Dandelions is a Portal roleplay on Tumblr that started in early October of 2022. When a user made an ask blog for Wheatley, their friends were quick to send ridiculous asks, which kickstarted another user's creation of a Grady ask blog. However, events began to happen that turned the silly ask blog shenanigans into a full-fledged roleplay with a plot and a complex cast. Eventually, this roleplay gained the name "Dandelions", thanks to a thread involving Ruth B's song "Dandelions".
As more people joined the ask blog antics, more characters began to appear - most from the Portal series, but some completely original. More ask blogs were made for more Portal characters, such as Fact Core, Rick, and Glados. More fandoms were roped in as well, like SCP and even Harumaki Gohan.
Dandelions contains examples of:
- Artificial Intelligence: Characters running the ask blogs are characters from the Portal franchise: AI cores such as Glados, Wheatley, and others made by Aperture Science.
- Beta Couple: Maverick and Gray are easily leagues more happy and healthy than Grady and Wheatley. The latter are gradually improving, though.
- Drugs Are Bad: When Grady accidentally confesses to him doing drugs, the others enforce into him that doing this will not help him deal with his issues.
- Fantastic Drug: The drugs Grady takes have no name, and are not a drug that exists in the real world. Instead, it's a combination of aspects from several pre-existing drugs. Jinx also used to drink a bright green concoction known as "battery acid", apparently made of way too much caffeine and alcohol, before Amethyst took it away from them.
- Robo Family: There's currently three examples of this:
- The AMA views GLaDOS as its mother (although it wouldn't admit it), and in turn, GLaDOS views it as her child.
- Amethyst, Jinx, and Rick have a family dynamic - Amethyst already viewed Jinx as her parental figure, and Jinx viewed her as their daughter, before Jinx and Rick became official, and Rick and Amethyst now have a similar relationship. Technically, Amethyst isn't a robot, but she's connected to technology.
- Grady and Virgil see each other as brothers, although they're not technically so. They did work together and spend a lot of their early years in each other's company, though, and have recently reconnected.
- Running Gag: It's become a tradition for the askers to pull a "Deez Nuts" joke on the characters whenever a new ask blog appears.
- Shout-Out: Multiple examples:
- The concept of phantoms is taken from Harumaki Gohan's multimedia project Envy Phantom. Additionally, Melty is from the song Melty Land Nightmare by that same artist.
- Nightwing is somewhat an SCP.
