#portal multiplayer

okay because it was 12 years of portal 2 yesterday I thought my first official post should be my thoughts on feminism in the saga 

the main problem is that a lot of the times in the media violence against women is used as a plot device to make a character stronger. it’s not empowering to be a sexually assaulted and/or abused but the media often makes these themes a “phoenix” moment for women.

and while it is satisfying to see women stick it to their abusers, This portrayal often boils women down to their only defining trait being their sexuality and the only real “motivation” for women to be powerful is having that sexuality threatened.  

This abuse also enforces the point that you have to become more masculine and drop feminine traits in order to become stronger and more powerful.

women do not need to go through abuse in order to be considered powerful, being a woman is powerful enough. being feminine is being strong

This is where portal comes into play. I’ll start with what i’m sure you all guessed i was going to bring up first but in the actual games and mods every main playable character is a female (portal 1& 2 and portal mel stories) or doesn’t have a specific gender to interpret( portal 2 multi player & portal reloaded).

in addition to this one of the main “villains” is also a woman. in the first game she is given no redeeming qualities but gets “redeemed” anyways showing fleshed out characters with interesting character development and even though this development get erased (sry caroline) it’s GLaDOS’s choice and not somebody else taking it away or making that choice for her

most importantly the women in this game are influential. The classic comparison of “can this character be replaced by a lampshade” doesn’t apply to the game. whether she’s a villain or a playable character everything is biased off the decisions women make and their influence.

and while there are male side characters(the cores) the portal women are never shown to be dependent on them for coming up with solutions to problems or saving them. In fact the cores are very rarely shown to do anything that isn’t driven by what the portal women do.

the fact the chell isn’t pointed out to be a woman, she is mainly a blank slate except from the player views her through portals, is also a prime example of this feminism because it isn’t calling attention to the different ways that men and women act it forces you to focus on not the gender of the character but of the actual gameplay

now i know nothing about game development and in the mod mel stories it may have been simpler to keep the main character a female when designing. but the choice to keep mel as an olympian and how they chose to portray female olympian instead of a male shows the dedication to having powerful woman “outside” the game and inside the game meaning that she was already strong but was made even stronger by what she went through in aperture.

and yes, they do go through hardships and are exposed to many challenges yet they are never shown to be abused or sexually assaulted. they have their “phoenix” moments anyway

We’re the robots, GLaDOS wish would just die for good already, cause we don’t get any tests done, lmao