Entry tags:

fandom: portal, shipping is very serious business, tumblr

Drive-By Shipping Wank
This just happened on Tumblr, and I think everybody involved is more confused than anything else. Our dramatis personae are Fuchsiamae, Tumblr Portal fandom's most vocal and prolific Caveline shipper, and a persistent anon.

It started out as a tl;dr but quite calm and reasonable discussion of differing interpretations of Cave Johnson's relationship with his secretary:

---

Anonymous asked: How do you resolve your headcanon of a great Cave/Caroline romance with the fact that he made it very clear he wasn't interested in her input on whether to make her into GLaDOS? I am all for shipping whatever interests people but you seem pretty convinced it's canon. It always seemed to me like he was more concerned with the company's well being than with her own.

I wouldn’t call it canon. It’s how I prefer to read their relationship, and I think there’s plenty of subtextual support if you do choose to read it that way, but it’s just one possibility.

On the upload and the greater issue of how Cave treats Caroline in general, several points:

I know I talk a lot about how much he respects her, but I say that with a caveat — what I mean is he respects her as much as he can. This is still Cave Johnson we’re talking about, and for sheer solipsism the man rivals Zaphod Beeblebrox. What his respect for Caroline means in practice is that he trusts her with a lot of responsibility, knowing she’ll get the job done. In disputes between her and someone else, she’s always right. In disputes between the two of them, he’s still right.

The thing about Cave Johnson is that in his mind, you either agree with him or you’re wrong. Caroline is a smart lady, and he knows that. Because she’s so smart, he assumes she’s always right — which means she always agrees with him. If she disputes something, it’s because she doesn’t understand the issue fully, or because her womanly emotions are getting in the way. When she’s clearheaded and fully informed, of course she’ll agree with him. That’s the mindset with which he operates.

Caroline’s well aware of that — and because she is so very smart, she uses it. She’ll voice disagreement if she has to, but she knows that butting heads with Cave Johnson never ends well. It’s much safer and more effective to smile and nod, do things her way behind his back, and then let him take the credit when it works. She knows how to play him. And in the end it doesn’t matter so much who’s right or wrong as it does that they both work for the good of the company — because for both of them, the company comes first.

On the specific issue of GLaDOS, the company does come first. Cave pushes Caroline into it because he wants to make sure Aperture is taken care of after his death. Because of the mindset I just talked about, he’s convinced she’ll eventually come around in spite of her initial opposition — which, in my headcanon at least, she does. There’s a good number of years between Cave’s death and the upload. It’s possible that she was kept locked up all that time and then dragged to the lab for the transfer, but I think it’s more likely that she did come to accept it for the good of Aperture. She is the only person who can take Cave’s place, after all, and it was what he wanted.

Building on that, I do think Cave was looking out for Caroline as well, in his own way. In his mind, uploading her was the right thing, whether she wanted it or not — because uploading her not only keeps Aperture in good hands, but it keeps her safe too. He was dying, remember. He was staring death in the face. The kind of long, slow death he went through is painful, and frightening, and humiliating to a proud man like Cave. Caroline’s never had to face that. She objects to the transfer, but she doesn’t know what death is, not like he does. Uploading her is a chance to save her from that.

And if we’re talking cut lines (since Caroline’s objections weren’t included in the game), it’s worth noting that Cave’s last speech originally contained the line, “Treat her just like you’d treat me… Just make sure she’s taken care of.” (x)

I’ll never call it a healthy relationship, but I do think he loves her as well as Cave Johnson can.

---

Anonymous asked: Why would she volunteer herself to be the first person participating in that untested technology though? She'd have to be as irrational and foolhardy as Cave, and I can't imagine two such people would be able to function together to get anything done. And she obviously didn't do anything to make sure GLaDOS remained the one in charge since the scientists immediately began subjugating her. I just can't see any sane person putting themselves in that position of their own will.

You say volunteer like she had a choice…

The way I see it, she’s backed into a corner. She doesn’t trust the technology — or the people behind it — but it’s the only way she can keep control of Aperture. She’s going to die herself someday. And it’s not unreasonable to guess that she was poisoned by the moonrocks as well, to a lesser degree, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of time. She’s still not happy about it, but she does it to keep Aperture safe, because Aperture always comes first.

And I really doubt the tech went totally untested — that wouldn’t just be stupidly risky, but also totally out of line with what we know of Aperture and its fixation on testing. She’d be the first to undergo the full upload into the mainframe, but they’d certainly have experimented to a lesser degree on plenty of people. They have a whole facility of employee “volunteers” to work with.

As for keeping control of the facility after the upload, it’s not like she just handed control over to the scientists without a fight. She tried to kill them. They built in failsafes and ways to control her which they thought would be effective, probably without telling Caroline, because I doubt they intended to let her keep power anyway. I bet they hated her. They resented her as a woman in a position of power, as someone who went from secretary to CEO allegedly by fucking the boss, and as the stone cold bitch she was. They planned ways to control her ‘just in case’ something went wrong, and at the first sign of trouble, they shut her down. Combine that with the fact that the upload drove her crazy, and I don’t think she stood a chance.

---

Anonymous asked: It seems like if the writers meant for it to be interpreted that Caroline volunteered, they would have written it in; anything along the lines of "Caroline says she'll do it if I can't." Instead they wrote Cave saying "you MAKE her." That's really significant.

Y…es? I think it definitely is significant. It shows that no matter what his feelings for her are, he knows best. That mindset is very important to his character, to the way he runs his company, and to his relationship with Caroline.

And I don’t think she volunteered. I think she was backed into a corner — maybe constrained by a written will, maybe by the scientists, or maybe simply because it was the only way to take care of Aperture — and in the end she accepted it, grudgingly, because it was the best or the only thing she could do.

Yes, you could paint her as kicking and screaming the whole way, but I don’t see why you’d want to. That reduces her to a victim. I’d rather see her as a strong person who made a tough decision, even though she knows it’ll end badly for her, for the good of the company she loves.

---

Then the anon starts getting indignant, and Fuchsia starts getting confused:

Anonymous asked: What I want to have happened has nothing to do with it. You are welcome to extrapolate to reach the conclusions you are comfortable with, but as far as what the game tells us, it's Occam's Razor. Cave said he doesn't care Caroline wants, GLaDOS immediately commits to killing every scientist she encounters upon activation. All the information =in the game= points to her being wronged and very angry about it. You don't seem to have any interest in distinguishing your shipping from canon.

Okay, first off, I agree with what you’re saying. Cave didn’t listen to what she wanted, she did not want to be uploaded, and GLaDOS’s rage against the scientists is the result. I’m agreeing with that. None of those points negate the ship, and I thought I’d explained the way I work with them.

What I’m interested in is the story I prefer to tell — and when you’re storytelling, Occam’s Razor isn’t the greatest guideline. Yes, the interpretation of Caroline as a victim fits canon, but it squicks me out and I don’t want to be involved in it. I’ve taken the few canon details we have and worked with them for a narrative that I hope allows her some personal agency. Yes, you could write a Caroline whose only purpose in Aperture’s story is to be brutally taken advantage of, but that’s not the Caroline or the story I want to write. If that’s the way you see it, write it yourself. I’d rather make what I think is a more interesting choice.

---

Anonymous asked: Actually it is very possible to read your responses and disagree with your interpretation. I don't need to have some mental block keeping me from appreciating the glory of Caveline, or to get off on women being wronged, or any of the other aberrations you have suggested. And not being in a relationship with Cave doesn't make her life meaningless, so I don't get your suggestion that if I don't buy into Caveline then her only purpose is to be brutally taken advantage of. Wow.

?????????

I have no idea where you’re getting any of this and at this point I’m just really confused.

You asked me to explain my interpretation, and I did, and now you’re apparently angry about it.

If you don’t ship it that’s totally fine. I never said you had to, and I’m not trying to convince you, I’m just explaining why I do because you asked.

I honestly have no idea where to even start.

---

Anonymous asked: Whatever makes you happy I guess. It irritates me how dismissive you are of anything and anyone that doesn't suit your shipping but it's your blog. Enjoy!

Okay?

I do actually have friends who don’t ship it and still write Caroline beautifully, and one of my favorite early Caveline pieces portrays them platonically with Caroline as a lesbian, but I guess I’m just totally dismissive of anything that doesn’t line up to my specific shipping tastes, yeah.

If you actually want to talk about your own interpretation, I’m curious to hear it, since it sounds like you’ve given it some thought. Otherwise you can leave my closeminded ship-crazy blog alone I guess.

---

Anonymous asked: Nah, you've contendly painted me as the crazy one with all the "anon is clearly not reading me" tags and your cheerleaders saying I'm full of shit. Enjoy your echo chamber in peace.

Okay?

---

And the anon departs back into the mists of the internet from whence it came, leaving everyone puzzled.