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tracfone · 2 years

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The “glados/caroline is chell’s mom” theory sucks and the math does not add up, and let me tell you why:

(Preface: this is going to cover a LOT of spoilers from both games. I would advise turning back unless you’ve finished portal 2)

To start off—i do not believe that test subjects age in stasis. If chell was a child during the specific bring your daughter to work day event (which i do not think so, but I’ll elaborate later), i do not know how she would have the mental faculties to handle the events of either game without freaking out, as she would have aged from a child to an adult in the time she was in stasis, with no time for her to develop mentally. Also, the time between the first and second games is unknown, though it’s definitely….a while, more than just a few months. Had stasis not preserved her, she would either look significantly older or be like, a literal pile of bones. But no, she remains largely unchanged, save for the fact she looks much less haggard and more refreshed:

According to the portal wiki, the time between GLaDOS’s activation/takeover and the events of portal is 12 years; the year this event took place would have been in 1998:

You could also say like, “oh but but her dad could have brought his adult daughter to work!!” but this does not make sense, as…well, just look at this penmanship. You would have to assume chell has horrible handwriting, but this clearly looks like the writing of an elementary schooler:

…but. I also do believe that THE bring your daughter to work day event and the one chell attended as a child were two separate events—likely taking place in two separate DECADES. I don’t know how long it takes to fully extract someone’s brain into a personality core, but it was probably not instantaneous, so I think it’s safe to assume caroline is already dead, and could not have brought her; cave johnson is most definitely dead and his brain is in a robot. Chell refers to her father and cave as two separate people, in any case

EDIT: actually i looked at this image more clearly, and the fact that chell refers to cave at all as someone she's interacted with means that the event she attended must be in the 80's or earlier!!!

(Side note: there is a line in portal where glados mentions that “the aperture science bring your daughter to work day is the perfect time to have her tested”, which you may think is evidence for the theory, and, admittedly, does raise some questions about how cryosleep works in this universe, but for reasons I’ve already stated, I don’t think this means they are putting kids into stasis so they can test as adults, though they may be introduced to the concept at the time and encouraged to apply once they’re old enough. This could also potentially refer to getting “tested” to be uploaded into a robot body)

Here, glados mom truthers, i will throw you a bone for once—savor it, because I’m not done, but according to a reddit AMA thread circa ~2015, ellen mclain admits she thinks the theory is interesting:

…HOWEVER!!

I am going to take that bone back now. In a 2011 panel, when asked if glados really deleted caroline or not, she says (this is me paraphrasing but you can view the whole thing), “…there’s what ellen mclain thinks, and then theres what erik wolpaw thinks. You’ll have to ask him…”. She’s basically saying not to take what she says as hard canon, because what the director says ultimately is what matters. Also in the thread specifically she could have been acting cheeky—see how she refers to herself as….well, herself, and not as glados. She could mean either, i guess, but it really sounds like “chell is my (ellen mclain’s) daughter ;)”. I dont know! It ultimately doesn’t matter, either way. This is me just going off the tone of her other answers

In any case. Back to the main point of the post. At the end of portal 2, glados gives a very bittersweet speech. She tells chell she realized that she was all along her best friend. This….is not something a mother says to her child, unless you happen to be a very suffocating parent who maybe possibly parentifies their child. I know what you might be thinking, and like, I don’t mean to kick dirt all over your experience if your takeaway from this series was “escaping an abusive parent”; i can see why you interpret it this way. Tonally, though, this goodbye speech does not fit a farewell speech from a parent, in my opinion!!! The portal series also is very “show and not tell”—you kind of have to figure out through clues from cave johnson’s recordings what is happening to the employees, and how glados came to be; you aren’t explicitly told it, until glados says that “being caroline taught (her) a valuable lesson”. The story unfolds with a lot of environmental clues, and that’s part of what makes it so engaging, figuring out what’s going on by yourself, by assembling this puzzle in the debris of an abandoned facility. That said though, the single player ending would have been a great time to elaborate on the parent plot IF it were actually a parent plot. At the end of the first game, glados tells you what she did to all the scientists, finally giving you an answer to why the facility is so empty, aside from you and her—portal 2 could have taken the chance to make her say something like, “being caroline taught me a valuable lesson: i remembered who i am, and who you are, my child…I’m so sorry i put you through all this” or [insert whatever tooth-rottingly sweet line you want here]. But they didn’t!

(Side note I think “cara mia addio” is completely unreliable evidence no matter which side of this you’re on, due to the double meaning of the word “bambina” and the fact it is, allegedly, an improvised song. I will not be using it to prove anything, though, i do think we can assume the tone to be of a romantic fondness, if you match it up with the vein “want you gone” was written in)

EDIT 9/7/22: OKAY I JUST GOT THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN ON CARA MIA (thank you so so much @ossyflawol on Twitter for letting me use this excerpt). This is from the portal 2 official guide, the collector's edition. Take a look!:

This post is becoming long and so as not to risk this entire textwall becoming completely incoherent, I’ll cut to my final point: chell was already an adult by the time she was put into stasis

In lab rat, we see a photograph of chell in her profile. It doesn’t really look any different from how she looks in every single other drawing in the comic:

I’m going to go as far as to say that chell was employed at aperture before the takeover. During her boss battle in the first game, glados has this to say:

…this would seem to imply that chell was a part-timer or an intern pre-stasis. Glados lies a lot but I’m choosing to take what she’s saying here to heart

Remember when i said “cara mia addio” doesn’t hold much water, and can’t be used as reliable evidence for anything? Well now I’m the one who lied, because i need to bring it up again. This song is like, the holy grail to those who stand by the mom theory—they say glados is sending her child “away from science” and saving her on the bring your daughter to work day incident. But—please stay with me here, this is where it all falls apart—there is no conceivable way that chell was a “little girl” in 1998, we know FOR SURE she was an adult. To illustrate, let’s see what our old pal cave johnson has to say about this:

During the 1980’s aperture had completely phased out of using people they grabbed off the street (and offering them $60) for testing, and have switched over to solely using their employees. He also says directly after that they plan to discontinue human testing altogether—this evidently did not happen, as there are ten thousand humans in stasis ready for testing. At least, there’s not really any evidence to the contrary: whether glados put all the employees in stasis, or caroline did when she was still human, or whether it happened before cave’s death is ultimately irrelevant, though i doubt it was glados as her current form, because she killed off the remaining staff sans rattmann

EDIT 9/21/22: it is with a heavy heart that, after receiving some more timeline resources, that i am unfortunately going to write off the science project entirely. but this is okay. while the words on the project itself do imply that the time chell met cave johnson would have had to be before the 1990's (and i still think it should be interpreted that way, canon or no), the combine-overwatch portal/half-life wiki has this to say about the bring your daughter to work day incident:

"The untested AI of GLaDOS is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day. Upon being activated, she almost instantly becomes self-aware, takes control of the Enrichment Center, locks everyone inside, and floods the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, but is halted when she is quickly fitted with a Morality Core. She then begins a permanent cycle of testing, aimed at beating Black Mesa in the race to develop functioning portal technology."

...so it was the first, as well as the last one. taking place in may of 200x (1998 was apparently retconned at some point, according to aperturescience.com). the entire timeline of these games is a horrible trainwreck, to be perfectly honest, so you can take this or leave this, but still, i wouldn't be swayed by allegations of chell being a child during this time. the forced testing initiative also began in 200x. not enough time could have elapsed for this project to have been made around the same time. it's impossible. this image of chell's science project is nothing more than a non-canon easter egg; it doesn't fit anywhere. therefore the point still stands, but i just thought i would be transparent about it if i know something. this entire post is kind of a living document at this point haha

In conclusion: CHELL WAS AN ADULT EMPLOYEE AT APERTURE LABORATORIES BY THE TIME OF THE BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO WORK DAY INCIDENT. Caroline did not bring her to work that day, these two are completely unrelated

You might be crinkling your nose right now and thinking “buh buh buh but roryyy you only think this way because you’re a chelldos shipper!!!” and like, you’re right to an extent, but i also firmly believe that were the narrative a familial one, it would change the meaning of the work drastically; portal is about two women who face workplace abuse and inevitably end up working together to combat it. It’s about the horrors of capitalism and the lack of ethics in the scientific field; it’s about an intelligent woman forced into a computer and suppressed so hard because people don’t want to give her any power or autonomy, to the point that she’s become a completely different person. And, of course…it’s a sweet, sad story of a robot who, no matter if you interpret the nature of these feelings as romantic or not, becomes attached to a test subject and it’s incredibly painful, emotionally, and she can’t deal with it; her test subject is both her killer and, if you think about it, also her savior. Putting glados in the role of chell’s mom feels like it slims down her character development significantly. It’s not sweet, I don’t have “chills bro literal chills”, it doesn’t move me or make me want to cry, it does absolutely nothing for me! The self-discovery, the mutual trust built between her and chell in a crisis situation, it morphs into something completely different if this narrative turns into “ohhh she softens up because she learns she’s a mother uwuwuwuwuwuuuuuu happy famiwy teehee!!!” I am going to VOMIT

I should say that i don't care whether you ship them together or not. I just think this theory is ridiculous and wanted to point out how full of glaring holes it is. A lot of people like to parrot this theory as ABSOLUTE TRUTH when nothing has been confirmed on th matter, and with developer commentary that directly contradicts it (have you heard the good word of Johnathan Coulton?), it's hard to present it as such. Glados loves and cares about chell--this much is absolutely true, even if the reverse isn't canon, and there is no hard evidence to suggest any of the named characters are related by blood or by legal ties

Anyways, if you read all this: thank you. Here’s some supplemental reading you may or may not have already read that features points i purposefully didn’t touch on, because i wanted to focus on things that have been said less on this topic

#portal #portal 2 #portal 2 spoilers/#glados #chell #chelldos #abuse mention /#genuinely sorry to those whom i have textwalled before about this i think i got it all out of my system now #this theory makes me so angry and i had to go to bat here

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jtl-fics · 10 months

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i just want you to know that I've started watching The Fantastic Race (I'd never heard of it before) and i too cannot stop imagining Andreil in it.. but also a Foxes/Exy only edition.

like, one is Foxes only, 10 teams, either with some of the freshmen, or while Seth is still alive/in an AU where he survives.

one is Andreil against other Americans where they dominate everything

and one is Andreil, Kevin/jeremy, riko/jean, and some other teams from other American Exy teams

i will eat this thing upppp!! please write it, i beg of you lmao

I do love me some Amazing Race. I think I could give you a Miracle Year of Collegiate Exy version of the Amazing Race.

I think maybe after their initial run through and victory Neil and Andrew are like absolute fan favorites and even though Neil, Andrew, nor the show ever say it there is a general belief that Neil and Andrew got together BECAUSE of the show. Any follow-up publicity on it has Neil and Andrew just staring at the camera like "Are u for fucking real?"

The thing with these shows is that fan favorites get asked to go back ALL the time and Neil gets a lot of very lucrative sponsorships that make the Moriyamas VERY happy after it.

They offer the same deal, a cut on the % that they will take from earnings and this time it's just for competing and this time it's a deal given to. They want the Miracle Generation of the Foxes to come and if every one does then Ichirou will lower Neil, Jean, and Kevin's %s owed to 50% (Maybe the deals are that good, maybe Ichirou is a big fan of the show, maybe he has a finger in it's production. This is mostly just like rationale on why the fuck they'd all do this. Especially Neil and Andrew since like Andrew had a bad time on those planes).

Either way not a single Fox disagrees. Arrangements are made for everyone's kids / pets. Shit is talked.

The Miracle Generation Race is ON.

The Teams are As Follows:

(Fox) Neil Josten & Andrew Minyard (Orange) (Dating)

(Fox) Kevin Day & David Wymack (Green) (Father-Son)

(Fox) Dan Wilds-Boyd & Matt Wilds-Boyd (Yellow) (Married)

(Fox) Allison Reynolds & Renee Johnson (Pink) (BFFs)

(Fox) Aaron Minyard & Katelyn Minyard (Blue) (Engaged)

(Fox) Nicky Klose & Erik Klose (Purple) (Married)

(Trojan) Jean Moreau & Jeremy Knox (Red) (Dating)

(Raven) Johnson & Reacher (Black) (Friends)

(Trojan) Alvarez & Laila (White) (Dating)

(Raven) Thea Muldani & Jenkins (Teal) (Friends)

(Penn) Penn State Coach & Penn State Captain (Grey) (Friends? IDK I ran out of people to be honest and thought well maybe we just have some throwaway team to lose first)

One of the funnier things I could do with that is that this Miracle season is also fan favorite season too and they want the cast to come back but no one can be with their same partner again. So you get shit like Neil and Jean, Jeremy and Andrew, Allison and Kevin, Renee and Aaron, Wymack and Nicky, etc.

#Neil and Andrew are like 'yeah we're not trying that hard'#but then Aaron and Katelyn pass them at a Detour and it's like 'Oh fuck that running.' and proceed to have the MOST insane rivalry #Neil and Andrew actually trying because they just can't tolerate any of their friends / family beating them #Like it was FINE last season they just had to do pretty well and Ichirou would be fine with it #This season? It's fucking PERSONAL.#Catch Allison nailing any and all of those fashion related ones #Renee always is a hit with the locals and can get anywhere easily #Matt just has the MUSCLE to be able to just force through the challenges #Dan's unyielding spirit pushes them past their most difficult challenges #Nicky and Erik flat out just have the benefit of being EU citizens #Aaron and Katelyn have a thirst for blood because they have medical school debt to pay off #Honestly the foxes have already decided that they get the reward money but they're not TELLING THEM THAT #The Ravens are the race heels #Like full on fuck those guys #Is the energy everyone has #At one point Allison just flat out pays one of their taxis to go to the wrong place #Thea keeps trying to talk to Kevin and everyone keeps getting in the way of that #They broke up like a year beforehand and it's AWKWARD (tm) but Kevin is doing so much better now #All for the Race (A Season of Miracles) AU #AFTG #AFTG AU #The Palmetto State Foxes

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