"Hey! How's it going! I talked my way onto the nanobot work crew rebuilding this shaft. They are REALLY small, so -ah - I KNOW, Jerry. No, I'm on BREAK, mate. On a break."

-Wheatley, Portal 2

Welcome to my Wheatley shrine! While i talk about him a whole lot on my general Portal shrine, this page is specifically dedicated to Wheatley because I think about him so so much. You know how it is.

This is probably going to end up being the most self-indulgent page on this site, if im being fully honest.

As a quick recap:

Who is this Wheatley character, exactly?

Wheatley (also known as the "Intelligence Dampening Sphere") is one of the many personality cores that were constructed specifically to be attached to the AI supercomputer, GLaDOS. His role was to "generate a stream of terrible ideas", which in turn would inhibit GLaDOS from thinking correctly, in hopes of slowing her down and preventing another one of her deadly neurotoxin attacks.

Eventually, he was detached from GLaDOS, being replaced with a different core, and was given other jobs to help out with instead.

One of these jobs included being put incharge of the "Extended Relaxation Center", which housed test subjects in a long-term cryogenic stasis before and after they were put through testing courses.

However, what he did to actually manage that entire wing remains unknown.

The Part Where I Talk About How Much I Love This Cuckball:

Okay, but why this guy? why are you so infatuated with this absolute failguy of a metal ball?

Like with most things I like, I could hardly tell you myself. I've always found myself drawn to villain/antagonist characters though, and I suppose it's no exception when it comes to Wheatley. But did I expect him to effect me to this extent? absolutely not. I'm not complaining though, don't get the wrong idea.

His goofy personality and dare I say cute design draws me in like bait from a fishing wire, especially due to my fondness for all kinds of robots/AI.

Despite Wheatley only being in my life for a or year so far as of writing this, he has for sure permanently rewired my brain when it comes to absolutely everything. The last time this happened was in 2020, when I was 14, and while that incident sure took a massive toll on my autism and my life in general, this is the first time i've ever felt so...I guess in love? with a fictional character.

I question this due to me being both asexual and aromantic, and therefore making it so much harder than it should be to identify whenever I feel attraction to someone, or something. While I have been attracted to many people and things in the past, it has never been as strong as whatever it is I feel for Wheatley, as embarassing as that might sound. I've seen labels for this sort of thing in the past, such as fictoromantic/fictosexual, and while I do align with those, I'd rather not use a label like that to describe what i consider as just regular romantic attraction, given my circumstances. Nothing against the people who do use those labels of course, love you guys! this is just personal preference.

I think the moment when I realized that this was more than just me being insanely autistic over a character was only a couple of days after beating Portal 2 for the first time, which is crazy to think about. Thinking about it makes me feel so grateful I decided to check the Portal games out after eyeing them from a distance for pretty much my entire life. Of course, I always knew that i'd absolutely love Portal, that was a given, but...dear god. It's been a wild one thats for sure.