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If Portal 2 Had Been Written By Classic American Lit Authors

In the spirit of never ever letting go of my favorite game in the whole wide universe, I’ve imagined a world in which my favorite writers had helmed the Portal 2 script instead of Erik Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek and Jay Pinkerton. Thank you for indulging me in my little whims. I… I have a hard time with change.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Caroline had the kind of puffed up lips that looked so good on girls. Cave Johnson, already a bit drunk on unaccustomed champagne and the flush of success coming off his first hobo experiment, tottered handsomely over to ask her to dance.

“Hey fella! Fella! Come over here!” Cave saw he was being beckoned to a potted plant in the corner of the ballroom by a stout, swarthy Italian American wearing a waiter’s uniform and smoking a funny kind of cigarette.

“Whaddya want?” Cave slurred. Menacingly, he hoped.

“I can get lemons for you real cheap. You look like a lemon kind of guy.” The man stamped out his cigarette and smiled slyly at Cave.

Enraged, Cave set the Officer’s Auxiliary Club on fire and ran out into the cool, clean evening air, thinking of a golden girl named Caroline and a future he now knew he would never live to see.

JD Salinger:

There were two kinds of crazy, Chell thought. One kind is when you go to a movie theater and everyone is pretending to enjoy the feature but really they’re all a bunch of goddamn phonies who wouldn’t know good from bad if they were given the choice between figuring it out or dying. And then there was Glados.

Richard Yates:

The turret in front of Wheatley turned and introduced himself. “I’m Richard. Aperture’s okay, I guess, but what I really want to do is get my paintings into the Tate.” Wheatley was suddenly struck by the futility of his work at Aperture and a kind of gray silent desperation settled over him like a cloak. He had always wanted to get a painting into the Tate (although he liked to think the Tate was vulgar and coarse) but he never would have had the balls to say it out loud.  Not in a million years. And although he knew somewhere inside of himself he loathed this weak looking turret, he found himself asking Richard to come have cocktails at his house. “Bring your girl,” he said.  Glados would have to put out some of that expensive cheese they had gotten on their honeymoon but she wouldn’t mind and anyway, wasn’t she always complaining about how they never had any interesting people over?

Mark Twain:

Exactly the same but more riverboats.

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Comments

  1. Kiala Kazebee says:

    @numa Next time I will consult the Jonathan Swift Handbook For Dummies.

  2. Numa says:

    While I applaud the fact that you included a parody of Yates (the Revolutionary Road author too often ignored), I’d argue there’s nothing fantastic or outstanding about this post. It’s parody and a poor parody at that. Throwing “phonies” and “goddamn” into a run-on sentence does not a convincing mimic of JD Salinger make. These posts lack the bite of good satire. The writers used were literary greats. Convincingly executing their style requires more than 25 minutes of brain storming that result in cliched character references, cough Fitzgerald reference cough.

  3. The Infamous Coolman1081 says:

    Quite an outstanding post.

    Loved the Mark Twain bit.

  4. Amanda says:

    I love this! You totally nailed Fitzgerald and Salinger; can’t speak to Yates because I’ve never read him. The Mark Twain one really got me too.

    You should do more of these! Maybe a beat poem in the style of Ginsberg? 😛

  5. Josh says:

    A Bukowski version would have drunken portal and at least 1 C-bomb. I want the Bukowski Portal. Also Cave John would beat someone with a belt.

  6. Pat T says:

    haha this is great, and timely for me because I just finished watching Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

  7. Geeko says:

    I’m not sure if I understood first two parts properly (I’m probably too stupid), but Richard Yates part is hilarious :D. Great article :D.