From me to @owlbaron , Happy Holidays and enjoy your @portal-secret-santa !!
I hope you like this little snippet into Chell and Wheatley exploring the many spots through Aperture, like a Rattman den. It was a lot of fun to work on this one!
(Also added a timelapse of the whole piece below the read more!)
So this might be a bit of a complicated question, but you know how the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day display has Chell's name on it? To me that seems to indicate that Chell was a child when GLaDOS neurotoxined everyone, but the Lab Rat comic seems to indicate otherwise, listing Chell as a test subject volunteer meaning she would have been an adult. So is this just an inconsistency or do you have any lore/theories that can square that circle, so-to-speak?
*cracks knuckles*
bring your daughter to work day is simply an annual event at aperture
the thing is is that Chell's potato science experiment has to have been made PRIOR to Cave Johnson's death, BECAUSE:
Here's young Chell writing about Cave Johnson on the placard behind her Potato Science Experiment, perfectly clear as day, literally showing that Chell saw Cave Johnson and him talking about how the kids could use as many potatoes as they'd like for their experiments. Cave had to be physically present at the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day that Chell attended.
In Portal 2, the Prototype Chassis Room you find at the end of Coop Course 6, which was the original GLaDOS chassis Cave Johnson was originally meant to be transferred into, is dated to have been made in 1989, meaning Cave dies prior to that point, and thus then places the Potato Science Experiments to come from the 1980's.
If you actually stop and analyse the area you find these Potato Science Experiments at, it actually matches the style direction that you see in the 1980's dated offices later in Portal 2 while you're in Test Shaft 09, same type of plaster and wall columning:
Plus, in the 1980's, we know that Aperture Science had started to invent the Modern, futuristic form of their technology, such as their modern Cubes and Buttons:
So simply put - the area we pass through in Portal 2 is not THE Bring Your Daughter To Work Day from 2003 that causes Aperture Science to be gassed by GLaDOS, it's a Bring Your Daughter To Work Day from over 20 years prior to the incident. Wheatley just easily seems to conflate it with the main BYDTWD incident due to how terrible the disaster was.
And I don't think I need to spell it out, but I will regardless - 20 years is more than enough time for Chell to grow up into an adult who would later apply to be a Test Subject at Aperture Science.
So there, there's the answer to that question.
TLDR; It's just a different Bring Your Daugther To Work Day from 20 years ago.
missed last year's Annual Doug Rattmann Portrait bc of art block from hell, had to make up for it 🥲
played around with CSP's shading assist tool for this, which was neat! I have a speedpaint video showing a little bit of it (except I started the recording after I'd already started painting, oops lol) over on my instagram!
Yes I know it’s day 2 but mY PHONE SHUT OFF BEFORE I COULD FINISH THIS OKAY?!
Portal 2, definitely, if anything for how it twists the atmosphere. Portal 1 feels so lonely, so empty and lifeless. But in Portal 2, that changes because it’s a more character driven story, which means that the robots AREN’T lifeless. They HAVE character. They have thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and when you previously thought that the facility was completely devoid of life, you instead find out that the place is more alive than ever.
I also wrote a little something to go along with this! Check it out!
Haunting the narrative means that the character’s absence heavily impacts the plot. They’re not present when their influence is most strongly felt, whether they’re alive or dead!
500 Kudos on Year's of Science... I'm honored
Thank you all for supporting this fic through the years. It means the world that y'all enjoy my little story.