Yeah, I’ve said it. I have been hanging out in the Portal section since Portal 2 came out and I would say none of the most popular/reviewed fics implement GLaDOS in more than an ancillary/plot device type of role, with perhaps the exception of MuriraRK’s fic which is one of the few that developed her in addition to the other characters.

Well I should note that I don’t ship her with anyone so I am disregarding ChellDOS fics for the purpose of this statement, although those tend to not be extremely popular either I’ve noticed.

She’s such a damn great character, but every time you get an independent/aloof/intellectual type of female character people tend to ignore them unless they can be used for a ship (or in this case facilitate one, i.e. sexie tiem between Chell and Wheatley). I know people like to ship things, I get it, and that’s fine, but can’t we ever explore characters in any capacity beyond that?

Anyway, I’ll plug my own GLaDOS-and-Chell-centric magnum opus here. It’s a non-ship friendshippy type deal, though done with a strict in-character adherence in mind.

honezuki:

fauxpromises:

Feminism. Yep, I said it, and boy that will probably make at least one person fly into a rage, even though I haven’t even taken a position on the topic yet.

Actually, I was going to bring this up in conjunction with Portal, as I did before with the last post. It’s a game with a lot of underlying themes, but I always hate when that theme has to be excessively political in nature.

Now, I don’t think the creators intended a feminist or anti-feminist message, either way. I think they treated GLaDOS and Chell as exactly what they were, the same as if they were male. But there is a school of thought out there that says there is some deep, political meaning behind Portal’s female protagonist-antagonist dichotomy.

I think it might have started when some guy starting blogging about how GLaDOS is a woman in bondage being suppressed by a misogynistic society. Secretly longing to die, something to that effect. I personally think it’s pretty clear by the end of the game that she was impaired by the cores, but absolutely narcissistic and diabolical. Not a suffering victim. Furthermore, I don’t think it is fair to say her treatment by humans (which was likely condescending) was because she is female, but because she is a non-human entity. Look at how Aperture treated male, human beings! Was that any more respectful?

GLaDOS’s plight is one of a non-human entity with an enormous intelligence, learning to come to terms with that fact. She isn’t a victim. But the feminist argument for Portal increased when the character of Caroline was introduced. This is probably one of my main reasons for not seeing them as the same individual, along with the fact that I think it cheapens GLaDOS’s character development. I don’t think making her out to be a former human is something I like, mostly because I like the idea of humanity as a developing trait in an AI rather than the fact that they must have originated as a human in order for them to be interesting.

I feel this same way about shipping either Wheatley or GLaDOS in any way…I just don’t like forcing them into a sexual role in order to see them as deep and dynamic character. I understand that sexuality is something people like and are drawn to, but it just isn’t my thing. No hard feeling, okay shippers? I know Shipping is Serious Business.

I think the angst that I like about GLaDOS isn’t the idea of her being a human made into a machine, but rather that she is actually her own entity, one that has always been inside a machine and only knows that existence. Her struggle is learning to cope with the inevitable human emotions that come with intelligence and experience.

Interesting note, I actually wrote to the writer of Portal on this topic (Is GLaDOS really actually Caroline?) and explained to him in brief my thoughts that I laid out here. That being that GLaDOS is a strong, truly feminist figure through her powerful and humanlike nature, rather than she is a feminist victim icon. And he wrote back!

It’s open to interpretation, but even if Caroline provided some essential foundation for glados, at some point there must have a clear enough split that glados can talk about deleting Caroline without wiping out herself. In fact, eliminating Caroline appears to have reset glados back to her “true” self.

My head-canon says GLaDOS didn’t have the heart to delete her, but he does make a distinction there, and it’s quite interesting.

Before I cut this message out and get back to Rayman Origins (squee!) I will say…nobody get butthurt and offended, okay? I know feminism and shit gets people all in a knot and I’m being just frank and honest with my own opinion here. Love and tolerance, yo.

While the Portal games obviously aren’t intended as a blatant social commentary, I think analyzing them from a social/political perspective is a worthwhile exercise. Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but regardless of how they intended their characters and themes to be read, the creators’ choices do not exist in a vacuum.

The power dynamic between robots and humans is one of my favorite parts of Portal, too. I wouldn’t call it a direct analog of either race or class, but it is a very socially charged tension, and I think there’s some overlap or intersectionality with the gender issue in terms of what type of power GLaDOS has or how powerful she is at any given time.

Hope this reblog doesn’t come across as too throat-jumpy-downy. I love OP’s perspective on the crappifying effect Caroline’s introduction had on the emotional-A.I. theme – I was rolling my eyes about it on my first playthrough, too.

Maybe I should clarify. I don’t think it’s not worthwhile to analyze something from a political perspective to some degree, I just think it is slightly unfair to women in the way that people have chosen to politicize it. When I first played Portal I thought ‘Hey, awesome, two female characters that are great.’ Chell is clearly a capable hero, and GLaDOS is an antagonist that shows many traits that are indicative of a sympathetic figure; she’s diabolical, but I always had to wonder after the first game if she could have been tamed. And in Portal 2, she essentially is.

But virtually every person I’ve seen read feminism out of Portal read it in a negative light. Of GLaDOS being a horrible sad victim who was treated the way she was because she was a female. I’m not saying you can’t read that out of it, I just think that people might have an agenda in doing that; that it could fit their personal narrative rather than looking at it in the context it takes place in. I think they undersell the positive female presence that GLaDOS is, an extremely capable, intelligent, and powerful figure.

Anyway, I’m not saying these peoples’ opinions are wrong, I just think they are doing GLaDOS and Portal in general a disservice by drawing these conclusions.

(via honezuki-deactivated20120324)

Feminism. Yep, I said it, and boy that will probably make at least one person fly into a rage, even though I haven’t even taken a position on the topic yet.

Actually, I was going to bring this up in conjunction with Portal, as I did before with the last post. It’s a game with a lot of underlying themes, but I always hate when that theme has to be excessively political in nature.

Now, I don’t think the creators intended a feminist or anti-feminist message, either way. I think they treated GLaDOS and Chell as exactly what they were, the same as if they were male. But there is a school of thought out there that says there is some deep, political meaning behind Portal’s female protagonist-antagonist dichotomy.

I think it might have started when some guy starting blogging about how GLaDOS is a woman in bondage being suppressed by a misogynistic society. Secretly longing to die, something to that effect. I personally think it’s pretty clear by the end of the game that she was impaired by the cores, but absolutely narcissistic and diabolical. Not a suffering victim. Furthermore, I don’t think it is fair to say her treatment by humans (which was likely condescending) was because she is female, but because she is a non-human entity. Look at how Aperture treated male, human beings! Was that any more respectful?

GLaDOS’s plight is one of a non-human entity with an enormous intelligence, learning to come to terms with that fact. She isn’t a victim. But the feminist argument for Portal increased when the character of Caroline was introduced. This is probably one of my main reasons for not seeing them as the same individual, along with the fact that I think it cheapens GLaDOS’s character development. I don’t think making her out to be a former human is something I like, mostly because I like the idea of humanity as a developing trait in an AI rather than the fact that they must have originated as a human in order for them to be interesting.

I feel this same way about shipping either Wheatley or GLaDOS in any way…I just don’t like forcing them into a sexual role in order to see them as deep and dynamic character. I understand that sexuality is something people like and are drawn to, but it just isn’t my thing. No hard feeling, okay shippers? I know Shipping is Serious Business.

I think the angst that I like about GLaDOS isn’t the idea of her being a human made into a machine, but rather that she is actually her own entity, one that has always been inside a machine and only knows that existence. Her struggle is learning to cope with the inevitable human emotions that come with intelligence and experience.

Interesting note, I actually wrote to the writer of Portal on this topic (Is GLaDOS really actually Caroline?) and explained to him in brief my thoughts that I laid out here. That being that GLaDOS is a strong, truly feminist figure through her powerful and humanlike nature, rather than she is a feminist victim icon. And he wrote back!

It’s open to interpretation, but even if Caroline provided some essential foundation for glados, at some point there must have a clear enough split that glados can talk about deleting Caroline without wiping out herself. In fact, eliminating Caroline appears to have reset glados back to her “true” self.

My head-canon says GLaDOS didn’t have the heart to delete her, but he does make a distinction there, and it’s quite interesting.

Before I cut this message out and get back to Rayman Origins (squee!) I will say…nobody get butthurt and offended, okay? I know feminism and shit gets people all in a knot and I’m being just frank and honest with my own opinion here. Love and tolerance, yo.

Okay, at least GLaDOS would think so. And when it comes to Freud, I’d agree you would be reaching to say that his theories are infallible. In fact, many of them are downright bizarre and have no place in modern thinking.

However…I did find a particular theme in Portal to remind me of the subconscious triad Freud advocated.

First, some backstory. I’ve always been adverse to the idea that Wheatley and GLaDOS were victims of the mainframe they were placed into. You could draw the implication that, if you prescribe to the belief that GLaDOS is directly Caroline’s consciousness, the mainframe made her insane and murderous. I personally don’t view them as the same entity but that is immaterial. You can then say Wheatley went from benign to murderous because of that same reason.

I’d like to go out on a limb here and say the mainframe is somewhat symbolic of the id:

The id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The id acts according to the “pleasure principle”, seeking to avoid pain or displeasure aroused by increases in instinctual tension.

Part of this relates to the testing-itch described by the AIs. Because of Wheatley’s lower intelligence, he was most strongly influenced by it out of the two. Another facet of his personality was his implied insecurity (he mentions getting passed up for a promotion at one point). The immoral nature of the id makes him more willing to exact his revenge by being a dictatorial presence.

GLaDOS is far more difficult to read. It would be fair to say that her level of intelligence drives her to more refined pursuits (her id is not satisfied with a more base pleasure). Hers is an intellectual addiction. She is willing to kill in the name of science because it satisfies her desire for the pursuit of knowledge, however warped it may be. Added to that equation is her relatively underdeveloped moral code; her intelligence level does not match her maturity. She shows an egocentric streak that is typical of smaller children in the earliest stages of moral development. While she acts sociopathic in nature, it’s important to remember that she is developmentally much like a child. Not to mention, her non-human psyche has no reason to value life in the first place.

The opposite of the id is the super-ego. That’s the moralistic side of the subconscious:

Freud developed his concept of the super-ego from an earlier combination of the ego ideal and the “special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured…what we call our ‘conscience’.”

Wheatley doesn’t necessarily have the mental capacity to get to this point, at least not in-game. He is not cognizant of what he did wrong until he encounters consequences at the end. The reward/punishment stage of moral development is not one that actually understands the reason something is wrong, only that consequences will follow the immoral action.

On the other hand, GLaDOS does arguably get to this point. Morality was not something that she could be programmed to adhere to, thus why the core was only able to prevent her from directly killing the humans. By the end of the game, however, I would strongly argue that she has learned a lesson, and it’s one that I believe is mutually exclusive from Caroline. Given GLaDOS’s character, I find it likely that she blamed this other presence for her moral actions in order to save face.

In the end, she’s actually progressed to a point where she sees the intrinsic value of keeping a promise. Rather than analyzing a situation from her own POV, she’s learned the concept of empathy. Which is something she had never considered, most likely. She had been in a power position for her entire life. I believe being helpless taught her quite a bit, one of those things being mercy. Chell could have left her there for bird food.

Now what’s the ego? It’s actually not that important to this analysis. It is the resulting personality from a mind driven by id but repressed by the super-ego. I don’t see the plot of Portal fitting this model perfectly, but there is definitely a battle between the id and the super-ego going on, if you ask me.