Science isn't about why, it's about why not.

stillalivedoingscience:

liongirl5:

reblog if you blog these:

• Ninjago
• Bionicle
• Portal/Portal 2
• Chima
• How to Train Your Dragon

Portal over here!

/aggressive coughing

portaltheories:

Any theories I should check out?

emberwhite:

As you guys know (and if you don’t then I don’t think you follow me), I consider myself a Rattmann fan in the Portal fandom. You’ve probably seen my writings, maybe, and have seen me blog stuff about my pairings. I might not be the best writer out there, but over the years I’ve studied Doug Rattmann a lot from what little sources we have on him, and step by step have created up my picture of him.

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stillalivedoingscience:

chell-master-of-the-portal-gun:

(SPOILERS. DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED PORTAL 2 AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS) 

I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before. I should have. I spend most of my portal playthroughs looking over the murals, I make it a point to find each and every one no matter how many times I go through the game.

I restarted Portal 2, and got to the den in the one room you can go into after breaking the glass. I noticed that it showed a cat, an orange cat, coming out of a box and jumping over the moon. I’ve seen this painting numerous times, never noticed that it was jumping over the moon until then. 

I also noticed, that the first den you come across, the one with the big Chell painting, the moon phases on the celing. This one I’d seen before, but I never connected it to anything. However, seeing that, and seeing the cat, well, it got me to thinking. The orange cat, of course, is Chell, escaping from the vault. And jumping over the moon. Which, she did do, more or less, at the end of the game. Okay, might just be coincidence. Except, this isn’t the only mention of the moon. There’s that picture of a companion cube on the moon, that you can only get by taking the radio into the den you find in the advanced aerial faith plates test, and running the sound through imaging software. There’s the “It’s like seeing, but not with my eyes.” thing in his last den, which also look like phases of the moon.

I never connected all of this, until I noticed one final thing. Something I honestly didn’t see until last night. 

Arrows, painted by Rattmann, on the wall next to the incinerator. Purposely directing Chell into the button room. The one that, upon pressing the buttons, would wake GLaDOS up. 

Why, in the world, would he want her to go in there? 

Also, I noticed, in the den with the radio, the one that plays Exile, Vilify, along with the song lyrics, is the sentence, “Too many variables.”

Never connected all this before, but what if he’s referring to Chell, and his recent obsession with the moon? 

Meaning, I think he had all this planed out.

At the end of the game, if it had been a couple hours sooner, or later, then the moon would not have been in the right place. If it had been a different day, say quarter moon, then it wouldn’t have been as easy to see it, and thus harder to shoot it. New moon, it wouldn’t have stood out at all against the background of the dark sky, and thus it wouldn’t have occurred to Chell to use the surface of the moon as a portal surface. 

Think about it, if it had been any other time, this would not have worked. And, the place would have to be in ruins for the ceiling to open up like that. The timing had to be perfect, otherwise, boom, with Chell in the middle of it all. 

Rattmann planed everything out. That’s the only explanation I can think of, because there’s too much here for it to be random chance. He became obsessed with the moon, despaired over all the “variables,” because there were so, so many things that could have gone wrong, and he told Chell to go into the button room of all places, which would reactivate the one A.I. that they’d both fought so hard to destroy.

The cat escaped the box and jumped over the moon.

He knew what would happen before the game even started.

Awwwwesome headcanon. I think all of this is very true, although I didnt read all of Rattmann’s moon symbolism before as anything more than him having wished “he had gone to the moon”, like he says in Lab Rat. I especially liked that “too many variables” part in this, because I can so see Doug Rattmann hiding out in one of his dens, trying to piece everything together.

There’s also the fact that Doug Rattmann probably knew that Wheatley was still overseeing the relaxation vault, if indeed it was the scientists that placed him in charge there. Part of my headcanon is that when Doug Rattmann says “until someone opens the box”, he has Wheatley on his mind. He knows Wheatley was designed to make bad decisions—so the idea that he may try to escape with Chell is not that unprecedented. Doug must have known a lot about the facility, enough to understand that without GLaDOS alive, the reactor core would eventually become unstable. So it makes sense to me that he would have directed Chell to the breaker room, if the alternative was a reactor core meltdown with her still inside.

As for the moon symbolism, I am not entirely sure that Doug foresaw the end battle—but there’s definitely something there. I think it does have to do with portalling to the moon… but my headcanon’s long and I am going to write it into a fanfic sometime in the near future.

skeletor-motherfucker:

alright i need more vidjeo games on my dash, reblog if you post:

• Portal
• pikmin
• TF2
• bioshock
• L4D

(Source: the-real-life-john-egbert)

Okay so I’m gonna be editing/rewriting “Poor Caroline” and “Aperture/Portal Timeline”. The first because of some things that have been debunked and the latter because there are some details toward the end that I think I’ve gotten wrong. (I should probably check the Half-Life timeline, but I haven’t played much of the series.)

fuchsiamae:

fyeahportaltheories:

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For the record:

• Erik Wolpaw said in an interview that the “rape scene” rumor was false.
• I’ve never heard those last three quoted lines anywhere else (as opposed to the other cut Caroline lines, which are in the game soundfiles) so unless there’s a source, I wouldn’t give them credence.

Yup. I wrote this before I knew he confirmed them as false, so I’m gonna rewrite this one soon.

But anyway, thank you for saying so!

fuchsiamae:

Yet another longpost by tumblr user fuchsiamae

It’s always worth repeating that liking something and realizing it’s problematic aren’t mutually exclusive. Having seen people get defensive over problematic points of their ships on one hand, and having heard people tell me I shouldn’t ship something because it’s problematic on the other, I figured it’s time for this post.

You can ship things and acknowledge they’re problematic at the same time. 

Problematic elements of Cave/Caroline:

• Most obviously, the way Cave talks about uploading Caroline into GLaDOS makes it clear that he refuses to take her wishes into account. Whatever his reasons, that’s inexcusable. If used to paint a broader picture of their dynamic, it means he doesn’t respect her opinions when they differ from his — which is extremely unhealthy in any kind of relationship. 
• A romantic relationship between boss and employee is inherently questionable. Cave could easily use his power over Caroline to take advantage of her. 
• Based on the time period, it’s fair to guess that whatever working relationship they had was misogynist as all hell. Cave isn’t exactly the progressive feminist type. No matter how highly he thought of Caroline, she’d always be a woman in his eyes — assumed to be less capable than male employees, overlooked and sidelined because her gender invalidated her thoughts, and subject to casual sexual harassment. She’d have to fight twice as hard as a man to get noticed, and even if she managed it, she’d still never be on totally equal footing. 

I completely acknowledge all of those things. I ship them anyway, but I don’t think the relationship is a good or healthy one, and I’m up-front about that. 

You can like problematic things as long as you realize they’re problematic. 

Oh thank god, there are people who share my viewpoint, woo! (In hindsight, my post needs editing. I should get on that, tweak it a bit.)

portal-headcanons:

So there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the presumption that BYDTW Day was the day GLaDOS took over the facility, and how Chell managed to grow up if being in stasis prevents aging, and where her personnel file came from.

I have two completely different theories for this.

Theory 1; Minors can’t be tested without a parent’s signature. Every day in captivity Chell filled out an application to test and was subjected to interviews and examinations to determine what kinds of trails she should be put in, which is where her file comes from. At the end of the day, she’d be told they had to reject her and to please come back tomorrow with her parent’s permission, and be sent back to the relaxation center. Thus, GLaDOS couldn’t test her, but couldn’t kill her with neurotoxin for refusing to test either. When she turned 18, the system started rejecting her and asking her to come back when she was less tenacious.

Theory 2; BYDTW day was the day the Combine invaded. Aperture initiated a lockdown as one of their many apocalypse contingency plans. While trapped inside, the scientists had to develop a means of combating the Combine so that the system would let them out. There were no shortage of volunteers willing to test to speed things up, but they just never had the breakthrough they needed. After about 10 years without significant progress, someone finally decided that they needed some direction. They needed a leader. So they started tinkering with the Morality core that they abandoned after the BYCTW day fiasco. The next time they put it on GLaDOS, it seemed to work. They informed her of the situation and she quickly decided that if they really wanted to speed things up, they couldn’t rely on volunteers anymore. Everyone needed to test and leave the thinking and engineering to her. Then the itch, euphoria, and withdrawls came. GLaDOS realized she was in a pretty good position now. Nobody could leave until they developed some technology or strategy that would allow them to save the world, and they were relying on her to guide them to that discovery. She could test them all to her hearts content, forever, and make the tests as sadistic as she wanted, and anyone who told her ‘no’ would be putting themselves above the rest of the human race. People caught on to this quickly and tried to shut her off or escape, but it was too late for that after the first picosecond.

-randomjayne

portal-headcanons:

After reading through all the headcanons here, I’ve discovered that mine is still missing, so I figured I would submit it and finally release my brain baby on the world after nursing it since the first time I played Portal 2.

So my headcanon is largely based around some hidden material in Portal 2 and in general the Lab Ratt comics, so spoilers ahead, beware, etc.

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fuchsiamae:

An unnecessary fan essay by tumblr user fuchsiamae

I am obsessed with Caroline. Deeply. I think she’s one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever run across, and I could spend ages picking apart all the little intricacies of her. I adore Caroline.

Yes, Caroline from Portal 2. The disembodied voice with four lines. That’s the one. 

What could possibly be so interesting about an unseen character who takes no part in gameplay and only has four lines?

Let’s talk.

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