Goopie's goodies

Caroline, assistant to Cave Johnson, testifies at the Senate hearings on missing astronauts, 1968.

"You really think Caroline would do that? Just go to the senate and tell lies?" Are you kidding? She'll give her LIFE for Aperture.

quick cave and caroline doodle

The more I think about the Mainframe Chassis the more it sounds like some fucked up MK Ultra experiment. This thing gives you an extreme euphoric response comparable to that of cocaine (paired with the eventual diminishing returns) whenever someone finishes a test. When a core is attached, it becomes a voice inside your head (and apparently may even restrict your physical actions if we trust ughhhh Lego Dimensions). Like holy shit how can you NOT expect someone to go mad when attached to this thing?? It's literally designed to ruin you. Imagine what Cave would've been like if he survived long enough to be put into this thing. Though I do wonder if all these weird mental inhibitors were added on specifically for Caroline since she might be a "less than willing" inheritor.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not in the "the mainframe makes everyone EVIL!" camp. That shits bogus. Both Wheatley and GLaDOS were dubious individuals from the start, all the chassis ever did is wear them down slowly over time (at least in Wheatley's case, GLaDOS seems to be slightly better off? Debatable when you consider that she tested a vault's worth of test subjects to death in a single week)

It's definitely an extremely cruel contraption, but I wouldn't really put all the blame on it for Wheatley's actions (honestly it sounds like an excuse he himself would use). He basically went on a power trip fueled by both his own insecurities and addiction to the weird pleasure response hard-wired into it.

Fun fact: there is a non-canon, yet still Valve-made glimpse into how Cave would've acted when plugged into chassis: Perpetual Testing Initiative (voiclines from which can be seen here)! Tl;dr: he gets understimulated very quick, and it's heavily implied he also goes to kill off all the employees once his dissatisfaction reaches a critical mass... yet overall he holds up remarkably well. What's interesting is that it suggests he, unlike GLaDOS and Wheatley, doesn't recieve the stimulation and the associated "itch": again, Cave only complains about how bored he is, not about how the process of testing makes him feel. I think it only gives credibility to the notion that the stimulation system is only in place in a canon chassis because Caroline wasn't turned into GLaDOS voluntarily.

Anyways, yeah, when you really look at Chapter 8 beyond the initial impression of "haha it's all a big innuendo", the implications quickly become rather horrifying, no wonder Wheatley lost ot so quickly. And omg, yes, all the talk about the "evil mainframe" is such a bogus.

Worst road trip ever

oh god i havent posted art here in the last five months

i saw a picture of a hugo boss magasine, and thought would look cool if it was Cave Johnson instead.

(reference pic and alt versions below the cut)

I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that Aperture science had a praying mantis incident- which have a famous myth around them that the females will decapitate the males- and then cave Johnson’s head is all that remained of him in desk job

nobody asked for this.

"Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically. Employee retention, however, has not."

if the halftone looks yucky on your screen just uhh make the image bigger (unshaded ver. below)

elon musk is like if you took all of the walt disney out of cave johnson. none of the big ideas or grand, bizarre ambitions but all of the infinite money to dump into dangerous, stupid, inhumane pet projects and raking in the benefits from the work of his lab boys

“Cave Johnson here. Was just checking in with the lab coats’ progress on the digital consciousness project, turns out they’ve got some kinda mind control brain chip put together. They already tried a couple in some monkeys, showed me lots of great data on exactly which parts of a monkey brain need to stay intact to keep it alive. Otherwise they used it to confirm that a pig is thinking. Something. That’s gonna have to do for the investor conference, I can tell you for sure that pig isn’t thinking about covering its medical bills. Or paying for monkey funerals.”

very quick ugly doodles for a system shock/portal crossover idea that i just had because i'm so cringeeee and i can't help myself

Loud and clear, five two four

The "canon" Cave Johnson: Boy howdy, I could just live forever! (dies with expediency)

The "non-canon" Cave Johnson(s): i have become a shadow of my former greatness. i exist in an eternal state of self-inflicted torment. death was my great foe and I hath killed it, trapping me forevermore in a physical cage, beyond the gentle arms of eternity. ....for God's sake can ANYTHING, ANYONE end my pitiful existence? (lives forever)

I think that it's super funny that the alternate universe Caves, as far as we can tell, do not have Caroline (as we know her) as their assistant, and I'd say most of them live long enough to get trapped in some sort of "torment nexus". Only canon Cave with Caroline (as we know her) perishes before being put into a "torment nexus" (ignoring the cut cave cube). This means Caroline kills Cave for sure. So, I will back up this theory in a tedious four part video essay series where i will not speak clearly or linearly and play poorly selected free to use hip-hop tracks or that one portal track over and over and--

decided to quickly redraw/draw over an old (and I mean OLD) GLaDOS drawing. I liked the idea I was going for! It's GLaDOS standing over Cave Johnson's corpse lol. Original drawing under the cut (:

As I work on revising chapter 15 of Schrödinger’s Cave, I’m sure many of you have been wondering what CaveDOS looks like from the moment his consciousness was put in there… so here he is! SC Cave Johnson in all his glory as a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. Looking pretty good, sir!