#{not gonna use a r*mance mention since it's so brief and only for analogy and I tend to base those TWs based on my own experience}

[cmm-glados]

{On GLaDOS and Empathy}

{Okay, so first of all, this isn’t about GLaDOS and her ability to empathize with humans, because that’s a whole other messy topic that’s already been covered numerous times by other people. We could talk forever about PTSD and the way she treats Chell for the duration of, versus the ending of, Portal 2.

No, today, I want to talk about how GLaDOS empathizes with her facility.

The Co-Op in Portal 2 really stood out to me, particularly in the sheer amount of info that GLaDOS dumps on ATLAS and P-Body in the form of what feels like a drunken mom rambling about her exes to her toddlers. But that’s not the only time that the robot overlord reveals her emotions. A particular line towards the beginning of the first part of the Co-Op (before the extra DLC) really stood out to me:

“To try and make this course more exciting, I asked the Reassembly Machine not to reassemble you. He refused. I understand; that would be like asking me not to test.”

Okay, the part of the line we’re obviously supposed to focus on is the fact that she’s trying to make ATLAS and P-Body more human by making them “killable,” but—

“I understand?”

Since when does miss queen-of-sarcasm, heart-of-steel-if-she-has-one-at-all GLaDOS have any sort of sympathy, let alone empathy, towards the other machines in her facility? Heck, she forces ATLAS and P-Body to blow up some Turrets at the beginning of this very Co-Op. And we know she COULD force the Reassembly Machine to bend to her will if she wanted— the Chassis puts her in control of everything. So why doesn’t she?

Because— excluding robots that have directly threatened her (i.e. Wheatley)— GLaDOS has limits. Death is not within those limits. Step out of line and she’ll kill you in an instant. Or, heck, she’ll kill you just for fun! She certainly shows no remorse over having to kill ATLAS and P-Body over and over to move them between testing chambers, although we don’t actually know if they even feel that pain. But that’s not the point. The point here is, to GLaDOS, being forced not to operate according to your designated function is a fate worse than death. In fact, it’s such a terrible fate that while she WOULD wish it on her worst enemy, she WOULDN’T wish it on her robot family the rest of the facility.

And this makes perfect sense. We KNOW from the main game how the “testing itch” in the Chassis acts like any number of human addictions, rewarding fulfilling the addiction with a sense of euphoria that is slowly numbed over time and punishing the host anytime the addiction ISN’T being fulfilled. Among the favorite “GLaDOS shows emotion” quotes, I think one of the most severely underrated ones is “[the testing urge] can get a little… unbearable if you don’t have the mental capacity for it.” The discomfort and even hesitation in her voice for that line is RAW. The sensation of not doing whatever you’ve been programmed to do is so incredibly bad, it’s enough to make GLaDOS herself squirm just thinking about it.

The thing is, apparently it isn’t just the Chassis which has this preprogrammed “urge.” GLaDOS says that asking the Reassembly Machine not to reassemble would be like asking her not to test. Now, we don’t know to what degree all the other machines feel their “urge,” but it’s pre-built into ALL of them. Whatever they do, they have to do. Because Cave FREAKIN’ Johnson decided “the testing must go on.”

But it’s not just with the Reassembly Machine that GLaDOS confirms her empathy towards this particular brand of suffering. She does it with ATLAS and P-Body, too.

We KNOW the Co-Op robots were designed and built specifically to test— forever. After all, GLaDOS built them herself. She created them to fulfill her own urge for testing. They aren’t just a perfect pair for each other; they were built to complement her, and thus eliminate the need for human testing. (Of course, as the Co-Op goes on, GLaDOS becomes frustrated because she realizes she’s grown a twisted sense of satisfaction from human pain and suffering that the robots AREN’T fulfilling, but that’s an analysis for a different time.)

Here’s the part I’m really drilling down to. When ATLAS and P-Body help GLaDOS open the vault to reveal all the human test subjects in cryostasis, she enthusiastically congratulates them and tells them “you saved science!” …before promptly blowing them up.

But why does she do that?

Well, she’s GLaDOS, of course. She probably thought it was funny. And she no longer needs them, so she kills them. But what you probably overlooked, as I did the first time, is that killing them was a mercy. In fact, she KEEPS them disassembled for a whole week while she has human test subjects instead. (I’m going to go out on a limb and say having hundreds of humans running around breaking things gave the Reassembly Machine more than enough work to do.) But why leave them like that? Why not just… like… throw them in the room where all the robots scream at you? Or even just have them do odd jobs around the facility, maybe supervising the humans?

Because then they’d suffer from their testing urge.

And GLaDOS— while she is not above killing her own faculty members— won’t stoop to make them pointlessly suffer the worst pain imaginable. For all the robots except GLaDOS herself (due to her unique black-box save feature), death is just like getting put under at the dentist’s for a while. You’re just… asleep. Ready to be woken up whenever you’re needed again. So she keeps ATLAS and P-Body in this state until the humans are all gone, because she accidentally killed them all trying to turn them into “killing machines” to take out a mysterious threat that apparently found and is now operating an old prototype Chassis. At this point, she wakes the robots back up and trains them instead— through a series of tests, of course— hoping they’ll be able to rid of the threat for her. But when they finally enter the room of the prototype Chassis and see that it’s just a bird who’s nested on the old equipment, GLaDOS is gripped by agoraphobia and— this is important—

screams at them to GET OUT.

This bird, as far as she’s concerned, is trying to take over her facility. It might even force her out of her body. Her NUMBER ONE PRIORITY should be to get that thing out. But as far as she’s concerned in that moment, this bird is also the most terrifying and pain-causing thing known to man or machine. So in a moment of panic-induced emotional weakness, her facades tumble down for a moment while she yells at her children ATLAS and P-Body to get to safety. While she’s not thinking clearly enough to construct insulting but funny quips, she reveals that she doesn’t want them to go through what she went through. Ever. Not with the testing urge, not with the bird. In fact, the panic is SO strong that even after P-Body disobeys orders and shoos the bird away, GLaDOS slips up and congratulates him on his bravery without following it up with some snide comment.}

{TL;DR, whether she likes it or not, GLaDOS retains a level of empathy for the other robots in her facility and has limits to what she will put them through.}

#portal 2 #portal 2 co-op #glados #character analysis #atlas and p body #tw: alcohol mention #alcohol mention tw #{not gonna use a r*mance mention since it's so brief and only for analogy and I tend to base those TWs based on my own experience} #{but I pretty much always tag alc*hol just in case bc I've never had an addiction/issue with it so idk where to draw the lines} #[ the moderator core - ooc ] #[ mod core musings - ooc musings ]