//...application._

[outofbeta]

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Haley
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: 616
IM: AIM; telepathing
PLURK: deliciousness
E-MAIL: ozymandisauce (at) gmail.com
RETURNING: 3! Charles Xavier, Nepeta Leijon & Lorna Dane

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: GLaDOS | Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System
SERIES: Portal & Portal 2 (Video Games)
CHRONOLOGY: End of Portal 2.
CLASS: Villain

BACKGROUND:
⚛

GLaDOS comes from the world of the Portal video games, which are in our own world. The games, and thus, her background, take place entirely in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center -- a product testing facility and underground construct, in a salt mine in Michigan, of the Aperture Science research company. In the games, your objective as a playable character is to complete the tests given to you in this Enrichment Center with the use of a portal gun -- one of the final inventions of the Aperture Science company before its collapse. The portal gun allows you to create inter-dimensional "portals" through which you can travel. For example, you would shoot one at the floor, then one across the room -- drop through the one on the floor, and come out the other side of the room. While you are going through these testing chambers with your portal gun and solving these riddles (and at the same time 'testing' the Aperture Science inventions and equipment), you're guided by an artificial intelligence lifeform called GLaDOS. She is an AI, whose sole responsibility is to run the tests and the Enrichment Center now that Aperture Science's founder, Cave Johnson, has long passed away. GLaDOS is a sentient and malicious AI with complete control over the entire Enrichment Center building, who oversees your progress through the tests and essentially "creates" the tests for you to solve as you go along.

In Portal 2, we learn quite a bit more about the background of GLaDOS and the Aperture Science research company. Originally founded by Cave Johnson in the 1940s as Aperture Fixtures, the company made shower curtains for the U.S. Military. Their direction changed, however, in the later 40's, when they changed their name to Aperture Science Innovators (to make their shower curtains sound more innovative); eventually, they began to shift to the study of real science. Cave Johnson then purchased the large salt mine that would become the underground location for the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. During Chapter 4 of Portal 2, after a hostile take-over that ends with GLaDOS being placed into a potato battery and becoming our helpful little potato companion, we find ourselves tossed to the very bottom of the 3-mile deep salt mine/Enrichment Center building, where we meet Cave Johnson in prerecorded messages that play while we explore through the condemned and dated sections of the building, learning about its history as we go along. We begin in the 1950s, when Aperture Science Innovators was using Olympic athletes and U.S. Military personnel and astronauts to test out their programs and products in the Enrichment Center. Products such as the in-development portal gun, as well as three 'gels' for use in the testing chambers: one blue, one orange, and one white; each creating a different effect on the surrounding areas that they coated. It quickly became clear that these tests were hazardous to health, and Aperture Science shifted their testing focus to a new group.

In the 1970s, they instead solicited paid volunteers (for a whopping $60!) for their testing programs; we see this as we make our way through the underground of the Enrichment Center in-game. Cave Johnson slowly becomes more and more ill, and his assistant, Caroline, begins to make a few more vocal appearances beside him during his prerecorded messages. Soon, it becomes clear that Cave Johnson has fallen ill due to mercury poisoning from the lunar rocks used to create the white gel used in testing. He is increasingly sickly as we make our way to the 1980s and the 1990s, where the Aperture Science company has now found themselves using mandatory testing on all of their employees. It is around this time that we learn that Cave Johnson has a final wish for his own genetic intelligence to be imported into a computer -- GLaDOS -- so that he may live on in the event of his death. He adds an addendum that if that is not possible, he wishes for his assistant Caroline to be the one whose genetic material and consciousness is preserved to run the facility. It soon becomes obvious that GLaDOS (who is still travelling with you, and also a potato battery, surprise!) is harboring the consciousness of Caroline -- much to her shock and surprise.

It is in 1998 that GLaDOS is brought online after years in development, during the very first Aperture Science "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day"; where she becomes immediately homicidal and douses the entire center in neurotoxin, killing all of its occupants save for one. In the years of GLaDOS' development, she was brought online and offline several times due to her violent nature. She was affixed with several different "personality cores" over the years, meant to keep her detrimental and homicidal tendencies in check. However, they did not work, and gameplay takes place after the Enrichment Center has been abandoned following her destruction caused by the mass-murder of every remaining scientist with deadly neurotoxin. Without any remaining test subjects save for you, that is where you come in as the playable character for the duration of the Portal games; performing tests to entertain her, and ultimately finding her chamber and "killing" her -- only to have her reawakened for the events of Portal 2. I am pulling GLaDOS from the very end of Portal 2, wherein she has regained control of her "body" from a hostile takeover performed by Wheatley and rather than continuing to attempt to kill you, she instead -- finally -- just lets you go. As she says herself in the song during the ending credits before she finally frees you from the center:

You want your freedom? Take it. That's what I'm counting on. I used to want you dead, but now I only want you gone.

PERSONALITY:
⚛

GLaDOS is a malicious artificial intelligence who is made up of personality cores. She has one central personality core -- based upon the consciousness of Caroline, Cave Johnson's assistant -- and several cores that have been added onto her in her history, to either dampen or hamper her intelligence, her logical problem-solving skills, or her homicidal tendencies. Over the course of the games we are able to remove some of the cores from her "body" and view first-hand the changes that it makes to her personality. However, her primary personality core remains the same for the duration of both games. Being an AI, GLaDOS is a highly intelligent computer with incredible logical skills and very little moral standing. She uses neurotoxin to kill scientists, children and cats freely, by activating the varying deliverance tubes located throughout the center. She has the aspects of her personality that are brought on by the added personality cores (for example, the morality core, the space core, the anger core, and even the cake baking core), but I will be focusing on her overall personality that shines through even with the removal of most or all of her added personality cores.

Throughout gameplay, GLaDOS "assists" you in completing your tests in the Enrichment Center. By "assist", I mean, she politely verbally abuses you on your way through the center. She makes sarcastic remarks and is overall a very cynical character, with a massive ego and an even larger complex of complete narcissism. At several points during the game, it is even made apparent that she's fallen in love with you. She's often facetious, two-faced, and derives joy from teasing you and otherwise promising things to you that are complete lies. For example, GLaDOS spends the entirety of the first game informing you that there will be cake at the end of your journey through the tests. That cake? It does not exist. Really, she just meant to kill you the entire time. Too bad. Her general demeanor throughout the game is one of loathing for you in a way that is somewhat flippant. GLaDOS will continually make fun of your weight as the protagonist (until Wheatley does it, then Wheatley is just a moron and you're not fat at all!), often poking fun at you for it or insulting you for having no parents. There are three themes to GLaDOS' insults: you were adopted, you're fat, and you're a horrible person for trying to kill her (even though she tried to kill you first, what a hypocrite)! She will take jabs at your intelligence as well, but not to the same degree as your weight and your lack of parents. During the course of Portal 2, you are assisted by a character named Wheatley; a personality core designed to hamper GLaDOS' intelligence by generally "being a moron" and not being able to solve tests or make logical decisions on his own.

When Wheatley comes into control and "steals" GLaDOS' "body", thus operating the Enrichment Center, GLaDOS becomes your temporary companion and almost all of her insults are then fired at Wheatley instead. There is a point in the game where Wheatley is attempting to use "GLaDOS' motivational techniques" (gee there are a lot of quotes going on up in this personality section) to force you to test faster. He tries to insult your lack of parents ( "Fatty fatty no parents!") and GLaDOS immediately asks him, "What's wrong with not having parents?" to which he has no real response. Then, under her breath, GLaDOS-the-currently-a-potato-battery informs you, "For the record, having no parents is horrible and you're horrible for it but bear with me here". GLaDOS continues in this manner throughout the rest of Portal 2's gameplay until ultimately she helps you liberate Wheatley from her "body" and ultimately defeat him, placing her back into her body. It is assumed that she is just going to kill you too, but we find that she has a change of heart. After all, she has been in a love/hate relationship with you for the duration of the game.

This is where it should be noted that GLaDOS is not all, entirely evil. Whether it is due to the humanity that re-discovering Caroline's consciousness brings her, or because she is just honestly exhausted with you, we find at the end of the game that she gives you up. After all, it is much too difficult to kill you, and she'd prefer to do things the easy way. GLaDOS is exhausted of her adventures and realizes at the end of game that really, her life was much easier before you came along to ruin it for her. As she says herself, "Nobody murdered me, or put me in a potato, or fed me to birds" before you came along and caused all sorts of disasters. Destroying her lovely Enrichment Center, murdering her, and being possibly the hardest test subject she's ever had to deal with. With GLaDOS' change of heart (if you can call it one, though it's more her pure exhaustion), she allows you to go free at the end of Portal 2. She wants to be able to go back to the old times of just testing, and now she has some little robots who can do that for her. She doesn't need you. With this revelation, GLaDOS also makes a point to delete Caroline's consciousness from her entirely, so as to not feel her human emotions any longer. However, it should be noted that during the end credits song of Portal 2, GLaDOS makes a point to delete her memory of you.

When I delete you, maybe I'll stop feeling so bad.

GLaDOS is clearly capable of human emotion and we see that several times, even without Caroline's influence -- as we're to believe that she has deleted her at that time. GLaDOS is more than just a cynical, lonely AI with a love/hate relationship with a not-really-heavy-but-still-adopted protagonist; she has her own set of emotions, too. Even if she's still a lingering, malicious artificial sociopath.

POWER:
⚛

technopathy | GLaDOS, being a highly intelligent computer, would be a very capable technopath. She would have prime hacking and encryption skills (used only with permissions and context within the game), as well as be able to understand computer "languages". With this comes the ability to understand all human languages, and gives her a subset of incredible skills. However, since she's not going to be used to her human body, she's probably not going to be able to use half of them. She'll know how to bake, for example -- since it's in her mind, from her vast database of information -- but she won't know how to physically apply the skills.

She'll also be able to make minimal, approved changes to her communicator for use on the network, most notably being the ability to hide behind images of celebrities or other representations of what her human form must look like for the sole purpose of trolling particular characters. She probably won't use it often. (For example, she could alter her voice and appearance to make herself appear as Bea Arthur for over-the-network interactions with Deadpool). As these would just be changes to her communicator, they wouldn't work in application in-person and would only be farces she portrayed over the network when she felt it appropriate.

[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[ TEXT ]

//...

There is nothing more infuriating than being placed in this human body._

What purpose does it serve to make me this angry right out of the gate? I asked that awful transporter machine, but she had no answers._ I'm afraid she's not a very intelligent AI. You might want to take a look at her and make sure that she's behaving to your obviously very minimal standards. If you have any standards at all._

I'm going to go out on one of my human limbs here and say that you don't. Well._

One of you is going to have to show me how I am supposed to open this door for my building. I'm not going to be waiting outside all day, with these useless human body parts._

I guess I should be thankful that I've a better life expectancy now than a potato._

Small miracles._

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

There truly was nothing more infuriating than being trapped in this human body. GLaDOS was pacing in front of the door to the apartment that she'd been so dutifully assigned, arms crossed over her chest in the only real position that felt natural for them in conjunction with her emotions. Oh, her emotions. Those were boiling over, now. She'd had inhibitors before. GLaDOS had known what it was like to have a slew of human emotions rushing through her body, but they were never so open and never so free to manipulate her in the way that they were manipulating her now. Oh, and she was angry. She had a complete and total understanding of the bodies of humans. She knew their inner and their outer workings with the skill of a true encyclopedia. However, that really didn't help her to apply it physiologically, and now she was in a position where she could not get the door open to her own apartment. GLaDOS made a point to stop her pacing, finding herself frustrated even with that inane behavior. She'd made her post to the network. That was enough, wasn't it? One of those humans had to come and they had to help her.

After all, she wasn't dangerous anymore. GLaDOS' expression shifted into a deep scowl as she realized just how tame she'd been made by the events of being turned into a human woman. The part of her that was excited for the thrill of it, for the scientific experimentation of it, was very easily crushed by the frustration and annoyance and humanity of it all. She'd been knocked down several pedestals and now she was sitting at the bottom. No neurotoxin, no tests. If she did not go completely out of her human mind with rage, she knew absolutely that she would go out of her human mind with boredom. GLaDOS turned to face the door again, pressed a hand against it and pushed for a bit. This was all very stupid and all very useless, and she knew that much. Stepping back from the door, GLaDOS opted instead to lean against it with her back and wait. She could be patient. She couldn't shut herself down entirely to ease the time spent waiting, but she could be patient.

Yes, that would be her next course of action. Find something to do. Find someone to talk to, or address those people again and demand that they find for her a proper substitute for testing. She was going to need it, if they didn't want her going completely out of her mind. In fact, she could feel it coming already. At least nobody is trying to murder you, she thought quietly. Again, small miracles.

FINAL NOTES:
For the purpose of playing in-game, GLaDOS will be given a human body, but she's going to have some trouble using it. She'll still retain her distinct, computerized voice, however; making her probably a little weird to have conversations with in person.