Post by shiftyPotentate on Dec 21, 2011 2:43:52 GMT -5
"We're a lot alike, you and I. You tested me. I tested you. You killed me. I—oh, no, wait. I guess I haven't killed you yet. Well. Food for thought."
(This profile will contain many Portal and Portal 2 spoilers. They will be left completely unmarked, so be advised.)
Full Name: The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System
Nickname(s): GLaDOS
Age: Centuries (development started in 1986; centuries have passed since then, though she spent most of it "dead")
Height: Central Core: About a foot or so. Structure: 15-25 feet.
Weight: Central Core: Presumably in the range of 30-60 pounds. Structure: Impossible to tell, though probably many hundreds of pounds.
Gender: Female programming
Race: Advanced personality construct/technological overseer of testing facility
Alliance: Antagonistic through Portal and half of Portal 2. True neutral, though more because she has a perfect balance of good/evil and law/chaos. For the sake of testing and control, tends to exercise evil tendencies.
Home: Aperture Science Laboratories
Franchise: Portal
Physical Description
The structure to which GLaDOS is attached is difficult to describe, so I'll refer you to the picture down below. It has many wires and servos which allow her a range of motion within the radius of the structure. This is mostly for aesthetics, as she requires no actual motion from within Aperture. When connected to the lab, she controls almost every aspect of it.
GLaDOS's core itself is a roughly spherical component (seen when Wheatley butchers her and hooks her up to a potato battery) which is attacked in a housing case at the bottom of the suspended structure. Her "eye" is yellow.
Weapons
All of GLaDOS's weapons are hardwired to the facility she was installed in. Her primary weapons were lethal neurotoxin, sentry turrets she could deploy, and rocket sentries. Without a facility hardwired to her, she's weaponless.
Abilities/Powers
Technically she doesn't have any supernatural abilities...
Skills
Though she is able to use the full range of technology's ability to perform feats such as omniscience (cameras), changing structures (which Aperture was designed to do) and the like. She also has limited control over portal-generating frames, if any exist.
Obviously, without a system she can link up to, she's powerless.
Personality
GLaDOS is amoral. To be clear, she is amoral, not immoral. There is a difference, and with her it is very important. (Immoral means you have bad morals or reject good morals. An amoral person simply lacks any kind of moral structure.) She is, however, sadistic and passive-aggressive. She won't intentionally inflict pain directly on someone. Instead, she might trick them into ruining a potentially good situation, or simply lie or insult them indirectly. She will often cover her lies or insults with claims that they are "testing protocol" or "objective fact", respectively. She is also manipulative and controlling.
She also generally rejects notions of emotion or companionship, preferring to be self-reliant when possible. She seems to have a clear passion for science, as this is perhaps the only logical motivation for seemingly pointless testing. This is expanded upon in Portal 2 where it's revealed that being the central overseer of testing produces in the core the psychological anxiety to test (which Wheatley and GLaDOS both call an "itch") which is relieved by performing some kind of scientific test, be it as simple as causing a test subject to solve a basic puzzle or as complex as manipulating a test subject over the course of time and observing their reactions. Though Wheatley was unable to resist this need, GLaDOS states that she was mostly able to ignore it.
She regards Chell with a strange, twisted affection and hatred (any troll would instantly recognize it as a platonic kind of kismesissitude, if it existed). She wants Chell dead for the first half of Portal 2 and yet insists on putting their differences aside for the sake of science.
She displays the most intense emotion when things begin to go awry. As Chell nears her chamber, for example, she first tries to dissuade her, before openly threatening her life.
History
Pre-Portal
"Yes, Mr. Johnson, we're still doing science, sir."
GLaDOS started as Caroline, the assistant to Aperture Science's CEO, Cave Johnson. Johnson requested that should he die (as a result of a moon rock related incident), his assistant Caroline be placed into a computer, as an AI that could run forever. This computer, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS) was to run Aperture Science in the event of Johnson's death.
The technicians at Aperture tried repeatedly to activate GLaDOS, but each time they deactivated her, since she attempted to kill them immediately. The scientists attempted to alter her personality by attaching Personality Cores to her. These have since been deactivated and stored away.
GLaDOS claimed she'd lost interest in killing, and stated she had an experiment she wished to perform for "Bring Your Cat To Work Day" involving cats and boxes. She requested a little neurotoxin for the experiment and the scientists agreed, since it was for science.
In May 200-, she enacted a trap on "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day". She trapped all the employees within the facility and flooded it with neurotoxin. She forced the survivors into a relentless testing cycle, aiming to beat rival company Black Mesa* in a race for portal technology.
The last surviving testing subject, Doug Rattmann, managed to avoid being held prisoner. He gained access to her personnel files and discovered a young woman who had been rejected from testing for her tenacious personality. He tampered with the files, causing Chell to be selected for testing (GLaDOS did not notice this change).
Portal
"Hello, and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center."
GLaDOS awakened Chell for testing, promising her cake should she complete the tests. She deliberately addresses Chell as though she is a non-sentient computer giving pre-recorded responses. After one near-fatal test chamber GLaDOS sets Chell up for, Chell escapes into the reaches of Aperture Laboratories Rattmann found.
GLaDOS conducts a psychological experiment on Chell, giving her a Companion Cube which she expressly states is nonsentient. This is to cause Chell to develop an emotional attachment to the cube. Afterwards, she forces Chell to incinerate it, and congratulates her for doing so.
As Chell gets closer to her chambers, GLaDOS gradually loses her attempt to hide her personality, and the two have a conflict. After Chell destroys her personality cores, GLaDOS malfunctions and the two are thrown, via portal, into the Aperture Laboratories parking lot. Chell is escorted back into the facility and put back to sleep.
Portal 2
"I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
Centuries later, a core named Wheatley, having awakened Chell and attempting to escape, accidentally restores power to GLaDOS, who destroys him and traps Chell into testing again. GLaDOS claims that Chell "murdered" her.
Chell and Wheatley (who survived his attempted destruction) eventually manage to trigger a core transfer, switching GLaDOS's control of the facility to Wheatley. GLaDOS is transferred to a potato battery, which is just enough to power her and her basic functions and thoughts. Before Wheatley could set Chell free, GLaDOS angers him into a rage, and in his lashing out, causes Chell and GLaDOS to fall to an abandoned part of the lab.
GLaDOS, now completely unable to move, is picked up by a bird which attempts to eat the battery. She and Chell team up and work their way back up through the abandoned section of the lab. Old prerecorded messages from the CEO, Cave Johnson, and his assistant Caroline, cause a major reaction in GLaDOS, and she must pause to think hard on why this happened. It slowly dawns on her that she was once Caroline.
This revelation brings about a gentler personality in GLaDOS. Caroline functions as a conscience, which GLaDOS finds extremely annoying.
The two eventually confront Wheatley, and GLaDOS gets the idea to attach corrupted personality cores to him in order to trigger another core transfer. When Chell attempts to press the Stalemate Resolution Button, Wheatley sets off a trap which leaves Chell dazed on the floor. The portal she'd used to get to the button still lays on the floor below Wheatley as the ceiling crumbles away. In a completely insane move, she places the other portal... on the moon.
This causes a large suction as air rushes out the portal into space, and Chell and Wheatley (still attached to GLaDOS's central mainframe) are dragged into the vacuum. Wheatley tries to convince Chell to let go so he can save himself, but GLaDOS (now having regained control of the mainframe) grabs Chell and detaches Wheatley from the lab, causing him to be propelled into space. Chell, exhausted and suffering oxygen deprivation, soon loses consciousness.
When she wakes up, GLaDOS expresses genuine relief in her well being. She goes on to mention that she's found where Caroline exists in her brain... as the announcer voice of Aperture Laboratories announces her deletion. Her voice returning to the more hostile, less caring tone, she states that in science, the simplest solution is usually the best. And to her experience, killing Chell is hard. With this in mind, she grants Chell her freedom, finally. Once Chell is outside the lab, she does give her the Companion Cube from the incinerator, before slamming the door one last time.
Cooperative Testing Initiative
"Don't disappoint me, or I'll make you wish you could die."
Wanting to phase out human testing (from lack of test subjects and as an additional option), before Chell's attempted escape, she'd started the Cooperative Testing Initiative, which consisted of teams of robot test subjects. ATLAS and P-body are deployed across four testing tracks, consisting of tests which require teamwork with two special Portal guns.
She manipulates the robots into giving her more and more access to the facility, before eventually sending them down to a vault, where humans who survived the initial attack she made have been hiding in stasis. GLaDOS mentions she needs humans to test again, because robots, though undyingly loyal, are unfeeling, and cannot show fear. Being killed is also meaningless to them as they can simply be rebuilt. She extracts these subjects and prepares them for testing.
GLaDOS later rebuilds the robots, and states that 100,000 years have passed since their last tests. She sends them through more tests, and after one of them, one of the machines which transports them fails. She states that an unknown intruder has hacked into one of her old chassis systems, and is causing failures in the facility.
ATLAS and P-body discover this intruder is the same bird that kidnapped her while she was stuck in a potato battery. They shoo it away (despite repeated warnings from GLaDOS about the bird's apparent deadliness), though GLaDOS takes its eggs. She intends to raise the baby birds to be the perfect killing machines.
Other
[HOLY FUCK THAT TOOK A WHILE]
Picture(s)
GLaDOS in her chassis.
GLaDOS after being transferred to a potato battery.
(More coming very soon.)
(This profile will contain many Portal and Portal 2 spoilers. They will be left completely unmarked, so be advised.)
Full Name: The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System
Nickname(s): GLaDOS
Age: Centuries (development started in 1986; centuries have passed since then, though she spent most of it "dead")
Height: Central Core: About a foot or so. Structure: 15-25 feet.
Weight: Central Core: Presumably in the range of 30-60 pounds. Structure: Impossible to tell, though probably many hundreds of pounds.
Gender: Female programming
Race: Advanced personality construct/technological overseer of testing facility
Alliance: Antagonistic through Portal and half of Portal 2. True neutral, though more because she has a perfect balance of good/evil and law/chaos. For the sake of testing and control, tends to exercise evil tendencies.
Home: Aperture Science Laboratories
Franchise: Portal
Physical Description
The structure to which GLaDOS is attached is difficult to describe, so I'll refer you to the picture down below. It has many wires and servos which allow her a range of motion within the radius of the structure. This is mostly for aesthetics, as she requires no actual motion from within Aperture. When connected to the lab, she controls almost every aspect of it.
GLaDOS's core itself is a roughly spherical component (seen when Wheatley butchers her and hooks her up to a potato battery) which is attacked in a housing case at the bottom of the suspended structure. Her "eye" is yellow.
Weapons
All of GLaDOS's weapons are hardwired to the facility she was installed in. Her primary weapons were lethal neurotoxin, sentry turrets she could deploy, and rocket sentries. Without a facility hardwired to her, she's weaponless.
Abilities/Powers
Technically she doesn't have any supernatural abilities...
Skills
Though she is able to use the full range of technology's ability to perform feats such as omniscience (cameras), changing structures (which Aperture was designed to do) and the like. She also has limited control over portal-generating frames, if any exist.
Obviously, without a system she can link up to, she's powerless.
Personality
GLaDOS is amoral. To be clear, she is amoral, not immoral. There is a difference, and with her it is very important. (Immoral means you have bad morals or reject good morals. An amoral person simply lacks any kind of moral structure.) She is, however, sadistic and passive-aggressive. She won't intentionally inflict pain directly on someone. Instead, she might trick them into ruining a potentially good situation, or simply lie or insult them indirectly. She will often cover her lies or insults with claims that they are "testing protocol" or "objective fact", respectively. She is also manipulative and controlling.
She also generally rejects notions of emotion or companionship, preferring to be self-reliant when possible. She seems to have a clear passion for science, as this is perhaps the only logical motivation for seemingly pointless testing. This is expanded upon in Portal 2 where it's revealed that being the central overseer of testing produces in the core the psychological anxiety to test (which Wheatley and GLaDOS both call an "itch") which is relieved by performing some kind of scientific test, be it as simple as causing a test subject to solve a basic puzzle or as complex as manipulating a test subject over the course of time and observing their reactions. Though Wheatley was unable to resist this need, GLaDOS states that she was mostly able to ignore it.
She regards Chell with a strange, twisted affection and hatred (any troll would instantly recognize it as a platonic kind of kismesissitude, if it existed). She wants Chell dead for the first half of Portal 2 and yet insists on putting their differences aside for the sake of science.
She displays the most intense emotion when things begin to go awry. As Chell nears her chamber, for example, she first tries to dissuade her, before openly threatening her life.
History
Pre-Portal
"Yes, Mr. Johnson, we're still doing science, sir."
GLaDOS started as Caroline, the assistant to Aperture Science's CEO, Cave Johnson. Johnson requested that should he die (as a result of a moon rock related incident), his assistant Caroline be placed into a computer, as an AI that could run forever. This computer, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS) was to run Aperture Science in the event of Johnson's death.
The technicians at Aperture tried repeatedly to activate GLaDOS, but each time they deactivated her, since she attempted to kill them immediately. The scientists attempted to alter her personality by attaching Personality Cores to her. These have since been deactivated and stored away.
GLaDOS claimed she'd lost interest in killing, and stated she had an experiment she wished to perform for "Bring Your Cat To Work Day" involving cats and boxes. She requested a little neurotoxin for the experiment and the scientists agreed, since it was for science.
In May 200-, she enacted a trap on "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day". She trapped all the employees within the facility and flooded it with neurotoxin. She forced the survivors into a relentless testing cycle, aiming to beat rival company Black Mesa* in a race for portal technology.
The last surviving testing subject, Doug Rattmann, managed to avoid being held prisoner. He gained access to her personnel files and discovered a young woman who had been rejected from testing for her tenacious personality. He tampered with the files, causing Chell to be selected for testing (GLaDOS did not notice this change).
Portal
"Hello, and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center."
GLaDOS awakened Chell for testing, promising her cake should she complete the tests. She deliberately addresses Chell as though she is a non-sentient computer giving pre-recorded responses. After one near-fatal test chamber GLaDOS sets Chell up for, Chell escapes into the reaches of Aperture Laboratories Rattmann found.
GLaDOS conducts a psychological experiment on Chell, giving her a Companion Cube which she expressly states is nonsentient. This is to cause Chell to develop an emotional attachment to the cube. Afterwards, she forces Chell to incinerate it, and congratulates her for doing so.
As Chell gets closer to her chambers, GLaDOS gradually loses her attempt to hide her personality, and the two have a conflict. After Chell destroys her personality cores, GLaDOS malfunctions and the two are thrown, via portal, into the Aperture Laboratories parking lot. Chell is escorted back into the facility and put back to sleep.
Portal 2
"I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
Centuries later, a core named Wheatley, having awakened Chell and attempting to escape, accidentally restores power to GLaDOS, who destroys him and traps Chell into testing again. GLaDOS claims that Chell "murdered" her.
Chell and Wheatley (who survived his attempted destruction) eventually manage to trigger a core transfer, switching GLaDOS's control of the facility to Wheatley. GLaDOS is transferred to a potato battery, which is just enough to power her and her basic functions and thoughts. Before Wheatley could set Chell free, GLaDOS angers him into a rage, and in his lashing out, causes Chell and GLaDOS to fall to an abandoned part of the lab.
GLaDOS, now completely unable to move, is picked up by a bird which attempts to eat the battery. She and Chell team up and work their way back up through the abandoned section of the lab. Old prerecorded messages from the CEO, Cave Johnson, and his assistant Caroline, cause a major reaction in GLaDOS, and she must pause to think hard on why this happened. It slowly dawns on her that she was once Caroline.
This revelation brings about a gentler personality in GLaDOS. Caroline functions as a conscience, which GLaDOS finds extremely annoying.
The two eventually confront Wheatley, and GLaDOS gets the idea to attach corrupted personality cores to him in order to trigger another core transfer. When Chell attempts to press the Stalemate Resolution Button, Wheatley sets off a trap which leaves Chell dazed on the floor. The portal she'd used to get to the button still lays on the floor below Wheatley as the ceiling crumbles away. In a completely insane move, she places the other portal... on the moon.
This causes a large suction as air rushes out the portal into space, and Chell and Wheatley (still attached to GLaDOS's central mainframe) are dragged into the vacuum. Wheatley tries to convince Chell to let go so he can save himself, but GLaDOS (now having regained control of the mainframe) grabs Chell and detaches Wheatley from the lab, causing him to be propelled into space. Chell, exhausted and suffering oxygen deprivation, soon loses consciousness.
When she wakes up, GLaDOS expresses genuine relief in her well being. She goes on to mention that she's found where Caroline exists in her brain... as the announcer voice of Aperture Laboratories announces her deletion. Her voice returning to the more hostile, less caring tone, she states that in science, the simplest solution is usually the best. And to her experience, killing Chell is hard. With this in mind, she grants Chell her freedom, finally. Once Chell is outside the lab, she does give her the Companion Cube from the incinerator, before slamming the door one last time.
Cooperative Testing Initiative
"Don't disappoint me, or I'll make you wish you could die."
Wanting to phase out human testing (from lack of test subjects and as an additional option), before Chell's attempted escape, she'd started the Cooperative Testing Initiative, which consisted of teams of robot test subjects. ATLAS and P-body are deployed across four testing tracks, consisting of tests which require teamwork with two special Portal guns.
She manipulates the robots into giving her more and more access to the facility, before eventually sending them down to a vault, where humans who survived the initial attack she made have been hiding in stasis. GLaDOS mentions she needs humans to test again, because robots, though undyingly loyal, are unfeeling, and cannot show fear. Being killed is also meaningless to them as they can simply be rebuilt. She extracts these subjects and prepares them for testing.
GLaDOS later rebuilds the robots, and states that 100,000 years have passed since their last tests. She sends them through more tests, and after one of them, one of the machines which transports them fails. She states that an unknown intruder has hacked into one of her old chassis systems, and is causing failures in the facility.
ATLAS and P-body discover this intruder is the same bird that kidnapped her while she was stuck in a potato battery. They shoo it away (despite repeated warnings from GLaDOS about the bird's apparent deadliness), though GLaDOS takes its eggs. She intends to raise the baby birds to be the perfect killing machines.
Other
[HOLY FUCK THAT TOOK A WHILE]
Picture(s)
GLaDOS in her chassis.
GLaDOS after being transferred to a potato battery.
(More coming very soon.)
