Writer Reacts to Portal 'Lab Rat' web comic 

I also like that the art style gets more sober and realistic after Doug takes his medicine, then gets more colorful and artistic againnwhen the effects fade.

One of the main things that made me stay on your channel was the fact that you are a writer and actually show it and comment from "the writer perspective" your opinions on some game's story telling and explain why you think the writers made that choice So if you're planning on making more of these videos im 100% here for it

From a graphic artist stand point considering I make art, I love the way the artist went about the comic. I’m currently in a college class that talks about comics, the art, writing, story etc. I played portal 2 before reading the comic and playing portal 1. From an artist stand point I think the scratchy like lines, out of line coloring, along with the text bubbles looking like wall writings serves as a neat aesthetic and symbolism. Maybe I’m looking too deep into this but I see the rough scratches and brush strokes as symbolism for Ratt man’s mind. It seems so out of place for a supposed scientist, which people often see as neat and clean in the real world. Also could represent how aperture science as pretty much started to fall apart. Also love how the portals serve as comic panels, creative.

What a great video! Echoing what another commenter said, definitely part of what has made me enjoy your game playthroughs more than others is your writer's brain perspective on things. You are really appreciative of details that I think a lot of other streamers miss. Now that you've read the comic, I recommend checking out the song "Exile Vilify" by The National. It was written specifically for this comic and Portal 2, and the lyrics are referenced in this comic. There's no spoilers for the game at all - it's really just about Doug. It's a great, sad song.

I finally read the comic in anticipation for this video, it's actually amazing.

What a joy watching you re-live the excitement I had leading up to Portal 2. Valve ran a lot of PR tie-ins to other games in the weeks before release. I remember spending a lot of time in KF2 on the Portal maps trying to do the steam achievements. I collected three potatoes. What great memories. Maybe you could have someone very carefully tell you about the ARG valve released to hype up the release of Portal 2.

30:35 That was a good read and even better observations!

Pretty sure you got it right about Doug there yes, he noticed the power was out for all the cryosleep pods. It's the reason he tried to get to the control room, to save Chell. So he went to bed knowing the cryopod he was closing himself into didn't have any functioning systems, presumably not even ventilation. Btw, you can piece together a bit more about the timeline after playing Portal 2 if check the comic again afterwards, nothing worthy of a video as its just a few simple things. Though I recommend you check it out yourself after completing Portal 2, one panel in particular is even more interesting with that knowledge. Especially with your comments on that particular page which were quite interesting.

Damn I haven't even read the comic or heard about it but here I am

absolutely enjoyed rereading this comic with you! Thank you for your insight!

0:00 This is a great comic.

This was nicely done, it's cool to see how you interpreted as the story / lore unfolded. Also very glad you got to read this before jumping into portal 2, but i'm not surprised that you did as you are a lore junky :) Next up Portal 2. #dougthehero (throwback to you saying that, and if you remember 17:09)

Not me actually crying from this comic lol

I knew about this comic and a lot of the lore in it, but I never got around to actually reading it, reading it alongside you was cool

It's not entirely clear if you don't have some knowledge in advance, but the realistic panels where Doug is neater are from the past.

26:18 Nice impression :)

I loved this, the Portal series has always been a favorite of mine, I personally preferred Portal 2 between them. I really enjoy getting different perspectives on games from people with different educational backgrounds, I also watch Dr Mick, he is a therapist and his deep dives into games through that window is so interesting! Have you ever thought about playing the Horizon series?

I don't remember this comic but thankful to read it with you

Crazy idea: Doug is Chell's father, which is why he redacted her from the file infrastructure. She's constantly ragged-on as being an orphan, but Doug actually brought her for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day and she snuck off into the testing facility and was lost, only to be recovered in an injured state and put into initial stasis to heal her (which took years from her adolescence to adult-age, having that be partial cause for the psychosis and 'hunch' that Doug has). Cave Johnson would have offered to have his "best medical eggheads brink her _right_ back up to snuff, you bet your bottom dollar-- and, *trust me,* we're very close after that Moon Rock purchase." In the same hand, budgetary causation would have led to her becoming a test subject, considering the amount of money that they spent on her would need to be recouped somehow. That part was already in the fine-print of Doug's Aperture contract. He wouldn't know anyone on that list but his daughter's own name, which is why he stops when he gets to her name in the Excel spreadsheet. He wanted to give her a chance at life again, not knowing whether she was alive or dead. He follows along during Portal 1 silently in the walls (as "The Rattman") and watches her progress, becoming more and more hopeful that she'll survive. All of the insane glitches that GLaDOS's text-to-speech encoding has in the beginning of the game is actually Doug screwing with her mainframe behind-the-scenes to remove her ability to flat-out lie because he knew about the deadly neurotoxin incidents and that she would do anything to trick and kill her just to spite Doug, knowing he's also in the facility and toying/taunting him on his simultaneous journey as shown in his escape methods sequence where she discusses the cat experiments. That would explain the strange gaps in her lengthy conversations with Chell at certain points where normally she would chime in for a while. This comic details Chell first awakening by the very end of the story, as intended by Doug Rattman himself and not GLaDOS. If anyone would have come to save Doug, it would have been Chell. She likely studied all of the research with her father too. GLaDOS purposefully changed the list to have her very, very low on the testing structure so that Doug would be dead by the time Chell came to find him. The same defect in the testing drive that turned Wheatley into a psychopath in mere moments (more so after the diminishing returns of testing became unbridled rage and a desire to kill Chell) was the same drive that fed her desire to kill all of the scientist in the lab that continued to tinker with her during trial phases instead of allowing her to test. Once GLaDOS becomes disconnected from the mainframe, we can note a significant shift in her personality. The same with Wheatley after being disconnected and his monologue in space. In all honesty, everyone in the story is a tragic character for their own reasons throughout the comic and both games, and it's easy to see why once you peer behind those cold walls into the Rattman hideaways and secrets held in Aperture's core motivations. It was always about beating Half Life's Black Mesa... It was never about the science once Cave Johnson's rage kicked in, and his testing initiative. What better than to turn the science toy into a weapons contract guarantee-- an AI that could dominate in war after humanity fell in the case of the Combine (which as we know, did happen) To be honest, I think Cave Johnson's actually in the mainframe as a virus and that the eggheads snuck him in after GLaDOS was working properly, thinking he could assist her research. GLaDOS is testing initiative, her Companion Cube Consciousness instead being a psychotic mind glued together and given one priority-- *death.*

This comic almost made me cry.😢

Just throwing it out there: Hope is an evil so great, that all the lesser evils fled Pandora's Box the moment they had the chance. Then Hope played with Pandora's emotions until she repeated her mistake and released it into the world. Now people can fly on the wings of hope until they crash in the surface of reality. Like Icarus with the wax wings. Just came to mind about 29 minutes in when you mentioned "One of the qualities that gives me hope." about 29:15. (Why yes, I do have Depression. How did you guess? That doesn't excuse Pandora repeating her mistake. I never feel worse than when I am dumb enough to look forward to something that never happens.)

If you are interested in games that take advantage of this interactive media and unique way of story telling to shift your perspective of reality, then you should check out Doki Doki Literature Club if you haven't already. And you mentioned that you studied literature, so your take on analyzing the poems and the story will be very interesting. Quick warning thou, it is a psychological horror game so if you don't like that kind of stuff then you may not play it but I suggest giving it a shot. Also its a visual novel that starts off as a dating sim trope which maybe annoying at the beginning but it is worth the wait till you get to the real plot. It is a fun game to stream and best to play completely blind.

There are plenty of insults physics etc. can direct at us CS people, but you chose a particularly bad example. The hard sciences are the ones with lots of math; CS has more math than the others. Physics makes fun of biology for not being a hard science; they can all go after CS for really being math not science.