Talk:Portal (game)

Name

Should this be moved to "Portal (video game)" to be more consistent with articles like Half-Life (video game)? Patchlamb (talk) 19:52, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Controversy, too much development history

I threw up a number of notices on the main page:

• PPOV: A Portal fan informed me that many of the example fanworks and some of the fan theories listed have controversy associated with them that isn't detailed, such as racism.
• Less Canon: There is too much detail about the development of the game and non-fan information, such as sales numbers.

I'm not in the Portal fandom, and given the touchy subject matter, I don't feel comfortable editing something I'm not educated on. A group of Portal fans are aware of the issue and may come to Fanlore to edit, but I encourage anyone that is more familiar with the fandom to research the controversies and expand upon them. --Pinky G Rocket (talk) 18:40, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there's too much canon as it relates to two games occupying one page, as well as having a much longer fandom section than canon section. Some canon content is usually allowed for context. But I can review the information on sales and such to see what could be cut down on that end. Though I've read some fanfics and enjoy the games and art, I haven't been very deep into theories/controversy with the game for a long while. I haven't read much on it outside of some general shipping discussions that were discussed back on Tumblr, mainly when Portal 2 came out. I can definitively see if I can find criticisms of the game surrounding racism; I imagine it may have something to do with how artists depict Chell. Patchlamb (talk) 19:43, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The actual summary of the game isn't really the issue. The issue lies with the fact that there are too many details on its development. I've noticed you've already gone ahead and cut a lot of it, but I feel that I should clarify just to make sure we're on the same page. Pinky G Rocket (talk) 22:38, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey Pinky G Rocket, you mentioned some fanworks used as examples on the page were related to controversy. Do you know which ones? Patchlamb (talk) 19:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm in the fandom and can answer this, at least as far as the fan theories issue (the fanworks one is one I don't really want to get involved in for fear of backlash). One of them is one that appears on the page already--the "Chell is the daughter of Caroline and Cave." The theory blatantly ignores the fact that Cave and Caroline are white, whereas Chell is Japanese/Brazilian, which a lot of fans very understandably take issue with. There's another theory that's steeped in controversy that's not mentioned in the page at all--the "Companion Cubes contain dead bodies" nonsense, which was... a big mess. I'm new to this site but I could probably write out a section for that part, at least. BabyCharmander (talk) 20:01, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't know the fanworks that are specifically controversial, sorry. Pinky G Rocket (talk) 20:07, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Charmander, when I was looking into discourse surrounding issues of racism in the fandom I did come across one mentioning Cave and Caroline being white while Chell wasn't. I wanted to review the wording of the theory section before I moved down into the new discourse section, which is why it's still blank, but I did save these links to use (for the longer ones I haven't read them in full yet): source 1 - source 2 - source 3 - source 4 - source 5.

If you're worried about being new, you can always write info for that section out and post it here in the talk page first. Or you can go ahead and put it on the page itself, and I or another editor can look it over for any changes (like formatting, wording, etc). You can use any of those source, or others you find. They were just a quick grouping I found on Tumblr, I haven't looked on any other websites. Be careful about calling theories things like "nonsense" on the page itself though, instead it's best to just mention what believers of the theory believe and then the opinions of those with counter beliefs. Patchlamb (talk) 20:19, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Canon has since been cut down on and the controversy section added and expanded. I'll be removing the needs less canon and PPOV notices. If there are any future concerns about PPOV they should of course continue to be brought up here on the talk. I'll leave the expand notice under the controversy section since I'm sure there's more others can help cover. Patchlamb (talk) 18:12, 8 March 2022 (UTC)