the-wheatley-core

[the-wheatley-core]

Most of my problems seem to stem from this belief in my core that I am unworthy of so many things. That I have to earn anything, any little thing at all. Basically what I'm trying to do is to allow myself good things even if I feel undeserving of them, and I want to focus on pushing myself to take good care of who I am even though it's hard, even though I feel so lost and undeserving because in all honesty if I don't keep trying to develop a habit of caring for myself without earning it I will never feel like I deserve anything, no matter what I ever achieve.

#believe in yourself! (motivational quotes) #feeling blue (musings)

[the-wheatley-core]

i’m trying to be less ashamed of my failures and more grateful to where they have brought me. without them, i would have so much less growth in my life.

#believe in yourself! (motivational quotes)

[the-wheatley-core]

Mentalhealthceo

#feeling blue (musings)

[the-wheatley-core]

I think a lot of the stupid wheatley stuff is people feeling like wheatley /deserves/ to be made fun of for all the shit he does in portal 2 (betraying and trying to kill you ) and less... how he actually is

((A lot of it comes from people only having a surface level view of Wheatley and not really digging deeper into it.

Kinda like with Cave’s lemon rant. It’s funny to hear at first, but then it dawns on you that it’s the frenzied ramblings of a dying man desperately trying to cling onto life for as long as he can.

A lot of things in Portal is actually quite bittersweet. Which is to be expected from a dark comedy, but there are a lot of deeper meanings in the game that people don’t seem to grasp.

It’s actually quite ironic. Because Wheatley has been given a demeaning purpose he never wanted. Upon his activation he’s been told that he was meant to be stupid. Imagine that. Imagine at a young age that your superiors tell you that you exist to be stupid and then constantly proceed to make you feel tiny and insignificant. That would contribute to some severe psychological scarring growing up. And then despite that, Wheatley still tries to be a good person and help out Chell despite it being of no benefit to him. And then he’s given the robotic equivalent of cocaine (The developers literally equated being in GLaDOS’s body to consuming cocaine) and then he starts acting out as any person would who’s suffering from a childhood trauma and then given drugs as a form of escape.

But nobody realizes the nuance. That’s the ironic part. Is how relatable Wheatley’s trauma is. Because there are tons of people out there who suffer from childhood trauma, who get picked on for having a disorder that they have no control over, who live in an abusive household and who then go on to engage in substance abuse as a way to cope. But these kinds of people often never get the help that they need because they’re always shunned and ostracized from society. From their friends and family. It’s incredibly ironic how Wheatley’s struggles somehow seem to reflect reality seemingly by accident on the part of the writers and that nobody seems to realize it.))

#((bringing this back))

[the-wheatley-core]

Analysis: Wheatley was never meant to be stupid to begin with

((You know, I always found it so odd how Portal 2 tries to convince you that Wheatley is meant to be stupid. Because when you’re playing the game for the first time, he really doesn’t come across that way.  It’s only until GLaDOS says this that in your mind you begin to try and deliberately look for acts of stupidity to justify her claims. 

But Wheatley really never came across as stupid for me.  My first impression of him was that he’s a reckless expositional character who would introduce you to the game’s mechanics right after taking the courtesy to utterly destroy your bedroom. 

And that he also happens to be clumsy.

But he never truly came across as stupid to me. I remember every time I would watch the core transfer/the fall, it always seemed so out of place to me. GLaDOS would call him stupid and I remember always being like “…Really?” Because it had honestly never occurred to me. Wheatley just never came across as stupid during the first act of the game. Clumsy, reckless and impulsive? Yes. But not stupid. Every time his stupidity was brought up in the game or in the fandom, I’d just look at him in confusion and go “…Are you sure?” Because it was his idea to disable GLaDOS’s defenses in the first place, he’s the one who redirected the faith plate to launch Chell into his trap and he studied GLaDOS’s boss battle footage so that he wouldn’t repeat her same mistakes. All of these actions only serve to prove against the whole narrative of him supposedly being stupid.  For a year or so now, I’ve been analyzing Wheatley non-stop. I’ve made countless analyses breaking down his character and just further explaining in depth why the writers failed at writing a stupid character. But recently I had a bit of an epiphany.  You remember this moment here?

Originally, that was supposed to be the end of Wheatley. He was supposed to die right then and there, but the playtesters liked him too much so the developers decided to give him a bigger role in the game. 

But the thing is… prior to GLaDOS crushing him, Wheatley never came off as stupid. His character traits had established him to be clumsy, reckless, “not-so-sure-of-himself”, frantic and impulsive. Those were the character traits that had originally been established for Wheatley early on and because he was never meant to play a bigger role in the first place, there was absolutely no narrative reason to convince the player of his stupidity. Because he was never written as stupid to begin with.  Now the thing with Valve is that when they gave Wheatley a bigger role in the story, they didn’t actually change any of his character traits. In fact, they seemed to make him pretty darn clever considering just how much he helps you out in the game. Such as devising a plan behind the scenes to break you out without GLaDOS noticing, only having to give away his position because he was forced to enact the escape plan ahead of schedule due to GLaDOS increasingly hinting at her plans to kill Chell earlier than expected.

Knowing what GLaDOS’s defenses are and coming up with a plan to disable them,

Guiding you through the dark,

Coming up with the solution for the turret control puzzle if you can’t figure it out on your own,

and many more. Valve failed exponentially at trying to write a stupid character and seemed to actively do the opposite with no changes or rewrites to Wheatley’s personality.  You know what’s a good example of a stupid character?

You know what’s a bad example of one? 

Someone who studies before a boss battle to ensure his victory. The only reason Chell emerged victorious was because she somehow miraculously survived a bomb blast. 

And also because Wheatley’s procrastination on fixing the facility resulted in the ceiling to crumble and reveal the moon that Chell would use to shoot a portal at like the lunatic that she is. 

But aside from that, it was a foolproof plan. So much so that the devs actually had to scale it back just so that it could be beatable. 

Valve failed at writing a stupid character. That much is a fact. But they needed to give Wheatley a reason to exist within the story. They needed to give him a motivation to drive his actions. As @the-evilanon​ said in their analysis on the matter:

“While the statement “Wheatley is dumb” is devoid of merit and rendered dishonest by canonical material, it makes for an excellent plot-device. It gives an otherwise simple, potentially one-dimensional character depth. Because he now has this insecurity he’s been given something to feel over, something to get angry about, to be haunted by, gutted by, and later corrupted by. Without his fear of appearing stupid, and his disdain for being the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, Wheatley is just friendly.” 

Which is an entirely accurate statement to make because more often than not, Wheatley’s negative actions are influenced by his insecurities. 

With the knowledge of his origins, you can easily infer that he’s been picked on in the past going by how strongly he reacts to being reminded of his status as an intelligence inhibitor.

It’s an old wound of his that he’s desperately been trying to forget about until GLaDOS brought it back up. I’m often reminded of this comment I once saw on a youtube video: 

So with the knowledge that Wheatley’s past is something that he’s ashamed of and that has caused him some degree of psychological trauma judging by his strong reaction, we can determine that the cause for Wheatley’s perpetual anxiousness and his subsequent actions going forward are the result of his lifelong status as someone who is meant to be considered stupid within his environment. This is what brings him anxiety, this is what makes him insecure, this is what drives his actions

This is what gives his existence meaning in the game:

Wheatley isn’t stupid at all. Valve failed miserably at writing a stupid character. But without that insecurity of appearing stupid to others, Wheatley has no motivation to drive the story along and therefore has no reason to exist.  Wheatley was never meant to be stupid in the first place. He’s always just been this clumsy, reckless, “not-so-sure-of-himself”, frantic and impulsive expositional device who was supposed to introduce you to the game before getting crushed by GLaDOS early on. His role in the story changed along with his motivations, but his character never did and I think that is why the reveal of his origins always felt so out of place to me. Wheatley is not motivated by stupidity but he is motivated by his insecurities and this constant desire to want to go against his assigned purpose and to become something else. He wants to be something that’s worthy of appreciation. It’s why he loves roleplaying so much (There is an actual voice line of his where he says exactly this: ”Dashing rogues! The both of us. Like Robin Hood or something! Role playing. Love it. Absolutely love it.“) because he gets to be something unrelated to being an “intelligence dampening sphere” and sort of live in this fantasy world where he doesn’t have to suffer a demeaning purpose all his life. Heck, he likely changed his name to Wheatley just to further distance himself from the idea of being an intelligence inhibitor. If you actually pay attention to Wheatley in the game, you can easily see this to be the case. Wheatley is not a genius, but he is far from being “the dumbest moron who ever lived” and this is honestly something that I wish more people would come to understand about his character.)) 

#((bringing this back))

[the-wheatley-core]

Bracket 4, Round A, Attack 5

Star Dream Propaganda

Wheatley Propaganda

#polls

[the-wheatley-core]

Bracket 3, Round B, Attack 4

Wheatley Propaganda

Yes Man Propaganda

#polls

[the-wheatley-core]

Bracket B round 1

Round bois

One-One propaganda

Wheatley propaganda

#polls

[the-wheatley-core]

Teach yourself the things your parents failed to teach you.

#believe in yourself! (motivational quotes)

[the-wheatley-core]

Some of my pages from the PORTAL 2 Lab Rat comic with @TKosmatka   and Andrea Wicklund from Valve- http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/

#Portal 2 #Lab Rat

[the-wheatley-core]

I helped design the Portal 2 cover a million years ago. We did hundreds of drawings and concepts all together. I found a few, these totally didn’t work, but were the kind of stabbing in the dark and reaching that goes on while designing and finding a design. 

#Portal 2 #reblog

[the-wheatley-core]

Bracket 1, Round C, Attack 1

They're the cringefail Robots of all time but they're also both the funniest about it I think.

CL4P-TP/Claptrap Propaganda

Wheatly Propaganda

#polls

[the-wheatley-core]

Semi Finals

Hatsune Miku propaganda

GLaDOS propaganda

Yes, Miku is considered a robot for this tournament, so don't complain about it like with Janet or Hal9000

[the-wheatley-core]

Semi Finals

Hatsune Miku propaganda

GLaDOS propaganda

Yes, Miku is considered a robot for this tournament, so don't complain about it like with Janet or Hal9000

[the-wheatley-core]

Semi Finals

Hatsune Miku propaganda

GLaDOS propaganda

Yes, Miku is considered a robot for this tournament, so don't complain about it like with Janet or Hal9000

[the-wheatley-core]

Semi Finals

Hatsune Miku propaganda

GLaDOS propaganda

Yes, Miku is considered a robot for this tournament, so don't complain about it like with Janet or Hal9000

#polls

[the-wheatley-core]

normalize having interests.

guys. i swear. apparently, society decided its "shameful" or "childish" to actually care about things. especially if those things bring you comfort or joy.

you shouldn't have to be ashamed about your interests as long as they don't hurt anyone. you find a certain game or topic cool? you know a lot about the lore of this show, or a bunch of facts about a certain animal?

awesome. cause i wanna know. tell me about the things you care about.

special interests, hyperfixations, or just things you love and put a lot of time into.

cause if society is gonna shame us for having interests, i'm gonna shame them right back for telling us not to.

#believe in yourself! (motivational quotes)