even-voiced. Which makes it quite the shock when they go so far as to abandon their job in favor of checking up on you and soaking up your attention. For the first time Hal confesses to wishing he could hold you. Tau's constant inquiries focus entirely on what little he knows of romance and your romantic past. Auto for once is open about his fondess for you that he cares about your well-being more than he does the ship's other passengers

Now the most bewildering are the ones openly antagonistic to you, to the point where you were convinced it was some long con ploy. AM already has a tendency to play hot and cold with you, but never before has he so innocently cooed at you like you were a puppy- even gently squishing your face in his wires. P03 has never looked this unashamedly happy over something that wasn't a won game of Inscryption, chattering away about how much he thinks about you and how excited he always is to play against you. GLaDOS seemed allergic to giving you genuine compliments before this, now droning on between chambers about how clever you are and much you're improving at her tests.

Now the conversations you have after they finally get rid of the virus? Now that ought to be interesting.

[ari-orangebox-collection]

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

[cozylittleartblog]

the piece i made for the @stillalivezine back in 2021

[bearionette]

Working on another big GLaDOS and Caroline piece. In the meantime have this dumb doodle I did

[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."

[tangramkey]

i love my Basketbot Portal AU

[aperturerecord]

glados and wheatus android bodies but they built them themselves

[ashyslashyy]

happy portal 2 day

[kirumarythechair]

i find the fact that all 3 ended up uncertain of each others futures beautiful

[ninawolv3rina]

The Coward Is Here