#with all of Cave's horribly unethical experiments

[coldgoldlazarus]

Watching a Portal 2 playthrough a couple days ago in current year is interesting

Because the Chell/GLaDOS dynamic is at once way more overtly gay than I remember, but also way way more toxic lmao. GLaDOS definitely has feelings for Chell, but in the same way an abusive ex still has feelings. The blatant double-standards, (my attempts on your life are fine, you successfully downing me before will never be forgotten) the constant insults and gaslighting and attempts at inducing body-image issues, and so on and so forth. It gets better after the whole Wheatley turnabout but never becomes good; in particular is a moment where she defends Chell from Wheatley's fumbling attempts to emulate her insults, only to immediately undercut it with "actually all of that does apply to you and that's terrible, but I have to spite him somehow". GLaDOS sucks.

I'm not saying this to undercut the ship, mind you, because what a beautiful trashfire it is. But it is just kinda funny to realize how far my recollection had drifted from that.

[humanwheatleyslefttoenail]

What D&D alignment do you believe each Portal character is/ends up as?

oh god, ok, I don’t know too much about D&D but I like to think I know the alignment system pretty well so here goes

Wheatley - Chaotic Neutral

I’d say chaotic neutral because he seems to mostly just follow whatever gives him recognition or the ability to escape either his personal or physical problems. Both Chell and the chassis gave him these things, and he’s not particularly loyal. You could argue he’s chaotic good but I think that depends on how much you think being in the mainframe corrupted his programming. 

Chell - Chaotic Good

This is tricky because we don’t actually know too much about Chell, but in Portal 2 she helps Wheatley and GLaDOS and in some cases, saves a turret. You could argue she’s done some “bad” things but all of those things were for personal survival. She’s chaotic because she values freedom above all else, but I like to think she’s good because she’s the individualist antithesis to the restrictive environment GLaDOS represents. 

GLaDOS - Lawful Evil

GLaDOS acts within Aperture Science protocol and seems to have some sort of programmed preference for it. Despite the fact that she opposed her human creators she also works inside of their guidelines, and gains her power through exploiting this existing system. She follows the rules but uses this to do evil, even if she is very oppositional, which is why I think she falls more under lawful evil than neutral evil. 

Caroline - Lawful Neutral

I don’t think Caroline is particularly moral one way or another. I think she’s more benevolent than Cave and GLaDOS, and when her personality shines through GLaDOS we can see that she is pretty nice to be around. That being said, Caroline is fully aware of the atrocities Aperture is committing and either is complicit or actively perpetuates it. I think her guiding moral compass is mostly just to follow her boss, though she’s probably one of those people who “acts nice” despite doing horrible things. She’s much more morally complex than the fandom gives her credit for.

Cave Johnson - Chaotic Neutral

This one’s pretty obvious. Cave does whatever the hell he wants, good or evil, even if it means violating the law or basic personal safety. His regard (at least at first) for the well-being of Caroline and his alleged commitment to the advancement of science redeems him enough to the point where he’s neutral rather than evil, but his unethical experiments aren’t easily excused. 

Doug Rattmann - Neutral Good

Before GLaDOS took over, Doug was very much someone who followed orders. In Lab Rat he questions the creation of the morality core but it’s still apparent that he just does what his bosses tell him to do. He does end up defying GLaDOS to save Chell, however, making him neutral. Because he primarily acts in the interest of his own and Chell’s survival, I’d also argue he’s good. 

[canadian-riddler]

Morality of a Supercomputer: Why GLaDOS is not evil (or inherently a bad person)

(under a readmore for length)

 Part A: Aperture Itself is an Immoral Corporation Run By Immoral Employees

- Cave Johnson was the was the CEO of Aperture from 1947 to sometime in the 1980s.  We can infer that his employees either a) had similar beliefs to himself or b) were content to adhere to his ridiculous whims while also turning a blind eye.

- Cave never, ever expresses remorse for killing his first set of test subjects.  He treats it as an inconvenience.  He literally doesn’t care that he killed a bunch of promising members of society during a bunch of horribly conceived tests with a horribly built device that was proven not to work.  Your introduction to the Repulsion Gel includes him making a joke about someone breaking all the bones in their legs.

- Aperture put to market two separate gels that were not fit for human consumption.  Again, Cave doesn’t seem to care one bit about this. He takes a stance more akin to ‘oh well, we’ll just… use them for this experimental quantum tunnelling device, I guess’.

- Aperture’s unethical disaster experiments are all played off as inconsequential or mildly amusing inconveniences.  

- Cave does not take responsibility for his own ill-advised actions.  He shoulders them off onto everybody else.  People were accepting this responsibility willingly.

- Cave publicly disrespects, insults, and demeans almost every person that works for him.  He fires without notice people who disagree with him.

- Cave’s plan, after killing the astronauts and Olympians, was to specifically entice the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children to do his tests for him.  That is, he specifically wanted populations that nobody would cause a fuss about if they went missing.  This tells us that Cave Johnson has no regard for human life and, additionally, that his employees willingly went along with this.  Aperture was taken to court not for injured astronauts, but for missing ones.  Somebody got rid of what was left of them.     People also agreed to this marketing campaign and put it into action.

- Because Aperture wanted only populations that nobody would miss, we can infer something very important: nobody ever survived the testing process.  Every single person who went into the testing tracks died.

               - During Test Chamber 18 in Portal, there is a room with craters in the wall panels where the energy pellets have been colliding with them.  No other chamber has this.  Therefore, before Chell arrives, nobody has ever solved that chamber.  Every person who has gone through the testing track has died before reaching this point.  In Portal, GLaDOS is not shown to have the ability to reorder the facility.  All she is able to do is position turrets and activate the neurotoxin, so we know that she does not reorder the tests.  They are static and she merely resets them after they are complete/failed partway through.

               - Test Chamber 19 appears unfinished, which follows from the previous point that Test Chamber 18 was never solved so Test Chamber 19 was never fully built.  GLaDOS, additionally, seems baffled that Chell ends up at the end of it and is forced to improvise when she escapes, which GLaDOS does not know how to do because she has never done it before.  

- In Lab Rat, neither Henry nor Doug Rattmann seem to be overly concerned with whether GLaDOS is a person or not, and not at all bothered by the fact that Caroline is supposed to be in there.  They talk about her like she is a bothersome computer and that is all.  You could argue that Henry does not know about Caroline; however, Doug’s murals prove that he does know.  This doesn’t seem to influence his decisions whatsoever.

- Lab Rat also states that they turn GLaDOS off and on at will, ‘off’ usually involving a ‘kill switch’.  Given that GLaDOS is a computer from the late eighties/early nineties, which took forever to turn off and on, and GLaDOS is shown to be immediately shut off, the ‘kill switch’ is probably actually her being crashed. Crashing software creates a whole host of problems for non-sentient software; therefore, every time they turned her back on again her system would have been a horrible mess.  This would have created massive system instability… which nobody seemed to care very much about.  

- GLaDOS is described on a PowerPoint presentation as ‘arguably alive’, but in the same presentation they propose selling her to the military as a fuel line de-icer that doesn’t have the ability to do anything else.  Therefore, they are fully aware that she is alive and she is a person… they just don’t care.

- It is explicitly shown that most of the work done on GLaDOS is carried out without her consent. The very act of Caroline’s upload is done with the consent of neither of them.  Henry is extremely blasé about the Morality Core and there are approximately forty cores shown in the clear bin during the end of Portal 2.  This implies that they have been installing them on her for a very long time with no regard at all for her or the Cores, even though they have very blatantly failed multiple times.  They just build sentient, arguably alive AI with the sole intention of corralling GLaDOS temporarily, and when the Cores fail they are basically put into storage forever.

- GLaDOS’s job in Portal was to supervise the tests.  As concluded above, she doesn’t demonstrate the ability to build them herself. Therefore, she was watching people be maimed and killed within human-designed tests under the supervision of her engineers before she ever killed anyone herself.

- Aperture had over ten thousand people in cryogenic storage waiting to be awoken for testing.  The Extended Relaxation Vaults at the beginning of Portal 2 have a ‘packing date’ (in 1976/77, when GLaDOS did not exist even as a concept yet) and an ‘expiry date’ (in 1996, which means that they were all brain-dead before GLaDOS took over the facility).  GLaDOS does not have any human test subjects between the conclusion of Portal 2 and the first DLC, and she doesn’t know about the existence of the human vault.  Therefore, Aperture put tens of thousands of people into indefinite, unstable storage with no regard whatsoever to what state they would be when, and indeed if, they woke up, and they did not tell the AI they put in charge of the facility so said AI so much as knew they existed.

               - The very fact they gave literal people – including children – an expiry date when they put them into a metal box for twenty years really tells you all you need to know about Aperture as a whole.

 What does this teach GLaDOS?

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them.  You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.  

               - Dying during the test is a controlled variable.  There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.  

               - GLaDOS does not actually understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects.  They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

  Part B.  GLaDOS, as We Know Her, is Pure AI

Before we get into this, it is important to establish that it is implied in-universe GLaDOS herself is actually the DOS; that is, GLaDOS herself is the operating system.  If you believe GLaDOS and Caroline are the same person, that’s fine; please hear me out regardless.  

- She has a prototype chassis in the Portal 2 DLC with an earlier version of her OS on it.  This has an in-game date of 1989 and, since we know that GLaDOS took over the facility nearabouts the Black Mesa Incident in 1998/1999, we know that she was in development for at least ten years.

- There was, at one point, a Portal 2 hype website where you did a survey and it was run by an early version of GLaDOS; it is no longer active but it was a real thing.

- GLaDOS is incredibly, genuinely clueless about things that any regular person knows: she believes a bird has malicious intentions to destroy her facility; she believes that motivation consists of telling blatant, obvious lies to people; her grasp of social niceties is completely nonexistent.

- Because it is stated that there were multiple versions of GLaDOS, this means that she is a person built from nothing.  Everything she knows was either provided to her via Aperture’s database or taught to her in some way by GLaDOS’s engineers.  GLaDOS does not know a single thing she was not directly taught by somebody else.

- GLaDOS is never shown to have a ~normal~ conversation with anybody.  Every time she talks, it is to convince someone to do what she wants them to do.  Because she is AI, this behaviour was learned and, given how the engineers at Aperture regard her and the Cores, it is not illogical to say that pretty much the only conversations they had with their AI were probably along the lines of ‘do this for me because my neck is on the line here’.

- During the instatement of the Morality Core, Doug Rattmann tells Henry that the Morality Core is not going to be enough because you can always ignore your conscience.  However, in the second half of Portal 2, GLaDOS is shown to be unable to ignore it.  What is the difference?

- The Morality Core was not a true conscience.  It was, yet again, the scientists telling her what to do.  It was, like all the other Cores, an annoying new set of restrictions that had no purpose except to impede her.  Henry describes it as ‘the latest in AI inhibition technology’.  It did not exist to teach her morals.  It was created to slow her down.

- It’s entirely possible that nobody actually told her what morals were or what the Morality Core was actually for.  Additionally, we don’t actually know what the Morality Core was telling her, since it is never mentioned and the Core never speaks.

- The conscience that GLaDOS comes across is her own conscience; she literally says so (‘I’ve heard voices all my life, but now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying, because for the first time… it’s my voice’) which, unlike the Morality Core, she cannot ignore.

 What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

 Part C.  GLaDOS’s Thought Process

- GLaDOS, as pure AI, operates on a binary scale; that is, everything to her is either yes or no, on or off, with her or against her.  Prior to being placed in a potato, GLaDOS never had a reason to think outside of this binary.  GLaDOS has no concept of an in-between and does not understand grey reasoning.

               - As a robot whose sole purpose was to run variations on the same test ad nauseam, it would never have occurred to GLaDOS to do anything else.

- GLaDOS says about herself in an unused piece of dialogue: ‘I’m brilliant. […]  I’m the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that’s ever existed.  I’m not bragging.  That’s an objective fact.’  Therefore, she knows she could do literally anything with her intelligence and her hardware… but that would require her to think outside her binary of testing and not testing.  So she does nothing.  

               - This is established several times: as soon as she reactivates after her death, she starts testing.  As soon as she sends Chell away, she sends her robots into testing. As soon as she finds the test subjects, she starts testing.  She constructs ‘art pieces’… which are simply more tests.  Her ‘training’ for the co-op bots are… you guessed it… tests.

               - As an extension of the above point: she could build any robot she wants or anything she wants.  She in fact talks about doing other experiments.  She doesn’t.  She opts to build testing robots and test elements.  And that’s it.  

               - Upon discovering her conscience/the ability to think in grey, she says, ‘I’m serious!  I think there’s something really wrong with me!’  She doesn’t understand that this is a normal thing for a person to have or to be able to use.  Conscience and morality are things that were neither demonstrated nor explained to her and so when she comes across them herself, she thinks it is a problem.

               - Additionally, when Chell fails to react to GLaDOS’s dialogue about her fledgling ability to think in grey, she immediately reverts to her old standbys of binary thought and manipulation: ‘You like revenge, right?  Everybody likes revenge!  Well, let’s go get some!’  She’s now aware of the concept of a middle ground, but does not know how to do anything with it.

               - GLaDOS states about Chell: ‘I thought you were my enemy, but all along you were my best friend.’  This is another example of her binary thought process.  A person who helps you when it’s mutually beneficial, as Chell does during Portal 2, is not necessarily your best friend.  At best, they are usually your temporary ally. But because GLaDOS only understands binary concepts, that’s the conclusion she comes to.

               - She states ‘the best solution is the easiest one, and killing you is hard’.  This slots neatly into her binary: if killing you down here is hard, then letting you live up there is easy.  In Want You Gone she says, ‘when I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad’ so we know Chell exists outside of her binary at that point, but she doesn’t know what to do about it so she forces a binary decision on the situation anyway.

 What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

  Part D.  What All of This Means

Gathering the previous points gives us these clues about GLaDOS’s behaviour:

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them.  You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.  

               - Dying during the test is a controlled variable.  There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.  

               - GLaDOS does not understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects.  They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

 What this tells us about how GLaDOS operates is the following:

- There are no consequences for anything whatsoever, as long as you’re the one in charge.

- You can do whatever you want to somebody else, as long as you come out on top.

- Death is meaningless.

- She sees people as objects and she treats them as such.

- She does not know how to talk to people.  Only at them.

- She knows that morals are rules people want her to follow, but she doesn’t understand them and has never seen them in action.

- Grey thought is anathema to her.  If something does not fit into her binary, she will force it to.

 All of these rules are challenged when Chell, through her actions, personally demonstrates morality to GLaDOS.  Chell helps GLaDOS not because she needs to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Instead of attempting to skip town and leave GLaDOS to fend for herself (which she was well within her rights to do), Chell returns GLaDOS to her chassis.  And at this point GLaDOS immediately demonstrates grey reasoning both when she elects to save Chell and when it is shown that she does not kill Wheatley. This is not the behaviour of an evil person.  This is the behaviour of someone who understands there was something wrong with their previous actions and has decided to do something about it. GLaDOS’s behaviour towards the co-op bots is less malicious than it is the fumblings of somebody whose worldview has skewed, but they aren’t sure what to do about it and there aren’t any binary answers.  Because of her extreme isolation, it is going to take her a long, long time to get things right, but once she is exposed to the concept of grey reasoning she does attempt to figure out what to do with it.  

GLaDOS is not evil, nor are most of her actions inherently ill-intentioned.  Some of them are.  To claim all of her actions are borne of evil and come from a place of inherent malice shows a misunderstanding of the sort of environment Aperture was and the kind of people who would populate such an environment.  At the end of the day, she’s still not a very nice person.  But to write her off as evil is oversimplifying a lot of what we are told about her and a misunderstanding of computer science as a whole.  Artificial intelligence is not developed in a vacuum and a computer only does exactly what it’s told.  All of GLaDOS’s behaviours are learned.  The people who created her may have been evil, but she herself is not.  And when given the choice to be something else, something she never knew was an option… she takes it.

[hope-isgood]

Hey guys. I’m having a pretty rough time... Can you help me take my mind off of things and send me some ask or questions? Hers’s a list of what you might ask if you don’t have any ideas. I’ll appreciate any kind of ask 📨❤

1. What weird food combinations do you really enjoy?

2. What social stigma does society need to get over?

3. What food have you never eaten but would really like to try?

4. What’s something you really resent paying for?

5. What would a world populated by clones of you be like?

6. Do you think that aliens exist?

7. What are you currently worried about?

8. Where are some unusual places you’ve been?

9. Where do you get your news?

10. What are some red flags to watch out for in daily life?

11. What movie can you watch over and over without ever getting tired of?

12. When you are old, what do you think children will ask you to tell stories about?

13. If you could switch two movie characters, what switch would lead to the most inappropriate movies?

14. What inanimate object would be the most annoying if it played loud upbeat music while being used?

15. When did something start out badly for you but in the end, it was great?

16. How would your country change if everyone, regardless of age, could vote?

17. What animal would be cutest if scaled down to the size of a cat?

18. If your job gave you a surprise three day paid break to rest and recuperate, what would you do with those three days?

19. What’s wrong but sounds right?

20. What’s the most epic way you’ve seen someone quit or be fired?

21. If you couldn’t be convicted of any one type of crime, what criminal charge would you like to be immune to?

22. What’s something that will always be in fashion, no matter how much time passes?

23. What actors or actresses play the same character in almost every movie or show they do?

24. In the past people were buried with the items they would need in the afterlife, what would you want buried with you so you could use it in the afterlife?

25. What’s the best / worst practical joke that you’ve played on someone or that was played on you?

26. Who do you go out of your way to be nice to?

27. Where do you get most of the decorations for your home?

28. What food is delicious but a pain to eat?

29. Who was your craziest / most interesting teacher

30. What “old person” things do you do?

31. What was the last photo you took?

32. What is the most amazing slow motion video you’ve seen?

33. Which celebrity do you think is the most down to earth?

34. What would be the worst thing to hear as you are going under anesthesia before heart surgery?

35. What’s the spiciest thing you’ve ever eaten?

36. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve broken?

37. What obstacles would be included in the World’s most amazing obstacle course?

38. What makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it?

39. What do you think you are much better at than you actually are?

40. Should kidneys be able to be bought and sold?

41. What’s the most creative use of emojis you’ve ever seen?

42. When was the last time you got to tell someone “I told you so.”?

43. What riddles do you know?

44. What’s your cure for hiccups?

45. What invention doesn’t get a lot of love, but has greatly improved the world?

46. What’s the most interesting building you’ve ever seen or been in?

47. What mythical creature do you wish actually existed?

48. What are your most important rules when going on a date?

49. How do you judge a person?

50. If someone narrated your life, who would you want to be the narrator?

51. What was the most unsettling film you’ve seen?

52. What unethical experiment would have the biggest positive impact on society as a whole?

53. When was the last time you were snooping, and found something you wish you hadn’t?

54. Which celebrity or band has the worst fan base?

55. What are you interested in that most people aren’t?

56. If you were given a PhD degree, but had no more knowledge of the subject of the degree besides what you have now, what degree would you want to be given to you?

57. What smartphone feature would you actually be excited for a company to implement?

58. What’s something people don’t worry about but really should?

59. What movie quotes do you use on a regular basis?

60. Do you think that children born today will have better or worse lives than their parents?

61. What’s the funniest joke you know by heart?

62. When was the last time you felt you had a new lease on life?

63. What’s the funniest actual name you’ve heard of someone having?

64. Which charity or charitable cause is most deserving of money?

65. What TV show character would it be the most fun to change places with for a week?

66. What was cool when you were young but isn’t cool now?

67. If you were moving to another country, but could only pack one carry-on sized bag, what would you pack?

68. What’s the most ironic thing you’ve seen happen?

69. If magic was real, what spell would you try to learn first?

70. If you were a ghost and could possess people, what would you make them do?

71. What goal do you think humanity is not focused enough on achieving?

72. What problem are you currently grappling with?

73. What character in a movie could have been great, but the actor they cast didn’t fit the role?

74. What game have you spent the most hours playing?

75. What’s the most comfortable bed or chair you’ve ever been in?

76. What’s the craziest conversation you’ve overheard?

77. What��s the hardest you’ve ever worked?

78. What movie, picture, or video always makes you laugh no matter how often you watch it?

79. What artist or band do you always recommend when someone asks for a music recommendation?

80. If you could have an all-expenses paid trip to see any famous world monument, which monument would you choose?

81. If animals could talk, which animal would be the most annoying?

82. What’s the most addicted to a game you’ve ever been?

83. What’s the coldest you’ve ever been?

84. Which protagonist from a book or movie would make the worst roommate?

85. Do you eat food that’s past its expiration date if it still smells and looks fine?

86. What’s the most ridiculous thing you have bought?

87. What’s the funniest comedy skit you’ve seen?

88. What’s the most depressing meal you’ve eaten?

89. What tips or tricks have you picked up from your job / jobs?

90. What outdoor activity haven’t you tried, but would like to?

91. What songs hit you with a wave of nostalgia every time you hear them?

92. What’s the worst backhanded compliment you could give someone?

93. What’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?

94. What was the last song you sung along to?

95. What’s the funniest thing you’ve done or had happen while your mind was wandering?

96. What app can you not believe someone hasn’t made yet?

97. When was the last time you face palmed?

98. If you were given five million dollars to open a small museum, what kind of museum would you create?

99. Which of your vices or bad habits would be the hardest to give up?

100. What really needs to be modernized?

101. When was the last time you slept more than nine hours?

102. How comfortable are you speaking in front of large groups of people?

103. What’s your worst example of procrastination?

104. Who has zero filter between their brain and mouth?

105. What was your most recent lie?

106. When was the last time you immediately regretted something you said?

107. What would be the best thing you could reasonably expect to find in a cave?

108. What did you think was going to be amazing but turned out to be horrible?

109. What bit of trivia do you know that is very interesting but also very useless?

110. What’s the silliest thing you’ve seen someone get upset about?

111. What animal or plant do you think should be renamed?

112. What was the best thing that happened to you today?

113. As a child, what did you think would be awesome about being an adult, but isn’t as awesome as you thought it would be?

114. When’s censorship warranted?

115. What’s the most boring super hero you can come up with?

116. What would be some of the downsides of certain superpowers?

117. What word is a lot of fun to say?

118. What current trend do you hope will go on for a long time?

119. What actors or actresses can’t play a different character because they played their most famous character too well?

120. Where’s your go to restaurant for amazing food?

121. What’s something that all your friends agree on?

122. What’s your best story from a wedding?

123. What languages do you wish you could speak?

124. What’s the most pleasant sounding accent?

125. What’s something that everyone, absolutely everyone, in the entire world can agree on?

126. What country is the strangest?

127. What’s the funniest word in the English language?

128. What’s some insider knowledge that only people in your line of work have?

129. Who do you wish you could get back into contact with?

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130. How do you make yourself sleep when you can’t seem to get to sleep?

131. If people receive a purple heart for bravery, what would other color hearts represent?

132. What are some of the best vacations you’ve had?

133. If there was a book of commandments for the modern world, what would some of the rules be?

134. What’s the craziest video you’ve ever seen?

135. What’s your “Back in my day, we…”?

136. If you could know the truth behind every conspiracy, but you would instantly die if you hinted that you knew the truth, would you want to know?

137. What animal would be the most terrifying if it could speak?

138. What’s the worst hairstyle you’ve ever had?

139. What habit do you have now that you wish you started much earlier?

140. If you were given one thousand acres of land that you didn’t need to pay taxes on but couldn’t sell, what would you do with it?

141. What about the opposite sex confuses you the most?

142. When was the last time you yelled at someone?

143. What’s the opposite of a koala?

144. What kinds of things do you like to cook or are good at cooking?

145. What life skills are rarely taught but extremely useful?

146. What movie universe would be the worst to live out your life in?

147. If you could hack into any one computer, which computer would you choose?

148. Who do you feel like you know even though you’ve never met them?

149. What’s the most ridiculous animal on the planet?

150. What’s the worst thing you’ve eaten out of politeness?

[fenix-minerva]

Elon is basically Cave Johnson except you realize it’s real life and remember all the wacky experiments Cave authorized in Aperture Science are all horribly unethical…

We’re all gonna die.

did you know tesla has been building gigantic lithium-ion batteries, for grid storage, like, in australia, and texas?

well, the one in australia is on fire, spewing toxic smoke

[askmyboys]

Jamie McCullough

Name: Jamie McCullough | Gender: Male | He doesn't have any nicknames really BUT- certain... beings tend to call him The Guardian | Species/Race: Human | Age: N/A | Height: 5'0" | Hair Color: Banana Yellow (Messy Undercut) | Eye Color: Baby Blue | Appearance: His main attire when he's working is a lab coat and some scrubs underneath, nothing TOO cool tbh- its just something he has to wear while working as a precaution, his normal attire usually consists of hoodies, sweaters, or turtlenecks- he also has to wear these huge circle glasses (not just bc he likes those, but he- he needs them to fuckin s e e lmao), some comfortable baggy looking yoga pants, and overall some normal looking sneakers- (his favorite hoodie to wear is one with little devil horns on the hood, not bc he wants to look or be edgy or anything- he genuinely thinks that looks cute plus it was a uh, gift that again, certain beings got him), he does have a few scars here and there but they don't seem to bother him, to others though- some of them look very severe and... odd but he just tells them he's fine, just clumsy n stuff- (he also has a circle beard) | Personality: Sweet, kind, outgoing, can be anxious at times and can get stressed out pretty easily, he doesn't necessarily like his job BUT it does get him a lot of money so he'll tolerate it not only for that but another reason which will be explained in side facts, he tries to be friendly and kind to his co-workers but he doesn't... EXACTLY like or think its okay what they do with their "experiments" or how they treat them even, he doesn't seem them as just experiments, he sees them as more than that... Beings with feelings, friends even- He can't hate the other scientists but he does believe they should be nicer and kinder to these beings. (tl;dr: sweet/kind/outgoing, can get stressed very easily which usually leads into anxiety territory, doesn't really like his job but it allows him to hang out and take care of these certain beings and of course brings money to his table, he can't hate anybody there he just wishes they'd be nicer and treat what they call these "experiments" better and like actual beings with feelings and emotions, he can at least hope they will one day) | Side Facts: Alright, so- Jamie IS a scientist himself but he's much different from the others, he won't c r e a t e the "experiments" himself, but he WILL take care of them and monitor them and give them food/water, etc- he just refuses to actually experiment on them or create them or do anything unethical towards them even if the other scientists say he's being ridiculous- their just disgusting beasts they created who don't feel a thing but Jamie knows better... Now these "experiments" or whatever, are essentially monster-like creatures these scientists have created n such, sometimes they create them from actual normal humans and turn them into these beasts or they create them from scratch, that one is harder to do unfortunately- so they usually just take people and turn them into monsters and then proceed to experiment on them and they will 100% do horrible things to them if they so desire- if they want they will dissect them n stuff which makes Jamie just want to wretch, it makes his stomach churn to see them commit these horrible acts which is why he takes the simple job... but what his co-workers don't know... Is that, Jamie has created a special secret area, in fact- it is legit like an entirely different world, the inside of this area is essentially a meadow-like area, it has several other areas (such as a winter-like land, a desert land, a forest one, mountain area, caves galore, an ocean even, etc-), perfect for ALL monsters- he wanted to make sure everyone of them had an area they could be comfortable in while creating this, he's helped tons of monsters escape to this area hence why they call him The Guardian because that's what he is p much, he's a guardian of all monsters big and small, he lead them to a place where they could feel safe and comfortable and he guards this place and them, he's a protector for sure- even tho he doesn't like to lie to people he WILL do so in order to protect his monster friends- any time the scientists ask him where the monsters went he will 100% tell them all lies and them, not expecting him to lie at all in his lifetime p much believe him when he says what happens, and hell- I mean Jamie WILL go to extreme measures to protect his monster friends, even if he has to hurt himself in the process to do so.

[recentanimenews]

Star Wars References Hidden In Anime

  Hey, everybody! It's Star Wars Day! May the fourth be with you. Go fourth and prosper. You know, all that good sci-fi stuff. That's how those sayings go, right? Anyway, in the spirit of this great day, the Crunchyroll features team has gathered up some of our favorite secret (and not-so-secret) nods to the Great Galaxy Struggle across various anime. We've got everything from short and sweet quotes to entire character arcs and storylines to an adorably sarcastic opening title crawl, and more. Anime creators have been emulating their favorite outer space tale for decades, hiding nods to George Lucas' masterpiece throughout their work.

  Let's take a walk on the Dark Side and check out just a handful of the many, many Star Wars Easter eggs hiding in your favorite anime series.

    My Hero Academia's Deku Is Basically Luke Skywalker

      Izuku Midoriya's dedication to day-saving is made clear early on the first episode of the series when Deku puts his notebooks to good use jotting down observations from an ongoing hero/villain showdown. That showdown takes place as Midoriya is traveling between home and school, giving the impression this must be his hometown ... and it just so happens the fight takes place at the Tatooin Train Station. Not at unlike the planet of Tattooine, the birthplace of Luke Skywalker himself. This them continues when All-Might trains Midoriya for the UA entrance exams at the Dagoba Beach, a clear homage to the Dagobah swamp where Yoda trained Luke.

  Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Relives Luke And Leia's Relationship

    When Luke and Leia got flirty and kissy it was sweet. Some fans might have even been rooting for them. When it was later revealed the two were twins it was ... awkward. Just, like, why? As odd as that story choice might have been, it's definitely been remembered in pop culture ever since. Remembered and recreated. Seed's Cagalli and Kira have a similar arc. She's a diplomatic princess, he's a pilot for the Alliance. (Get it? Because Rebel Alliance). They're twins separated at birth and might kinda have a thing for each other before they learn the truth of their origin story.

  Dr. Slump & Arale-chan's Drop-kun's Face Is A Stormtrooper Mask

    When creating a character who is a member of the armed forces, you would think skill and precision would be of the utmost importance. Unless you're designing a police officer for Dr. Slump, in which case your cop is modeled off of some of the most notoriously bad shooters in pop culture history. Star Wars' Stormtroopers are well-known for their horrible aim, and yet, Drop-kun wears his Stormtrooper helmet face with pride. Originally created for Akira Toriyama's Star Wars parody Mysterious Rain Jack, Drop-kun would later turn up in Arale-chan's debut series.

  Hellsing Ultimate Gets Help From A Star Wars Fan Club

    Basing their shadowy organization Millennium off the Nazis, there are lots of historical references in Helsing regarding the series antagonists. The name itself is a big nod, being an homage to Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. The group's modus operandi -- using creepy, unethical surgery to humans into vampires -- echoes the Nazis human experiments during wartime. And smack dab in the middle of all this dire, we have a goofy Star Wars reference. While trying to gather intel on Millennium, Walter investigates a Star Wars fan club, explaining the connection to Han Solo's Millennium Falcon.

  Dragon Ball Quotes Star Wars ... A Lot

    Lots of people draw parallels between Superman and Dragon Ball, but there's another pop culture touchstone with a huge influence on the franchise. Pretty sure you know where this is headed. On more than one occasion, the Dragon Ball franchise has lifted nearly direct quotes from Star Wars, including Bulma's assertion that those who don't escape the collapsing pirate cave will become "permanent residents" -- echoing Han Solo during an escape from the Death Star in The Empire Strikes Back. Colonel Silver also quotes Han with his "Boring conversation, anyway" quip. While General Blue channeled Darth Vader with his menacing, "Apology accepted." Dragon Ball has offered plenty of visual homages to Star Wars, too. Including the Excel Saga episode "The Woman From Mars" opening crawl that blatantly informs viewers this episode is going straight sci-fi.

  It's quite fitting that so many anime creators would be drawn to the folklore and style of Star Wars, considering George Lucas' admission that Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress -- a live-action samurai film that inspired many other anime offerings -- had influenced his creation of the long-running franchise. What goes around comes around, in a great, big Ouroboros of sci-fi tropes.

  What are your favorite Star Wars Easter eggs in anime? Let us know in the comments!

    ----

  Carolyn also writes for Bunny Ears and Cracked. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com