20: ITS MY LIFE! – Chapter Four

Title: ITS MY LIFE!
Author: MarissaTheWriter
Media: Video game
Topic: Portal
Genre: Listed as Adventure/Drama…
URL: IT’S MY LIFE! : Chapter Four
Critiqued by Ghostcat

:thunk:

:thunk:

:thunk:

Oh, hi there. I’m just bashing myself over the head with this baseball bat to get my brain all softened up for today’s chapter of ITS MY LIFE!

For those of you who didn’t make it through the last installment, let me catch you up – Marissa the Super-Sue dodged an asteroid strike on the Moon, saved her robot-ball baby-daddy, fell back to Earth, and found her sister Chell, whom she discovered had brain damage. Chell did a little Booty Quake dance and Marissa tearfully blew her frickin’ head off. After murdering her only known family, she goes looking for Glados, who should still be floating through the nothingness of space, but is in fact nearby listening to depressing emo goth music. Marissa uses another situation-specific power, MEGA PAWNCH, to punch Glados’ head off and everyone is happy. And then the bad-ass robots show up, threaten Marissa and her robot-ball baby-daddy, and are vanquished by a frying pan wielded by Chell, who is now a zombie. She bites one of the robots, Atlas, and it becomes a zombie as well. If you can tell me how this is possible, I will give you a brand-new kidney. (Not mine, but it might be human. Or monkey. Meh, some sort of mammal.)

All caught up? Good. Now maybe you can explain it to me because I’ve got no frickin’ clue what’s going on.

And it only gets worse from here!

CHAPTER 3: HELLO HELL, THE RETURN OF GABE JONSON!

I know – it says Chapter Three but it’s really Chapter Four. The next chapter is listed as Chapter Five. The author is apparently as good with numbers as she is with words.

Instead of an Author’s Note, this chapter begins with a pair of shout-outs to a couple of reviewers. In the first one she thanks one of the reviewers for the idea of “androd” hell, which features prominently in this chapter. I’ve read the review; it basically says “Send her to hell, that’s where she belongs” but it doesn’t look like the author picked up on the subtle hint. The second one is … I just have to share it.

“OF COURSE ITS BAD CHELL BOOTY QUAKED AN NOW THERE ARE ZOMBOYS, IF IT DOESN’T GET BAT THE STORY WULD BE BORON! ITS CALLED CONFILCT MY TEACHER TOLD ME SO!”

Your teacher needs to be taken out behind the woodshed and spanked with a landmine.

Okay then, here’s the chapter!

Marissa is shocked (more o-mouthing) at Zombie Chell and Zombie Atlas, Wheetly just screams. She has no weapons to fight with, even though she just demonstrated the ability to “MEGA PAWNCH” someone’s head off with her bare hands. Thinking quickly, she uses the portal gun she happens to have in her hands, even thought she just said she didn’t have any weapons, to portal herself and Wheetly far away. They begin looking for clues as to why Chell, who should be a rapidly stiffening headless corpse, is now a zombie. (or “zombee”) Suddenly she realizes that one of her situation-specific powers is “super detective” and instantly knows the cause of the human (and robot) vampirism.

Potatoes.

Potatoes are mentioned in Portal 2; one is used as a power source by GLaDOS for a portion of the game. For those unfamiliar with the game –  at one point Chell, the protagonist, is wandering through an abandoned section of the Enrichment Center that is still decorated with a banner for “Take Your Daughter To Work Day” and a number of science projects are still set up, complete with three part display boards, and nearly all are potato batteries. (one is a baking soda volcano) Most of the potatoes are whithered and dead but there is one gigantic one that has grown to fill a good portion of the hallway, with thick vines reaching up and down into the rest of the complex. Wheatley, who is travelling with Chell at this point in the game, remarks that there must be potatoes everywhere by now.

Those potatoes. Techically they are zombie-making potatoes since the potatoes are not zombies themselves. At least there is no mention of hordes of slavering undead tubers roaming the halls of the Enrichment Center. As Marissa explains it;

“Those were zombee taters if you eat them an dead you will be zombee.” I esplained to Wheetly who o-mouthed.

That is her entire explanation for why there are zombies in this story.  I will never mock  Resident Evil‘s “Better science through zombies!” plotline ever again. Or until I forget and do it anyway.

Ignoring the fact that, as a robot-ball, Wheetly doesn’t have a mouth with which to o-mouth, I have translated this to mean that if someone eats one of the zombie-making potatoes and then dies, they will become a zombie. Alternatively it could mean that if you are already dead and eat a zombie-making potato that you will turn into a zombie, but if you’re dead you have pretty much moved beyond the “snacking on raw tubers” stage.

As Marissa reveals this starchy plot twist, a portal appears without warning near them and out steps Zombie Chell and Zombie Atlas.

Let’s have a quick refresher course in how portals work. The portal gun shoots two portals, differentiated by blue and orange colored borders. These portals only adhere to surfaces coated with adhesion gel, which contains ground-up Moon rocks and is very expensive and highly toxic. (Not something you would use to paint the hallways of your office building.) One portal by itself does nothing, you need both portals to be active for them to work. Like any gun, the portal gun only shoots in a straight line; you have to be able to see what you’re shooting, even if it is very far away. If you are close enough to the zombies that are chasing you that you can still see them and are near a portal surface and they have a portal gun, you shouldn’t stop running to explain a ridiculous plot point, you daft twit.

Marissa’s powers are still acting “wonky” so she can’t fight them, instead she runs. As she is running, she trips over a “prototip” portal gun that is just lying around. She picks it up and fires it at the attacking zombies, when she does this they vanish and flames shoot up (it is assumed the portal is on the floor). As Wheetly so succinctly puts it, “Bloody hell it’s a buggering portal to andord hell!”

Again – for the portals to work, there must be two active portals. It’s not a cosmic paper punch, it just links two places through the portals. That means someone traveled to Android Hell, shot a portal somewhere that just happened to be coated in Moon rocks, and then traveled back to the Enrichment Center and tossed the “prototip” gun into a hallway for this chick to trip over without passing through any of the Material Emancipation Grids (forcefields that reset the portal gun, closing any active portals) located at nearly every entrance and exit.

Despite the fact that Atlas had been very mean to her and she had already killed her sister once, she decides to save them. She picks up the “prototip” gun (that she never actually let go of) and jumps through the portal.

That’s two portal guns that she has now, the one she used to escape the zombies and the one she just found lying around. A portal gun is a fairly unwieldy device, most of the pictures I’ve seen show it being held in one hand with the barrel supported in the other. Like so.  It’s not as if you can just stick it in a holster, what with the little prong-things at the front. And at no point in this chapter does she put down either one of them.

Android Hell is described as being;

“a bunch of metal an fire with robots gettin bet up I saw Glados an Chell an Atlas all there being hurted by robodemons from the game DOOM”

Funny, I thought hell would be filled with bad fanfic writers instead of video game robots. Oh well, to each their own.

Marissa walks up to Chell, who is still being “hurted” by the “robodemons”, and sees that she is no longer a zombie. Chell o-mouths ( :sigh: ) at her and hugs her, telling Marissa that she saved her because there are no zombies in “adroid” hell (remember that). Chell has either forgotten or forgiven the “shooting me in the skull” incident, because she does not mention it. Ever.

If my sister shot me in the head, the first thing I would do when I saw her again (assuming I did see her again) would be to ask her why she had shot me in the head. Actually, I would probably slap her in the face and scream at her first, but I’d definitely want to know why she shot me.

Happy to have found the sister she murdered, who is still being “hurted” by the robodemons since it’s never stated or implied that they have stopped, Marissa decides to go looking for Atlas (even though Marissa could see him from where she entered hell).
While the two women are looking for Atlas, who should be right in front of them, they find a hot tub made of lava containing a “muscely” guy and several babes. Chell o-mouths ( :sigh: ) at the sight of the man and Marissa sends her a telepathic message asking her what was wrong and who the “muscely” guy was.
Because she’s suddenly telepathic now.

Chell tells her that he is “GABE JONSON!”, the sound of his name makes the “muscely” guy look up at them. He appears shocked (“scarred lookin”) to see them; he makes “fart bubbles” in the lava which makes the hot babes angry so they leave. He recognizes Marissa, calling her by name. When she asks him how he knows her name, he tells her that she is his “DOTTER”, causing everyone, even the robots, to o-mouth.( :sigh: ) Chell faints, since she is Marissa’s sister and that makes “Gabe Jonson” her father as well. (This is despite the fact that Chell is never told that Marissa is her sister by anyone at any time during this story.) He gets out of the hot tub but since he is “NAKED” and it was “all gross” Marissa runs away. Gabe laughs at his faux pas and puts on his pants, which Marissa doesn’t actually witness since at this point she is “far away”. Chell is still passed out and presumably still being roughed up by the robodemons.

After running for a while, Marissa finds the portal she entered hell through and sees something bad – Wheetly is tied up (he’s a ball, there are numerous references to him being a robot-ball…how do you tie up a BALL?) and Atlas and P-Body are throwing the zombie-making potatoes into hell. (They must have Super Detective Power as well) The robots in Android Hell are eating the zombie-making potatoes (huh?) and are all turning into zombies. Even though, as previously stated, there are no zombies in “adroid” hell. One of the robodemons eats one of the zombie-making potatoes and;

“becomed the big zombie boss monster from Reisdent Evil only he had a portal gun an rocket launchers”

Because eveything’s better with rocket launchers.

Everything!

As Gabe Jonson arrives, carrying the still-unconscious Chell and being chased by zombies, the two robots close the portal and leave them behind. Gabe instructs Marissa to use her powers to get them out.

“Marrissa you most use yur powers its the only hope.” Gabe Jonson said an I new it was true. I bended down on the metal floor an thot hard an sparks came out of my everwhere an I glowed brite gold. Gabe Jonson o-mouthed at me an Chell was still uncosios so she didnt do nothin. There was a huge flash of the britest lite ever an we were in Portal Labs!”

Sparks came out of her “everywhere”. That sounds exceptionally painful.

A joyful Marissa hugs Gabe and Chell, who is still unconscious, and someone begins to laugh at them. It is …GLADOS! ( :gasp!: ) She has escaped “Ardod Hell” and vows to have revenge on Marissa. Again.

I am having serious doubts that the author has ever heard of the game  Portal, much less played it. I’ve never played the game and I can point out all kinds of problems. Not one single character has done anything remotely in-character, half the time the characters’ names are spelled wrong. That aside, this fic is poorly written and has never even been near a spell-check. The constant “o-mouthing” and “lolling” is really, really getting on my nerves. My four-year-old niece can tell a more coherent story and she’s hopped up on sugar most of the time.

---