WHEATLEY

Jul 08, 2011 04:01

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Squid
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: hailthenarc
IM: Squiddlypeon
E-MAIL: notthatwitty@yahoo.com
RETURNING: N/A

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Wheatley
FANDOM: Portal 2
CHRONOLOGY: After being shot into space.
CLASS: He’ll do his best to be a hero, he really just wants to help.
SUPERHERO NAME: Unit 701D1
ALTER EGO: Wheatley: Any job he can get that doesn’t involve too much thinking. Security Guard to Quickway worker.

BACKGROUND:

The world of Portal is a mysterious one. The entire game takes place miles underground, so the actual world above is almost unknown. There are a few hints towards the idea that the planet has undergone some kind of apocalypse outside, and the facility is run down and falling apart after the first game. There are no humans alive or functioning, other than Chell and the never seen scientist Doug Rattman. The only other intelligent beings are robots.

Wheatley's role in the game was varied. He started out as a guide and a helpful sidekick, someone who helped open locked doors or hidden rooms for Chell, and even helped her locate the portal gun and escape from GLaDOS. However, in the second half, he becomes the antagonist, becoming corrupted, power-mad and paranoid by GLaDOS’s chassis that he took over with the help of Chell. He was created as an intelligence dampening sphere to make GLaDOS less dangerous, which did not stop her from flooding the Enrichment Center with neurotoxin anyway.

He seemed to have a great deal of interest invested in Chell, even risking his life to help her at several points when it would have been easier to just quit and find a different test subject. He even showed signs of liking her quite a bit, always encouraging and helpful and going out of his way to assist her. Well, up until he was plugged into the chassis, anyway. He is terrified of GLaDOS, only big and brave when he was in control of the facility.

PERSONALITY:
Wheatley is an innovative, major step in science. He is a testament to man-kinds ability to engineer and is a credit to his creators. Wheatley is the best at what he does, and Wheatley was created entirely and solely for the purpose… of being a complete idiot. A bumbling, useless, skittish, poor idea generating, intelligence dampening moron with a miserably small attention span. To quote GLaDOS, “He’s no ordinary moron. He was designed by some of the most brilliant minds to be the dumbest moron who ever lived.”

Of course, when first speaking to Wheatley, he might come across as a babbling, absent minded, peppy little metal ball with some terrible attention to detail, but not a total idiot. He might even appear semi-competent, capable of hacking simple things (or breaking them when you’re not looking and claiming it’s hacking), and more than willing to try and lend a hand where he can. But Wheatley is merely trying to appear cleverer than he is. He’s roughly about as sharp as a bowling ball. His lack of attention to detail is what often kills him, though if it’s not that, it’s his inability to plan ahead, see the bigger picture, put in any great amount of focus (without a reward) … Oh, and all the terrible ideas. He’s chock full of awful absolutely hideous ideas that he thinks are the best ideas in the universe. Well, until they backfire on him, like smashing the only test subject you have into a pit, or plugging yourself into a malfunctioning lift and flipping on every stupid breaker switch with it. At the very least, he’s wonderfully friendly to start out with, being talkative and encouraging (if bad at it), and willing to chat with just about anyone and anything. There is a mild case of disgust with humans, but it doesn’t seem to be anything major, merely calling them smelly at one point.

He’s also not terribly brave. He’s a tiny little metal sphere, and while he’s not easy to break, he is easy to manipulate, and was pretty much told that if he did anything other than move along on his guide rail and check on humans in extended hibernation, he’d die. Of course, he believed this. He’s perfectly capable of being terrified of death, and even tries to talk Chell out of going into GLaDOS’s room right after he got done stating that her room was the only way out. Why? Because he knew if GLaDOS was awake, he would be killed. He’s also afraid of birds, falling, and turning on his flashlight, though the lattermost is probably lesser now, considering he knows he won’t die if he turns it on. He also seems to dislike being left alone for any extended period of time, even more so now after being shot into space. He tells Chell to jump down to another platform, and then screams all the way there. He zips down the guide rail shrieking as a bird pops out of a room to peck at him. He insists that he’s going to detach himself from the guide rail on three… and then pusses out on the first go and claims it’s way too high up. He is a terrible little ‘fraidy-cat, and that’s probably the only reason he is still alive in the facility, his willingness to just plain run away from something before it can smash him to bits keeping him at the very least intact. It isn’t quite right to call him a coward though, perhaps just terribly nervous and skittish. The sphere risked his life several times to follow Chell around the facility after they were separated by GLaDOS, and this was even after he was crushed by her.

Wheatley is also a terrible liar. Not that he does it a lot, though he does, but that he does it poorly. Very, very poorly. Especially when it comes to pretending to be actually smart. He went as far as to simulate the sounds of page flipping while playing classical music, claiming that he’s reading Machiavelli all the while, and further claiming that he totally understands it by stating “who else finds Machiavelli totally understandable? I do!” He lied to the nanobots, claiming he himself was a nanobot, so that he could remain alongside Chell. He lied to Chell, poorly again, saying that she should jump down into a bottomless pit because there were, at the bottom, her parents, a new jumpsuit from France, a handbag, a boy band, lonely hunky men who are not picky, and a pony farm. His terrible ideas also stem from this lying, like speaking in a terrible American accent and claiming GLaDOS could not hear that particular tone (he had no basis for this, and as it turns out she could hear them just fine).

Of course, deep down, Wheatley knows he’s a moron. In what almost seems like a cruel joke, the Aperture scientists made Wheatley just smart enough to realize he’s stupid. He’s incredibly insecure about his intelligence, being perfectly self-aware, and he gets very, very angry when his intelligence is insulted. GLaDOS taunts him by calling him a moron, and he becomes enraged, slamming both her and Chell into a pit. He became paranoid and corrupted inside GLaDOS’s old body, claiming that Chell was against him the entire time and with GLaDOS, and thus lashes out at her as well. He takes it very seriously too, claiming that she wanted to hurt him the entire time, by not catching him when he fell, and by not telling him that she knew and had killed GLaDOS.

He gets confused rather easily, and usually either ends up brute-forcing his way through a situation when he can (ripping apart the facility to make a door or smashing a door to ‘hack’ it), or endlessly trying futile plan after useless plan. He honestly just wanted to be in charge of the facility and do a good job, unable to accept that his idiocy was destroying it, admitting that he had no clue how to fix it towards the end, and eventually desperately insisting that he wanted to repair it. He tries very, very hard to be something he isn’t, unable to accept the fact that he’s just not that smart. It seems as if Wheatley has been picked on and mocked before GLaDOS, considering his reaction to her comments. He also apologizes a great deal in the first half of the game, considering how many times he messes up, which again hints at a history of being berated and mocked for stupidity. Of course, he’s also quick to suggest another really stupid idea. He never demands either, merely suggests, and is usually pretty accepting if the player decides to do something else. Even if the player decides to start smashing the monitors, he’s not quick to demand that the player stop, though he begs, pleads, and tries to guilt the player into not smashing them. Even when he tries to order the player around towards the end, he usually flubs it in some manner or another, simply incapable of actually being a demanding, honestly bossy character.

That being said, he does have a bit of an empathy problem. He doesn’t read people very well, and being a computer, doesn’t really understand the meaning of empathy. He does unintentionally insult Chell once or twice through the first half of the game, and while he knows enough to apologize for it, he still doesn’t seem to quite have a grasp on that particular human facet. This is perhaps the only thing that would really cement him as a true AI rather than a human that had been downloaded into Aperture technology. He isn’t necessarily cruel, but it can become disconcerting when he shows relatively little sadness or distress for the discomforts of others, or even gives confused, tentative apologies for slights of which he can’t understand the offense.

Overall, Wheatley is a dim-witted, talkative, insecure, nervous and usually rather nice little personality construct. He’s more human than any other being in the facility, with the exception of Chell, of course, with real fears, real worries and real wishes and wants. All Wheatley really, really wants is to be actually appreciated. Considered smart, or at least a little clever, useful and wanted, like any human being would actually want. It’s little wonder that he went mad with power, having gotten in one fell swoop the ability to obtain everything he ever wanted, though one could always blame GLaDOS’s corrupted mainframe as well. Floating in space, by himself with no one but the utterly insane space core to hear him, he admits he was monstrous, bossy, wrong and horrible, and that he wishes he could apologize for what he has done. It is probably unlikely that this is a lie, as Wheatley is honestly very bad at faking a genuine emotion such as regret. He’s not evil. He’s just stupid.

POWER:

Wheatley doesn’t really have any abilities in-game, unless you count his ability to withstand temperatures up to 4000 degrees kelvin and continue to operate on one and a half volts. He’s not really good at hacking, or… anything that a computer is normally good at, so he’ll be given new powers (to go with his created ability to handle high temperatures).

Wheatley will be outfitted with a dual portal gun, which is attached to his right arm, and can be disassembled and reassembled when needed. It’ll be slightly tweaked to allow him to create portals on concrete, though not glass, wood, metal, or any other surfaces.

He will also come with built in long fall boots, as fun with portals can be very bad for the everywhere-bones.

Finally, as his android form will look human, but still a little obvious, he will have a more human, holographic disguise. He can’t change it, he will always appear to be the same human male at all times with the hologram going.

If in the case that the portal gun is too much, then it can be replaced with a gun that shoots propulsion and repulsion gels.

[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: So, I have quite the story for all of you. All of you who are… listening, at the time, actually. I don’t know just who or how many you’s there are out there, but I’m going to hazard that it is ah… quite a lot. Quite a few out there. Whoever is listening on the communicators, hi, hello, nice to meet you all. So, story! Right!
So I just get out of this crazy building, real nice program in there, by the way, fantastic AI, could use a little brushing up on the greeting message though, maybe someone ought to go and… take care of that before she starts getting spooky or flooding the immediate area with neurotoxin. Just an idea.

So anyway, walking out of this building- Walking! Yes, that’s right, I’m walking now. Me, walking. With my legs. Very nice, don’t know how that happened, you’d think that you’d lose extremities in reentry but... there you go. Legs! And arms to go with it, isn’t that just brilliant? I got this walking thing down pretty right quick, let me tell you. Fast learner, me. You know. Because of my vast intellect and all.

Right! Walked out, headed down the street, and can you believe it, some bloke just started staring at me. Just stared! At me! You’d think he’d never seen an android or- Oh! Right, android now. Got a bit of an upgrade. Not a sphere anymore, what with this new…. Ah, be-limbed body here. S’gonna be great, let me tell you. Right, so I go up to him to talk and… Well…
Okay, long story short, anyone out there have a nice, private, maybe ah... gun proof house they’re willing to share for oh… maybe… forever?

LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: Funny thing about legs. They were all fine and dandy when you wanted to go for a walk, sit down, jump up and down in one place for a bit. Jogging was fairly easy, as long as he just kept it to a leisurely lope. … But running? Yeah, running wasn’t quite as easy, as he was figuring out fairly quickly now. Gunshots rang out behind him as the android tried to keep himself from continuously landing on his face, managing to at last scurry behind a corner and sling himself promptly into the dumpster that was right there. At least he had the arms thing down. Mulling over that fact as he picked pieces of banana out of his hair (Hair! He had hair now!), he had to remind himself that if he got out of this with the minimal amount of bullet holes, that he had writing to practice. Fiddly thing, writing was. Why couldn’t it be like typing? Press a button, bam, there’s a fancy curvy letter. What’d they call that now? … Cursive? Right, had to work on that, get back to his soaps, go back to wo-

BLAM BLAM BOOM BLAM. Oh… Oh right, he was still in imminent danger of being filled full of holes, wasn’t he?

“Why couldn’t I get something bloody useful? Like a turret dispenser or a big damned moon laser? I’d have taken a flippin’ rubber band gun over this!” He gave the portal gun a peeved shake, ignoring the nagging voice in the back of his head that coldly reminded him of certain… intellectual barriers. He was not an idiot, he could figure this out! If Chell could save herself (and him…) from turrets and GLaDOS, there was no way he was going to be outsmarted by a bunch of thick skulled smelly humans. A cease in the gunfire? … He barely lifted the lid of the dumpster, peering nervously out. Anyone? Damn, too blasted dark out to see anything, they must have hit the storm light. May as well give the flash light a try and- flick

BLAM

“AUGH! STOP… JUST STOP SHOOTING AT ME FOR FIVE SECONDS, MATE! JUST HOLD YOUR DAMN FIRE! … PLEASE?” The lid of the dumpster banged open, and amid another hail of gunfire, Wheatley made another dash into the night, still silently cursing his abysmal luck as the portal gun warmed itself up for use. Time for another try, luv. Let’s not smack a building this time, alright?
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