#glados analysis

"You did an excellent job placing the edgeless safety cube in the receptacle, you should be very - oh wait. That’s right. You're not humans. I can drop the fake praise. You have no idea how tiring it is to praise someone for placing an edgeless safety cube into a receptacle designed to exactly fit an edgeless safety cube."

Like, she has a point. Her programming forces her to monitor and motivate test subjects and it must get quite boring and exhausting having to go "Wow, you did it!" over the test subject doing the equivalent of a baby pushing a cube into a square hole. Imagine if you had to do that all day: praise people over doing the same mundane tasks that were already set up to be done a certain way.

Apart from that hope you have an awesome day! You really have a great analistic skill (idk if it's well said but you know, I mean that you analize characters really well, you get the point xd) and I hope you work on the entertainment industry, cause I would really like seeing where your analysis and construction of characters would lead a story! I think it would be an amazing story ^^

Alright, this is a long ask, sorry about that, have a good day!! (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)

Canonically, Chell is robophobic and Aperturphobic. She doesn't like anyone or anything in Aperture and she's just storming around the place in a consistent state of anger, refusing to talk to anyone.

So, I'm not much of a shipper. I don't get caught up in pairing characters romantically or anything but I do like to look at each character individually and analyze their emotional needs and wants. So, we already know how Chell feels about everyone in Aperture. As for Wheatley... he doesn't seem to be romantically attracted to Chell so much as the fact that he just idolizes her and considers her his favorite person. He has this very idealized version of her in his head as this sort of legendary hero who defeated GLaDOS and who wants to escape and she's basically a celebrity or an all inspiring hero to him. He wants to be friends with her. His entire reason for helping her in the first place was to escape the facility before it could explode since all reactor core safeguards have become nonfunctional. And as someone without any limbs who can only rely on a rail to get around, he needs the extra help to escape certain doom. However, once GLaDOS wakes up, she fixes the problem, so Wheatley no longer has any reason to want to help Chell. The facility is fine, Wheatley is safe as long as he avoids GLaDOS. No reason to come back to help Chell. But he does anyway despite it being of no benefit to him. And this is an impulsive spur of the moment decision too. He wasn't thinking about the potential consequences of what would happen if he decided to help Chell, he just did so because he wanted to. Because he got attached to her. And this is proven in this line right here:

Because he had just spent a couple hours following Chell around from test chamber to test chamber, devising a plan behind the scenes and breaking her out of the testing track and only THEN when they've made it to the turret control center, is he realizing the potential dangers and getting cold feet. So the entire time prior to this, he really just decided to help Chell because he wanted to. Because he got attached to her. And it's clearly not his intention to throw Chell under the bus here either so much as it's just a fear induced intrusive thought of his being fuelled by the risk of GLaDOS potentially crushing him again if things happen to go wrong. Sometimes Wheatley just lacks a filter and blurts out the first thought that comes to mind when he gets scared or nervous.

And he doesn't want Chell to leave him either. It's very subtle and pretty easy to miss, but Wheatley seems to display some signs of separation anxiety. Or more specifically, a fear of being abandoned or left behind by someone for not being useful enough to them.

And this is how I interpret his lines here: Wheatley: "Wait, where are you going? Where are you going? …." (No- wait- don’t panic, she’s not leaving you. Maybe she’s just thought up an idea) "Ohhhhh, have you got an idea?" (Well, okay, this is fine. She’s just thought up an idea, she isn’t leaving you. She’s going to go do whatever she does and then she’s going to come straight back.) "Okay, well, alright. Just do your idea and then come straight back!" Chell: [Going further away/Taking a while to return] Wheatley: "Sorry, what's going on over there? You know, I'm actually over here, still thinking really hard!" (I swear, I’m still useful to you, I’m still working really hard, I’m still thinking up ideas, I’m still trying to help you, please don’t leave me, I swear I’m helpful, please don’t leave.) And this seems to be supported by a later line during his boss battle when he says this: Wheatley: "And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him a sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"

And this line certainly seems to confirm that Wheatley thinks that he will be abandoned/discarded if someone, namely Chell doesn't consider him useful. But not only that, Wheatley gets very upset when he starts assuming that Chell doesn't value him. In fact, he doesn't turn against Chell when he lowers the lift. He turns against Chell when GLaDOS discredits him. Wheatley: "I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this!" GLaDOS: "You didn't do anything... She did all the work." Wheatley: "Oh really? That's what THE TWO OF YOU think, is it?"

He IMMEDIATELY assumes that Chell has sided with GLaDOS in discrediting him and that's when he turns against her. Because the fact of the matter is that Wheatley is quite emotionally needy. He craves constant validation and approval from those who he admires but the problem is that Chell refuses to talk to him and is very emotionally unavailable in general. So Wheatley is left to assume what she's thinking. And since he's someone with low self esteem who happens to be very paranoid and insecure, he ends up assuming the worst. And Chell not speaking to him makes it worse because it allows him to spiral the more and more he thinks about it. Wheatley: "Enough! I told you not to put these cores on me. But you don't listen, do you? Quiet. All the time. Quietly not listening to a word I say. Judging me. Silently. The worst kind."

So do I ship Chell and Wheatley? Not canonically. Maybe if the writer portrays Chell as being more kind, compassionate and understanding, but with her canonically being robophobic and being emotionally unavailable all the time, she's just not the right fit for Wheatley. Wheatley needs someone who is attentive to his emotional needs and who can communicate openly and honestly with him without making him feel insecure or like he's not good enough. Chell in the end just proved that pairing an emotionally unavailable girl with an emotionally needy core who has an insecure attachment style is just not a good match in the long run. As for ChellDOS? We run into the same issue of Chell being robophobic and emotionally unavailable. GLaDOS has a lot of complicated feelings and emotions of her own and it's likely that she's quite lonely herself and craves some form of social interaction or at the very least someone to bounce her ideas off of. Although she's in heavy denial of it and won't outright admit it. Constantly trying to convince herself and others that she doesn't need anyone. There's also the fact that GLaDOS is afraid of Chell. She has some mixed feelings. While she considers her one of her only best friends, she concludes that she's far too much trouble than it's worth and sends her away.

GLaDOS: "I never expected you to make it this far. To be honest, after your performance in the calibration test I was ready to break down your cores and put them back in the scientific calculators I took them from. But you two have become quite the team. Extremely close. I have only met one other team closer and one of them was an imbecile I had to destroy. The other? Well... I don't think I want to go through that again."

She has warmish but complicated feelings towards Chell and ultimately considers her to be a source of trauma for her.

Even in the co-op DLC, while we later find out that it was a bird messing with the prototype chassis, she at first thinks that it's Chell coming back to torment her. GLaDOS: "It looks like our mystery woman in the prototype chassis is sending us a message: She's not AFRAID of me... But don't worry, I've got a plan. Let's keep testing and show HER we're not afraid either." GLaDOS: "Mission accomplished. Now SHE knows WE'RE not afraid of HER either. GLaDOS: "Think about that: She doesn't care about you. I don't either, of course. But I'm not trying to permanently kill you. It's a benevolent indifference." GLaDOS: "The prototype chassis room is just down this hallway. Remember your training. You are kill-- She's turned the lights off! Night vision! Night vision! Your move, Mystery Wom -- She turned the lights back on! Night vision off! Night vision off!"

I can't see it, honestly. I don't ship it for a number of reasons, but there's also an age gap there that turns it into a relatively strange dynamic. Because the only reason Wheatley exists is because GLaDOS couldn't stop killing people and the scientists kept making cores to try to regulate her murderous tendencies. He came into existence as a direct result of her actions. So, I just see him as being much younger than her, personally. I mean, even if you dismiss physical age, because they're robots, even in terms of mental maturity, he just comes across as being younger than her. Inexperienced, a bit naive (Until he starts developing trust issues and it turns into paranoia), unsure of himself, desperate for the approval of others, his... very creatively worded insults.

Even just this scene here

// I think GLaDOS tries to act more robotic than she actually is. She tries to act all distant and professional, but then she gets all emotional and offended at things and clearly craves attention and interaction with others. She is ashamed of the human part of herself and thinks she can bury it by being apathetic and cruel to others, but it’s clear that she can’t avoid it. You can see this demonstrated in her interaction with HAL 9000 in Lego Dimensions. HAL doesn’t show emotion and acts completely robotic while calling out the humanlike, emotional reactions GLaDOS has to his intrusion. Even if she seems completely calm, hearing her compared to HAL really shows how human she actually is compared to a true robotic AI.

The writers of Portal also mentioned in an interview that GLaDOS should not speak to you like a computer, but rather should speak to you like a regular person. In other words, like a human.

Quote from Erik Wolpaw:

“You try and write stuff that's truthful. When GLaDOS is talking to you, one of the rules I had is that she shouldn't talk to you like a computer. She shouldn't be all like, ‘Oh my nuts and bolts.’ She's got this computer voice and she is a computer, but she's talking to you like a regular person. In that sense, we've got a theme. It's not metaphor. We're just trying to make her sound like a person who is angry at you and is manipulative might sound.”

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SOURCE:

gamasutra.com/view/feature/4151/valves_writers_and_the_creative_.php?print=1

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This is why GLaDOS doesn’t say things like “Get me back into my chassis,” and instead says “Get me back into my body.”

And instead of saying “You shut me off,” or “You forced me into sleep mode,” she says “You killed me,” or “This is murder.”

She also says “Luckily, I’m a bigger person than that,” referring to herself as a person.

Consider this deleted line of hers:

"Well done. You know, when I woke up and saw the state of the labs, I started to wonder if there was any point to going on. I came THAT close to just giving up and letting you go.”

GLaDOS’s anger and hatred of Chell essentially motivated her to keep going out of spite. Just seeing her fired her up. 

But imagine if she didn’t see Chell. Imagine if she just woke up all alone, surrounded by ruin. She looks for test subjects, but there are none. All the test subjects in the Relaxation Center are brain-dead. Her facility is in shambles and she has no one to test. As she says, would she even be motivated to go on?

Well, I can’t see her giving up right away, but I do think it would depress her a bit. She’d start by cleaning everything up in a trance. Just automatically focusing on the task of fixing up the facility and getting everything working again. Then, she builds Atlas and P-Body. She’s a little less lonely with them around, but then she finds that they don’t satisfy her testing itch because they aren’t human and she grows frustrated. Also, she doesn’t know about Old Aperture because she never got thrown down into that pit, so she wouldn’t know to look there for the Human Vault that she has Atlas and P-Body track down in Co-op.

Maybe she’d even try to clone new humans from the brain-dead ones, and then gets frustrated with how much trouble she’s having getting it to work. If she succeeds with it at all, it would probably take a while to get it right and perfect the process. Meanwhile, the lack of science and that testing itch nagging at her brain — even though she SAYS it doesn’t bother her — must still be quite annoying for her to some extent. Even if she doesn’t care about chasing that high, it must still affect her, as I’m sure there’s some sort of punishment function for going a long period of time without getting proper test results — some sort of function that keeps nagging at her brain, bringing down her mood, and torturing her. 

So, she has no one to test, she’s essentially all alone — aside from Atlas and P-Body, who are more like children to her — and she’s not getting any real science done because she doesn’t have any humans to test. I think all of this would really start to get to her after a while. Maybe at some point, she would even get depressed enough to cry to herself alone in her chamber, before picking herself back up and continuing to search for new solutions to her dilemma. 

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So, I did an Enneagram personality test for GLaDOS and she got “Type 8: The Challenger.” I thought the results were really interesting and insanely accurate so here they are, along with my comments and insight into how they fit GLaDOS!

Type 8: The Challenger

Natural leader... imposing presence... believe that people should be encouraged to help themselves... Yep, that’s GLaDOS.

She’s definitely prone to thinking things over and analyzing situations rather than reacting spontaneously. It does end up crippling her sometimes, though.

“Serious about control over environment”

I mean, she literally has it, lol. And she is definitely a control freak.

"Fierce and certain look"

Yep.

“Respect as opposed to status or being liked by the group”

Yep.

“Strong inner sense of justice.”

At first glance, you might think this sounds out-of-character for her because of how she lacks morals. However, she actually DOES possess her own sense of personal justice with how she loves revenge and thinks others must pay for hurting her because it’s only fair. The problem is that she never applies this justice in reverse onto herself.

“Loyalty also plays a major role in their value system. They’re devoted to those who have proven themselves over time and will stand by them until the end—through hell and high water. When danger comes and their loved ones are in trouble, they will confidently stretch their wings to protect them.”

This matches up perfectly with what I’ve been saying about her being insanely loyal! Despite her lying and messing with others, if she’s actually truly dedicated to a person or cause, she will never betray them unless they do so to her first. This is also further backed up by the fact that when she was Caroline, she stayed with the company from the beginning until the end, through all its ups and downs. She was dedicated to the cause of science and to Cave Johnson and she never betrayed them.

So, she may be a liar at times, but she has an extreme sense of loyalty! And her protecting her loved ones... Mama GLaDOS.

“They become stone-cold and take an antagonistic stand to anyone who dares to question them and their motives. They may use empty threats to regain power over others and turn existing relationships into tests—where one can only pass or fail. Others may turn their backs on Challengers, who will reason that they were better off working alone. In the end, they may force themselves into loneliness.”

That last sentence that it ends on... That’s exactly what GLaDOS did at the end of Portal 2...

The page literally ends on the word “loneliness,” which is exactly what Ellen McLain (GLaDOS’s VA) has said about GLaDOS in multiple interviews: that she’s lonely... :(

Also, “turn existing relationships into tests,” heh.

“They will reason that they were better off working alone.”

GLaDOS: "I had a pretty good life. And then you showed up."

(This chart is called The Three Centers” and it basically shows what the dominant emotion is for each type.)

"In the Instinctive Center, Eights act out their anger and instinctual energies. In other words, when Eights feel anger building in them, they immediately respond to it in some physical way, raising their voices, moving more forcefully. Others can clearly see that Eights are angry because they give themselves permission to express their anger physically."

Yeah, she’s definitely not afraid to show her anger. She may be good at controlling it to an extent, but she definitely isn’t ashamed of it and doesn’t try to hide it. Anger/Rage being her dominant emotion also fits, not because she’s always angry all the time, but rather because she is very motivated and has a lot of drive.

“If you become light-headed from thirst, feel free to pass out. An intubation associate will be dispatched to revive you with peptic salve and adrenaline."

I never fully understood this voice line of GLaDOS’s, so I decided to do some investigating.

“Intubation” is the process of inserting a tube into someone’s body.

“Peptic salve” doesn’t seem to be a real thing, but we can take a guess at its meaning from the individual words.

The way GLaDOS is animated is so clever and expressive and yet, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone break it all down before, so I’m going to go ahead and do so! :D

To start off, something very interesting I’ve noticed is that her body does very little to contribute to her expressions and it’s mainly just her headpiece doing 90% of her expressing. Her body actually seems to just get pulled in whatever direction her headpiece wants to go. In fact, all of her movements in general seems to originate from her headpiece, with her body merely acting as support for it. This really makes a lot of sense too, considering that her headpiece is where her actual consciousness and “self” is stored. 

Here’s an example of what I mean. Notice how her headpiece seems to lead the motion and then her body just kind of trails along behind it:

Now, on to the headpiece itself. It’s really quite fascinating and clever how her “brokenness” is actually what allows her to be more expressive this time around. Lemme break down what each piece of her headpiece represents:

Her yellow, glowing optic = her eye Her black component = her face Her white casing = her eyebrow and head

Her optic is pretty much a given: It shines brighter the more energy she has and shines dimly when she’s tired and low on energy. When it’s off, she’s unconscious. You can see her optic is very dim when she first wakes up, since she’s a bit groggy and isn’t at full power yet:

Her black component has little shutters that give her eye shape: When they squeeze together and cover her optic, she’s squinting. When they pull apart wider than their usual resting position, she’s going wide-eyed with shock or surprise. 

Her black component also has a tendency to pop out of her casing either when she’s startled, or to give emphasis to her words:

Her white casing tends to act as an eyebrow. It tilts down over her black component and optic to give her an “angry eyebrow,” as seen here:

The white casing also tilts upward to give the impression of a “raised eyebrow,” to indicate surprise or shock, as seen here. Just before she jumps back, you can see the white casing lift up like an eyebrow.

Lastly, her headpiece as a whole does a whole lot of moving and tilting, representing her gestures — which makes up for her lack of arms.

As for her body, she tends to lift herself higher up off the ground when she’s displaying dominance, keeping herself above others and out of reach. When she raises her headpiece above her chest plate, it’s like she’s puffing out her chest in a stubborn way. Like so:

On the flipside, when she’s being more submissive, she tends to hold herself close to the ground, head lower than her chest plate, well within reach of others. You can see this especially during the ending scene, where she’s so low to the ground, she’s nearly touching the ground, getting down to the other person’s level instead of holding herself way above them.