Having just quit my job in favour of not going postal and sprinkling broken glass into customers drinks, I finally found myself with enough time to play Portal 2's single player, and thought I'd give my interpretation of the story.
My experience of the first Portal was one of sheer joy comparable to watching your first born child slide into the world already wearing aviators & building a jetpack, and then I was fortunate enough to read this article:
http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/f/portal-is-the-most-subversive-game-ever/a-20071207115329881080/g-2006071916221774024To summarise, it's possible to interpret Portal 1 as a feminine take on the world of First Person Shooters; your antagonist (a female robot) uses verbal discouragement rather than physical force, and the only creatures that do cause you harm are easily defeated turrets whose size and squeaky vocals make them resemble naughty children more than a real threat.
If we look at Portal 2 in the same light there is a lot more to interpret in Portal 2's fairly simple story.
An overview of the story is as thus: you are rescued/released from a potentially endless stasis by a robot eye called Wheatley (voiced by Stephen Merchant) and set off to escape the ruined laboratory together, since neither of you are capable of achieving this by yourself. Wheatley leads you to a potential exit, but his clumsiness re awakes Glados, your antagonist from Portal 1, who separates you and Wheatley. You progress, snide comments from your adversary ever present, before you finally reconvene with Wheatley and take down Glados by removing her robot eye component from the lab's mainframe and replacing it with Wheatley's. Wheatley, suddenly drunk on power refuses you exit from the lab and torments you in the same manner as his predecessor, though as is stressed, not as capably.
You later team up with what is left of Glados in order to take Wheatley down before he destroys the entire lab, himself included.
The final confrontation with Wheatley involves Glados handing you faulty robot eyes so that you can merge them with Wheatley in an attempt to dumb him down even further, before you shoot a portal onto the moon and he is sucked out into the void.
Since Wheatley is the only male character we are introduced to in either game, a safe bet would be that he would fill the role of either virtual father or virtual boyfriend. In this case it's boyfriend, as you and Wheatley overcome each of the lab's challenges together, neither one of you being able to progress entirely without the other's help from time to time. Even after you are separated Wheatley attempts to peek through holes in the scenery to reach you, which is kind of sweet if you think about it. And then comes the betrayal; Wheatley, suddenly in control of the entire facility, gets ideas above his station and banishes you and Glados to the bowels of the lab.
Down there, we learn that Glados' personality is based on that of the lab's owner's favourite employee; his secretary Caroline who he wanted to live on, so he had her brain uploaded as his last gift before he died. This is shocking news to Glados, who is scared & vulnerable for the first time in her existence, so we forget about her long history of being an utter bitch and agree to work together to bring down Wheatley.
The puzzles Wheatley sets you are crude and when bested, he will use his robot arms to tear apart the scenery & crush you (the first time a character has attempted to use physical violence against you).
When the final confrontation arises the physically imposing Wheatley attacks you head on, whilst Glados aids you by throwing you defective robotic eyes that you can use as a weapon. As you wield them, the eyes talk to you in men's voices, each one doing an impression of how some men act around a girl.
The first the first a gibbering wreck, it's eye darting round frantically; clearly not boyfriend material. The second has the voice and attitude a cocky & patronising bar-fly, who eye narrows as he looks you up and down. He is the kind of guy who holds a door for a woman so he can look at her arse; again, not dating material. The final eye can only be described as a nerd; it reels off useless facts, unaware of the current social situation, and refuses to make eye contact, looking slightly above you as you hold it.
Each of these contenders has had their chance to be close to you and has been discarded, because our character has learnt the difference between these idiots and good boyfriend material.
Thankfully, our friend Glados did warn us that these guys were 'defunct' before we met them, so you could always say that it was thanks to her guidance that we were able to tell the difference, but we were the ones to actually physically dump them. You go girl.
As the building crumbles around him, Wheatley insists that he is still in control; an extreme version of the 'refusing to ask for directions' story, before being flung into space where the final cut scene shows him apologising for being so 'bossy & monstrous'.
I've made Portal's portrayal of men sound worse than it actually is, and again this is just my interpretation, but I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the matter.
So yeah, a video game about a girl being wronged by a psychotic ex, and turning an enemy into a friend in order to never make the same mistake again. Also, portals look like vaginas.
Bring on Portal 3: Using Lasers To Deal With Daddy Issues.
Sisters (and for having the train platform where they filmed The Railway Children), and rummaging in the basement of an old knick-knack shop, I found an old 10" 78rpm record with a pretty sleeve that I bought for 50p. Before you ask, that is a picture of me back when I died my hair black. I'm not overly proud of it, but there's no pretending it didn't happen.
Anyway, the record itself was from the 30s (meaning it was made from something much heavier than vinyl) and has a couple of tunes, sung by Maurice Elwin, a singer who is hard to track down online. He's credited with singing a few songs from the 30s and there appear to be a couple of photos of him kicking about, but otherwise there seems to be no other information about him.
