What is this I don't even.

Srs Wheatley discussions herein

(Not really, just jabbering at Lacey about The Punishment and forgiveness and writer’s laments and stuff)

I gotta say, I’ll probably always feel guilty at how easily swayed Chell was by Wheatley’s blubbering towards the beginning of The Punishment. I mean, she maintained a bit of a cold front against him for a while, but I doubt it was really enough. In writing those parts I considered stretching things out a lot more (as well as other parts of the plot) but everything was already getting too long with what I had planned that I figured it would get completely ridiculous so I just kept the plot moving instead.

I really do have an explanation for her willingness to forgive him, though, and I think I might actually regret not explaining it well enough at the time rather than choosing to write it that way in the first place…

My initial perception of Wheatley as a character in the game and my ideas about what ‘happened’ to him when he got into the chassis were a big part of what made me write the story this way. My interpretation as I played was that the chassis had a corrupting influence on his personality because its protocols and programs overrode/overloaded/crashed his own, and (switching to story ‘headcanon’) Chell could see that happening at the time. And after everything awful that had happened to her against her will at Aperture, in my mind she (or at least the Chell I’ve written) may have had the capacity to empathize or at least understand when something awful happened to someone else against their will.

Then when they met in The Punishment, Wheatley was just this weak, sobbing thing she’d tried to strangle. She was so tired of struggling and he was so obviously not a threat anymore—completely lost, barely able to stand on his own, obviously not in good health (as a result of nearly starving himself by eating the wrong things, as she later figured out)—that she couldn’t feel anger towards him, only pity. And maybe some empathy for his confusion and fear since—well, she’d been there once too.

I don’t think I articulated that well enough at all in the story (there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t articulate well back then and I sometimes beat myself up about it) but that was the particular set of circumstances and assumptions I made for those two.

(Wheatley’s characterization throughout is another thing entirely, but I think I will have a good chance to explore that through actual writing and not disjointed explanations on Tumblr.)

Of course, it’s entirely valid to work things a completely different way. You can define the corruption as something else, make Wheatley a fundamentally ‘bad’ character or one who doesn’t care about humans at all, make Chell’s reactions to his antagonism completely different, shift their relationship and her feelings toward him however you want. You can make Chell into a feral, thoughtless animal raised alone by machines, a Chell that would sooner tear his head off than walk past him. You could make him regret only the fact that he lost his power and make him hold a grudge against her for taking him down.

Honestly, that’s the single best thing about the pairing for me, that there are so many variables to tweak to create something new for them. And I love seeing what people do with it.

I dunno why I’m telling you this, or even posting it publicly, I guess I just feel the need to justify it to myself through text and you reminded me of it just now with one of your answers to the fandom meme.

…Alright, why is it that whenever I try to write something AN ENTIRE ESSAY comes out